Ghosts & Echoes (18 page)

THE SCROLLWORK GATE ACROSS THE LONG, BRICK DRIVE TO VAL’S home was closed tight. Sylvie idled the truck and pushed the intercom. “Sylvie Lightner to see Val Cassavetes.”

The intercom squawked, an electronic shrill of outrage, and Sylvie winced. That wasn’t a welcoming sound. But she knew she wasn’t welcome here at all. She had dragged the witch into the Chicago mess—sorcerers, battling gods, catastrophe—and Val’s magic had flamed out, left her powerless and pissy. The verdict was still out on whether the power-strip was permanent.

Even with her powers gone, Val presented a challenge to anyone wanting in: The warding spells still worked. Sylvie had proof of that with the office warning bell, which hadn’t lessened in strength at all.

“Try again,” Wright urged, and she turned an incredulous look on him. Since when had he been so hot to meet Val? Then again, so far as he knew, Sylvie had done nothing on his case. He shrugged, shoved at the trash can again, and grimaced. “I really don’t like this thing.”

“I agree, but no one’s answering.”

“It’s a wide-spaced gate,” he said. “I could
walk
through the gaps, knock on the door.”

“You would really, really regret trying,” Sylvie said. “And don’t tell me to chuck the Hand through either. Do you know what kind of hell we’d be in for if I threw a black-magic artifact through her wards?”

“Are there any good kinds of hells?”

“Some are worse than others. The one where my ex-best friend sends out her son’s pet monster to dismember us? That’s a really bad place I don’t want to go.”

He shifted, rubbed at the scar beneath his shirt, and said, “Once more? Just for luck?”

She hit the intercom button again, pressed hard, held it down until the buzz became the swollen sound of a kicked hornet’s nest; she jerked her hand back as energy—blue, electric, and alive—lashed out and danced across the truck’s hood.

“Holy shit,” Wright said. “Guess she really doesn’t want us around.” A glimmering radiance lingered in the air, whited their teeth and eyes like a blacklight, though it was midday. Fine tremors ran across Wright’s body, a vibration of fear or stress.

Too close to lightning,
she thought. Too close to his death. Maybe there was a little PTSD in his mix, after all.

The intercom crackled again, and Sylvie growled, then yelled toward it, “I get the picture, Val. Give the pyrotechnics a rest. We’re going. But you still owe me.”

She put the truck in reverse and gunned it back onto the road, furious with the waste of time. She’d let Alex sway her with easy solutions to Sylvie’s problems. She should have known better; problems didn’t get better if you farmed them out. They just changed hands.

She scowled at the trash can, trying to convince herself she couldn’t smell a tinge of rot, magical corruption leaking into her truck. Alex had been right about one thing, though. She had to do something with the Hand. Val wasn’t open for business, and Sylvie didn’t want to leave it at the office, didn’t want to force Alex to play guardian to it, didn’t want Zoe to find it if she ever showed up. . . .

“What now?” Wright asked, his grip on the door handle loosening as her speed slacked back to legal limits.

“I want to get rid of the Hand. It’s too dangerous to just cart around. Usually, with bad magic, you can burn it gone. But this?”

“It burns?”

“Like a never-ending candle,” she said.

He slumped, said, “I don’t suppose they come with an instruction manual.”

“No,” Sylvie said. “I bet the person who sold it knows how to destroy it. I can’t talk to Bella; her maid would probably call the cops if I set foot there again. Crap, I should have been nicer to her.”

Wright licked his lips, fidgeting with his cigarettes, and said, “What about your sister. Would she know?”

Sylvie flashed him a quick glance, all she could afford on the island road, and said, “It’s not a bad thought. I’ll drop you back at the office—”

“No,” he said. “Stick to you like glue, remember? I’ve been in your apartment; why not your sister’s house? Don’t leave me behind this time.”

Sylvie turned to look at him, suddenly unsure. Was that Wright sitting beside her, worried about his skin, his case, his ghostly passenger, or was it Demalion, referring to her habit of cutting him out of the action? If she’d only been able to that final night.

“Road!” Wright snapped, and she jerked the wheel, and thought, Wright. Definitely Wright. Demalion, even startled, would never have that nasal howl of a startled Chicagoan.

“Jeezus,” he muttered. “Just ’cause I came back once doesn’t mean I want to tease Death again.”

Sylvie leaned her head back, rolling it against the headrest, trying to rub out tension that started in her bones. Some days were gracious things, allowed her to believe in a fresh start, a slate wiped clean by good intentions. Other days . . . all they did was rub her face in mistakes she’d made.

Wright clicked on her radio, thumbing the tuner ruthlessly, until he found something to his taste—country rock—humming along tunelessly under his breath, tapping out mismatched beats on her dash.

“What?” she said. Zoe had slid back to the forefront of her thoughts—a current problem and one she might be able to solve. Zoe’s continued absence worried her; there was teenage rebellion, staying out all hours with disreputable friends, and there was just plain missing. The line between could be very narrow.

“What are we going to do now? Not with the Hand. With me. I thought the witch would help. She slammed the door in your face. So am I screwed or what?”

“She’s hardly the only witch in Miami. I can find another one. It’s just going to take time.”

“Fine, sure, take all you want. Not like the ghost might eat my brain, or something.”

“Calm down,” she said. “It’s your body. That gives you first claim. Remember that.”

He sighed. “It’s just, he feels stronger, and I’m—”

“Scared,” she said, without thinking, without considering that it might be an insult to a beat cop.

Wright surprised her, though; he didn’t snap back at her, just stared out at the traffic patterns, and finally said, “Yeah.”

Sylvie nodded at the pack of cigarettes opened in his lap and rolled down the windows. He lit up like a starving man.

She used his momentary bliss to debate with herself. She could tell him about Demalion. It might be a kindness, help remove that bone-deep terror, but . . . she didn’t know which way he’d jump. If he chose not to trust her—and why should he, when he barely knew her beyond a name in his head—she could lose Demalion completely. The one true thing about ghosts: They had unfinished business, something that stuck in their souls like grit in a wound, blistering, festering. Sylvie wanted to see Demalion’s final business completed; she owed him that. And Wright could be easily endangered if he went about Miami looking for someone to help him all on his lonesome. “It’s not time to panic, yet,” she said. “I’ve got a plan.”

“A plan? You said you didn’t deal with ghosts. You said you—”

“I know what I said, and now I’m telling you I have a plan. Diplomacy.”

He laughed on a nervous inhale and choked. He hacked for a moment, then chucked the cigarette out the window, a tiny red-tipped meteor crashing to earth in their wake.

“Look,” she said. “You told me the ghost was confused, didn’t know who he was, didn’t know where he was, right? You also told me he feels stronger now, more complete. Maybe he can listen to reason now.”

“Dead men can reason?”

“We’ll find out as soon as he shows himself again.” She tried not to let any of the anticipation in her voice show, found herself wondering dourly if that was why Demalion was playing hard to get. She’d have thought, after this morning, he’d be more in sight. She’d been braced for his reappearance all day. But Demalion did love to confound her.

Wright shot her a glance, a hard-to-read expression on his face. Skepticism? Concern? Relief?

“I’m a cop—”

“So you’ve mentioned—”

“I got a good sense about people. About when someone’s lying to me. When they’re hiding something. You and Alex, you know something. Or think you do. Got me outta the way so you could talk. You gonna let me in on it?”

Sylvie veered sharply into the exit lane and off the highway. Wright braced the wastebasket at his feet and chewed over her nonanswer, his own speculation.

“You know who it is,” Wright said, abruptly, “don’t you? That’s why he sent me here. That’s why he sent me to you.”

FACED WITH WRIGHT’S ACCUSATION, SYLVIE DID WHAT SHE HAD vowed never to do: She lied to her client. She did it quickly, smoothly, without ever taking her eyes off the midday traffic. “I might know witches, even a werewolf or two, but I draw the line at hanging out with the dead.”

She didn’t make the mistake of glancing over to see if he believed her. If she was going to lie, dammit, she was going to do it well.

He sighed, a long, drawn-out breath that argued he was less a cigarette addict than Sylvie had thought. “I don’t think I believe you.” His voice wasn’t angry, a quiet statement. “Maybe I should find someone else. Someone who’ll take slave labor since I’ve given you the last of my cash.”

She did look at him then, took in the wry twist to his mouth and knew he was seriously considering it.

“Don’t joke about that,” Sylvie said. It came out too fast, too earnest. Too telling.

He turned an incredulous and unhappy gaze on her. “You’re shitting me.”

“You go up to a witch or a sorcerer and throw yourself on their mercy . . . you won’t see much in the way of it. Most people are petty, self-centered, and greedy; it’s how we’re wired. We act nice, get along because we have to. Maybe one in . . . six, to be generous, is a truly good person. For the rest of us? Power, as they say, corrupts. If you give the average person an ability beyond the norm? It only lets their inner desires out to play.”

Wright shook his head. “I don’t believe that—”

“Think about it this way. Your boy, Jamie, right? You had to teach him to share. Teach him to
play nice
. If he’d been able to shape the world around him, get whatever he wanted, how well do you think those lessons would have taken?”

Silence from the passenger’s side of the truck for a block, two, and Sylvie had to glance his way. He’d been waiting for it. “You’ve blown right past cynicism and headed for misanthropy. You’re wrong, though. People are social creatures. They pull together.”

“Crusader,” she said again. “Guess that explains the badge.”

“Now who’s naïve?” he asked with an unhappy grin. “There are far too many people with the badge who don’t give a fuck. But they’re mostly sitting behind desks.”

Guess she didn’t have to wonder if he was a little bitter about still being a beat cop. No wonder he was tagging along so willingly, so eager to offer solutions to her problems; he had dreams of being a detective.

She sighed, reached across the cab, and rested her palm on his shoulder. “I’m not expecting you to trust me completely. You’re a cop. I know better than to ask for total trust. But I will get you back to your family. Just give me a little time.”

“Time, I don’t mind. Hell, I wouldn’t be helping you hunt your sister down if I was counting the minutes. Trust. I can do that, too. But I can’t do both at the same time, Sylvie. I’m not that patient. I’m not that laid-back. So be careful what you’re asking of me. Choose.”

She licked her lips. Fair enough. Trust, she could live without. It wasn’t like he was armed, and if he didn’t harbor severe doubts about trusting others with his problem, she hadn’t done her job well enough. But time? That she needed. Time to find Zoe, time to find a new witch to deal with the Hand of Glory leaking corruption all over her truck, time to talk to Demalion, find out what he needed. Time, as always, was not her ally.

A HALF HOUR’S DRIVE TOOK THEM INTO THE PINECREST SUBURBS, TO Sylvie’s parents’ small house on an oak-shaded street. Sylvie pulled the truck into the drive.

“Wait here. I’ll be back.” The need to find Zoe had reached near-painful levels in her blood. If Val wouldn’t wave her wand for her, Sylvie’d have to go back to basics: legwork and serendipity.

“Time, not trust, remember,” he said. “You’ve been doing too much behind my back. I’m coming with you.”

And didn’t that sound familiar. Demalion had been like that. Dogging her steps, growling the whole time.

She stopped by the side of the house, rested her hand against where peeling stucco and lichen grey brick met. “Well? Lock the truck behind you.”

He caught up with her as she ducked under an oleander’s low-hanging branches, dodged around a humming air-conditioning unit, and climbed over a locked gate.

“You got something against knocking?”

“I’m trying to sneak up on Zoe on the off chance that she’s here and just ignoring the phone.” She rattled the gate, and he clambered over after her, long legs making an easy job of it.