Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

“Shadows,” he said, a hiss that carried easily in the night breeze. Her pulse jumped at the sudden summons.

Sylvie turned, found Wright two rows down on the far edge of the lot, standing beside an SUV. “Not on your list,” he said.

“And big enough to carry pretty much anything,” she said, joining him.

Wright nodded, bent over the list with his pencil stub, not only putting down the license plate but going around to the front and collecting the VIN. He passed the paper back to her, his numbers script-elegant at the bottom of her scrawled notes. She copied the information onto her own paper and passed it back before heading back onto her own circuit.

She finished her circuit, and her nerves began to complain. Maybe the burglars weren’t even there. Maybe they’d been and gone while Sylvie and Wright had folded into people origami. They’d been out the better part of an hour. That was more than enough time, if they had a specific target, if they weren’t just window-shopping.

She eyed Wright, a long, lean shadow wandering aimlessly about the parking lot. If she went toward the mall . . . She took a purposeful set of steps in that direction, and, as she had expected, he fell in just behind her. Being helpful. She bit back the command to return to the truck. He hadn’t listened to her yet, and she didn’t want him to get in the habit of ignoring her orders. Sylvie said, “Let’s go see what we can see. If we’re lucky, they’re slowpokes and choosy.”

“You don’t want to call the police?” He shook his head before she could respond. “No, of course you don’t. You’re the vigilante in the dark.”

“Hey,” she snapped, unexpectedly stung. “If you want me to keep you as a client, play nice.” Cops never did appreciate PIs, but she’d have thought the fact that he needed her would keep his contempt at a civil level.

Sylvie stalked toward the mall, keeping to the shadows clustering beneath royal palms, the fronds high above rustling in the breeze, hiding her footsteps’ soft rasp against the asphalt. Hiding his. He followed on little cat feet, as silent as she, and clinging to the shadows with a tenacity born of practice.

Beat cop, she thought. Really? They tended to walk the centers of streets, the better to see what could be seen, what could be coming at them. Wright looked far too comfortable skulking along like a stray dog for it to be foreign to his nature. Alex was going to have to dig deeper. The clients always lied. Always.

The fragrance of jasmine reached out delicate tendrils to her, a scent warning that she had reached the edge of the parking lot. Wire-mesh benches lined one side of the smooth concrete path, paint-scored where people had chained bicycles to them, bounced skateboards off them. Stepping onto the path to the door showed her lights glimmering inside the mall’s main promenade, a faint flicker visible even against the store’s emergency lights. Something about the little glow made her queasy, dizzy, that disorientation growing again. She took a step back, bumped into Wright, standing skin close.

“They’re still there?” he asked, a breath in the shell of her ear, his hands resting on her hips.

She twitched him off. “Yeah, but that’s no flashlight they’re carrying. It’s something else. Something like a torch.”

“Smoke detectors?” he asked, but he shook his head. “Maybe not. Not if it’s magical. Then the rules don’t necessarily apply.”

She gave him a longer, warier glance. “You’re getting the hang of this world pretty damn fast, Wright.”

“Good teacher,” he said, bared his teeth in what should have been a grin but came out a grimace.

She got closer to the mall doors, leaning on the stucco when her body felt iffy again; she squinted inside at the alarm pad. “Alarm’s still active,” she murmured. “But the door’s unlatched.” That close, she could see the bolts drawn back, the gap between the door and the frame.

He caught her hand. “The alarm will go off.”

“Not if they know their business as well as I think they do,” she said. The flickering light grew stronger, and she yanked her hands away, suddenly nervous, suddenly dizzy. Suddenly scared of the dark. Not the dark. The light in it.

She steeled herself and grasped the handle and pushed, just as the torchlight shifted and dimmed, the weight of shadows stepping before the flame.

“They’re coming,” Sylvie muttered. The alarm system showed active, but it also showed the door still shut. She fumbled for the touchpad, for the emergency call button, but a flu wave of dizziness, nausea, and terror slammed into her. She fought it, pulled her gun, felt Wright collapse behind her, a sliding, silent weight along her calf and foot, then the torchlight was on her. She bit her lip, fought the vertigo, fought the exhaustion long enough to get a glimpse of a startled, underlit face, made skull-like by a sulfurous glow.

“Get back—” she said, tried to raise her gun with hands that felt miles away.

SHE ROLLED AWAY FROM THE BOOT PUSHING AT HER HIP, HER GUN hand clutching at nothing, nails scrabbling on the concrete, collecting sand and splinters.

“Easy, now,” the voice warned. It vibrated with tension. Sylvie rolled to her back, squinted up at the man looming over her, backlit by the rising sun. Yeah, she’d thought so. Cop.

Hell. Worse than that. Cop with a gun pointed down at her.

“I’m unarmed,” she said, and wasn’t that a concern? Her hand twitched against the concrete again, still trying to find her gun. A quick glance around gave her nothing at all. She pushed herself up on her elbows, as slow as a yoga movement, both for the sake of the patrolman’s nerves and her own trembling weariness.

What the hell kind of spell was this? She hadn’t heard anything, no trigger words, no incantation, and anyway, teenagers were unlikely to be skilled at magic. The talent was rare enough, thank god, and the training, rarer still. Yet here they were, teenagers with power.

Her head throbbed, but she folded the pain back and forced herself to think. Witches tended toward elaborate plans, careful preparation, long buildups to ensure everything went off exactly as planned. This power was overkill for a witch, who tended to be sparing with power. An illusion would have done the job just fine; a repulsion glamour could clear a stadium if done well.

Sorcerers, on the other hand, loved splashy. The more power, the better, but they wouldn’t have walked on by Sylvie. Sorcerers, faced with an unconscious obstacle, would have killed her where she lay.

Talismanic, she thought, and groaned. She always forgot that one. Borrowed power.

Borrowed power was like handing a gun to a toddler.

“You hurt?” the cop said.

“Only my pride,” she muttered. Finally, her body cooperated enough to let her sit upright, one leg crossed beneath her, one knee up. Another moment, and she’d stand.

That plan fled her mind when she saw Wright. Disoriented indeed. She’d forgotten about her client.

He lay sprawled a bare body’s length from her, supine, legs dangling limply over the curb, another patrolman bent over him gingerly. Wright’s hand twitched, and Sylvie relaxed. Still alive, then. Good. Her rep was iffy enough without getting a client killed.

“Up,” her patrolman said. His name tag read ROSS. “And go easy. What are you doing here? This isn’t the Grove—you can’t sleep on benches around here.”

She licked her lips, waiting for him to point out that the doors to the mall were ajar, that the store shutters were open. That would be embarrassing; to explain to her client that no, she hadn’t seen enough to identify the burglars, hadn’t caught them, and pretty please could Lisse Conrad admit to hiring Sylvie and tell the police that she wasn’t the burglar?