Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

Her satchel shouldered, jacket on, attitude in place, she headed out into the Miami morning, bookended on either side by the trouble she left behind and the trouble she hoped to find.

DIFFICULT TRAFFIC TO THE BEACH, NOW THAT IT WAS CLOSER TO EIGHT, helped her to narrow her focus. Forget about Wright for the moment. Forget the whys and hows of Demalion’s return. Forget about Zoe and her problems. Forget about her dislike of Lisse Conrad. Concentrate on the simplest things. Driving without accident. Hunting down her leads on the burglars. Compartmentalization was the key here.

She slued the truck into the alley between the bar and her office, taking quick advantage of a gap between cars. She had to stomp on the brake to avoid hitting the Dumpster, left a quick yelp of burned rubber, and rocked herself in the seat. But hey, another perfect parking job. She’d recovered enough of her composure to actually feel a tiny smidge of pride.

The bar’s alley door opened; Etienne poked his head out, all tousled dark curls and a faceful of piercings over a pale green beater tee. Dragonfly tattoos decorated his bare shoulders, black wings on black skin, and a blurred image of what she presumed was Jesus or a saint stretched the length of his forearm. He yawned, propped himself on the mossy stucco, and said, “’Sup, Shadows? Coffee in a mo’.” He turned around, not waiting for a response. That was Etienne, all over, slow-moving but inexorable.

Sylvie watched him go, decided she really had been out of the neighborhood loop if Etienne was sleeping in the bar as a deterrent to burglars. Confrontation was a dangerous tactic at the best of times; in this case it was likely to be a useless one if her experience was anything to go by.

She squeezed out of the truck, pushing the door open the whole eight inches available—parking in the alley did tend to leave precious little space—and dropped to the sand-coated asphalt, just as Etienne reappeared with two paper cups in his hands. An unbuttoned guayabera had been slung over his tee: business wear, Miami bar casual.

“Kinda busy,” Sylvie warned, even as she took the first cup. The heat went straight to her bones. She warmed her hands around the cup as if it were thirty degrees outside and not a damp eighty-five. She inhaled the deep roast, popped the lid to see the oily shimmer of serious caffeine, and thought she could make the time for a single cup’s worth of conversation.

He grinned, white slash of teeth. “You’re always busy, and I’m not looking to chat.” He pressed the second cup into her hands, sweet-scented even through the lid. It was a WASP-SPECIAL, mocha plus hazelnut, double cream and sugar: candy bar in a cup. She popped the lid; no jimmies, at least.

Sylvie looked down at it with more disapproval than the concoction really warranted. It wasn’t the coffee so much as what it foretold: Her plan for a quick in-and-out raid on Alex’s computer for that list of homes had just been squashed flat as a conch fritter. Her fault, completely. She’d been in such a hurry to avoid . . .

The scene of the crime? her little dark voice suggested slyly.

. . . the explanation she owed Wright that she’d left the list behind.

Her nerves jittered without her taking a single caffeinated sip. Alex was a minefield of potential questions, and Sylvie wasn’t ready to answer anything that might touch on Demalion’s inexplicable return.

“Thanks,” she said, lifting herself from the side of her truck, where she’d been slouched against the warm metal, tipping the coffee cup in Etienne’s direction.

“De nada,” Etienne said. He disappeared back into the bar on a waft of air-conditioning that mingled spilled alcohol with the cloying, chemical bite of Freon.

She sidled around the truck, slurping at her own coffee, scalding her tongue as always, but hell, impatience was a familiar flaw. The front door was locked; she kicked at the metal surround, rattle and clang, and shouted, “Alex!”

Alex popped the latches, a series of clicks and snaps one after another, and said. “Dammit, I knew you’d be in. I could have been sleeping.”

Sylvie waved the coffee cup, and Alex’s attention derailed. She pounced on it, and Sylvie said, “So, I’m a bad boss, made you get up early, and asked you for info that kept you up. You got anything useful?”

“List’s on the desk,” Alex said. “Organized for driving ease since there’s nothing much else to go on. All the neighborhoods are nice, no one reported a car stolen, and none of the owners have criminal records. How’d it go with Wright?”

Sylvie considered telling Alex exactly how it had gone, down to the little groan he’d made when her nails grazed his throat. Then she imagined the result: an impromptu lecture on the psychology of grief-driven behaviors as seen on Oprah , and god help her, but probably some type of client-employee counseling as scripted by Alex. Instead, Sylvie bit it all back, and said, “About as you would expect.”

Alex looked down at the murky froth of her de-lidded coffee, and said, “Jimmies, this needs jimmies,” and disappeared into the kitchenette with suspicious alacrity.

Sylvie eyed the computer, thought about her list, and followed Alex. Alex had her head buried in the cabinets, hunting candy toppings they didn’t have, and Sylvie leaned up against the counter. “Something you need to say, Alex? About Wright’s case?”

Alex pulled her head out of the cabinet, wiping a stray cobweb from her hair. “We’ve got to clean—”

“Alex.”

“ Is he possessed?”

“You had doubts, and you force-fed me the case anyway?”

Alex slumped against the counter. “I did a search on him before I said yes to his case. No red flags. Cop right out of high school, wife in insurance, apartment, kid. A few small commendations for the job, but he’s looking at beat cop for a while longer. I couldn’t see any reason he would lie; it’s not the right type of lie for a cop, but you always say to look for real-world reasoning first. And I might have skipped that step.”

Alex poked morosely at the foam on her coffee, the better to flavor the fingernail she began to chew. “He was just so desperate, I guess I got caught up in his fear, then in selling him to you. I didn’t start worrying until later.”

“You lucked out,” Sylvie said. “He’s possessed.” As soon as the words, sure and decisive, left her mouth, she grimaced. Red flag to a bull.

“Oh, good!” Alex said, then backtracked. “I mean, bad. For him. Good I didn’t waste your time with galloping PTSD or a really special case of dissociative identity disorder. So what’d you find out? What’s up with the ghost? What does it want?”

“I’ll catch you up later,” Sylvie said. “I just came by for the list. Since you’re in, can I assume that you’ve added useful facts to my info?”

“C’mon, Syl, I’ve never seen possession before.”

“It’s not a game or a collectible card,” Sylvie snapped. “It’s a man’s life.” Two men’s lives. Her breath tightened in her chest again.

Alex went white, set down her coffee, and passed Sylvie the list. It had grown in her hands, gone from sketchy information to a page-long dossier on each car and owner.

Sylvie tucked the sheets into her jacket, the slick denim reminding her—“Zoe come back yet?”

Alex shook her head, still silent. Still upset.

“Crap,” Sylvie said, wondering where her sister had washed up. Bella’s? Not likely, given their apparent spat, but teenage fights healed as fast as they happened. Jasmyn? Ariel? “She’s probably hanging out at one of the princess pack’s homes. Or off bumping uglies with Raul—”