Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

Her stomach wanted to eat through her skin, anxiety burning as hot and painful as a flame. He came back. But how? The Furies devoured souls as well as bodies.

“Sylvie?”

“It’s the burglars’ magical tool.” She hastened into speech. “In the can.”

“You found them?” His concern melted away into pleasure and surprise. “That was quick. Bet that went a long way to making the local PD like you better.”

“If I’d told them,” she said, absently. “How’d you know about—”

“You didn’t tell them?”

She moved to derail the argument. “The trash can’s sealed,” she said. “What tipped you off? You said you’re not much for the Magicus Mundi .”

“I’m not,” Wright said. “The ghost is. Now that he’s more awake, he’s all sorts of busy in my head. And he thinks there’s something very bad in there.”

“Well, chalk one up for the dead man,” Sylvie muttered, then winced.

“So why didn’t you call the cops?”

“You’re a cop,” she said. “If I brought a burglar to you, and said, ‘Hey, here’s your perp, and she and her friends are breaking into stores, pretty as you please, using black magic’—how long do you think you’d keep listening? Before the ghost.”

Wright slouched back into the seat, pulling his legs up to keep them as far as possible from the trash can, and said, “You’re not even trying. Phone it in, an anonymous tip, and trust that they’ll match the suspects to the stolen merchandise.”

“Yeah, that might work,” Sylvie said. “Except that the burglars in this case are the kind of people who give the police hives. Make ’em dot every i, cross every t, and it’s still not gonna be enough once the lawyers get involved.”

“Rich people,” Wright said.

“Worse,” Sylvie said. “Rich kids.”

“You should still try—”

Idealism peeked out of his eyes. An honest man who believed in doing what was right no matter how likely it was to fail.

“I want the source of their tool, the person who thought it was a slick idea to expose teens to black magic,” Sylvie said. “That’s worse than anything the kids have done.”

“They couldn’t figure it out themselves?”

“No,” Sylvie said flatly. “Magic’s not exactly like building a bomb. You can’t just download the plans from the Internet. They had a teacher. A corrupter.”

“How are you going to find the person?”

“Got an idea or two,” she said. Zoe. Relying on a teenage network of gossip. She’d done more with less. “Let me do my job, my way. That’s what you’re paying for.”

He took the hint and stopped talking cops and robbers, ghosts and fears. Instead, he rubbernecked, watched palms towering over the highway, watched the sky wheel from blue to brighter blue, and counted seafood restaurants aloud. It made her grin, even through her worries about him, Demalion, the Hand, Zoe. It also made her hungry.

Back at the office, Wright and Sylvie stared at the trash can for a moment. He stepped away from the truck, put his hands in his pockets, and whistled aimlessly, blue eyes squinting in the beach sunlight.

“Cute,” she said. “I wasn’t going to ask you to carry it.” She came round the truck, tucked the trash can beneath her arm, and headed inside.

When Sylvie entered, pink plastic clutched tight, the warning bell on the main desk began to chime. It rolled in its marble base, metal hissing against stone, a quiet susurrus beneath the steady dinging. Sylvie eyed it warily. If she’d had any doubts that the Hand of Glory was authentic, they were gone now.

On the bright side, she’d seen the bell do worse. When the Furies had come by, the bell had all but spun out of its orbit. As bad as this was, it was a human-sized problem, not a godly one.

Alex looked up from the couch where she was sprawled, catching a bit of a nap after her early start. “—the hell?”

“Bad magic,” Sylvie said. “Don’t touch it. Don’t peek at it. Pretend it’s not here.” She set the trash can down at the far end of the room, as far as she could get it from the kitchenette because she didn’t even want to think of food and it in the same vicinity; her stomach growled and proved her a liar.

“O—kay, then,” Alex said. She gravitated to the trash can despite all Sylvie’s warnings, and Wright was the one who took her by the arm and urged her away.

“Trust me,” he said. “I don’t even know what’s in it, but it’s not anything good.”

Alex recoiled from his touch, then flushed red with embarrassment and shame. Guess Alex wasn’t ready for up and close with a confirmed ghost. Wright’s mouth tightened, his jaw tensed, but he said nothing.

“Where’d you get it?” Alex asked, rubbing her arm absently where Wright had touched her. “What’s it for? We’re disposing of it, right? Not using it . . .”

“Alex,” Sylvie snapped. “You think I would?”

Alex said, “If you thought it was necessary? Yeah. I do.”

“Nice,” Sylvie said, but there wasn’t much bite in it. For one thing, Alex was right. Sylvie did all sorts of things she would prefer not to do if it was needed. Wright was looking all manner of appalled and doing a crap job of hiding it.

“Zoe swing by for her toys yet?” A stupid question, but it distracted Wright, and Sylvie needed to voice her fear. Zoe had slipped out after hours last night, and teenagers could patch up broken relationships so easily. Bonding over burglary and black magic? Until she saw Zoe in her office, unharmed and untouched by the Magicus Mundi , Sylvie wasn’t going to be happy.

Sylvie tried to think back, to attach shapes to those barely glimpsed figures from last night. Had Zoe been among them?

Alex shook her head. “She’s still MIA.”

“Was Zoe the jailbait masquerading as a fashion plate?” Wright asked.

“Is Zoe my baby sister, you mean?” Sylvie said. Her tone warned him off the topic.

He took a step back, held his hands up. “No offense meant.”

Hands landed on her shoulders, and Alex banged her head gently against her back, her gel-spiked hair stiff against Sylvie’s nape. “Sylvie . . . curb the instincts. Take a breath. Tell me about the trash can. Your sister’s an alley cat. Deal with it. She’ll come back after she’s gotten bored with her new boyfriend.”

Sylvie sighed. If they’d been alone, she might have told Alex everything; Bella, the burglaries, the Hand, her fears for Zoe, and Demalion’s return. But Wright was listening. Typical, she thought. When she hadn’t wanted to talk, she and Alex had been alone, and now that the words burned to be loosed, she had to swallow them.

“I need to find Zoe, and soon,” she said. Stripping Zoe of her cell phone may have been good as punishment, but not practical. No. Reach out and smack someone held an undeniable appeal right now. What the hell was Zoe thinking?

“Give me a list of names, and I’ll canvass her friends.”

Sylvie said, “Start with Ariel Goldbach.”

Wright slouched into the kitchenette, peered into the cupboards, beat-up sneakers squeaking on the terrazzo. “I don’t see the deal here. She’s what? Sixteen? Seventeen? She a druggie? That why you’re so hot to find her?”

“She’s my responsibility,” Sylvie said, flatly. “Like you.”

He frowned; his fidgety body went still as his mind went active. Calculating, putting random pieces together in a way that shouldn’t mean anything. “Don’t suppose she’s a rich kid?” He glanced back at the trash can.

Goddamn cops with goddamned intuitive leaps.

“No,” she said. It was the truth, in a narrow, tunnel-vision manner. Clients had the privilege of lying to her; if she lied to them, it was bad for business. “Anything going on here, Alex?”