Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

“It’s a waste of . . .” Sylvie started to say, but then paused. Usually, Hands of Glory were old, but Bella’s dream was modern. A woman poolside, with a scoop net. “No, tell you what. Go ahead. An old woman who drowned a toddler.” Modern media would be all over that story. Infant murders were popular with the press.

“You got it, and listen, Sylvie—” Alex jerked her head around, checked the door, leaned close. Sylvie closed her eyes and hoped Wright would be back soon. Immediately. Anything to forestall this argument, but she’d been a fool for thinking it would be that easy.

Your fault for confiding in someone else, her voice mocked her.

Sylvie interrupted Alex’s second speech of the day on grief and guilt. “Alex! If I flipped out and saw ghosts every single time someone I knew died because they got involved in my life, I’d be sitting in a padded room, carving names of the dead into my skin.”

She won a moment’s silence from Alex and took ruthless advantage of it, “Shut up and listen. And watch the damn door. I don’t want Wright walking in on us again.”

“Fine,” Alex said. She put her feet up on Wright’s chair, crossed her arms over her chest.

“We have a dead man from Chicago who knows my name. He didn’t pull it out of the ether. And my reputation might be growing, but not that fast. He’s a recent ghost, or he wouldn’t be so confused, wouldn’t be riding around in Wright. . . .”

“Circumstantial.”

“Didn’t say you could talk yet,” Sylvie said. “Still my turn.”

“It’s always your turn—”

“Coincidence only goes so far. He’s scarred, the mark of a crystal ball burned into his skin, with a gap. I brought home a piece of that crystal. It matches the gap like a key in a lock.

“It held his soul. Don’t ask me how. The Furies chased it; they wouldn’t have done that if there hadn’t been something of him trying to escape.” Sylvie’s hands clenched on the desk. She raised her head, looked out across the office, out into the sunny day, trying to erase the memory of bloody rain and a high, dark rooftop where Demalion’s bones had been ripped out of his skin. “But there were only two of the Furies then. Alekta was dead. They hunt in a pack. And with only two of them, they lost his scent. Demalion’s soul escaped, found the nearest harbor it could.”

Alex didn’t say anything, but her mouth twisted, and Sylvie wanted to lunge across the room and shake her. She knew, suddenly, what her clients must feel; the certainty that they were right, and at the same time, unable to express it. She hadn’t felt like this in a very long time. She didn’t like it any better this time around. “It’s Demalion,” she said, kept her voice level. “Just . . . trust me.”

If she’d had any doubts, they’d been erased by the way he’d traced her name into her skin, but that wasn’t something she could share. “He said he was Demalion,” she offered instead. “If you’d rather take his word over mine.”

Alex gnawed her lip, her cheeks spotted with red, and finally asked, “Will you listen to me now? Really listen?”

Sylvie’s temper fretted, threatened to spike. Was it too much to ask Alex to trust her? Instead, the girl—who knew barely the surface of the Magicus Mundi —was setting herself up as judge. . . . The dark voice crept closer, mingled with her own.

Alex leaned forward, caught Sylvie’s wrist, and said, “Please,” in a tone of such soft desperation that it defanged her growing anger. It was one thing to refuse to bend her head to someone who claimed unfair authority over her, another to refuse to listen at all.

“Wright’s possessed. You say that, and I believe you. But . . . Oh god, Sylvie, he knows about Demalion. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—but Zoe was asking about him, if you were still seeing that guy, and I said Demalion had died.”

Sylvie sat back, a niggling bit of doubt winding neatly around her heart. The human answer was the more common answer—casual venality, con artistry, murder. . . . But when she closed her eyes, she felt Wright’s fingers on her skin, guided by Demalion’s knowledge, and shook her head. “Nope, you’re still wrong. I know Demalion.”

“If you’re wrong, it’s really dangerous,” Alex said. “If you’re wrong, then there’s a possessing spirit lying to you. Manipulating you. Please, at least take him to Val’s. Take the Hand also. Get her diagnosis.” Alex’s voice shook. “I’ve been looking up ghosts ever since you said they weren’t a game. You’re right. They’re not. They ruin lives.”

“It’s Demalion ,” Sylvie said.

“Who worked for the ISI. Not exactly the most ethical bunch.”

Sylvie’s certainty soured in her chest; she knew it was Demalion. She also knew that Alex was right; hadn’t Sylvie said it herself? Possession wasn’t the act of a benign man. At best, Demalion was desperate enough to control someone else’s body to make his wishes known. And, like cornered rats, desperate men were dangerous.

She leaned her head into her hands, her heart thumping. The warning bell continued to ring in unpleasant counterpoint. She surged off the desk, headed for the closet. “Fine. You win. I’ll take Wright and the Hand by Val’s. See if she can throw some good news my way. You. Keep looking into Bella, and find Zoe.”

She snagged the trash can out of the closet, ignoring the bell’s sudden increase in sound, and headed out to hunt Wright, careful not to meet Alex’s eyes, unwilling to see the pity she knew she’d find there.

SUNLIGHT SLANTED INTO THE TRUCK, DECLARED TRIUMPH OVER SYLVIE’S laboring AC, and left them sweating gently into midday heat. She could smell Wright next to her, hot salt and the lingering scent of habañero spice. Utterly different from Demalion, who had smelled of sandalwood, coffee, musk.

She shook her head, tightened her grip on the steering wheel, and blistered the air with her curses as the too-hot wheel burned her hand.

“Feel better?” he asked wryly.

“I should have stayed on vacation,” she muttered. Should have stayed away from the job, with its reminders of broken friendships and things lost to the Magicus Mundi .

Instead, she was sharing tight quarters of a too-small truck with a man who housed her dead lover. But she couldn’t think of him like that. Or shouldn’t. Wright was more than a vessel: He was the cop she reluctantly liked, her tidy houseguest, Giselle’s husband, Jamie’s father. A living, human man.

Wright squirmed away from the trash can, propped between his legs again, and her frustration and anxiety found an outlet. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop fidgeting. It’s not like it’s going to crawl out and cop a feel.”

He pressed it all the way to the front of the leg space, held it there with his sneakers, knees up in the air, and said, “So why not throw it in the truck bed?”

“Too risky,” she said. “Ties break; accidents happen. You’re a cop. You should know that. How many men do you catch on outstanding warrants ’cause their car tags are expired, the taillights broken, their driving erratic?”

He bristled at being treated like a not-too-bright child, then said, “You’re expecting to wreck? You know what they say, Sylvie. Cowards die a thousand deaths—”

“And heroes die for lack of common sense and a little forethought.”

She got a dry chuckle. He let his legs down slowly, sneakers slipping off the top of the wastebasket, stretching long muscles forced tight by his hunched shape. The pink-plastic bin slipped back, rested between his legs. He kneed it gently. “So . . . what’s in it?”

“Short-term memory a problem for you?”