Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

“Black magic artifact doesn’t mean much to me. I’m a cop. Give me details.”

“A hand.”

“A human hand?”

“I didn’t say paw.”

“Wow,” he said. “That’s . . . pretty perverse. Body snatching common in your magicus thingy?” He reached over, ran his fingers along the edge of the tape, testing the security of the seal. The model on the cover of the magazine simpered at him. He grinned, with sudden mordant humor that brought a taste of Demalion to his face. “Yeah, I get it. Crash the truck, fling a hand into traffic, and some poor commuter gets a windshield full of hand.”

Sylvie’s lips tugged upward, nearly against her will. Then she imagined the scene continuing, car wrecks, police reports, her evidence lost.

“Wow,” he said, again. “A hand.” His amusement faded; she had thought it would. Wright was, after all, a cop. “Where’d it come from?”

“According to legend, it’s the hand of a murderer,” Sylvie said. “I’m inclined to believe it. The girl who’s been using the Hand has been having . . . unsettling dreams.”

“Good,” Wright said. “Nice when crime doesn’t pay. It’s something real-world to charge ’em with. Desecration of a body. That’ll get police attention.”

“Rich kids,” Sylvie repeated. “Misdemeanor at best. Slap on the wrist. And it depends on whether they dug it up, hacked it off themselves, or if they bought it. If they bought it—be hard to press any charges at all.”

“Oh, I hate people,” Wright muttered.

“Welcome to my world. Hopefully, we’ll be able to offload this problem at Val’s, though,” Sylvie said, and cut off a Lexus in her sudden lane shift for the turnoff to Rickenbacker Causeway. Val Cassavetes’ husband had been a gun-runner, drug smuggler, and voodoo king: His house had been placed to facilitate all that, on the private shores of Key Biscayne. Ocean tides, after all, were so useful for hiding the bodies, and Biscayne Bay was hammerhead heaven. Sylvie had fed the sharks a time or two herself, when there’d been no other option.

She glanced over at Wright; Demalion had known she was a killer—a tiny smidge of wariness that had never left his gaze—but Wright only looked at her like she was salvation.

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.

Hand.

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.