Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

She clattered downstairs, the bell growing louder as she descended, her frustration growing with the sound. Her cake case was nothing but trouble.

Alex was back; her spiky bright hair catching sunlight outside. She stood on the stoop but was held back from entering. Wright leaned against the front door, his palm flat against the glass, his arm and body caging Alex. Alex had her head ducked; Wright’s lips moved rapidly, talking up a storm.

A murmur carried through the glass, an unintelligible vibration. Alex raised her head, and her eyes were wide, the whites showing all around the irises. Sylvie snarled, headed for the door, for Wright—and the scene changed all at once. Wright, gesturing with his free hand, nearly stubbed himself in the face with the tip of his cigarette, and flinched. The cigarette tumbled; Wright slumped.

Alex yanked the door open, slid inside, and shut it in Wright’s face. She stumbled inward, jumped when she saw Sylvie looming, then looked relieved.

“What was that about?” Sylvie said. “Do I need to have a talk with Wright about respecting the staff—”

Alex held up a hand. “Fine. You were right. Utterly right. It’s Demalion in there, the bastard.”

“Bastard’s pretty harsh,” Sylvie objected. It was weak, buried beneath the relief that she wasn’t going to have to fight Alex on this.

“You’ve called him worse before you lionized him after his death. He’s ISI, Sylvie. And he chose to convince me of who he was by reciting their file on me. Did you know they had a file on me?”

“Demalion wanted to hire you,” Sylvie said.

Alex shuddered. “Me? Work for dicks in suits? Just no.”

Silence fell between them. Sylvie watched Wright pacing on the front stoop, phone back in his hand—comfort-calling his wife, his son. Reminding himself of who he was.

“Did he say what he wanted?” Sylvie asked. She tried not to feel the itch of envy that Demalion had spoken to Alex when Sylvie had been waiting all day for a single word. That would be both pathetic and counterproductive.

“Demalion?”

“Of course , Demalion,” Sylvie said. “I know what Wright wants.”

Alex bit her lip, that quick, sideways nip that meant she was biting back hard or hurtful questions—Sylvie heard them anyway, read them off Alex’s expressive face. Did she care? With Demalion’s wishes also in the picture?

“Speaking of Wright,” Alex said, “I gather you haven’t told him. About Demalion. Why not?”

“Maybe you made me doubt?” Sylvie said.

“Crappy excuse, Syl.”

“I will. Soon.”

Alex narrowed her gaze, but Sylvie moved past her and stuck her head out the door. “Wright! Stop sucking on the cancer sticks, or I’ll be sending you back to your wife with black lung.”

Wright jerked, his fingers in the packet, then said, resignedly, “I quit last year. Before all this . . . started.” He tucked the packet away, followed her back inside. “You two done with your confab?”

“Hey, you could have joined us. You were on the phone.”

Alex was poking at the bell, trying to interrupt the chime, and licking blistered fingers for her efforts. “Is it just me, or is this getting louder?”

“I’ve got two Hands of Glory in a briefcase,” Sylvie said. “Val’s too pissy to help, so I’m going to take Wright and go hunt up Tatya.”

“Tatya, really,” Alex said, and grimaced. Wright looked concerned. But then, he’d looked that way ever since Sylvie had met him.

“She knows the city’s residents,” Sylvie said. “If there’s a witch who can help us, besides Val, Tatya will have sniffed her or him out.”

“Hey, Hands, plural? You only had one when you left.”

“Zoe had a Hand of Glory in her room, too.” It hurt to say, raised that weird anger and betrayal all over again to admit that her own blood could be so stupid.

“Jesucristo, Maria, y los santos pequeños y grandes,” Alex muttered. “Where is the common sense, I ask you.”

“Teenager,” Wright supplied, laconic. Easy for him. It wasn’t his sister.

“I did find something on the first Hand. Especially this one. I found something out for you. A woman named Patrice Caudwell died six months ago at eighty-seven. She’s probably the origin of Bella’s Hand. But if you want me to dig her up to find out, that’s a big hell no.”

Sylvie wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think grave digging’s in the cards.”

“How are you connecting her if you didn’t get fingerprints?” Wright asked.

“Bella’s dream. Toddler, pool, homicide. Patrice Caudwell’s housekeeper’s son drowned in Caudwell’s pool. The old lady was supposedly watching him since she loved little children so much, but she . . . fell asleep. Supposedly.”

Wright shook his head in disbelief. “A dream?”

“Hey, your dreams sent you here,” Sylvie said. “So why does an eighty-seven-year-old woman kill a toddler? Never mind, never mind. Motive’s not important. What’s important is who knew she was guilty and decided to make use of a dead murderer.”

Alex whined, a sound her dog might have made, a complaint that echoed the chiming bell. “How the hell am I supposed to find that out?”

“Ask around,” Sylvie said. “Ask the housekeeper, ask her friends, ask anyone who might have gossiped about the boy’s death being something more than an accident. But I’m not asking you for legwork quite yet. If you find Zoe, we can just ask her who supplied the Hand. That’s what I’m really after. Old murders are tragic, but irrelevant, since the murderers are dead. We want the person who gave, sold, or otherwise provided black-magic tools to teenagers. To Zoe .”

Alex said, “You think about it? I mean really think about it? I have been.”

Sylvie sat down on the edge of the desk, put her hand out to still the bell, remembered Alex jerking away, and thought better of it. “Which part’s bugging you?”

“The Hands of Glory give the user magic power of a sort—”

“Open locks, dead man knocks,” Sylvie said.

When Wright looked at her questioningly, Sylvie elaborated, “Old rhyme. Evidently true. It’s a burglar’s tool.”

“So why sell it?” Alex asked. “If you own one, you have a risk-free way to get cash, so it’s not about profit. And if you think it’s a freebie—that’s even more extreme.”

Sylvie dropped her voice until she could barely hear it over the bell. “I know, Alex. There’s something else going on here. Be careful.”

She squeezed Alex’s arm, slid off the desk, and headed for the door. She turned back at the last. “Two things, Alex. First, do me a favor while you’re out and about? Pick me up a couple of quartzite globes. No bigger than palm-sized.” It felt risky, asking that much in front of Wright, though it wouldn’t have meaning to him. But if Demalion wanted to play hard to get, she’d see if she could lure him out.

“All right,” Alex said. “What else?”

“Do you still have that file? Woman who went missing on Alligator Alley?”

“Alien-abduction lady?”

Wright, sipping at a bottle of water he’d liberated from the fridge, choked.

Alex took the change of direction with good grace. She rummaged through the recycling, came up with a photocopied flyer with the woman’s details and picture. “I thought we were passing on it.”

“While I’m out at Long Pine Key, I thought I’d show Tatya the pic, see if she’s stumbled over anything, maybe catch us a fee.”

And it wouldn’t hurt to ask Tatya, even if the area the woman had gone missing in was a hundred miles off. It would be a nice little reminder that Sylvie cared about women in jeopardy. A nice little reminder that Tatya had once been a woman in jeopardy herself, and Sylvie had helped her for the asking. Might make Tatya cooperative. Tatya had moods. Not all of them were nice.