Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

Or at least, so she excused it to herself.

You don’t want her help. You want to keep Demalion here, the little dark voice whispered.

“Don’t worry, darling,” Odalys said. “I’ve got help for your little problem.” She held the pendant out; in the bright sunlight, the stone glittered as it spun, age-smoothed stone with shiny flecks and a hole through the center of it. “Consider it your pay for watching the shop.”

He reached out, as cautious as a child approaching a strange dog. At the last, he pulled back. “No,” he said. He put his hands behind his back, his expression closing off into distaste, a little fear. Sylvie frowned. Was it Wright’s fear? Or Demalion’s?

“It’s good for what ails you,” Odalys said. “It’s a fragment of a tombstone from sacred ground.”

“I hope no one’s missing it,” Sylvie said. Her fingers itched to take it away from her, keep it away from Wright.

“It’s old,” Odalys said. “Broke off naturally. I swear.” Her lips curled, a smile that said she didn’t care whether Sylvie believed her or not. “It will help you. Why do you think we mark graves with stones? Our ancestors remembered. To keep the dead from rising. Body or spirit. We dress it up with religion and respect, but gravestones are all about fear. About holding down the dead.”

Wright’s hands fell slack by his side, and Odalys reached forward, folded his long fingers around the stone. “Spill a little blood to initialize it, rub it in, and let it hang over your heart. It’ll drive away any revenant spirit.”

He was looking at it, considering it, turning it over in his hands. Demalion’s second death in a piece of rock. Wright’s wary eyes met hers over Odalys’s shoulder, and Sylvie shook her head slightly. Time, she mouthed. He had promised her time. Time to find a better solution.

Blood magic was always more dangerous than it seemed, fed a tiny piece of yourself into the air, where anything could smell it, taste it, track it down. The safest way to live with the Magicus Mundi was simple: Don’t get its attention.

Besides, her reluctance wasn’t all about saving Demalion. Odalys seemed too eager—maybe because she thought Sylvie and her problems would leave, maybe because the stone would do something other than she said—and blood risk aside, it seemed too simple. A piece of rock, hung around his neck, and Wright was cured?

Color her skeptical.

Wright shifted Odalys’s attention from the stone, from his indecision. “The Ghoul,” Wright said. “Do I want to know?”

“He’s dangerous,” Odalys said. “I know you don’t think much of my morals, but I don’t want your fates on my conscience if you barge in on him and get yourselves turned into parts.” She scanned Sylvie head to foot, and added, “You would probably find your hands taken. If I’m not mistaken as to your character.”

Sylvie bit back complaint—what was it with witches and character assassination?—as well as the new surge of skepticism. Odalys didn’t know that only the left hands were used?

“Let me worry about us. Just give me a direction—or do you want me to park myself in your store and ask every practitioner who comes in if they know how to disarm, so to speak, these Hands I’m carting around?”

“He hangs out in the Grove on weekends. Sells bone jewelry.”

Sylvie froze. “That’s . . . disturbing.”

“Well, there are only so many uses for a body,” Odalys said. “Even the most thrifty of necromancers have extras. But he claims to be selling animal bone—buffalo, deer, cow, anything but human.”

“Where else?” Sylvie said. “You understand that I’m in a bit of a rush, and that’s three days away.”

Exasperation laced Odalys’s voice. “What on earth makes you think I keep tabs on someone who scares me shitless?”

The vulgarity rang oddly in the woman’s voice, a sign of stress. Sylvie hid a smile. Terrible of her, but she never felt like she was doing her job unless her questionee was feeling stressed.

“I think you’d keep tabs on him for exactly that reason,” Sylvie said.

“I can’t help you.”

Wright said, “What about a real name? People can’t call him Ghoul to his face, can they?”

“They call me Shadows,” Sylvie muttered.

“That’s your fault,” he shot back. “It’s on your sign.”

“Wales,” Odalys said. “Tierney Wales.”

“Thank you,” Wright said. “For that, and for this.” He held up the stone pendant and forced a smile. “Get the briefcase, Sylvie. Let’s go.”

Calling the shots, is he? Sylvie thought. But it was so evidently an excuse to get himself out of these surroundings, out from under Odalys’s scrutiny, that she let it go. Instead, Sylvie paid for the silk scarf, figuring it was better to leave Odalys with a smile than a curse. Sylvie knew she’d need witchy aid in the future.

Sylvie left Odalys’s shop and stepped into the full heat of the day. She rocked back on her heels, her breath suddenly thick and tight in her chest. Wright moved on without her, his steps uneven, but Sylvie didn’t think the heat was to blame. He held the stone pendant up to the sunlight; his mouth twisted, a mobile expression of dismay and doubt.

“I got two souls,” he said. “And a pendant to drive one away. Do I put it on? Erase your guy? Save myself?”

Sylvie’s throat felt parched, her words dry and brittle. “If you trust her.” It took all her considerable willpower not to make the decision for him, take that stone, and hurl it away.

He caught the stone in his hand, hid it in his palm. “It’s so hard,” he said. “It’s all questions all the time. Do I trust you? Do I trust her? How does magic even work? How can this piece of rock tell which soul’s the bad one? Even docs’ll tell you that antibiotics fuck up the good bacteria as well as the bad. And your Demalion’s stronger’n that, like a cancer in my bones.” His voice tightened, stretching his tenor shrill and sharp. People driving by stared at the gringo in the stress-sweated T-shirt gesturing wildly on the street.

“Let’s have the breakdown in the truck, please?” And see, she was being polite. She’d said please, even while anxiety still churned in her. A name was a start, but Zoe was still out there. Hell, it was conceivable she was with Wales. With the Ghoul .

“No,” he said. “The sun feels good. Got a problem with that? I mean, I’ve come all this way. I’m gonna get some goddamned sun to go along with severed hands, black magic, and possession.”

“Hey,” Sylvie said. She throttled back her own emotions, touched his trembling shoulder, and guided him beneath the ragged shade of a palm tree. “What’s going on?”

He sat on the low concrete edge, his knees nearly at his shoulder, hung his head. “It’s just too much.”

“Hey,” she said again, sharper this time. His eyes were glassy, his face slack. “Don’t fade out. You can’t pass the buck on this. Running only works when you can leave your problems behind.”

“I’m not a coward,” he said. “I’ve faced bad odds before. But not like this, not tired and alone. I’m used to having backup. A rule book. A gun.” He picked up a fallen palm frond, scritched it aimlessly through the dirt. His eyes, when he looked up at her, seemed as blank and empty of intent as the glyphs he had drawn in the soil.

“When I died,” he said, “I was scared shitless. I saw it coming. I had time enough to realize that this was it. That I was dead.”

She bit her tongue, tasted blood. Wright had better get to the point, soon. Sylvie was too hyperaware of the pendant he dangled carelessly from his hand to keep paying attention to his words much longer. Sylvie hadn’t realized how much she had begun to hope Demalion could be saved until Odalys had offered up her quick ’n’ easy soul disperser.