Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

“Not our MO,” Sylvie said. “Alex, call the Grove merchants’ association. They’ll know who he is.”

THE SKY BLED PINK AND GOLD AND RED, USHERED IN A SINKING LINE of darkest indigo, and, though it was lovely, all Sylvie saw in it was another example of bad timing. She was off her game. First, she’d dragged Wright out to visit Tatya and Marisol on a full-moon night; now they were headed into one of Florida’s most crime-ridden cities hunting for a necromancer. The Grove merchants had paid off; one underpaid clerk had coughed up an address. It might be a blind, but Sylvie doubted anyone would list an address in Opa-locka for the prestige.

The gun nestled against her spine was fragile reassurance.

Wright sat silently in the passenger’s seat, head tilted back against the headrest, eyes closed, and reflected sun scald washing over his skin, warming the exhausted pallor from his cheeks.

“You should have stayed with Alex,” she said.

“No,” he said, without even opening his eyes though they moved behind his closed lids. His lashes tipped gold in the sunset, sparse in places, evidence of stressful rubbing. Sylvie jerked her gaze back to the slowly darkening highway before her. Demalion’s lashes had been plush, ridiculously long, and as black as a bad-luck cat. She’d kissed them once, felt them flutter against her lips, a fragile shield for Demalion’s clairvoyant gaze.

“You’re tense,” he said. He rolled his head to look at her; she took another quick glance in his direction and felt her spine screw up even tighter.

“I’m driving into Opa-locka after dark with severed hands in my truck and a ghost-possessed refugee cop at my side. My sister’s AWOL, maybe of her own volition, maybe not. There’s something you should know about the Magicus Mundi : Time is never on your side.”

“You couldn’t have told me that when I was holding the rock?” Wright said.

Rock? Sylvie frowned, then got it. The tombstone pendant.

“I don’t want to end up with a permanent roommate,” Wright added. “Just saying. I don’t care how good a guy he is. I play nice. I share a lot of things with a lot of people. I’ll even give you the shirt off my back. But not my skin.”

He leaned back, closed his eyes, and said, “Not an accusation, Shadows. Just sayin’.”

They made the rest of the trip in aching silence. Sylvie opened her mouth every mile, a question burning on her tongue that she couldn’t voice. She didn’t know if Wright had picked up the stone or left it in the gutter, or if Demalion had: If they were keeping secrets from her or each other.

When she saw the first of the Moorish-style buildings that studded Opa-locka’s streets, Sylvie slowed and started looking for the address Alex had given her.

Wales’s apartment building, like so many of the others, looked like it had weathered one too many heavy storms; the facade was crumbling, windows were boarded over and graffitied, while others were cracked. A streetlamp blinked feebly and went out as they passed. Too much damage, too few jobs, too much bad history—Opa-locka was a city that had long ago fallen apart at the seams.

Sylvie pulled over to what passed for a curb, scraggy grass clumps and a broken sidewalk, a chain-link panel propped up all on its lonesome, and cut the engine.

Keeping an eye on the street, she tugged the briefcase from her truck box, glad the duct tape masked its original value. The last thing she needed was to be mugged and have to hunt down the Hands all over again.

“Second floor?” Wright asked. He had opened his eyes the moment the truck slowed and was squinting out into the night, all purpose, the beat cop on patrol. She had to admit she was glad to have him along.

“Second floor,” she agreed. She locked the truck, hoped that its battered state would keep it safe from further vandalism, from outright theft, and headed inside. An arched entryway revealed creamy limestone beneath peeling rose paint. The lobby was dim and cluttered and smelled of mildew and ammonia; a dark stairwell led upward, lightbulbs broken off in the fixtures. Random junk littered the steps—empty cans, tangled rags, old shoes, and beer bottles.

“Watch your step,” she said. “Try not to knock anything down. Some neighborhoods use—”

“Use clutter as an early-warning system. Kick a can, get shot. A cheap alarm. Chicago, remember?” Wright’s hand twitched, and Sylvie thought she should have found a gun for him, too. Wright and Demalion both had the skills.

The door they wanted was the last one on a long, dark hall, the carpet threadbare and studded with broken glass. The numbers on the old doors were drawn on with Sharpies, narrow, wavering numerals barely visible in the gloom. A door beside them creaked open as the floor sagged beneath their weight and revealed an apartment littered with paper and scattering rats. The smell was pungent, making her eyes water. Wright pulled the door closed again.

Sylvie couldn’t imagine her fastidious sister or her spoiled friends making this trek through squalor. But if Wales was the merchant she was looking for, she doubted he was careless enough to conduct transactions on the crowded streets of Coconut Grove. Here, at least, there’d be privacy and a lack of witnesses.

Sylvie stopped at the last door and drew her gun. Wright hissed, a tiny protest. She shook her head: Trust me . It was best to go in hard, go in fast, and never let them get a chance to fire off a spell.

Control first, question later; the only safe method of dealing with magic users. Besides shooting them straight off, but that was only if you didn’t want to question them later.

Sylvie licked her lips, a tiny doubt slowing her. Generally, powerful people didn’t live in tenements. Generally. Maybe she had the wrong place, the wrong guy.

“Hang back,” she murmured.

A wave of dizziness struck. Ammonia fumes, sucked in by her quickened breathing, she thought, and tried to shake it off. Too late, the alternative occurred to her. A spell cast from behind a slowly opening door. A Hand of Glory being lit. She flung out a hand, trying to shove Wright back, hopefully into a safe distance, but he fell, eyes gone black and blank—lights out—and she thought, No, no, no! even as the dizziness swung back around, huge, dark, and swallowed her whole.

Her last aggravated thought was at least she had the right guy.

THERE WERE FINGERS ON HER FACE, PUSHING BACK HER HAIR, DOING something ticklish to her forehead. She jerked away, but couldn’t get far; her head banged into something unyielding, and her arms moved a bare inch at best. She jerked again, panic and rage filling her skin as she understood the situation: She was bound, a loose coil of rope about her waist, wrapped about her wrists. Bound to a chair; from the feel of it, a cheap one, all bare wood and splinter. She blinked and blinked, trying to clear the darkness away, but it lingered. The only light came through a dusty window, showed her very little but a scarecrow of a man leaning over her.

“It’s all right,” an unfamiliar voice said. Not Wright, not Demalion either. The Ghoul? Seemed disturbingly plausible.

“Get the hell away from me!” she growled.

He backed off, and some of the darkness went with him.

Her forehead itched and tingled; her skin tightened. “What did you do to me?”

“Woke you right on up,” he said. “Otherwise, it might have been morning before you recovered. Don’t you worry. You prove yourself sensible, and I’ll untie you.”

She watched his figure move away, bend over another bulky shadow—Wright, slumped and bound, in another chair—and reach out a long spindly arm.