Lyn Benedict: Ghosts & Echoes

She shifted, smelled her own salt sweat and the faint drift of night-blooming jasmine. Sticky seat leather or not, boredom and a SOB holster kept her hunting for a comfortable position. Her legs tangled again, confined in the wheel well, unable to stretch completely. She’d tried propping them along the bench seat or on the dash, but both positions left her vulnerable, unable to move quickly if needed.

She was one step away from declaring the night a washout and going home. The matter was police business, really, not hers. Not an unlicensed PI who worked the Magicus Mundi beat.

But if she did, if she started up the engine, let it growl out her frustration as she headed for home, for air-conditioning, for a cool shower and clean sheets; if she quit this case before it had even begun, Alex would be . . . visibly, horribly . . . disappointed in her. Sylvie could face down werewolves, succubi, angels, even a god or two, but Alex? Tell Alex that Sylvie thought the case was tedious and out of her purview, and to hell with making nice with the neighbors who had hired her? No way.

Movement on the access road, the bump-bump of a van’s tires slowing over the speed hump. Sylvie snatched up the binoculars, trained them on the van’s side in time to get the last of their logo vanishing beneath a streetlamp—ITORIAL SERVICES and a dancing mop. She took down the license number, just in case, but unless the police were far more incompetent than she imagined, these were not her guys.

She let her head drop back to the headrest, her list drifting to the floor beneath her feet, her hair snagging in the seat belt. It was a terrible thing to think, but she almost missed the death-and-devastation beat she usually marched to: At least then, she wasn’t bored. Frantic, half out of her mind with anger or fear, and injured—but not bored. The very things she told Alex she wanted to escape. People were contrary to the bone, she thought. Why should she be any different?

Still, she didn’t really mean it. It was just resentment for taking a case she didn’t want. Trying to catch burglars in the act.

Alex had made it more palatable by pointing out all the unusual features of the case, pointing out reasons why Sylvie was exactly the woman for the job. It might be Alex working overtime to draw conclusions, but the case as presented did twig the part of her brain that resonated to magic. It was the illogic of it all.

Sixteen stores, all robbed this summer, all without a single alarm going off. When the workers arrived in the morning, the alarms worked as they were supposed to. The alarm companies’ records said the alarms hadn’t been bypassed or accessed, that no one had come or gone at all. So either there was a conspiracy spanning five alarm companies, sixteen stores, and three insurance agencies, or something trickier was going on.

Sylvie didn’t have objections to a real-world conspiracy; just because she knew magic existed didn’t make it responsible for everything unusual.

However, if it was a conspiracy, it was one that was both too clever and astoundingly stupid. Clever enough to be discreet. Stupid because . . . sixteen stores robbed of stuff . Not cash. Not easy items to fence. Not items that could be used as stepping-stones to more important crimes. Just stuff. The closest they’d come to real money was an independent jewelry store that specialized in antique art deco. Distinctive, but not high-dollar.

It just couldn’t be profitable. It sure as hell shouldn’t have been discreet. One of the stores hit was a coffee shop; they’d been robbed of their espresso machine, a La Pavoni behemoth.

It was far too much effort for far too little reward. But if magic was involved, then maybe the effort changed. Required fewer people, less of a need for profit.

Even if these burglars had managed to rob a whole slew of South Beach stores successfully by using magic, then what? Sylvie was a blunt instrument, more competent at handing out punishment than gathering prosecutable evidence. Most of the people she was sent after ended up dead.

That seemed like overkill for a bunch of after-hours thieves.

Still, she thought, shifting again, nearly winding herself with the steering wheel, taking the burglary case at least got Alex off her back about the might-be-possessed-cop case. Sylvie might dislike boredom; she also disliked complicated tangles. Give her a clear-cut foe and a lot of ammunition, and she knew where she stood.

She tugged the gun out of her holster with a lot of wiggling and cursing, rested its weight in her palm, settled her finger on the trigger. She sighted along it in the dark, aimed at the far wall of the parking garage, testing to see if the dark voice within stirred again. Testing herself.

Alex said the world needed her, but that didn’t give Sylvie free rein to be nothing but a monster-killer with an increasingly fluid definition of what made a monster.

She holstered the gun, wiped her hands on her shirt. She reached for the dash, kicked the AC and the radio on, a blast of tepid air and hair bands overriding the hissing tide of Biscayne Boulevard traffic. She fluffed her damp hair off her neck and wished for burglars, for anything to distract her from the nearly physical boredom. She should have known better.

Life had a way of granting unconsidered wishes.

A man stepped into the parking lot, a lean silhouette under a distant streetlight, paused, and peered through the gloom. His gaze swept the lot, focused in on her truck, then beelined toward her.

Sylvie rolled up her windows, reached for her gun, wondering why she’d bothered to holster it in the first place. The man’s walk, his stance, his confident attitude—it suggested someone at ease in the dark, righteous in his purpose. Security guard, if she was lucky. Cop, if she wasn’t. Authority figures and her—never a happy combination, and that wasn’t even counting the locals with a personal grudge.

He tapped on the window glass. She showed him her gun, the PI license not worth the paper it was printed on. The gun was distraction enough that people, especially law-type people with a healthy concern for weapons in the hands of civilians, didn’t look too closely at the license.

She supposed sooner or later Alex would suggest she jump through the hoops. Sylvie knew she’d fight her on that one. In the beginning, it had been miserliness, coupled with a desire to stay under the radar, that kept her from applying. Now, her rep made, she had no interest at all in interning for someone else, in going back to school, in asking someone else for permission to be what she already was.

The cop grinned, a flash of teeth in the dark, and leaned against her truck. He pulled a small notepad from his pocket, scribbled on it with a stub of a pencil, then flattened it against the window.

She didn’t want to look at it; he tapped more decisively, and she gave in.

In careful block printing the note read, ALEX SAYS YOU OWE HER. He pulled the pad away, scribbled another word on it, and showed her again. BIG. Underlined twice with an arrow from ALEX SAYS.

Sylvie banged her head on the steering wheel and whimpered.

He waited outside, drumming his fingers on the side of her truck, all firecracker impatience. She gave in, popped the door locks, trying to remember the name on the troubled cop’s file. This guy couldn’t be anyone else.

He clambered in on the passenger’s side, long-limbed and angular, built in lines of wire and sinew. He held out a hand for her to shake. “Ms. Lightner. Sylvie, yeah?”

“You’re Wright,” she said, not taking it.

He pulled his hand back with a what-can-you-do shrug. “I like to think so. Not so sure, of late.” He slouched into place, feet propped on the dash, peering out between his spread knees. “What’re we watching for?”