Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

“Possessing spirits,” Wales said, “are dangerous and delusional. There’s no reasoning with ’em, no matter how sweet they talk.”

Demalion stared steadily back at him. “You’re wrong.”

“Hard words from a necromancer,” Sylvie said. “And I don’t recall asking your opinion.”

“You came to me,” Wales said. “I’m telling you things—”

“No,” Sylvie said. “You’re making us a part of things. You’re flaunting your powers, your unnatural ally, and you’re making judgment calls you’re not qualified to make. And you’re still the most likely suspect I’ve got for passing out Hands of Glory to teenagers.”

“I wouldn’t,” Wales said, shifting to defensiveness. “I’m not a necromancer. I’m a researcher, a . . . curator, at worst.”

“A curator with a booming gift shop.”

“Damn you, no!” he snapped. Marco drifted forward, stood before her with a considering expression. He leaned closer, and his lips moved, showed teeth as grey as needles; cold air bloomed and faded on her skin. I killed bitches like you. The words crystallized in her mind, bypassing her ears entirely, as icy cold as his presence.

The little dark voice roared through her, Never like me.

Marco retreated like an icy fog, leaning into Wales’s side once more.

Sylvie didn’t like that at all; it argued a symbiosis between the living and the dead, made Wales more dangerous, made her look at all the Hands dangling stiffly and imagine their ghosts active and malevolent.

She and Wales studied each other a long moment, and Wales caved first. “I wanted you to see behind the Hands. So you’d understand. But if you care so little for words—” He strode to the door, opened it in a clatter of locks, and Marco slid into the hallway like killing frost. Sylvie jerked to her feet. “What are you—”

“Better look, or I’ll have to send him out twice,” the Ghoul said, his expression bleak. “The guy in 2C comes home every night this time, comes home to count the cash he took off of people at gunpoint. I take the cash from him when I can. I don’t live in luxury, but still, I’ve got expenses.”

Demalion said, “You can’t—”

Wales overrode Demalion’s complaint, and Sylvie heard the faint footfalls weaving up the stairs between the junk. She opened her mouth, but had nothing to say—call out a warning to an armed man who’d probably shoot first? Ask Wales nicely not to do . . . whatever it was he was doing? She didn’t even have the vocabulary for that.

“When I light the Hand, I direct the ghost’s action, but he gets paid, too.”

The robber stepped into the second-floor hallway, a machine pistol tucked precariously into his belt, and Marco swarmed him. Even as the man fell, Marco leaned in like a vampire, pulling at the falling man’s chest.

“When the Hands put you down,” Wales continued inexorably, “it’s nothing so benign as sleep. It’s a type of shock. It’s what happens when a ghost takes a bite of your soul.”

“NOW THAT YOU SEE, NOW THAT YOU KNOW . . . TELL ME, SHADOWS. Do I look like the kind of man who would perpetuate slavery and soul shock? Do I look like I’d pass Hands out to teenagers?”

Sylvie studied Wales, the grubby little room filled with dead men’s Hands, the way the ghost, Marco, slunk back beside him, the hellish light the Hand gave off, the tightly drawn fear on Wright’s face—Demalion’s mind—and let loose. “You just fed your . . . pet a soul snack. Hell yes, you look the type.”

Wales actually had the audacity to look bewildered, flustered. He sputtered, “No, no. That was just for illustration! So you’d see . . . and he’s no good anyway, a real bad guy—”

Sylvie shrugged that off—she and Demalion were too jaded to be able to argue that point effectively—and said, “Well, we’re not. Soul shock and slavery, and you thought it was a good idea to take us down instead of just answering your door. Thought it was great idea to expose us a second time?”

Demalion’s breath seemed loud and rasping, as if he’d caught the rhythm of her stuttering heart. The room felt tight and close, dusty with the scent of mummified flesh. She felt choked on it, on her rage. Zoe had gone to someone like this. Walked into a room stinking of black magic and taken home a souvenir. Put her soul at risk for the promise of cold hard cash.

Wales stiffened; his lanky shape grew more angular. “You came to my door, gun drawn. I was justified. I do what I have to, to survive. You’re no different. Neither’s your dead friend there. I might feed Marco on occasion, but I don’t body snatch for him. I’ve got the moral high ground here, Shadows.”

She hissed in a breath, and Demalion said, “Sylvie,” again. Not a plea this time, but a flat-out command not to pick a fight, not to be herself.

“Prove it,” she said, instead. Her voice was rough, hostile, but it wasn’t a shout. “If you’ve got the moral high ground, offer me your help.” Her fingers tightened on the wrist stump of the Hand she held, nails digging into the flesh. Disgusting and gruesome, but the only outlet she could allow herself.

She didn’t trust him, but like Val, he seemed more than willing to talk about magic, feed her information she needed. While she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of admitting it, he could have hurt them; hell, just leaving them passed out in this part of the city would have been a form of passive murder. Instead, he’d brought them in, bound them gently, wakened them with a potion whose contents he willingly listed.

Those actions were discouraging, created doubt in her breast. Wales might be telling her the simple truth. He wasn’t the one passing Hands out to kids. And if that were so, if he were the guardian he claimed to be . . .

“We need your help.”

That shocked Wales rigid in a way all her previous bluster and rage hadn’t. He sidled away from her, all nerves now, no poise. “I don’t get involved with other people’s problems. Not anymore.”

“Sometimes you don’t get a choice,” she said. When his pale face went as ashy as Marco’s ghostly one, she gestured with the Hand she held. “What? You thought you’d show me a little dark magic, and I’d be ready to flee? You’re going to help us. You say you’re not the problem here? Not the necromancer I’m hunting? Fine. Then you’re the help I need.”

Demalion said, “Shadows is a black-and-white woman. You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution. I’ve been on both sides with her. It was better on the solution side.”

That made her heart hurt. The solution side had gotten him killed. But he met her eyes squarely and nodded once. A knot that had tied itself around her heart eased: Like her, Demalion would have done nothing different. Relief made her sound friendlier than she felt when she said, “Helping us out would go a long, long way to making me forget that you just sicced your ghost on your neighbor. As an illustration.”

He sighed. “What d’y’all want, then?” Wales asked. He hunched a shoulder, turned his head away from Marco’s whispers.

“First? Put your buddy Marco back in the box or wherever he goes when he’s not looming over you. I’m getting a cramp holding on to Thing here.” She had about reached her limit for grossness, was one step from her fingers betraying her and dropping the loathsome thing.

Marco scowled, but Wales only nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” He carried Marco’s Hand past them, Sylvie and Demalion pivoting to keep watch. Wales puttered about the open kitchen—really not the nesting sort, Sylvie thought; his kitchen consisted of a cardboard box that looked suspiciously full of cereal cartons, a battered cooler, and a spray bottle beside the sink.