Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

She woke partially when her cell phone buzzed against her hip. Swatting at it, still half-dreaming of clutching ghosts, brought her to full wakefulness. The room was watery with grey light, the first diffuse glow of morning approaching, and Sylvie thumbed the call through without even looking at it.

“What.”

“Shadows. Got your sister.” Lio. Zoe.

She jerked upright, pushed her hair out of her face, coughed her voice to full capability. “What?”

“I’m bringing her to your office on my way off shift. If you’re not there, Little Miss can spend her time in juvie until you bail her out.”

“What she’d do?”

“Other than use language that shocked even an old cop? Showed up too damn close to another burglary. See you soon, Shadows.” He disconnected while she was still speaking; she’d done the same to him more than a dozen times. Payback was a bitch.

AS SHE DROVE, SYLVIE CHECKED THE CLOCK AGAIN. STILL TOO EARLY to call Alex and ask her to do research. She called anyway, got her voice mail, and left a long report of the previous night’s events. Something nagged at her, and freed of the worry about Zoe’s immediate safety, of Demalion’s tempting company, of Wright’s scared eyes, she was able to pinpoint it.

The trouble was, despite the Ghoul’s assumptions, Sylvie wasn’t all that sure the Hands were defective.

Odalys was competent at lying, at projecting what she wanted to, at running her business just under the radar. It was hard to imagine that competence didn’t spread to her magic. Hard to imagine that a lich ghost—rare monster that it was—could be created by accident.

Harder still to imagine her wasting time and money creating more than one defective Hand. Given Bella’s illness, that soul sickness, Sylvie felt sure that her Hand of Glory had held a lich ghost as well.

One might be a mistake. More than that? Was deliberate.

There was something else the Hands were meant to do.

Hell, maybe it was some type of return policy. Sell the Hands cheaply knowing you’d get them back when the user wigged out at getting sick. Or maybe they were defective. Maybe she was assigning too much ability to the woman; after all, people overstated their abilities all the time.

Sylvie just didn’t believe it. There was a pattern she was missing. Two Hands, both defective. Both women’s hands. Both old women’s hands. Why? Women committed murders; she was proof enough of that. But old women? Bella’s dreams had shown Patrice Caudwell old and murderous. Sylvie’s own trial with Zoe’s Hand had been much the same: a murder committed with gnarled hands.

She’d be interested to see what Alex could dig up on the defunct lich ghost’s past.

ADELIO SUAREZ’S UNMARKED CRUISER WAS PARKED OUTSIDE HER office when she arrived; Lio himself sat on the bumper, smoking a thin cigar and drinking convenience-store coffee. Her gaze skimmed him, focused in on the sulking teen locked in the backseat of the cruiser.

“She’s okay?” Sylvie asked.

“You know, I only smoke these things when I’ve got something to celebrate,” he told her. “I’ve been saving this one.”

“Catching a teenage runaway that much a coup?” she said.

“Shadows, don’t make me ask. Tell me about Rafi. Tell me about his killers.”

Sylvie let out a breath. “You wired?” She didn’t think he was, and hell, even if he was, what would the tapes prove but that she was crazy.

“I play fair,” he said. “Tell me.”

Zoe banged on the window, made demanding gestures at Sylvie, and Sylvie gestured Lio away. Sat on a bench where she could keep an eye on her sister but still have the relief of knowing Zoe couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t know what Sylvie had done.

“You believe in magic?” she asked. “All those things you’ve seen on duty that you can’t explain.”

“I believe in evil,” he said.

“It’s not the same thing,” she said. “Much as I sometimes think it is. Look, the long and short of it is, the satanists are gone. Transformed by magic into something harmless.”

“You telling me you’re a bruja ?”

“Hell no,” Sylvie said. “I’m telling you I farmed the task out. I couldn’t do it myself. Didn’t have the right skill set. But he did.” The words were stark, oddly easy to say after all the effort she’d put into not telling him. Maybe because she knew, deep down, how he’d react.

Lio groaned and put his head in his hands. “This is bullshit, Shadows. Bullshit.” His cigar fell to the concrete, smoldered slowly. “I trusted your word.”

Sylvie said, “There’s not going to be the kind of satisfaction you’re after, Lio. I can’t take you to a secret grave, can’t show you their bones. There’s not going to be anything you recognize as justice, but Rafi’s death has been paid for. I promise you.” Cold comfort for a man who didn’t understand how far-reaching magic could be.

“How do you mean, transformed?” he said.

“You know what I mean,” Sylvie said. “No longer human. They weren’t worthy of it.”

He shook his head, sighed. “No lo creo. No te creo.” He rose, stared back at the car, at Zoe slouched as low as possible in the backseat in case any of the early-morning tourists or joggers saw her.

Sylvie said, “You don’t want to. You want to be part of the normal world. To be blind to the rest of it. I can understand that. But I’ve been honest with you. If you change your mind, call me. I’ll show you what became of them though I doubt it’ll give you the closure you want or need.”

She touched his arm a last time, and stood. “Thank you for finding Zoe.” She licked her lips, hating to do it, but hating the despair on his face. “I made a deal with you. You didn’t find it satisfactory. I don’t usually offer rain checks. But I owe you one.”

He waved a hand at her dismissal, and said, “Get your sister out of my car and stop the burglaries before the press figure out there’s something going on.”

“I could take that deal,” she said. “But I won’t. I would have done both those things anyway. Listen to me, Lio. I owe you one. That’s more valuable than you think. Remember it. I don’t offer myself in debt lightly. You need me, you call.”

“Don’t think so,” he said. He straightened on the bench, rose, and said, “People you deal with end up dead more often than they should. Bella Martinez died last night. Doctors still don’t know why. Do you?”

It felt like a punch to the gut, all unexpected. Sylvie had thought the girl would get better, the Hand’s ghost gone, not worse. But maybe the ghost had been gone because it had already succeeded in eating Bella’s soul, had fed and moved on.

She shook her head, and Suarez took it for ignorance, not denial. He headed back to the cop car, popped the back door, and pulled Zoe out. She was cuffed, hands behind her back, and Sylvie remembered she’d been found near the last burglary site.

“Is she under arrest?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Zoe protested. “I can’t believe you sicced the cops on me.”

Suarez looked at Sylvie a long time, ignoring Zoe; Sylvie imagined him balancing scales in his mind. His disappointment in her answers. His need to make progress on a case. His lack of tangible evidence.

Eventually, he pushed Zoe forward, unfastened the cuffs, and said, “She’s all yours.”

SYLVIE UNLOCKED THE OFFICE DOOR, USHERED A SILENT ZOE INSIDE, and said, “We have to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk. There’s nothing to talk about. Why don’t you be a good big sister and take me out for breakfast. I’m starving.” Her sister’s tone was false casual, her poise a front to buy time. Waiting to see what exactly she was in trouble for. A childish tactic, and it made Sylvie’s fury stronger. Zoe had no business getting involved with the Magicus Mundi .