Ghosts & Echoes

8 Something Blue

ANYTHING ALEX WOULD HAVE SAID IN RESPONSE WAS DERAILED AS, upstairs, the door to Sylvie’s office opened and closed with a bang, a clear sign that Lisse Conrad was getting impatient. Sylvie growled. “That woman’s such a—”

“Client,” Alex said, jumping onto the escape hatch of the conversation without her usual subtlety. “She’s our client. Go deal with her.” She rose from the couch, filled with a manic energy.

Sylvie imagined if she didn’t go upstairs, Alex would try to shove her up the treads. “Fine, but don’t think you’re being subtle.”

“Go, go!”

Less irritated than she let on, she took to the stairs. Alex didn’t want to think about it, fine. Alex wanted to think Sylvie was crazy. Not fine, but Sylvie could disabuse her of that easily enough the moment Demalion showed up again.

Sylvie let herself into her private office with her game face on: a little irritated, easy to shade toward neutral or to critical judgment. Her private office was usually off-limits to the clients, so she hadn’t bothered with any attempt at décor. She’d scrounged the filing cabinets, the desk, the standing fans from UM’s redecorating sales, and it showed. Her office looked like a particularly shabby dorm room, right down to the ratty futon behind the door.

The single window didn’t let in much light, being an alley view of the bar wall next door, and what sunlight came in was fractured, dancing prismatically along the linoleum, split by chips in the glass from the time Sylvie had found herself body-slammed into it by a pissed-off sorcerer.

Lisse Conrad sat in Sylvie’s desk chair, pushed back from the desk, her spine straight and her hands crossed neatly on her lap. In her shoes, Sylvie would have taken the opportunity to snoop. File drawers beckoned; the computer was right there—locked, of course, and coded besides, but right there.

Normally, Sylvie would make a point of removing the woman from her seat—she was in control here, not Conrad, no matter which way the money ran—but she wanted to be done with this. “I have a lead. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Suarez. I’ve found one of the burglars, but I’m holding out for the rest. I’d like to wrap this up all neat and tight before we go to the police.”

“The longer it takes, the less likely we are to regain our belongings,” Conrad said. “For the chain stores, that doesn’t mean much. It’s just money. For businesses like mine, like the people I represent, it means a lot more.”

“They’re not selling them,” Sylvie said. “Nothing’s shown up on the market. It’s being kept, so your chances of getting your belongings back are better than usual. But not if we let the police blunder in too soon. These aren’t your usual burglars.”

“What—they’re . . . magical?” Conrad said. Her expression was guarded. “You think I didn’t want you here because you were an investigator? I didn’t want you here because you have a strange reputation, Ms. Lightner, and rumor has it, you believe some strange things.”

Sylvie said, “I’ve investigated people who thought they could do magic.” Another truth—the false-alarm file existed for a reason—but the bigger truth left unsaid. “It’s Miami. When you live in an exotic city, your rumors have to be more exotic still. Did you hear the one that said I killed vampires? That one’s my favorite. Me and Buffy, saving the world.”

The woman shook her head, pale hair barely moving. No patience at all. “You have a plan?”

“Why keep a single minnow when you can use it as baitfish? I know one of the players; I’ll link her to others and net them all at once.” Sounded good to her, and by the relaxing of Conrad’s shoulders, good to her also.

“Time frame?”

“Soon,” Sylvie said. “Best for all concerned. Oh, and ask your jeweler friend what his policy is on rewards.”

“We’re paying you already—”

“His art deco greyhound got picked up by a bystander. She said she got rid of it. I’m not so sure. We can probably get her to cough it up with a little bit of cash. She doesn’t know the actual value.”

“It’s stolen property. The police can retrieve it.”

“The police get involved, she’ll claim total ignorance, and he might lose the brooch forever, piss off the customer waiting for it. Just have him call me.”

A few back-and-forth comments later, Sylvie ushered Conrad down the stairs and out the door. She handed Alex another check with a smile. “For expenses. Cash it.”

“And Wright’s check? I haven’t cashed it yet. I could send it and him on to someone else. I still think Val—” Alex said it all on one long breath, half-apologetic, half-challenging.

“Last time I tell you,” Sylvie said. “My case. I’ll help him.”

“Glad to hear it,” Wright said, closing the front door behind him. “So’s the ghost.” She jerked in surprise. She hadn’t heard him come in, hadn’t expected him back so soon. Noon at the shrimp shack was a madhouse, which was exactly why she had sent him there. To get breathing space.

He handed her a white paper bag, hot and grease-spotted, and said, “The one place had lines down to the beach.” He smiled with the smug awareness that he had confounded her plan. “I got us conch fritters instead. I don’t know what a conch fritter is, but it’s fried, and people looked happy to be buying them.”

“Good choice,” Alex said, when the silence threatened to linger. Her smile, a little tight, flashed and faded. She pushed Wright gently toward the kitchenette, her fingertips on his shoulder, and said, “You’ll love ’em. You like spice? There’s habañero sauce in the fridglet.”

And that was Alex in full protective mode, Sylvie thought. Still scared of Wright’s ghost, but she’d put herself between him and the woman with the gun. Not sensible. The kind of thing that could get her killed, and definitely a sign that Alex was going to be . . . difficult about accepting Demalion’s return.

Wright cast a worried glance at Sylvie, cop enough to distrust Alex’s change of heart and man enough to want to believe her earlier chilliness was just a mood.

Fumbling for something, anything, to ease the tension in the office, Sylvie noticed that the bell was quieter than it had been before, a mute reproach instead of a warning wail. Sylvie said, “What’d you do with the trash can, Alex?”

“Coat closet,” she said. “Under all those old ’Canes sweat-shirts of yours. It’s all right.”

“You’re assuming it is,” Sylvie said.

“I’m not the only one with assumptions,” Alex said.

“Later for that,” Sylvie said. She still wasn’t sure how she was going to explain Demalion to him, the possibility that Wright had been hijacked just to get Demalion to Sylvie. Here Wright was thinking she was the answer to his problems when she was likely the cause of them. No, she and Alex couldn’t get into that debate now, not with Wright as an audience.

Sylvie applied herself to lunch, evicting Alex from her desk. Wright took the couch, Sylvie the hot sauce, and Alex shuttled between them both, chatting with her mouth full, ramping up on a capsaicin high, asking Wright increasingly pointed questions about his ghost. “So you don’t have a name, or anything tangible. What do you have? Something he remembers?”

Wright set down his sandwich remnants, scrubbed his hands on his jeans, and lowered his gaze. Sylvie tensed. She’d begun to learn Wright’s tells, and focusing on his jeans meant something unhappy and hurting.

“The sky rained blood,” he said.

Alex swallowed and shut up. Sylvie shivered, her mouth dry. Before Alex could get her nerve back, Sylvie sent Wright for sodas, ignoring his protest of not being her caterer as utterly insincere: Even as he made it, he was rising, ready to escape Alex’s interrogation.

The moment he was out the door, Sylvie turned on Alex, raced her into speech. “If you can’t control yourself, I will send you away for the duration of this case.”

“Control myself?”

“Not talking about this now. Wright’ll be back, and I need to talk to you about the burglaries.”

“You sent him away, again, for that?”

“Are you listening?” Sylvie said. When she got an irritated huff, and Alex frowning in silence, she filled her in on Bella’s bad dreams, on the Hand of Glory. Attention diverted, and after a disgusted glance at the closed closet door, the Hand behind it, Alex said, “You think she’s been dreaming about the crime?”

“Looks like.”

“You want me to see if I can find out where the Hand came from? Maybe knowing where will give us some idea of who, if this is something out-of-state, or local?”

“It’s a waste of . . .” Sylvie started to say, but then paused. Usually, Hands of Glory were old, but Bella’s dream was modern. A woman poolside, with a scoop net. “No, tell you what. Go ahead. An old woman who drowned a toddler.” Modern media would be all over that story. Infant murders were popular with the press.

“You got it, and listen, Sylvie—” Alex jerked her head around, checked the door, leaned close. Sylvie closed her eyes and hoped Wright would be back soon. Immediately. Anything to forestall this argument, but she’d been a fool for thinking it would be that easy.

Your fault for confiding in someone else, her voice mocked her.

Sylvie interrupted Alex’s second speech of the day on grief and guilt. “Alex! If I flipped out and saw ghosts every single time someone I knew died because they got involved in my life, I’d be sitting in a padded room, carving names of the dead into my skin.”

She won a moment’s silence from Alex and took ruthless advantage of it, “Shut up and listen. And watch the damn door. I don’t want Wright walking in on us again.”

“Fine,” Alex said. She put her feet up on Wright’s chair, crossed her arms over her chest.

“We have a dead man from Chicago who knows my name. He didn’t pull it out of the ether. And my reputation might be growing, but not that fast. He’s a recent ghost, or he wouldn’t be so confused, wouldn’t be riding around in Wright. . . .”

“Circumstantial.”

“Didn’t say you could talk yet,” Sylvie said. “Still my turn.”

“It’s always your turn—”

“Coincidence only goes so far. He’s scarred, the mark of a crystal ball burned into his skin, with a gap. I brought home a piece of that crystal. It matches the gap like a key in a lock.

“It held his soul. Don’t ask me how. The Furies chased it; they wouldn’t have done that if there hadn’t been something of him trying to escape.” Sylvie’s hands clenched on the desk. She raised her head, looked out across the office, out into the sunny day, trying to erase the memory of bloody rain and a high, dark rooftop where Demalion’s bones had been ripped out of his skin. “But there were only two of the Furies then. Alekta was dead. They hunt in a pack. And with only two of them, they lost his scent. Demalion’s soul escaped, found the nearest harbor it could.”

Alex didn’t say anything, but her mouth twisted, and Sylvie wanted to lunge across the room and shake her. She knew, suddenly, what her clients must feel; the certainty that they were right, and at the same time, unable to express it. She hadn’t felt like this in a very long time. She didn’t like it any better this time around. “It’s Demalion,” she said, kept her voice level. “Just . . . trust me.”

If she’d had any doubts, they’d been erased by the way he’d traced her name into her skin, but that wasn’t something she could share. “He said he was Demalion,” she offered instead. “If you’d rather take his word over mine.”

Alex gnawed her lip, her cheeks spotted with red, and finally asked, “Will you listen to me now? Really listen?”

Sylvie’s temper fretted, threatened to spike. Was it too much to ask Alex to trust her? Instead, the girl—who knew barely the surface of the Magicus Mundi—was setting herself up as judge. . . . The dark voice crept closer, mingled with her own.

Alex leaned forward, caught Sylvie’s wrist, and said, “Please,” in a tone of such soft desperation that it defanged her growing anger. It was one thing to refuse to bend her head to someone who claimed unfair authority over her, another to refuse to listen at all.

“Wright’s possessed. You say that, and I believe you. But . . . Oh god, Sylvie, he knows about Demalion. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—but Zoe was asking about him, if you were still seeing that guy, and I said Demalion had died.”

Sylvie sat back, a niggling bit of doubt winding neatly around her heart. The human answer was the more common answer—casual venality, con artistry, murder. . . . But when she closed her eyes, she felt Wright’s fingers on her skin, guided by Demalion’s knowledge, and shook her head. “Nope, you’re still wrong. I know Demalion.”

“If you’re wrong, it’s really dangerous,” Alex said. “If you’re wrong, then there’s a possessing spirit lying to you. Manipulating you. Please, at least take him to Val’s. Take the Hand also. Get her diagnosis.” Alex’s voice shook. “I’ve been looking up ghosts ever since you said they weren’t a game. You’re right. They’re not. They ruin lives.”

“It’s Demalion,” Sylvie said.

“Who worked for the ISI. Not exactly the most ethical bunch.”

Sylvie’s certainty soured in her chest; she knew it was Demalion. She also knew that Alex was right; hadn’t Sylvie said it herself? Possession wasn’t the act of a benign man. At best, Demalion was desperate enough to control someone else’s body to make his wishes known. And, like cornered rats, desperate men were dangerous.

She leaned her head into her hands, her heart thumping. The warning bell continued to ring in unpleasant counterpoint. She surged off the desk, headed for the closet. “Fine. You win. I’ll take Wright and the Hand by Val’s. See if she can throw some good news my way. You. Keep looking into Bella, and find Zoe.”

She snagged the trash can out of the closet, ignoring the bell’s sudden increase in sound, and headed out to hunt Wright, careful not to meet Alex’s eyes, unwilling to see the pity she knew she’d find there.