by Lyn Benedict
His face, tight with stress, quivered. He sank down in the seat. “I didn’t see anything.”
The cruiser pulled away from the curb, toward the interstate and the downtown jail.
“C’mon, Wright. Nothing? You saw enough of the light to fall prey to it—” She felt her voice go sharp. He’d been doing so well; she hadn’t expected him to get a last-minute case of wishful blindness.
“Nothing,” he snapped. “Nothing at all. Don’t you get it? The last thing I remember? I was sitting in your truck, wishin’ you’d turn on the AC.” He turned his back on her, determinedly staring out the window as if he were just an ordinary tourist, leaving Sylvie to wonder if memory loss was a side effect of the sleep spell that had whammied him—it wouldn’t be the first time she recovered faster, better, differently from those around her—or if for those forty minutes or so, Wright’s “ghost” had been running the show.
5
Echoes & Leftovers
MMM. JAIL AIR, SYLVIE THOUGHT. THE STINK OF BLEACH AND DESPERATION, old coffee, alcohol, and chemical-laced sweat. She sat, cuffed to the long bench on the edge of the main squad room, with Wright a sullen presence at her side. At least, this early in the morning, near the end of night shift, before day shift, there weren’t a lot of people waiting processing. Gave her space to think about Wright and his memory gap.
Fugue states were rare but far more common than ghosts, and Wright had enough trauma to suggest a fractured psyche: Dead and back again wasn’t all roses. On the other hand, Wright had died in Chicago, where the Magicus Mundi was everywhere, snatching at everything like greedy children freed from the need to be mannerly.
A dead man brought back to life on an ordinary day, suffering mental gaps, she’d write him off as delusional or damaged. A dead man brought back to life while gods were roaming around and magic was reshaping reality? Chicago made possession a possibility.
But a ghost, given abrupt freedom of a body, should have betrayed itself somehow.
Beside her, Wright slumped, an unstrung puppet, all uncomfortable angles and quiet misery.
She’d thought herself in circles, gotten no closer to a solution to Wright’s problem. Frustrated, she leaned back and thumped her head against the wall, regretting it when her hair stuck. “I hate this place.”
“Then maybe you should have gotten a permit,” Wright said. He leaped into conversation as if he’d been desperate for an opening. “Christ, Sylvie, what kind of PI doesn’t even register her gun?”
From the wary expression on his face, he had come up with an answer of his own—the kind of PI who might need to walk away from used guns and dead bodies.
“I have a concealed-carry permit,” she said.
He raised his brows, double-barreled skepticism, followed by a speaking eye sweep of their surroundings. An utterly nonverbal yeah right.
She licked her lip. He hadn’t been anywhere near that expressive during the time they were roaming around the parking lot, checking for burglars.
“They ignore it or lose it,” Sylvie said.
“It’s a conspiracy? The Man out to get you? I hear that a lot.”
Sylvie sighed, pitched her voice to the most annoying whine possible. “Yup. But it’s different this time, Officer. . . .” At his expression, she said, “What? You never played the game at all? Losing info? Just long enough to make a difference?”
“I’m a beat cop,” Wright said. “I risk my neck for a general pop that spit on me if I give ’em a chance. I do my job, I do it well, and I don’t play games.”
“Don’t you?” She stood, tried to stand, and was yanked to an awkward crouch by the cuffs. It did nothing for her mood. “Thing is, I’m used to my clients lying to me, Wright, but it still burns me every single time.”
“I haven’t—”
“Lying by omission is still a lie,” she said. “You have blackouts? Fugue states? You think the ghost is walking around in your skin, and you didn’t think to mention that?”
The receptionist, a heavyset cop with a permanently etched scowl on his face, said, “Hey, Shadows, keep your freak show quiet!”
The rasp in her throat pointed out, if the cop’s reprimand hadn’t, that she’d been one step away from shouting. Sylvie sucked in a breath, brought her temper back under control, and dropped into the seat.
Wright didn’t make it easy. The moment she sat, he said, “I told you I was possessed. I thought that kinda thing came with the label.”
“That’s it?” she said. “That’s all you’re going to say. You just expected me to know?”
He nodded once, jerkily.
The bad temper washed out of her; he looked so . . . broken. A tough guy barely hanging on.
He scrubbed his free hand over his mouth, his eyes, as if he could wipe away things he had seen or said. As if the whole problem could be erased. Then his shoulders went back, stiff and strong. “So, you going to tell me what happened? I mean, what . . . it did when it had control?”
Sylvie studied the juncture of cuff and bench, a spot worn slick in the terrazzo. She wasn’t sure she had an answer to his question—two questions in one, really. The covert one was a plea for assurance that there was a ghost at all.
Setting aside her default paranoia, Sylvie wasn’t convinced that there had been anything more at play than the sleep spell messing with a man already fighting his own mind.
“Did it try to hurt—”
“You were helpful,” Sylvie said. “You were useful. A little mouthy, a little logy, not all that different.”
Wright’s mouth twisted, rejecting what should have been good news. Sylvie reminded herself that cops had their own instincts, and he was reading between what she had and hadn’t said. His voice deepened to a growl, an angry pitch she hadn’t thought he could reach. “I recognize that look. You’re going to dump me and my problem on someone else.”
Sylvie bit back her first, second, third retorts, before saying, temperately, “I just don’t think it’s my kind of problem.” A police station was not the place to have this talk. This discussion should be happening in the privacy of her office, not under the bloodshot eyes of an overworked cop. But Wright was as pushy as the best cops tended to be.
He swallowed hard, his throat working, his chest rising rapidly beneath his thin T-shirt. “I thought you were supposed to help me. Thought you were supposed to believe all this shit.”
Sylvie scooched over on the bench to put her mouth close to his ear. “What ‘shit’ is that? Wright, all I’ve seen so far is a man with a blackout. And that’s explicable by lots of things: drug abuse”—she held up her hand to forestall his instant protest—“psychological trauma, organic trauma, just plain exhaustion. Just because there are monsters doesn’t mean that every shadow is cast by one. You have a high-stress job in a high-stress city that just had big problems. You have money problems. You’re having trouble in your marriage. And you died. You’re the poster boy for stress-related disorders.”
“I dreamed you. Isn’t that proof enough?” He picked fitfully at the fraying denim on his knee. She addressed herself to the high blade of his cheekbone, the bronze stubble blurring his tight-held jaw.
“Tell me what type of possessing ghost would be so helpful? Possession isn’t a good thing, Wright—”
She ignored his dry Tell me about it and bulled on. “Possession means taking over someone else, trammeling their will beneath your own, claiming their flesh. Not the mark of a good guy. Not the mark of a nice guy. Yet your supposed ghost helped out. Do you see why I’m having doubts?” It sounded good. Believable. Solid. Everything she said had been true. Facts. Logic. The PI’s best friends.
Yet she couldn’t quite shake the tiniest doubt in herself. The idea that Wright’s ghost might be a very real threat.
“You don’t want to take the case, fine. Don’t lie about it,” he shot back, and he was hissing in her face now, red-flushed, a vein pulling tight in his neck. “If you don’t believe me, tell me why Cedo Nulli makes
you flinch.”
“You’re mangling the Latin,” she said.
The intake cop growled another warning.
Wright leaned back, let bleach-scented air drift between them; the red heat faded from his skin before he said, “I’m not leaving. You don’t believe? Just wait. You’ll get your fuckin’ proof. I’ll be your sidekick if I gotta. But I’m sticking around.”
“You could help your cause,” Sylvie said. Her voice was sharp, torn between guilty relief that he wasn’t going to let her push him away, anger for the same cause. “You got someone else in your head, and you know nothing about them? Not even a name? C’mon, Wright, you want me to believe you? Give me something. Give me a name.”
Wright’s eyelids fell closed, shutting off that fever-bright gaze. The last of the hectic flush faded, leaving him ashen. His brow knotted. Behind his eyelids, movement, searching his own mind. She found herself holding her breath.
“It’s . . .” His hands fisted, his jaw tightened, and he gritted the words out. “I don’t think it knows. It’s all broken glass; edges and bits and pieces. Like those toys, kaleidoscopes, and you turn ’em and you turn ’em and it’s pretty and shiny but it never makes sense. It’s like there’s a piece missing.” He went back to picking at his jeans.
She didn’t say anything. She might be a bitch, but she didn’t kick a man when he was down. Unless he deserved it.
“I’m still sticking to you like glue,” he muttered.
She licked her lips, hated to give him false hope, but ghost or not, his distress was real. “I’ll get someone to take a closer look, do a proper diagnosis. I can help you that much.”
A rude laugh interrupted their talk; Felipe Suarez loomed over them. His partner, three steps ahead, holding two cups of coffee, paused on his way toward the exit. “Shadows, you don’t help people. You fuck ’em over. I’d run back to your wife, Chicago, if I were you. Or you’ll end up on a slab.”
“Felipe, man, c’mon,” his partner urged, and silence fell in their wake.
Wright cleared his throat. “So, why exactly are they out to get you?”
“Rafi . . . Rafael Suarez was an employee of mine, as well as related to a good chunk of the force.”
“Was?”
Yeah, trust a cop to home right in on the point.
“He died. We tangled with some would-be sorcerers, and he got killed.” It cost her something still to winnow Rafi to cold fact and report his death in a level tone.
“They blame you,” Wright said. “ ’Cause grief makes people crazy. I get that. So our arresting officer?”
“First cousin, Felipe Suarez,” Sylvie said. “And if it hadn’t been him, it could have been one of Rafi’s brothers, his uncle, his sister, or his father. They’re a big family, and they bleed blue. So, they lose my permits and give me the runaround. We’ll sit, they’ll yell at me, maybe fine me. Depends on how bad their day went.”
“Lightner!” A big-voiced man in a rumpled suit poked his head into the hall, saw her cuffed, and sighed. He scrubbed at his face, stubble dark along his jaw, eyes weary. The very picture of a tired man about to go off shift and finding that he had one last unwelcome task to complete.
He disconnected her from the seat, the jangle of hand-cuffs, and pointed her down the hall. “You know the way.”
She wiggled her fingers bye-bye at Wright and let Detective Adelio Suarez lead her into one of the interrogation rooms.
* * *
THE ROOM WAS A FLUORESCENT HELL: CHEAP LINOLEUM, CHEAP paint, cheap video camera aimed squarely at the table bolted to the floor, all of it reflecting the flicker-shine of the false light. A rectangular window high up, filled with wire-mesh glass, showed a sky going blue and bright outside.
Here we go again, she thought, stiffening her spine. It was hard: With all the other Suarezes, she felt equal portions irritation and patience. With Adelio Suarez—she just felt guilt. Rafael had been his son, and when Rafi had come to work for her, she’d told Adelio she’d keep him safe. He’d been pleased. One child out of the line of fire.
He stabbed his thumb at the chair. “Sit.”
Disobedience ran deep in her soul, but she dropped into the wooden chair, heard it screek against the faded turquoise linoleum as she shifted her weight. The sooner she shut up, the sooner she’d be out of here. He paced behind her; then, just when she was preparing to start the game by asking for a phone call, he said, “Wait here,” and left the room. A total change of pattern. It made her wary.
Adelio came back with a file folder, and her gun, which he set on the table before her. It drew her eyes like a magnet; she missed his first words, lost in the itch to reclaim what was hers.
“. . . even with your testimony and Ms. Figueroa-Smith’s, we’ve had no luck finding the cultists that killed my son. We’ve got a set of probable names, but the suspects themselves are gone. All of them vanish on the same night, except for one of them, who disappeared some days earlier—a college student named Mira Castellan. She vanished from the UM campus, and funny thing is, Shadows, campus security recalls seeing your truck on that day. You’re no student.” He flipped through the folder, showed Sylvie a picture of the woman. Sylvie felt her upper lip curl, restrained any other response. Murderess.
“Campus is open to community,” she said. She traced a chip in the table’s laminate, pried at the edge of it with her fingernail. There wasn’t any point in denying her presence there. Her truck was noticeable, had been ever since the dire hound—her very first monster—had clawed six long furrows through the red paint to expose the metal beneath.
“These are the people who killed my boy, right?”
“You’re the detective,” she said.
“What happened to them?” Suarez said, his voice strung tight. “Did they run from you? Where are they, Shadows?”
Sylvie sank back in the seat, folded her arms. “I wish I could tell you.”
Yeah, this was a change of routine, and an unpleasant one. She wondered how the hell he had gotten the cultists’ names when she hadn’t been able to.
Hadn’t needed to. The god of Justice had done her scutwork.
While Adelio Suarez didn’t have preternatural help, Sylvie should have realized that grief, determination, and the resources of an entire police department were enough. Look what she managed with attitude and a gun.
He pressed his chair back to two legs, stared at the ceiling for a long moment, and dropped it down again with a thunk that made the table vibrate. “You wish you could tell me?”
“I don’t have any answers,” Sylvie said. “Does that make it clearer?” She stared him down; after werewolves, succubi, and gods, one overworked night-shift detective was barely a blip on her radar.
He dropped his gaze. “Tell me this one thing, Shadows, one thing. Do you think they’ll ever resurface?”
Sylvie grimaced. Maybe if he hadn’t been asking her in the middle of a police station, maybe then she’d be tempted to give him the answer he expected.
“Look, Lio, I’m sorry about Rafi—you know I am—but I don’t have any answers for you. And that’s a client of mine you’ve got cuffed out there. He’s got nothing to do with anything.”
“They never do; you take them down with you, anyway.” Suarez stood, turned away, facing the door. His shoulders slumped.
Sylvie was grateful for his weakness. It hid her own, the quick tears that burned her throat and filled her eyes. He was right, of course. Demalion was only the most recent, most graphic example of that. The Furies had shredded him down to his soul for doing what she had asked him to do. She reached out blindly, put her hand on the gun, finding familiar, cold comfort.
“Can I go?” she said.
“When you answer one question more for me,” he said. His voice was ragged, as if he’d been fighting to control his breath.
Sylvie groaned, put her head on the table, smelled greasy laminate and the lingering scent of gun oil. “I should have stayed at the beach.”
“Expla
in to me why you and your client were passed out at a crime scene. Or did you not know the Bayside Mall was the latest in a string of robberies?” Suarez leaned over the table, forced her to look at him. The sunlight creeping through the barred window was unkind to him, pointed out the fatigue tint to his skin, the silver in his stubble, and blanked those remarkable eyes.
“Motherfucker,” Sylvie muttered, the heels of her hands pressed tight to her forehead. “That’s why I was there. To prevent it or find out who was doing it.”
“Your Chicago beat cop hired you to worry about south Florida robberies?”
“Ever heard of multitasking?” Sylvie said. “He’s not my only client. Just the most needy.”
“The robbery?”
Sylvie shook her head. “I didn’t get a good look.”
He waited, leaning pointedly against the hallway door. She growled, but forked over her list of the car plates, the long one with all the cars in the lot, and the new additions nicely circled for him. She felt like she was back in high school, handing homework over to a bully. Except, of course, she had never been the bullies’ target.
He folded the paper into his hand, expression still somber. “Anything else?”
“I gave you my leads. You give me nothing. I think we’re more than done. I think you owe me one.”
“There was graffiti this time,” he said, as she pushed away from the table.
“Graffiti’s nothing compared to a list of getaway vehicles,” she said.
“So you don’t want to know what it said?”
Her hand was on the doorknob. She wanted out, but the case, her clients . . . “Something really interesting, I hope.”
