by Lyn Benedict
“Demalion,” she said. “Get out. Get out now!”
If Sylvie and Demalion had invaded Odalys’s storefront, carrying the lit Hands of Glory powered by malevolent lich ghosts, and the alarm had only whispered—Sylvie really didn’t want to meet what made it shriek.
Demalion shook his head, refusing to go; his free hand sought a gun he wasn’t carrying.
“Sorry,” Odalys said. “Time’s up. She’s found us.” Her eyes were wild, her gestures choppy and ungraceful. She made one wave of her hand, a fierce, slashing version of the slower movements she’d made earlier. This time the salt ring expanded with the concussive force of a hurricane tide; scouring Sylvie’s ankles even through the denim of her jeans, her socks. The outermost salt ring blew past them all, created a new curve at the very edges of the room.
The lich ghosts wavered and went out, clawing ineffectually at the air as if it had suddenly become toxic to them. The Hands of Glory snuffed themselves out, hellish firelight sinking into the sere flesh in a moment, leaving Sylvie and Demalion defenseless against whatever approached.
22
Dead Come Calling
DEFENSELESS? NEVER THAT, THE LITTLE DARK VOICE SAID. SYLVIE tossed her Hand to Demalion—it might have been blown out, but it didn’t mean she was meekly going to let Odalys take it—and leveled the gun. Demalion dropped the Hands by his feet, and said, “What’s coming?”
“Something you freed,” Odalys said. “You really should have stayed out of my business.”
Outside the store, cars screeched to a metal-grinding halt.
Odalys ignored the crash, went back to ransacking her own storeroom. Baskets fell, scattering candles, herbs, twists of paper stained strange colors by their contents.
The bone flute increased its shrilling, pitch rising until the lightbulbs rattled in their sockets. Glass cracked like a gunshot, but not here, not in the back room. It was the front windows, those broad expanses, that were giving way.
Sylvie traversed the salt rings, moving through them like a beginner’s labyrinth, wondering if the center rings were safer than the exterior ones, if she should urge Demalion forward and never mind that it would put him closer to Odalys. Odalys wasn’t the immediate threat here, too occupied with her own tasks. Whatever it was that made bone scream was.
Something she had set free? Maybe bullets hadn’t been the solution to the lich ghost after all. Maybe she’d broken the binding, not the spirit.
“Margaret Strange,” Sylvie said.
The dead had played dead.
Her skin goosefleshed and chilled.
“For god’s sake,” Odalys swore. “Don’t say her name. Don’t draw her to us. She’s crazy.”
“Whose fault is that?” Sylvie said.
“Not mine,” Odalys said. “Everything would have been just fine if her bankers hadn’t embezzled from her. I barely got my deposit out of her.”
“Sylvie,” Demalion said. “Can we get gone?” Sweat stood out on his face; his skin tinged toward grey.
She wanted to say yes, sure, and get them the hell out of there, but . . . she wanted to take Odalys with them, and short of shooting her—in her shop, on a busy street—she had no ideas.
The drape between the back room and the storefront swayed, beads clacking, a warning as ominous as a rattlesnake. Sylvie parted the beads, poked her head through, gun first, and swore. Cars were wrecked in the street beyond Invocat’s storefront, slewed across the lanes of traffic; people lay in the road as if they’d dropped when they had gone to help.
That, Sylvie thought, her blood going cold, her fingers tightening on her gun, wasn’t just any accident. That was soul shock, courtesy of the lich ghost. She saw it now, a shadow in the sunlight, a ripple pressed against the cracked glass.
The front window shattered, the ultimate crack racing side to side through all the spiderweb damage the ghost had already inflicted. The shards scattered with force, sliding across the floor with an evil hiss, coming at her, and the ghost flowing after, stirring the glass that had stopped moving.
Sylvie watched long enough to confirm that it was Margaret Strange and wondered how she’d slipped Wales’s ghost trap of an apartment. Wondered if Wales was still alive.
Sylvie canted a look over her shoulder. Demalion stood resolutely at the back door, keeping Odalys from escape. She might be witch enough to have her defensive spells ready, but her offensive ones seemed lacking. Good for them, bad for her.
The ghost opened its ragged lips, keened in pitch with the bone, a high, shrill cry that had Sylvie clutching her ears, nearly clouting herself in the head with her gun. The cry separated into individual sounds, vibrated through her hands, twinging against bone, resonating in the metal parts of her gun until she found herself worrying crazily that they would rattle the bullets enough to explode.
Her skull shook, but as the resonances sank deeper, Strange’s cries shifted to words, full of bile, outrage, entitlement, madness. My body, I’ve waited. I’ve paid and paid, and I want it now.
“Your check bounced,” Odalys snapped, then blanched as the lich ghost’s attention shifted toward her.
Strange’s estate had been embezzled, Sylvie recalled. That explained a lot. Odalys would rather have her own pet baby witch than a blanked-out body for a ghost who couldn’t afford the fee. That was how Zoe had known about the milk. Odalys had told her.
When the broken shards of glass lifted back from the carpet and orbited the lich, shining and molten in the sunlight, Sylvie ducked back behind the curtain. She’d seen enough. She’d heard enough. She wiped the sweat from her cheek, licked her lip where she’d apparently bitten it at the ghost’s first shriek.
“Odalys, are your circles proof against poltergeist activity?” Sylvie asked.
Odalys crowed in sudden triumph; her hand came out of a cloth-edged basket, fisted tight. She grinned at Sylvie. “You stick around and tell me, Shadows. I’ve other plans.”
She whirled and tossed her handful of something—not toward Strange’s ghost and her orbiting glass whirlwind—but straight at Demalion’s chest.
Demalion dropped as if she’d shot him. Dark dust plumed from his chest when he hit the floor, illuminated two wraith-like, glowing shapes twining above him.
“What did you do?”
“Graveyard dirt,” Odalys said. “Reminded his soul, both of them, that he was dead. There’s more of it in the basket if you want to try your hand at holding off Strange. If I were you, though, I’d drag your friend out of here and hope his spirits follow. Maybe you’ll be lucky. Maybe one of them will survive.” Even as she spoke, she threaded her maze of protective rings, heading for the door.
Sylvie growled, holstered her gun, and followed her path. The door, even Odalys, wasn’t her target. Wright’s still form was. She dropped beside him. Beneath her hand, his chest was still, the dust gritty, piercing her blisters and adding blood to his shirt.
Shit, she thought. She rose, ready to tackle Odalys, and the woman tutted, picking up one of the fallen Hands of Glory. “You can chase me. Or you can try to get the dust off him. Your choice.”
She scooped up Sylvie’s satchel, stuffed the two Hands of Glory into it, and waved bye-bye.
Sylvie froze. If Odalys got away, Zoe would find herself gift-wrapped for Strange. Odalys might have wanted Zoe as her apprentice, but with a ghost demanding a body . . . Zoe became expendable.
Leave Wright, the little dark voice said. They both had more time than they were meant to have. You can’t save the dead except at the cost of the living.
He was so still beneath her hands, his warmth like the lining of a shucked-off coat, residual and fading fast.
Faintly, Sylvie could hear people on the street beginning to shout, waking as Strange grew ever closer to Sylvie and Wright and farther from the accident.
She dragged him up, her hands under his shoulders. The air hissed and seethed behind her, and she turned, shielding her throat and face. Heat grazed her shoulder, ran like a rivulet o
f boiling water down her arm, and leeched onto the inner curve of her elbow.
The salt rings had failed to hold Strange back, Sylvie thought, swaying and sick, her senses all caught up in the tiny point of pain.
No, that wasn’t quite true. The woman’s ghost—glass aura left behind—paced the rings, round and round, as if she were caught within high walls. It was that damned serpentine tongue that had gotten ahead of her and locked onto Sylvie’s flesh. She tried to pry it off, but found it barely there to her fingers, some plasmic state between solid and mist.
Their time was running out, she thought. The salt rings were holding, kept her awake, aware, alive, but for how long?
She scrabbled at Wright’s chest, collecting a bare scraping of graveyard dirt in her palm, slapped it over that writhing, stinging tongue, and felt it grow briefly tangible—slimy and muscular—before it decayed beneath her grasp, setting her free.
Sylvie grabbed Wright while Strange paced the circle, while the lich’s tongue slowly re-formed and made cautious sorties back in her direction. She forced his body upright, heavy and emptied of life, propped him against the wall, and started working on buttons. She ripped his shirt off, watched the graveyard dirt scatter downward, catching on his jeans, his shoes, and swore. Sweat sleeked her spine, her hands, made her one-handed grip on him faulty. He tipped, nearly fell.
From the front of the store, she heard a voice. “Hello? Everything all right here?”
Cop, she thought, come to see to the fender benders. Couldn’t walk away from Invocat’s shattered windows. Curiosity killed the cop, she thought, and worked faster.
It wasn’t like they were silent; Strange still shrieked, the bone flute howled, and Sylvie panted like a dog, cursing Wright, cursing Demalion with each outborne breath. Come back, you bastard. Just hold on. Hold on. Work with me here, you fucker, as she stripped him. Shirt fell, jeans down, shoes unlaced and off.
Caught holding a half-naked corpse . . . Oh, that would be a great way to end this day. Caught in a jail cell while Odalys fed Zoe to Margaret Strange to get the ghost off her own back.
Wright twitched in her grasp, breath sucking in like a bellows, began coughing almost immediately.
“Police officer,” the man called. “I’m coming back—”
Strange’s head rose from where she was studying the ring’s patterns, and she moved back toward the front, seeking an easier meal.
“Syl—” Wright murmured, voice ragged, face worn.
“Shh,” she hissed, making the judgment call. Wright first. Mr. Bad-Timing Cop would have to deal with the ghost himself.
“I’m naked—” he said. “Why?”
“Shut up,” Sylvie said. She slid her arm about his waist; he was all rib cage and jutting spine, hip bones like blades, and she dragged him into the alley. “Besides,” she muttered. “I left you your boxers.”
She shoved him—Wright, Demalion, one or both, god, please both—into the alley, ducked back into the store, and stretched the graveyard-dust-contaminated clothes across the threshold. Hopefully that would buy them time. Unless, of course, Strange went around the front.
How much sentience was left in her? How much of her was pure rage and hunger? Could she plan? Sylvie cursed Wales and cursed herself for not knowing the right questions to have asked.
Sylvie spun Wright about and headed down the alley, dragging him drunkenly after her.
In her pocket, her cell phone rang. She ignored it. With her luck, it was Suarez demanding an update, and when she didn’t answer, he’d probably come after her just in time to die like his son, at the hands of some magical calamity.
At the alley mouth, Wright balked, said, “Can’t go out there like this.”
“People have other things to gape at than your skinny ass,” Sylvie said. For someone so skinny, he was heavy and solid clear through. Her shoulders ached. Peering into the street, she saw the gathered crowd about Odalys’s place. They were gaping; they were shouting; they were . . . falling.
She couldn’t see the ghost in the sunlight, but she could track her by the way people fell, one soul bite at a time. Hopefully, given the sheer number of people in the area, the sheer quickness with which Strange was dealing out unconsciousness, she wasn’t having time to drain any one person of more than a taste of each soul, like some evil-minded sampling party. Miami might be meaner, afterward, a lot of people walking away that much less whole, but they’d be walking, talking, breathing.
Sylvie doubted that Strange would be so cavalier if she got them in her grasp.
Her heart thumped hard. Other way. If they went out the front, they’d be easy prey for Strange. Right now, Strange seemed desperate enough to—
Why hadn’t she taken over any of the females who’d fallen, fed utterly, and forced her spirit into the empty shell? This was Miami, the land of sun and skin. Surely there’d been more than one who’d fit her criteria of young and attractive.
“Why specifically Zoe?” she murmured aloud.
“Money,” he slurred. “Prolly set up so Zoe will inherit it. Like Bella. New body. New life. Old money.”
Sylvie shivered. She’d hoped he’d missed that. That Demalion had missed that. “No fun in being resurrected if you can’t take it with you,” she bit out. “I bet Strange doesn’t know she’s broke.”
He swayed, hard, tipped over, put his hand against the grimy stucco wall for support. “Still naked,” he muttered. “And I stepped in glass.”
“Fine,” she said. “Stay here. I’m going to get the truck.”
His gaze was hurt, and she stamped out her guilt. She wasn’t even sure which one of them she was yelling at and was scared to find out. She ran out of the back alley, looped around; hopefully, by the time she got back to the front of the store, Strange would have moved far enough away that she could collect her truck without collecting the ghost’s attention.
Good plan, she thought, only—
Her truck wasn’t there.
* * *
SHE TURNED AND TURNED, TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF IT. HER TRUCK hadn’t been involved in the accident—no glass littered the area where she had parked. In fact, the empty space where her truck had been was the only slot that would allow egress onto the street without waiting for the tow trucks to remove the tangle of cars.
Odalys, she thought. In a hurry, needing an escape, and seeing a chance to do Sylvie an injury in the process.
The lich ghost blurred the air like a heat shimmer, a deadly mirage; bystanders stopped to gawk at the ghost as it moved along the sidewalk, and realized their mistake too late. A police officer in a squad car shouted into her radio, shouts about gas and casualties, and only managed to stir panic into the already tense street.
A high whistle rang through the street—the ghost shrieking again about her promised body? Sylvie didn’t want to find out. She turned, headed back toward the alley, toward Wright. Half-naked, disoriented or not, he was going to have to brave the streets.
They had to get out of there.
“Shadows!” a hoarse voice called, followed by another piercing whistle. She jerked about, hand going for her gun, even as her hailer scrambled to her side.
She barely recognized him. In his darkened apartment, Wales had been cadaverous, creepy, a horror-movie host. Sunlight washed his skin, gave him life and a veneer of health, picked out reddish lights in his dark hair, made him less of a scarecrow, more a man. He yanked her toward him by the elbow.
She jerked away, and said, “The fuck, Wales?”
“You didn’t destroy the lich ghost when you shot it,” he said.
“You think?” She threw a hand out to encompass the chaos nearby.
“She was weak, trapped in my apartment. I let her out by accident. Didn’t even realize she’d survived until she blew past me when I headed out for a milk run. I followed her here.”
“Great,” Sylvie said. “Nice to see you. Now get the hell out of my—”
“I did some research,” he said, holding her in
place. His sallow face brightened, lips twisting upward. “I know how to get rid of a lich ghost.”
She stopped fighting him, feeling a glimmer of relief, hope, eagerness. “Well, get to work. She’s right over there!”
The lich ghost was bent in half, a muddy blur in the air, crouched above a fallen body. Snacking, Sylvie thought; then the blur whipped around, and another person fell. Strange was a glutton.
Wales slewed around, shaking his head. “Haven’t got the ingredients with me.”
“Useless,” Sylvie said. “Utterly useless.”
He dangled car keys in front of her face. “Useless? Your overburdened and underdressed friend’s already in my car. Want a ride?”
Sylvie turned a last look on the scene, watching people felled, knowing more police would be arriving any moment, feeding themselves into the ghost. And all she had was a gun. She was the useless one here.
“Get us out of here,” she said, and guilt swamped her. For the first time ever, she thought that the ISI—that paranoid and secretive agency—might be onto something with their plans. If they could figure out a way to introduce the Magicus Mundi into the world with laws already in place for controlling it, scenes like this might not happen. Instead of the police, there’d be people like Wales, but better prepared.
The best she could hope for was that Strange would remember Odalys and leave once the area calmed.
His sedan was an ancient Corolla, more parts rust than paint, but it purred when it ran.
Wright lay curled in the backseat, his skin sleek with sweat. He was shivering in fine tremors.
“Soul shock,” Wales diagnosed. “Doubled.”
“They both in there?” she asked.
“As far as I can tell,” he said. “Can’t last, you know.”
“More pressing problems,” she said.
He shook his head, all tangled hair and cheekbones like knife blades. “I don’t even want to know.”
