“And a concealed-carry permit,” she continued, as if there had been no interruption. “In the truck.”

“Oh, is that your truck? Parking violation,” he said and, despite his partner’s bewildered glance, turned her about and cuffed her.

“What’s going on—?” Ross asked.

“She got Rafi killed,” Suarez answered, and Sylvie flinched as his grip bit into bone for a moment.

Ross made no response, but he didn’t need to make one. A fraternity in blue indeed; loyal to their own.

Sylvie ducked when Suarez shoved her into the backseat of the cruiser, saving herself a knock to the head. The vertigo that resulted from her sudden movement made her wish she’d just taken the lump. It wouldn’t have been too bad. Their harassment followed predictable lines—concussions were out of bounds. She leaned back against the cruiser seat, squirming as she imagined she felt guilt and desperation bleeding out of the stuffing.

Outside, Ross tugged Wright to his feet, shaking his head at whatever it was Wright was saying.

Wright fell in beside her, his face a tight knot of frustration and anger. His shoulder pressed hard on hers, and he struggled to right himself, awkward with his hands cuffed behind him. His shoulders shook, long tremors in his body that told her he felt as crappy as she did.

“Take it they didn’t believe you were a cop,” she said.

“Not real trusting, no. It’s the company I’m keeping. Should I be worried? You got a record, Sylvie?”

“I’ve got a reputation.” Sylvie kicked moodily at the driver’s seatback before her.

He slipped down beside her, hunching inward with a grimace.

“They hit you?” Sylvie asked. If the Suarezes had expanded their harassment to her acquaintances, all bets were off.

“Just sore and really confused.” He sighed, twitched, tried to rub his cheek on his shoulder.

“Welcome to Miami,” she said. Lowering her voice, she added, “And the Magicus Mundi. You got off lightly. Just arrested.” She gave one last kick to the front seat, and Ross slapped the glass.

“Hey, play nice, kiddies,” Ross said, climbing into the passenger’s seat. “And Shadows? Felipe doesn’t like you already. Try not to piss him off further. He might slam on the brakes.”

Wright said, “He slams on the brakes for anything but a kid in the street, and I got your badge.”

Ross sighed, scratched at his grey-black stubble, and said, “Look, just keep her from kicking the seat.”

Suarez climbed in; the cruiser rocked as he settled himself.

Sylvie started to snark about men who loved their donuts, but Wright leaned closer, and said, “What happened? I thought waking up in the gutter was just an expression.” He shifted, twitched; metal chinked behind his back. If his hands had been free, Sylvie bet he’d be crossing his arms defensively.

“Spell of some kind,” Sylvie said, keeping her voice low. “The people coming toward us? The light? They were carrying a talisman of some kind. I was looking at their faces, for all the good that did me. That light was . . .” She shivered a moment. She’d been afraid of light before—balefire, the lightning of battling gods—but she’d never been repulsed down to her core by light. Until now. She swallowed back the memory. “You see anything different? What they were carrying? I got an idea. Don’t like it much, but could stand to have it confirmed.”

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.”