She leaned closer still, chasing that elusive sea taste of him, that familiarity. Her hands found their way into his hair, carding the tufts to wilder heights yet. She settled more comfortably across his lap, spread her knees wider to take him closer. His hand slid up her spine, rested heavy at her nape; his fingers curled around the crest of her shoulder, traced familiar patterns, S after S after S, her name drawn on her skin with careful touches.

Just like. . . “Demalion,” she murmured.

“Yes,” he breathed back.

She scrambled away from him, the shock of it heating her face, her throat, her chest. Shame burned in her breast.

“What are you doing—” Her breath failed her, caught tight and muffled by her own welter of conflicting emotion. Anger, as always, came to her rescue. “What the hell? I tell you to give me a name, and you choose that one?”

“I reclaim what’s mine,” he said. He shrugged, a fluid rearrangement of Wright’s stiffly set shoulders, projecting an ease he obviously didn’t feel. His eyes were on her, sandy brows drawn tight; his lips still damp with her breath. “And I remember. You kept that last piece of me safe. And then you gave it back to me. I am, was, Michael Demalion. Want to welcome me home?” Though he smiled at her, it was shaky, hard to hold.

“Demali—” She shook her head, felt like the world spun with it. “It’s not possible. The Furies devour souls.”

“I don’t know how I escaped, but I did,” he said, rose to draw her back into his arms. She resisted, kept from pressing herself back into Wright’s lanky chest, set hands flat against his skin, wanting to believe, wanting not to. If Demalion was a ghost, he was beyond her aid, and this could be nothing but a cruel reminder of what she had lost.

As if the thought proved the facts, Demalion shivered beneath her hands, then he was stepping back, his eyes wide and wild. “Sylvie? What’s—”

She didn’t need the clipped tone to know; the surprise was enough. Wright was back where he belonged.

“Missing time?” she asked.

He nodded once. “What hap . . . No, don’t wanna know. I’m gonna—Can I go get a shower?”

She realized her hands were still on his skin, jerked back. “Go for it.” He slipped away from her like a feral cat, contorting himself to evade her and the couch, before disappearing into the bathroom.

Sylvie collapsed back onto the couch. Could she believe it? She turned possibilities over in her mind like garden rocks, wary of things beneath.

The ISI and a sneak attack? They knew Demalion, but they didn’t know how she and he had fitted together.

Her lips burned; her hands still carried the memory of warmth. She shifted uneasily, and pain spiked her thigh, a sudden snake-strike of unexpected hurt.

Sylvie slapped her hand over the pain and found that curved piece of glass that was all she had held of Demalion. Her blood wetted the edge of it, ran thin and dark into the curved heart of it. Despite the crystal’s gloss, the shine of reflected light, it was oddly empty; the pale glow it had held, that kiss of soul—was gone, reabsorbed.

A broken crystal ball. Such an impossible thing to save a soul, such a contradictory egg—only birthing once its pieces had found the same flesh and become whole.

Her face was wet, the skin tight on her cheeks; her throat ached. She scrubbed salt from her face, her lashes. In the bathroom, she heard Wright swearing, and flinched at the idea of facing him. She couldn’t. Not now. Not when she’d be peering at him, wondering if she could see Demalion in the way Wright moved, not when Wright was the one who needed her help.

The shower cut off, and Sylvie jumped into motion.

She dropped the crystal fragment into the wastebasket, forced determination into a body that wanted to sink under so many emotions: guilt, relief, a spike of joy, despair. Wright was a no-go for the moment. But the magical burglars were just begging for attention. One quick change later—trading her sweatpants for comfort jeans, a little loose in the waist, and an oxford on over the tank top—she collected her gun and realized she’d left the holster in the bathroom that Wright was using as a hidey.

She couldn’t imagine knocking and saying, I know you’re having a freakout that I helped cause, but could I have that holster so I can go out and harass people, and no, you’re not invited. . . . Even her courage had limits. Far easier to shrug on a silvered denim jacket Zoe had left on her last visit: It was fashionable on some model’s runway in a city like Paris, Venice, Hong Kong, and way over the top anywhere else. But it had pockets. Discreet, padded pockets, the perfect thing to secrete a compact gun.

Her satchel shouldered, jacket on, attitude in place, she headed out into the Miami morning, bookended on either side by the trouble she left behind and the trouble she hoped to find.

6

Information Retrieval

DIFFICULT TRAFFIC TO THE BEACH, NOW THAT IT WAS CLOSER TO EIGHT, helped her to narrow her focus. Forget about Wright for the moment. Forget the whys and hows of Demalion’s return. Forget about Zoe and her problems. Forget about her dislike of Lisse Conrad. Concentrate on the simplest things. Driving without accident. Hunting down her leads on the burglars. Compartmentalization was the key here.

She slued the truck into the alley between the bar and her office, taking quick advantage of a gap between cars. She had to stomp on the brake to avoid hitting the Dumpster, left a quick yelp of burned rubber, and rocked herself in the seat. But hey, another perfect parking job. She’d recovered enough of her composure to actually feel a tiny smidge of pride.

The bar’s alley door opened; Etienne poked his head out, all tousled dark curls and a faceful of piercings over a pale green beater tee. Dragonfly tattoos decorated his bare shoulders, black wings on black skin, and a blurred image of what she presumed was Jesus or a saint stretched the length of his forearm. He yawned, propped himself on the mossy stucco, and said, “’Sup, Shadows? Coffee in a mo’.” He turned around, not waiting for a response. That was Etienne, all over, slow-moving but inexorable.

Sylvie watched him go, decided she really had been out of the neighborhood loop if Etienne was sleeping in the bar as a deterrent to burglars. Confrontation was a dangerous tactic at the best of times; in this case it was likely to be a useless one if her experience was anything to go by.

She squeezed out of the truck, pushing the door open the whole eight inches available—parking in the alley did tend to leave precious little space—and dropped to the sand-coated asphalt, just as Etienne reappeared with two paper cups in his hands. An unbuttoned guayabera had been slung over his tee: business wear, Miami bar casual.

“Kinda busy,” Sylvie warned, even as she took the first cup. The heat went straight to her bones. She warmed her hands around the cup as if it were thirty degrees outside and not a damp eighty-five. She inhaled the deep roast, popped the lid to see the oily shimmer of serious caffeine, and thought she could make the time for a single cup’s worth of conversation.

He grinned, white slash of teeth. “You’re always busy, and I’m not looking to chat.” He pressed the second cup into her hands, sweet-scented even through the lid. It was a WASP-SPECIAL, mocha plus hazelnut, double cream and sugar: candy bar in a cup. She popped the lid; no jimmies, at least.

Sylvie looked down at it with more disapproval than the concoction really warranted. It wasn’t the coffee so much as what it foretold: Her plan for a quick in-and-out raid on Alex’s computer for that list of homes had just been squashed flat as a conch fritter. Her fault, completely. She’d been in such a hurry to avoid . . .