“Convenient excuse,” she said, less to needle him, and more to give him space to recover. “It wasn’t me who broke your lamp; the ghost did it. Honest . . .”

He gave her a shaky grin. “Yeah. Sorry.”

He folded his hands in his lap, braided his fingers, rubbed at the pale spot where his wedding band had been, frowned, looked at her with an expression shading toward unhappy.

Some information seepage, she thought. He had a glimmer of memory trying to make itself felt. Since she’d rather get out and walk the rest of the way to the office, full on summer heat and all, than talk about that horrifically inappropriate kiss, she shifted subjects firmly. “So what else do you know about him?”

“Not a lot. I didn’t lie,” he said. “I’m not an idiot, Sylvie. You consult a specialist, you tell ’em your symptoms. It’s just . . . I don’t know the words. Like a blind child, trying to describe the world. All I got are feelings, sensation, nothing real. Nothing I can grab hold of. Your name was the first real thing. Only real thing.”

He stared blindly out the windshield, not even squinting in the sunlight, utterly focused inward.

“When it started, it was like a rat tweaking in my brain, all twisted round, biting at everything. Panic all the time, on both our parts, I guess. Me ’cause I never know what I might do; him ’cause he didn’t know what he was. Then I got to you, and it changed. Got better. Still all activity, no purpose, but better. Can’t really make it sound right.”

The idea of Demalion waking scared and fragmented woke strange hurts in her chest, made it impossible to speak. She blinked furiously and changed lanes.

“It’s all different now.”

“How?” And her recovered voice was ragged enough to make him jerk in his seat.

He tangled his hands in his hair, drummed out a beat on the back of his skull; it made her think uneasily of knocking on a door, waiting to see who would answer.

“This morning . . . He’s clearer now. Got real feelings. Not just panic and confusion. In fact, he’s kinda—” Drum tap on his neck, the quiet thump of flesh against flesh.

“Kinda what?”

He folded his arms across his chest, gave her a brush of eye contact. “Worried. Guilty. Excited. Like a baby gangbanger psyching himself up to do something he’s not sure of.”

“I see,” Sylvie said, slowly. She didn’t like that description at all.

“He also feels . . . stronger.” His hands strangled each other, went white and tight, though the rest of his body strove for casual. “Like he’s more there.

“So, you going to tell me what he did to get you all handsy?” Wright interrupted her musings. His question was abrupt, hostile in tone, though she imagined it was fear that fueled it.

“Nothing important,” Sylvie said. “You weren’t out long, half an hour max, and most of that time you were couch-bound.”

He nodded, but gnawed on his lip as if he wasn’t sure he believed her. Wanted to, but doubted. He shifted, bumped the can again, and his attention jerked back to it.

Sylvie gripped the wheel tighter, eyed the traffic warily, but the moment passed without Wright or the ghost freaking out again.

“That’s . . . vile,” he said. “How can you . . . Where did you get that? What is it?”

Sylvie verified that the trash can was still tightly sealed, the cover of Vogue flattened over the top, shiny with duct tape. Answering him truthfully was likely to lead to argument, but it would also get them off the ghost topic. She’d had about as much of that as she could stand; he might be thinking it through, but she was remembering Demalion in her arms again, even with the wrong flesh pressed against hers. Remembering Demalion’s blood, a fine, sticky spray that had stained her face and hair and clothes, seeped into her pores, gotten into her nail beds, and taken days to scrub out.

Her stomach wanted to eat through her skin, anxiety burning as hot and painful as a flame. He came back. But how? The Furies devoured souls as well as bodies.

“Sylvie?”

“It’s the burglars’ magical tool.” She hastened into speech. “In the can.”

“You found them?” His concern melted away into pleasure and surprise. “That was quick. Bet that went a long way to making the local PD like you better.”

“If I’d told them,” she said, absently. “How’d you know about—”

“You didn’t tell them?”

She moved to derail the argument. “The trash can’s sealed,” she said. “What tipped you off? You said you’re not much for the Magicus Mundi.”

“I’m not,” Wright said. “The ghost is. Now that he’s more awake, he’s all sorts of busy in my head. And he thinks there’s something very bad in there.”

“Well, chalk one up for the dead man,” Sylvie muttered, then winced.

“So why didn’t you call the cops?”

“You’re a cop,” she said. “If I brought a burglar to you, and said, ‘Hey, here’s your perp, and she and her friends are breaking into stores, pretty as you please, using black magic’—how long do you think you’d keep listening? Before the ghost.”

Wright slouched back into the seat, pulling his legs up to keep them as far as possible from the trash can, and said, “You’re not even trying. Phone it in, an anonymous tip, and trust that they’ll match the suspects to the stolen merchandise.”

“Yeah, that might work,” Sylvie said. “Except that the burglars in this case are the kind of people who give the police hives. Make ’em dot every i, cross every t, and it’s still not gonna be enough once the lawyers get involved.”

“Rich people,” Wright said.

“Worse,” Sylvie said. “Rich kids.”

“You should still try—”

Idealism peeked out of his eyes. An honest man who believed in doing what was right no matter how likely it was to fail.

“I want the source of their tool, the person who thought it was a slick idea to expose teens to black magic,” Sylvie said. “That’s worse than anything the kids have done.”

“They couldn’t figure it out themselves?”

“No,” Sylvie said flatly. “Magic’s not exactly like building a bomb. You can’t just download the plans from the Internet. They had a teacher. A corrupter.”

“How are you going to find the person?”

“Got an idea or two,” she said. Zoe. Relying on a teenage network of gossip. She’d done more with less. “Let me do my job, my way. That’s what you’re paying for.”

He took the hint and stopped talking cops and robbers, ghosts and fears. Instead, he rubbernecked, watched palms towering over the highway, watched the sky wheel from blue to brighter blue, and counted seafood restaurants aloud. It made her grin, even through her worries about him, Demalion, the Hand, Zoe. It also made her hungry.

Back at the office, Wright and Sylvie stared at the trash can for a moment. He stepped away from the truck, put his hands in his pockets, and whistled aimlessly, blue eyes squinting in the beach sunlight.

“Cute,” she said. “I wasn’t going to ask you to carry it.” She came round the truck, tucked the trash can beneath her arm, and headed inside.

When Sylvie entered, pink plastic clutched tight, the warning bell on the main desk began to chime. It rolled in its marble base, metal hissing against stone, a quiet susurrus beneath the steady dinging. Sylvie eyed it warily. If she’d had any doubts that the Hand of Glory was authentic, they were gone now.

On the bright side, she’d seen the bell do worse. When the Furies had come by, the bell had all but spun out of its orbit. As bad as this was, it was a human-sized problem, not a godly one.

Alex looked up from the couch where she was sprawled, catching a bit of a nap after her early start. “—the hell?”

“Bad magic,” Sylvie said. “Don’t touch it. Don’t peek at it. Pretend it’s not here.” She set the trash can down at the far end of the room, as far as she could get it from the kitchenette because she didn’t even want to think of food and it in the same vicinity; her stomach growled and proved her a liar.