She leaned her head into her hands, her heart thumping. The warning bell continued to ring in unpleasant counterpoint. She surged off the desk, headed for the closet. “Fine. You win. I’ll take Wright and the Hand by Val’s. See if she can throw some good news my way. You. Keep looking into Bella, and find Zoe.”

She snagged the trash can out of the closet, ignoring the bell’s sudden increase in sound, and headed out to hunt Wright, careful not to meet Alex’s eyes, unwilling to see the pity she knew she’d find there.

9

Consequences

SUNLIGHT SLANTED INTO THE TRUCK, DECLARED TRIUMPH OVER SYLVIE’S laboring AC, and left them sweating gently into midday heat. She could smell Wright next to her, hot salt and the lingering scent of habañero spice. Utterly different from Demalion, who had smelled of sandalwood, coffee, musk.

She shook her head, tightened her grip on the steering wheel, and blistered the air with her curses as the too-hot wheel burned her hand.

“Feel better?” he asked wryly.

“I should have stayed on vacation,” she muttered. Should have stayed away from the job, with its reminders of broken friendships and things lost to the Magicus Mundi.

Instead, she was sharing tight quarters of a too-small truck with a man who housed her dead lover. But she couldn’t think of him like that. Or shouldn’t. Wright was more than a vessel: He was the cop she reluctantly liked, her tidy houseguest, Giselle’s husband, Jamie’s father. A living, human man.

Wright squirmed away from the trash can, propped between his legs again, and her frustration and anxiety found an outlet. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop fidgeting. It’s not like it’s going to crawl out and cop a feel.”

He pressed it all the way to the front of the leg space, held it there with his sneakers, knees up in the air, and said, “So why not throw it in the truck bed?”

“Too risky,” she said. “Ties break; accidents happen. You’re a cop. You should know that. How many men do you catch on outstanding warrants ’cause their car tags are expired, the taillights broken, their driving erratic?”

He bristled at being treated like a not-too-bright child, then said, “You’re expecting to wreck? You know what they say, Sylvie. Cowards die a thousand deaths—”

“And heroes die for lack of common sense and a little forethought.”

She got a dry chuckle. He let his legs down slowly, sneakers slipping off the top of the wastebasket, stretching long muscles forced tight by his hunched shape. The pink-plastic bin slipped back, rested between his legs. He kneed it gently. “So . . . what’s in it?”

“Short-term memory a problem for you?”

“Black magic artifact doesn’t mean much to me. I’m a cop. Give me details.”

“A hand.”

“A human hand?”

“I didn’t say paw.”

“Wow,” he said. “That’s . . . pretty perverse. Body snatching common in your magicus thingy?” He reached over, ran his fingers along the edge of the tape, testing the security of the seal. The model on the cover of the magazine simpered at him. He grinned, with sudden mordant humor that brought a taste of Demalion to his face. “Yeah, I get it. Crash the truck, fling a hand into traffic, and some poor commuter gets a windshield full of hand.”

Sylvie’s lips tugged upward, nearly against her will. Then she imagined the scene continuing, car wrecks, police reports, her evidence lost.

“Wow,” he said, again. “A hand.” His amusement faded; she had thought it would. Wright was, after all, a cop. “Where’d it come from?”

“According to legend, it’s the hand of a murderer,” Sylvie said. “I’m inclined to believe it. The girl who’s been using the Hand has been having . . . unsettling dreams.”

“Good,” Wright said. “Nice when crime doesn’t pay. It’s something real-world to charge ’em with. Desecration of a body. That’ll get police attention.”

“Rich kids,” Sylvie repeated. “Misdemeanor at best. Slap on the wrist. And it depends on whether they dug it up, hacked it off themselves, or if they bought it. If they bought it—be hard to press any charges at all.”

“Oh, I hate people,” Wright muttered.

“Welcome to my world. Hopefully, we’ll be able to offload this problem at Val’s, though,” Sylvie said, and cut off a Lexus in her sudden lane shift for the turnoff to Rickenbacker Causeway. Val Cassavetes’ husband had been a gun-runner, drug smuggler, and voodoo king: His house had been placed to facilitate all that, on the private shores of Key Biscayne. Ocean tides, after all, were so useful for hiding the bodies, and Biscayne Bay was hammerhead heaven. Sylvie had fed the sharks a time or two herself, when there’d been no other option.

She glanced over at Wright; Demalion had known she was a killer—a tiny smidge of wariness that had never left his gaze—but Wright only looked at her like she was salvation.

THE SCROLLWORK GATE ACROSS THE LONG, BRICK DRIVE TO VAL’S home was closed tight. Sylvie idled the truck and pushed the intercom. “Sylvie Lightner to see Val Cassavetes.”

The intercom squawked, an electronic shrill of outrage, and Sylvie winced. That wasn’t a welcoming sound. But she knew she wasn’t welcome here at all. She had dragged the witch into the Chicago mess—sorcerers, battling gods, catastrophe—and Val’s magic had flamed out, left her powerless and pissy. The verdict was still out on whether the power-strip was permanent.

Even with her powers gone, Val presented a challenge to anyone wanting in: The warding spells still worked. Sylvie had proof of that with the office warning bell, which hadn’t lessened in strength at all.

“Try again,” Wright urged, and she turned an incredulous look on him. Since when had he been so hot to meet Val? Then again, so far as he knew, Sylvie had done nothing on his case. He shrugged, shoved at the trash can again, and grimaced. “I really don’t like this thing.”

“I agree, but no one’s answering.”

“It’s a wide-spaced gate,” he said. “I could walk through the gaps, knock on the door.”

“You would really, really regret trying,” Sylvie said. “And don’t tell me to chuck the Hand through either. Do you know what kind of hell we’d be in for if I threw a black-magic artifact through her wards?”

“Are there any good kinds of hells?”

“Some are worse than others. The one where my ex-best friend sends out her son’s pet monster to dismember us? That’s a really bad place I don’t want to go.”

He shifted, rubbed at the scar beneath his shirt, and said, “Once more? Just for luck?”

She hit the intercom button again, pressed hard, held it down until the buzz became the swollen sound of a kicked hornet’s nest; she jerked her hand back as energy—blue, electric, and alive—lashed out and danced across the truck’s hood.

“Holy shit,” Wright said. “Guess she really doesn’t want us around.” A glimmering radiance lingered in the air, whited their teeth and eyes like a blacklight, though it was midday. Fine tremors ran across Wright’s body, a vibration of fear or stress.

Too close to lightning, she thought. Too close to his death. Maybe there was a little PTSD in his mix, after all.

The intercom crackled again, and Sylvie growled, then yelled toward it, “I get the picture, Val. Give the pyrotechnics a rest. We’re going. But you still owe me.”

She put the truck in reverse and gunned it back onto the road, furious with the waste of time. She’d let Alex sway her with easy solutions to Sylvie’s problems. She should have known better; problems didn’t get better if you farmed them out. They just changed hands.

Hand.

She scowled at the trash can, trying to convince herself she couldn’t smell a tinge of rot, magical corruption leaking into her truck. Alex had been right about one thing, though. She had to do something with the Hand. Val wasn’t open for business, and Sylvie didn’t want to leave it at the office, didn’t want to force Alex to play guardian to it, didn’t want Zoe to find it if she ever showed up. . . .