Did Zoe have a Hand of Glory? Oh yes.
A long, slim hand, narrow at the wrist, long-nailed, swollen knuckles, spotted here and there with liver marks. Another old woman’s hand.
Impossible as it seemed, two teenage girls had collected a pair of rare talismans that sorcerers would kill for.
Where Bella had decorated hers with little girl sparkles and gauded it up with fake jewelry, Zoe had drowned hers. The rank smell in the room, clogging Sylvie’s sinuses, wasn’t the Hand but the spoiled and spoiling milk it floated in, layers of it, poured repeatedly over the Hand, judging by the yellowed crust along the side of the dish. Sylvie couldn’t figure that at first, too taken aback by the way the Hand slid and surfaced beneath the clotting milk. Then a tiny memory twinged. Milk could be used in purification rituals. The milk, the spell circle—Zoe was clever enough to try to avoid Bella’s illness. She was trying to mediate the effect of the Hand on her soul. But Sylvie knew the spell circle was inert, just paint and pattern; what were the odds that the milk was doing any good?
Wright gagged and triggered Sylvie’s own reflex. They raced each other out of the room, and the air outside smelled sweet, clean, safe; the world seemed brighter.
She leaned up against the hallway wall, temper simmering. How could Zoe do it? How could she have brought this into her parents’ house?
“Sylvie,” Wright said, “we gotta call the cops. If Bella won’t talk to the police, your sister probably will. It’ll get her off the hook for the worst of it.”
“Is the worst of it the money, the stolen property, or the necromancy? Give it up, Wright. I am the police for things like this.” She closed her eyes.
The little dark voice within her had been shrieking ever since Sylvie touched that clammy flesh, that inadvertent finger brush, and it wanted what it always wanted: someone to pay, to fix things that couldn’t be fixed.
Lilith’s voice, carried down to her in her blood, railing against those who would stop her. For the first time, Sylvie wondered how much of that blood Zoe had inherited, the mingling of their ancestors, Lilith the disobedient and Cain the murderer. Enough to crave power? Enough to be dangerous? Enough to be damned?
The voice calmed, grew slow and certain. Some people forfeit their right to be saved.
Not Zoe. Sylvie wasn’t going to give up on her.
“Bring me the trash can,” Sylvie said.
Wright dithered. “The trash can, right? The pink one?”
“Yup,” Sylvie said. “Might as well keep them in the same place.”
He grimaced. “All right, but you’re putting it in there. And I get to drive this time. I’m not paying to ride around with severed body parts in my lap.”
HE RETURNED WITH THE WASTEBASKET HELD AS FAR FROM HIM AS possible just as she was tucking a note into the hole in the mattress. She’d been to the point with it. You’re in so much trouble. Come see me.
She peeled off a thousand dollars in fifties and twenties, putting them into her jeans pocket, before wrapping the rest of the bills back into their rubber band.
“That’s not yours,” he said.
“Not Zoe’s either.”
“That’s my point. Someone lost that. They’ll be wanting it back.”
“I don’t ask where my clients get the money to pay me.”
“Zoe’s not your client.”
“Yes,” Sylvie said, “she is. And I’m billing her up front.”
She shut him up by approaching him with the sodden Hand, tipping it gently into the trash can on top of the other, amid a splash of sour milk. Wright, who hadn’t seen the first one, went green as the two hands nestled together, one bloated and blanched, one gnarled and sere.
“They’re both left hands.”
“Sinister,” Sylvie said. “In magic, the left hand is the sinister hand.”
“That means two women are dead, not just one. Two.”
“You see my concern,” Sylvie said. She took advantage of his dismay and snagged the driver’s seat. Like she would have let him drive. Her truck.
She backed the truck into the traffic and headed out, plotting the routes to Zoe’s closest friends. If Zoe was this involved, they didn’t have time to wait for her to come back on her own.
Belatedly, she looked over at Wright, frowning at the trash can, and fought back the urge to reassure him that this wouldn’t take too long. Time or trust, he’d asked. She’d chosen time. She wasn’t going to apologize for it, no matter that possession trumped burglary. Demalion was already dead, Wright was alive and well, but Zoe was at risk.
11
Ear to the Ground
SYLVIE’S OFFICE WAS REGRETTABLY EMPTY WHEN SHE AND WRIGHT returned, unevenly sunburned from their two-hour hunt-and-seek through Miami traffic. Her frustration felt as bright and hot as the red burn on her forearm. Every place they’d stopped had been a dead end. No one had seen Zoe. Rather, no one had admitted to seeing her, and most of Zoe’s friends had been in the wind themselves. Sylvie had been stuck talking to maids, random parents, and in one case a poolboy who grinned wide and white at the mention of Zoe’s name.
The office did nothing to assuage her frustration; the door unlocked to an empty room. No Alex, and no Zoe. No one to greet them save for the alarm bell. It began chiming before Sylvie could finish carting the trash can back inside the office, and she muttered, “Give me a break.”
She waved at Conrad, standing in the gallery doorway across the street, looking aggravated. Sylvie could see her point. So far, all Conrad had gotten out of her today—besides a set of grandiose promises—was the sight of Sylvie moving a trash can from her truck to office to truck and back again.
Sylvie set the can down next to the main desk, though the bell rang more shrilly for it; Wright winced and chose to sit outside on the stoop like one of the old men in the Cuban district, keeping a weather eye on all those who passed. He dragged his cigarettes out of his pocket, battered and flattened, and lit one up. Sylvie shut the door on the stink of it.
Ignoring the bell’s desperate chiming, she headed upstairs for the wall safe and deposited the cash she’d confiscated from Zoe. Thinking of the evening still ahead, she kept out a few more bills to add to her own wallet. Good advice rarely came cheap.
After a moment’s thought, she unlocked her filing cabinet and dug the unused briefcase out of the back. It wasn’t really her style; she leaned more toward canvas satchels and large purses. But it would be a damn sight easier than carting around a trash can secured by paper and peeling tape. She laid in a thick pad of newspaper on both sides, then, grimacing, reached into the trash can and transferred just the Hands, leaving her with a plastic wastebasket full of soured milk.
A quick trip downstairs to the sink let her scrub her hands clean; it took two washings with antibacterial soap, and she still thought she could smell spoiled milk on her skin, a stinking reminder that Zoe was in over her head. She’d done what she could hunting Zoe, didn’t have time to drive aimlessly around the city.
Forget giving Zoe back her cell phone. Sylvie wanted the girl microchipped with her very own GPS tracking device. Her parents would understand.
Rafael, Sylvie thought. She didn’t dwell on his loss much these days, cruel as it sounded. He’d been avenged, and Demalion’s death had overwhelmed the earlier loss. But thinking of Zoe in magical trouble, probably oblivious to exactly how much trouble, Sylvie recalled her grief, Adelio’s grief, and imagined that pain reaching out toward her parents.
Back upstairs, out of hearing of the warning bell, she dialed the old number, still in Alex’s records, and got a groggy male voice—Detective Adelio Suarez catnapping before his shift. “¿Sí?”