“Yeah?” he said.

“His name was Michael Demalion. He was a white knight, too. You would have liked him.”

Lie, she thought—half the time Sylvie hadn’t been sure she liked him; Demalion was too wily a player of politics for her tastes—but it eased his shoulders, let him take a deeper breath.

“How did this happen?” he asked. “I still don’t get how this happened. Why me?”

“You were there,” she said. “That’s the easy answer. Wrong place at the right time. The harder answer? Demalion . . .” She hesitated, trying to pick her words, find an explanation for something she didn’t understand the mechanics of herself. Finally, she said, “Demalion wasn’t entirely human to begin with, and by the time he died, he was a little less human than he had been before. Maybe it gave him an escape route that regular people don’t have. A way to cling to life.”

“What—” Wright started, as much at a loss for words as she. “What was he?”

“Government agent,” Sylvie said, just to be difficult. Demalion had been too human, too fragile, and had cared too much about the human world to be labeled anything but human, no matter that his mother was the ageless sphinx.

“What?”

“The agency that looks into the Magicus Mundi? He worked for them.”

Relief washed his face. “So why did he send me to you?” A sudden blush hot on his face, stippling his neck. “Besides the obvious—” He gestured back toward the rumpled sheets. “Let’s go talk to them.”

“Let’s not,” Sylvie said. She wanted to kick herself. He was a cop. Fond of departments and regulations, felt secure in the bureaucracy even if he bitched about it. “Look, Demalion was a good guy. The people he worked for? Not so much. They’d rather study you than help you, and really? They’d rather have Demalion back. Even if he’s in your body.”

“Like you wouldn’t? You’re his girlfriend, right?” He jerked away from her, the kitchen too small to contain them both. He paced circles in her living room.

Sylvie shrugged off the label. “You’re my client,” she said. “Demalion’s . . . not. I won’t lie. I’d love to find a way to save you both. I intend to try. But I won’t sacrifice you to save him.”

Wright searched her face; she did her best to allow it, to keep confidence in her expression and not discomfort, not worry. Finally, he nodded. “I . . . believe you.” By his expression, those had been hard words to say. He rubbed the werewolf bite, the scabs that dotted his palm, wrist, and fingers, prodding a more tangible source of pain.

“It might prolong the situation,” she said. Honesty, once begun, was hard to stop. “Saving both of you.” If she could. But hell, Demalion was right. She had faced off against worse situations. She’d helped reconstruct a god. Surely she could find a way to resurrect a ghost.

“How’d he die?” Wright asked, an apparent non sequitur. Sylvie understood it. He wanted reassurance, to know that this was a good man’s ghost. Sylvie was more than willing to give it.

“If I say saving the world, it sounds improbable, doesn’t it? He died because he did something that had to be done . . . and if it didn’t save the world, it was as close as men can come.”

“He’s not human?” Arms clutched his chest, and worry, fear, discomfort chased themselves across his face.

“His father was. His mother isn’t. She . . . misses him. A lot. Her only child dead.”

“His mother . . .” he said. Nearly under his breath. Was this manipulation or information? Sylvie felt she’d crossed the line in her desire to make him see that Demalion wasn’t someone to fear or despise. Wasn’t something you just got rid of, termites in his house, a parasite in his skin.

“Yeah,” she said. “Kinda a bitch, but she doted on him. You’re going to make her very happy.”

He flickered a ragged smile. “Every man’s purpose. To make a woman happy.”

Sylvie couldn’t grin. Not now that she thought about it. He’d been so close to danger, all unknowing. He had hunted for Anna D, and if the ISI couldn’t be trusted with Wright’s well-being, Anna D was less trustworthy still. She’d have stripped Wright’s body of his own soul to save her son’s, probably before Wright had finished explaining himself.

Wright had been lucky. How sad was that, that Sylvie was his best hope, and even she had a vested interest in his ghost’s survival.

Resurrection, the little dark voice said. No good can come of it. Death is final.

Sylvie took the coffee mug from his hands—he hadn’t taken a single sip of it—and poured it down the drain, pouring him a fresh one.

There was a distinct knocking on her door, an authoritative pound, pound, pound, and she groaned.

“Cops,” they said at the same moment. The peephole gave her a closer view of Adelio Suarez’s dark-stubbled throat, his solid chin. Even distorted by the peephole, Suarez’s face was tired and grim, and Sylvie flashed back to standing on Suarez’s porch, soaked with fear sweat and failure, wanting him to hear about Rafael from her and not the police. She thought Zoe, on a despairing note, and opened the door.

She shooed Wright back toward the bedroom. Gesturing his objections, he went.

Suarez, when she opened the door, slipped in with an agility surprising in such a solid man. When she turned around, he was eyeing the coffee mugs on the counter.

“Company, so early?”

“Not your business,” she said. Her nerves twanged. Was he making sure there was someone to be with her? Had he found Zoe? Had he found her dead? “Get to it. Is she . . . is she dead?”

“Haven’t found her,” he said.

She shuddered as if he had given her the best of news.

“Any coffee left?” he asked.

“Caffeine, at the end of your shift? Lourdes will have your hide,” she said. She poured him a cup anyway, her hands shaking. Adrenaline rushed beneath her skin, wanting out. This thing with Demalion was eating at her; she wanted to be shaking answers out of someone, anyone. Zoe was out there, robbing banks or something, wading in the murky waters of black magic. Sylvie didn’t want to play favor for favor now. Her gratitude that he hadn’t brought her the worst of news went only so far.

She gritted her teeth and thought of the politest way to give him the bum’s rush.

He hooked a chair out from her tiny kitchen table, plunked himself down into it.

“Sit, Shadows.”

Her back stiffened. “Shouldn’t you be out looking for Zoe?”

“You want me on the streets, doing your job, then listen to me for a change.”

“You always say the same damn things. I’ve got a short attention span.”

He pushed a chair out toward her, its wooden feet screeking across the pale linoleum, leaving marks. “Sit.”

Wrong way to get my attention, she thought. But he couldn’t know how deep disobedience ran in her blood. Still, he was helping her with Zoe. . . . She sat.

“I lifted a bunch of fingerprints from the Lincoln Navigator,” he said. “No matches yet, though Meredith Alvarez gave me a name. As well as a stolen brooch she just happened to run across.”

“I thought you’d decided that was a dead end, that I’d sent you all on a snipe hunt.” She swallowed hard, took a gulp of her own cooling coffee to ease the constriction in her throat. This stupid case—she’d be glad to be rid of it, to sic Suarez on the kids, except Zoe was one of them. And Zoe didn’t have a high-powered legal retainer on her side. It made Sylvie brittle-tempered.

“So you haven’t found Zoe. But you came here anyway? To do what? Collect on the favor? To thank me for putting you on the right track?” She was getting shrill, knew it, but seemed unable to stop it. If Demalion had broken down last night, she was doing so here and now, with a cop for a witness. Sometimes, she hated her life.

She lunged out of her chair, started another pot brewing just to give her something to do. His eyes on her back made her itch the entire time, and she turned, pressing her back against the edge of the Formica counter, using that thin line of discomfort as a vital focus point.