“It doesn’t look like anything,” Wales said. “You just die. All at once. Drop dead in your tracks. Your body might breathe for a little bit, your heart beat, but the shock of having a soul ripped out—”

“The girl I took the Hand from was sick,” Sylvie said.

“No argument,” Wright muttered.

Wales shot him another glance and caught on this time. It wasn’t Demalion behind the skin any longer.

“Sick,” Sylvie said, prodding Wales with her forefinger. His chest was all bone beneath the layers, thin as an anorexic’s. “Could the Hand do that?”

“No,” Wales said. He rubbed at his chest. “If the ghost got free, the girl would have dropped. At least—there’s something just not right with these Hands. . . .”

“Okay, you know what? Forget all that. Let me worry about where they came from. Just tell us how to destroy them.”

Wales tossed Bella’s Hand into the trash. “That one’s done. No ghost? No trouble. The other—”

He picked up Zoe’s Hand with a wary expression, bit back most of his comments so that all she heard was a mumbled, “Wrong,” and she said, “Well?”

Her tone was sharp, but she couldn’t help thinking about Bella—ill and in the hospital, and a ghost mysteriously vanished from its prison. Zoe was next on the chopping block.

“Oh, this one’s active as hell,” Wales said. “I can feel it, even unlit; it’s buzzing, angry and barely contained.” He raised his face, furrowed brow, and upset eyes. “You’ve got to find out who’s making these and stop them. They’re not right. They’re defective. Dangerous. To the user and anyone else.”

Sylvie said, “I’ll get right on that. If you’ve got any ideas, I’d love to hear them. You’re right. There aren’t a lot of necromancers in Miami. I try to keep it that way.”

“There’s a woman on Calle Ocho. Runs a fancy shop like she’s nothing more than a merchant. But she’s the real deal.”

“She sent us to you,” Wright said.

“Well then,” Wales said. “I’m tapped out.”

“Focus, Ghoul. Tell me how to destroy them.”

“They’re tough,” Wales said. “It’s the binding between the bones and the spirit. You have to destroy one without freeing the other. Otherwise, you’re fighting something that can touch you, hurt you, that you can’t touch. It’s a man boxing hurricane winds on a cliff.”

“An exorcism?” Wright said. “Gotta be a priest around. Surely one of ’em will believe the threat’s real.”

Wales said, “An exorcism would work no better on the Hands of Glory than it would work on you.”

Wright twitched, and Wales continued. “An exorcism is a rite designed to remove a devil or demon from human skin, to send it back to the abyss. A ghost isn’t a devil or a demon. You can’t send it back. You can only send it on. And if it’s not ready to go, then you’re going to have a fight that gets really ugly. A demon’s nothing. It’s not natural to be in human flesh, doesn’t fit. A human spirit? Feels right at home.”

Wright sagged back against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest, gripping his shoulders. “So there’s nothing you can do.”

“Nothing I can do for you, no,” Wales said. “All the spells I know are about binding ghosts tighter to flesh. Milk and salt bind them. Put them to sleep,” Wales said. He took another glance at Zoe’s Hand, added, “Usually.”

“Sleep’s not the same as gone,” Sylvie said. “C’mon, Wales, you’ve got to have a way.”

“Age and entropy do it—the longest-used Hand of Glory was only active for three hundred years.”

“Only—” Wright muttered.

“Not an option,” Sylvie said. “You’re telling me that as much as you loathe the slavery forced onto these spirits, you haven’t been looking for a way to break the spell? To send those spirits on?” She gestured broadly, taking in the Hands still hanging from the ceiling, the room, the neighborhood, his entire life. “This is what you’re going to do forever? Truck the Hands around, keeping anyone from using them? That’s not a life. That’s a holding pattern.”

“I have a method,” Wales said. “But I designed it around traditional Hands of Glory, the traditional ones. Don’t know how it would work on this one.”

“Can’t we just give it a try?” Sylvie asked.

Wales shook his head. “Not without knowing more about this Hand, about its ghost. I could free it . . . her . . . instead of destroying her, and she’d go after me, maybe her previous master—”

“That’s not an acceptable risk,” Sylvie said.

“Hey, the user knew what he was getting into when he used the Hand in the first place,” Wales said. “Spare your sympathy for someone who deserves it.”

“Teenagers,” she hissed. “Kids. They make dumb-ass choices all the time, and society protects them from it.”

Wales nodded but looked less than convinced. It made Sylvie want to snatch the Hand back, keep it close to her, risk or no risk. Bad enough Zoe was out and about, doing god knew what. Sylvie didn’t want to imagine her dead in some alley, victim of the Ghoul’s puritanical streak.

She swallowed. “Tell me something, Wales. How does mastery work? If I took that Hand? Lit it? Would I be its master? Would it be my soul at stake and not . . . not hers?”

Wales and Wright shared one expression: stunned dismay.

Wright got his words out first. “Syl, you can’t!”

Sylvie shook her head. “Wales, an answer?”

“Possession is most of the law,” he said. “You light it, you own it. At least until the next person picks it up.”

“And the ghost would be able to talk? Like Marco? She might be able to give me info on who made her?”

Wales said, “That’s total conjecture. It took Marco a year to talk to me, and I never left him drenched in milk. It’s risky.”

“Why? I light it, I’m her master, right? You said as much.”

“But these Hands are wrong. . . .”

“Where’s your spirit of adventure?” she said.

“I’m a researcher,” Wales said. “Not a risk-taker.”

“Well, welcome to my world,” Sylvie said. She held out her hand, snapped her fingers. Gimme.

Wright made an odd, tight-throated groan, a protest from within, looking startled even as it rattled his teeth. Demalion, making himself felt. Sylvie hadn’t thought there was any overlap, hadn’t thought Demalion could see the world when Wright was in control; she knew Wright couldn’t when Demalion was dominant. But then, Demalion’s senses had always been just a little . . . more than human.

The Ghoul was looking slinky, like any moment now, he’d be out the door, and she’d be out her guide. Sylvie snatched up the Hand from the table, went briefly dizzy with the touch—Wales had been right. It buzzed with magic. With malevolence. But she’d laid her hands on gods, and what was one ghost-possessed Hand to that?

“Risky? Fine. Make it safer. You got salt. Build me a ring. And I’ll light her up inside it. You can hold Marco close, and Wright can—”

“I’m not touching anything dead.”

“Demalion wasn’t so squeamish,” she said.

His attention shifted to his hands with a grimace. If he’d been as young as his son, Jamie, she thought he’d be doing the cootie dance, complete with flailing hands. Any other time, and she might have been amused. She went back to her staredown with Wales, trying to make him see she was doing this, make him see she expected him to help her.

Zoe was out on the streets of Miami, somewhere. Sylvie hadn’t been able to find her, couldn’t see her safe and sound. But she could do this. She could take the ghost’s attention away from Zoe. Try to break whatever bond existed between them. That was worth any risk.

Wales sighed. “Fine. But yeah, you’re going in a ring. And Marco’s coming back, and your guy’s going to have to hold Hands with a dead man.”

Wright backed away, disgust and fear chasing themselves across his face, and while Sylvie’s first instinct was to order him to pick up the damn Hand and hold on, a cooler thought pointed out that he was her client, too. Not just a burden.