“You don’t listen. I told you. To destroy the flesh is simple. But if you just fuck up the flesh, the ghost gets loose. I’ve got a method for the regular Hands. I bind the souls tight, squeeze them down into the bone, then I dissect them. It’s a spiritual vivisection. It’s not gentle. And it’s not pleasant for any of us.”

Sylvie thought of Zoe, hiding the Hand in her wall, that lich ghost in her house with her parents. She had no reservations. “They’re murderers.”

“So are you,” Wales said. “Marco knows one when he sees one. That’s what he whispered to me the whole time I was trying to shield you. ‘Let her go. She’s a killer. She’ll kill you. . . .’ ”

“Nice,” Sylvie said. “Glad a dead murderer sees fit to make judgment. I know what I am, Wales. But I don’t kill toddlers and little old men. I kill monsters.”

“You’re protecting one,” Wales said. He gestured at her huddle with Demalion, their shoulders pressed tight together, their fingers still twined.

“He’s not anything like the ghosts we’ve just removed,” Sylvie said. “He’s a benign and temporary possession—”

“There’s no such animal,” Wales said. “I’m sorry.”

Demalion jerked. His mouth twisted, so much more mobile in Wright’s flesh, and crossed his arms over his chest. Sylvie shivered as his warmth left her side.

“Some things aren’t meant to be shared,” Wales continued, each word one she had already known. Already told herself. “And mixing living and the dead . . . it confuses everything.” He leaned closer to Demalion, reached out. Demalion slapped his hand away—so instinctive he might not even know why. But Sylvie knew. She remembered the god of Love reshaping his human flesh to be something other.

Wales didn’t try to get any closer, only studied him. “There’s a touch of death on both of you.”

“It’s Wright’s body,” Sylvie said. “Look, we didn’t come here for this, but is there any way to give Wright his body back and keep Demalion’s soul in the land of the living?”

“Oh yeah,” Wales said. “Your friend already knows how to do it. Done it once already. Wait for someone to die, and move in when the soul vacates. Of course, that usually means lingering in terminal wards of the hospital, and those bodies are wrecked or rotting, so hey, just enough time to say good-bye. Or maybe he’ll be lucky and find a coma victim whose brain matter isn’t too scrambled. Most likely, though, he’ll find a body he likes, debase and destroy the soul in it, and move on in. See, no problem at all.”

Sylvie’s lips parted. “Bastard.”

“I’m honest,” Wales said. “I’ve heard you prefer that to pretty words.”

Demalion tightened his lips, said nothing at all, only headed for the door, his stride tightly controlled.

Sylvie gritted her teeth; the door slammed behind him. “There’s got to be another option.”

Wales picked up Marco’s Hand again, just holding it in his own. It seemed to give him an extra jolt of courage. “People always want what they can’t have,” he said.

“Most of the time, they’re not trying hard enough,” Sylvie said, and left him alone with his ghosts.

18

No Rest for the Wicked

AFTER THE STUFFY, MILDEW-DRENCHED HALLWAYS, AFTER THE MEATY scent of Wales’s apartment, the nighttime air felt fresh and sharp, like a winter morning, and never mind that it was a sultry, humid eighty-five degrees on a grungy city street. She found Demalion—definitely Demalion by the elegant way he used Wright’s wiry frame—leaning against her truck, staring up at the dark windows. He looked sick and exhausted; he jammed his hands in his pockets but not before she saw the tremor.

“You believe him?” he asked. It was a vague question, able to cover so much of what Wales had said tonight, but Sylvie knew there was only one thing on Demalion’s mind.

“No,” she said. Just that, met his gaze, not too long, not too short. Not trying to convince him. Not trying to convince herself. Demalion was a good guy. He wasn’t going to body-jack Wright.

“Yeah,” he said. He climbed into the truck, settled into the seat with a groan. “Me neither.”

She climbed in on the other side, and the silence lingered. They were both good liars when needed. They both had fears. So many terrible things had been done in the name of survival.

“At least Zoe should be safer, wherever she is,” Sylvie said. “I might actually get a little sleep.”

“Yeah,” he said, again. “That’d be a nice change of pace.”

She started the engine; it growled, and Demalion echoed it, looked at his stomach with some surprise. “Shadows, aren’t you feeding him?”

“Been a little busy,” she said. “And he’s a grown-up. He can feed himself.” The guilt still rose. Wright didn’t complain enough. When he did, she shut him down.

When a McDonald’s lit up the night in the shut-down outskirts of the city, Sylvie pulled into the drive-through, listening to Demalion bitch, “Fast food? Really, Shadows?”

Five miles later, she pulled the truck off the highway, letting it ping and cool on the quiet shoulder. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t drive while the cab of the truck smelled of salt and grease and the bacon on his burger. His contempt for fast food had faded as soon as the bag hit his lap. Now she had to deal with the sight of Demalion eating his meal like it was gourmet. Like he was in love.

He licked his fingers, said, “God, would you believe I’ve been letting Wright do all the eating for us? You’d think—I mean, they’re his taste buds, not mine, and he’s been eating all this time, it shouldn’t taste . . . new. Wonderful. So damn good.” A smear of ketchup smudged his mouth; he rubbed it off with the back of his hand, so fastidious, then licked his skin clean, catlike, small, quick licks. She half expected purring.

Her body still churned out adrenaline from the lich ghost’s attack, and all she wanted to do was crawl across the cab, lick the salt from his fingers until he forgot the meal and dragged her close. Her second chance.

“You know, you haven’t washed your hands since we held the Hands of Glory,” she said instead.

Demalion froze, grimaced, swallowed, then shook his head. “There were wipes. I remember seeing them on the floor. We used them. Besides, they’re Wright’s germs.”

“He gets sick, so do you,” Sylvie said.

He took another bite of his hamburger, chewed, and said, “True, and he’s too thin. I don’t know how he survives Chicago winters. He’s not a vegetarian, do you think? Or what if he has allergies? I should find out if I’m going to be taking my share of the meals.”

“You’re not going to be inside him long enough for it to matter,” Sylvie said. She started the truck up again, worry canceling out that brief surge of desire. “Don’t get cozy.”

“The Ghoul didn’t have any . . . decent suggestions.” Demalion slanted a long, low glance at her. In the dim glow of a distant streetlamp, the one not broken, his eyes looked more like Demalion’s than Wright’s. “You think he’s on the level? He’s far too close to his Marco to make me think he’s as firm in his convictions as he says. He could be our guy.”

Sylvie shook her head, getting a brief smear of traffic light and oncoming headlights for her pain. “He’s not our guy.”

“Really. You just know that.” Demalion crumpled his food wrappers, bagged them neatly, and dropped them in the narrow gap behind the bench seat in lieu of a trash can.

“Nice,” she said. “Odalys is our guy.”

“What?” he said. Sylvie normally would have given herself a point for eliciting that precise tone of exasperation, doubt, and surprise, but she was just tired.

Apparently, fighting for your soul really took it out of you.

“Why would you think—”

“Location, location, location,” Sylvie said, flippant though there was a low, familiar roil of anger in her belly. It might seem sudden to Demalion, but she’d been puzzling at it ever since they’d set foot in the tenement. Was Wales their necromancer and if not, why not, and if he wasn’t, then who? Once Odalys crossed her mind as a possibility, it wouldn’t be dismissed, only expanded upon.