She touched his arm a last time, and stood. “Thank you for finding Zoe.” She licked her lips, hating to do it, but hating the despair on his face. “I made a deal with you. You didn’t find it satisfactory. I don’t usually offer rain checks. But I owe you one.”

He waved a hand at her dismissal, and said, “Get your sister out of my car and stop the burglaries before the press figure out there’s something going on.”

“I could take that deal,” she said. “But I won’t. I would have done both those things anyway. Listen to me, Lio. I owe you one. That’s more valuable than you think. Remember it. I don’t offer myself in debt lightly. You need me, you call.”

“Don’t think so,” he said. He straightened on the bench, rose, and said, “People you deal with end up dead more often than they should. Bella Martinez died last night. Doctors still don’t know why. Do you?”

It felt like a punch to the gut, all unexpected. Sylvie had thought the girl would get better, the Hand’s ghost gone, not worse. But maybe the ghost had been gone because it had already succeeded in eating Bella’s soul, had fed and moved on.

She shook her head, and Suarez took it for ignorance, not denial. He headed back to the cop car, popped the back door, and pulled Zoe out. She was cuffed, hands behind her back, and Sylvie remembered she’d been found near the last burglary site.

“Is she under arrest?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Zoe protested. “I can’t believe you sicced the cops on me.”

Suarez looked at Sylvie a long time, ignoring Zoe; Sylvie imagined him balancing scales in his mind. His disappointment in her answers. His need to make progress on a case. His lack of tangible evidence.

Eventually, he pushed Zoe forward, unfastened the cuffs, and said, “She’s all yours.”

SYLVIE UNLOCKED THE OFFICE DOOR, USHERED A SILENT ZOE INSIDE, and said, “We have to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk. There’s nothing to talk about. Why don’t you be a good big sister and take me out for breakfast. I’m starving.” Her sister’s tone was false casual, her poise a front to buy time. Waiting to see what exactly she was in trouble for. A childish tactic, and it made Sylvie’s fury stronger. Zoe had no business getting involved with the Magicus Mundi.

Sylvie leaned up against the doorjamb and waited her out. She knew Zoe had been back to her house, had found the money gone, had found Sylvie’s note. Otherwise, Zoe wouldn’t have trashed Sylvie’s apartment. She didn’t have to wait long. Zoe’s eyes darkened, narrowed, her jaw clenched. “Where’s my money? You had no right!”

“Do you really want to talk about rights?” Sylvie asked. “ ’Cause there’s a lot of things we can talk about, including the right of the dead to be treated with respect.”

Zoe made a face, a fierce grimace, and trotted out a lie. “I know, it’s gross. But it’s part of a biology class, like that exhibit on musculature—”

“Black magic on the curriculum now? Christ, Zo, how the hell could you bring that into the house? Sleep with it in the walls? How could you do that?” She stormed across the room, slapped the desk hard; her hands stung, her breath rasped in her throat.

Zoe looked older, suddenly, than her years. Harder. She stiffened on the other side of the desk. “You’ve no idea what I can or cannot do. And you never will.” She closed her eyes, raised her hands, palm up, began murmuring, rubbing her fingers along the edges of a gemstone ring.

Sylvie slapped her sister this time instead of the desk, her gun leveled even before she recognized the spell: Pearls for sorrow in her ring, and what bigger sorrow was it than to forget the past and be doomed to repeat it?

Zoe took a step back, her cheek reddening, her words stopped. Still an amateur to be distracted so easily.

Sylvie lowered the gun immediately. Almost immediately.

“I can’t believe you,” Zoe said. “You pointed a gun at me. Mom and Dad are going to be piss—”

“Shut up,” Sylvie snapped.

“Who are you to tell me what to do? I’m sixteen, nearly—”

“I’m the one who cleans up the messes made by humans fucking around in the Magicus Mundi.” Her hand was tense on the gun; Zoe’s ring hand was behind her back. “I wouldn’t try that again. You’ll find I’m immune to most magic.”

Zoe paled. For one moment, Sylvie thought that was it. Either her older-sister glamour was back, or Zoe really hadn’t expected such fierce and informed disapproval and was feeling chastened.

Then Zoe let out a shriek, more air than sound, as angry as a spitting cat, shrill as a siren. “You knew! All this! This . . . world, this power, and you knew! And you kept it from me!”

The gulf between them was deeper than she had ever imagined. Zoe’s introduction to the Magicus Mundi hadn’t been like Sylvie’s, a long haul of fear and chaos and loss. Zoe’s introduction had been about pleasure and power and profit.

“I hate you,” Zoe spat. “Hate you.”

“That’s too bad, because I’m the one who’s going to get you out of this mess.”

Zoe stamped her foot. “Where’s my money?”

“Who sold you the Hand?”

“Who made it your business?”

“You’re in trouble, Zoe. Real trouble. Your friends are in trouble,” Sylvie said. Exasperation and fear made uncomfortable inroads in her belly. Bella . . . Suarez hadn’t told Zoe. That much was obvious.

“Hardly my friends,” Zoe said.

Sylvie dropped onto the couch and stared at her sister. “You’ve spent every waking hour with them for the past two years.”

“C’mon, Syl, you really think the rich kids play nice with me out of the goodness of their hearts? I bought my way in.” Zoe slouched back into the desk chair, brought her knees up, crossed her wrists over them. She looked ready for a photo shoot, down to the soft pout and the hard eyes. She looked like a stranger.

Sylvie swallowed, her fingers tensing on the arms of her chair. “You weren’t holding those pills for Bella.” She made it a flat statement though her voice quivered with rage. How could Zoe have fallen so far? So unnoticed? “You were refilling them.”

“I make a good go-between,” Zoe said. “Keeps Bella and Jasmyn and their boys from having to talk to the dealers. Keeps their parents in the dark. In return, as long as I can keep up with them, they let me play.” She rubbed the pearl ring thoughtfully.

“ ‘ Keep up with them’?” Sylvie kept her gaze on that ring, on her sister’s words. A large part of her was paying the kind of attention she’d spend on an enemy, waiting for them to strike. But Zoe’s words were more hurtful than any attack; she’d had no idea her sister felt like this. Left out, bitter, alone, valueless.

“With their style? The clothes? The parties? Eating out? It all costs money. God, Syl, people pay you to find out things? You’re slow.” Zoe shifted in her chair, crossed her arms across her chest, dropped her gaze. Sylvie wondered coldly if it was shame that made her refuse to meet Sylvie’s eyes or anger so great it choked her.

“Why? Why bother with them if they’re that shallow?” Sylvie asked. Her throat felt stretched around all the words she wanted to say.

Zoe raised her head, pushed back the dark mane of her hair, streaked salon-tipped nails through it, her eyes old and cynical. “Because they’re the power brokers. Their futures are mapped out, and people go out of their way to help them along the path. All I was trying to do was get a push here and there. Half their parents are benefactors at major schools. Hang out like I’m one of theirs, and who knows the letters they’d write, recommending me. Grades aren’t enough anymore.”

“So you’re prostituting yourself to make them happy?”

“Not since I learned that I can make things happen. All on my own. I don’t need them anymore.” She smiled, and it was such a happy thing that Sylvie almost didn’t say it.

But facts were facts.