20

Calling on the Dead

SYLVIE PULLED THE TRUCK INTO THE GROVE AGAIN, FELT AS IF IT SETTLED into a groove that she’d been wearing through the city. Wright said, “You think her parents are going to let you just waltz in and talk to their daughter? She died yesterday. They’ll be keeping her close, dialing their lawyer, suing the hospital.”

Sylvie shook her head. “I’d lay money that Bella’s parents are still out of the country. By the time they got the call that Bella was sick to death, then dead, then alive again . . . They’re still traveling. We’ve got a few hours at least.”

“So you think the newly undead daughter of the house is just sitting in there by her lonesome? That’s taking latchkey to an extreme.”

“Nope. She’s not alone. Which is why you’re going to call, represent yourself as a pharmacist at the hospital, and tell Eleanor that Bella left without getting one of her meds.”

Wright eyed her sidelong, leaned up against the passenger’s-side door as if disassociating himself from her. “Fine. But it’s not going to work.”

“It will,” Sylvie said. “Eleanor wants to keep her job, and she didn’t call the doctors until it was too late. She’s going to be strung so tight . . . Bella’s going to get the best care imaginable. Otherwise, the moment her parents come home, Eleanor’s not only kicked to the curb, she’s the scapegoat for Bella’s entire lifetime of neglect.”

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, and when he didn’t reach for her phone, she said, “Any day now.”

“You don’t think she’ll be suspicious?”

“I think she’s going to be so freaked-out once you start mentioning staph-resistant strains that she’ll forget.”

Wright shook his head. “So it’s not enough to misrepresent ourselves as hospital employees—which is a crime, you know—we’re going to make her think the girl’s in danger—”

“Just dial, dammit. You keep saying you want to be useful. Be useful! Or pass the body over to Demalion, who would not be giving me this kind of grief.”

Sylvie rolled up the windows, which made the truck cab instantly sticky and hot but kept distinctive car sounds to a minimum.

Ten minutes after Wright made the call, Eleanor scooted out of the house in a shiny little two-door—Mrs. Martinez’s around-town convertible. Yeah, Eleanor would do a lot to keep this job, Sylvie thought.

A knock on the front door yielded no response. Sylvie frowned. She was prepared to lean on the doorbell as long as necessary, but if Bella was sedated, it might be useless.

“Do you hear splashing?” Wright asked, head cocked, eyes narrowed. “You said she had a pool?”

“Dead yesterday, swimming today, you really think?” she asked, but she heard it, too. She walked along the house to the back, found a handy perch—a flowerpot dragged to appropriate proximity—and peered over the concrete wall. Wright pulled himself up, wiry muscles working, and peered over the edge beside her. They shared a speaking look.

Yeah. Bella was feeling all kinds of better.

She lounged poolside, her hair slicked back, her bikini damp. Footprints darkened the tiles around the pool, a track of her path. Bella leaned back in her chair, stretched a lazy arm up toward the afternoon sun, all serpentine angles and smooth, tanned skin.

Wright dropped back down to the scrubby dirt between the jacaranda bushes, and said, “So, now what?”

“Now we go in,” Sylvie said. His face screwed up as he looked up at her, sun dazzle behind her. She got the skepticism loud and clear even through the wrinkled nose and squint.

“Over the wall?”

Sylvie hopped down from the flowerpot, and shook her head. “Through the gate. You don’t think they let the pool man tromp through their house, do you?”

They walked around back until they found the gate, Sylvie thankful that it was the dead hour before three o’clock. There was a reason most home burglaries happened mid-afternoon. Fewer witnesses.

The wrought-iron gate opened soundlessly, and the cement was smooth beneath her sneakers. Wright stayed there, keeping a lookout. Sylvie got within twenty feet of Bella before the girl realized she was there. She yelped, nearly fell off the lounger, then said, “What the hell do you want?”

“Just a couple of questions,” Sylvie said. “Eleanor said we could come round back.”

The girl shrugged, drawing her towel up to cover herself, then letting it slide back to her waist when she saw Wright looking at her from the gate.

“I’m supposed to be resting,” she said. “Make it quick. But don’t think a home visit is going to stop my parents from suing your hospital.”

Sylvie rocked back, her footing suddenly uneven as if a sinkhole were devouring the concrete.

This was it; this was the tipping point. Sylvie pasted a bright smile on her face, suitable for some hospital social-worker lackey. Blandly unthreatening. It worked. Bella looked bored and utterly lacking in recognition.

Sylvie didn’t pride herself on it—she knew it was a flaw when she needed to be unnoticed—but she tended toward notoriety. People remembered her, maybe not fondly, but they remembered her.

For Bella to be drawing a blank—

Well, it was intriguing. . . .

Kill it, her little dark voice said. The hairs on her neck rose. The girl before them might be vain, spoiled, and sadly stupid, but she was just a girl. Except her little voice was rarely wrong. Bad-tempered, evil-natured, but rarely wrong.

The girl crossed her arms over her chest, drummed her nails against her shoulders. Sylvie narrowed her gaze. Bella’s fingernails were blue at the base, the curved white moons as leaden as a stormy sky.

“I’m waiting for your apology,” Bella said. “Do you know how dreadful it is to wake up in a morgue?”

The cadence of her voice was subtly wrong. If Sylvie hadn’t been spent the past few days a reluctant audience for the Demalion-and-Wright show, listening to the slip and slide of personality through shared flesh, she might not have twigged to it. But she had, and Bella . . . didn’t sound like herself. Not just out of sorts, because of drugs, illness, trauma. Like an entirely other person. And there was a ghost gone missing. Patrice Caudwell’s Hand of Glory had gone inactive without notice.

It all made Sylvie sick with suspicion.

“Some people might be grateful they woke up at all,” Sylvie said, keeping her voice steady. “To get that precious second chance. You can squawk all you want about hospital error, but they know death when they see it.”

“Gratitude,” Bella said. She mouthed the word like she was unfamiliar with it. Then she sighed. “You’re not with the hospital, are you? She sent you. What does she want? She knows it will take a month or so for me to be able to access my accounts.”

“Just a reminder to be grateful,” Sylvie said. Her mouth was dry. She was getting the outlines of it now, but she needed more. She wondered how long she could keep . . . Bella talking.

“Gratitude implies something was unearned. A gift. I paid dearly for this opportunity. I intend to make the most of it, so she will just have to be patient.”

“If Odalys allows it,” Sylvie said. “After all, even if the hospital didn’t recognize it, you died of what she did to you. A black-magic OD.”

Mistake, she thought, even as she let the words slide free. A misstep. She’d talked about Bella’s experience. Bella’s death. Not hers.

Bella’s face went flat, expressionless; her arm shot out, and next thing Sylvie knew she was dodging the aluminum pool pole aimed at her face.

Wright shouted; Sylvie dodged the next strike. Bella jabbed fiercely. The net crashed into Sylvie’s rib cage, hard enough to knock the wind from her, hard enough to send her plummeting backward into the pool. Gasping vainly for air, she found herself with a mouthful of bitterly sharp water, searing her sinuses, and rolling inexorably down her throat.