She splashed to the surface, flailing for air, for the edge of the pool, and found the net slapped down on her head, clammy and wet. She ducked instinctively and got another gasped breath of water scalding her throat.

This was a stupid way to go, she thought, killed off by a ghost-possessed teenager riding a self-preservation rush and with a bad habit of drowning people. But Sylvie wasn’t a toddler; she hit bottom, oriented herself, and pushed upward. Breath could wait for just a little longer.

She surfaced to the welcome sound of Bella shrieking, to the blurred image of Wright pinning the girl to the lounge. He rose to help Sylvie, and Bella lunged at him.

“Hold her,” Sylvie managed to gasp out, spitting water out on each word. Her throat felt raw.

Wright pushed the girl back again, and she screamed—her voice, high, thin, furious, slowly forming into words, surprisingly lacking in profanity for a teenager. But then, she wasn’t really a teen any longer. . . .

“Get your hands off me! Police! Help!”

Sylvie hung raggedly on the pool’s coping, and spat water. “Okay, forget her, Wright. Let’s get out of here.”

“Getting mixed messages,” he snapped. Bella slashed at his face with her nails, and he shoved her again, sent her reeling back. The lounge chair, battered by their struggle, collapsed, tangling Bella in it.

Sylvie beached herself on the tiles beyond the pool, forced herself to hands and knees, and Wright got his hands under her shoulders and tugged. She staggered out after him, spitting water, sneezing.

Drowning worked for her before, her little dark voice suggested.

Pity the toddler hadn’t had backup, she thought.

Her truck was a red haven in an eye-stinging wash of green trees and grass. Wright slung himself into the driver’s seat, snapped his fingers in her face. “Keys.”

“Manners,” she said, but forked them over, fumbling them out of the sodden weight of her jeans.

He jerked the car into gear with a grinding complaint that she flinched at, but got them moving in the right direction. Away. It ate at her to just drive off and leave Patrice Caudwell living it up in a new body, but now was not the time. She preferred to hit the bad guys when they weren’t expecting it.

“So we learn anything worth getting hauled in on assault charges for?” he asked.

“Oh hell yeah,” she said. She thought it was Wright. Hoped it was. She leaned back against the headrest, let the long shivers work their way free of her spine.

He merged into traffic with a quick jerk, banging her head against the window, and she snarled. Her sodden hair left trails on the glass, droplets rolling down like tears or rain. “So, what’s the deal? What just happened?”

Sylvie shook her head, unwilling to talk about it. Unwilling for Demalion to hear. She didn’t want to distrust Demalion, wanted to help him, save him, but . . . not like this. This wasn’t hanging about in a cancer ward. This wasn’t playing salvage with a body in a coma. This was . . . murder from beyond the grave.

“Tell me,” he said. “I don’t want to work blind.”

Two cops in one, she thought and not a chance in hell of keeping this from him. Either of them.

“Bella’s dead,” she said. Coming at the answer obliquely.

“Seemed damned lively to me,” Wright said. “Got the scratches to prove it. Helping you, Sylvie? It’s hard on the hide.”

She grimaced, hoped it passed for a smile. It was hard when suspicion was burning into certainty in her blood. She’d expected Wright to recognize it, after the Ghoul’s lecture on takeover spirits, after his own experiences, but trees for the forest and all that. He looked at Bella through clouded glass and missed his own reflection in it.

The girl was back from the dead, yes, but it wasn’t Bella Martinez.

“That’s it,” he said. “Bella’s dead? That’s all I get?”

Her throat burned, chlorine still raw in it, and she coughed again as the air-conditioning clicked on. Reached out and slapped it off.

“Fine,” he said. “Bella’s dead. What next?”

“I’ve rethought my position on breaking into Invocat.”

Wright bobbled the wheel a little, then set his jaw. “I don’t like that plan? I don’t like it at all. I don’t do B and E. I told you that.”

“I need to find Odalys; I need to know what she’s hiding. She’s not keeping any secrets at her condo,” Sylvie said. She shifted uncomfortably, shivered even in the Miami heat, and rolled down the window, the better to air-dry.

“And the spells you said were guarding the shop?”

“Wright, what did we take from those teens today? Can you think back that far?”

“Besides a new despair for the future of this country—” Wright’s flippancy failed as he caught her intention. “Oh no, no. We’re not.”

“I am. You can stay with Alex,” she said. “Makes sense to me. I’ve got a magical shop I need to break into, and I’ve got the ultimate burglar’s tool sitting in my office.”

21

Invocat Redux

THEY SWUNG BY SYLVIE’S OFFICE, SYLVIE LEAVING DAMP AND HASTY footprints up the stairs. Wright followed closely on her heels and joined her in the office, eyes clouded with speculation. “You never answered me. Something about Bella upset you. Enough to make you use a magical tool you’ve been treating like—”

He blinked, blue eyes widening as she finished pushing her pants toward the floor, fighting as they clung to her skin. He turned his back to her, giving her privacy she hadn’t asked for.

“You mean besides her trying to kill me? Half-assed and impulsive though it was,” Sylvie said. She peeled off her socks, found a pair of old jeans in her “scutwork” drawer, and tugged them on. “People don’t die of black-magic malaise, then get better.”

“Then what happened?” Wright asked.

“She died. She got better,” Sylvie said. She rubbed the welt on her head, finger-combed her hair.

“Sylvie,” he groaned, “be nice. I don’t get all this magic stuff.”

She turned her back to his back, peeled her jacket, holster, shirt away from her skin. The floor creaked as he paced, trying to figure out what she wasn’t telling him. Sylvie pushed her hair out of her face and sighed. Another reason not to take up with cops—too damn curious. Too disinclined to let go. His pacing stopped. She shivered. He had come up behind her, rested his palm, warm and dry, on the small of her back. He leaned close, kissed the knob of her spine, and said, “You’re hiding something.”

“You know me, Demalion, full of secrets.” She slipped away from him. “Now, if you don’t mind, Wright and I were talking.” She wondered whose idea it was to set Demalion to asking her questions. It smacked of collusion.

“Don’t you get tired of explaining things to him?”

“I seem to recall explaining the facts of life to you more than once,” she said, “so don’t get all high-and-mighty.” She toweled her hair roughly with a sweatshirt destined for the laundry and pulled on a grey T-shirt. Her holster, the webbing still damp, went back about her waist. The gun—she sighed. Water was so unforgiving, and chlorine—even worse. Her eyes still stung, a sign that the Martinezes believed in a sterile blue pool.

Still, it wasn’t like the weapon was dripping, and she didn’t have time to strip it down. Plus, she remembered with a pang of loss, this was the backup; stripping it wasn’t going to be as familiar, easy, or quick as the gun that she had lost in Chicago.

She sighed. Some investigators bitched about insurance, about licensing fees. Sylvie just got tired of paying for replacement weapons. When she went through them as quickly as she did, they were hard to claim as business expenses.

Wisely, Demalion had backed away while she armed herself. He leaned against the desk edge, and said, “You really intend to use the Hands?”