Behind the drapes, faint music ghosted, something slow, hollow, mournful. A languid, atonal flute. Accompanying it, like a small percussive undercurrent, a series of tiny click, click, clicks. Someone moving about in high heels.

Sylvie nodded once at Demalion, and he slipped by her, holding his own ghost light high and behind him, keeping it away from the drapes. She pulled her gun, juggled the flaming Hand, and prepared herself.

Demalion seized the drape, keeping out of her line of fire, and yanked it back. Across the room, Odalys finished up the last curve of her protective circle with a practiced gesture.

Her expression showed surprise, but more—it betrayed relief. Sylvie fought the urge to double-check their backs. If Odalys was preparing for an invasion, and it wasn’t Sylvie she was expecting . . .

After another silent moment, Odalys raised a perfectly groomed brow, and said, “Make yourselves at home, children. I’ll just be going.”

“Not going to happen,” Sylvie said. She gestured gently, urging Demalion back. He slipped beyond the drape; she heard the back door close, shutting them in with Odalys, keeping their confrontation out of view.

“No?” Odalys turned in her circle, admiring it.

It was poured thick and bright, not pure salt given the way it flickered and shone in the Hands’ uneven light. Crystal quartz or mica mixed in, Sylvie thought, but to what purpose? Protective circles were old magic; the recipe wasn’t something that changed. That Odalys had done so worried her.

“No,” Sylvie said, projecting a surety she didn’t feel. “For you to leave us, you’d have to leave the circle first. And you might have some talisman to protect you from the ghosts, but can you really trust them? Since you tinkered with the formulas?”

“That horrible Ghoul,” Odalys said. She shifted from one high-heeled foot to another, but it didn’t seem like agitation, only boredom. “I suppose he managed to convince you he was on the side of the angels, then got talky.” She sighed hugely. “You don’t live up to your reputation, Shadows. You were supposed to shoot first.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a temper and a hair trigger,” Sylvie said. “But you know what really defines me? Hating to be manipulated.”

“Whatever,” Odalys said. If Sylvie had any lingering doubts that Odalys was involved up to her sculpted cheekbones with the teenagers, that dismissive verbal twitch would have erased them.

The ghost beside her flowed forward, the long, barbed tongue striking in at Odalys, and was repelled by the salt ring. “Remember yourself, General,” Odalys snapped, then, without a pause, turned on Sylvie. “I could attack your spirit-vulnerable friend. I know more spells than you can imagine for dispersing souls.”

Sylvie said, “Looks to me like all your ingredients are on the wrong side of your shield.”

“Looks to me like you’re the ones with the time constraint,” Odalys said. “How long do you think they’ll stay quiet? When I could wake them into a feeding frenzy?”

Bluff, Sylvie thought, but she just couldn’t be certain. Magic wasn’t all that dissimilar to psychiatry; a lot of it depended on belief. She dared a quick glance back to make sure Demalion wasn’t in distress.

A quiet rush of air, the soft crash of a wave sounded in the room. Sylvie whirled back around, leaving a faint arc of firelight in her wake, and found that Odalys’s salt ring had spawned itself. A second, more thinly drawn circle had joined the first, its diameter a full foot wider. Odalys took a step forward, one step closer to the exit. One step closer to Sylvie, her gun, and the lich ghost, and she didn’t seem concerned at all.

That kind of self-confidence was rarely unearned.

That kind of self-confidence deserved to be shot down. Sylvie tightened her grip on her pistol, more than willing to do the job. But her neck prickled; she felt the weight of Demalion’s need on her back. Could she shoot Odalys down in cold blood? Yes. Pragmatism was an important part of the Magicus Mundi. The squeamish fell fast.

But could she do it in front of a man whose future might depend on what they could learn from Odalys? When she still needed answers? Needed to know how deep the danger ran, how widespread Odalys’s plan had been.

Reluctantly, she eased off the trigger, irritated beyond measure that Odalys hadn’t even flinched.

“Fancy,” Sylvie said, her voice a little rough. “You adapted the spell.”

“A little bit of sea foam in the salt, a little bit of ground glass . . . and it flows like water at my will. Very useful.” Odalys smiled. “All those traditionalists, never bothering to improve on things.”

“Improve it enough to stop bullets?” Sylvie asked. “This is how it’s going to go. I won’t shoot you. But you’ll pack up, disable your little bonding activity with these Hands, freeing Jaz and her friends, freeing Zoe, and any others you may have going. Then you’re going to get the hell out of my city.”

Odalys laughed. “Oh, Sylvie, really. Is this your new friend’s influence? I’m surprised you aren’t threatening me with arrest.”

“I might be having a soft moment,” Sylvie said, “but I’m not stupid. And you know? I don’t even think it’s softness. I think I’m just not in the mood to clean blood off my shoes.”

Odalys shook her head, made a tiny gesture, and the salt ring washed forward again, creating a third circle, one large enough that it stung Sylvie’s ankles like blown sand. Sylvie’s ghost—the general?—blew backward; the Hand’s glow flickered in her grasp, fires thinning. Sylvie took a giant step back, scuffed a hole in the salt ring. Her sneaker, still damp from the pool, left a wet streak on the terrazzo. She was ready for Odalys to be done with. If that meant letting her own creations take a bite, so be it. Sylvie could always call them off later.

The salt ring shivered around her heel, beneath her instep, and rippled back into place as if it were water pouring into a channel. Her ghost pressed back against the drape, trying to escape it.

“Careful, Sylvie,” Demalion warned. Unnecessary. She knew it would be bad if the flame went out, would leave her vulnerable to the ghosts. They wouldn’t laze through that: It’d be the equivalent of blood in the water. Hungry or not, the sharks would bite.

Odalys said, “I do know my stuff. Now, are you going to get out of my way, or do you want to see if the next ring snuffs out your protection?”

Sylvie grinned. “Make it easy, why don’t you.” She fired a shot; the noise was oddly muffled, as if all the magic running across the room could silence it. The bullet moved just fine, though, went exactly where she wanted, splintered terrazzo just before Odalys’s feet. The woman jerked.

“If you’re threatening me, all bets are off,” Sylvie said.

Odalys worried a full lip, teeth white against the red stain of her mouth, still not showing the fear Sylvie craved. Finally, she said, “If I leave town, I’m not going alone. I’m taking Zoe.”

Sylvie said, “You’re too late for that. She’s safe—”

“Did you really think Zoe would be content to play dogs-body to a burned-out witch? Do you think your associate even got her there? Zoe’s mastered the basics. She’s quite good at her little oblivion spell. She ditched your associate, let her think her task was done, and came straight to me. Wanting answers. And I told her Bella was alive.”

“Patrice Caudwell is alive. Bella’s dead.” Those were facts. Sylvie could deal with them. She couldn’t even begin to wrap her mind around Zoe.

Odalys raised her hand, delicate bracelet dangling from it, tilted her palm back and forth. “You say potato, I say—”

“ ‘ Give me the money.’ ”

“Well, yes. This is a business, after all.”

“You don’t have Zoe.” Sylvie made it a statement, as if she could make it a fact just by saying so.

“Care to gamble on it?”