It was a lie. Another bluff. She hoped.

But Sylvie couldn’t make herself believe Odalys was telling her anything but the unpalatable truth.

“She’s a winning child,” Odalys said. “Originally, she was nothing but a body for a particularly unsatisfactory client. But she showed unexpected talent. More than that, she showed ambition.” She paced circles within her rings.

Like a bull’s-eye begging for target practice, Sylvie’s little dark voice murmured.

A tiny sting touched her fingertips, a punishing, testing lick of flame. Lost in speculation and suspicion, in fear for Zoe, Sylvie’d slacked her grip on the Hand, with the result that the flame proved itself real-world enough to blister her skin. She fought the instinct to drop it. Her flame-eyed military ghost loomed at her, all but licking his sere, grey lips for a chance at her soul. He seemed more awake by the moment. Their time was running short.

Flaw in my logic, she thought, inching the Hand upward fingertip by fingertip while her skin sizzled. Just because the dead man doesn’t want to start his second life as a woman doesn’t mean he won’t eat my soul.

Demalion moved toward her, and Sylvie hissed at him, channeling pain and effort into a single thought—stay back, stay safe. She worked the Hand into a safer grip; her fingers still ached and stung, but the general’s ghost backed off. All this without lowering her gaze or her gun from Odalys.

Odalys sighed. “For a moment there, I thought you’d be ghost food. Pity. Things would have been easier. You gave me your list of ultimatums. I heard you out. Now it’s your turn to listen to me.

“I am not interested in grudge matches or vendettas. What I want is to continue providing a very exclusive service to those who can afford it—”

“Who can stomach it. Did Patrice Caudwell flinch when you told her she’d have to kill someone?”

“Did you flinch, Shadows?” Odalys shook her head. “Some things just have to be done to move forward. I have no quarrel with you though I’d like my clients to be happy. I propose a deal. You give me those Hands, and I’ll give you enough information for you to realize how much danger you’re in. I saw what you did with Strange’s Hand, Shadows, and you’re not safe.”

Sylvie laughed. “So very generous. No.”

“You’re running out of time. We all are,” Odalys said. She walked her circle once more, and like moons in an orbit, they all pivoted with her—Sylvie angling to keep the gun aimed on her, the Hand casting its light, the ghost following, and Demalion orbiting Sylvie, looking uneasy. In the background, the flute music swelled and stuttered.

Odalys paused, one foot rocking gently on its stiletto heel. “All right, then. Since you think me ungenerous anyway. Here’s the deal. You leave the Hands, you leave the store, and I’ll leave Zoe out of my plans. Send her home to you. It’s a real hardship. I had such plans for that girl.”

Whatever Sylvie would have answered with—bile, capitulation, bargaining, or even a bullet—she was distracted by the ambient flute music’s changing. It grew louder, more discordant, rapid-fire, the notes bleeding into one another like a single, sustained scream, the shriek of a damned soul.

“What is that?” Sylvie shouted. But she already had guessed the answer. Odalys’s own version of a supernatural alarm. She spotted it in a dim corner of the room, a hanging, vibrating pale stick—no, a long bone, with holes augured through.

“Demalion,” she said. “Get out. Get out now!”

If Sylvie and Demalion had invaded Odalys’s storefront, carrying the lit Hands of Glory powered by malevolent lich ghosts, and the alarm had only whispered—Sylvie really didn’t want to meet what made it shriek.

Demalion shook his head, refusing to go; his free hand sought a gun he wasn’t carrying.

“Sorry,” Odalys said. “Time’s up. She’s found us.” Her eyes were wild, her gestures choppy and ungraceful. She made one wave of her hand, a fierce, slashing version of the slower movements she’d made earlier. This time the salt ring expanded with the concussive force of a hurricane tide; scouring Sylvie’s ankles even through the denim of her jeans, her socks. The outermost salt ring blew past them all, created a new curve at the very edges of the room.

The lich ghosts wavered and went out, clawing ineffectually at the air as if it had suddenly become toxic to them. The Hands of Glory snuffed themselves out, hellish firelight sinking into the sere flesh in a moment, leaving Sylvie and Demalion defenseless against whatever approached.

22

Dead Come Calling

DEFENSELESS? NEVER THAT, THE LITTLE DARK VOICE SAID. SYLVIE tossed her Hand to Demalion—it might have been blown out, but it didn’t mean she was meekly going to let Odalys take it—and leveled the gun. Demalion dropped the Hands by his feet, and said, “What’s coming?”

“Something you freed,” Odalys said. “You really should have stayed out of my business.”

Outside the store, cars screeched to a metal-grinding halt.

Odalys ignored the crash, went back to ransacking her own storeroom. Baskets fell, scattering candles, herbs, twists of paper stained strange colors by their contents.

The bone flute increased its shrilling, pitch rising until the lightbulbs rattled in their sockets. Glass cracked like a gunshot, but not here, not in the back room. It was the front windows, those broad expanses, that were giving way.

Sylvie traversed the salt rings, moving through them like a beginner’s labyrinth, wondering if the center rings were safer than the exterior ones, if she should urge Demalion forward and never mind that it would put him closer to Odalys. Odalys wasn’t the immediate threat here, too occupied with her own tasks. Whatever it was that made bone scream was.

Something she had set free? Maybe bullets hadn’t been the solution to the lich ghost after all. Maybe she’d broken the binding, not the spirit.

“Margaret Strange,” Sylvie said.

The dead had played dead.

Her skin goosefleshed and chilled.

“For god’s sake,” Odalys swore. “Don’t say her name. Don’t draw her to us. She’s crazy.”

“Whose fault is that?” Sylvie said.

“Not mine,” Odalys said. “Everything would have been just fine if her bankers hadn’t embezzled from her. I barely got my deposit out of her.”

“Sylvie,” Demalion said. “Can we get gone?” Sweat stood out on his face; his skin tinged toward grey.

She wanted to say yes, sure, and get them the hell out of there, but . . . she wanted to take Odalys with them, and short of shooting her—in her shop, on a busy street—she had no ideas.

The drape between the back room and the storefront swayed, beads clacking, a warning as ominous as a rattlesnake. Sylvie parted the beads, poked her head through, gun first, and swore. Cars were wrecked in the street beyond Invocat’s storefront, slewed across the lanes of traffic; people lay in the road as if they’d dropped when they had gone to help.

That, Sylvie thought, her blood going cold, her fingers tightening on her gun, wasn’t just any accident. That was soul shock, courtesy of the lich ghost. She saw it now, a shadow in the sunlight, a ripple pressed against the cracked glass.

The front window shattered, the ultimate crack racing side to side through all the spiderweb damage the ghost had already inflicted. The shards scattered with force, sliding across the floor with an evil hiss, coming at her, and the ghost flowing after, stirring the glass that had stopped moving.

Sylvie watched long enough to confirm that it was Margaret Strange and wondered how she’d slipped Wales’s ghost trap of an apartment. Wondered if Wales was still alive.

Sylvie canted a look over her shoulder. Demalion stood resolutely at the back door, keeping Odalys from escape. She might be witch enough to have her defensive spells ready, but her offensive ones seemed lacking. Good for them, bad for her.