Wales gunned his engine and was gone. Demalion limped into the office; Alex slipped Sylvie’s grip, followed the bar patrons into the bar, and came back out a moment later, clutching a sweat suit. She tossed it to Demalion, and said, “You owe Etienne a new set of sweats. Those were supposed to be a gift for his father.”

“Clothes are not the critical problem here,” Sylvie said. “I need to find Odalys. Like, immediately. You good to work?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Alex asked.

“Zoe spelled you,” Sylvie said.

Alex’s lips went tight and flat. “She what?”

“Later,” Sylvie said. “You’re not hurt, right? Odalys first. Odalys isn’t staying at her own condo, and Invocat’s a no-man’s-land now. Odalys likes money, but she doesn’t like to spend it. She’s got Hands of Glory at her beck and call. She could waltz in and out of any house in the city. But capable of doesn’t mean likely to. She’ll want a nice house. A rich house. And there are at least five homes going to waste. Five homes to match five Hands of Glory, five homes that were owned by rich people. Just her speed. And even if the heirs wanted to sell . . .”

“Housing market’s clinically depressed. No one’s got the cash to buy houses. Especially not multimillion-dollar estates that might need upkeep,” Alex said. She slid into her desk chair, pulled the laptop closer to her. “Strange’s estate is a no-go. The bank foreclosed on it, and they’re aggressive about protecting their property. If Odalys was mucking about there, Hands or no Hands, someone would have noticed.”

“It needs to be someplace she can practice necromancy,” Demalion said, slightly muffled as he pulled the grey sweatshirt over his head. “Without the neighbors noticing.” He ran his hand through his hair; the blond spikes tufted up again, and Sylvie thought he was getting pretty damn familiar with Wright’s body.

She shook the worry off, and said, “So Caudwell—”

“No,” Alex said, fingers moving on the keyboard, “Caudwell’s a condo-dweller.”

Sylvie groaned. “Never easy. We’ve got three Hands left, three rich estates to find somewhere in Miami, and no time at all.” Sickness lodged in her throat. Zoe was going to be ghost food. Zoe was going to be someone else the next time she saw her.

Worse, the little dark voice said, Strange is going to inherit Zoe’s magical talent to go with her already murderous personality.

Sylvie felt furious tears clog her throat. This was insane. Surely, there was something—

The last was a half wail bursting out of her throat.

Alex grinned up at her. “Ask and you receive. I’ve been working on identifying the Hands ever since you took them from Jaz and her friends. I’ve been making a list. Rich old people who’ve died recently. You want them by property?”

Sylvie laughed in relief, turned on Demalion, and said, “No. You can’t have her,” even as his mouth opened. Then back to Alex. “I want them two ways,” she said. “I want them by address. And I want them by burial site. We’re going to need to do some digging.”

Alex’s lips shaped a giant “ew” that she didn’t voice, but bent to work.

GIVEN THAT THEY LACKED THE TIME OR INCLINATION TO DIG UP DIRT from every grave of every old rich decedent in Miami, Sylvie ruthlessly winnowed Alex’s list, going on gut instinct and pragmatism. Anyone buried out-of-state was right out. Odalys’s business seemed local; she’d need access to the bodies, and besides, a controlling personality like Odalys? She’d make her clients come to her.

The third female ghost was easy enough. Sylvie had seen her during the botched invasion at Odalys’s store. Miami might be a metropolitan city, but rich, Asian, elderly, and recently deceased was enough to pick out one Marianna Li from the slew of local dead.

Marianna Li owned a private island off Florida’s west coast, which ruled out her home as Odalys’s chosen base. What busy necromancer had time for a six-hour commute? Thankfully, Li was buried locally, next to her husband, where her grandkids could visit.

Identifying and finding the men had been more difficult.

Remember yourself, General, Odalys had said.

Sylvie tossed out all men without military backgrounds, though at their ages, war was a common thread. It was amazing how many people’s obituaries were all about leftover vanity—their photographs showed younger men and women, faces smoothed, smiling brightly at the camera.

It wasn’t helpful, left her looking for lines of familiarity in two dimensions, comparing them to aged and ghostly flesh. Still, she picked one face out of the grim lineup. General Stephen Hughes.

While she was still hunting his address, watching Demalion pace like a caged thing, Alex slapped down another printed-off obit and named the last, unseen ghost. “This one,” she said. “Lieutenant Charles Sorenson.”

Sylvie stared at the blurry image of a smiling young man, checked the birth date, and said, “He was only in his fifties. . . .” Another look raised more skepticism. The obit was so short as to be nearly meaningless. That wasn’t usual for a rich man.

At Sylvie’s skepticism, Alex said, “He worked with the general for nearly thirty years. He shot himself the day after Hughes’s funeral, in the cemetery. The general’s bank account shows a ten-million-dollar withdrawal; Caudwell paid five, and Li did also. Either Odalys overcharged him, or he paid to take his lieutenant along.”

Sylvie knew when she was licked. She added Sorenson to the pile of probable ghosts and prayed Odalys wasn’t hiding out at some middle-class rental. There were a hell of a lot more of those than high-end estates.

But by the time they had the gravesite addresses, Sorenson’s home was still a blank. Sylvie moved the wreath aside on Marianna Li’s grave and took out her frustration on the dirt. Demalion, having learned his lesson at Tsang’s gravesite, where one spadeful of the dirt across his shoes had left him dizzy and disoriented, was back on the concrete path.

Sylvie dug down a foot or so, hoping that Demalion’s reaction was a good sign, and more, a sign that she didn’t need to exhume any of the bodies. Distaste and the likelihood of being caught aside, they just didn’t have the time. She spilled the shovelful onto the grass, keeping an eye out for darker, moving patches that might be some of Miami’s scorpions, and scooped three generous handfuls into the cloth bag. Sweat trickled into her eyes, sleeked her skin, turned the dirt damp and clinging to her fingers. She wiped her hands on her jeans and reminded herself to burn her clothing when she was done.

Demalion’s weakness made her hope that even if she’d gotten one of the names wrong, any old graveyard dirt would work well enough for the three ghosts that were still bound to their Hands.

It was Margaret Strange, freed from her Hand, that they needed to worry about.

One cemetery later, Sylvie stood, shovel in hand, game face on, unexpectedly balked by a limestone-and-marble wall studded with small name plaques.

“She was cremated,” she said.

“Yeah,” Demalion said. Wright had been playing least in sight ever since the soul shock.

“Of course she was cremated,” Sylvie said. The sun was sinking behind the trees, tinting the stone and the grass in bloody hues. “She was difficult to begin with. Why would ending her be any easier?”

She shifted foot to foot, cast a look around. “You see anyone?”

“No,” he said.

She dogtrotted back to Alex’s jeep, grabbed the tire iron, and took a swing.

“Shadows—”

“Oh, shut up,” she said. “We’ve already desecrated three graves. What’s smashing up a columbarium? Just keep an eye out.”

“There’s no grave dirt,” he said. Without seeming to will it, his gaze slid back to the jeep. The grave dirt, bound neatly in color-coded bags, obviously disturbed him. He’d been edgy ever since she started carting the dirt around, giving her and the bags a wide berth. Maybe lich ghosts needed dirt specific to them, but for other spirits, graveyard dirt apparently didn’t discriminate among the dead. Sylvie only had to recall Wright’s collapse in Invocat to know that.