“I have to ask him,” she said. “He can’t go in there blind.”

Demalion nodded. The body she leaned against, draped herself over, suddenly went boneless.

“Wright?” she murmured. She slid off his lap even as his hand tightened on her hip, an absent clutching for stability in an unstable world. He blinked.

“Sylvie,” he said.

“We found Odalys,” she said. “We’re going to stop her. It’s risky. You could sit this out. Your call.”

He was shaking his head by “risky.” “I’m a cop, Syl. I do risky for my career.”

“Demalion will take over again,” she said. “He’s pretty pushy—”

“He knows the field better’n I do. Less likely to freak out,” Wright said. He raised a shoulder, let it drop, a lazy shrug that didn’t quite mask his shaking hands. “I trust him,” he said finally. “I’m inside him. He’s inside me. We know each other. He’s worried about me, about you. He wants to call the ISI, but he’s holding off because you said so. Me, I still think we should call the cops.”

“And let the ghost munch their souls?” Sylvie asked.

Wright flickered a tense smile. “Noted. Get on with it. Sooner this is done, sooner he can get out of my head, sooner I can go—All your ethical crises done with?” Demalion finished his sentence. “Odalys is waiting.”

Sylvie collected the dirt bundles, each a thick, soft roll about the size of a tube sock, wrapped in brightly colored fabrics. Orange for the general. Green for his ADC. Cherry red for Ms. Li. And a gritty plastic bag full of ash for Margaret Strange.

Sylvie wished she had a charm against Odalys; her gun would just have to do. Even if she didn’t intend to kill, nothing was so good at breaking magical focus as pain. A single bullet might save them yet.

The house was old, 1920s in style, and showed signs of it. The wood trim, beneath peeling paint, was green-stained with years of mildew removed and painted over. The front door, though unlocked, required a push to get past the swollen jamb. But the stained-glass trim in the windows shone bright, graceful lines of an earlier time still clear, and the interior, once seen, managed to be both simple and luxurious.

The rooms were spare and uncluttered, the furnishings simple and of excellent quality. The rooms were also utterly empty of people, though Sylvie nudged Demalion’s shoulder in one of the brightly lit guest bedrooms, directed his attention to the scatter of belongings across the rumpled sheet.

“Think the general liked to feel pretty?” Demalion said.

“Only if he used Zoe’s color palette,” Sylvie said. “Stupid little bitch.”

“The house is empty,” Demalion said.

“No one alive in it,” Sylvie said, both agreement and counter. Her mouth was dry. The house was deceptive in size; rooms unfolded from rooms; the floor echoed in such a way that she thought there might be a rare root cellar. The teenagers could be dead; their bodies discarded anywhere. Zoe among them.

“Doesn’t smell,” Demalion said.

“Hasn’t been long enough,” she said, rejecting his reassurance.

A wash of warm air crept through an opened window down the hall, carried the faint drift of sound with it. A woman’s voice.

Sylvie stiffened like a hound catching scent. She headed for the back door; Demalion scrambling to catch up.

The backyard was brightly lit; lanterns spiked the grass, ringed the illuminated pool, rimmed the eaves of the house, and cast glimmering sparks on the black waves beyond. The pool slanted sharply, one end close to the house and beach, the other spread wide to accommodate limestone tiling and a dining area.

Sylvie gathered all of that in one dazzle, light against the dark sky, but her attention hooked hard on the demented tea party Odalys was hosting. Zoe, Jaz, Matteo, Trey, were trussed neatly to white-painted, wrought-iron pool chairs, tucked closely around the table as if any moment someone would serve a meal. But the meals on offer were the teens’ souls. Jaz and her boyfriends sagged in their bonds, their faces sallow and pained, even unconscious; their Hands of Glory had been returned to them, lay in their laps like hellish spiders. Beyond the table, nearing the edge of the limestone tile, beneath the shadows of gumbo limbo and poisonwood, Zoe, bound and gagged, kicked feebly at Odalys as the woman knelt beside her.

Odalys straightened up, smoothing Zoe’s hair absently. “Don’t fuss so. It’ll all be for the best. You want to be my apprentice, don’t you? I have a plan. Trust is a part of—”

Gun in hand, Sylvie stepped out to greet Odalys. “Trust doesn’t involve tying people up.”

“How dull your sex life must be,” Odalys said. Sylvie really didn’t like her expression, calculation mixed with satisfaction, as if she’d expected Sylvie to make it in time to—what? Play witness? Or something more sinister.

“Step away from my sister,” Sylvie said.

Odalys smiled and stepped behind Zoe, resting her hands on the girl’s shoulders. Zoe twitched, trying to push her hands off.

“I don’t think so,” Odalys said. “Even you wouldn’t shoot through your little sister to get to me.”

Sylvie kept the gun leveled. “You’re a lot bigger than she is. Demalion, untie the rest of them. Get them out of here.”

He moved around her, careful not to step between Sylvie and Odalys. He bent over Trey, seated the closest to the house. Trey’s chin lolled on his chest; his skin gleamed as white as the paint. Demalion straightened, face grim as his voice. “This one’s dead already.”

Sylvie’s attention flickered for a moment, a quick glance in Demalion’s direction, as if she could see the boy’s pulse not beat in the shadows of his throat, and it was all Odalys needed. Her hand came up, the lighter flaring bright, a thrown bridge through shadow, from one circle of light to the next, landing on the Hand of Glory in Matteo’s lap. Sylvie got off a single reflexive shot, jerking the gun skyward at the last, afraid she would hit Zoe; then the ghost lethargy crashed down on her, the ghostly miasma smothering her into darkness.

24

The Quick and the Dead

WHEN SYLVIE WOKE, IT WAS TO PINS AND NEEDLES ALL OVER; HER skin burned and itched, an enormity of discomfort so great that it took her long minutes to realize that things had changed. She had joined the ranks of bound-to-chairs; the wrought iron was savaging her spine through her empty holster. But as befitted an unwelcome guest, her chair had been dragged away from the table, closer to the house. Her gun was gone; her hands were tied, and the cloth bundles of grave dirt were attempting to burn holes through her flesh.

Damned Odalys, Sylvie thought. Gun versus a lighter, and the woman still got the jump on her.

The little dark voice growled. You didn’t take the kill shot. Always take the kill shot. Your fault, all of this.

She should have, Sylvie agreed. Forget that Odalys was human; forget that Demalion wanted Odalys alive. Given a second chance, a third chance, she’d shoot first.

Sounds of struggling, grunting, caught her attention. Cautiously, she turned her head, neck aching, to see what could be seen. Odalys, hair coming unpinned, skirt smeared with rust and dirt, was manhandling Demalion onto the table itself, having run out of chairs. Wright’s body might be long, might be lanky, but it was muscled. The task was made more difficult by the closeness of the other chairs, of Jaz’s and Matteo’s proximity to the table, and the ghosts pressing in close behind them.

Sylvie blinked. Was that? It was. Her gun lay unattended on the table, bare inches from Demalion’s lax hand. Wake up, she thought. Goddammit, wake up!

She couldn’t understand why Odalys hadn’t killed them both. A glance at the blazing Hands of Glory suggested the answer. They were bait. A sop to Margaret Strange so that she wouldn’t interfere with the other ghosts and their transitions to flesh.