Ghosts & Echoes (10 page)

Her little dark voice growled warning, but what else could she do? Pat him down for cash, call the banks, and make sure he was telling the truth?

She couldn’t leave him at the office. Alex wouldn’t be in until noon, and that left a lot of files open to his scrutiny. She locked the file cabinets as a matter of course, but every cop she’d ever met had a dab hand at popping the usual locks. Her files were coded, but codes were easy enough to crack if someone had a talent for it.

He waited, hanging off her door like some scrawny excuse for a gigolo, nervousness in his expression, leery of her offer. Of her. Maybe even of himself.

Sylvie had a few doubts of her own. The least dangerous scenario Wright presented was that he was delusional, and she was inviting him home. She stifled her common sense, sighed, and said, “In the car, Wright, or you’ll be bunking on the beach. And sand fleas are a real bitch.”

He shook off his own worries, slipped back into the passenger’s seat like he belonged there. Once he was settled, she turned her truck for home, flicking on the radio, and flicking it off when the morning DJs blathered at them. The traffic patterns were just going to have to surprise them.

Wright closed his eyes, and his face aged. The morning light traced the stubble on his chin, half-gold, half-grey; lines of exhaustion pulled his slack face toward sorrow’s mask.

Sylvie took another quick look at the list of cars, wondering if any of them were on her way. Made no sense to pass by if she was just going to have to return later.

“Home, James,” Wright muttered. He reached out a sleepy hand and took the list from her.

She allowed it; she’d seen what she needed to. Each house on the list was a destination, not a drive-by. Instead, she turned the truck’s scarred nose toward her apartment and a couple of hours’ sleep. She sighed. One day back on the job, and she was down to catching bits and pieces of sleep when she could.

The ride was quiet, South Dixie blessedly clear at this early hour, and Wright collapsed into a boneless sleep she hadn’t thought possible in anyone past the age of fifteen. Like a colicky baby, she thought, soothed to sleep by the motion of a car. But if he was asleep and dreaming, his dreams were unpleasant.

He woke when the truck came to its usual coughing halt and squinted at the bright Miami morning, yellow light and haze, reflecting off the white-stucco apartment complex. “Come on,” she said, and he followed her past the cutesy would-be Chinese entry arch, the single stranded Kwan-Yin sculpture left bereft in a rocky alley pathway between the buildings, with only a raised brow for all the kitsch.

“Home sweet home,” she said.

“Thought Florida was all about the Latin look,” he said. He took in the view of tilted-up roof corners, red tile cartoon-bright against the blue sky, the expanses of raked gravel and sand.

“Landlord was trying for the foreign-student demographic,” Sylvie said. “Ended up with something as authentic as grocery-store lo mein.”

Her building was the one deepest into the lot, farthest from the pool. She’d chosen it for the quiet, plus the nice long view of the walkway, which let her see who was coming to visit.

One flight of stairs up, and Sylvie put the key into the lock, jiggling the key as it stuck again. Humidity was a killer. The lock gave after a solid
thump
, and she ushered Wright in, kicking the door closed. He moved forward with the awkward shuffle of a guest preceding his host, awaiting cues and guidelines.

Sylvie felt tight in her skin, all too aware of his eyes sweeping the small expanse of the living room, the tiny kitchen, the shadowed depths of her bedroom, her bed unmade, sheets still tangled from that final nightmare that had driven her out of town. She’d slept better in Sanibel, defying all logic. Slept soundly and at length, no matter that her most pressing problems were things she’d brought along.

She sidled past him once he had moved beyond the narrow pseudofoyer, and found herself standing awkwardly in the living room. Times like this, she wished she were more of a regular person, with a dog, a cat, an aquarium, even houseplants that needed watering—anything to let her fuss with until she got over that first stranger-in-the-house discomfort.

Instead, she had a nearly bare room, a comfy couch with magazines strewn along one half—
Guns & Ammo
,
Closer
, and a month’s worth of inserts from the
Herald
—newspapers piled beneath and beside the end table, collecting dust. A TV on a cheap stand, DVDs piled beside it. A bookshelf, three-quarters full. A floor lamp at strategic distance from the couch. It wasn’t even messy enough that she could justify a scamper round tidying. Instead, she just did a quick point and show. “Bedroom, mine, thataway. Couch, yours. Bathroom down the hall. Drinks in the kitchen. Help yourself. If you dirty something, put it in the dishwasher. I’m going to shower. I think I rolled in oil.”

Once off the road, out of the truck, in the clean confines of her apartment, the scent lingered about her like a cloud, a reminder of the failed night on her skin.

She grabbed a couple of blankets, one of the pillows from her bed, and tossed them to him. “Don’t worry. I don’t sing in the shower. You should be able to sleep.”

“I’m not that tired,” he said. “We could talk about my case.” He swayed gently, foot to foot.

“In the morning,” she said.

“It
is
morning. You’re the one who got PO’d I was holding out on you—”

“Know anything new and urgent, like a name?” she asked.

He wrapped himself in his own arms, shook his head. She said, “Then we’ll talk later in the morning. Much later. After coffee. After a spicy breakfast omelet. And more coffee. You need some rest, and I need a clear head.”

Maybe with some sleep under his belt, he wouldn’t look so close to the edge. Whatever sleep he’d gotten in her truck, it had been the opposite of refreshing. He looked strung tight, and worse, he looked . . . crowded, as if the thing in his head, having surfaced briefly, was watching for another chance.

Sylvie shuddered. He might be ready to talk about it; she wasn’t. Enemy, ghost, crazy? Or some combination of all of the above? Sylvie didn’t want to start that round of speculation again. Once had been enough, and nothing had changed in the interim.

“You came to me for help. I’m telling you now. Sleep will help. You can’t think clearly if you’re exhausted.”

“Can’t think clearly when someone else’s using my brain,” he muttered, but nodded agreement. He toed off a sneaker, white leather worn nearly grey with age and use, then the other, and Sylvie found herself shying away from his bony bare feet, the unwelcome intimacy of it. Ridiculous in a city where flip-flops were so common, but there it was. Wright needed help; she didn’t want to give it. She didn’t want to see any further signs of vulnerability—his or hers.

She grabbed a shower, scrubbing her skin clean, trying to purge the guilt over her reluctance to help. It was just bad timing. She’d been truthful with Alex; she wanted a nothing case. Not something that was life-or-death desperate. Wright’s problem was twigging every nerve in her body attuned to Serious Trouble.

The water was hot and plentiful at this hour, before her neighbors rose for work, and Sylvie lingered until the knots of tension in her spine—

—faded away into a dull ache.

She got out, her fingers pruned, the mirror glass steamed and drippy, and dragged on a pair of ’Canes sweats, faded from forest to olive, and a black tank top.

The apartment was silent and dim; Sylvie expected to see Wright a mute, mummy shape of blankets along the couch. Instead, he perched on the edge, bare-chested, barefoot, bent over something small in his hand, something that gleamed with an opalescent shine. He was utterly still, staring into it.

Sudden rage washed Sylvie. She snatched it from his hand, the broken curve of glass leaving a tiny crescent of blood on his skin. He jerked back. “What the hell?”

“Don’t touch that. Where did you even—”

“It was on the couch,” he said. “
Memento mori?
Didn’t expect you to go in for that sort of thing.”

On the couch, right. She remembered now. That last night before her vacation, packing and repacking and repacking again. All of it centered around a quarter moon of cloudy, broken glass that she couldn’t decide to take or leave behind.

A tiny broken piece of a crystal ball, cloudy with a fragment of a dead man’s soul. She rubbed it in her palms, familiar by now with the sharp edges. She’d left it behind. A fragment of a soul. It wasn’t good for much when the rest of it had been obliterated, devoured by the Furies. She’d slept better in Sanibel? Maybe because she hadn’t taken it with her. She rocked it in her hand now. Sometimes she swore she could see a slice of Demalion’s life in it. A boy in a blazer, raising his head, and facing down a school bully with nothing but arrogance.

Sometimes, in her nightmares, she was child-Demalion’s bully. Sometimes, in her nightmares, she killed him herself. Shot him, hit him, sicced the Furies on him. She shivered, closed her palm around the glass in her hand without looking at it, afraid of seeing that boy’s face in it.

She dropped heavily onto the couch beside Wright. “It’s important to me.”

Wright pressed on the small slice in his palm until the blood welled up over his fingertips. “Glad to hear it.”

“God, you did a number on yourself,” Sylvie said. She hadn’t thought the crystal was that sharp. “Hold on a moment.” She collected her first-aid kit, pulled out the butterfly bandages, and, after wiping the blood away again, fastened them over the curved wound. She traced the edge of the wound with her fingertip, checking that pressure on the rest of his hand wouldn’t be more than the bandages could control. Tracing that small curve, over and over again.

“Ow?” he said. He folded his fingers inward, out of her grip. “Bad bedside manner, Shadows.”

“You’ve no idea,” she muttered. “Last person I patched up wasn’t even a person.”

When she looked up to see if he was shocked silent, or just thinking, her gaze never made it to his face, caught on that curved scar on his chest. She lifted his hand in hers, brought it upward. The curves matched. Like key in lock. She jerked away, trembling. Coincidence? Or the ISI, playing vicious games with her and using Wright? She touched that spot on his chest, that smooth gap in the arc.

He touched her cheek, fingertips cool against her flushed skin. She twitched away.

“Sylvie,” he said. “You look wrecked.”

“Not your problem,” she said. As she rose, she stumbled, and he drew her back, wrapped her in an embrace that shook, as if the weight of her problems and his combined might break him. It would have been easy to push him away, but it was easier still to rest her head in the curve of his neck, his shoulder bony and flat beneath her cheek. Easy to pretend. He smelled of salt and sweat, and she wondered, if she parted her lips, leaned that tiny increment closer, would he taste of the sea beneath her tongue?

She curved her palm over that evocative scar, felt it cool and smooth and incomplete. A fragmentary wound as cool as crystal. She shivered in his arms.
Step away,
she thought. End this before she did something she’d regret in the name of comfort. But he was warm and alive, and his arms felt good closed on her shoulders, his breath stirring her hair.

She raised her face, and he kissed her. A strange first kiss that felt nothing like new. Slow, familiar, comforting, his tongue dueling gently with hers. The rasp of stubble a gentle friction against her skin, as welcome as a breath of sea air. She shifted closer, slid onto his lap, a knee moving to each side of his hips. His hands caged her waist, spanned her ribs, thumbs rubbing circles in the hollows between bone, all of it familiar. “Shadows,” he whispered against her throat.

She leaned closer still, chasing that elusive sea taste of him, that familiarity. Her hands found their way into his hair, carding the tufts to wilder heights yet. She settled more comfortably across his lap, spread her knees wider to take him closer. His hand slid up her spine, rested heavy at her nape; his fingers curled around the crest of her shoulder, traced familiar patterns,
S
after
S
after
S
, her name drawn on her skin with careful touches.

Just like. . . “Demalion,” she murmured.

“Yes,” he breathed back.

She scrambled away from him, the shock of it heating her face, her throat, her chest. Shame burned in her breast.

“What are you doing—” Her breath failed her, caught tight and muffled by her own welter of conflicting emotion. Anger, as always, came to her rescue. “What the hell? I tell you to give me a name, and you choose that one?”

“I reclaim what’s mine,” he said. He shrugged, a fluid rearrangement of Wright’s stiffly set shoulders, projecting an ease he obviously didn’t feel. His eyes were on her, sandy brows drawn tight; his lips still damp with her breath. “And I remember. You kept that last piece of me safe. And then you gave it back to me. I am,
was
, Michael Demalion. Want to welcome me home?” Though he smiled at her, it was shaky, hard to hold.

“Demali—” She shook her head, felt like the world spun with it. “It’s not possible. The Furies devour souls.”

“I don’t know how I escaped, but I did,” he said, rose to draw her back into his arms. She resisted, kept from pressing herself back into Wright’s lanky chest, set hands flat against his skin, wanting to believe, wanting not to. If Demalion was a ghost, he was beyond her aid, and this could be nothing but a cruel reminder of what she had lost.

As if the thought proved the facts, Demalion shivered beneath her hands, then he was stepping back, his eyes wide and wild. “Sylvie? What’s—”