Sylvie shrugged that off—she and Demalion were too jaded to be able to argue that point effectively—and said, “Well, we’re not. Soul shock and slavery, and you thought it was a good idea to take us down instead of just answering your door. Thought it was great idea to expose us a second time?”
Demalion’s breath seemed loud and rasping, as if he’d caught the rhythm of her stuttering heart. The room felt tight and close, dusty with the scent of mummified flesh. She felt choked on it, on her rage. Zoe had gone to someone like this. Walked into a room stinking of black magic and taken home a souvenir. Put her soul at risk for the promise of cold hard cash.
Wales stiffened; his lanky shape grew more angular. “You came to my door, gun drawn. I was justified. I do what I have to, to survive. You’re no different. Neither’s your dead friend there. I might feed Marco on occasion, but I don’t body snatch for him. I’ve got the moral high ground here, Shadows.”
She hissed in a breath, and Demalion said, “Sylvie,” again. Not a plea this time, but a flat-out command not to pick a fight, not to be herself.
“Prove it,” she said, instead. Her voice was rough, hostile, but it wasn’t a shout. “If you’ve got the moral high ground, offer me your help.” Her fingers tightened on the wrist stump of the Hand she held, nails digging into the flesh. Disgusting and gruesome, but the only outlet she could allow herself.
She didn’t trust him, but like Val, he seemed more than willing to talk about magic, feed her information she needed. While she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of admitting it, he could have hurt them; hell, just leaving them passed out in this part of the city would have been a form of passive murder. Instead, he’d brought them in, bound them gently, wakened them with a potion whose contents he willingly listed.
Those actions were discouraging, created doubt in her breast. Wales might be telling her the simple truth. He wasn’t the one passing Hands out to kids. And if that were so, if he were the guardian he claimed to be . . .
“We need your help.”
That shocked Wales rigid in a way all her previous bluster and rage hadn’t. He sidled away from her, all nerves now, no poise. “I don’t get involved with other people’s problems. Not anymore.”
“Sometimes you don’t get a choice,” she said. When his pale face went as ashy as Marco’s ghostly one, she gestured with the Hand she held. “What? You thought you’d show me a little dark magic, and I’d be ready to flee? You’re going to help us. You say you’re not the problem here? Not the necromancer I’m hunting? Fine. Then you’re the help I need.”
Demalion said, “Shadows is a black-and-white woman. You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution. I’ve been on both sides with her. It was better on the solution side.”
That made her heart hurt. The solution side had gotten him killed. But he met her eyes squarely and nodded once. A knot that had tied itself around her heart eased: Like her, Demalion would have done nothing different. Relief made her sound friendlier than she felt when she said, “Helping us out would go a long, long way to making me forget that you just sicced your ghost on your neighbor. As an illustration.”
He sighed. “What d’y’all want, then?” Wales asked. He hunched a shoulder, turned his head away from Marco’s whispers.
“First? Put your buddy Marco back in the box or wherever he goes when he’s not looming over you. I’m getting a cramp holding on to Thing here.” She had about reached her limit for grossness, was one step from her fingers betraying her and dropping the loathsome thing.
Marco scowled, but Wales only nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” He carried Marco’s Hand past them, Sylvie and Demalion pivoting to keep watch. Wales puttered about the open kitchen—really not the nesting sort, Sylvie thought; his kitchen consisted of a cardboard box that looked suspiciously full of cereal cartons, a battered cooler, and a spray bottle beside the sink.
The spray bottle yielded a fine, stinking mist that sizzled and spat as it made contact with the Hand of Glory. The hellish flames sank back to a sullen glow, then went out.
Marco disappeared like a screen projection shut off. Wales set the bottle down, the Hand, and refilled the bottle with a carton of milk from the cooler. Farm Stores brand, she noted absently. That fitted. Somehow she had a hard time imagining Wales walking down brightly lit Winn-Dixie aisles, all twitchy-eyed, with a Hand in his wallet pocket.
“Milk douses the flame,” he said.
“So you’ve said. Nature versus unnature.”
“Birth and death,” Demalion contributed, tag-teaming.
“You’re stalling,” Sylvie concluded.
He blotted Marco’s Hand against his shirt, pocketed it again. Sylvie felt her lip curl, her fingers uncurl, letting the Hand she’d held drop to the floor.
“If you let go while it’s active,” she said, “what happens?”
“Marco knocks me out and eats my soul. Not a nibble, the whole damn thing. Like any slave, he’ll turn on his owner if given the chance.” Wales cocked his head in thought, then added, “Well, maybe Marco wouldn’t. We’ve been through a lot together.”
Sylvie scrubbed her fingers down her jeans repeatedly. Demalion was doing the same.
“Soap?” she asked.
“No running water,” Wales said. “There are Handi Wipes under the sink if you’re squeamish. They’re pretty inert, bacteria-wise, you know.”
“No, I don’t.” Sylvie shifted farther away from the dangling Hands. “That’s why we came to you.”
Wales hesitated. “I’m confused. I assumed you wanted me to find your ghost friend a body of his own.”
“Can you?” Demalion asked.
“No!” Wales said.
Sylvie didn’t like Demalion’s eagerness, said, “Yeah, like even if that was our plan”—and hey, it was the first thought that ended with both Wright and Demalion alive—“we could trust you. We came to do a show-and-tell with Hands of Glory.” She sought out the promised wipes and scoured her fingers; fake floral-scented alcohol had never smelled so good. She tossed the container to Demalion, and he did likewise.
“I’ve shown, I’ve told. You’re still here.” He shifted his hands, crossed his arms above his chest, uncrossed them, hooked fingers into his pockets, shifted again, visibly restraining himself from seeking out Marco’s Hand in some bizarre comfort.
“Not your Hands,
our
Hands . . . My briefcase. Where’s my briefcase?” It had slipped her mind entirely; surrounded by Hands of Glory, she hadn’t missed the two she’d brought to this party.
“In the hall,” he said. “I didn’t want to mess with it. It looked iffy.”
“Iffy,” she muttered. She took three giant steps—all it took to cross the small living room—griping the whole time. “I’ll tell you what’s iffy. Your future if it’s gone.”
“Sylvie,” Demalion said. “Take a breath.”
“What, you’re on his side? He thinks you’re a squatter looking to move in permanently.”
“How about we all play on the same side?” Demalion asked, but without a lot of hope. He seemed tired, still resting in the chair where he had been bound as if his bones were too heavy to let him rise. Sylvie took another glance, thought he looked grey in Wright’s skin, and shut up. She wondered how long Demalion could hold on to the body—this was the longest she’d seen him manage—wondered if Wright was fighting to recover it.
The front door was crusted with locks—three dead bolts, two chains, all no doubt illegally installed, all sticky with salt-milk brushed over them. The walls, up close, shimmered with a salt wash. She supposed it was hard to lock up properly when you had a roomful of tools designed to open locks.
The last chain slithered free, and she jerked the door open, annoyed when it came at her so fast she nearly clocked herself. All those locks and the door was cheap-ass hollow-core. Made her edgy, especially with 2C still lying sprawled in the hallway. Wales was courting disaster. Magic wasn’t proof against bullets.
The briefcase was still there in the gloom—battered duct tape, the scarf stuffed in between silvery tape, the lumpy crust of salt seeping free, the smell, rotten milk—Sylvie paused in collecting it, her thoughts veering. Zoe’s Hand had been soaked in milk. Zoe wasn’t as clueless as Bella. Hell, Zoe wasn’t as clueless as Sylvie had been. Sylvie wasn’t sure whether this was good or bad. Good, because it meant Zoe was less likely to be affected than Bella. Not soul sick. Bad, because Zoe’s messing with magic made Sylvie’s teeth hurt.
She dragged the briefcase into the room, breaking the staring contest Wales and Demalion were having, and slapped it down on the counter. “Someone is selling Hands of Glory, and there are a group of teenagers using them to play burglar. If it’s not you, then who?”
“Probably no one,” Wales said. “There aren’t a lot of necromancers in Miami. Think it’s the heat. Bodies rot too fast to be used for anything but a splash-and-dash kinda spell.” At Sylvie’s frown, he said, “Uh, splash and dash is a blood harvesting and summoning; happens fast and—”
“I know what it is,” Sylvie snapped. “You’re telling me you think the kids just developed the ability spontaneously? I don’t think so.”
Demalion frowned, started to say something, but shivered instead, fell back into silence.
“Look,” Wales said. “They’re teenagers. They don’t have any access to the real thing, and a lot of little bodegas sell knockoffs, guaranteed gross, but harmless. I think they’re dog paws, partially defleshed.”
“You’re not listening,” Sylvie said. “Their Hands are real enough to let them walk through burglar alarms and locked doors, to put down anyone in the vicinity for hours. Knockoffs? I don’t think so.” She flipped the latches on the briefcase, yanked the duct tape back, spilling salt, and popped the lid. Demalion took a step back, then wobbled. Sylvie half turned; she knew what was happening, even as it happened. Wright shivered convulsively, his eyes flat and black, but his jaw was set. Taking his body back. Possession trumping his fear of the unknown and the malign.
He made a series of quick, darting glances about the room. Sylvie figured he was trying to play catch-up on events. Wright seemed confused, but less wary than Demalion had been. Then again, Wright had missed the whole “prisoners of the Ghoul” thing, had missed Wales being all judgmental about ghosts and human bodies, had missed Wales feeding his pet Hand. For all Wright knew, Sylvie, Demalion, and Wales had been sitting around making friends and drinking tea.
She merely nodded welcome, not wanting to draw Wales’s attention to the changeover. But Wales’s focus was all for the Hands in the briefcase, tangled in their jumbled embrace, fingers linking.
“Interesting,” he said, expression intent. “One of them is . . . fake? The other . . . not?” He pulled his fingers back without ever touching either Hand, not Bella’s, all spangled silver and fake tattoos, not Zoe’s, faintly crusted with milk from its long immersion.
“You don’t sound certain,” Sylvie said. She wanted certain. A tiny sprig of hope bloomed in her. Maybe Zoe’s Hand wasn’t real, a knockoff like her faux designer clothing.
Hope hurts,
her little dark voice warned.
Hurts being born and hurts dying.
Wales said, “I can check.” He picked up Bella’s Hand of Glory, made a face at the decorations, and then flipped his lighter out of his pocket.
Sylvie snapped, “Hey!” just as Bella’s Hand dipped into the flame and failed to light. The silver nail polish blackened and stank.
Wales said, “Huh.”
“A little warning!” Sylvie said. “I’ve had all the blackouts I can tolerate for the month.”
“It’s dead,” he said.
“It’s a frickin’ Hand cut off a body, yeah,” Wright said, twitchy as always. “I don’t think it takes a whole lotta know-how to figure that it’s dead.”
“Let me rephrase, then,” Wales said. He studied Wright as he did so. “It looks like a Hand of Glory, but it’s not one. It lacks a ghost. It’s just dead flesh.”
“It worked earlier,” Sylvie said. “Had a ghost, had a fairly active one. Gave the user all sorts of nightmares, reliving her crimes.”
“Shouldn’t have done that,” Wales said absently, turning the Hand this way and that, setting the lighter down. “Part of the packaging is to prevent soul seepage. Thankfully. I can’t imagine sharing Marco’s dreams. Sure that’s what was going on? Not just imagination?”
“Sure enough that we could ID the . . . donor by her memories flooding the kid’s dreams.”
“Her?”
“The dead woman?”
Wales twitched visibly, bobbled the Hand, and only caught it at the last. “It’s a woman’s Hand!” He shot a look back at the other one, and said, “They’re both women’s!”
Wright and Sylvie traded a long, speaking look with each other. Wright’s expression said,
He’s kinda slow
, and
We’re not paying for this, are we?
Sylvie shrugged minutely; she wasn’t sure Wales saw a lot of women, living or dead.
Wales muttered, “No, no, no. They’re women’s hands, and they’re never women’s hands.”
“Why not?” Sylvie asked. “Women commit murder, too. They might be a little less likely to hang themselves after, though.” A stray thought occurred. Alex hadn’t said how Patrice Caudwell had died. She would have mentioned something as grisly as an old lady hanging herself. “What happens if they don’t hang? Can they still be bound into the Hands?”
“No,” Wales said. “No. At least . . . Look. It’s all about symbolism. Hanging yourself, a rope around your neck—it keeps your soul tight to the body. Suicide by gunshot, by bleeding out—”
“Soul leaves with the blood. But could it be less significant than you think?”
“That’s not the . . . Tradition dictates men’s Hands. Tradition dictates hanging,” Wales said.
“Tradition changes—”
“No,” he said. “No. It’s like prescription meds. You don’t prescribe the same dose to a woman that you do a man. The . . .” He flailed his hands about, reaching for vocabulary they would understand, and finally came up with a word that made Sylvie want to gag. “The recipe to create the Hands is specific. Detailed. Picky. You don’t just change out pieces of it.”