“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.
“The dirt’s all about reminding them they’re dead. Her ashes should be even more successful.” Sylvie put a hand on the plaque, sketched out Margaret Strange’s name, learning the proportions of the stone. Then she stepped back, shouldered the iron, and swung.
FLEEING FROM THE FOURTH SCENE OF MORE GRAVESITE DESECRATION than any one woman should have to commit, Sylvie’s nerves were fraying. Demalion, nice and neat, and far too quiet in the passenger’s seat, wasn’t helping. Behind them, a trail of mud led back to the military section of the cemetery, where Hughes’s and Sorenson’s graves gaped. Sylvie thought she’d be reading about that in the papers tomorrow, wished she’d had the luxury of time enough to cover up her excavations.
She licked her lips, tasted dirt, shuddered, and felt her determined optimism sinking alongside the sun. The jeep seemed unwieldy, unresponsive, and she pulled off the road.
Demalion looked up from the map he was frowning at. “What’s going on? The general’s estate is miles from here still. Why’d you stop?”
“I know where it is. Alex gave me the list, too. Key Largo, down by the boatyards,” she said. “God, what if we’re wrong? What if Strange’s lich ghost is perfectly content to eat her way through the city? What if Odalys isn’t at the general’s house? We really have no reason to believe Odalys is living in a dead man’s home—”
“No reason not to,” Demalion said. “Trust your instinct.”
“Zoe’s on the line,” she said, her throat tight. “Makes it a little hard to gamble.”
Demalion didn’t have a quick response for that. There was none to be had. Their choice of path was educated guesswork, based on a leap of logic. Sometimes that was all you got.
Five Hands, five dead people. Five choices. They’d dismissed three of them. Which left them with General Hughes and the wild-card lieutenant, who seemed to have had no permanent residence at all.
She shivered, cold even despite the sultry night. She wanted her old cases back. She wanted an enemy who bragged and left a trail a mile wide. Instead, she had guesswork and greed, a ghost-possessed man for backup, and her family at stake. She wanted her little dark voice to rouse her to rage, but it was quiescent.
“Sylvie,” Demalion said, “any choice is better than none.”
“Fine,” she said. “The general’s it is.”
Sylvie put the jeep in gear, bumped it back onto the road, and drove with disregard for the posted speed limits and the traffic. If she was wrong, if the general’s house wasn’t the right place, better to find out as soon as possible. She wished that the truck had panned out, that Suarez had called with a location. She got the truck back? She was installing a GPS unit and tracker.
Full dark had settled in by the time they found the address. General Stephen Hughes had a thirty-acre estate, a sizable holding on an island key, ringed round by an iron-spiked limestone wall, and an automated gate that was chained shut.
Sylvie got out of the jeep, walked up to the gate, peered through the dark. The plat, courtesy of Alex, showed the house at the back of the property, right on the water. The gate revealed a long driveway overhung by oaks laden with Spanish moss and air plants. She sniffed, wishing she had a werewolf nose, the better to scent anything, living or unliving. All she smelled was salt air, the heavy green scent of moss, and mown grass. She leaned against the gate, the metal cold against her heated face.
“Dead end?” Demalion asked.
“God,” Sylvie said. “Zoe . . . What am I going to tell my parents?”
“What did you tell mine?”
Rage flushed her, burned out despair, made her dirt-smeared hands on the gate shake, rattling the chain. She wheeled on him, and he took a step back, hands held high. She’d expected to see anger on his face, but there was only calculation.
Demalion knew her far too well. Knew what fueled her and would provide a reason for fury when she needed it to fuel her. The relief she felt nearly undid his efforts, and she snapped at him, “Is this really the time to bring that up? God, you’re going to throw that in my face forever. I died for you. . . .”
“It is a trump card, yes,” Demalion snapped back.
Wright, despite his urge to help and protect, didn’t know her ways, her cues, and kept her off balance, endangering both of them. Demalion, on the other hand, was backup.
She grinned at him, nasty and tight, and felt her nerves settle. So what if this was Zoe on the line? It only meant the stakes were higher.
The padlock was cheap enough, common enough—the basic locker-room combination lock—fed through a length of chain. In the distance, a shrill sound echoed, distorted over the water. A scream.
Sylvie picked up a rock and bashed the lock open. For a lock on a dead man’s land, it was shiny new, the chain still supple; it got regular use. Demalion shoved the gate, and Sylvie revved the jeep; he slid in, and they headed up the long drive as quickly as the shut-off headlights would allow. No sense in warning Odalys that they were on their way. She’d expect them, but every ounce of surprise counted.
Salt air curled about her hair, licked at her skin, left her thirsty. She turned her head to get away from a particularly invasive breeze, thinking, windows, cars should have windows, and said, “You hear that?”
Demalion closed his eyes, fell silent, turned his head from side to side. “Screaming.”
“Yeah,” she said. She picked up the pace, nearly jerked them off the driveway when a dark shape cannonballed out of the trees lining the drive and shrieked right under their engine.
“Peacock,” she muttered. “A goddamned peacock. We’re chasing a bird screaming—” She rounded the drive, and trailed off. The house was ablaze with light. The driveway held three cars; still pinging with warmth. Most damning of all, pulled right up to the front door, was Sylvie’s truck, its clawed hood nearly luminous in the dark.
She put a hand on his shoulder, keeping him in the jeep when he started to get out. “Demalion. You should stay here. There’s going to be a lot of ghost-inimical magic flying around.”
“I’m coming,” he said. “I know you, Sylvie. You want Odalys dead. I need her alive. If I’m to have any chance at a new life, new body, I need her skills, her information. And the ISI can and will get it from her.”
“Pretty cavalier with Wright’s body and soul, there. He might have a different opinion. Hell, he might want to wait in the car.”
Demalion shook his head. “No. He’s agreed to this.”
“Let him tell me.”
“Do we really have time?” Demalion said. “That ghost is—”
“Make time,” Sylvie said.
“You still don’t trust me.”
“You’re dead. You’re not exactly a neutral party here.” He lunged, not away but toward; his mouth found hers, clung tight. He kissed words against her lips, please and trust me, help me, and don’ts. She translated them, breathed back her answers: Yes, and I want to, and I’ll trys, and there was salt between them, seasoning her weak promises. They couldn’t be anything but weak; wanting didn’t translate to having, and guarantees couldn’t even cover electronics, much less human lives.