“You need a bridge of some kind,” Odalys said. “It won’t work.”
“Did I ask you,” Sylvie snapped. “Besides, he did it before, and he’s at his best under pressure, aren’t you? C’mon, Demalion—” She shook him. He winced away.
“Stop it.”
“Missing the boat here,” Sylvie hissed. “The cops are going to show up, and they don’t like the walking dead.”
She shook him again, trying to shake his eyes open. It worked; but the expression in them silenced her, made her heart pound. It looked like guilt.
“No point,” he finally said, made the fear real. “I’m alone in here. Wright’s gone . . . devoured.” He levered himself off her lap; she sprang up, paced the contours of the patio as if she could find Wright’s spirit hiding under the lawn furniture. Her throat ached.
Zoe said, “Could I please get untied?”
“You got one hand free by yourself,” Sylvie snapped. “One to go. Get to it. I’m busy.” She rubbed at her face; the salt on her bloody palm stung her eyes and made them water. Sickness soured her belly, tasted of flat metal in her mouth. Her hands twined, seeking the comfort of her gun, but it was drowned like Wright’s hopes. What she was going to tell Alex, so convinced Sylvie always saved people . . .
“I can’t believe you’re upset I saved myself!”
“I can’t believe you walked into this in the first place!” The spurt of rage was welcome, and if the cops hadn’t made the scene at that moment, walking out of the house, backlit by the interior lights into shooting gallery cutouts—generic men with guns—Sylvie would have happily sailed into a brawl to end all brawls with Zoe.
Demalion groaned, rose to his feet; he was white-faced, clumsy, staggering with pain, weariness, and—she bit her lip—moving like a man who didn’t know himself. A tiny balloon of hope she hadn’t known she held burst. Alone in a strange body without even Wright’s subconscious to guide the long limbs.
“So, Shadows, we found your truck. But I see you did, too. Nice of you to let us know . . .” Suarez stepped out of the light, took shape in the shadows, and Sylvie’s brain locked up, trying to decide if his presence was good or bad. It wasn’t his jurisdiction, and the cops behind him were his family. An incursion of Suarezes. She just didn’t know if they were coming to help her or to ensure she went down with Odalys.
Adelio’s face was grim, studying Jasmyn’s body, Trey’s; he pointed at the pool. “That Matteo?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But we got the killer for you.” She gestured toward Odalys. It felt oddly like a kid brandishing a finger painting, hoping for praise.
Odalys stroked her hair back, and said, “Please. You brought them here and killed them for involving your sister in their robberies.”
Should have killed her, left her body in the woods for the animals to eat, Sylvie thought. Odalys sounded too damn plausible. Much better than the scrap of story Sylvie had constructed, which consisted of pointing a finger at Odalys, muttering something about drugs to explain away the teens’ bodies, then refusing to say anything else. The Key Largo PD might have believed her. Adelio knew better.
“Oh, please,” Zoe said. “Like she’d bother. She makes me clean up my own messes.” She smiled shakily at the young policeman who knelt to untie her hand and ankles. “Besides, I didn’t do anything. It was all them. Some freaky type of pyramid scheme where they got paid for bringing in new would-be burglars. She’s all about the freaky initiation rites—”
Sylvie tuned her sister out, focusing instead on Suarez, on Demalion still testing his balance with as much success as a newborn colt.
“Nothing to add, Wright?” Suarez asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Demalion said. “The blonde’s your man. Sylvie tried to save our asses. Drugs and corpses. Freaky initiation rites, indeed. I blame TV. Too many shows about secret societies—”
Tried to save.
He might not have meant it, but it resonated like a body blow, reverberating in her bones. She held her hands out to Adelio; they looked worse than they were, bloody and shaking, clotting thickly where she’d collected dirt and salt in the wounds. “Can we do this someplace else?” she asked.
Suarez toed over a dark, soft splotch on the concrete; it flopped like a decayed frog—one of the Hands of Glory, gone to rot now that the animating ghost was gone.
“Tío—” Felipe Suarez said. “There’s no mark on the bodies.” He stopped talking as Adelio held up a decisive hand.
“If I send you home, will you come to the station tomorrow without fail to file your report? I’m already on a limb here.”
She shivered at the thought. Another report on her failure. To sit across from Lio, to look him in the eyes and tell him a lie about how she’d saved Wright . . .
“Lightner? We can do this at the station. Now, and all night long, if you’d prefer. You have a lawyer, right? I hear they’re expensive if you get them out of bed to tell them—”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Tomorrow.” So close to tears, she’d promise him anything if he’d just give her the time to put herself back together, to figure out if she was drowning in relief or guilt.
“What?” Felipe protested. “We’re not just letting them leave—”
“We can . . . trust her,” Adelio said. “She’ll be in.” The knowledge of her debt to him, that IOU he had brushed aside, lingered in his face. He was sure of her.
She wasn’t even sure of herself at the moment. What she’d done, what she’d wanted to happen. If Wright had been in charge of the body, would it have been Demalion who was taken by the general’s appetite? Had her decision to let Demalion steer the body made Wright vulnerable?
Adelio gestured them onward, let the light from the house lead her forward. Demalion came to stand at her side, listing badly; gritting her teeth, she provided a shoulder. She couldn’t look at him. Too much guilt. Too much relief. Too much.
Adelio spoke quietly to Zoe, who was rubbing feeling back into her legs. Trust me, Sylvie thought, with all that entailed. It made her want to cry. That simple phrase that augured forgiveness.
Felipe held his hand out to Zoe, but before their hands linked—cop’s square hand, glint of gold in the light, Zoe’s blood-shadowed fingers—Sylvie snapped, “Don’t touch her.”
He recoiled; Zoe said, “Nice. He was just helping me, since you couldn’t be bothered—” But the look in her eyes was all about hunger and disappointment, an old and ugly expression on her young face. Sylvie shuddered, took Demalion along for the ride. Zoe had defeated Strange, had been drenched in ghostly blood; had she absorbed something with it?
Demalion whispered, “Trouble?” in her ear, a warm breath, a concern he wanted to share with her. She jerked away from him. Wright was dead, but it was hard to remember that when Demalion was walking around in his skin. She couldn’t allow herself to forget, couldn’t just accept it with wholehearted gladness. Wright was dead.
25
Postmortem
THE OFFICERS KEPT PACE WITH HER, SHOOTING HER RESENTFUL glances. They’d no doubt prefer her cuffed and in the back of a cruiser. Instead, they backed their cruisers away from her truck, allowed her to squeeze both Demalion and Zoe into the cab with her, and drive off, as if she’d just been visiting a party that had gotten out of hand. She stopped at the side of the road, just out of sight of the driveway, and waited.
“What are we doing?” Zoe asked. “I want to go home.” There was a tremble in her voice. Even Ms. Brat had a limit, and she’d reached hers.
“You’re the reason we’re out here,” Sylvie said. “You don’t get to make demands.” Unfair, she knew. She’d have come for the other teens, come to deal with Odalys and the Hands no matter what, but she wasn’t feeling forgiving.
They waited in the silence until Sylvie saw what she had waited for. Some tight knot in her chest eased as the cruiser drove by, Odalys a prisoner in the backseat. With three wealthy families about to get the bad news, ready to look for someone to blame, jail was the most likely outcome.