“Business courtesy between two entrepreneurs?”
“You haven’t said what it is you do,” Odalys said. She swayed to her seat, and Sylvie bit back the urge to tell the woman to turn off the glamour.
“I’m a troubleshooter,” Sylvie said. “And I’ve got some trouble I’m hoping you can help me with.”
Sitting in this quiet room with Odalys felt oddly familiar. Odalys was a witch in the same mold as Val Cassavetes. Elegant, personable, superior. Sylvie tucked her grubby sneakers beneath the chair. At least with Val, Sylvie had had years of acquaintance to offset the disparity in their priorities.
“Well,” Odalys said. “Are you going to tell me what evil magic you’re afflicted with, or are you waiting to see if your cop can sell a love potion to the high-school crowd? They’ll be in fairly soon.”
Sylvie set the briefcase on the oriental carpet between them, pried up the tape, and opened the latch. “I need two things. One, to make these safe, inert. Two, to figure out who might have sold them.”
There was a
screech
—Odalys shoving her chair back off the carpet, her poise stripped from her. “Oh, that’s . . . disgusting. Close it at once.”
“I agree.”
“Just . . . close it!”
Odalys was out of the chair, her hand at her throat as if her breath had lodged itself there.
Sylvie tipped the lid shut, aggravated.
Val
wouldn’t have spooked so easily.
“Damn you,” Odalys said. She rummaged through a basket, shoulders tight, and yanked out a long length of embroidered white silk. “Those kinds of things stain. Places and souls. I’ll have to cleanse the entire shop once you’ve gone.” She tossed the silk at Sylvie; it fluttered and fell short, drifting to the floor with a hissed whisper. “Cover that up.”
Sylvie draped the silk over the briefcase. “Sorry,” she said. Apology wasn’t her usual style, but this interaction was still new enough it could end abruptly and unsatisfactorily; Sylvie needed a witch on her team.
Odalys waved a hand; tiny diamonds in her bracelet caught the light and flashed. “Better back here than in the storefront, I suppose. Small mercies. That silk will isolate the damage.”
“Thanks,” Sylvie said.
“It’s also a hundred and fifty dollars.”
Sylvie sighed. “Why am I not surprised?”
The bell in the main store rang, followed by the laughter of young girls, and Odalys’s attention veered toward it.
Wright’s voice welcomed them, started another round of giggles, and Odalys sighed. “I’ll be right back.”
She slid the door back and disappeared. Sylvie waited until she heard Odalys catching the girls’ attention with practiced ease, then she rose and gave in to temptation.
Careful,
the little dark voice urged.
Witches protect their secrets well.
Sylvie agreed, but there wasn’t much help for it. She chose to trust in her sketchy immunity to magic, trust in her instinct and ability to withdraw before a spell could touch her at all.
She thought dryly she might as well milk what she could out of Lilith’s legacy. Something more useful than the bad temper, inability to shut up in the face of danger, and a stubborn streak the proverbial mile wide.
The baskets were stacked seven high, the tallest accessible by step stool; the rows were ten baskets wide. Seventy baskets and just a few minutes to make her assessment of Odalys. She wanted to know the caliber of the witch she was asking for aid. Odalys rang . . . false to her. According to Tatya, the woman was powerful, and Sylvie had seen that she was clever enough. Still, she seemed more like a retailer than a witch. Only her instant recognition of the Hands and the shield cloth argued anything more.
Sylvie selected the basket least likely to be reached for, trusting that the candles, jewelry, books—things that the shop ran out of most often—would be the most easily accessible. She used the step stool, picked the basket in the darkest, higher corner, rested her hand on the edge of it gingerly. It didn’t feel like anything but clean wicker. Despite its position, it was dust-free. More obsessive cleaning? Or proof that this basket was used frequently despite the awkward placement?
The basket, drawn out carefully, yielded evidence that Odalys was more witchy than she let on. The basket revealed narrow vials of what looked like clumpy dirt and cloth dolls. It wasn’t a smoking gun, but the two items in conjunction suggested the darker sides of magic. If it were grave dirt, it argued some control over death, though that could be benign—an abjuration against an evil spirit—or something more malign—the base for a curse.
The poppets—Sylvie picked one up, studied the blank face, the undone seam where fingernails, hair, or teeth could be inserted—were more worrying. Sylvie didn’t know any nice spells that involved poppets; generally, beneficent spells were worked directly on the targeted person. Only black-magic spellcasters felt the need for a proxy. Too afraid to face their enemies.
Then again, as she was quick to acknowledge, she didn’t know all that many spells.
The rasp of the door sliding back alerted her, too late to do more than push the basket back into place, no time to regain her seat.
Odalys looked at her without surprise. “Curiosity satisfied? I am a witch, but I’m also a sensible one. Your problems are more than I want to be involved with. So you can take your cop and your disgusting artifacts and find someone else to bother. There’s a woman called Cassavetes. I hear she’s the one to go to if you have magical problems.”
Sylvie said, “She’s otherwise occupied. You’re it, I’m afraid. Going to have to step out of your comfort zone and deal with me.”
“But I,” Odalys said archly, “am a good witch. What makes you think I can even do what you want?”
“Part of being a good guy is knowing how to put the bad ones in their place. Besides, you sell the black, so you don’t get to be all holier than thou.”
Odalys laughed, a short, brittle thing. “It’s funny. Sad but funny. I offer ways to improve lives, help find happiness, harness luck, love. But that’s not what they ask me for. I might be a witch, but I’m a businesswoman first. I meet demand.”
“So that makes it okay for you to sell harmful—”
“No,” Odalys said. “Look again. Those dolls are mass-produced crap, no more magical than any Barbie. I sell the promise of black magic, not the actuality. It’s all fakes. Magic’s a tricky thing; it can turn on the user.”
“Tell me about it,” Sylvie said.
“If I did the harm people wished me to, even secondhand, I’d be concerned for the state of my soul.”
“So you sell fakes—”
“I prefer to think of them as frustration buttons. Mostly harmless ways for people to vent their ill will. The vast majority of my clients have no ability at all. They might as well be trying to run a car on sugar water.”
“And those with talent?” Sylvie shook her head. “Even Barbies will work for them. For them, intent and information is enough.”
“Still likely to be less than ideal. Broken legs instead of broken necks. Financial dismay instead of utter bankruptcy.”
“And that has no effect on your soul?” Sylvie asked.
Odalys stiffened. “I never claimed I was lily-white. But intent, as you noted, counts for a lot, and my intentions are good. Here—to prove it. See this?” She finessed a stone pendant on a long chain out of a tangle of similar jewelry. It didn’t look like much, a rounded piece of granite with a hole through it. “For your cop with the ghost problem. Or hadn’t you noticed it?”
“I noticed.” That Odalys noticed, too, made Sylvie more determined that the woman was the power Tatya said she was; she’d seen Wright through the window, interacted with him briefly, and yet had diagnosed him successfully. “What’s the pendant for, and what’ll it cost me?”
Odalys said, “You lack grace.”
Sylvie ignored the odd sting that caused her. “I also lack answers.”
Odalys sighed. “It’s a pendant to drive back the dead. He’s overshadowed, not actually that uncommon for a policeman. Too much dealing with victims. It’s harmless to the living.”
“What about a location spell? Can you do them? I need to find my sister. Urgently.”
Odalys stepped away, letting the pendant dangle. “Everything seems urgent with you. Perhaps you could benefit from a tranquility candle. Let you reassess what’s really vital.”
“By the time it gets to me, it’s
all
vital,” she said. “People don’t come to me for easy fixes. Will you do a location spell for me or not?”
“Not,” Odalys said. “I don’t trust you. Too hungry for things to be done your way. Too . . . dark-natured. If I failed, you’d hold it against me, and I don’t want enemies.”
“You’re sure as hell not making me your friend,” Sylvie said. “So you won’t help me with the Hands—”
“Can’t,” Odalys said. “Not won’t. Won’t help you with the location spell.”
Wright pressed the screen back, stuck his head in. “Shadows, any luck? Only we’re gonna need to feed the meter. . . .”
“Another minute,” Sylvie said.
She turned back to find Odalys putting a few more feet between them, her expression gone flat. “Shadows? Sylvie Lightner of Shadows Inquiries? You’re
that
investigator?”
“Does that change your mind?”
“Makes me more convinced that I am not the person to help you.”
Sylvie studied the woman; Odalys raised her chin and stared back.
Some people could be bullied with impunity. Some people couldn’t. A witch was one of them, especially when Sylvie didn’t know enough about magic. Odalys could say she’d help, do the spells deliberately wrong, and Sylvie wouldn’t know. At best, the spells would fail. At worst, they might hurt her, Wright, Zoe.
As much as it galled, Sylvie had to cede this round to Odalys. “Can you at least give me an idea of who might have made the Hands? If people aren’t buying the black magic from you, where are they going? You’re all about the good karma—think how good it will be to get a dangerous seller off the street. Wouldn’t hurt your business any, either.”
Odalys’s eyes flashed, bright blue and angry, but then the anger shaded to calculation. “You won’t say who told you?”
“Discount the scarf fifty percent, and I never even heard of you.” Sylvie would pay the woman; the price was worth it to keep the Hands corralled—especially if they were reaching out toward Wright’s dreams—but she didn’t have to let Odalys know that.
“I don’t care about that,” she said. “This isn’t about business. It’s about trouble. I don’t want any. And he’s bad news.”
“He?” Sylvie said. Her interest, fading while Odalys had prattled on about self-interest, spiked again. “Who’s he?”
“Someone newer to town than me,” she said. “New enough your ladies haven’t heard of him yet. Wales, the Ghoul. Washed in out of Texas. Rumor says he carts around cadavers the way drug dealers carry guns, and for similar purposes. Weapons out of human flesh. The Hands of Glory? They’re his specialty.”
15
Trouble, Trouble
“SPECIALTY?” SYLVIE ECHOED. HER VOICE WAS SOFT, MUFFLED BY THE wall shelves of wicker baskets, by the soft rug on the floor, by the fact that even after ten-odd years dealing with the
Magicus Mundi
, she could still be shocked and repelled.
Black magic was bad enough, but it was familiar to her. She’d seen it in Troilus Cassavetes, who used voodoo to rule his drug running in South Miami. She’d seen it in Gabriel Brand, who’d used false lycanthropy to slaughter his enemies. And she’d seen it far more often than she liked in the
Maudit
society, the organization of sorcerers that played every type of nasty magical trick possible. But someone who specialized in a single black skill—the Hands of Glory—who profited on murder, who cultured malevolence—it just made her despair.
Odalys shook her head, a clear “I don’t want to talk about it,” and headed back into the main shop.
Sylvie followed, her own distaste for the subject gone in the urge to push Odalys on it. “An address would be nice.”
Wright twitched away from his scrutiny of a shelf full of spice jars, his eyes seeking Sylvie’s, asking a wordless question. Sylvie’s stomach roiled. She hadn’t asked Odalys a single thing about Wright’s problem; the woman had diagnosed it herself, proffered aid without being asked, and Sylvie had done nothing. Asked nothing. Hadn’t even accepted the small help Odalys had offered. Caught up in her worries about Zoe, she was neglecting her client.
Or at least, so she excused it to herself.
You don’t want her help. You want to keep Demalion here,
the little dark voice whispered.
“Don’t worry, darling,” Odalys said. “I’ve got help for your little problem.” She held the pendant out; in the bright sunlight, the stone glittered as it spun, age-smoothed stone with shiny flecks and a hole through the center of it. “Consider it your pay for watching the shop.”
He reached out, as cautious as a child approaching a strange dog. At the last, he pulled back. “No,” he said. He put his hands behind his back, his expression closing off into distaste, a little fear. Sylvie frowned. Was it Wright’s fear? Or Demalion’s?
“It’s good for what ails you,” Odalys said. “It’s a fragment of a tombstone from sacred ground.”
“I hope no one’s missing it,” Sylvie said. Her fingers itched to take it away from her, keep it away from Wright.
“It’s old,” Odalys said. “Broke off naturally. I swear.” Her lips curled, a smile that said she didn’t care whether Sylvie believed her or not. “It
will
help you. Why do you think we mark graves with stones? Our ancestors remembered. To keep the dead from rising. Body or spirit. We dress it up with religion and respect, but gravestones are all about fear. About holding down the dead.”
Wright’s hands fell slack by his side, and Odalys reached forward, folded his long fingers around the stone. “Spill a little blood to initialize it, rub it in, and let it hang over your heart. It’ll drive away any revenant spirit.”