Chapter 2

H arrow settled into the client chair opposite mine while I flipped on lights and got ready for the day. The short reprieve before sitting across the desk from him gave me precious minutes to decide how to frame the information he required to do his job without giving away more details than necessary about what happened below The Body Shop.

"You're nervous."

"Ha." I wiped my damp palms on my pants where he couldn't see. "You wish you made me nervous."

Wood groaned as he shifted his weight, and I composed myself before turning to face him.

"Chew your thumbnail any lower, and you'll convert to cannibalism."

"I haven't bitten my nails in…" I startled to find my thumb denting my bottom lip. "Oh."

"I came on strong earlier." He wiped a hand over his mouth. "I apologize if I made you uncomfortable."

"No worries." I used that gust of bravado to sail into my chair. "I appreciate your time."

An awkward silence fell between us where we both avoided looking at one another.

"So." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. "Tell me about your case."

"A spirit visited me last night." I mimicked his businesslike tone. "His name is Leonard Collins. His granddaughter, Audrey, is missing. He believes she was kidnapped, but there's no proof. She lost her mom, never had a dad, and skipped out on her foster parents when they started talking about adoption. She's been living on the streets for months with only her grandfather's spirit watching over her. But he's got time limits. Even if he spends from dusk until dawn with her, she's still vulnerable during the day."

"The people who took her must think she won't be missed, that she's an ideal victim."

That was what Collins told me when he pleaded with me to find her. That was what forced me to say yes when I had no business agreeing to a request so far outside my comfort zone. But if I didn't try, who else would put in the effort? Without parents or a home, she had no one to miss her, to worry about her.

Us Marys shared a lot in common with Audrey. Except we had each other. This girl? She had no one.

No one with a pulse anyway.

For those who couldn't see or hear spirits, it amounted to the same thing.

"Her name is Audrey Collins?" He pulled out his phone and a stylus. "Do you have her mother's name?"

"Yes. Audrey Collins. Her mother was Leonard's daughter. Her name was Marsha Collins."

"Okay." He wrote down his notes. "How about the fosters' names?"

"Holly and Dan Houwaard."

"Address?" One corner of his mouth twitched. "Phone number?"

Heat spilled into my cheeks as I squared my shoulders. "Are you laughing at me?"

"Laughing? No. Smiling? Yes." He tapped his stylus. "You're on a roll. Don't stop now."

All I could figure was he found it amusing for a former con artist such as myself to try thinking like a cop.

"I should have called Carter," I grumbled, aware his redcap training officer wasn't an option until after she detoxed from getting a small taste of my blood. "I could have bought her help with cheddar puffs."

"I sent her a care package full of them last week." His gaze went distant. "She's due back in a few days."

"Oh?" A lump wedged in my throat. "And is she still feeling…murderous…toward me?"

"There's only one way to find out."

As my mouth dropped open and hung there, he released a rusty chuckle while savoring my shock.

"Do you honestly think I would let her anywhere near you if she wasn't cured?"

"I don't know." I studied his familiar and yet unfamiliar face. "You tell me."

"You've seen the lengths I'll go to for you." His voice turned hoarse. "Carter has her urges under control."

Uncertain if he meant breaking up with me when we were young, his moving to Seattle to put the entire country between us, or coming to my rescue the night he lost his only family to his own bullet, I couldn't find words to make any of that better or easier for him. So, like a coward, I focused on the second half of his sentence and slapped a smile on my face to mask the other competing emotions.

"Are we talking blood or cheddar puffs?"

"Definitely the former." He took the out he was given. "The latter is what keeps her sane."

"I suspect you and I have very different ideas of what qualifies as sanity."

A shadow crossed his features, and he dipped his head, burdened with heavy thoughts.

Too late, I bit my tongue, but there was no salvaging the mood. I had to forge ahead. Or pretend to go to the little necromancer's room then slip out the back door, drive to Maine, and start a new life under an assumed name. I could always send for my siblings later, right?

"I have all I need to get started on locating Audrey." He rose from his chair slowly, eyes on me, giving me a chance to voice some magical combination of words that would convince him to stay. "I'll call after I've dug around some, okay?" He pushed open the door, breathing in the fresh air. "It was good seeing you."

From the direction of his gaze, and a familiar indignant squawk, I wasn't sure if he meant me…or Badb.

The drive to Bonaventure that night left me melancholy for reasons I didn't want to examine too closely. Sure, I rocked out with Badb and Pascal, I smiled and I laughed, but a cold stone had settled in my belly. I couldn't get Harrow out of my head since he left, and not for lack of trying. I wished I could rewind time. I would take back the desperate call and let him return to a life that didn't include me.

Learning the truth might have changed my perspective of him, of our tangled past, but he had lived with the knowledge all these years. It no longer held sway over him. He had moved on, and I should have too.

All the what-ifs and might-have-beens in the world couldn't fix us. Breaks that weren't set properly don't heal right. And losing Lyle? That had shattered Harrow. To be the one who killed him? Yeah. Harrow was better off sticking to Savannah while I kept to its outskirts. Maybe I would get lucky and he would sell his inheritance—his childhood home and cars and whatever else—then return to Seattle for good.

But that was selfish thinking. He had already given up his hometown for me once. I would never ask that of him. I didn't have the right, though he wouldn't see it that way. He was free to pursue his life any way he chose. He could embrace his witch heritage without shame, settle down without harsh judgment on who he chose to love, fully come into himself without criticism or prejudices tearing him down.

"You still care about him, huh?"

Pascal, unable to quit meddling, another trait he had in common with Matty, eyed me with pity.

"Hard not to when you have a past like ours."

"No matter his reasons, no matter the circumstances, he chose to leave."

I hummed in answer, not ready to explain Harrow had been given two bad choices.

Stay with me, knowing Lyle wouldn't have stopped until I was behind bars, or let me go, knowing I would hate him for breaking my heart. He would have lost me either way. His sacrifice was for me. Not himself.

"That's the sound of you ignoring my sage wisdom." A sigh whistled between his teeth. "I know that you see me as I was —young and delicious—but I'm older than you. That makes me wiser. You should listen."

"Wait." I tapped the brakes to let a possum hustle across the road. "Did you just call yourself delicious?"

"More than one girl wanted to take a bite out of?—"

"TMI." I jerked to a full stop to jar him into shutting his mouth. "You're like a brother to me."

"That's because I am your brother."

Smiling, as he no doubt meant for me to, I made the final turn into the parking lot at Bonaventure.

Through the gates, the spirits mingled with their neighbors, sat on blankets overlooking the river, and… I waved as one of my transient friends flagged me down with the red silk bag hanging off her dainty wrist.

Stalking over with a sultry roll of her hips, Daisy Mae Wainwright cut a figure in her red sequined gown. I only knew the color because she had described it, in great detail, the first night we met. The slinky fabric hugged her curves, and her muscular leg flashed with every hurried step as she rushed through the gate.

"Looks like you're coming in." Pascal snickered as he offered me his hand. "You can be my date."

Spurred on by his mischievous grin, I reached over and pressed the heel of my palm to Matty's forehead, exorcising Pascal with a gentleness perfected through long practice and mutual consent.

A glowing blue figure of a man in his midtwenties separated from Matty with a stretch and slid outside.

Yawning, Matty snuggled into the seat and was soon fast asleep, which left me alone to face Daisy Mae.

"Frankie." She mimed tapping on my glass. "Tell me the rumors are true."

"Depends on the rumors."

"That fine hunk of man on your arm yesterday is roaming the afterlife."

Yesterday? Not quite. That had been weeks ago.

Spirits don't have the best concept of time unless they stuck to a routine like the Suarez brothers. But in all my time working with spirits, in Georgia and in New Orleans, Louisiana, I hadn't met another one—let alone three others—determined to earn a living long after their deaths. Most spirits' unfinished business didn't involve, well, business .

"He's not dead." I almost growled the words, willing myself to believe them. "He's just…not here."

That line was getting a lot of use. I ought to figure out a better excuse if I was going to use it so often.

"Oh well." She pushed her boobs up then pulled her neckline down. "Can't blame a girl for hoping."

"Daisy Mae." Pascal took her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles. "You're lovely as always."

"And you're sweet enough to give me a toothache." She pinched his cheek. "Good thing I always brush."

"Dance with me?" He reeled her against his chest. "They're playing our song."

With songwriter Johnny Mercer in residence, music was always playing somewhere in Bonaventure.

As Pascal twirled her away, he jerked his chin toward the wagon, giving me permission to leave.

A stroll through the cemetery would be nice, but I could always come back later without Matty.

After climbing in the wagon and pointing her toward home, I nudged my brother with my elbow.

"Wake up, lazybones." I jabbed him again. "Time to rise and shine."

"If you love someone—" he scooted down in his seat, "—let them sleep."

"Where's the fun in that?"

"Okay, okay." He stretched as much as he could where he had fallen against the door. "What's up?"

"Does something have to be up for me to want my darling brother's company?"

Though he was the oldest, Josie and I treated him like the baby of the family.

"Darling?" He pushed upright, twisting to face me. "Now I'm wide awake."

Figuring he was the more levelheaded of my siblings, and the one burdened with the knowledge Harrow had visited me bright and early this morning, I decided to come clean about what I was doing before he found out on his own. And then skipped off to tattle on me to Josie.

"Please don't tell me you're becoming one of those ghost whisperers who goes around solving crimes for the dead."

"Um…"

"How cliché would that be?" He scoffed at the very idea. "Every movie and TV show goes that route."

"Well…"

"Once you open that door, there's no going back. Spirits would be lining up for blocks for a chance to tell you their sob stories. You'd never know another moment's peace. You whole life would be…" He jerked his head toward me. "Mary, no. Tell me you didn't. Please. You have more sense than that."

"The guy's granddaughter is missing." I kept my chin angled away from him. "She has no family and?—"

"—she lives on the streets." His skin blotched from rubbing his face. "That's how this ghost hooked you."

"Us Marys had each other. That's how we survived. She has no one. Without my help, she won't be so lucky."

"Our survival had nothing to do with luck. You busted your ass—and risked your life every single day—to keep us from starving. We even had a roof over our heads. Most of the time. Maybe not during the warmer months, but always in winter."

Impossible to tell from looking at him, but he must wear rose-colored glasses stacked ten pairs deep.

"It's not like you guys were hand-fed grapes and fanned with palm fronds while I slaved in a salt mine."

"Nothing Josie and I brought in compared to what you earned with your necromancy."

"It's not your fault I have a niche talent."

Or that I had, more than once, traded spirits for their former banking credentials or safe combinations.

Any items I helped myself to, or cash I transferred to one of my shell accounts, had belonged to the spirits who promised me recompense prior to their deaths. However —this was the moral gray area—the assets had since been transferred to a beneficiary via inheritance.

I was a thief. Plain and simple. Nothing to be proud of.

That didn't mean I wouldn't do it over again for my family.

Matty picked at a grease stain on his thigh. "Promise you won't get mad if I ask you something?"

"The fact you prefaced a question with a question almost guarantees I will, but don't let that stop you."

"Are you sure you didn't take a case as an excuse to reach out to Harrow?"

"No." I coasted into the shop's parking lot. "I didn't do it for him."

"If you're sure…" He gripped his door handle. "I just don't want you to get hurt again."

As I let myself out, a bolt of lightning struck the tree across the road with a deafening crack .

A cold sweat glazed my spine as I surveyed the destruction, the sudden thud of my heart deafening.

"Fuck." Matty took the word right out of my mouth. "Did you see that?"

"I didn't almost wet my pants for nothing, if that's what you're asking."

"Call the fire department." Matty ran past me. "I'll grab the hose."

Flames erupted from the trunk, engulfing the leaves, consuming it whole.

And for just a second, I swore the summoning token Kierce branded into my skin, the tattoo-like rendition of Badb on my forearm, burned too.

Wailing filled my ears, but I hadn't made the call yet. It wasn't a siren. It sounded more like…

Oh God.

Josie.