Chapter 1

The comforting scents of oil, gasoline, and exhaust filled my lungs as I shoved through the office into the garage with the sticky note I had left myself the day before pinched between my fingers. I had a repo on the schedule tonight. Collection visits sucked. Always. At least Josie was home, and I wouldn't have to go it alone.

Since days tended to roll right into one another for me, I had to guess at tonight's mechanic like I hadn't been the one who drove him to work this morning. "Paco?"

Only the bottom half of him was visible from underneath a 1966 Ford Mustang convertible getting an oil change. The threadbare denim of his favorite ratty overalls and the scuffed leather of his steel-toe boots were more familiar to me than his face these days.

"No."

"Pascal?"

"Getting warmer."

"Pedro."

"Guilty as charged, mija."

The Suarez brothers were a fixture around The Body Shop, but it could be hard to tell them apart.

Mostly because their spirits took turns sharing my brother's body from noon until nine, Tuesday through Saturday.

"Tell Matty I'm driving down to Savannah." I checked my smartwatch. "I should be back in a few hours."

"Another repo?"

"Yeah." I puffed out my cheeks. "Ormewood."

"The Disney lady?"

The rental agreement provided her with a seven-day lease on the body of a (recently deceased) forty-year-old woman to spend quality time with her grandkids at the iconic family vacation destination. She had paid the extra fee to take the loaner out of state, a popular add-on, but her weeklong stay was up two days ago and counting.

"The tracker says she's on River Street." I had the app up on my phone. "I'll try my luck there first."

Why waste magic on dowsing for her location when a chip injected under the skin got the same results?

"I'll let Matty know." He resumed his work with a breath of laughter. "Take Josie with you."

"Planning on it."

Josie blended. She could be any pretty blonde girl on the street. Me? Not so much.

Fresh air swirled through the perpetual tangles in my long hair as I stepped through the side exit into the customer parking lot. Moonlight glinted off the errant strands that kept getting stuck in my lip balm. The color was a trendy silvery-blonde shade that rejected hair dye like water repelled oil. Even that wouldn't be so bad if my eyes weren't the greenish gray of moss creeping over mildewed tombstones. Or, let's be honest, if I didn't share a skin tone with Victorians who nibbled arsenic wafers to achieve translucence.

There were other differences between us, twenty pounds worth of them, but I was oddly proud of every single one. Growing up hungry, always scraping by, I developed benchmarks for success only someone with similar scars would recognize and fully appreciate.

No ribs showing. No pointy hipbones. No protruding clavicles.

The curvy life, if you asked me, was the good life.

"Mary," Josie called out from her perch on the hood of the love of my life.

The 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Nomad station wagon had been a birthday present from the Suarez brothers the year after they came to work for us. My brother wasn't much of a mechanic without their guidance, but they split the credit with him. With his body anyway.

Glossy Regal Turquoise paint cut to a gleaming India Ivory fluted roof. The matching bicolored leather interior still caused my heart to skip a beat. And it wasn't lost on me that the cargo area had room to fit a body. Or three.

"Why are you on my baby?" I resisted the urge to reach for a polishing cloth. "Do you want to die?"

"Eh." She slid until her bare feet hit dirt, grinning while I gritted my teeth. "You'd just bring me back."

The wagon had come with a pricy preservation spell on it, which vainly included the paint job, but still.

Little sisters were a menace.

"Necromancy won't work on you. You're a dryad." I hummed low in my throat. "Miracle Grow might."

"You're not half as clever as you think."

"Get in." I followed my own advice, climbing behind the wheel. "You track the repo, I'll drive."

"Have you talked to Matty today?" She caught my phone when I tossed it. "He's got a hot date tonight."

"I checked in with Pedro on my way out, but he didn't mention any plans."

Pascal was the more likely Suarez to tattle on their host. Pedro was more respectful of Matty's privacy.

The throaty rumble as I turned the key always brought a smile to my face.

"How does he even meet women?" She stuck out her bottom lip. "He's asleep all day."

"I always figured he was ducking into their dreams and planting the idea to meet him for a beer."

Oneiros spent their days as narcoleptic voyeurs. Or at least ours did. That was why our brother loaned his body to the Suarezes. He wasn't using it anyway. While they maintained our legitimate business, auto repair and maintenance, he drifted in and out of others' dreams, visiting the subconsciouses of unconscious minds.

"You give him more credit than I do." She banged her elbow cranking down her window. "Shit."

"Watch your mouth, Mary, or the sisters will eat you."

Not a joke. I saw it happen once. To this day, I tasted copper every time I swore out loud.

"Do you think the sisters at St. Mary's expected our names to become a running joke?"

"I doubt they thought about much beyond what seasonings enhanced our natural flavors."

The orphanage where we met, back in the eighties, had been established to accommodate the children of others who had no surviving family to take them in. The founders named their outreach St. Mary's Home for Children. Not because they were Catholic, but to blend in with similar charitable organizations run by humans. Their lack of humanity, and their total ignorance of the Catholic faith but dogged determination to fake it, led to some confusion when naming the babies entrusted to them in a likewise similar fashion.

And birthed an entire generation of Marys.

I got stuck with Mary Frances, which wasn't too bad. There were, however, a lot of us. I went by Frankie. It was the only way to scratch out an identity for myself. Then there was Mary Josephine. Josie. My little sister. And Mary Mathew. Matty. Our older brother who we treated like the baby of the family.

The three of us had been as thick as thieves since we were toddlers, so, yeah. Us Marys were family. The only one we had ever known. We even chose our own surname and made it legal after Josie came of age. Talbot. Sounds fancy, right?

"You're determined to ruin all our happy childhood memories, aren't you?"

Chills swept through me, raising gooseflesh down my arms, prickling up my spine to sting the base of my skull as I tamped down those happy memories. "If you're determined to act like we have any, then yes."

"Meanie." She oriented herself before studying the map. "So, Ormewood."

"Yes." I turned the radio on low. "Ormewood."

A text chime rang out on her cell, distracting her, and she flashed the screen a grin. "Armie says hello."

Armie Buchanan, restauranteur, family friend, and friends with benefits when it came to Josie.

"Tell him hello back." I could guess the answer based on her smile, but I asked anyway. "He's home?"

"Yep." She squirmed on the seat. "Finally."

Part of owning a successful restaurant was, apparently, getting wooed by investors who wanted to make his local brand a nationwide chain. He often disappeared for a few days here or there while entertaining offers. While he sat on the fence about a possible corporate buyout, he enjoyed the free meals enough to go and be wined and dined on their dime. I did not want to see those bills. Shifters could eat you out of business.

"Tell him you're on the clock." I thumped her ear. "He can send you dirty pics later."

"He doesn't always send me dirty pics." She stuck out her bottom lip. "Sometimes he just wants to talk."

"The nerve of him." I was tempted to thump her again. "How dare he want more than sex from you."

"You've seen his abs." She sighed dreamily. "What can he say that's more important than that?"

While he did have a nice body, a definite benefit to being a shifter, I doubted they would keep coming back to each other if sex was the only thing between them. "How he feels?"

"Six. Pack. Abs." She clawed her fingers and made a raking gesture. "Hard is how he feels."

"I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole."

"It's not a ten-foot pole so much as it's a ten-inch?—"

"Nope." I pointed to the phone in her lap. "Sign off and pay attention."

Five minutes of goodbye texts later, she put down her cell and picked up mine again.

"Huh." She crossed her long, tan legs. "Your corpse must be watching a taffy-pulling demo."

There were a few candy shops on River Street, two of them side by side, but I was betting Ormewood was visiting The Sweet Hereafter, which catered to the dusk-until-dawn crowd.

From our shop on the outskirts of Thunderbolt, Georgia, it took ten minutes to reach historic downtown Savannah, Georgia. Ormewood had spent that time shopping for treats near as we could tell. Unless she still had her grandkids with her, not the most ideal collection scenario, that was plenty of time to select her candies and go. Yet she was lingering.

"Loaner." I pinched Josie's thigh, relishing her yelp. "Not corpse."

The code was critical when speaking about the secondary business we ran out of The Body Shop, if I wanted to stay out of Atramentous, the prison where people like me got stuck in cells and forgotten.

No one, as far as I could tell, had talents like mine, so using them wasn't exactly illegal. Just ill-advised.

Even knowing the other drivers would hate me for it, I parked across two spots, guaranteeing I had room to maneuver if I had to make a quick exit. We rode down in an elevator that reeked of stale beer and hot wings then walked a block to the nearest cobbled ramp winding down to River Street.

"I can't make it on this bum leg." Josie rubbed her thigh with the heel of her palm. "Go on without me."

"Dork." I picked my way down, careful not to turn an ankle. "I didn't pinch you that hard."

"You have fingers like vises." She caught up to me. "That's what made you such a good pickpocket."

Nostalgia crept over me like a warm blanket, but I grunted, "How about you check on our repo?"

"How about you buy me a caramel apple when we get to the shop, and I forgive you?"

"You're my little sister." I considered tripping her for good measure. "I don't care if you forgive me."

"Liar, liar," she sing-songed, bending down to rest her head on my much lower shoulder.

The crowd wasn't too bad for this time of night, which could work for or against us. More people meant an easier time blending in until we cornered the repo, but it also gave us worse odds of catching her if she ran. And they always ran. That was why I lived in sneakers.

Wading through the throng, we were almost to Hereafter when a woman exited with three kids in tow.

"We never get this lucky." Josie jabbed me in the ribs. "We should buy lotto tickets on the way home."

A fresh prickle of unease stung my spine because she was right, but I called out, "Mrs. Ormewood."

The repo turned toward me wearing a polite, automatic smile that didn't bode well then dissolved into bloodcurdling screams that drew the eye of everyone on the street. Of all the ways I expected a repo to react when faced with collection, shrieking like a horror movie extra didn't rank in my top one hundred.

"Help." She gathered the kids around her. "Please, someone." She pointed at Josie. "She's got a gun."

"You've got to be kidding me," I muttered, stepping in front of my sister.

Half the people scattered, ducking into stores, but the other half closed ranks, eager to be heroes.

"I'm unarmed," Josie yelped from behind me. "Call the police. I'll submit to a search."

One of the nearest men dialed 911 on speakerphone. The second the operator finished asking what the nature of his emergency was, he blurted in a rush, "There's a woman on River Street waving a gun."

This situation was spinning out of control faster by the minute, and I didn't trust the rapid escalation.

Magic. Some type of agitation spell maybe? But who had cast it? Ormewood couldn't have done it.

"What gun?" I was screaming to be heard, but no one was listening. "There's no gun."

"She threatened to shoot my children if I didn't give her my wallet," Ormewood wailed, pitching her voice over the crowd for the operator's sake. "Don't just stand there. Grab her. Don't let her get away."

Grab her? Really? That was how she wanted to play this?

If Ormewood wasn't already dead, I would have wrung her neck for pulling this stunt.

"We'll wait here for the police." I held my arms out, shielding Josie. "They'll verify my sister is unarmed."

"How can we trust you?" A woman stepped forward, crackling her taser. "You have a gun."

"I thought y'all said she had the gun?" I rolled my eyes. "Get your stories straight."

"Please put that away." Josie grimaced. "Those things hurt like the dickens."

"If you're not a criminal," the woman shouted, vindicated, "how do you know what a taser feels like?"

"You're not helping your case," I hissed at Josie, wary of us getting pinned against a stone wall.

"Easy." She leaned over my shoulder. "My first girlfriend shot me with hers?—"

"See?" The woman wasted no time pulling the trigger. "She's a thug."

The thug in question hit her knees, jittering as electricity arced through her, then fell over sideways.

Fury spread ice down my arms into my hands, chilling my fingers until they were as cold as the grave.

Spirits moaned as my temper roused the dead beneath our feet, those lost souls begging me to let them rest in peace. An unearthly chill began frosting the glasses of the teenage boys standing across from me.

Breathe, Frankie. Don't make a bad situation worse.

The past few weeks, whenever anger or fear spun the dial on my emotions, my powers developed a mind of their own. Right now, I was in danger of spinning out of control to protect Josie.

With no one to compare myself to, and no gauge for how deep my magic went, I had no idea what type of growing pains to expect during my life.

"Are you crazy?" I stepped over her. "She didn't do anything wrong."

"She attacked that woman," a man yelled from the back of the crowd. "She has a knife."

Yep.

Definitely magic run amok.

There was no other excuse for the randomness of their baseless accusations.

"That's not—" I craned my neck to see the big mouth. "You can't even see her from back there."

"Don't let…her get…" Josie wheezed, curling around her middle, "…away."

Cursing under my breath, I whipped my head toward Ormewood.

Too late.

The repo was gone.

About to yank Josie to her feet and pursue, I snarled when thick fingers clamped over my upper arms.

"Hands off her if you want to keep them," a low voice growled from behind my captor and me.

Shivers dappled my skin, but I couldn't identify the speaker among the jostling looky-loos.

"Her friend tried to kidnap that woman's kids right off the street. She has a gun and a knife." The man tightened his fingers until they bit into my skin. "A brave citizen stopped her with a taser, but this one tried to run."

"Ha."I struggled in his grasp. "Like I would leave my sister at the mercy of you psychos."

"She quit twitching," the brave citizen noted, her thumb on the trigger. "Should I zap her again?"

"Hands," the low voice warned a second time. "Off."

The person restraining me vanished with a grunt, leaving a cold spot where he had been.

"Well, shit." Josie blinked up and up at a fixed point beyond my shoulder. "It's you."

Pivoting on my heel, I almost swallowed my tongue when I recognized my savior.

And noticed his Savannah Police Department uniform.

"It's me," Samuel Harrow agreed, challenging me to a staring contest I was determined not to lose.

Had his eyes always been that shade of faded denim? Like my favorite pair of jeans? The ones fraying at the knees?

"Don't mind me, the victim of a violent crime." Josie propped her elbow on the concrete then rested her cheek on her fist. "I'll just lie here in gum, stickers, spit, vomit, and pee while you two eye-fuck each other."

"Thanks," I murmured, distracted by the same unruly flop of golden-brown hair, how his sweat plastered the ends in a crosshatch across his forehead, practically begging me to brush the strands out of his eyes.

For the span of a single heartbeat, I struggled to remember why seeing him again was a bad thing.

"You shouldn't be in Savannah."

That snapped me out of my hormone-induced daze, and the old anger gripped my throat like a fist.

"Neither should you."

Last I heard, he was living in Seattle. Not that I listened out for news of him. That would be pathetic.

"Uncle Lyle got sick, lung cancer, so I transferred back home."

"I'm sorry to hear that." I thumped his badge for the simple joy of watching his teeth grind. "He must be proud of you for carrying on the Harrow family tradition."

"How about you?" His fingers curled into his palm as he resisted the urge to buff away the smudge. "Still running an illegal necromancy practice?"

"She works with Matty and me at The Body Shop." Josie got her feet under her. "It's all aboveboard."

Minus the voluntarily possessed mechanic and the secret basement where I kept the bodies. Er, loaners.

"Good." His lips flattened into an unforgiving line. "You're not a kid anymore, Frankie."

"Huh." I cupped my boobs, gave them a little jiggle. Fine. A big jiggle. "That would explain these."

"Jesus." He gripped my wrists then pinned my arms down by my sides. "Mature as ever."

"Are you going to hit her with one of your patented do better speeches?" Josie drawled. "Because we've all missed those. So much. Please do go on."

"She needed to grow up and take responsibility for her actions before she landed herself behind bars. Or face-down in a ditch. Maybe if you or Matty made her quit while she was ahead instead of hiding behind your Marys bullshit, I wouldn't have had to—" He shut his eyes, exhaled. He hadn't let go, and his touch burned through my skin to brand his fingerprints onto my bones. "What really happened here?"

"Your guess is as good as ours," she said cheerfully, since my brain quit working after he touched me.

A scream rang out, and Harrow didn't hesitate. He ran straight toward it. But he forgot to let me go first. He dragged me across River Street into one of the slammed parking lots. His fingers spasmed, opening at his first good look at the scene.

The crime scene.

Ormewood sat with her back against a tire, her neck bent forward, chin resting on her chest.

Her spirit was gone. Only the loaner was left behind. The kids were nowhere in sight.

Good thing, too, since Ormewood had slashed open a man's throat and left him to bleed out beside her.

Human police couldn't identify the body. Thank God. The spells wrapping the loaner guaranteed any tests from fingerprints to DNA would return inconclusive. A layer of glamour blurred the features, preventing anyone from identifying her and allowing lessees to see what they wanted to see in the face of a loaner.

Even those precautions might not be enough to fool a witch if this very public debacle got noticed by one of the paranormal law enforcement agencies, of which there were dozens. Enough for every paranormal faction to be policed by their own and then some.

If one of those agencies caught wind of this, I might as well put my affairs in order.

"Wait here," Harrow tossed over his shoulder as he waded into the fray. "I'm not done with you."

Soft fingers slid into my hand, drawing me backward as soon as he turned away.

"Come on," Josie whispered after I faded behind the first row of gawkers.

A few more steps, and I cleared the crowd. Then we were powerwalking up the ramp onto Bay Street.

Only after we climbed in the wagon, and its steady purr got to work settling my nerves, did it hit me.

"Ormewood is dead."

"Technically, she was already dead."

"You know what I mean." I rested my forehead on the steering wheel. "She killed someone."

"Yeah." Josie tugged on her ear. "And Samuel is back."

"Samuel is gone." I needed her to draw hard lines to keep mine from blurring. "Harrow is back."

The Samuel I first met, back when he was a sulky teen volunteering with his uncle at the food pantry we hit in times when even the roaches gave up on finding crumbs in our apartment, was dead to me. He had buried our past long before he left for Seattle.

And if I didn't find out how and why Ormewood had killed that man, he just might bury me next.