Ghosts & Echoes by Lyn Benedict Read Free Book Online Page A

away; she could point him there, let him barter a few chores for a bed, but . . . he was her client. Her responsibility.
    An engine cut off nearby, a car stopping in the lot. She got the binoculars back up, scanned the area. Cars had been passing by all night, a trickle of steady sound, as familiar a backdrop as the surf, but they hadn’t stopped.
    Doors shut severally; feet pattered over asphalt, casual, no attempt to mask the sound. Sylvie couldn’t pinpoint the direction, couldn’t find them in the green glow of the binocs. In the dark, by the sea, sound echoed in as many ripples as the waves.
    “The convenience store up the street?” Wright said, slumped low again, sinking into shadows. His voice was a bare murmur, aware of how sound could carry, could betray their watching eyes with a single misplaced word. “Cigarette run?”
    “Not enough chatter,” Sylvie said, leaning close to put her words directly in his ear. “I counted four doors. Who rides that many in a car these days?” She had an idea, wanted to see what he came up with.
    “Bar-hoppers, teenagers, gangs, and thieves,” Wright said, no hesitation at all. “There a bar nearby?”
    “It’s the beach,” Sylvie said. “They grow spontaneously. But we would have heard a beach party before now.”
    “Nighttime swimming? Popular with the teens?”
    “Pools, everywhere. And the coast here? Sharky.”
    Wright grinned, teeth white in the dim confines of the truck, in the slope of shadow he’d made his own. “So we got ourselves something interesting to check out.”

4
    Will-o’-the-Wisp
    SYLVIE SHIFTED IN HER SEAT, LISTENING FOR THE MIGHT-BE-BURGLARS’ footsteps, trying to pick out their direction, though really, the mall was the only thing around. She found time to say, “No,” to Wright’s hopeful grin. “I have something to check out. You . . . guard the truck.”
    “Sylvie,” Wright said, “no one wants this truck. I’m broke and on foot, and I don’t want this truck.”
    “Shh.” She put her hand up, signaling silence. The echoes were consolidating, becoming distinct. That meant they were close. Sylvie peered over his shoulder and spotted them by movement. Soft-edged forms, their shapes blurred by motion and the diffuse trickle-down glow of the distant streetlamp. She counted five, maybe six, maybe four—they wavered and bled together, little knots of darkness walking companionably close for all their silence. Heading for the mall.
    “Not a gang,” she said, half to herself, half-soliciting Wright’s opinion. “They’re grouped too close for machismo.”
    Wright nodded. “So, you gonna call the cops?”
    “And say what? No, I’m going to watch.” She raised the binoculars again, twisted the zoom, trying to get a better look. They were all slim figures, winnowed by shadow, but the way they walked—at least one of them, she thought, was a girl.
    They stopped near the mall, maddeningly just outside the pool of light at the front entrance, turned inward toward each other in a close circle, shielding themselves from the sea wind.
    “Cigarette break, y’think?” Wright asked, his hand straying to his own pack.
    “Nicotine nerve? Seems unlikely,” Sylvie said. “The burglars I’m looking for have no reason to be nervous.” She got why he thought that—something about the way they hunched their shoulders together, bent over their hands, suggested cigarettes lit against the wind. But it also might be something magical, she realized. She could count them now, four slight figures with their backs to each point of the compass: north, south, east, west. Forget thirteen; that was for covens more interested in politics and in having a ready pool of sacrificial volunteers: For a lot of magics, all you needed were enough people to call the compass.
    She put a hand on Wright’s shoulder, pushed him back against the seat; he kept leaning forward, trying to get a look on his own, and interfering with her view. “My case,” she