Free Gods & Monsters by Lyn Benedict

hidden, not by the landscape, anyway. But if they retreated, they could miss any narrow window of opportunity that might present itself.
    “They look pretty damned entrenched to me. I’m not really in love with the idea of waiting until past dark to do my look around.”
    “You and me both,” Sylvie said. The idea of lingering out there, exposed in the tall grass, was bad enough in daylight. In the dark? “We’ve got to get closer.”
    “All right,” he said.
    He drew out Marco’s Hand and his lighter, and Sylvie said, “Wait, what?”
    “What’d you think I was going to do?” Wales asked. “Put on a suit and pretend to be a cop? Sorry. I got just one spell that’ll get us up close.”
    Sylvie growled. “You want me to ignore the fact that lighting up Marco is going to result in soul shock for people who already feel fragile? Some of those cops are cleaning up bits of their colleagues.”
    Wales shrugged. “Then you should have brought a different type of witch,” he said. “One who could send them off chasing a will-o’-the-wisp or give them the compulsion to go back to the station. But you pissed off the local witches, and now you’ve just got me.”
    You could have called on Zoe, Sylvie’s little dark voice whispered.
    That was enough to steel her spine. Bad enough her little sister had gotten a yen for practicing magic, worse that she showed talent enough she had to be trained, worst of all would be Sylvie’s encouraging her.
    Two types of pragmatism warred in her, and, finally, she just shook it all off. “You light Marco, and I go down, too. I’ve had enough soul shock for a while.”
    Wales frowned. “There is that.” He set Marco’s Hand down on the grass, fumbled through his pockets some more. Sylvie kept a close eye on the Hand of Glory. Last thing they needed was some random raccoon running off with it. Problem with nature. It was always lurking, always hungry.
    “Ah,” Wales said, drew out a pocketknife, a convenience-store special, the kind that lived in plastic bins beside the dollar lighters. “Blood’ll do it.”
    “Yours or mine?” she murmured, but the question was already answered. Wales dragged the thin, brittle blade across the heel of his hand, left a bloody smile slowly forming. He wiped the blade on his jeans, shoved it back into his pocket, then dipped his fingers into the blood.
    “Hold still,” he said, brought his fingers toward her face.
    She shied back. “Blood goes where exactly?”
    “On your skin,” Wales said. “So Marco knows you’re part of me.”
    “Marco was licking your blood earlier—”
    “He won’t lick this,” Wales said. “Trust me.”
    He touched her cheeks, two quick strokes and a squiggle, some symbol she couldn’t see; the temperature of her body, the heat of the day, was such that she didn’t feel the dampness at first, only smelled the old-penny copper of it.
    Then it started to trickle sluggishly down her skin, nothing like sweat, sticky and already going rank. She had to force herself to hold still for the next two touches, marking her forehead and chin. No point in doing this half-assed, and she really didn’t like the idea of having her soul munched on by a ghost who wasn’t all that fond of her.
    The last time she’d seen Marco—more than just his remnant Hand—he’d gotten in her face and told her he killed women like her.
    If there was anything that would break the deal between Wales and his pet ghost, it would probably be her: Recidivism was more than just a word, after all, and while alive, Marco had made a habit of killing women.
    She was trusting Wales on two fronts here—that he knew what he was doing and that his word was good—and that made her nearly as edgy as the hunt they were on. She watched him, her vision narrowing until the flick of the lighter, his long, pale fingers, and bony knuckles, the quick and tiny spill of sparks, got eaten by the wash of the Hand of Glory coming alight.
    The last time