Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel (26 page)

“And they took your sister? Why? Leverage against you?” Said in the weary tones of a cynical rich kid. The Fernandezes, Sylvie recalled, had spent nearly two years in Mexico City, where kidnappings were common.

“I don’t pretend to know how they think, if they even do. But I have to—”

“I get it,” Lupe said. “She’s your sister. She’s more important than me. I’m just a—”

“Lupe, lock it down,” Sylvie interrupted. The thread-picking had given way to gouging, and the skin along her shoulders was … sliding around like oil on water. “Or go sit in the panic room.”

Lupe sucked in her breath, let it out on a growl that she seemed surprised to hear. “All right.” She bolted for the panic room, Sylvie hot on her heels, and she got the door closed, just as Lupe went to her knees.

“Lock yourself in!” Sylvie said. Hoped Lupe would listen. Hoped her animal shape couldn’t learn how to deal
with locks. She waited until she heard the hiss and thunk of heavy bolts sliding into place, then went to find the rest of her ragtag crew, with worry a bitter taste in her mouth.

Alex dithered in the hall as she approached. “You’re back? I can stop watching?”

“Yeah,” Sylvie said.

“Good.” Alex darted for the nearest bathroom. “Four cups of coffee!”

“Bring me some!” Sylvie yelled after her, then went in to talk to the rogue ISI.

Demalion looked up as she entered, grinned. “Nice pants.”

“Shut up,” she said. “They’ll stretch. Tell me about Graves.”

An unearthly howl resonated through the house, and Marah jerked for her gun. “What the hell is that?”

“Client,” Sylvie said. “Sit down. Graves, remember?”

“Can’t forget that bastard,” Marah said. “He’s mine to kill, you get it? Don’t make this a fight.”

“Saves me the trouble,” Sylvie said, “and the jail time. Go for it.”

Demalion shook his head but didn’t even make a pro forma protest. Guess turning traitor was what it took to get the okay from Demalion on planning murder.

“He was working out of Dallas,” Demalion said, “but they were the first hit.”

“So we hear,” Sylvie said. “Do we know that it’s true? If Graves is behind the killing, what better way to start by preemptively giving his people an alibi. Do we actually know they’re dead?”

Alex wandered back into the room, passed a steaming mug to Sylvie, who slurped at it, first for need, then for real appreciation. Rich friends. Excellent coffee.

“I’ve been looking into it. There are definitely bodies that hit the Dallas morgue,” Alex said. “Gas leak was the story put out. Death by asphyxiation. Or is it suffocation in that case? Whatever. There are a lot of creature stories about things that steal breath. So
something
happened.”

“Maybe it was a test sample,” Marah asked. “Graves is capable of that.”

Sylvie looked to Demalion. He said, “I can’t confirm that. I have serious doubts that anyone psychotic enough to kill his own men in an experiment would be recruited in the first place, much less rise through the ranks.”

Marah’s jaw ticced. Rage flashed through her eyes. Her fist clenched; the Cain mark seemed to undulate over her flesh. Then she reached out and patted Demalion’s cheek. “So sweetly naïve.”

“Hey,” Sylvie protested. “Watch your tone.”

Marah shrugged. “Look, I know Graves. I worked for him. And yeah, he knows how to play the game. Knows how to keep himself looking clean. But he’s not. He’s the monster-catcher. He kills them. Experiments on them. Sylvie. You and I know killing. It gets easier each time. And
we’re
not zealots.”

“Fair enough,” Sylvie said.

Demalion looked like he might protest, and she dropped a hand on his thigh. A quiet
not now
. She had things she wanted to discuss, but Marah was exuding a hectic, violent cheer that made Sylvie think of ticking bombs. In the back of the house, Lupe howled and whined, quieter now.

Alex said, “You need plane tickets?”

“For the morning,” Sylvie said.

“Now,” Marah said.

“No,” Sylvie said. “You’ve invited yourself along. I can’t say I’m sorry, but that doesn’t put you in charge, Marah. We are not rushing this. The one thing we all agree on is that Graves is dangerous. If he’s behind the attacks, he’s a thinker, also. The kind of man who has contingency plans. We go in the morning. Well rested and researched.”

“I like that idea,” Alex said. “C’mon, Marah, is it? I’ll find you a room.”

Marah twitched like it was a physical pain to not go for Graves right away.

“Sheets are six-hundred-thread count,” Sylvie said.
“Soft as silk. Hell, some of them even are silk. There’s no complaining about Val’s hospitality.”

Marah groaned. “Not fair, using sheets against me. I suppose she’s got scads of hot water also.”

“Tankless system.”

“I’m licked. Lead me to it. Revenge in the morning.”

Demalion reached across her and pushed the papers that Marah had been holding. “She brought blueprints of the Dallas ISI.”

“Do we really think Graves is still there? If he’s this rogue ISI terrorist?”

“You obviously don’t,” Demalion said.

“I don’t know,” Sylvie said. She slumped down next to him, butted her shoulder up tight against his side. He draped an arm over her shoulder and pulled her closer. “I’ve been saying that an awful lot of late. I don’t like it. I just feel like there’s more going on here. Riordan’s not impartial. He was slinging a lot of mud.”

“If it helps, I really doubt Yvette’s behind the memory spells,” Demalion said. “They’ve been going on for some time, right?”

“Society of the Good Sisters,” Sylvie murmured. “Sounds like a quilting group. That sound familiar to you?”

“Should it?”

“Dolphin boy thinks they’re our memory culprits.”

“When did he say that?”

She waved it off and went back to Graves. “The thing that’s bugging me. The thing I can’t get over. How is Graves doing it? If he is doing it? He’s human. Not even magically talented from everything I hear. How’s he controlling the
mundi
monsters?”

“Fear?”

Sylvie flicked his cheek. “They’re the monsters, Demalion. We fear them. Not the other way around. They’re committed to these actions. I talked to the Mora, saw the footage of the succubus attack. You survived the sand wraith. Did it seem frightened to you?”

“It seemed angry,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you, Sylvie. I know that Yvette distrusts Graves. I know that Riordan, who’s pretty damned sensible, thinks Graves is our guy. I’m willing to go on a little faith.”

“Faith,” Sylvie said. “Yeah. I’m not much for that. Requires too much working blind.”

“Hey,” Demalion said, pulling her to her feet. “Think about it this way. You’re working to get Zoe back. And I can guarantee you that Graves is no innocent.”

“It’ll have to do,” Sylvie said. She stretched, felt her back pop and crack, and thought about another few hours of sleep.

Demalion rubbed at the back of her neck, long fingers soothing as they carded through the tangles of her hair. “So. Dolphin boy was here? You let me sleep through it? Saw him alone?”

“Oh God, in the morning,” Sylvie said. “I’m too tired to argue.”

She tugged away from him, headed back for the bedroom. She stopped to move Alex’s blanket over the young woman; Alex was facedown on the couch, a few inches from her laptop. Sylvie closed it, slid it beneath the couch for safekeeping, then just stood there.

“She’s forgetting more things,” she said.

“She asked me how things were going in Chicago,” Demalion said.

Sylvie grimaced. “What did you say?”

“Not much. I started to, and she sort of went blank while I was watching her. Sylvie. Whoever these witches are. Good Sisters? They’re getting stronger. I don’t think we can count on Alex’s research skills now. Researching is making her worse.”

“Agreed. God, if Riordan weren’t kidnapping family members, I’d send Alex home. Get her out of this mess. I just hope she remembers that Lupe is dangerous.”

Turbulence

IT WASN’T UNTIL THEY WERE SQUEEZED ONTO A PLANE THE NEXT morning, hip to hip and knees to chair back in front of them, that Demalion seemed to recall her mention of the Encantado. “So tell me about your meeting with the dolphin.”

Across the aisle, Marah’s ears pricked up. “What dolphin?”

Sylvie sighed. Demalion had practically whispered it into her ear. Marah was too damned attentive. “The ISI’s not the only one concerned about the attacks,” she admitted. “There’s a … party from the other side who doesn’t like the precedent being set.”

“A monster,” Marah said. “Told you what? That they were
innocent
?”

“Told me what I already knew. That the ones attacking the ISI are pawns of someone else.”

“Yeah. Graves,” Marah said.

Demalion, recalling Sylvie’s objection from the night before, said, “How do you think he’s doing it? A human controlling the monsters.”

Sylvie found her wandering attention sharpening. Did Marah have an answer?

“If anyone could figure out a way, it’d be him.” Marah leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “So what else did your informant say? Anything useful?”

“Not a lot,” Sylvie said. “You know about the Good Sisters?”

“Sounds like the Daughters of the American Revolution,” Marah said. “All prim do-gooders and charitable works.”

“The Encantado thinks their charitable works are erasing memory—”

“Oh,” Marah said. “Wait.”

Demalion leaned over. “Oh?”

“SGS,” Marah said. “The Society of the Good Sisters. They’re a rumor. Not really real. Supposedly started in the late 1800s. Industrial Revolution witches.”

“What do the rumors say?”

“That they’re secret keepers,” Marah said. “Men and women who use magic to hide magic. We thought they were a sort of magical police. But we never found any evidence they existed at all.”

“Sounds like just the type of thing that’s happening here.”

Marah shook her head. “They don’t exist, Sylvie. Trust me. The ISI looked hard. You know how the government loves templates. No, your guy was just telling you about the bogeyman that the monsters believe in.”

Sylvie thought back. But the Encantado hadn’t seemed afraid. Had seemed angry. Still, the plane was no place to get in an argument, and she had other things to worry about. Like Lupe and Alex, locked in a house together, one losing control of her shape and the other losing control of her memory.

Sylvie remembered driving out this morning, in the predawn swelter, and finding that Val’s house had become Sleeping Beauty’s castle overnight. Jungle blooms had twined and tangled and crawled over the low limestone walls, as pervasive as kudzu and as sweet-smelling as orchids. They’d had to hack through the greenery to free
the gates from their tangled weave. Demalion and Marah had gawked, and Sylvie had felt eyes on her from the darkest heart of the thickets.

Erinya.

Right now, Sylvie wasn’t sure whether Erinya’s lurking presence was a good thing or a bad. She’d protect Lupe—wanted to keep her new toy safe—and she’d protected Alex before. But she was also impatient and violent and easily distracted. If she wandered off on some bloody task, would Alex remember to call on her?

Demalion’s hand wrapped around hers, slid his long fingers between hers. “They’ll be fine. All of them.”

“Or I’ll know the reason why … Vengeance gets old, Demalion. I’m tired of making people pay for hurting others. Be better to prevent it from happening in the first place.”

Turbulence shivered the length of the plane, of air pockets shifting beneath the wings, and in the skies outside, lightning flashed, white cracks in a pale, blue sky.
Unnatural,
she thought. The plane dipped again. Demalion’s hand slipped from hers; when Sylvie blinked the jagged purple afterimage from her eyes, ears popping ferociously, she wasn’t on the plane any longer.

“Oh, come on!” she snapped, seeing Dunne leaning against the wall, watching her.

She was back in her office, back in Miami. Back where she started. With Zoe depending on her.

“You were supposed to stop her.” Dunne’s eyes were storm clouds. Lightning flashed through them, a constant angry crackle, strobing her office in washes of light.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Sylvie snapped. “But there’s a lot more going on than Erinya. She’s the smallest part of my problems right now. Take your godly envy and get lost.”

Dunne sighed. “The problem with large events,
enormous
events—if you’re in the center of it, you don’t see the scope of it. You live in your city, but you haven’t seen it.”

Like magic—well, it was magic, wasn’t it—a glassine smart board appeared between them, the city mapped
across it, glowing green and red and gold. Mostly green. Key Biscayne was solid red from shore to shore, and the water around it was tinting with bloody light.

Lupe was in Key Biscayne.

“She’s changing things past repair,” Dunne said.

Sylvie swallowed. “So Key Biscayne goes Aztec jungle—” She couldn’t finish her objection. Couldn’t find anything to ameliorate what was happening. Erinya’s jungle would be troublesome enough if it were just plants. Sylvie imagined Erinya’s otherworldly jungle spreading outward, sending tendrils through the waters, snaring ships, eating away at the ocean floor. But her presence brought life to alligator statues, encouraged people to pray to her with blood and stolen hearts.