Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel (27 page)

Dunne didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

A spark of gold washed over the red-tinged Key, traced it like lightning, then was swallowed by Erinya’s power.

“What was that?” Sylvie said.

Dunne cocked his head and looked at his magical board.

“Is that real time? What’s the gold? Green’s real world, right? Nonmagic?” The gold light was tiny, like sparks. But it was speckled
everywhere
, from coast to coast and beyond, as pervasive as termite dust in an old house.

“Witchcraft,” he said. His mouth turned down in disapproval. She shared that sentiment. “A large spell affecting multitudes.”

“Witchcraft? What the hell … that’s all from the brain-rewrite spell? Jesus. I knew they were brainwashing people, but this… She sank down on the couch, stared at the board. It was easy to be angry at Graves, to declare him a rogue and an enemy, a traitor to humankind, but Sylvie thought that this was the greater sin. Erasing people’s memories. Leaving a magical taint big enough to show up against gods.

“You’re adding to it,” he said, “by not stopping Erinya. Her power’s leaking, and your witches are using it to strengthen their spells. Should I find something more personal to motivate you? If not your city, your lover? I can take him from you.”

Sylvie tore her gaze from the board. “Try not to be an asshole, Dunne. I seem to recall you had a few good points. Besides, you’re too late. You can’t lay a hand on him. He’s been god-claimed.”

Dunne’s gaze went human in surprise. “Let me guess. Erinya.”

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “You can’t attack her, or one of her followers, without making war. She doesn’t have enough worshippers yet that she won’t notice him going missing.”

“She won’t want anything good for him. If you kill her—”

“Dunne,” Sylvie started, then just sagged. She was tired enough that his unsubtle manipulations felt like physical weights. “Look. Would you just get off your high horse for a minute or two? I know that your pantheon’s probably making your existence maddening at the moment, all
Stop her, you created her, this is your fault
. I seem to recall that the Olympiads were big on blame. But listen to yourself.
Kill her?

“Even if I had the time, the energy, or the inclination … what happens? She got this power by a god’s dying. If she dies, all that power’s up for grabs again. Things are bad enough down here as it is. I don’t need a dozen gods and godlets descending on Miami to snarf up what she left. How would that help my city? Or, wait. Am I supposed to call you before I kill her, give you the heads-up so you can call dibs? I’m not a paid assassin, Dunne.”

“You were the one who suggested you could get her to leave. No progress?” That, Sylvie thought, was as close as Dunne would come to admitting she was right.

“Some,” she said. None, she thought. Worse than that. Antiprogress. Erinya’s discovery of Lupe made her that less likely to leave. Earth was where her new toy lived. Unless … Lupe wasn’t too happy about her current life.

Dunne growled, sounding rather disturbingly like the Furies he still controlled. “Shadows.”

Right. Mind reading.

“Fine, there’s a snag or three,” she said. “But I need to be in Dallas right now. Erinya might be dangerous, might
be spilling god-power all over the place, but there’s someone else who’s actively killing humans and using the
mundi
creatures to do it. Any pointers?”

“I can’t intervene,” he said.

“Figures,” she said. “After all, dead humans are good for swelling the soul collections. What do gods do with them anyway?”

Dunne waved; the board vanished. “Nothing I can explain to you. Sylvie, if it comes to it, I will remove Erinya from the earth myself.”

“You said that could start a war in the pantheons.”

“Yes,” he said.

She licked dry lips, tasted fear and the lingering flavor of the cinnamon gum she’d chewed on takeoff. “Seems to me human casualties would be higher if that happened than if you left her be.”

“She’s setting precedent. There are whispers across the heavens, especially from the forgotten gods: If she can walk on earth, attract worshippers, why not the rest of us?”

“Give me a week,” Sylvie said. “Right now, Erinya’s all wrapped up in my client, but Lupe’s not interested. Let me see if I can turn that one way or the other. Get Lupe intrigued or Erinya tired of her new toy.”

“She was created to chase,” Dunne said. “She won’t get bored.”

“Give me a week,” Sylvie repeated. “Please.” She’d deal with Erinya, even if it took a bullet. Miami might lose out that way, but at least the world wouldn’t.

“A week,” he said.

He spoke as if he was considering it, but she chose to leap to her feet, and say, “Great. It’s a deal. Now, can you get me to Dallas? Since you interrupted my flight? I need to take a look at William Graves’s offices.”

He sighed; the office grew storm damp. Her hair rose and danced in the growing electricity. “His office or him?”

“He’s alive?” Guess that answered that. The man was playing possum. The odds of his being the guilty party just went up.

“Yes.”

“Then him, definitely him.”

She collected her backup gun and spare ammo, snagged a chocolate bar from Alex’s desk drawer, and took a giant, sweet mouthful. She needed the sugar rush in the comedown from the confrontation with Dunne. Finally, she took a quick moment to text Demalion that she was fine, would meet them in Dallas. Dunne sighed impatiently. The office twitched with electricity.

“Anytime, Shadows.”

“I’m ready when you are,” she said.

“If you don’t mind,” she tacked on, hastily. Better to be polite to the god who was about to fling her through space.

“Not at all,” he said, as falsely polite as she. He flicked his fingers in her direction, and she was gone.

LANDING WAS HARD; LUCKILY, THE FLOOR WAS SOFT. SYLVIE sprawled in the thick grey carpeting, and caught her breath, her bearings. Sofa to her right—chrome legs shining in the sunlight coming through the high windows—glass coffee table to her left. She spared a moment to be grateful she hadn’t landed on it. She clambered to her feet, gun in hand, half-expecting to find Graves or his men drawing down on her. She hadn’t landed quietly. Her ears popped, testament to the storm violence of her travel. She thought she smelled ozone, sharp and sour, in the air, and wondered if she’d traveled by lightning.

The living room was empty of people and stayed that way. She lowered her gun and moved on. A glance out the windows showed that she was sky-high, the ground multiple floors below, a wrinkle of grass and toybox cars. Top-floor apartment, she thought, in some Dallas condo. Judging from the size of the living room, a solid thirty feet by thirty feet, Sylvie assumed it was the penthouse. They were alone up here.

She moved through a sterile kitchen, continuing the mad-scientist theme of the living room—all grey and
chrome and glass. His refrigerator doors were transparent, showed neat shelves sparsely filled. A man who wasn’t home often. Or at least, not often enough to cook.

Tension tightened her jaw. She knew Graves was here. She didn’t like Dunne, but she knew his word was good. He’d told her once that he could find any man on earth; she believed him.

So where is Graves?

Her boots rasped against the soft white stone in the foyer; there was dust beneath her feet like a dustpan’s worth of forgotten sweepings. It was gritty to her fingers but softer than sand.

She rubbed her hands clean on Val’s borrowed khakis, and checked the front door. Locks engaged; the security system was on.
Where is he?

Sylvie headed down the white-carpeted hallway; caught her sleeve in one of the moving, metal sculptures that lined the walls. It rang like a struck tuning fork, a growing vibration of sound. She damped it with a hasty palm, listened.

A faint sound. A groan. Something that wanted to be urgent but was losing the strength to convey it. Sylvie hurried toward the sound, pushed through the bedroom door, and stopped cold on the threshold.

Dunne had played fair. Told the truth.

Graves was here.

Graves was alive.

But not for much longer.

Truthfully, Sylvie was shocked he was still breathing at all.

He was … His
skin
was …

It lifted and curled away from him in a thousand little shags, blanched and bloodless. It reminded her of nothing so much as paper birch bark. It made him nearly unrecognizable. His head lolled on the pillow; flakes of him drifted away. “Who—”

Sylvie backed up, repulsed, then shook herself.

“Graves,” she said.

He tried to push himself up; close to death and still fighting. Still furious. A zealot indeed. His bare chest revealed four deep tears, edged in blood, and one shallow one; Sylvie thought of a hand pressing in, four long fingers and a shorter thumb.

“Traitor,” he breathed. His lips cracked bloodlessly. His tongue rasped against teeth made enormous by white gums pulling away. “In the ISI. Good Sisters. Key. Books.”

“What happened?”

“Warn—” He coughed, and his tongue blew away in the gust of his last breath. Sylvie reached out to check his pulse and his chest and neck and head disintegrated beneath her fingers. Not completely. A few curved fragments of bone remained, cradling a withered heart.

His hand fell to his side; his fingers hooked in his pocket, then crumbled likewise. His pants slowly collapsed as his body spilled out at both ends of the fabric.

Something chinked softly. Metal touching metal.

Key,
Sylvie thought. His pocket. She reached in gingerly, hoping to God this wasn’t some kind of magical disease, that she wasn’t going to have to test her magical resistance against
mundi
plague. How would that work, would she lose a finger or two, before her resistance kicked in? She grimaced, tried not to think about it as she sorted through his remains.

A key fell into her palm. Small. She’d expected a locker key, or a safety-deposit-box key. Instead, she held a curio cabinet key. Simple. Uncomplicated. The kind of key that could be bypassed entirely with a paper clip.

Graves had thought it worth a dying word.

Sylvie toured the penthouse, found room after room full of white furniture. Nothing that the key fit. Nothing that looked like the books he’d mentioned. No reading material at all though she found several computers and an e-reader.

Graves liked technology.

Sylvie looked at the key again, looked at it more closely.

Smiled.

It was a key, but not the kind she’d thought. There was a glass bead at the tip, with a glimmer of light behind it. It was an electronic key, disguised.

She went back to his bedroom, grimaced at the remains on the bed, and started tossing the room as carefully as she could; she didn’t want to stir up his dust. Really didn’t want to breathe him in.

Behind a wall mirror, she found a safe with a blank black face. She waved the key across it and it popped open, a tiny vacuum dispersing.

A book.

Journal, rather. White leather. The man was compulsive.

Sylvie dragged it out, wondered what was in it that he had felt the need to hide. To bypass his tech toys and commit to paper.

Easy enough to find out.

She sat, gingerly, on the edge of the bed, flipped it open to the first page.

Sylvie grimaced. Nice. A torturer’s diary.

Sylvie flipped ahead, skimmed through accounts that turned her stomach. Mentions of how well electricity traveled through salt water, mentions of food deprivation and sound bombardment and isolation.

Mermaid? Sylvie wondered.

Maybe Marah was right. Maybe Graves did have a way of making monsters obey: He broke them.

Sylvie flinched. It was one thing to tell Demalion that the ISI wanted her dead and dissected. Another to come across Graves’s eagerness for it.