by Lyn Benedict
Lupe slipped out of the truck, letting her stress out by pacing just as Sylvie had done, kicking at the worn yellow lines on the pavement. “I don’t know.”
“Of course you know. You were there. Let’s start. You were in the room, you called this witch who you didn’t even know—”
Lupe growled.
“So you let her in… then what?”
“Her bodyguard sat on the other bed. Creeper. Just stared at us. Livvy—the witch—told me to lie down.” Lupe’s breath rasped in her throat. “I did. She put crystals on me, told me that they were going to find the seat of the curse … but they burned.” She licked her lips, rubbed at her breastbone as if the heat remained. “I don’t remember things clearly after that. She tried to get her bodyguard to hold me down. I think I bit him. And the heat just sort of … ripped me open, turning me inside out. Next thing I knew, she was screaming and throwing spells at me.”
“Spells?” Sylvie said. She’d chalked the witch up as mostly show, a new age wannabe, who had managed to reach convinced-she-was status.
“Like wasps stinging. I don’t know. She kinda got freaked when the spells didn’t do much to me. Then you showed up.”
“When did you get your licks in?” Sylvie asked. “Her leg was torn up.”
“I don’t know. Does it matter? She got what she deserved. Trying to trick me. Pretending she could help.” Lupe’s eyes flashed bright again, a glance Sylvie’s way, her breath quickening. “Of course, that’s all you’re doing, isn’t it? Stringing me along. Doing nothing? Studying me? Watching me get worse? Watching me become just like him?”
Her words grew thick, distorted; her face creaked strangely, as if the bones were shifting.
Sylvie had her gun up, leveled in Lupe’s inhuman face by the time the woman lunged at her. Half animal. Human enough to recognize the weapon as a threat. Lupe dropped to a crouch, nails scratching at the concrete, the side of Sylvie’s truck, the inhuman jut to her jaw shrinking.
“Back off. Back down. Chill the fuck out. Or we’re going to have bigger problems than a pissed-off crystal witch and some overworked cops.
“I told you to let me handle it. But you couldn’t trust me. You had to trust a stranger. You’re lucky it ended the way it did. No one dead. Not them. Not you. You got a crap witch who exacerbated your curse. Boo hoo. You lucked out. You could have gotten the witch who said, ‘Drink this! It’ll help,’ then vivisected you for spell components. Witches are tricky business. If I can’t find someone local, I’ve got a backup plan—”
“Fuck plan A, I vote backup plan. And now,” Lupe said. “Why are we waiting?”
“Because you’re in no condition to face the TSA and an international flight. You lose control on a plane? Things can get worse, Lupe. Even if it doesn’t seem like it.”
Lupe nodded, calming down. Sylvie holstered her gun, noting that her fingers were trembling. She glared at them. They stopped.
“Why international?” Lupe said. “Another witch?”
“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “One who’s dealt with death curses before.”
“Can the witch come here?”
“Working on that,” Sylvie said. It was like the most frustrating game of missionaries and cannibals ever, all bounded around by difficult women: Erinya and Lupe and Val. Lupe couldn’t fly to Ischia. Val wouldn’t come back while Erinya was in Miami. And Erinya wasn’t budging.
Sylvie had already struck one deal with the god—her promise not to kill Demalion in exchange for god-power; Sylvie didn’t have anything else to bribe Erinya with.
“Then what?” Lupe asked. “I just live like this? Turning into a bigger freak each day?”
“Better than the alternative,” Sylvie said.
Lupe shut up, either shocked silent or furious.
The parking lot couldn’t hold them for long. The movies had let out; people collected their cars, cast inquisitive glances in their direction—at the spectacle of two women arguing about witches, their voices carrying.
“Look,” Sylvie said, dropping back to a whisper. “I’ll think of something.”
“Waiting sucks,” Lupe said. “Where do I go now?”
“New hotel,” Sylvie said. “We pay cash, keep a low profile.”
“Yeah, ’cause a woman with snake eyes and fangs is so unmemorable,” Lupe said. She flung up her hands before Sylvie could respond. “I know. I know. Better than the alternative.”
“That’s right,” Sylvie said. She nodded toward the truck, and Lupe climbed into it, far more calmly this time.
Sylvie wished she thought the calm was more than skin deep. Lupe was breaking down, getting moodier, more aggressive with each day. The stunt with the witch hadn’t helped.
But it had made one thing clear.
The witch really hadn’t done anything wrong—she’d simply tried to run a diagnostic with the wrong tools. Sylvie had seen crystal witches work, using the clear stones to identify the type of curse—stones turning red, black, blue, all the shades of a malevolent rainbow. It was utterly passive, reactive magic.
Lupe shouldn’t have had any reaction whatsoever.
If the stones had felt like they were burning her, that meant one thing only. The curse had dug its way in like a parasite, and fueled by a god’s power, was actively protecting its new position.
Giving Lupe the happy ending she deserved was looking less likely by the moment.
6
Government Business
SYLVIE WAS EATING AN EARLY DINNER, HIDING OUT IN A PART OF town she didn’t normally visit, waiting. Waiting for Suarez to see if her name had hit the system, if she could go home without getting dragged into the station by the police. Waiting for a call back from Alex to assure her that Zoe was home and bitchy and resting up from her jet lag.
Instead, she got Alex calling to say, “Sylvie. She’s not here.”
Sylvie flipped her watch—an hour past the time Zoe had said. “Delayed?”
“No,” Alex said. “Her flight arrived on time. But I can’t find her. I tried calling, but her cell’s off.”
Sylvie pushed her plate away, the sushi suddenly repulsive. Her heart beat unpleasantly. “Okay. This is what we’re going to do. You’re at the airport? Check to see if her luggage made it, and if it’s still there.”
“You think she had checked baggage?”
“It’s Zoe. Of course she had checked baggage. Probably the maximum allowed.” Sylvie closed her eyes, tried to remember. “I think it’s dark green. Hard-sided. A matching set.”
“Okay, what else?”
Sylvie sipped her tea, mostly lukewarm, set it back down. The cup chattered against the cherrywood tabletop. “You have your laptop?” She didn’t wait for Alex’s response, knew it would be a yes. “Dig up, oh… that smuggling case we had. Victor Arana. He owes us one. and he works at the airlines. Call him. See if Zoe ever got on the flight. If she’s missing, we need to know which end it happened on.”
Sylvie waved off the hovering waitress, trying to think of all the angles. NYC or Miami. Or god … Sylvie closed her eyes. The last time her family had been threatened, it had been Dunne doing the threatening. He wanted Erinya gone, and she hadn’t agreed. He could have snatched Zoe from the plane anytime he wanted, midflight.
“All right,” Alex said.
“Be careful. Keep me informed.” A shadow crossed her table; she turned, and though it felt like turning away from her sister’s plight, she disconnected. Suarez eased himself into the chair opposite her, rested scarred forearms on the table. The waitress brought him a menu, but he handed it back without looking at it, requesting coffee.
“So there’s nothing on the line about you,” Suarez said, his voice a deep, disapproving rumble. “Should there be? If I go through police logs, am I going to find something inexplicable with your name attached to it?”
“Not mine,” Sylvie said. “My client’s. She’s got some anger-management issues at the moment. With reason.”
“Yeah?”
Sylvie reached out, touched the scars on his arm, looked up at the scar winding over his face. “When you were in the hospital, I said you wouldn’t turn into a monster after being attacked by a magical were-creature, told you shape-shifting via curse was rare.”
“You did,” he said.
“She wasn’t as lucky as you. Azpiazu’s curse shifted to her.”
Suarez sat back, eyed her with a cop’s ingrained suspicion. “You’re volunteering information, Shadows. Why?”
“Because the way she’s going, she might end up in your cells. You call me if that happens. It’s not safe to keep her there. Not for your men. Or for her. Lupe Fernandez. You’ll know her if you see her.”
“Understood,” he said.
Sylvie rose, and Suarez reached out with that quickness he had, so surprising in such a solid man. “Not so fast. Since you’re in a sharing mood. I have two questions for you. There’s some sort of monster killing people in Miami. You know what’s doing it?”
“Depends,” Sylvie said. “There are a lot of monsters in Miami.”
He narrowed his gaze, losing patience. “Are you encouraging it?”
“Tell me about the people who’ve died.”
“A woman, only this morning, fleeing down the street, swore that a monster tore her mother’s head off and devoured her newborn baby. They sent her for a psychiatric evaluation. Last week, six men died, heads pulverized; witnesses claimed they saw something like an enormous cat. With feathers. Later, they recanted. Remembered nothing at all. What’s happening? Tell me.”
Sylvie debated pros and cons for a moment, then decided, hell with it. Suarez knew about the Magicus Mundi, and she didn’t have time to play keep-away games. Truth, it was. The whole truth.
“We’ve got two separate problems, and neither is going to make you happy. The monster is the easy part. She’s a Fury, and she’s avenging dead or abused children.”
“Enojada?” He sounded perplexed, and Sylvie remembered English was his second language. He was so fluent that she forgot. Not only that, but his curriculum would have been different. She wondered if they taught the Greek myths to children in Cuba, wondered belatedly why they taught Greek myths to American children anyway.
“One of the Eumenides,” Sylvie said. “A Greek mythical monster, only less myth, more monster. A lonely creature, who’s doing what we all do. Losing herself in work. Just, her work is full of dead people.”
“Can I stop her from doing it? What do I need? SWAT team? Spell?”
“You can’t stop her,” Sylvie said. “The best you can do is take heart in the fact that she has very specific parameters for her kills. And that, so far, she has some sense of collateral-damage control.”
Suarez growled. “A murderer who kills undesirables is still a murderer.”
“Suarez, please,” Sylvie said. “I don’t have time to fight her now. I’ve got a client in bad shape, I’ve got the ISI bringing serious trouble to the city, and I’ve got a missing sister.”
“Again?” Suarez said. “Leash that girl. She’s trouble.”
“She might be in trouble.”
“Don’t count on me to rescue her. We’re short-staffed. Fifteen of our officers had to rush to the hospital today because their parents had had strokes or heart attacks while watching the morning news. When they did call in, they said the ERs were overwhelmed. I might not have your inside knowledge, but something seems wrong about that.”
“I don’t suppose mermaids mean anything to you?”
Suarez winced, pinched the high bridge of his nose, and Sylvie said, “That’s what I thought. That, right there, is our second problem. Someone’s playing cleanup with our brains. Well, your brains. Making you forget anything you were exposed to that was blatantly mundi. You didn’t take any of those monster calls yourself, right?”
“That’s right,” he said. “People told me about them.”
“I bet if you talk to the woman sent for the psych evaluation about her mother and the monster now, she’ll remember something different. Will get a headache if you press. Might even stroke out, depending on her overall health. I bet your men won’t be much different.”
Suarez dropped his hand, stared at it in horror. “They made me forget something? Like Garza did when you helped him?”
“You remember that, though,” Sylvie said. “That I dealt with Garza in the Keys?”
“Maudits, you said.”
“I did.” This was part of what was making her crazy. The results of the memory wiping seemed so scattershot. Secondhand info relayed to someone who hadn’t been a part of the original scene stayed just fine. Sylvie wondered what would have happened if Garza had written up truthful reports. Would they have altered like the video feeds? Would all the cops who read the report have their minds altered, like the TV viewers?
Sylvie thought the answer was probably yes.
“Who’s doing it?” Suarez said. “And why?”
“Witches,” Sylvie said. Witches were the most likely suspects. Anything more powerful—like a god—would be doing a better job. Anything less powerful than a full coven of witches, and the memory plague wouldn’t be so widespread. The Mundi, as Sylvie had noted before, didn’t cooperate with each other, and that ruled them out.
“Brujas?” Suarez seemed skeptical, which Sylvie thought was unfair of him. Azpiazu had nearly ripped Miami apart, which Suarez knew, and he’d started off as a witch.
“A whole coven of witches. More specifically than that, I can’t tell you. Why? I don’t know. I’m not sure who’s benefiting. Whether it’s ‘to protect society’ bullshit, or whether they’re protecting the Mundi from discovery.”
“Nothing good comes from secret workings,” Suarez said. “Those who hold power should be transparent in their use of it.”
“Don’t have to sell me on that,” Sylvie said.
“So, how will you identify this coven if you don’t know its motive?”
Sylvie’s phone buzzed. “Hold that thought.”
“She got to Miami,” Alex said. Her voice was thin and tight. Worried. “Victor found a flight attendant who remembered her—tried to carry on too much luggage, threw a bit of a fuss. Zoe is kind of a pain, but I guess, in this situation, it’s a good thing.”
“Alex,” Sylvie snapped. “You’re stalling. Where is she?”
“Four men in fancy suits and guns snagged her as she stepped out of the gate. Gate attendant noticed because Zoe dropped her carry-on, and they didn’t bother to pick it up. Said the suits had to be official since they were armed within the terminal.”
“ISI,” Sylvie said.
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“But they’re dead. The flood destroyed their base. How in hell do they have time to hunt down Zoe?”
Suarez leaned in, shamelessly eavesdropping. Sylvie didn’t care; she was recalculating. The mermaids had killed the ISI agents who were there. But, like Yvette, maybe others had been out of the office.
“… want me to see if I can get video feed?”
“No,” Sylvie said. She was slow, so slow. How had she forgotten? When the ISI had tear-gassed her office and kidnapped her, she had woken up in a different facility than the downtown hotel. “I’m going straight to Dominick Riordan. If the ISI is grabbing my sister, he’s got to be alive.”
IT WAS LONG PAST FULL DARK BY THE TIME SYLVIE MANAGED TO retrace her path from the frantic night three months prior. Then, she’d been concentrating more on getting away and stopping Azpiazu, the Soul-Devourer, than on figuring out where she’d been held.
By starting at Vizcaya, still being repaired from the showdown with Azpiazu, and working her way back, she thought she was on the right track. It had been on a frontage road near the airport, but it hadn’t been one of the dozens of warehouses that sprouted in that area; it had been a business-office type of building, with at least two floors.
She slowed her already crawling pace, and the driver behind her honked and cut around her. Sylvie peere
d into the dark, trying to focus, trying to remember. There had been a parking garage full of matching SUVs. White-painted concrete already going green. A shadow in her memory smelling like mold—everything underground in Miami smelled like mold.
Up ahead, a sign flashed in her headlights, a time-faded declaration that Miami’s Best Bank would be opening soon. A bank she’d never heard of. Opening never, Sylvie thought. Not if it was a front for the ISI.
She jerked the wheel, garnered another series of traffic complaints, and crossed a narrow bridge over a watery ditch with pretensions to canalhood.
Sylvie bumped over the rough pavement, remembered that jarring sensation from her previous visit, and turned again sharply, picking a darker space out of an unlit lot that turned into a parking garage. One level down, lights bloomed distantly, showed a shiny row of dark SUVs and water glistening in thin trails down the walls. It made Sylvie think about mermaids.
Her nerves coiled and twisted. God, she wished Demalion had picked up a phone, wished he’d given her some way to contact him. She was used to going it alone, but right now, she wanted backup, and he was her first choice. Now and always.
Erinya could be called, but Erinya came with her own problems. If Zoe was in the ISI building, then Erinya was the last thing she needed. Zoe wouldn’t thank Sylvie for causing all her witchy powers to be burned away.
Sylvie backed into a parking slot, put the truck in park, and stared into the depths of garage and the discreet elevator. She didn’t see any surveillance cameras, but she didn’t doubt they were there. The ISI liked to watch.
She wondered, if things went wrong—if she disappeared into their holding cells instead of pulling Zoe out of them—if Alex would call up the video feed to be witness to it. Wondered how many agents were left. Riordan to give the orders. Four to pick up Zoe.
Don’t forget Demalion.
An uneasy squirm of unpleasant emotion crawled through her at that thought, made her jaw clench and her heart sink—unhappiness? betrayal? worry? Rather than dwell on it, she climbed out of her truck and went to face the music.