Sins & Shadows

by Lyn Benedict

  Sylvie drove on, stopping at the rest area on the Illinois border to clean the worst of the blood from her skin. She turned the stained black shirt inside out and covered up the rest that way. She did it all without ever once looking at the mirror directly. Anna D’s condemnation lingered too loudly for that. Do you like what you see?

  An hour later, she had to pull the car onto the shoulder while the events of the night tried to shake themselves from her bones. She laid her head against the steering wheel, shook and screamed and sobbed until she was empty and exhausted.

  In Kentucky, hours later, the little dark voice muttered back to life. Stupid Old Cat. If she hadn’t hidden her own identity from Demalion, he might not have been in the line of fire at all. What kind of dutiful son would join an organization dedicated to corralling monsters, after all, when his beloved mother was one? The fault lies with her.

  Sylvie felt obscurely comforted and made the rest of the drive without having to pull the car off the road for any more hysterics. A few stealthy tears here and there hardly counted. She stopped instead for a big gulp of caffeine and nuclear-cheese nachos, a king-size Snickers bar, and a bag of beef jerky, scarfed them down somewhere in Georgia, and gave her body enough fuel to make it the rest of the way home.

  Her brain was locked on autopilot, locked in cold anger at herself. Hadn’t she vowed to change? She hadn’t. Hadn’t she promised not to put others in danger? She had.

  Finally, she sat outside Baptist Hospital in South Miami, trying to gather one last burst of courage. Once more into the fire. One last chance to have her numbed heart pushed back into grief and pain.

  Or she could just leave and never know. Leave it all. Alex’s fate, the job, Miami. Start somewhere new.

  She got out of the car instead. Nothing on that list was worth running from. And she couldn’t run from herself. If she wanted a change, she’d have to make it herself. Starting now. Kinder, gentler Sylvie coming right up. If she stayed out of the Magicus Mundi, surely she could do it.

  Sylvie strode into the hospital, hit the desk, and said, “My friend was checked in—” How long ago? One day? Two? Three? Sylvie shook her mind into order and said. “Wednesday. Alexandra Figueroa-Smith.”

  The receptionist typed for a second, then looked up, face still, and Sylvie braced herself. “ICU.”

  Alive. Sylvie nearly gasped with the relief. “ICU? Did I say friend? I meant sister. Which room was it?”

  “Family only,” the man said. Bored with the routine.

  “She hasn’t got family, not decent family anyway,” Sylvie said. “Except for me. Look it up, bet there haven’t been people beating down her door to visit.”

  “We can’t give out that kind of—”

  “Look, I’ve driven nonstop for twenty-four hours, I’ve been through hell, and seeing Alex is the only thing keeping me on my feet. Trust me, you don’t want to get on my bad side.”

  “Or what?” he said. He flipped papers without ever looking up.

  She reached across the desk, laid her hand over his. Smaller than his, but smeared with scratches from glass, bruising from hits she couldn’t even recall, nails torn, blood pooled beneath the quicks. His gaze fixated on it. Sylvie said, “I’ve been through hell. And I’ll share it with you.”

  So much for kinder and gentler, she thought. But who was she to argue with success?

  He gave her the room number, and she smiled, though she was sure it looked more like a rictus than a thank-you.

  She headed down the hall at a fast clip, in case he decided to call security after a second or third thought. Her speed faltered at the closed door. She’d seen snakebite victims before. Ugly business. Bruising, swelling, necrotic tissue, comas, machinery, and death.

  She pushed open the door and blinked. Alex looked—asleep. Despite ICU and the machinery humming nearby, supposedly monitoring her vital functions, there were no tubes in her, no sensors, no needles. Sylvie blinked in cautious hope. A deep fragrance reached her as she closed the door behind her and sealed out the scent of bleach. Orchids.

  Orchids massed in the ICU room, propped everywhere, potted and fragrant, impossibly out of place. But she supposed if anyone could leave flowers in an ICU, it would be a god paying his fee. Sylvie collapsed in the chair beside the bed, a half-choked cry leaving her lips. The whole room smelled like Fairchild Gardens, like the outdoors. Like life.

  The debt’s been cleared, Bran said. Not such a bastard after all, she thought, shaking again.

  Alex’s hand clenched, unclenched in the blanket; her eyes squeezed tighter shut, as if she was enjoying her sleep.

  Sylvie licked her lips, said, “Hey, wakey-wakeys.”

  Alex’s eyes fluttered open, turning first toward the sunlight, as if she’d never expected to see it again, then back toward Sylvie. She blinked at the orchids for a long moment, the riot of white-speckled pink, of violet and cream, of attenuated yellow. “They’re not lilies,” she whispered. “I guess I’m not dying. Am I going to prom?”

  Sylvie laughed for the first time since Demalion had died. It was ragged and started up about as well as a cold engine on a winter’s day. She folded her hand around Alex’s cold fingers. “Do you feel like dancing?”

  “I’m alive,” Alex said. “You’re alive. Yeah, I could dance.”

  “Club night, then, soon as you’re out,” Sylvie said. Her voice was roughened. She scrubbed at her eyes. “How you feeling?”

  “Confused mostly,” Alex said. She struggled to sit up, wiped bleariness from her eyes. “A cop came and talked to me. With a florist? He said I’d get better. Except it was all in my head. The florist kissed me.” A tiny blush swam up through her pallor. “He was really hot.”

  “Well, it was Eros,” Sylvie said. “I think hot goes with the position.” The tears kept threatening, and she couldn’t understand it. She pinched the bridge of her nose punishingly hard. Her nails dug into the skin.

  “A god brought me flowers?”

  “Two gods. I guess he didn’t trust me with them,” Sylvie said. Each of the orchids was potted, and didn’t that boggle her brain—the idea of Dunne gardening. Even Bran—“I was going to mulch them.”

  “What? Why? They’re beautiful,” Alex said. “Beautiful.” She rolled her head to look at them again. Pale spattered pink, violet, gold-tinged, elegant, radiating color in the sterile room, warming in sunlight.

  “They’re the satanists,” Sylvie said. She hadn’t meant to tell Alex, but she was tired of hiding things. If she was going to change, she would need help.

  “What?”

  Sylvie closed her eyes, leaned her head against the mattress. “It was my fee. For helping Dunne, he’d kill the satanists for me. . . . But he couldn’t do it. He’s not a killer.” The last was a bare whisper.

  Alex reached out an unsteady hand, and Sylvie handed her one of the plants, setting it carefully beside her. Alex stroked a petal. “This—was a person? One of the ones who killed Suarez?”

  “That one’s the red-haired bitch,” Sylvie said. “The first one he transformed. He couldn’t kill them.”

  Alex said nothing, still stroking the petals, giving them all her attention, and Sylvie stumbled on, well aware that Alex, for all her supposed abstraction, was listening very closely indeed.

  “You were right,” Sylvie said. “I’ve killed people, though I called them monsters. I’ve killed lots of things. And a lot of people die around me and because of me, and for—” Her voice gave out for a moment. “God, Alex. Demalion’s dead. I let him in, and he died. I can’t let that happen to you. That’s why I never told. To keep you safe—”

  “No,” Alex said. “You were doing well there, Syl. Finish up right. You never told me, never let me know, hid what you had to do, because . . .”

  Sylvie swallowed, pressed her face to the white sheets, breathed in faint hints of bleach and orchid fragrance. Alex leaned back and waited.

  “I didn’t want you to see I was a monster, too,” Sylvie said.


  Alex sighed. “We’re going to talk, Sylvie. Before we open the shop again. Preferably with alcohol in hand.” The sleepy daze had left her eyes, and she was getting that all-too-familiar martial look, the one that organized Sylvie’s life for her.

  “The shop?” Sylvie said. “I can’t—”

  “People need you,” Alex said. “Did you think about that when you decided to close up shop?”

  “People should take care of their own damn problems,” Sylvie muttered.

  “But so many of them can’t, Syl. Not everyone can see what has to be done or have the strength to do it. You do both.”

  “I—” Sylvie shivered.

  Alex turned her hand over, stroked her wrist, frowning. “You’re all beat-up. More ’n usual. What have you been doing?”

  “Surviving,” Sylvie said. “At the expense of others. As usual.” Alex’s stroking stopped, but she made no other sign that she’d noticed Sylvie’s words. “I’m sorry, Alex. The snakes were my fault. They came after me, too. I sent them away . . . set them on you. I didn’t mean to.” Another pitiful apology, better suited to a child.

  “I know,” Alex said. There was sufficient weight to her words that Sylvie looked up from their linked hands. Alex’s eyes were tired, burdened. “The cop—that was your Justice, right?—he talked in my head while he brought the orchids. Told me what you’ve done. What you’ve kept from me. Told me about Lilith. About Demalion.”

  “And you still think I can help people? That Shadows Inquiries should stay open? I’ve killed people, Alex.”

  “It’s another reason you can’t close the shop.”

  “It’s the best reason to close it,” Sylvie countered.

  Alex shifted in the narrow bed, pushing herself upward, trying to sit upright again. “And do what, instead?” Alex said. “You help people, Sylvie. That darkness in you gets focused on achieving results on the good side of the ledger. Without the job, how long do you think it would last before you snapped? Before you got into something else. Something blacker.”

  Sylvie shuddered, put her face down in her hands. “God, Alex. Don’t let me fall.”

  “I won’t,” Alex said. She petted Sylvie’s tangled hair. “You might be good at taking on the world. But I am good at taking care of you. If you let me. No more shutting me out.”

  “I’ll try,” Sylvie said.

  “Good girl,” Alex said.

  Sylvie snapped, “I’m still the boss. And you’re still the employee. Don’t get cocky.”

  Alex bit her lip and laughed at her before her eyes grew thoughtful again. She touched the orchids nearby. “What are you going to do with them now?”

  Kill them. Grind them to pulp. Why should they have any kind of life when they’d killed her friend?

  New leaf, she argued with herself. They were no longer dangerous. They’d paid. They were plants, for God’s sake. It wasn’t like they could come back.

  Best to be sure. They killed your friend. Tried to kill Alex.

  I killed my lover, she countered, and silenced the growl in the back of her mind.

  “I—”

  “At a loss for words, Syl? That’s not like you.”

  “Too many words,” Sylvie said. “You decide.” Her heart thumped. “You tell me what to do with those killers.”

  Alex dabbled her fingers into the soil a little, touched the pale petals again, traced the slender stem; fragile, it shivered beneath her touch. She let her hand drop, reached it out to Sylvie.

  “We’ll keep them alive. They’re beautiful, Syl. Whatever they were before, whatever sins they committed—they’re beautiful now.”