by Lyn Benedict
“Focus!” Sylvie said. “A god coming to Miami. Sooner, rather than later—Kind of on a time line, here. If you lock me up, what can you do in my place?”
“Do you expect a meteorologist to stop a hurricane?”
Her breath caught in her throat, a thousand words trying to escape at once, gagging her. Beside her, Stone cocked her head as if she could sense even a fraction of Sylvie’s outrage.
“That’s your plan? To run around telling people to get out of the pool. That a thunderstorm is coming?”
“What can we do against gods? Nothing. Statistically, it’s irrelevant. Deaths caused by gods are massive, but the real casualties are the deaths caused by witches and sorcerers, by monsters. By people like you.” It all sounded so reasonable in his newscaster voice.
“You think I’m a part of the Magicus Mundi?”
“You’re telling me you’re not? That being the new Lilith means nothing? That it’s a human thing?”
“It’s the quintessential human thing,” Sylvie said. “The ability to say fuck you.” Whatever else it meant, whatever expectations the title came with—Sylvie knew that much was true. She was still human, still had free will. Everything else was just details.
He leaned across the desk, and said, “What was the creature in your office?”
“No one you want to tangle with.” Sylvie sneered at him. “She’s one of your hurricanes. Too much for you to handle. Maybe you should just . . . report on her. Tell people to run for their lives.”
“Caridad Valdes-Pedraza said it was a Fury,” Stone said beside her. “One of the creatures who turned Chicago inside out.”
“And you wonder why we name you an enemy,” Riordan said. “One city through turmoil’s not enough for you? You want to go for two?”
“I want to save my city,” Sylvie said. “You’re the ones who’re jeopardizing it.” She turned on Stone. “When you talked to Cachita? Did she tell you that she’s got a god waiting on her words? That he’s not a patient god? That he’s not even a particularly bright god? He’s been manipulated by a sorcerer he meant to punish. He’s not happy.”
“And you can make him happy?”
“Nothing can,” Sylvie said. “At best, we can keep him . . . elsewhere.”
Riordan tapped his stylus thoughtfully on his desk. “Convenient that it requires you to be set free.”
“And Cachita,” Sylvie said. “Just to be clear.”
Riordan said, “And Ms. Valdes-Pedraza.”
“She was carrying an obsidian knife,” Stone said. “A nice weapon. Sharp. For ritual use, I’d imagine.” She gestured obscurely; her red-mottled hand held an imaginary blade with a deadly competence.
“The kind that might carve symbols in dead women’s skin?”
Sylvie let out another careful breath. “If you’re trying to suggest that Cachita is the Everglades killer, you’re dangerously off target. If you’re planning on using her as a scapegoat, it won’t last. Azpiazu’s appetite is too big.”
“Take her away,” Riordan said, shaking his head. “It’s late. I’ll deal with her tomorrow.”
“Am I charged with anything?” Sylvie snapped. “Are you sure you can keep me?”
“Bella Alvarez went missing earlier today. I think we can keep you until she shows up. As a person of interest. Actually—” He paused to smile. It was a nice smile, showed just the right number of teeth, made his eyes crinkle with laugh lines. Whatever he was going to say made him happy. “We’re the ISI. We can make you disappear. With no questions asked.”
“Here I thought you were going to study the supernatural for years before you started carting people off. What was the plan? Five years of study, three years of legal tests, and two years of preparing the world? You’re in year four. Jumping the gun a bit, aren’t you?”
“Demalion talked too much,” Riordan said. “We’ve had to accelerate the ten-year plan. Because of you.”
Stone leaned close as the guards moved in. “Should have had that chat with me, Sylvie. I could have given you a heads-up.” Her whisper was a brush of warmth against Sylvie’s cheek.
That whisper lingered even once Sylvie had been dragged back down into the cold, sterile hallways below, a reminder of a political current she didn’t understand. She hadn’t paid enough attention to the ISI, and she was paying for it. The problem was keeping the city from paying the price as well.
* * *
THE CELL THEY PUT HER IN WAS CLOSER TO A HOSPITAL WARD’S SECURE room than the steel and concrete cage Sylvie had expected. Four walls, a solid door with a wire-mesh glass panel, a number pad beside the door. Sylvie watched the guards punch in the release code—six digits long, easy to understand, that day’s date—but the knowledge wouldn’t do her any good when she was on the wrong side of the door.
They shoved her in, and she staggered a few steps, stubbing her toes on the bare floor and cursing. When she looked up, she found she had a roommate. Cachita, looking small and huddled in her white scrubs, sitting knees to chest on the lower bunk.
There was one flickering fluorescent light pressed close to the ceiling, a toilet, and a sink. The walls were highgloss white, shiny enough that she could track almost-reflections in it.
“Spartan,” Sylvie said. “But at least it’s new and shiny.”
Cachita’s eyes were red-rimmed; but then, Sylvie was sure hers weren’t much better. Tear gas was wicked stuff. She knuckled an eye in reaction to phantom pain and peered out the window. There were more doors in the hallway, at least three that she could see, but none of them had keypads beside them. Guess she and Cachita were roommates by necessity. The ISI wasn’t prepared for the full-time jail business yet.
She wandered back over to the sink—ten steps at a tight stride—and slurped some water from the faucet. Mineral strong and chlorine rough on her throat, but it felt good going down.
“Well, this sucks,” she said. “You think we’re being monitored? I don’t see anything. No mikes, no cameras, but they’re making them so small these days.”
Cachita let out a strangled sob, and Sylvie turned. Maybe her eyes were red from the tear gas. Or not exclusively. “Hey, you okay there? They hurt you?”
Cachita knotted herself tighter, wrapped her arms around her knees, her hands around her shoulders. Her hair was loose and messy and dark, stringy from the chemical shower they’d been put through. Tears leaked steadily down her cheeks.
Sylvie ducked her head, sat down beside Cachita. The mattress gave, springs squeaking with newness, still smelling of the plastic it had been wrapped in. “Huh. Bet they outfitted this room today. IKEA, you think?”
Cachita dropped her head into the tangled cradle of arms and knees; her shoulders shook. Not with laughter. Even her feet were trying to huddle up into her scrubs. Utter terror and retreat.
“It’s okay,” Sylvie said. “It’s going to be o—”
Cachita raised her head, found a spark enough to express her fear. “I’ve been to Mexico, Sylvie. People disappear there. If the government doesn’t like you. If los narcos don’t like you. It’s not supposed to happen here.”
“We’re not here forever,” Sylvie said. “It’s just gonna feel like it.”
“Sylvie, no one will miss me.”
“Maybe not, but you know? I’m a big pain in the ass. They’ll miss me. Besides,” she said, feeling her mouth stretch in a grim smile, “we’ll get out. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
“Yeah?” Cachita asked. Skeptical. Wanting to be reassured.
“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “You said it yourself. Tepeyollotl’s impatient. Sooner or later, he’ll be checking up on you, and we can get out during the—”
“Slaughter,” Cachita said. She didn’t look reassured.
“Hey, on the bright side, maybe Erinya will come instead?”
“Not funny,” Cachita said, but she relaxed her defensive posture, stretching her legs out before her.
“No, not funny,” Sylvie agreed. She started pacing again, t
oo antsy to be still even when she knew she should be reserving her strength. Too many worries. Azpiazu and the god, of course. But Alex, also. Was her memory right? Had Erinya abducted Alex in the midst of the chaos? Then there was the ISI and their call to arms, which meant, apparently, arresting her.
She wasn’t ready for the ISI to get aggressively involved with the Magicus Mundi. She didn’t think they were ready, kept imagining new recruits like Riordan Jr., stumbling into a firefight like today’s, facing a Fury with technology and expecting it to do the job.
To be fair, Erinya probably could be brought down by bullets. But could she be kept down?
“Sylvie?”
“Yeah,” Sylvie said absently. She shivered; the room was chilly. They were going to have an uncomfortable time of it if they were stuck there. The ISI had bought mattresses, but no sheets, no blankets.
“The woman who interviewed me took the knife.”
“Good,” Sylvie said. “Less temptation for you to summon him.” She peered at the narrow window inset into the door. It was slowly going as white as the walls. She touched it, jerked her finger back.
Cold.
She licked her lip, nervously, sudden images of government “interrogation” techniques coming to her. Environmental discomfort was just the start.
Except—she held her hand toward the air vent. The air coming out of it felt . . . warm in contrast. The cold was centered outside the door. Then at it. Then inside.
Sylvie stepped back, shuddering all over. She knew this type of cold. Something beyond physical. A chill of the spirit. A tiny piece of death moving through the living world.
A ghost walking.
Cachita hissed and pointed toward the glossy white walls. A third shadow had joined theirs, a narrow human-shaped blur, and when it swayed closer to the wall, it grew grey-shaded and sharper; the wall frosted over.
“Marco,” Sylvie said. The shadow ducked its head in a nod.
Cachita shot her a wild-eyed glance. “Who?”
“Wales’s . . . pet.” But what was he doing here? Sylvie jerked her gaze from the wall to the spot in the cell where Marco stood and saw nothing at all. Damn ghosts. Even when they wanted to communicate, it couldn’t be easy.
At least, not for her. Not for a non-necromancer.
Why was Marco here?
Sylvie shook her head abruptly. Stopped asking herself a question she couldn’t answer and asked Marco instead. “Why are you here?”
Only after she asked did she realize it wasn’t an easy question to answer if all they had for communication was a ghost shadow that could nod or shake its head. But it seemed to be what Marco was waiting for.
That bitter cold, that chilled rot swooped in on her again, something biting at her mouth, her lips, a bitter, deathly kiss. She tried to push him off, but only pushed through the gelid unseen mass of him.
His fingers wrapped her skull, an icy cage around the back of her neck, her cheek, and a freezing fog pressed into her mouth. She gasped, choked. He backed off, and she coughed the fog out.
It came out, warmed by her living breath, and created sense out of ghostly silence. His words. Her voice. “Wales needs you.”
Sylvie shivered. “Why?”
Their shadows merged again, and Sylvie shuddered through another onslaught, growling even as he fed her his frozen words. There was necessity, and there was Marco, and his misogynistic history. And an icy hand that was sliding down her throat toward her breast.
She tore herself away, sprawled on the tile; the words gusted out on impact, strained, but clear.
“Sorcerer found him.”
“Sorcerer. Azpiazu?” Sylvie held up a hand. “Nod yes, or no.”
The shadow on the wall swayed, grudging her that, but his need to communicate was too strong. He nodded.
“Killed?” Sylvie asked. Her throat felt sore, stretched by its brush with death.
The shadow swayed, a twist at its top like a small tornado. Dizzying to watch, to focus on that pale shadow on a white wall.
“Taken.”
Another nod, slow so there could be no misunderstanding. It should have made her feel better. Taken was a long way from dead. But taken, when she was trapped here, felt a whole lot like dead.
“For his binding spell.”
The crash of shadow and cold against her, within her, pressing inward, an invasion. Marco pressed into her skin, into her body, climbed inside, and pushed a nightmare of images into her brain.
Wales/Sylvie, bent over his/her computer, reading spells by tech light, stretching absently, lifting an empty soda can to their lips, brief burst of warm dregs dropping onto their tongue. Long ache in their spine and a yawn, cold coins in their palm, the kiss of cool air as they passed the ice machine, the sudden stink of animal in the hotel’s wide halls, strong as skunk, turning too slow, the blow crashing down, the impact and crackle against the soda machine, then black.
Waking underwater, lungs straining for air, with claws ripping patterns into their skin, blood swirling upward, so hypnotic, so sleepy, bubbles rising, find Sylvie . . .
Sylvie jerked away from the memories, from Marco’s invasion, from the physical sensation of being drowned, of being frozen, of being afraid. She lunged for the sink, hung over it, gagging.
Sweat sprang out all along her hairline; her neck felt swampy with it.
“Sylvie?” Cachita pulled the belt from her scrub pants, wadded it up, wet it with cool water, and sponged at Sylvie’s face. “What’s happening?”
“We’re getting out of here,” Sylvie said, when she felt more in control. “We’re not waiting for Tepé or Erinya or, hell, for Alex to call us a lawyer. We’re getting out. We’re getting Wales, and we’re kicking Azpiazu’s ass all the way to hell.”
“How?”
Sylvie leaned against Cachita’s human warmth, soaking it in. “Marco’s a free ghost now. But he used to be a Hand of Glory. I’m betting he still has it in him.”
“What does that mean?” Cachita asked. “Hand of Glory? A free ghost?”
“It means,” Sylvie said, “we’re walking right out the door.”
* * *
AS SOON AS THE LAST OF THE SHAKES HAD LEFT HER BODY, THE LAST of the ghost-repulsion fled, Sylvie gave Marco the go-ahead. The shadow drifted toward the door, and after a moment, the door popped open. An alarm buzzed, an annoying electric whine like a swarm of mosquitoes. Cachita tensed, but Sylvie said, “Marco can handle it. Just stay behind me.”
They followed the ghost into the hallway, their bare feet leaving marks in the frost caused by his passage.
Three ISI agents appeared in the hall, talking rapidly into their headsets, and balking at the sight of them escaped from their cell.
Pausing, Sylvie thought, was definitely their mistake. They crumpled one after another, falling so fast that they didn’t even have time to draw their weapons.
Cachita squeaked beside her. “What just—”
“Don’t ask.”
Marco might be biting into their souls, putting them into soul shock, but hell, they were still getting off easy. Erinya, Tepeyollotl—the white walls would be bloody by now.
By the time they neared the front door, word had gotten out, and Marco had taken down so many agents that he had lost his translucency; he pulsed with stolen pieces of soul, a false heartbeat that glowed dimly in the building’s bright lights.
Sylvie collected two holstered guns, yanking at buckles and webbing and slinging them over her shoulder. She’d want them later. Even if they wouldn’t work against Azpiazu and his oh-so-talented ability to change metal into something harmless.
Another agent appeared, blurry behind the luminescent mirage that was Marco, and for once, Marco paused. Sylvie edged out behind him, found Agent Stone standing a cautious distance away, her red-stained hand held up before her face like a shield.
“Call off your ghost,” she said. “I’ve got your stuff. You can get gone. We won’t stop you.”
“Cachita,” Sylv
ie said.
Cachita took the unspoken command and met Stone halfway, careful to stay out of the woman’s reach, to keep an eye on her holstered gun. But Stone seemed more concerned with keeping her one hand held before her.
Marco thrummed and pulsed but held steady. Afraid to attack, Sylvie thought. Stone might be more than he could take.
If the red-stained hand was like Zoe’s, Stone could have gained it through killing a ghost. Enough to make Marco cautious.
“Got it,” Cachita said, retreated back to Sylvie’s side, a rough bundle of clothes and shoes in her hand.
“Get dressed,” Sylvie said. “Hey, Stone . . .”
“Marah,” the woman said. “My name’s Marah.”
“Don’t care,” Sylvie said. “You got car keys?”
“You don’t need mine,” she said. “The cars in the garage have keys in the ignition. Just pick one.”
“Thanks. Now go away before Marco decides to snack on you after all.”
“I could help you—”
“No,” Sylvie said.
Marah nodded once, and backed away. “Just remember. I offered.”
“Brownie points noted,” Sylvie said.
“What about this?” Marah held out the obsidian summoning knife. Cachita collected it; when she returned to Sylvie’s side, Sylvie took the knife herself.
“Thanks,” Sylvie said. “Now go away.”
Marah held up both hands in mocking surrender, turned as if putting her back to an armed escapee was nothing, and sauntered away.
“It’s mine,” Cachita snapped.
“You can’t be trusted with it,” Sylvie said.
Cachita was dressed now, khakis and sneakers and slightly less crisp blouse; she had the advantage over Sylvie, whose hands were awkwardly full with gun, knife, and clothing. But Cachita was—incompetent, her little voice suggested—used to obeying others, Sylvie thought, and made no effort to take the knife by force.
Sylvie skinned out of her prison scrubs, trading them for her own clothes, dressing awkwardly with the gun in her hand and belatedly aware of the ISI cameras.
Vanity, her voice muttered. More likely they’d be occupied with the blur that was Marco.