Sins & Shadows

by Lyn Benedict

  “Alexandra Figueroa-Smith is dying.”

  Sylvie’s entire body spasmed as if she’d been electrocuted. Cold traced her nerves, made her pant. Her brain locked, repeating those words. Not Alex.

  “A curse of some kind. Or one hell of a freak accident. Her jeep overturned. They didn’t find her right away, and when they did, she was covered in—”

  “Coral snakes,” Sylvie said through numb lips. She’d driven them off, feeling in control, feeling smug—it was her fault entirely.

  Her breath seared her throat, and she realized distantly that she was hyperventilating. Her ankle complained, and Sylvie eased it out from under her, wondering when she’d hit the floor.

  Beside her, Demalion crouched, still talking, empty words where one or two percolated through every so often. Paralysis. Neurotoxin. Ventilator. Antivenin. Hours. Sylvie’s mind raced. Shorted out. Started again. Swerved to vengeance. They were going to pay and pay. . . . Dunne could save her. No, Dunne couldn’t save himself at the moment. Mnemosyne had said as much. His attention elsewhere.

  So get his attention. You know how. The one thing he can’t ignore. The one thing he’d die for. Sylvie closed her eyes. Impossible. But, if there were no other options, then the impossible had to be done. A scheme unfolded, bit by bit by impossible bit. Sylvie’s breath steadied, her pulse slowed. She looked at her plan through a sniper’s obsessive focus and found it acceptable.

  “. . . you on a private flight to Miami,” Demalion said.

  “What good would watching her die do?” She ignored the shock that lit his face. “I need clothes, I need your car. I need my phone and my gun.”

  “What are you planning?” he said, eyes growing less concerned and more wary. “You’re upset, not thinking clearly.”

  “I’m angry,” she said. “I find it clears the mind extraordinarily well.”

  20

  Waking the Oubliette

  SYLVIE ABANDONED THE ISI SEDAN ON A SIDE STREET. DEMALION would figure out where she had gone; he had all the pieces and had shown himself more than capable of putting them together. Abandoning the car was only a slowing device, but she wanted things played out before he hit the scene. Before he put himself between her and danger. He’d be furious, not only that she left him behind—again—but that she’d used a weakness he confided in her to do so.

  She’d allowed his company as far as Dunne’s apartment, Sylvie driving the last mile when proximity keyed the return of Demalion’s blindness. They had changed places in a tension-ridden silence, and Demalion sank into the passenger seat, cradling his crystal “eye.” Once there, Sylvie had taken ruthless advantage of his blindness, of the effort it took him to see through the crystal; she collected what she had come for in a rush, too fast for him to make any sense of it, and hightailed it out of the brownstone.

  Her actions had blown the hell out of their truce and set the ISI back on her tail, but it was the only thing she could do. The curse on her had rebounded onto Alex, who had been—mostly—safely out of the way. At her side, Demalion was nothing more than a walking target.

  Another wary glance at the storm-churned sky, and Sylvie thought, Better hurry. Chicago was a shadow of itself, a town lit by tempest light, its borders girdled by towering dark clouds, and its people hunkered down in growing panic.

  Lightning flickered and licked the clouds, coming not from within them, but from elsewhere. Dunne was on the run, hiding his own storm-cloud core of power somewhere within the sky tumult, and Zeus—Sylvie winced as another sheet of lightning crackled across the face of the cloud, red-violet, bruising the sky—Zeus was hunting. A bird splatted into the concrete near her, a twisted thing half scale, half feather, all writhing movement, before a passing cab smeared it into the asphalt. The cabbie slowed, backed up alongside her. “Car trouble? Lady, you need a ride?”

  Sylvie shook her head. “El,” she said.

  “It’s not running. Power outage at the main line.”

  “Best news I’ve heard all day,” she said.

  He drove on, not bothering to waste more words on an obvious idiot. Sylvie had been serious, though. Doing what she planned to do was already in the impossible category; doing it with an audience? Might as well ask her to save the world. Her intentions were much smaller. One girl, one boy. Alex. Bran. The world would have to fend for itself.

  She hefted the artist’s satchel out of the backseat; she’d stolen it from Bran’s attic studio, filled it while Demalion hovered sightlessly, if not quietly, at her side. She bit her lip. If he’d just stay out of this . . .

  If you wanted him safe, the dark voice said, you shouldn’t have let him in.

  She shivered and forced those thoughts away. Keep him safe, she thought. It was a lie, or rather, a partial truth at best. She didn’t want Demalion at her side. Demalion was her weakness because he offered her his strength, a shoulder to lean on, arms to shelter in. Right now, Sylvie needed to stand alone and tall, needed aggression and vitriol more than understanding. She needed to keep her rage, and she fueled it by knowing she was alone against the world. Demalion had no place in that.

  She slung the satchel over her shoulder and headed for the El, ignoring the crackling, fulminating sky above her head.

  The entryway to the El gaped, dark under cloud cover, without electric lights. Sylvie stumbled down the stairs in the dimness, let her eyes adjust. In the uncanny storm light that trickled through, the oubliette spell’s greasy residue gleamed. Sylvie smiled at it and dropped the satchel.

  “You can’t do it, Sylvie,” Val had said, when called for advice. Sylvie, still thinking of Val’s sending Alex away, had no problems in riding roughshod over Val’s objections and demanding answers. Rebuild the oubliette? Why not? No magic? When she was immersed in a city drowning in a god’s despair? When she had a Fury’s blood beneath her nails? And the will to refuse failure when so much depended on it.

  Sylvie crouched and drew out the tubes of paint snagged from Bran’s studio. Vermilion, cobalt, titanium white, cadmium yellow, malachite green, mars black. Val had warned it took special ingredients to build a spell circle, that ordinary paint was fit for nothing but decoration. Sylvie, having recently seen the way a god’s sphere of influence could affect things, figured that these oil paints, stored and used in a god’s house, were soaked in special.

  She unfolded the sketch she’d made of the oubliette and stuck it to the cement with a glob of white paint. She wished she’d brought a flashlight.

  The moment on her, she hesitated.

  “It’s not paint by numbers,” Val said. “It’s magic. It’s bending reality. It’s more than will. It’s know-how. Even if you can muster the tools, get any kind of result at all, it won’t open the same door.”

  It had to. Sylvie closed her eyes, breathed steadily. If she had Bran in her custody, Dunne would have to deal with her. Dunne would save Alex.

  “You are resourceful, aren’t you?” the woman said, and Sylvie spun around. She had thought she was alone. At first she didn’t recognize her, felt an instinctive liking and camaraderie for this woman, slouched lazily on the stairs, dressed in clothing that looked every bit as “found” as Sylvie’s. Worn black denim, loose at the hips, bagging over cracking cowboy boots. A T-shirt that declared the wearer wanted Dead or Alive, a tangle of dark hair, and a bronze sheriff’s star on a thong around her neck, like an old-Western gunslinger doing CSI. Her eyes seemed sheened with silver, and in this city, that made Sylvie wary.

  “Sylvie Lightner, aka Shadows,” she said. “I’ve been doing my homework. You have had a barrel of misfortune of late, haven’t you—”

  “Lilith,” Sylvie said. Recognition swept over her all at once. The Old Cat was right: Lilith was able to blend in as well as stand out.

  Lilith sat sideways on the stairs, fading in and out of shadow more deeply than her clothing could account for. She leaned back against the wall, stuck long, denim-clad legs along the riser, and inspected the dusty toes of her boots. “You’re reall
y going to give it a go, aren’t you? The old college try. Well, more power to you,” Lilith said. “I knew you were interesting when I first laid eyes on you, a girl with a Fury on a leash, but—”

  Sylvie raised the gun to bear, and Lilith sighed. “But now, you’re being dull. Go ahead. Fire. You want to, and I can tell there’s no talking to you until it’s out of your system. Just don’t expect much. I’m immortal, not—”

  Sylvie pulled the trigger. One shot, aimed directly at the star-shaped metal at Lilith’s breast. The second shot was between Lilith’s iridescent, unblinking gaze, the thunder crack of the first shot still reverberating in the cement confines. When the second roll of noise stopped, Lilith was unharmed.

  “—stupid,” Lilith finished. She fumbled in her jeans pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “You a smoker?”

  Sylvie stepped closer, closer, and Lilith lit her cigarette, sucking it to red-tipped life.

  Trembling—Sylvie couldn’t miss from this range, no matter what—Sylvie put the barrel of the gun to Lilith’s temple.

  Lilith cast a sidelong glance up at Sylvie, eyes silvery-glossy under dark lashes, and said, “Go ahead. I admire perseverance. But remember—I’m not stupid. Immortal’s not the same as invulnerable unless one takes steps to make it so. So try it again if you want, but I’ll tell you true, I don’t know where the bullets go. They don’t stop in my flesh, but that’s not to say they don’t find flesh. After all, isn’t that a bullet’s raison d’être; to pierce and kill?”

  Lilith took a long breath, let out the smoke, and said, “I know your bloodline. I know you’re a killer—I watched you kill my petit sorcier. What a temper you have. But are you an indiscriminate killer? You’ve already sent two bullets into the world without a target. Will you send others?”

  Sylvie let the gun barrel drop, her breath a loud rasp in the quiet. “You can’t make me think you care. You burned people alive in the nightclub.”

  “You destroy everything and everyone you touch. And then you blame them for being weak.”

  “You pretended to be Bran’s friend. You betrayed him.”

  “Your arrogance saw your associate killed—”

  Sylvie’s vision greyed. Was she already too late for Alex? She couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe it. “Are we done with the pissing contest? I’m bad, you’re worse. Pretty sure the vote would swing my way.” Her voice, though ragged, held its edge. Sylvie was perversely proud of that.

  Lilith raised her head and smiled, serene. “It all depends on whom you ask. We’re not painted in black and white, Sylvie. Just different shades of grey.”

  Sylvie closed her eyes, wished she could close her ears. “You can’t stop me from doing what I have to do.”

  “I could. Of course I could. Just by snapping my fingers,” Lilith said. “Or a stick. Balefire down here would be spectacular, I’d imagine.” Like a stage magician, she folded her fingers closed, opened them again to reveal a wooden match. She pressed it between two fingers.

  Sylvie’s hand dropped to the gun, though it hadn’t proved useful. She couldn’t stop watching the matchstick rotating in Lilith’s agile fingers. “You should listen better, Sylvie. There’s no need for melodrama. I could stop you. I have no intention of doing so.”

  “I don’t believe—”

  “Well, it’s not like he’s doing me a lick of good all locked away like that, now is he? Auguste, my little prodigy, was quite a genius when it came to magical doors, locks, keys . . . oubliettes. Pity he slacked on his defensive skills. I expected him to be able to open it for me. Now, I’ve got you, willing to do the same.”

  “I’m not a talent,” Sylvie said. “So there’s no point in you hanging around, playing cat at the mousehole.”

  “Never a cat,” Lilith said, making a moue. “Nasty, sly, self-indulgent creatures.” She gestured broadly with her cigarette, tracing a pale, smoky path in the dim light. “The fun part is I don’t think another sorcerer could reopen it. Too much power. They’d open another oubliette, maybe, and that wouldn’t slice the bread for sandwiches, would it? But a nonwitch, a nonsorcerer, doesn’t have power to open anything. . . . Such the conundrum. I was furious with you at first. I admit it. You made my simple, elegant plan into a locked-room mystery. But then you show up, carrying all the tools to redeem yourself.”

  Lilith finished her cigarette, fished out another, and dropped her hand to the cement, the matchstick reaching out. . . . Then she yanked it back, unstruck. Unbroken. “Oops. Wouldn’t that be overkill for lighting a cigarette?” She lit the new cigarette from the ashy tail of the first. “You want one?”

  Sylvie shook her head, wordless. Lilith raised the fine hairs on her arms and nape. Her chatter couldn’t mask the stink about her, the obsessive rage that betrayed itself in a hundred little tells in her false calm, in her ragged fingernails, in the flick, flick, flick of those silvery eyes. If Sylvie were a dog, she’d have been laying her ears flat and growling low in her throat.

  “No, suppose not,” Lilith said, putting the cigarettes away in her hip pocket with a little pat, as if to make sure they made it there. It reminded her of Demalion with his little crystal and his constant check on it. A crutch. “Mortal after all, and who needs lung cancer? Though, Syl, I’ve got to say, you aren’t going to live long enough for that kind of death.” She spun her own cigarette away; Sylvie dodged the burning tip with a scowl.

  “I’m not helping you.”

  “You are being painfully slow about it,” Lilith said. “Is there anything I can do to speed matters?”

  “Go away.”

  “If it’s confidence you’re lacking, don’t,” Lilith said. “You know what they say. There’s not a safe that can’t be cracked, given the right skill set and a good set of tools. And you’re well prepared. Got your hands slicked with power I can smell from here.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Tick, tick, Sylvie,” Lilith said, voice dropping low and smooth as a snake. “Your friend’s counting on you, isn’t she? And your poor blinded lover boy—whom you left all alone. You may work alone. I don’t. I’d get started if I were you. I’m really being very patient.”

  Sylvie shivered at the glimpse of the steel core beneath the persiflage. Her trembling increased until she felt it rattle her spine, felt the room vibrate with it. Rage. Fear. Stress. She wasn’t sure what the driving emotion was, and her little dark voice seemed to have deserted her.

  Tick, tick, she thought, and Lilith tapped her wrist as if she plucked the thought from Sylvie’s mind.

  Sylvie took a last look at those faintly luminous eyes, trying to decide if the moment she turned her back, Lilith would incinerate her. Lilith’s gaze gave her nothing to go on, and finally Sylvie turned to the satchel.

  Tick, tick. Sylvie clenched her jaw and knelt before the stained remnants of the first spell casting. Bending reality, she thought. Val had made it sound impossible for a non-Talent. But it seemed to Sylvie that doing it once was the hard thing, doing it twice—well, the world had bent already. It could bend again and would follow the path of least resistance, the path it had followed before.

  Sylvie uncapped the cobalt paint and globbed it onto her fingertips. The dregs of Erinya’s blood leached toward the oils, and Sylvie sucked in a breath. Once begun, she couldn’t stop. She wasn’t a magic-user, had never wanted to be one, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t picked up a few basics. She’d seen elaborate spell casting done before. Always build the circle first, Val had said, in full-out lecture mode.

  A tiny crack behind her made her jump nearly out of her skin. She spun, hand full of blue paint, spattering the wall. Oddly dizzy, Sylvie forced her eyes closed.

  “It’s okay, you know,” Lilith said. “It was a dud.” Sylvie opened her eyes, breath lodged in her throat, heart pounding, still half-expecting balefire to devour her. Instead, all there was was Lilith looking down at the broken matchstick in her hand and pouting. “Maudits bastards. I despise shoddy work.”

&n
bsp; “You burn me up, no chance in hell of getting Bran back,” Sylvie snapped.

  “True,” Lilith said. “I didn’t mean to snap it. I was getting bored, and it just . . . slipped. Don’t bore me, Sylvie.”

  Tick, tick.

  Lilith traded the most recent end of a cigarette for another fresh one, chain-smoking, staring blankly at the cement ceiling. Dud, my ass, Sylvie thought. Lilith was far too careful to set off any spell accidentally.

  Gritting her teeth, Sylvie globbed more cobalt on her fingers and started following the first curve. Build the circle first, Val said. That way, if the spell goes wrong, it’s contained. She couldn’t let this one go wrong.

  She tucked the tube of paint into her palm, nozzle down, squeezing, providing herself with a steady flow. Beneath her fingertips, the concrete felt as rough as sharkskin. She scuttled along the old curve in an uncomfortable half crouch, trying to keep an eye on Lilith even while she focused her will on the circle.

  Halfway around, and Sylvie paused, knees cramping, fingers still connected to the concrete. It wasn’t working, she thought, and despair made her fingers tremble. Shouldn’t there be some sense of progress? She was learning nothing more than finger painting on a surface rougher than sandpaper sucked and that oil paints smelled like gassy swampland. An inane thought echoed in her head. Art is pain.

  “Focus,” Lilith said. “Keep moving.”

  Sylvie almost gave up then and there, wanting just to spite Lilith and half-convinced it was too late for Alex anyway.

  “Listen to me. Focus your will. Get it done.”

  Sylvie bent back to the oubliette. Three-quarters around, and a tiny spark of something lanced upward, an electric tingle like touching a battery with wet hands. Then, a last knee-walk, sideways crab scuttle, and she closed the circle. The sting returned tenfold, ran up her arms in a jangling, nerve-strung firecracker series of tiny explosions. Her entire body felt sensitized, like she stood too close to a hot-wire-laced fence.

  “There you go,” Lilith said. “Do the signifiers next. Don’t lose focus. The world doesn’t like to bend. It’ll fight back.”