by Lyn Benedict
“And he lives where?” Sylvie said. “I’m not leaving you loose in my city while I run your errands.”
“He’ll be here soon. He follows me. Always just out of my sight. Gloating. This spell you think is so cruel . . . is the only way I’ve found to weaken him.”
“Nice to know you hold your life so high that you’ll use innocents as a shield,” Sylvie said. “You’re not making me want to do you any favors.”
“Every time I change without intent, without control, it’s as if acid is poured beneath my skin. I burn. . . .”
“Not feeling sorry for you. Just so you know.”
He gritted his teeth; his jaw deformed on one side, thrust forward; his cheek twisted and sprouted whiskers before slipping back to GQ smoothness. “Make no mistake, Lilith. I am in control here. It’s a devil’s bargain I offer you. But you cannot afford to say no. These women will wither and die. Tepé’s curse is strong, and they are human. Help me. Save them. If you delay too long, they will die, and I’ll be forced to find replacements.
“Think of that, if nothing else. Me, loose in your city. Can you protect every woman who meets my needs? It’s an enormous city, Shadows. Do we have a deal?”
“How do I contact you?”
“You don’t. Break the curse, and I’ll vanish as I came. The women will wake and return home. Always assuming you were quick enough that they survive.”
“I know your rep,” Sylvie said. “Soul-devourer. You’ve left a trail of bodies.”
“You’ll just have to take it on trust,” he said. He slipped alongside the van, climbed inside.
Sylvie yanked Wales around. “Can you do anything right now? Can you help those women? Wake them? If so, do it!”
Wales shook his head, nearly tilted over, and Sylvie clutched his shirt in her fists as the soul-devourer drove away, his “harem” still intact. Swaying, Wales put a hand to his head, and said, “Can we get the hell out of here?”
“God, yes,” Sylvie muttered. She wanted away with a force that nearly sickened her. Away from the scene of her defeat. Away from the sorcerer’s unclean magic. Away from her agreement to aid him.
It wasn’t quite the rapid retreat Wales wanted. She made him sit first, studied his pupils—reactive, the same size, able to follow her fingertip—and declared him hardheaded.
“I’ve heard that before,” he drawled.
The blood was mostly gone, courtesy of Marco’s cleanup, and what was left, Wales mopped at with the edge of his sleeve. The gash on his cheek had coagulated; the one on his shoulder was glued shut with fabric. The two in between were reddened lines on the thin skin of his throat—a reminder of mercy. The sorcerer could have ripped Wales’s throat open, and from the way he fingered those small tears, Wales knew it.
* * *
SYLVIE LET WALES INTO THE SOUTH BEACH OFFICE, GESTURING HIM ahead, and already looking over her shoulder. Attempted murder tended to make her a little paranoid. Wales, of course, lived in a state of controlled paranoia.
She shut the door; he was peering out through the blinds, his mouth drawn tight. He looked tired, strung-out; he’d dozed fitfully most of the way back, jerking awake every so often, eyes frightened, hands flailing. It all argued that it hadn’t been sleep that held him last night but simple unconsciousness. Two days in her company, and she’d worked him into a frazzle.
Alex wouldn’t be happy.
“You know you got men scoping your shop? They’re not subtle.” His voice was pitched low, as if he feared being overheard.
Sylvie took a look, miniblinds spread around her fingers, and sighed. “There’s the ISI. Figures. They don’t hunt the bad-guy sorcerer, no. They come and camp on my doorstep. They’re cheats. Something bad happens, they like to try to copy off my test paper.”
“I didn’t sign up to deal with the government,” Wales said, still in that same half mumble. Trying to avoid a parabolic mike.
“Untwist your panties, Tex,” Sylvie said. “You’ve got Marco, remember? They get too close, you disappear.”
She let the gap in the blinds shut, kept the sign on the door to CLOSED, and headed upstairs, fighting the urge to stomp her feet like a child. She hadn’t missed the ISI and their spying one bit.
Her little dark voice said, You should have taken care of Odalys yourself.
They would have been back, no matter what, she argued with it.
Think they were watching when you were attacked? Watching and waiting to see if you’d take care of the assassin yourself? Watching while the assassin held your blameless neighbor hostage?
“Wales!” she snapped. “Stop gawking at them and start some coffee.”
“Not the boss of me,” he shot back. But she heard him drop the blinds with a snap.
Her upstairs office was a mess. Leftover paperwork from the previous case, still incomplete for more than just the time it would take to code things properly. If the ISI was on her ass again, it was more important than ever to keep her case files innocuous, cloak the magical in the mundane.
But these files were also waiting on Odalys, on Patrice, on justice to be done. Sylvie dumped the files into her drawer and rested her head on her hands. It was hard to start the hunt for this mysterious Tepé when she knew the one benefiting from her actions would be the soul-devourer.
She opened the safe, took out the newest backup gun, and sorted her feelings out by loading it.
There was a sudden burst of conversation below, the rattle of the door closing, then Alex wandered upstairs, sipping coffee from Etienne’s.
“Working from home?” Sylvie said. “I know you’re here a lot, but home’s the thing that has an actual bed in it.”
“Got a futon, not a bed,” Alex said. “Besides, practice what you preach, Syl. I was just driving by, and I saw your truck.”
“Just driving by?”
“Okay, so I bet myself one of Etienne’s beignets that you’d be in.” She held up her free hand, then deliberately brushed powdered sugar onto her jeans. “So Tierney seems kinda pissy today. And hurt. I told him I’d get the first-aid kit, but he sent me up here, instead.”
“ISI’s back,” Sylvie said. “He doesn’t like the government overmuch. Go home, Alex.”
“Don’t you want to know what I found out?”
“Phone, e-mail—”
“Oh, but face-to-face is more fun.” She draped her lanky self over the spare chair, kicked her flip-flops off, and hooked her feet in the rungs. “Are you going to ask?”
“Alex,” Sylvie said. “We met the soul-devourer. I’m not in the mood.”
Alex stiffened all over. “What happened? Is that how Tierney got hurt? What did he want?”
“He wants me to work for him,” Sylvie said. She filled Alex in; by the end of it, she was pacing the room, angry and sick all over again. “He’s holding the women as hostages. He said they get closer to death the longer I take. Wales agrees.”
“You can’t work for him,” Alex said, focusing in with her usual talent for rubbing salt in the wound. “He’s the bad guy.”
“I have to work for him. But I’ll make him choke on it before I’m done. For me to do that, I need to know who he is. Where he came from. What his weaknesses are.”
“Okay,” Alex said. “Okay, I can maybe help—” She pulled out her laptop, flipped it open, and said, “I did some preliminary research. I skipped the soul-devourer part. Tierney’s right. That’s a giant dead end. The necromantic community knows he exists but nothing else about him. Hell, turns out they weren’t even sure it was a man, just defaulted to it. So I went back to the simple facts. What you and Tierney got from the symbols: old-fashioned magic, Basque magic, a linkage to alchemy.”
“Alchemy? He disintegrated my gun with a touch.”
“Oh yeah,” Alex said, eyes lighting with wholly inappropriate enthusiasm. “Alchemy’s all about the transformation of one thing to another. Bet your gun didn’t just disintegrate; bet it became some other type of metal first—”
&n
bsp; “Alex. He disintegrated my gun. Tell me you got something,” Sylvie said.
“Not something,” Alex said. “But something that might lead to something. A nineteenth-century man they called the Basque Alchemist. Eladio Azpiazu. Supposedly he had the power of a wolf, and he scared his neighbors so bad that rather than drive him out, the town picked up and moved.”
“Nineteenth century? Not our guy, Alex.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Alex said. “It’s like the Maudits. They seek out apprentices—”
“You say apprentice; I say slave,” Sylvie murmured, but she got the gist. “You think it’s a lineage. A pattern of teaching.”
“Yeah, and a strict one if this modern sorcerer is still using the same techniques as his ancestor. That’d be like me still using quill and ink. It works, but there are better methods now. Why should magic be any different?”
“Anything else?” Sylvie asked. “I’m greedy.”
“One ring-a-ding prize maybe,” Alex said. “I farmed out some of the research. I thought, if the town moved, that would leave a record. Or if the town just disappeared. I know a grad student at UM, a local history buff. She looked into it, confirmed that there was a town that disappeared, and this is the important part—one of the key reasons people left? A series of grisly murders where people were found with their hearts torn out. Sound like the soul-devourer? I’d say that our modern sorcerer was following the family line all the way down.”
“Alex, you’re amazing,” Sylvie said.
“So what’s my prize?”
“More research,” Sylvie said. “Look into his enemy. A sorcerer called Tepé. Tepé cursed him but good. An enmity that strong should draw notice.”
Alex sighed. “Good work makes more work. So damn true.”
Sylvie said, “I strongly doubt that’s his real name, anyway. Sounds more like a handle than a given name. Like . . .” She raised her head. “Like the Ghoul.”
Wales flipped her off as he joined them. He leaned against the doorjamb, and Sylvie waved him in. The landing was narrow, the stairs were steep, and Wales still didn’t look any too steady on his feet.
Alex moved to get out of her seat, and Wales shook his head. His earlier fear had given way to a sullen sort of irritation. He had come upstairs, Sylvie thought, to pick a fight. Give himself a reason to storm out of the office and the city.
Usually, when people wanted a fight, Sylvie was willing to oblige. Not today. She turned her back on Wales, took her seat again, tried for calm. “You going back to the hotel?” she asked.
“Unless you have something else you want me to do today. Boss,” he said.
“Better leave the necromancy be for a bit,” Sylvie said. Wished she hadn’t the minute the last word left her mouth.
“You think?” he snapped. “Want to tell me to not play in traffic, too? Or hey, how about not shooting up?”
“You look tired is all. Not in shape to watch your back.”
Wales shot her a grin that was all teeth, offense, and not a lot of humor. “Guess it’s a good thing I got Marco for that.”
In a hasty attempt to disrupt the argument ready to break out, Alex said, “I checked out Patrice on the way here. She was macking on some goth boy at a coffee shop.” She huffed under her breath, said, “You have to be really dedicated to work full goth gear before 9:00 a.m. Of course, later in the day it’s too hot for that much guyliner—”
“You did what?” Sylvie said.
Alex looked up from her amused memories and blinked. “Um.”
Sylvie took a deep breath, ready to shout, caught sight of Wales’s smirk, and let her breath out. When she did speak, it was far more moderately than her original intention. “So instead of working at home where it’s safe, you went out and chased a dead girl around.”
“I did work at home. Then I hit a dead end, decided to clear my mind, and since you got up in Patrice’s face yesterday—yes, Tierney tattled—”
Sylvie blinked again. When the hell had Alex had time to squeeze in a chat with Wales? But she should know better than to underestimate Alex’s ability to gather information.
“—so I figured you couldn’t follow her around, and she doesn’t know me, so, I sat outside her house and followed her to the coffee shop—”
“Where she hit on a goth boy, got it,” Sylvie said.
“Cute one, too, if you like that type. Long, lanky, the kind of bony shoulder blades that make me think of wings.” Alex’s gaze was resting on Wales’s clavicle, visible through the thin shirt.
Wales’s cheeks darkened steadily, but he said nothing, only hunched his shoulders and made himself small. At least embarrassment had eclipsed his anger.
“Great,” Sylvie said. “She’s got the new life, and now she’s slumming it.”
“Can’t be slumming it too bad,” Alex said. “Not if he’s buying five-dollar coffees and ten-dollar pastries. And they’re planning on clubbing tonight at Caballero, so there goes another chunk of change.”
Sylvie shook her head, disgusted. Patrice offended her on a very simple level. She’d stolen a new life and was doing nothing new with it, tracing the same self-indulgent lifestyle she’d had before.
You could still shoot her, the little dark voice suggested.
Rather than listen to it, Sylvie headed back downstairs.
The sunlight seeped in through the closed blinds, thin lines of brilliant gold that exposed every dust mote in the office and made her sanctuary into a prison of shadowy bars.
Sylvie yanked the blinds open, blinked in the glare, and sent a rude gesture in the direction of the ISI nursing their coffees at the crowded pastry shop across the street. They wanted to watch? Let them.
It was going to be another scorcher. Sylvie hoped Patrice’s goth boy melted and ruined her day. Hell with it, she hoped Patrice melted.
Likelihood was, the only one who’d be suffering from the heat was Sylvie. Odds were, she’d be out pounding the pavement for hours, looking for the black van that the sorcerer had used to take the women away. She envied the cops and their ability to just slap an APB or BOLO or whatever acronym floated their boat on a vehicle.
The idea made her thirsty just thinking on it. She raided the fridge, cracked a water bottle, took a healthy slug of cold—
The pain surprised her. It was sudden, all-encompassing, breathtaking. Like knives lodging in her throat, her stomach, her chest. She let out a strangled cry and found blood speckling her lips. She thrust the bottle away, though she knew it wasn’t to blame.
A spell. Finding its target.
No.
A curse.
Her throat itched, ached, and burned. She couldn’t breathe through the agony of it, found herself crumpling forward, losing all control of her body save the most important one.
She wouldn’t cough. Wouldn’t cry out. Whatever the spell was, it was tearing the hell out of her throat.
Her hands were wet, icy with spilled water.
She tried not to breathe. Not to move. Not to make it worse.
This wasn’t illusion. This would kill her whether she believed it was happening or not. Her unaccountable resistance to magic could only last so long. Blood blossomed hot, slippery in her throat.
Footsteps came down the stairs so fast they were nearly falling. Alex shrieked, high and distorted, Wales’s shouting back, all but incomprehensible, torn between fast words and the Texan drawl.
“Hold on, Sylvie,” he said. Or she thought he said.
Icy fingers threw her backward, pressed her down. She clawed up, felt only fog, malevolence.
“Don’t fight him,” Wales said. “He’s trying to help.”
Cold fog iced over her lips; something that tasted of rot, of cold, clotted blood. Marco, she thought, and was amazed that she still had energy to be squeamish.
Marco sealed her mouth with his, blew death and ice into her chest. She stopped breathing. No. She didn’t stop. He stopped her. Killed her. The deadly cold in her lungs spread outward.
Her hands struck at nothing; the pain in her chest and belly fought back.
Her bones were ice, too cold even to shiver.
In the background, Alex sobbed.
Just when Sylvie thought she must be encased in ice, a new cold pressed into her belly, so frozen it burned. So cold, that if she’d been breathing, she’d have expected to see ice.
Her lungs ached; her vision dimmed, but she saw the impossible. A floating clump of red-smeared pins rising through the skin of her stomach. Passing through her flesh, held in Marco’s invisible fist.
She blacked out.
When she came to, the lips on hers were warm, breathing life, not death, and shaking with fear. “C’mon, Sylvie,” Alex whispered. “C’mon.”
Sylvie’s heart gave a giant lurch, stuttering, then pounding furiously, shaking her lungs into action. She coughed, felt pain, tasted copper, but nothing like before, and curled onto her side. Alex slumped beside her, rubbing her spine.
“Tierney sent the ghost after the witch,” she said. Her voice was hoarse. “Said Marco’s gonna force-feed her the pins. God, Sylvie—”
“’S okay,” Sylvie breathed. It wasn’t.
Pins. That was ugly magic, a far cry from the illusions she’d been attacked with earlier. Hell, she preferred the gunman to this. And she didn’t know how it had been triggered. Line of sight? A poppet? A triggered spell attached to the bottle she’d so carelessly picked up?
She hadn’t expected Odalys to try something so messy and violent. Something inexplicable enough to rouse serious attention. Something so old-fashioned. Odalys was a modern witch.
For the first time in a long while, Sylvie felt in over her head. She was crazy to do what she did. To face off against the Magicus Mundi with a gun and nothing more. She was going to have to cave, have to crawl to Val and Zoe and get the defensive magics back on the shop and their homes.
“Don’t talk,” Alex said. “He’s pulling the truck around. We’re going to take you to the ER. The ghost got the pins out, but—”
“’S okay,” Sylvie whispered again. This time it was. She felt . . . all right. Like crap. Sore. Like her throat and lungs and stomach had all been sandblasted. Like she could brush forever and never be rid of the taste of Marco’s tongue moving between her teeth. But nowhere near the kind of pain she expected from shredded tissues.
