Sins & Shadows si-1

by Lyn Benedict

  “You thought I might do something terminally stupid. Sorry, Alex. You should know better. Other people die. Not me.” Sylvie kept one eye on the dwindling crowd, wanting to be back downstairs looking at the spell

  “No,” Alex said. “You’re too mean to die.”

  “Damn straight,” Sylvie said. “You got the number or what?”

  “Had to unpack a few unlabeled boxes,” Alex said. “But I got it.”

  Sylvie waited. And waited. A gust of warm air rolled up from the railway entrance as a train passed through and rose clattering over the street.

  “What are you doing in Chicago, Sylvie?”

  Sylvie thought about throwing the cell phone to the street in a satisfying shatter of plastic and walking off. If she could recall even a glimmer of Val’s damn number—

  “Sylvie—” Alex singsonged into the receiver.

  “Missing person,” Sylvie gave in, pitching her voice lower as a group of teens walked by.

  “Weird, obviously, or you wouldn’t be using Val. How weird?”

  “The weirdest,” Sylvie said, biting her lip. She shouldn’t, she knew she shouldn’t. Keep her safe, she thought. Safe meant away from all of this. But Alex was her researcher, and so damn useful. “Ever hear of a family named Eumenides?”

  “Eumenides?”

  “Yeah, three sisters. Not good with friendly, and not scared of guns. Shifty, scary, savage kind of girls.”

  “Hellascary girls,” Alex breathed. “Jesus, Syl. They are . . . You . . . Why are you asking?”

  Sylvie could hear it, the thing she’d been hearing in Alex’s voice more and more frequently, beneath the brashness, a tendril of fear as she was pitchforked into one dangerous situation after another.

  “Met ’em, didn’t like ’em. Now I’m working for someone who owns them.”

  “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” Alex chanted. “They’re not real—I mean, I never thought they were real. They’re myths.”

  “Greek myths?” Sylvie said. I am the god of Justice. Greek lettering in the spell circle. The Olympus group.

  “Yeah,” Alex said. “You think they’re the real deal? Not just sorcerers with a shtick?”

  Sylvie remembered the bone-chilling paralysis she’d felt under their eyes, the small-rodent urge to curl up and die or run. With shape-shifters, the fear was always physical, that atavistic dread of being eaten alive; the sisters made her feel more than that. In their presence, Sylvie was aware of the fragility of her soul. “Yeah,” she whispered.

  “Do you know how dangerous they are?”

  “No,” Sylvie snapped, taking refuge in anger. “That’s why I’m asking.”

  “They’re called the Kindly Ones, the Erinyes, sort of in a talismanic hope that respect will keep them off your back. But they’re also called the Furies.”

  Sylvie twitched. That name she knew. Her blood cooled in her veins, raising goose bumps beneath her long sleeves. “A human could control them?”

  “Hell no,” Alex said. “No one controls them. Not really. They’re punishers. Classically, they drive men mad for their sins, though I’ve heard they kill as well, or even destroy souls, depending on how much they want their victim to suffer. They’re family-obsessed in a way even the moral majority would shrink from—most of the sins they punish are crimes inflicted by a child upon parents. They’re unstoppable. They respect few gods, and obey only one.”

  “The god of Justice,” Sylvie said.

  “God? There is no god of Justice in the Greek pantheon, Syl. You gotta read more. There’s goddesses, weak things, Themis, Dike, but no god. If the Furies listen to any god, it’s Hera, who’s as mad as they are.”

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Sylvie said. She kicked at a dropped cigarette butt, sending a faint red spark across the sidewalk. “They’re working for a man now. Kevin Dunne, proclaims himself the god of Justice. They cower before him, fawn on him. Hunt murderers for him, like some vigilante team of cops.”

  “Oh that’s so not right,” Alex said. “He’s pulling something. There is no god of Justice. You want me to snoop into Dunne’s life?”

  “Absolutely not,” Sylvie said, though she desperately wanted more information on Dunne. Knowing who she was working for had always been top of the list important to her, second only to the ultimate goal of a case.

  Normally, she set Alex on every client’s bio, knowing that they always lied about something. Alex, who made nice with people, made even nicer with computers. Not this time. She’d have to piece his history together herself and hope she beat the clock.

  “Sure?” Alex asked.

  “Absolutely sure. Besides, I’ve got a suspicion someone’s already been doing that. It’s his boyfriend who’s missing.”

  “Ransom? Blackmail?”

  “Not yet,” Sylvie said. “And probably not; it’s been two weeks.”

  “Cold trail,” Alex said. “If you don’t find a missing person within—”

  “Yeah, yeah, we all watch TV. But it’s a little messier than that. The ISI’s involved,” Sylvie said. “It looks like one of the reasons we haven’t seen Demalion sniffing around at home is ’cause he’s here. Or at least, he was here the night Bran Wolf disappeared.”

  “Bastard. Kick his ass for me,” Alex said.

  Sylvie grimaced against the phone. Alex had taken Demalion’s betrayal as hard as Sylvie had, if not harder. Demalion had used Alex to introduce him to Sylvie; in retrospect, Sylvie knew that it was the only way it would have worked. She trusted Alex. And Alex trusted people. Though not so much as she used to, courtesy of Demalion. One more black mark against the man.

  “You want me to look into their files, see what I can find?” Alex said.

  Sylvie hesitated, and what did it say about this case that she thought Alex would be safer taking on the Internal Surveillance and Intelligence agency than a single man who might be a god.

  “I’m gonna go nuts otherwise,” Alex said.

  “Yeah, all right,” Sylvie said. “But it’ll take some time. I’m still going to meet them head-on. Makes it harder for them to lie.”

  “Ah, you just like the look on their faces,” Alex said. “All red and puffy.”

  “Guilty,” Sylvie said.

  “Give ’em hell,” Alex said. “And Syl, just so you know—you rehired me at a higher pay scale.”

  “Alex—”

  “I wrote the contract up already. Done deal. You can sign it when you get back.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sylvie said. “Got Val’s number, you little mercenary?”

  Alex read it off, and Sylvie punched it back into her memory list, cursing in her mind with each digit. “Hey, Alex,” Sylvie said. “Don’t—don’t hang around the office, okay? I don’t know where those sisters are now, but last time I saw them, they were prowling around the beach.”

  “It’s okay,” Alex said. “I don’t want to run into them. I’d pee my pants for sure, but I’d be okay. They hunt specific sinners, and I’m clean. My parents are alive and well, all the multiple steps included, and there’s no blood on my hands.”

  Sylvie sucked in a breath. You kill people, Dunne told her again. “Gotta go. You stay out of this,” she said, and disconnected without further words.

  “I kill monsters,” she whispered, clinging to that. Monsters. Her stomach churned, roiled, declared her a liar. Her definition of monster had grown looser over the years.

  Before Alex could call back, Sylvie dialed Val, punching in the number while it was fresh in her mind. Wrong number.

  She cursed her inability to retain numbers, and hit the newly reprogrammed Memory 1—the first, and hopefully, only Magicus Mundi contact back in her books. The phone rang, but it wasn’t Val on the other end. A second wrong number. Sylvie frowned. Had Val changed it?

  She tried again and got a disconnect notice. Always something with witches, Sylvie thought, getting it all at once. They couldn’t just screen their calls like normal people. No, Val had to bespell her phone with a dial-me-not whe
n she didn’t want to be disturbed. Tough.

  Sylvie took the phone, glared at it, and gritted her teeth. “I’m calling you, Val, so give it up.” She dialed the number, one careful, steady key at a time, focusing on Val, on her streaky blond hair, her pale linen dresses, her penchant for white-gold bangle bracelets and hoop earrings. It just shouldn’t be so damn hard to call someone.

  The phone rang and a youthful voice picked up, didn’t speak directly to her, but shouted, “Mom! Sylvie’s on the phone!”

  Sylvie winced. Julian’s lungs were growing along with the rest of him. Nice to see there were no lasting nasties after his go-round with the sorcerers.

  “You shouldn’t be able to do that, you know,” Val said, into her ear. “Just break through my dial-me-not like that.”

  “There are a lot of things that people shouldn’t be able to do,” Sylvie said. “They still get done. You up for a trip to Chicago?”

  “Tell me you want to go shopping and need my fashion advice,” Val said.

  “Wouldn’t that be something,” Sylvie said. “I’ve got a spell I want you to deconstruct for me.”

  “I’m busy,” Val said. “There’s some strange stuff happening in the occult world, power shifts or something. Big stuff.”

  “I wasn’t too busy to save your life,” Sylvie said. Favor number one. Val owed her three in total. “Look, I’ll fax you a sketch I made, and yes”—she overrode the automatic warning—“I was careful when I drew it. You can get a start on it that way, but I want you here. It might still be active.”

  That would get her. Val had the good witch’s hatred of open spells. “ ’Sides,” Sylvie said, “there’s a good chance that this is related to your big stuff.”

  “Why am I not surprised. You stir up the worst shit, Sylvie.”

  “Hey,” Sylvie snapped. “You brought me into this world, so watch the attitude. Just get here. Call me when you land.”

  “Fine,” Val said. “It’ll be late, though. And I’ll only owe you two after this.” The phone went dead in Sylvie’s ear, not with the normal flat tone but a shrieking laugh. She winced away. Witches.

  Well, at least her argument with Val had done one thing; it had put her in the mood to go rattle the ISI.

  7

  Old Flames Make the Best Enemies

  SYLVIE SHOVED THE PHONE INTO HER POCKET AND HEADED DOWN the street at a quick clip. She’d seen a CopyKwik Shop on her way into the neighborhood, and she could fax the spell to Val there.

  Plus, as a twofer sort of thing, she could hit one of her favorite research tools: the all-purpose phone book. ISI wasn’t going to be listed under SNOOPS—BLOODY-MINDED, she knew, but they would be listed. It had taken Alex a while to translate their cover stories, but now Sylvie and she could find them pretty much anywhere. Usually they only did it to keep out of their way.

  The ISI had a presence in every major US city; two hours later, Sylvie had learned that in Chicago it was in a onetime bank, hidden behind a lobby of gilt and marble.

  Sylvie strode in through the metal detectors and glanced at the man behind the lobby desk. Tall, hefty, didn’t look too bright. She flipped her hand at him and kept moving, heading for the hallway and the elevators.

  “Ma’am, this isn’t a public building.”

  “Oh, I know,” Sylvie said, turning, continuing to walk backward. “I’m just here to search your lost and found; it’s amazing what your men pick up on the streets, sometimes. Like some old lady, snatching up cats who were only out for a walk.”

  “Stop!” he said. His hand slid behind the desk; she wondered which he was going for: silent alarm or gun.

  Maybe both, she thought, considering how long it was taking to get his hands back where she could see them. Or maybe he was just slow to decide.

  The elevators were twenty steps closer when he rushed forward, hands empty. He loomed just before her, trying to intimidate her by sheer bulk. “You have to stop.”

  “Do I?” Sylvie said. Sweat beaded along his hairline. There wasn’t anyone coming to his aid. Maybe Chicago’s ISI was skeleton-staffed. Maybe the budget cuts had finally reached the ISI—and didn’t they deserve it—or maybe he cried wolf all the livelong day. Whichever it was, he was on his own, and he knew it.

  Still, he was a lot larger than she was; it couldn’t hurt to try friendly again. “I could stop—all I want to know is if the ISI snatched—”

  His eyes flared wide, and she broke off. “What, you thought I was in the wrong place?”

  His jaw settled. “Look, bitch, if you know that much, you know how much trouble you’re in. I could have you locked up, and no one would ever know what happened to you. I could even have you killed.”

  “What, with the guards who came to your first call?”

  Behind them, the elevator dinged, and an all-too-familiar voice rang out. “Back off, Agent.”

  “But, sir—”

  That her heart jumped a tiny bit when she recognized his voice was something she’d deny to her last breath.

  “Christ Almighty, Stockton, take a look at the big picture here before you commit yourself to a world of trouble.”

  “Demalion,” Sylvie said, releasing her grip on the butt of the gun. “Super. Just the man I wanted to see.” She kept her tone flat just in case he might try to read that as a compliment.

  He brushed past her, still talking. His cologne drifted across her senses, spicy, earthy, and too appealing for her comfort.

  “You should have recognized her. Her name is in the files. Her face is in the files. She’s posted as trouble on all the boards, all over the country, and hell, even if you didn’t, you should have put the pieces together. How many pretty women carry a big gun and an even bigger mouth?”

  Sylvie turned her back when it began to get embarrassing. Huh, from this side of it, Demalion almost sounded pleased with her presence: He must really dislike Stockton.

  Then he was at her side, his hand sliding out to take her elbow. She shrugged him and his tasty scent off automatically. His lips thinned. “Let’s talk, Ms. Shadows.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said. He always did, and it made her wild; he knew her name, knew her family, had made a point of studying her life and habits, and yet, deliberately called her Shadows.

  “You know, the one bright spot in this entire day was that I got whisked out of Miami, out of your jurisdiction. Then I got here, and damn, if you didn’t just creep out of the woodwork.”

  “I transferred. Got family here,” he said, ushering her toward the elevator, sliding the keycard into the lock on it. “You didn’t think I followed you, did you? Sorry, Shadows, I was here first.”

  There was a faint gleam in his gold-flecked eyes that could have been amusement or malice. He put a hand at the small of her back as the elevator doors slid open, not out of friendliness, Sylvie thought, but to confirm she was armed. Beneath his hand, the gun twitched. They both flinched.

  He jabbed the button for the third floor, and said, “Interesting new weapon you’ve got. Am I going to get a look at it?”

  “Are you going to answer some questions?”

  “I always talk to you. It’s in self-defense,” he said, his lips curving up, mocking her again. The elevator doors slid closed, sealing her in with him. They hadn’t been so close together since that night in Key West, and she wasn’t thinking about that at all.

  She leaned up against the far wall and studied him, the sleek dark hair, the Byzantine eyes, the Egyptian cast to his face. He always reminded her of pharaohs, somehow exotic and ancient. When she’d first met him on the blind date Alex had set up, she’d had the creeping sensation that he might not be human, even while he chatted her up, oh so interested in her and her life. Then, of course, she learned about the ISI and knew he was all too human, and a bastard suit at that.

  “No cane today?” she said. “An interesting look on you, I thought.”

  “Is that what this is about?” he said, the skin around his eyes tightening, as if u
p to this moment, he’d been enjoying himself. “I should have known.”

  “I didn’t know an ISI agent could have a sense of humor,” she said, still staring at him. “A spy masquerading as a blind man, though, that’s pretty funny.”

  “Glad to amuse,” he said. The door dinged open, and he took her arm again. “My office.”

  Sylvie opened her mouth to protest but hesitated. He seemed oddly on edge. As if the ISI world, that orderly snow globe, had been shaken.

  He keycarded his office and let them both in. She looked around with reluctant interest, the first time she’d ever been behind the scenes at the ISI. Earlier visits in the Miami facility had been in the equivalent of interrogation rooms. ISI offices were apparently small but elegantly laid out, dominated by a cherrywood desk covered with high-tech toys and a stack of paper beneath a pyramid paper-weight. There was even a framed photograph on the desk, propped up alongside a palm-sized crystal ball. A real home away from home.

  Sylvie reached for the photo, feeling it was only fair; after all, they knew whose pictures she kept on her desk, on her walls, in her albums. Demalion beat her to it, tucking it inside the drawer, catching the crystal when the motion started it rolling.

  “So ’kay—” she said. “Don’t want to look at that one, how about these?” She dropped the Polaroid of Brandon Wolf on the desk, followed it with one of Demalion in blind-man guise. “Do you have him in your lockup? And please, keep in mind, I’m not in the mood for plausible denial or any other government bullshit—he’s the only thing between me and my retirement.”

  Demalion picked up the photograph, stared at his own picture, some unreadable emotion touching his face, before moving to the one of Brandon Wolf. He raised a brow and Sylvie’s temper in one move. “You think the ISI has nothing better to do than detain a pretty-boy artist?”

  “That’s not a no,” Sylvie said. “Just in case you weren’t clear on my question.”

  Demalion settled down behind his desk with a sigh, leaving her looming across it. He rubbed his hands over his eyes, reached out, and rolled the crystal ball from palm to palm.