by Lyn Benedict
“We didn’t take Wolf. Hell, I didn’t even know he was missing.”
Sylvie felt like swearing. She hadn’t really thought they had, not once she found the spell circle; the ISI was generally a technological menace, not a magical one. Still, it would have been nice to pit herself against a known entity instead of fumbling in the dark for someone new.
She wished she could believe he was lying to her. “But you were watching him, stalking him, playing blind man at parties with him?”
“Not him,” Demalion said. “Like I said, the ISI has no interest—”
“No, of course not,” she said. “Not Brandon for himself. But how about as an avenue to his lover? To Kevin Dunne.”
“Shut the door,” he said quietly. “Shut the door and sit down.”
Sylvie’s jaw wanted to drop. Was he really going to share information, just like that? This couldn’t bode well. She did as he asked, listening to the door suck closed, realizing the room was soundproofed. She perched on the seat before the desk.
“You think we watch you, make your life a Candid Camera moment, and you’re nothing much—”
“Make a girl feel loved, why don’t you,” Sylvie muttered.
“A small-time vigilante with a dangerous mouth. A useful barometer of the occult in the country.” He sighed, closed the crystal in both palms, then rolled it between his fingers. “No power yourself but good at ferreting out those with powers. Then came Dunne, who made us reset our conception of scale and power. We don’t know what he is or how he got that way. He was an average guy, a better-than-average cop, and the only thing not strictly by the books was his relationship. Then boom. A year ago, and suddenly he’s everywhere. All our psychics could see was him, like a bomb gone off in their minds.”
Sylvie shrugged. The ISI had been cruising for trouble; they thought they knew everything. A momentary thought sidetracked her. “You have staff psychics? Slick. Bet it makes the interoffice pools a bitch, though.” Maybe she should rethink the magical-menace part of the ISI.
“You have no idea,” Demalion said, setting his crystal down again, uncharacteristic fidgeting done. “What did Dunne want with you? I heard he visited your office this morning.”
Sylvie’s temporary good humor evaporated at the reminder of the ISI eyes on her life. “If you can’t even add one and one to get two, I don’t know why I thought you could help me,” Sylvie said.
“Maybe I don’t want you to retire,” he said. “You’re not the retiring type.”
“I learn my lessons,” Sylvie said. “My associate died. Maybe you heard about that, too. Hell, maybe you and yours watched it happen, took notes on it.” Her temper prowled her skin, tensing nerves, quickening her breath. She forced her hands to unfist.
“Bullshit,” Demalion said. “People die around you, Shadows. You’re used to that. You’re . . . running scared.”
“You get a whole coven of would-be demons on your tail, planning to cut out your still-beating heart, then we’ll talk.” Sylvie scraped the two pictures from his desk with shaking hands, crammed them into her pockets.
“Monsters have never scared you before.”
“Don’t be more an idiot than your paycheck makes you.”
“Not scared like this,” he said. His dark eyes were on her again, searching, and she’d forgotten how penetrating they could be. She turned her head, looking longingly at the door. But she still had answers to get. “There’s only one thing that scares you that badly. Yourself.”
“Could we stay on topic?” she snapped. “Brandon Wolf. Missing. Dunne. Unhappy. Bad news all around.”
“We’re not here to help you,” Demalion said.
So angry even her voice failed her, Sylvie yanked the door open; there’d be no answers here, and if she stayed . . . Demalion might get a closer look at her weapon than she could afford.
Behind her, he said, “Sylvie.” Not Ms. Shadows. Not Ms. Lightner. Sylvie. She waited, breath coming fast.
“I didn’t hear about Suarez until after,” he said. “If I’d been there, I would have helped.” Quiet footfalls in the carpet warned her of his approach; he put a hand on her shoulder in what felt like honest sympathy.
“Words are easy,” she said. “Belief’s harder.”
She’d trusted him once, and the memory was powerful, with him standing so close, smelling so good, so familiar, his warmth mingling with hers.
Six months prior, Sylvie had taken him out to celebrate, though she hadn’t explained what. Hard to say to a new guy, yeah, I had a good day at work. I pried a werewolf cub from the government’s hands through sheer persistence and at least one screaming argument about children belonging with their mothers, whether they were furred or fleshy on the outside. She felt good, picked Demalion up at his apartment, and headed for the Keys.
They’d been dancing close in the un-air-conditioned bar, slick and easy in the tropical night, and he’d licked a traveling bead of sweat from her breast. She’d clenched her hands in his hair, mussed out of its sleekness, and thought this one, this one she was taking home and keeping.
Then his cell had gone off, and she, teasing, had plucked it from his hip over his protest—fast fingers, trained by Alex—flipped it open, and found herself listening to the ISI: Come on home, Demalion. We got the mother, too.
Result? One crushed cell phone, one shattered relationship. One battered heart. Played from the first.
She met his eyes, remembered that he couldn’t be trusted, and shied away from his sympathy. Crocodile tears or not, she didn’t want it. “Back off, Demalion. We don’t dance anymore.”
When he retreated to his desk, she found another question. “When you played your spy games with Wolf and Dunne, you get a sense of anyone else watching? Anyone who might want a shot at Dunne through Bran?”
“No,” he said, glancing away. Her breath caught.
“Such a lie,” she said. “C’mon, Demalion, we are talking about dirty deeds being done, and you’re going back to Mr. I-Know-Nothing, I-Say-Nothing?”
“I don’t know anything,” he said, voice dropping to a growl. “Yeah, there was someone else watching. No clue as to who or why. It was like having a shadow. We knew it was there, but couldn’t touch it.”
“Not so fun when it happens to you, is it?” Sylvie said.
“Do you want to hear this or do you want to take pot-shots?” Demalion said. “It’s your client, right?”
Sylvie sagged back against the doorjamb and waited.
“Dunne found out about the surveillance,” Demalion said. “He didn’t like it. He nailed them, and he got the mystery observer right alongside the ISI team.”
He continued, voice low and intense. “I don’t know what’s happened to Dunne’s boy. But things are getting ugly. Be careful, Sylvie.”
“Who’s this?” Another ISI agent stopped in the hallway, seeing Sylvie framed in the open door. “Is she authorized to be here? To know about Dunne?” He seized her arm. Sylvie twisted free and stepped back into Demalion’s office, the nearest shelter from a storm.
“Back off,” Demalion snapped. “Jesus, Rodrigo, give us all a break. A pretty girl comes downtown for a pastry and a chat, and you go Nazi on her ass. Don’t you have a dick?”
“I’ll see her out,” Rodrigo said. “You might do things differently in Miami, Demalion. Here we follow the rules.” When he tried to take her arm again, Sylvie flipped him off and stormed down the hall. Rodrigo caught up to her at the elevator and keyed the doors open.
“I know who you are,” he said, shoving her into the elevator; he jabbed the lobby level and locked it in. “I’m not impressed with your mouth. And you’d best stay away from Dunne.” Slackness touched his face, left him staring blankly at her as the doors slid shut.
Sylvie looked at the closed doors thoughtfully. “Okay, that was freaky, even for the ISI.”
At the lobby, she wasn’t surprised to be met by Stockton, as well as two other guards, mustered from God knew where. She smiled at
them, showing all her teeth, and stalked out the front door.
Pastry? She had passed a pastry shop two blocks from here. She walked down the street, bought herself a cruller, two double espressos, and took a seat. She knocked back the first espresso, chased it with powdered sugar, and tapped her nails on the cheap Formica table. She had the second espresso at her lips when Demalion arrived.
“That better not be mine,” he said.
She passed it over.
“It’s almost cold,” he said.
“It was almost gone,” she said. “What the hell do you want, Demalion? Not help, you’re not in the helping business.”
He bit his lip, as if he could unsay his earlier words, but then shrugged. “A bargain of sorts. I’ll keep an eye out for Wolf. More than that. I’ll institute a search. If—”
“If,” she parroted. “If what, Demalion?”
“If you tell me what you know about Kevin Dunne.”
“You’ve been watching him. What makes you think I’ll know more than you?”
“I hate to admit it, but you seem to know what’s going on when no one else does—why do you think we watch you so much? You’re like ISI Cliff’s Notes to the Magicus Mundi.”
“That’s flattering,” Sylvie said. She stood and snagged another coffee from the counter clerk, plain old black this time; if she had another espresso, she might find herself throttling Demalion.
“Surveillance has failed on Dunne,” Demalion said, when she sat back down. “Three teams—”
“Dead?” Sylvie interrupted. Her nervous fingers ceased their drumming on the side of her paper cup. “You said—he nailed them.”
“No.” Demalion leaned forward. “Look, it’s this way. The first team we sent—they got nothing. Dunne spotted them right off, went over, and asked them to leave. They did. Now, we even mention Dunne’s name, and they get all huffy, demanding that we leave him alone.
“The second team kept their distance. Dunne and Wolf found them anyway, invited them to dinner. They went, contrary to instruction, then discontinued surveillance and returned to base against orders.”
“So, Dunne threatened them, made them back off. I can see it; he’s a scary guy,” Sylvie said. At least he was spreading the scary around, and she couldn’t think of anyone more deserving than the ISI.
“They weren’t scared of him,” Demalion said, shaking his head. “It’s like they worship him.” She twitched at his choice of words, but, caught up in his problems, he didn’t notice. “One of the men on that team, Erickson, keeps talking about how nice Bran and Kevin are, that we should just leave them alone. He gets heated about it.”
“Guess he met a different Dunne than I did,” Sylvie said. “But hell, there’s no accounting for taste. Look at you, talking to me. Voluntarily.”
Demalion sighed. “Before the ISI took Erickson on, he’d had some disciplinary actions for harassing gays. Enough of them that his career was in a nosedive. You’re not in law enforcement—”
“That’s not what he says,” Sylvie muttered.
“But if he’d been disciplined, it wasn’t just a matter of name-calling. It was sticks and stones and broken bones.”
“So, not an easy convert,” Sylvie said, trying to imagine Dunne winning someone over with charm. She failed. Admittedly, she hadn’t seen him at his best. He’d been stripped-down angry and scared. Maybe Bran was the lovable one. Tish seemed to think so.
“And you saw Rodrigo back at the office. He was all over you merely for mentioning Dunne’s name. He was team one.”
“So that wasn’t just an ISI fit?”
“No,” Demalion said. “That was lingering contamination.” He shrugged, fumbled in his suit-coat pocket, pulled out the crystal again, went back to moving it hand to hand. “For a while, we tried purely electronic surveillance, but all our bugs failed. A third team went out, consisting of three experienced field agents, one a clairvoyant, who would warn them of any magical influence.” Demalion set aside his espresso, mostly untouched, rubbed his face.
“What happened?” Sylvie asked. “More bestest of friends?
“No,” Demalion said. “Dunne lost patience with playing nice. None of team three will ever be watching them again. I would imagine the same holds true for our mystery observer.”
“But not dead?” Sylvie asked again, trying to imagine what she felt about that, some evidence that maybe Dunne was what he seemed. A nice guy who didn’t like to kill. She remembered his snatching the orchid-girl from beneath her heel, and grimaced. She wasn’t used to being more reprehensible than her clients.
Her phone buzzed; she looked down and caught a glimpse of a text message. Flight information. Val was on her way.
“Bespelled. Or something. It wasn’t a spell. It just was. One moment, things were one way, the next moment, they weren’t. We don’t understand what type of ability Dunne’s tapped into but—”
“All you know is that he’s powerful? That’s pathetic,” Sylvie said, rising. “I learned more than that in the first ten minutes of meeting him. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to work.”
“Bullshit,” Demalion said, his temper fraying to match hers. “You talk big, Sylvie, but you’re full of it. I’m trying to help you, talking shop when I should just keep my mouth shut and let you sink. But the hell of it is, I’d rather not see you dead. Let me help. You tell me what you think you know, and I’ll set men to look for Wolf.”
“Your bargain sucks,” she said. “Your men are already looking for Wolf, whether they know it or not. Dunne wants it that way. Dunne’s not a witch, sorcerer, psychic, or even some type of master hypnotist.”
“If you know so much—what is he then?”
“He’s a god,” Sylvie said. She swept out of the pastry shop, leaving Demalion behind her, sinking back into the booth.
8
When Only a Witch Will Do
SYLVIE WAITED OUTSIDE O’HARE, SITTING ON A METAL BENCH brought to oven warmth by the heat from passing car engines. She shifted, pulling sweat-damp cotton away from her nape, and went back to watching the airport police.
Earlier, they had been everywhere, running in packs of five or more, like confused hounds casting about for scent. Now, they were back to that deceptively slow cop stride, in pairs or singles, and the only signs of interference was the occasional freeze of movement coupled with a blank stare, like the stutter-stop of a petit mal seizure. Like a seizure, the symptoms disappeared with the cops unaware of them.
Sylvie couldn’t decide if this was an improvement or not; she lacked facts and was left with empty speculation. Did their return to near normal mean Dunne’s influence had faded? If so, why? Had he lost interest or hope in their ability to find Brandon Wolf? Or was it a simpler thing altogether? Had he regained some of his concentration, keeping his powers close to home? Sylvie gnawed her lip, checked her watch, and moved on—nearly time to meet Val.
A third option presented itself to her. Had Dunne weakened? Maybe gods weren’t affected by human limitations of distance or endurance, but that didn’t mean nothing could weaken him. If he was a god—and she chose to let that declaration stand—she could think of only two things that could stop him. A belatedly delivered ransom demand. Or another god. Sylvie shivered. She needed to check in with her client and soon.
Val strode up at that moment, smiling a little, looking like a sleek jet-setter anticipating nothing more taxing than the shopping trip she’d teased Sylvie about. That changed the moment she leaned in to give Sylvie a social hug. The gun at Sylvie’s waist . . . twitched. Sylvie felt the distinctive click of the safety shifting off, a tiny flicker of movement against her skin, a finger tap saying “ready.”
“What the hell is that?” Val said. “What have you done, Sylvie?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“You’re wearing something of stolen power,” Val accused. “Spirit bound to flesh. That’s black work. How did you—”
“It’s fine,” Sylvie said. “Just trust me,
okay?”
Val grimaced but let the questioning drop, for which Sylvie was grateful. She needed to parse what Val had said. Flesh and spirit, bound? Her flesh—she knew that; otherwise, the gun wouldn’t feel so comfortable against her skin. Whose spirit? Dunne’s?
Val waved for a cab, her lips still tight in disapproval. “Let’s get this over with, Sylvie.”
“We’re not taking a cab to the subway,” Sylvie said. “That’s just plain stupid. How spoiled are you, anyway?” She waved off the cabbie and headed toward the El connection.
Val huffed but followed her down the sidewalk in silence. Once in the El, Sylvie leaned up against a pole near the doors, touching her cheek to the cool metal, studying the other passengers, mostly airport run-off of flight attendants and travelers. No one looked back at her; the one man in a business suit who did ducked her gaze a second later, leaving her with nothing to do but seethe and listen to the rattle and clank of the El rising above the street.
Three stops later, Sylvie decided Val had sulked long enough, and said, “You look at the spell?”
“Enough to know it’s probably what you’re looking for,” Val said, pausing in her own calming study of the posters within the car. “Not enough to tell you how, who, or why, yet. I’ve made some assumptions, of course, from the sketch, but I’d rather see the actual circle itself before I draw real conclusions.”
“Thanks, Val,” Sylvie said. She relaxed; it looked like Val was going to be helpful.
“Don’t thank me,” Val said. “If I had a choice, I wouldn’t be here. Things are strange right now, and all I want to do is hole up someplace safe.”
“Strange,” Sylvie repeated.
“My coven thinks a god may have come to the mortal realm.”
“So?” Sylvie said. “It’s their earth, too, right?”
Val made a face as if Sylvie had said something unbelievably stupid. “The only good thing about gods is that they prefer their realm to ours.”
The El swayed heavily as they took a long curve, rattling loud enough to make it sound like a roller coaster, and drew to a screeching halt. Val winced. “Not quite a Benz, is it?”
