by Lyn Benedict
Alex let out a breath, drained her coffee like it was booze after a too-long day.
Fighting the conflicting memories. Whoever was doing the changing hadn’t gotten into the ISI files to alter them. So Alex remembered those. But they were erasing the truth outside of the ISI, and Alex was dutifully trying to forget.
“Why don’t you give it a break?” Sylvie said. “Lock the door, pull down the blinds. Take a nap.”
Alex’s eyes swept the couch; she leaned forward in her chair, as if she could simply fall into the couch by wanting it. “What are you going to do?”
“Check in on Lupe,” Sylvie said. “I was supposed to do it this morning, but Demalion was at my apartment, and I got distracted.”
“Distracted, huh?” A brief smile touched Alex’s lips. “I guess I can forgive you for not calling me immediately.”
“Distracted like he brought trouble with him. You remember the ISI assassin who killed Odalys?”
“Not like you ever introduced us,” Alex said. “I know she exists.”
Sylvie found the image of Marah and Demalion whirling to confront the sand wraith, Marah’s hand upraised. She showed it to Alex. “That woman Demalion’s leaning on? Marah Stone. ISI assassin. Big trouble.”
“How big?” Alex asked.
“She’s been in town for a few hours, and she’s already tried to kill Erinya.”
Alex clicked her jaw shut, then said, “I’m too tired to deal with that. Go away. I’m taking a nap. Check on Lupe. She left a message on the machine. She’s found a witch she wants you to vet.”
“She what?”
“She’s impatient, I guess. Can’t really blame her,” Alex said, digging a camp pillow and blanket out of her deepest desk drawer.
“No one listens to me,” Sylvie said. “I gave her the speech. I told her that you had to be careful, I told her—”
“Yeah, yeah, I was there. Go tell her again and let me nap.” Alex dragged herself to the couch, sprawled over the cracked green leather, tugging the blanket over herself.
“See if you can find anything else on our mystery man. He had to have come from somewhere. For that matter, the monsters, too. Even if they were living among us, there should have been signs. Why attack now?”
“I don’t know,” Alex muttered.
“Crap,” Sylvie said, glancing at her watch. “Alex, do me a favor? Pick up Zoe at the airport? I have a feeling Lupe’s going to eat time.”
Alex sighed hugely. “So unfair. Come in, tell me to rest up, then give me things to do. I will look into our mystery man. I will pick up your brat of a sister. But after a nap. Go away, before I throw something else at you.”
Sylvie waved off the threat but headed out, right into the full heat of the day.
* * *
THE MOTEL LUPE WAS STAYING AT WASN’T IN THE BEST PART OF town; sirens were a familiar background melody, and the palm trees embedded in the sidewalk cutouts were hardly the type to gladden even an indie director’s location scout, being stunted and soft.
But the motel was reasonably cheap, catering to long-term guests, and the neighborhood wasn’t so bad that Lupe couldn’t take her morning runs. There were even coffee shops and restaurants and a movie theater in the area—so why the hell couldn’t Lupe just occupy herself in some safe way?
Sylvie found herself gritting her teeth as she parked her truck, made herself stop. She stepped out of her truck and found her teeth locking tight again as she heard muffled shouting. That was never a good sign. Even in a crap hotel.
Also not good? The fact that Sylvie could feel the tiny flare of unnatural forces rippling in the air, like a storm about to break. Guess Lupe hadn’t waited for Sylvie to approve of the witch but dived in headfirst.
She booked up the stairs, felt the morning’s bruises protest, and pounded on Lupe’s locked door. “Lupe!”
“Help us!” a woman shouted. “Help!”
It wasn’t Lupe. Lupe’s voice had a thick rasp to it, an animal huskiness when she spoke. Sylvie hadn’t asked if the rasp was original or if it, too, was a change forced upon her.
She tested her balance, her aches, then pivoted and kicked the door, with the expected result. She bounced off it. Even cheap motels tended not to skimp on the doors. Easy road to a lawsuit.
“Lupe,” Sylvie said. “Let me in!”
The shouting on the inside broke off to a series of hushed whimpers and a low, feral growl. “Lupe,” Sylvie said. She leaned on the door, slapped her palm against it repeatedly.
“I called the cops,” a voice said. Sylvie jerked, found the day manager staring at her. Truculent, even in the face of her gun. Then again, he probably had one of his own.
“Great. You got a key?”
He stared at her, dark eyes under a crew cut, tattoos running the breadth of his thick neck. “Don’t sue.” He threw her the passkey and stomped back toward his office to wait for the cops.
Sylvie slapped the door again, said, “Lupe, I’m coming in.”
Another whimper, another growl, a groan that was another voice altogether. What the hell was going on? She swiped the card through the reader, shoved the door open, and fell through the door.
Blood on the bed nearest the door. Bright and wet and freshly shed.
Dammit.
A crying woman in a long skirt huddled near the bathroom alcove. At Sylvie’s entrance, she raised her head, eyes flaring wide with alarm. “Behind the door!”
Sylvie caught Lupe’s wrist as the woman lunged—and it was Lupe-the-woman, which Sylvie was grateful for—and used Lupe’s momentum against her, slung her onto the bed, crashing into the headboard. Crystal crunched beneath Sylvie’s feet, cracked quartzite.
Lupe growled, a deep, inhuman rumble in her chest, and Sylvie snapped, “Stay there.”
“She hurt me,” Lupe said.
“It doesn’t look like your blood,” Sylvie said. Her client looked furious, close to insane, her hair a wild tangle, her eyes bloodshot, her hands clawing at the sheets, but she didn’t look hurt.
“It shouldn’t have hurt!” The woman—the witch—by the bathroom shrilled. She had reason to sound scared. It was her blood; the patterned skirt she wore was shredded. Her leg beneath the fabric was streaked and stippled with blood. Claw marks.
“Can you walk?” Sylvie said, cutting over her protests that she’d just been trying to help, that Lupe had gone berserk, that she’d tried to kill her—
“What?”
“Get out of here,” Sylvie said.
“Not without Peter,” the woman protested.
“Peter?” Sylvie echoed, and the low groan rose again. Keeping a careful eye on Lupe in case she freaked out again, Sylvie peered into the only space another person could be in: the gap between the beds.
The shadows separated themselves into a man in dark clothing crunched down into the gap.
“Fine,” Sylvie said. “Get him up, go.”
“But he’s heavy—”
Sylvie lost patience. Sirens scaled through the air, getting closer. She leveled the gun at the witch, and said, “Should I motivate you?”
The woman scrambled to her feet, tripped over the edge of her skirt, gained her feet again, and started dragging her boyfriend out of the room. Sylvie waited until they had cleared the door to slam it closed.
“Get your stuff, Lupe.”
“That bitch tried to do something—” Lupe said.
Sylvie did rapid math in her head. Another minute, maybe two for the cops to reach the motel, two minutes for them to get directions from the day manager, a minute to get their asses up the stairs.
“No time to talk,” Sylvie said. “Move your ass, Lupe, or I’m leaving you here to deal with the police.”
Lupe’s jaw slammed shut; she snatched up her shoes. Sylvie grabbed her duffel bag, grabbed the woman’s arm, and pulled her out the door, nearly tripping over the witch. No sense of self-preservation, Sylvie thought. The witch and her boyfriend should have been long gone; instead, the w
itch was trying to wake him, while they were still in the danger zone.
Lupe snarled; the woman yelped, and Sylvie jerked hard, her nails digging in to Lupe’s skin. “Ignore her.”
They descended the stairs in a slithering rush, half-falling, half-pulling, and Sylvie slammed Lupe up against the truck. “Get in.”
Sylvie darted around the nose of her truck, got the engine started, and was backing out at speed before Lupe even had the passenger door shut. “You check in under your own name?” Sylvie’s truck was distinctive, but not enough to randomly ID her. Not unless she was really unlucky, and it was a cop she knew.
Lupe’s lips went tight and thin. Answer enough.
Sylvie slued the truck around and headed out of the lot as the cops were pulling in. She waited two heartbeats, three, checking her rearview to see if they were U-turning, then punched the accelerator.
They drove ten miles down the road before Sylvie pulled into a movie theater’s crowded lot, parked her truck in a morass of other vehicles, and got out. She paced a tight circle, swearing, trying to figure the angles. So the cops had Lupe’s name. They didn’t have hers. Sylvie’s truck was distinctive, but there were so many red Ford trucks in the city that the cops would get bored long before they ran down the one with the jagged scars in the hood.
Unless she was unlucky, and the cops were part of Suarez’s brood. Then they’d know exactly who the truck belonged to.
Fuck.
All right. If that was so, Suarez would come to her first. She could put him off. After all, no one was dead. No one was that badly injured. Sylvie hadn’t committed the crime herself. She could come down hard on “I know nothing. Where’s your warrant?” if she had to.
The witch … Lupe had torn up her leg, and pissing off witches was usually a one-way ticket to a nasty curse. Nastier than what Lupe was already suffering through? Not likely.
Sylvie let her breath out. Okay. She’d need to keep Lupe away from the cops, but that wasn’t impossible. Not even particularly hard. Cash, another hotel, a tiny crime—hardly the kind of thing that would set them on a manhunt.
Annoying and time-consuming for Sylvie, and completely avoidable if Lupe had only listened.
She glared at Lupe through the truck window. Lupe glared right back, serpentine eyes gleaming in the shelter of the truck cab. Lupe didn’t look like she’d learned her lesson. She looked pissed, even put-upon, as she crossed her hands over her chest and revealed that the nails of one hand were stained with blood.
What the hell happened?
When she put the question to Lupe, back in the close confines of the truck, her nerves prickling at the animal scent in the cab, Lupe stiffened in her seat, and said, “That witch fucked me up. Made things worse. She was just supposed to diagnose the curse. She brought it out. I changed, Sylvie. No moon, and I changed. Now it’s right there, under my skin, ready to break free.”
Sylvie tightened her jaw, said nothing. She couldn’t think of anything to say immediately that wasn’t an I told you so or If you’d only done as I said, and Lupe was nearly vibrating with tension, one breath from hysteria. “Tell me exactly what the witch did,” Sylvie said, finally.
“What does it matter?” Lupe snapped.
Sylvie couldn’t help but notice that Lupe’s teeth were long and sharp, more than just the canines. Now, she had an entire mouthful of predator’s teeth.
“Humor me,” Sylvie said. “I just saved you from an awkward interview with the cops.”
Lupe slipped out of the truck, letting her stress out by pacing just as Sylvie had done, kicking at the worn yellow lines on the pavement. “I don’t know.”
“Of course you know. You were there. Let’s start. You were in the room, you called this witch who you didn’t even know—”
Lupe growled.
“So you let her in… then what?”
“Her bodyguard sat on the other bed. Creeper. Just stared at us. Livvy—the witch—told me to lie down.” Lupe’s breath rasped in her throat. “I did. She put crystals on me, told me that they were going to find the seat of the curse … but they burned.” She licked her lips, rubbed at her breastbone as if the heat remained. “I don’t remember things clearly after that. She tried to get her bodyguard to hold me down. I think I bit him. And the heat just sort of … ripped me open, turning me inside out. Next thing I knew, she was screaming and throwing spells at me.”
“Spells?” Sylvie said. She’d chalked the witch up as mostly show, a new age wannabe, who had managed to reach convinced-she-was status.
“Like wasps stinging. I don’t know. She kinda got freaked when the spells didn’t do much to me. Then you showed up.”
“When did you get your licks in?” Sylvie asked. “Her leg was torn up.”
“I don’t know. Does it matter? She got what she deserved. Trying to trick me. Pretending she could help.” Lupe’s eyes flashed bright again, a glance Sylvie’s way, her breath quickening. “Of course, that’s all you’re doing, isn’t it? Stringing me along. Doing nothing? Studying me? Watching me get worse? Watching me become just like him?”
Her words grew thick, distorted; her face creaked strangely, as if the bones were shifting.
Sylvie had her gun up, leveled in Lupe’s inhuman face by the time the woman lunged at her. Half animal. Human enough to recognize the weapon as a threat. Lupe dropped to a crouch, nails scratching at the concrete, the side of Sylvie’s truck, the inhuman jut to her jaw shrinking.
“Back off. Back down. Chill the fuck out. Or we’re going to have bigger problems than a pissed-off crystal witch and some overworked cops.
“I told you to let me handle it. But you couldn’t trust me. You had to trust a stranger. You’re lucky it ended the way it did. No one dead. Not them. Not you. You got a crap witch who exacerbated your curse. Boo hoo. You lucked out. You could have gotten the witch who said, ‘Drink this! It’ll help,’ then vivisected you for spell components. Witches are tricky business. If I can’t find someone local, I’ve got a backup plan—”
“Fuck plan A, I vote backup plan. And now,” Lupe said. “Why are we waiting?”
“Because you’re in no condition to face the TSA and an international flight. You lose control on a plane? Things can get worse, Lupe. Even if it doesn’t seem like it.”
Lupe nodded, calming down. Sylvie holstered her gun, noting that her fingers were trembling. She glared at them. They stopped.
“Why international?” Lupe said. “Another witch?”
“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “One who’s dealt with death curses before.”
“Can the witch come here?”
“Working on that,” Sylvie said. It was like the most frustrating game of missionaries and cannibals ever, all bounded around by difficult women: Erinya and Lupe and Val. Lupe couldn’t fly to Ischia. Val wouldn’t come back while Erinya was in Miami. And Erinya wasn’t budging.
Sylvie had already struck one deal with the god—her promise not to kill Demalion in exchange for god-power; Sylvie didn’t have anything else to bribe Erinya with.
“Then what?” Lupe asked. “I just live like this? Turning into a bigger freak each day?”
“Better than the alternative,” Sylvie said.
Lupe shut up, either shocked silent or furious.
The parking lot couldn’t hold them for long. The movies had let out; people collected their cars, cast inquisitive glances in their direction—at the spectacle of two women arguing about witches, their voices carrying.
“Look,” Sylvie said, dropping back to a whisper. “I’ll think of something.”
“Waiting sucks,” Lupe said. “Where do I go now?”
“New hotel,” Sylvie said. “We pay cash, keep a low profile.”
“Yeah, ’cause a woman with snake eyes and fangs is so unmemorable,” Lupe said. She flung up her hands before Sylvie could respond. “I know. I know. Better than the alternative.”
“That’s right,” Sylvie said. She nodded toward the truck, and Lupe climbed into
it, far more calmly this time.
Sylvie wished she thought the calm was more than skin deep. Lupe was breaking down, getting moodier, more aggressive with each day. The stunt with the witch hadn’t helped.
But it had made one thing clear.
The witch really hadn’t done anything wrong—she’d simply tried to run a diagnostic with the wrong tools. Sylvie had seen crystal witches work, using the clear stones to identify the type of curse—stones turning red, black, blue, all the shades of a malevolent rainbow. It was utterly passive, reactive magic.
Lupe shouldn’t have had any reaction whatsoever.
If the stones had felt like they were burning her, that meant one thing only. The curse had dug its way in like a parasite, and fueled by a god’s power, was actively protecting its new position.
Giving Lupe the happy ending she deserved was looking less likely by the moment.
6
Government Business
SYLVIE WAS EATING AN EARLY DINNER, HIDING OUT IN A PART OF town she didn’t normally visit, waiting. Waiting for Suarez to see if her name had hit the system, if she could go home without getting dragged into the station by the police. Waiting for a call back from Alex to assure her that Zoe was home and bitchy and resting up from her jet lag.
Instead, she got Alex calling to say, “Sylvie. She’s not here.”
Sylvie flipped her watch—an hour past the time Zoe had said. “Delayed?”
“No,” Alex said. “Her flight arrived on time. But I can’t find her. I tried calling, but her cell’s off.”
Sylvie pushed her plate away, the sushi suddenly repulsive. Her heart beat unpleasantly. “Okay. This is what we’re going to do. You’re at the airport? Check to see if her luggage made it, and if it’s still there.”
“You think she had checked baggage?”
