by Lyn Benedict
“If it helps, I really doubt Yvette’s behind the memory spells,” Demalion said. “They’ve been going on for some time, right?”
“Society of the Good Sisters,” Sylvie murmured. “Sounds like a quilting group. That sound familiar to you?”
“Should it?”
“Dolphin boy thinks they’re our memory culprits.”
“When did he say that?”
She waved it off and went back to Graves. “The thing that’s bugging me. The thing I can’t get over. How is Graves doing it? If he is doing it? He’s human. Not even magically talented from everything I hear. How’s he controlling the mundi monsters?”
“Fear?”
Sylvie flicked his cheek. “They’re the monsters, Demalion. We fear them. Not the other way around. They’re committed to these actions. I talked to the Mora, saw the footage of the succubus attack. You survived the sand wraith. Did it seem frightened to you?”
“It seemed angry,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you, Sylvie. I know that Yvette distrusts Graves. I know that Riordan, who’s pretty damned sensible, thinks Graves is our guy. I’m willing to go on a little faith.”
“Faith,” Sylvie said. “Yeah. I’m not much for that. Requires too much working blind.”
“Hey,” Demalion said, pulling her to her feet. “Think about it this way. You’re working to get Zoe back. And I can guarantee you that Graves is no innocent.”
“It’ll have to do,” Sylvie said. She stretched, felt her back pop and crack, and thought about another few hours of sleep.
Demalion rubbed at the back of her neck, long fingers soothing as they carded through the tangles of her hair. “So. Dolphin boy was here? You let me sleep through it? Saw him alone?”
“Oh God, in the morning,” Sylvie said. “I’m too tired to argue.”
She tugged away from him, headed back for the bedroom. She stopped to move Alex’s blanket over the young woman; Alex was facedown on the couch, a few inches from her laptop. Sylvie closed it, slid it beneath the couch for safekeeping, then just stood there.
“She’s forgetting more things,” she said.
“She asked me how things were going in Chicago,” Demalion said.
Sylvie grimaced. “What did you say?”
“Not much. I started to, and she sort of went blank while I was watching her. Sylvie. Whoever these witches are. Good Sisters? They’re getting stronger. I don’t think we can count on Alex’s research skills now. Researching is making her worse.”
“Agreed. God, if Riordan weren’t kidnapping family members, I’d send Alex home. Get her out of this mess. I just hope she remembers that Lupe is dangerous.”
10
Turbulence
IT WASN’T UNTIL THEY WERE SQUEEZED ONTO A PLANE THE NEXT morning, hip to hip and knees to chair back in front of them, that Demalion seemed to recall her mention of the Encantado. “So tell me about your meeting with the dolphin.”
Across the aisle, Marah’s ears pricked up. “What dolphin?”
Sylvie sighed. Demalion had practically whispered it into her ear. Marah was too damned attentive. “The ISI’s not the only one concerned about the attacks,” she admitted. “There’s a … party from the other side who doesn’t like the precedent being set.”
“A monster,” Marah said. “Told you what? That they were innocent?”
“Told me what I already knew. That the ones attacking the ISI are pawns of someone else.”
“Yeah. Graves,” Marah said.
Demalion, recalling Sylvie’s objection from the night before, said, “How do you think he’s doing it? A human controlling the monsters.”
Sylvie found her wandering attention sharpening. Did Marah have an answer?
“If anyone could figure out a way, it’d be him.” Marah leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “So what else did your informant say? Anything useful?”
“Not a lot,” Sylvie said. “You know about the Good Sisters?”
“Sounds like the Daughters of the American Revolution,” Marah said. “All prim do-gooders and charitable works.”
“The Encantado thinks their charitable works are erasing memory—”
“Oh,” Marah said. “Wait.”
Demalion leaned over. “Oh?”
“SGS,” Marah said. “The Society of the Good Sisters. They’re a rumor. Not really real. Supposedly started in the late 1800s. Industrial Revolution witches.”
“What do the rumors say?”
“That they’re secret keepers,” Marah said. “Men and women who use magic to hide magic. We thought they were a sort of magical police. But we never found any evidence they existed at all.”
“Sounds like just the type of thing that’s happening here.”
Marah shook her head. “They don’t exist, Sylvie. Trust me. The ISI looked hard. You know how the government loves templates. No, your guy was just telling you about the bogeyman that the monsters believe in.”
Sylvie thought back. But the Encantado hadn’t seemed afraid. Had seemed angry. Still, the plane was no place to get in an argument, and she had other things to worry about. Like Lupe and Alex, locked in a house together, one losing control of her shape and the other losing control of her memory.
Sylvie remembered driving out this morning, in the predawn swelter, and finding that Val’s house had become Sleeping Beauty’s castle overnight. Jungle blooms had twined and tangled and crawled over the low limestone walls, as pervasive as kudzu and as sweet-smelling as orchids. They’d had to hack through the greenery to free the gates from their tangled weave. Demalion and Marah had gawked, and Sylvie had felt eyes on her from the darkest heart of the thickets.
Erinya.
Right now, Sylvie wasn’t sure whether Erinya’s lurking presence was a good thing or a bad. She’d protect Lupe—wanted to keep her new toy safe—and she’d protected Alex before. But she was also impatient and violent and easily distracted. If she wandered off on some bloody task, would Alex remember to call on her?
Demalion’s hand wrapped around hers, slid his long fingers between hers. “They’ll be fine. All of them.”
“Or I’ll know the reason why … Vengeance gets old, Demalion. I’m tired of making people pay for hurting others. Be better to prevent it from happening in the first place.”
Turbulence shivered the length of the plane, of air pockets shifting beneath the wings, and in the skies outside, lightning flashed, white cracks in a pale, blue sky. Unnatural, she thought. The plane dipped again. Demalion’s hand slipped from hers; when Sylvie blinked the jagged purple afterimage from her eyes, ears popping ferociously, she wasn’t on the plane any longer.
“Oh, come on!” she snapped, seeing Dunne leaning against the wall, watching her.
She was back in her office, back in Miami. Back where she started. With Zoe depending on her.
“You were supposed to stop her.” Dunne’s eyes were storm clouds. Lightning flashed through them, a constant angry crackle, strobing her office in washes of light.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Sylvie snapped. “But there’s a lot more going on than Erinya. She’s the smallest part of my problems right now. Take your godly envy and get lost.”
Dunne sighed. “The problem with large events, enormous events—if you’re in the center of it, you don’t see the scope of it. You live in your city, but you haven’t seen it.”
Like magic—well, it was magic, wasn’t it—a glassine smart board appeared between them, the city mapped across it, glowing green and red and gold. Mostly green. Key Biscayne was solid red from shore to shore, and the water around it was tinting with bloody light.
Lupe was in Key Biscayne.
“She’s changing things past repair,” Dunne said.
Sylvie swallowed. “So Key Biscayne goes Aztec jungle—” She couldn’t finish her objection. Couldn’t find anything to ameliorate what was happening. Erinya’s jungle would be troublesome enough if it were just plants. Sylvie imagined Erinya’
s otherworldly jungle spreading outward, sending tendrils through the waters, snaring ships, eating away at the ocean floor. But her presence brought life to alligator statues, encouraged people to pray to her with blood and stolen hearts.
Dunne didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
A spark of gold washed over the red-tinged Key, traced it like lightning, then was swallowed by Erinya’s power.
“What was that?” Sylvie said.
Dunne cocked his head and looked at his magical board.
“Is that real time? What’s the gold? Green’s real world, right? Nonmagic?” The gold light was tiny, like sparks. But it was speckled everywhere, from coast to coast and beyond, as pervasive as termite dust in an old house.
“Witchcraft,” he said. His mouth turned down in disapproval. She shared that sentiment. “A large spell affecting multitudes.”
“Witchcraft? What the hell … that’s all from the brain-rewrite spell? Jesus. I knew they were brainwashing people, but this… She sank down on the couch, stared at the board. It was easy to be angry at Graves, to declare him a rogue and an enemy, a traitor to humankind, but Sylvie thought that this was the greater sin. Erasing people’s memories. Leaving a magical taint big enough to show up against gods.
“You’re adding to it,” he said, “by not stopping Erinya. Her power’s leaking, and your witches are using it to strengthen their spells. Should I find something more personal to motivate you? If not your city, your lover? I can take him from you.”
Sylvie tore her gaze from the board. “Try not to be an asshole, Dunne. I seem to recall you had a few good points. Besides, you’re too late. You can’t lay a hand on him. He’s been god-claimed.”
Dunne’s gaze went human in surprise. “Let me guess. Erinya.”
“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “You can’t attack her, or one of her followers, without making war. She doesn’t have enough worshippers yet that she won’t notice him going missing.”
“She won’t want anything good for him. If you kill her—”
“Dunne,” Sylvie started, then just sagged. She was tired enough that his unsubtle manipulations felt like physical weights. “Look. Would you just get off your high horse for a minute or two? I know that your pantheon’s probably making your existence maddening at the moment, all Stop her, you created her, this is your fault. I seem to recall that the Olympiads were big on blame. But listen to yourself. Kill her?
“Even if I had the time, the energy, or the inclination … what happens? She got this power by a god’s dying. If she dies, all that power’s up for grabs again. Things are bad enough down here as it is. I don’t need a dozen gods and godlets descending on Miami to snarf up what she left. How would that help my city? Or, wait. Am I supposed to call you before I kill her, give you the heads-up so you can call dibs? I’m not a paid assassin, Dunne.”
“You were the one who suggested you could get her to leave. No progress?” That, Sylvie thought, was as close as Dunne would come to admitting she was right.
“Some,” she said. None, she thought. Worse than that. Antiprogress. Erinya’s discovery of Lupe made her that less likely to leave. Earth was where her new toy lived. Unless … Lupe wasn’t too happy about her current life.
Dunne growled, sounding rather disturbingly like the Furies he still controlled. “Shadows.”
Right. Mind reading.
“Fine, there’s a snag or three,” she said. “But I need to be in Dallas right now. Erinya might be dangerous, might be spilling god-power all over the place, but there’s someone else who’s actively killing humans and using the mundi creatures to do it. Any pointers?”
“I can’t intervene,” he said.
“Figures,” she said. “After all, dead humans are good for swelling the soul collections. What do gods do with them anyway?”
Dunne waved; the board vanished. “Nothing I can explain to you. Sylvie, if it comes to it, I will remove Erinya from the earth myself.”
“You said that could start a war in the pantheons.”
“Yes,” he said.
She licked dry lips, tasted fear and the lingering flavor of the cinnamon gum she’d chewed on takeoff. “Seems to me human casualties would be higher if that happened than if you left her be.”
“She’s setting precedent. There are whispers across the heavens, especially from the forgotten gods: If she can walk on earth, attract worshippers, why not the rest of us?”
“Give me a week,” Sylvie said. “Right now, Erinya’s all wrapped up in my client, but Lupe’s not interested. Let me see if I can turn that one way or the other. Get Lupe intrigued or Erinya tired of her new toy.”
“She was created to chase,” Dunne said. “She won’t get bored.”
“Give me a week,” Sylvie repeated. “Please.” She’d deal with Erinya, even if it took a bullet. Miami might lose out that way, but at least the world wouldn’t.
“A week,” he said.
He spoke as if he was considering it, but she chose to leap to her feet, and say, “Great. It’s a deal. Now, can you get me to Dallas? Since you interrupted my flight? I need to take a look at William Graves’s offices.”
He sighed; the office grew storm damp. Her hair rose and danced in the growing electricity. “His office or him?”
“He’s alive?” Guess that answered that. The man was playing possum. The odds of his being the guilty party just went up.
“Yes.”
“Then him, definitely him.”
She collected her backup gun and spare ammo, snagged a chocolate bar from Alex’s desk drawer, and took a giant, sweet mouthful. She needed the sugar rush in the comedown from the confrontation with Dunne. Finally, she took a quick moment to text Demalion that she was fine, would meet them in Dallas. Dunne sighed impatiently. The office twitched with electricity.
“Anytime, Shadows.”
“I’m ready when you are,” she said.
“If you don’t mind,” she tacked on, hastily. Better to be polite to the god who was about to fling her through space.
“Not at all,” he said, as falsely polite as she. He flicked his fingers in her direction, and she was gone.
* * *
LANDING WAS HARD; LUCKILY, THE FLOOR WAS SOFT. SYLVIE sprawled in the thick grey carpeting, and caught her breath, her bearings. Sofa to her right—chrome legs shining in the sunlight coming through the high windows—glass coffee table to her left. She spared a moment to be grateful she hadn’t landed on it. She clambered to her feet, gun in hand, half-expecting to find Graves or his men drawing down on her. She hadn’t landed quietly. Her ears popped, testament to the storm violence of her travel. She thought she smelled ozone, sharp and sour, in the air, and wondered if she’d traveled by lightning.
The living room was empty of people and stayed that way. She lowered her gun and moved on. A glance out the windows showed that she was sky-high, the ground multiple floors below, a wrinkle of grass and toybox cars. Top-floor apartment, she thought, in some Dallas condo. Judging from the size of the living room, a solid thirty feet by thirty feet, Sylvie assumed it was the penthouse. They were alone up here.
She moved through a sterile kitchen, continuing the mad-scientist theme of the living room—all grey and chrome and glass. His refrigerator doors were transparent, showed neat shelves sparsely filled. A man who wasn’t home often. Or at least, not often enough to cook.
Tension tightened her jaw. She knew Graves was here. She didn’t like Dunne, but she knew his word was good. He’d told her once that he could find any man on earth; she believed him.
So where is Graves?
Her boots rasped against the soft white stone in the foyer; there was dust beneath her feet like a dustpan’s worth of forgotten sweepings. It was gritty to her fingers but softer than sand.
She rubbed her hands clean on Val’s borrowed khakis, and checked the front door. Locks engaged; the security system was on. Where is he?
Sylvie headed down the white-carpeted hallway; caught her sleeve
in one of the moving, metal sculptures that lined the walls. It rang like a struck tuning fork, a growing vibration of sound. She damped it with a hasty palm, listened.
A faint sound. A groan. Something that wanted to be urgent but was losing the strength to convey it. Sylvie hurried toward the sound, pushed through the bedroom door, and stopped cold on the threshold.
Dunne had played fair. Told the truth.
Graves was here.
Graves was alive.
But not for much longer.
Truthfully, Sylvie was shocked he was still breathing at all.
He was … His skin was …
It lifted and curled away from him in a thousand little shags, blanched and bloodless. It reminded her of nothing so much as paper birch bark. It made him nearly unrecognizable. His head lolled on the pillow; flakes of him drifted away. “Who—”
Sylvie backed up, repulsed, then shook herself.
“Graves,” she said.
He tried to push himself up; close to death and still fighting. Still furious. A zealot indeed. His bare chest revealed four deep tears, edged in blood, and one shallow one; Sylvie thought of a hand pressing in, four long fingers and a shorter thumb.
“Traitor,” he breathed. His lips cracked bloodlessly. His tongue rasped against teeth made enormous by white gums pulling away. “In the ISI. Good Sisters. Key. Books.”
“What happened?”
“Warn—” He coughed, and his tongue blew away in the gust of his last breath. Sylvie reached out to check his pulse and his chest and neck and head disintegrated beneath her fingers. Not completely. A few curved fragments of bone remained, cradling a withered heart.
His hand fell to his side; his fingers hooked in his pocket, then crumbled likewise. His pants slowly collapsed as his body spilled out at both ends of the fabric.
Something chinked softly. Metal touching metal.
Key, Sylvie thought. His pocket. She reached in gingerly, hoping to God this wasn’t some kind of magical disease, that she wasn’t going to have to test her magical resistance against mundi plague. How would that work, would she lose a finger or two, before her resistance kicked in? She grimaced, tried not to think about it as she sorted through his remains.
