Lies & Omens si-4

by Lyn Benedict

  “Yeah?” she said. She braced her cast-encased hand against the edge of the board and stuck a tiny pin in an already crowded spot. The universities, as a whole, were reacting in two ways: sheer, unbridled fascination or utter refusal to accept the magical world. That was all right. They weren’t the ones she was worried about. Not really.

  She was worried about the churches. It was one thing to believe in your gods, to get proof that your gods were real, concrete, tangible. To have your faith proved fact. It was a whole other type of shock to realize that other people’s gods were just as real. Right now, the religious groups were being very, very quiet. It made her nervous. The whole world made her nervous, hence the board—Alex’s idea to keep them up to date, trying to predict trouble spots.

  “Apparently, someone at UCLA was going back through old studies and found out that the reports had—”

  “Changed,” Sylvie finished. “Proved that psychic powers were possible?”

  “Guess whatever it was was definitive enough. The new scientists are a group of geneticists.”

  Sylvie grimaced. “Urgh. That … I don’t like that. They go too far down that road in this environment, and we’ll have genetic scans made mandatory. The government’s already strung tight.” There were seventeen red pins in DC. Each of them represented another blip on the radar, another constituent group who’d managed to get an audience with their senator or congressman for something that once would have branded them lunatic fringe.

  “Tell me about it,” Demalion said. He sounded strung tight himself. She stopped putting pins in the corkboard and looked at him. “Marah’s been calling.”

  “Marah tracked you down?”

  Sylvie had been expecting it. Partly because Marah was just that determined. Partly because Sylvie and her allies hadn’t gone far.

  Sylvie had left her South Beach office behind—not that there was much left of it—and found them discreet office space in Hialeah. It wasn’t the beach, but it had everything she needed, including a lot of escape routes. Hialeah was a transport city.

  Originally, Sylvie’s intention was to pack up her business, her partner, her sister, and Demalion and get out of Florida for good. It would have been the wise thing to do. But Erinya was still her mess. She couldn’t walk away from that. Right now, Erinya was playing nice, making a nest out of her small world for herself and Lupe. If that changed, it would be Sylvie walking up the causeway, with her gun in hand.

  She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Lupe had come over for lunch a day ago, and she was happy, healthy, and bringing a peace offering from Erinya—a slew of carnivorous plants in pretty pots. Sylvie had passed them off to Alex with a grimace.

  Erinya hadn’t forgotten Sylvie’s and Dunne’s treachery, but … as Lupe said, “She’s occupied. We’ve got worshippers finding their way to us, daily. Supplicants asking for vengeance and aid.” Lupe had ducked her head when Sylvie asked how vengeance played out with Erinya trapped. Lupe hadn’t needed to answer after that.

  Lupe was dealing out punishment in Erinya’s name.

  Demalion sighed. “Marah’s trying for the hard sell. Pushing guilt. I don’t think she’s even capable of feeling guilt.” He stepped away from the desk, stretched out the kinks in his back. His shirt rose, revealing smooth flesh where there had been stitches.

  Another benefit to the Sphinx toxin treatment. He healed better now. Sylvie would be lying if she said it didn’t ease her mind. But healing wasn’t where her thoughts went as she watched the small, subtle play of flat muscle over his hips. He caught her gaze and grinned, slow and wicked. “Call it a day? Head home?”

  “Don’t think about it,” Alex said, from the front room, eavesdropping automatically. “I swear. I’m this close to getting into Graves’s files.”

  “You’ve been saying that for days,” Sylvie said. She almost, almost opened her mouth and teased Alex about losing her touch. Then she recalled Alex, unhappy and scared and losing her mind, and shifted direction. “You’re just cranky ’cause Tex is out doing fieldwork.”

  “You sent him to Georgia.”

  “Look at the map!” Sylvie said. “There are pins all over Georgia! I have to know why. And there’s only so much that facts can tell me. I want to know the feel of the—”

  Their room-to-room argument was disrupted by the front door opening. The bell—a Zoe special—rang once, then twice: short bright dings that told Sylvie that it was a human coming in, and an armed one. Zoe had spelled the door chimes to alert them to a lot of different combinations since she couldn’t be there to do it herself. Val had whisked Zoe back to Ischia. Sylvie’s parents, appalled and newly aware of the dangers of the world, had thought Val offered the safest alternative.

  Sylvie couldn’t really argue. Look what Zoe had done under Sylvie’s supervision.

  This time, the chimes’ special tones were irrelevant. Sylvie recognized the man coming in. “Detective Garza.”

  “You’re a hard woman to find,” he said. He gave Demalion a quick once-over, noting the gun at his hip, then, like everyone else who’d made their way to their new office, fell silent before the map.

  “Those are all … what are those?”

  “People interacting with or reacting to the Magicus Mundi,” Sylvie said.

  Garza let out a sigh that was more groan than breath. “I killed a man and covered it up, then I forgot about it.”

  “You had help,” Sylvie said. “I helped you kill him; the Good Sisters made you forget.”

  “Can I help you?” The question burst out of Garza’s mouth, raw. Needy.

  Garza paced, thrust his hands into his pocket, looked embarrassed; Demalion left the room, closed the door behind him.

  “That’s not usually the way this goes,” Sylvie said. “People ask me for help, not if I need—”

  “Look. I can’t do this,” Garza said. “I go to work every day, and I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. We got memos from above. Telling us to stay away from Key Biscayne—it’s not even in our jurisdiction. Someone sent down a list of likely monsters we might run into. Ways to identify witches, werewolves, even vampires. But no one really knows anything. It’s not enough. I feel like I can’t do my job right because I don’t know enough.”

  “You used to do just fine—”

  “I know better, now. I don’t want to wait for more memos, Shadows. I want to be there, on the front line, be the one figuring this out. Not waiting for it to be a problem that crosses my path—”

  Sylvie held up a hand, opened the door. “Demalion. Can I have your phone?”

  He blinked but tossed it in her direction. She caught it awkwardly with her good hand, then set it down to poke through his call history. Garza vibrated with impatience.

  Sylvie found the number she was looking for, hit redial. Garza said, “Shadows!”

  Wait, she mouthed. When Marah picked up, her voice was triumphant. “Demalion, I knew you’d—”

  “Sorry, just me. I’ve got a deal for you.”

  “What kind of deal?” Marah sounded suspicious.

  “Simple. Stop trying to recruit Demalion.”

  “That’s not a deal—”

  “If you’ll let me finish, I’ll make it worth your while. This is Detective Raul Garza. He wants a job. On the front line. He wants to know all about the Magicus Mundi. He ID’d a Maudit sorcerer as a criminal before the Magicus Mundi gossip started.” Sylvie passed him the phone.

  A few minutes of impromptu job interview later, Garza handed the phone back to Sylvie, looking far more at ease than he had when he came in.

  “I still want Demalion,” Marah said into Sylvie’s ear. “Do you know how useful foretelling can be in politics? I’m a professional assassin, and I tell you, I was not prepared for the cutthroat tactics.”

  “I’m hanging up, Marah,” Sylvie said.

  “I get what I want,” Marah said, before disconnecting.

  Sylvie, despite herself, despite Marah’s cheerful tone, found her blood
running cold. In the front of the office, Alex gave a sudden shriek of triumph as Graves’s files gave up their secrets.

  * * *

  SYLVIE STOOD ON THE RIVER’S EDGE AND THREW THE WREATH OF pale flowers onto its sluggish surface. She waited for the bait to work while the water lapped up over the white petals, slowly dragging them downward.

  It was quiet around her, almost peaceful here on the isolated river basin. Made her nervous. She shot a glance back toward the roadway, toward the bulk of the rental jeep, and a moving shape that was Demalion, pacing around the vehicle. He didn’t think coming to Brazil was a good idea, thought it took them too far off their turf.

  Sylvie couldn’t blame him, but the trip had been necessary. A month had passed since Alex had cracked the encryption on Graves’s files. A month since that triumph had turned to worry and set Sylvie on the hunt.

  Everyone was hunting, it seemed like. Hunting for answers, for safety, for a way to stop or control the changes. All across the world, people were being drawn into the Magicus Mundi’s influence as surely as the wreath continued to sink.

  Marah’s ISI was on everyone’s lips; last Sylvie had heard, before she set off on this river hunt, eight separate ambassadors from European countries had come to learn from the ISI. As if the ISI was an example of anything but what not to do …

  Sylvie still worried most about the religious groups. The schisms were fast and ugly—people wanting peace, wanting communion with the gods, wanting wars to glorify their gods’ names and smite the unbelievers. And people were listening to them. A lot harder to dismiss a man who declared the gods were speaking to him when Key Biscayne had an entirely-too-tangible god that could be visited, prayed to, worshipped. The Church of Wrath was growing exponentially.

  Sylvie had already killed two gods who were nothing of the sort—only a jumped-up Maudit sorcerer and a necromancer who resurrected the dead. Taking advantage of the climate. Sylvie had managed to get herself on television once again, lecturing the would-be believers about the differences between gods and men, and why blind faith was no good for either. She had ended up being asked to consult on cases all over the US. She was flavor of the month; but when she could, she sent Demalion out to play nice instead of her. After years of keeping an unofficial profile, her sudden notoriety was nerve-racking.

  A mosquito hummed at her ear, and she swatted it away, wincing as the cast on her hand caught her hair and tugged a few strands free. She was healing fast, but not inhumanly so. A mixed blessing. She might be the new Lilith, an immortal woman, but at least she was still human.

  Demalion, not so much.

  Hospitals and doctors were being subpoenaed all across the country by the ISI, trying to winkle out any Mundi living in their midst. The witches, Sylvie thought, had been the tipping point. The world seemed to accept the idea of monsters—after all, maps had declared HERE BE MONSTERS for centuries. Monsters were upsetting but part of the collective unconscious.

  Witches, though, scared the fuck out of people. Made them realize that maybe they couldn’t tell the monsters at a glance. Made them pull apart from each other instead of growing closer in the face of the Magicus Mundi. And then, someone let slip about werewolves and succubi and all the shape-shifting things that looked human but weren’t, and the rare half-breeds …

  Martial law had looked like a possibility for a few fraught weeks, then things settled back into a panicky détente, while the government passed law after hasty law about creatures and things they knew next to nothing about.

  The water before her glossed suddenly, rolled as something slid just beneath the surface. The sinking wreath bobbed again, and the Encantado surged out of the water, shifting from dolphin to human as he did. White petals stuck to his sleek skin, and his dark eyes were languorous.

  “You called for me—” He trailed off. The pleasant anticipation on his face faded to wary irritation. “Shadows. What do you want?”

  “Come up here. Come out of the water,” she said.

  He touched the flowers over his shoulders, testing them. There wasn’t a spell laid over them. Only tradition. He shrugged and walked up the bank to stand before her.

  “What do you want?”

  “Mostly, just to talk.”

  “Mostly,” he said. “I don’t like mostly.”

  “You played me,” she said. “From the beginning.”

  If she’d thought he’d deny it, she would have been wrong. He smiled, showing sharp teeth. “You listened to me. Believed me. Even behind your magical wards, my words reached you. Because you wanted to listen.”

  Sylvie said, “You fed me a lot of things I was primed to hear. That the ISI was morally corrupt—which Graves most definitely was. That there were other forces working within the ISI, even gave me a name. The Society of the Good Sisters. You told me they were the ones running the Corrective. That was true.”

  “So you wanted to thank me?”

  “You also told me that Yvette’s people were the ones running the monster attacks. You … encouraged me to believe it. That’s the problem with being me. I’m resistant to magic. But first I have to experience it before I can shake it off. You … enchanted me. Just a bit. Just enough.

  “You told me that the Good Sisters could leash the monsters as weapons. That they were the ones setting the attacks.

  “You know what? They couldn’t. None of them could. Not even Merrow. I should have known right then. I saw Merrow when the mermaids tried to drown him. He wasn’t controlling them. He couldn’t control them. He could barely hold them off long enough for us to escape. You sold me that lie, and I believed it. The worst-case scenario. You sold it to Graves also, drove him mad with the possibilities.”

  His placid face twisted hard at the mention of the dead ISI agent.

  “How did he catch you, anyway? Did you stay ashore too long with some woman? Or did you plan to be captured?”

  The Encantado said, “You think I wanted to be caught?”

  “I don’t know; I only get to judge by the results. The results are a lot of dead humans,” Sylvie said. “You ended up in his torture chambers. I thought his notes referred to a mermaid, but it was you. You told him things. Held out long enough to make it believable, and then you sent him, a paranoid man, after enemies inside his own organization. That’s one way to disable an enemy.”

  He turned back toward the water; Sylvie caught his wrist with her bad hand, her fingertips scrabbling over the warm-rubber feel of his flesh.

  “But that wasn’t enough. You escaped. Then you coaxed the sand wraith, using your abilities to inspire belief, to go with you to Chicago, and you told it to destroy the ISI there. It obeyed. The Encantado. The strongest of the Magicus Mundi seducers. Then you moved on, and you did it again. Johnny-on-the-spot. You told me you were a Magicus Mundi troubleshooter. Trying to figure out who was controlling the monsters. A good cover story that explained your presence at all the scenes.”

  “You believed me,” he said. “So eager to think that maybe we were just like you. That we cared about murder. It wasn’t murder. It was extermination.”

  “When I stopped the mermaids, killed the Mora, you had to redirect me, to get me out of your playground. So you sent me after the Good Sisters, another set of your enemies.”

  “You went off like a firecracker. Funny,” he said. “You wanted to believe that the humans were the bad guys, and my kind the innocent tools. Check your allegiances, Shadows.”

  “I know my allegiances,” she said. She brought her good hand up, aimed the gun between his eyes. This close, she’d blow his skull to pulp.

  He twitched. “What, you want me to tell you my motives, the whole of my plan? You’ve caught me—”

  “No,” Sylvie said. “I don’t care about your plans. They stop today with you. I have one question left. And I want an answer.”

  “Put the gun down,” he said. Compulsion rang through his voice; a clarion call to the back part of her mind.

  She kept the gun steady, he
r voice even. She was in control here, and from the shock on his face, he was beginning to realize it.

  “One question,” she said. “Why did Marah Stone free you from Graves’s torture chamber?”

  Graves’s files had shown that clearly enough. Two shocks in a row for Sylvie. That the monster Graves had been tormenting for answers hadn’t been the mermaid she assumed, but the Encantado—her bias had blinded her. Graves had called the Encantado it, he had called the Encantado creature, and Sylvie, who’d already met the Encantado, thought of him as he and man.

  The second shock had been the familiar form of Marah Stone releasing him, Cain-marked hand held protectively before her as he exited the tank on shaky legs. They had paused to speak to each other for nearly five minutes before Marah stepped back and watched him leave.

  It hadn’t been the much-maligned Hovarth. It had been Marah. A woman with some degree of magical resistance. A woman who’d done nothing but benefit from the chaos.

  The video-feed quality was too bad to read the truth off their lips. Sylvie needed to know. Had the Encantado called Marah down, his seductive voice reaching out through the late-night building, mostly empty, and found her, heart and head full of desires for power, overriding the Cain mark as smoothly as he had evaded Sylvie’s own protective instincts? Or had Marah known he was there and gone down looking for a tool she could use?

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It does.” The one meant Marah was what she seemed. An opportunist who took a mistake she’d made and twisted it until she landed on her feet. Mercenary, morally suspect, but understandable.

  The other meant Marah was a long-range-planning murderous bitch who made Graves look like an amateur. Two hundred fifty-seven ISI agents had died in the attacks. Sixty civilians. And Marah didn’t even have the fragile excuse of the ISI hunting her kind.

  The one was politics. The other … was psychopathy.

  “Yes,” the Encantado said. “I see that it does.” His dark eyes bore down on her, made her wonder if he had rudimentary mind-reading abilities.

  He bared all his teeth, and said, “I don’t have an answer for you.”