Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel (17 page)

“One of the Eumenides,” Sylvie said. “A Greek mythical monster, only less myth, more monster. A lonely creature, who’s doing what we all do. Losing herself in work. Just, her work is full of dead people.”

“Can I stop her from doing it? What do I need? SWAT team? Spell?”

“You can’t stop her,” Sylvie said. “The best you can do is take heart in the fact that she has very specific parameters for her kills. And that, so far, she has some sense of collateral-damage control.”

Suarez growled. “A murderer who kills undesirables is still a murderer.”

“Suarez, please,” Sylvie said. “I don’t have time to fight her now. I’ve got a client in bad shape, I’ve got the ISI bringing serious trouble to the city, and I’ve got a missing sister.”

“Again?” Suarez said. “Leash that girl. She’s trouble.”

“She might be
in
trouble.”

“Don’t count on me to rescue her. We’re short-staffed. Fifteen of our officers had to rush to the hospital today because their parents had had strokes or heart attacks while watching the morning news. When they did call in, they said the ERs were overwhelmed. I might not have your inside knowledge, but something seems wrong about that.”

“I don’t suppose mermaids mean anything to you?”

Suarez winced, pinched the high bridge of his nose, and Sylvie said, “That’s what I thought. That, right there, is our second problem. Someone’s playing cleanup with our brains. Well, your brains. Making you forget anything you were exposed to that was blatantly
mundi
. You didn’t take any of those monster calls yourself, right?”

“That’s right,” he said. “People told me about them.”

“I bet if you talk to the woman sent for the psych evaluation about her mother and the monster now, she’ll remember something different. Will get a headache if you press. Might even stroke out, depending on her overall health. I bet your men won’t be much different.”

Suarez dropped his hand, stared at it in horror. “They
made me forget something? Like Garza did when you helped him?”

“You remember that, though,” Sylvie said. “That I dealt with Garza in the Keys?”

“
Maudits
, you said.”

“I did.” This was part of what was making her crazy. The results of the memory wiping seemed so scattershot. Secondhand info relayed to someone who hadn’t been a part of the original scene stayed just fine. Sylvie wondered what would have happened if Garza had written up truthful reports. Would they have altered like the video feeds? Would all the cops who read the report have their minds altered, like the TV viewers?

Sylvie thought the answer was probably yes.

“Who’s doing it?” Suarez said. “And why?”

“Witches,” Sylvie said. Witches were the most likely suspects. Anything more powerful—like a god—would be doing a better job. Anything less powerful than a full coven of witches, and the memory plague wouldn’t be so widespread. The
Mundi
, as Sylvie had noted before, didn’t cooperate with each other, and that ruled them out.

“Brujas?”
Suarez seemed skeptical, which Sylvie thought was unfair of him. Azpiazu had nearly ripped Miami apart, which Suarez knew, and he’d started off as a witch.

“A whole coven of witches. More specifically than that, I can’t tell you. Why? I don’t know. I’m not sure who’s benefiting. Whether it’s ‘to protect society’ bullshit, or whether they’re protecting the
Mundi
from discovery.”

“Nothing good comes from secret workings,” Suarez said. “Those who hold power should be transparent in their use of it.”

“Don’t have to sell me on that,” Sylvie said.

“So, how will you identify this coven if you don’t know its motive?”

Sylvie’s phone buzzed. “Hold that thought.”

“She got to Miami,” Alex said. Her voice was thin and tight. Worried. “Victor found a flight attendant who remembered her—tried to carry on too much luggage, threw a bit
of a fuss. Zoe is kind of a pain, but I guess, in this situation, it’s a good thing.”

“Alex,” Sylvie snapped. “You’re stalling. Where is she?”

“Four men in fancy suits and guns snagged her as she stepped out of the gate. Gate attendant noticed because Zoe dropped her carry-on, and they didn’t bother to pick it up. Said the suits had to be official since they were armed within the terminal.”

“ISI,” Sylvie said.

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“But they’re dead. The flood destroyed their base. How in hell do they have time to hunt down Zoe?”

Suarez leaned in, shamelessly eavesdropping. Sylvie didn’t care; she was recalculating. The mermaids had killed the ISI agents who were
there
. But, like Yvette, maybe others had been out of the office.

“… want me to see if I can get video feed?”

“No,” Sylvie said. She was slow, so slow. How had she forgotten? When the ISI had tear-gassed her office and kidnapped her, she had woken up in a different facility than the downtown hotel. “I’m going straight to Dominick Riordan. If the ISI is grabbing my sister, he’s got to be alive.”

IT WAS LONG PAST FULL DARK BY THE TIME SYLVIE MANAGED TO retrace her path from the frantic night three months prior. Then, she’d been concentrating more on getting away and stopping Azpiazu, the Soul-Devourer, than on figuring out where she’d been held.

By starting at Vizcaya, still being repaired from the showdown with Azpiazu, and working her way back, she thought she was on the right track. It had been on a frontage road near the airport, but it hadn’t been one of the dozens of warehouses that sprouted in that area; it had been a business-office type of building, with at least two floors.

She slowed her already crawling pace, and the driver behind her honked and cut around her. Sylvie peered into the dark, trying to focus, trying to remember. There had
been a parking garage full of matching SUVs. White-painted concrete already going green. A shadow in her memory smelling like mold—everything underground in Miami smelled like mold.

Up ahead, a sign flashed in her headlights, a time-faded declaration that Miami’s Best Bank would be opening soon. A bank she’d never heard of.
Opening never,
Sylvie thought. Not if it was a front for the ISI.

She jerked the wheel, garnered another series of traffic complaints, and crossed a narrow bridge over a watery ditch with pretensions to canalhood.

Sylvie bumped over the rough pavement, remembered that jarring sensation from her previous visit, and turned again sharply, picking a darker space out of an unlit lot that turned into a parking garage. One level down, lights bloomed distantly, showed a shiny row of dark SUVs and water glistening in thin trails down the walls. It made Sylvie think about mermaids.

Her nerves coiled and twisted. God, she wished Demalion had picked up a phone, wished he’d given her some way to contact him. She was used to going it alone, but right now, she wanted backup, and he was her first choice. Now and always.

Erinya could be called, but Erinya came with her own problems. If Zoe was in the ISI building, then Erinya was the last thing she needed. Zoe wouldn’t thank Sylvie for causing all her witchy powers to be burned away.

Sylvie backed into a parking slot, put the truck in park, and stared into the depths of garage and the discreet elevator. She didn’t see any surveillance cameras, but she didn’t doubt they were there. The ISI liked to watch.

She wondered, if things went wrong—if she disappeared into their holding cells instead of pulling Zoe out of them—if Alex would call up the video feed to be witness to it. Wondered how many agents were left. Riordan to give the orders. Four to pick up Zoe.

Don’t forget Demalion.

An uneasy squirm of unpleasant emotion crawled
through her at that thought, made her jaw clench and her heart sink—unhappiness? betrayal? worry? Rather than dwell on it, she climbed out of her truck and went to face the music.

It sounded sooner than she’d expected. She rounded her truck’s scarred nose and found Dominick Riordan holding the elevator open for her, spotlighted in the otherwise-dimly-lit garage. A faint smile crossed his patrician face, showing a sliver of polished teeth. “Well, it’s about time. I was beginning to think we were going to have to send up flares.”

His voice was lovely, mellow and deep. It worked like nails on a chalkboard for Sylvie.

“I have an office, with office hours,” Sylvie said. “I know you know where it is. You gassed it, robbed it, and wrecked it just three months ago. If you wanted to talk, you knew where to find me.”

Riordan said, “Your office also has a guard dog of a particular ferociousness, and I’m down men already. Did you bring her with you?”

“Does it look like I brought anyone in with me? Do you see her sitting in my truck? Or launching herself at your throat?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t. Which is odd to me, Shadows. Here you have this powerful attack dog, and you’re not using her.” He smiled again, a fuller thing that made his eyes bright with pleasure. Made him look like a nice guy. “Which makes me think you
can’t
use her.”

“Or maybe I don’t need her for the likes of you. Seems to me your lot is folding all on your own. Mermaids, Riordan? Sand wraiths? Succubi? I don’t need to call on Erinya. You’re fucked.”

Riordan’s lips flattened, but he wasn’t goaded into temper. That was the problem with him, Sylvie thought. He was always so measured. So damn rational. Usually people shot off their mouths around her, goaded into it by her rudeness, by the desire to prove her wrong. Riordan just observed, calculated, then struck.

“Tone down your glee,” Riordan said. “You have hostages to fate here, or did you forget who brought you to my door?”

Sylvie swallowed back her retort, caught by the plural.
Hostages.
She hadn’t expected a plural. Zoe, yes. Who else?

Riordan said, “Your sister’s actually been helpful, though I doubt that was her intention. She saw a certain agent in the halls and hailed him by a dead man’s name. Pled with him for help that he’s now in no position to give. Come along, Shadows. Let’s talk.”

He stepped back from the entry of the elevator, gestured her in. Sylvie saw no option but to follow his lead.

RIORDAN WASN’T ALONE IN THE ELEVATOR. AS SHE STEPPED IN, THE agent holding the door open released the button and turned his attention to her. “Hand over your weapon,” he said.

“Think you can make me?” Sylvie asked.

He took a step toward her, and she took that same step closer to Riordan, a quick two-step made awkward by the close confines of the elevator. Riordan pressed his code into the keypad, selected the top floor.

“Relax, Powell. Shadows can keep her weapon. She knows to be mindful of what she does with it.”

“I do?” Sylvie said, as the elevator glided into motion, ticking upward. Too much to hope for that Zoe would be at the top. More likely, she was in one of the holding cells, and Sylvie recalled the chill damp of them, thought they must be pressed up against the parking-garage wall. The elevator was taking her farther away.

Riordan said, “You’re much less impulsive than your reputation states. You control yourself well enough that your crimes have raised suspicion but nothing approximating proof. Shoot an ISI agent, and you’ll be in jail.”

“For as long as Erinya left me there. She doesn’t like me in distress. You should have seen her with the mermaids.”

“I am honestly sorry to have missed it,” Riordan said.

“Wait,” Sylvie said. “You know about the mermaids?”

“My son told me about them.”

“He remembers them?” Sylvie thought back. The other witnesses didn’t. But then, he’d fought off their song also. “That’s right. He’s a witch.”

“Of course he’s not,” Riordan said. Faint distaste drew his mouth down.

Before Sylvie could delve deeper, the elevator motor traded its whisper for a sudden whine and grind of machinery. The lights snapped off, plunging them into darkness.

Sylvie dodged Powell’s inevitable lunge, put her elbow into his ribs, put her gun to his throat, and pushed him back. He went.

“Shoot her, boss, don’t worry about me,” Powell said, voice strained.

Riordan sighed. “No one’s shooting anyone. Shadows, you doing this?”