Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel (28 page)

She slid off the bed, too repulsed to sit near his corpse any longer. Any sympathy she had for his outré death fled. She hoped it had hurt.

Something wrapped fingers like steel hawsers around her ankle and yanked her off her feet. She kicked out, thinking,
Stupid, stupid, stupid!

The door had been locked, the apartment sealed. Dunne had dropped her inside and made a locked-room mystery of her presence. Graves had been still alive; his wounds fresh, his body whole. All signs that the monster was still here. Had only retreated to the nearest hiding space as a startled creature would. And she’d blissfully sat down to read on top of it.

The monster under the bed.

Sylvie’s kicking hit something that hissed, that felt like metal jarring her bones. She twisted, got free, her gun drawn, just as the creature scuttled out into the room, as ungainly as a grounded bat, but
fast
. Sylvie backpedaled with all her might, skidded to the wall, and braced herself for further attack.

It leaped to its feet, revealed itself to be human-shaped, skeletal, with a crumple of burned parchmentlike skin stretching from joint to joint. When it moved, it sounded like paper tearing. Long, bone-bladed fingers jabbed at her, and she jerked aside. Her ankle throbbed and trickled blood.

“Cost me the best part of my meal,” the thing hissed. “The last, labored breath.” A withered tongue flicked.

Night Hag,
her Lilith voice reported.
Feeds on suffering. Eats children and leaves dust behind in their beds. Parents think the children have been stolen, then the Night Hag feeds on their suffering for weeks.

Graves wasn’t a child, she thought. He hadn’t been suffering. How had the Night Hag gotten to him?

“You followed Graves home from work,” Sylvie guessed. Fitting fate for a torturer.

“His prisoner’s cries drew me in, but it was gone when I found my way into his labs. His frustration was sweet. I rode home in his bodyguard’s skin, ate him from the inside out, left him dust. Then slid in and sampled Graves slowly; he tasted of rage and panic and blood. You, I’ll kill quickly.”

“No, you won’t.”

The adrenaline had worn off. Sylvie just felt tired. Felt like she had all the time in the world. The Night Hag lunged at her, bony fingers diving for her chest, and Sylvie shot it three times in the chest. Bone splintered and cracked.

The creature looked surprised, as if it hadn’t expected the bullets to affect it at all. Sylvie was getting used to that expression. She liked it. The Night Hag crumbled inward, its bones crunching under the weight of that leathery skin.

Sylvie kicked it away from her as it fell, left it a broken, skeletal nightmare stretched obscenely across a white carpet. Huffed and went back for the journal. She flipped it open to the last entry; if there was ever a time for skipping to the end, it was now.

Her throat was dry; she dragged herself and the journal to the kitchen, pulled a bottle of springwater from the glass-front fridge, and sat at the white-marble counter to read it.

That was it. Sylvie groaned, flipped back and forth, trying to piece together the narrative. Graves’s captive, not surprisingly, ended up responding better to crumbs of kindness: food, fresh water, the faint promise of freedom. A lie—Graves gloated for a page about how desperate the creature must be to believe him. Once it started talking, it had things to say, things that must have made Graves feel like all his paranoia was worth it.

There was her answer to her memory plagues. Motive and perpetrator laid out in Graves’s cramped penmanship. The Good Sisters. The Encantado had been right.

Sylvie closed the journal. Graves had never had the chance to prove it. The Night Hag had latched on, followed him home; while he lay trapped and dying, his base had been attacked, his men killed. If the much-scorned Hovarth really had been Yvette’s man, if Yvette was the Society,
then
the attacks made sense. He released the monster and ran to Yvette, telling her that they had been unmasked.

The Encantado had been right, but so had Riordan. Sylvie’s objections had all been based on Yvette’s being genuinely a member of the ISI. If Yvette wasn’t ISI, then suddenly she became a lot more likely as a suspect. The only suspect.

Infiltrating the ISI had to have been a simple way to keep an eye on their competitor, to make sure that Graves’s xenophobia didn’t win the day. They put in their own man, or woman, and undermined him. Then the ISI accelerated their ten-year plan, was thinking of opening up the
Magicus Mundi
to public knowledge. Regulating it.

For the Good Sisters, who seemed to farm the magical world, it would mean sharing their resources. If the rest of the world knew about magic, everyone would be poking at it. The number of witches would skyrocket, as all the would-be latent talents suddenly gave it a go. Boys and girls like Zoe.

Until they killed themselves messing with power they weren’t ready for,
her little voice said.

Until equilibrium was reached,
Sylvie responded. Every system, no matter how chaotic, eventually settled. Humans were adaptable, and they learned fast. Look at the technology—science had gone from Model Ts to the moon, from the inklings of genetics to DNA mapping, from the first snowy TV to the ubiquitous Internet. They’d kick and fuss and panic and slowly make space for the new knowledge.

Sylvie wouldn’t have to fight alone any longer. When something went wrong in the
Magicus Mundi
, people would be able to defend against it. They’d know what they were dealing with.

It wouldn’t be the end of things, only a new beginning. A beginning that the Good Sisters opposed to the extent that they were willing to wipe out government agencies, to wound or kill civilians to keep from happening.

Why wouldn’t they? When they could erase their own tracks, what would stop them?

The Encantado couldn’t get close enough.

It left her and Demalion. And Marah and Riordan. If they could be trusted. They wanted Graves dead, but Riordan, at least, had suspected Yvette of manipulating memory. He didn’t seem to mind, but that was when he thought Yvette was working her spells on behalf of the ISI.

She needed to tell him. He’d want proof. The journal was a start. Graves had mentioned photos and files. Sylvie checked the computers, found each of them required a password to enter. She groaned. She didn’t have time for this. Maybe Alex would be feeling better and could crack whatever security the paranoid Graves had put on his machines.

A glance at her watch showed her the flight from Miami to Dallas should be landing any moment now. She needed to get there, pick Demalion up. And Marah. The eternal, unwelcome afterthought.

Sylvie packed up the journal, the two laptops—one ISI issue, one personal use—and the external drive she’d found in the locked drawer beneath. It hadn’t been a very good lock.

For the hell of it, she packed up his weapon—standard-issue Glock—and ammo. It left her with quite a pile. She stared at the keys on the kitchen counter and thought, in for a penny …

Besides, Graves was dead. He didn’t need his car any longer.

When she left the apartment, stepping over the dust pile that had been an unfortunate ISI bodyguard, the alarm went off. She cursed and clattered down the stairwell, trying for haste without dropping any of her armful of things.

Twelve floors later, Sylvie came out into the parking garage and thought, penthouse apartment. Graves would have a prime parking spot. She waved the key fob at the closest spots, and a slate grey SUV chugged to life.

She should have time to pick up Demalion and Marah and make new plans before the car was reported stolen. Any cops who responded to the alarm’s going off would be far more occupied with the two bodies left in the apartment—Graves’s half-disintegrated corpse and the unearthly Night Hag.

The Good Sister & the God

SYLVIE HAD JUST MANAGED TO MAKE HER WAY INTO THE DALLAS/ Fort Worth terminal, remembering at the last that, no matter how much she liked her gun, she couldn’t get it inside without causing a major fuss. She left it in Graves’s glove box, along with his Glock; she chose to carry the laptops with her, stuffed into a single, overstretched laptop case.

Two small children raced past, screaming and fighting, their mother chasing after, shouting vainly for them to behave. Amusement and relief sparked in Sylvie’s chest. Those were the children that had been fighting on the plane in the seats before her. At least, Dunne’s travel express had spared her three plus hours of whining children.

Her gaze left them, scanned for Demalion; for once, she didn’t have to remind herself to look for blond instead of brunette. It seemed her brain had finally accepted Demalion in the new form. Defaulted to it in her memory.

While looking for them, she grew tense. One suited man lingering in a terminal was nothing. A businessman traveling. But one suited man lingering in a terminal trying to not look at another suited man … it could be a potential
hookup, but Sylvie knew better, even before she saw them avoid looking at two more suits. The ISI net was laid out.

Sylvie moved smoothly toward a coffee kiosk, then kept moving until she was behind a pillar. They didn’t notice, all their attention trained on the exiting passengers. Sylvie dialed Demalion hastily, hoping he had been quick to turn his phone back on.

“Sylvie,” he said, “Nice disappearing act you pulled. Think you can stay disappeared?”

“They’re waiting for you—”

Demalion and Marah crested the curve, and Sylvie bit off the heartfelt curse she wanted to emit. She wasn’t that far away from the ISI herself.

“I know they are,” Demalion said. A woman that Sylvie had not marked as ISI peeled herself out of a chair and strode over. Late forties, a face like a beautiful blade—all sharpness and intent—and cropped, tight curls. Unlike the rest of the ISI, she wore a dress in a eye-catching teal.

Marah tensed all over, and the woman laid a hand on her arm. The movement looked gentle, a casual touch, but Marah sagged beneath it. The suits moved in and gripped her arms tight.

“What’s the point of having psychic abilities if you don’t use them!” Sylvie said.

“I did. This is the best-case scenario,” he said. His gaze swept the concourse briefly, lit on hers for the barest moment of contact, then swept on. “This way leaves bread crumbs—”

The witch—she had to be a witch, a strong one, to affect Marah with a touch—took the phone from Demalion’s hand.

“Sylvie,” the woman said. Her voice was as sonorous and warm as a viola. “Will you join us?”

“Yvette,” Sylvie said. Really, the woman could be no one else. Even if she weren’t the witch in charge, she looked like Demalion’s type: strength before prettiness. “I don’t think so. I’m still in Miami.”

“The first time we get to talk, and you tell me a lie? Not a good start, I’m afraid. I’ve cast a seeking spell. It won’t be long before we find you.”

“Finding isn’t catching,” Sylvie said.

She grabbed another look at Demalion; he’d shouldered aside one of the agents, a red-haired man, and was holding Marah up himself. Stupid, Sylvie thought, he wouldn’t be able to move quickly if he got the chance. Then again, though Demalion had flaws, stupidity was not one of them. He didn’t think they were in immediate danger; burdening himself was a signal to her that she should flee without guilt.

Something brushed over her skin, as damp and breathless like a dog’s nose, all snuffling curiosity—Yvette’s spell.