Lies & Omens

8 On the Run

IT WAS DAWN OUTSIDE, THE AIR DAMP AND FRAGRANT WITH SALT, the grass shading from black to smudgy green, and the second sunrise Sylvie had seen after a sleepless night. Her truck surged up the last bit of the garage ramp and brought them into morning. At least that, she thought, explained the slight tremble in her gun hand, explained why her emotions were ping-ponging from rage to fear to desperation. Another night gone without sleep. Exhaustion was beating her down.

Sylvie stepped on the gas, and Demalion snapped, “Wait!” She slammed on the brakes, hair-triggered, and nearly gave them both whiplash.

“What?” Sylvie snapped.

She glanced over at him in the uncertain morning light, and felt a chill chase over her skin. Demalion’s eyes were glassy, the pupils shrunk to nothing.

“What is it?” Sylvie said. She scanned the roadway behind and before, one hand slipping from the wheel to her gun.

“Someone’s waiting for you at the canal edge,” Demalion said.

“Friend or foe?”

Demalion shook his head. “Can’t tell.”

“There’s no one there.”

“Not yet.”

Fucking psychics. Sylvie eased forward, and sure enough, just as the truck reached the narrow bridge, a man stepped out from the piling’s shadow. She stopped the truck, got out.

He didn’t look like a threat. He was smaller, slighter than he had appeared on the video feeds. His head barely reached the top of the truck’s cab. All he wore was a pair of low-slung jeans. His feet were bare. Everything about him suggested he was harmless.

But he was the same man Sylvie had seen shrug off the mermaids’ compulsion like it was nothing more than an irritating radio station, the same man who’d been at the site of at least three of the ISI disasters. He was more than he seemed.

Even if she’d been willing to buy into his appearance, the fact remained: He was enough of a threat that he triggered Demalion’s visions.

“What do you want?” she said. “This isn’t a good time.”

“What happened to the Mora?” he asked. His voice, even pitched low to carry only to her ears, held the same powerful resonance as an opera singer’s.

“I killed her.”

“Fuck,” he muttered, and Sylvie knew he was mundi, not a witch, by the way the obscenity sounded wrong in his mouth. A language poorly learned. Imitation of humanity. But not of it.

He looked human. About five-eight, slightly olive skin tone, curly dark hair dripping water to his narrow shoulders. His eyes were dark enough that it was hard to tell pupil from iris, and his irritation creased his forehead in all the human ways. But his hair was damp; his jeans were sodden, and if she looked closely, his nose seemed more for show than for breathing, a beak with dents for nostrils instead of actual breathing apparatus.

“What’d you want with her? To congratulate her on a job well-done?”

“I was hoping she’d lead me to whoever sent her out to kill your kind. I wanted to know if she was coerced or coaxed. Now, I can’t. You killed her.”

“Trust me, she wasn’t in the mood to chat.”

“Sylvie.” Demalion jerked his head toward the ISI. “Riordan’s watching. Should we have this meeting here?”

“Fuck,” Sylvie echoed, but kept her attention tight on the monster masquerading as a man. “You think she’d have talked to you?”

“Everyone talks to me. Even you.”

Sylvie twitched and realized unhappily that it was true. On the ISI’s lawn, her enemies behind her, Riordan’s goad driving her onward, exhaustion fluttering in her chest, and she had stopped to chat. “What the hell are you?” Her gun hand—when had she lowered it?—started to rise.

“Don’t shoot. I need to know what the Mora said to you. But not here. Not now. Your man is right.”

Sylvie darted a glance over her shoulder and twitched when she felt the invasion of her personal space; she jumped back, but the stranger had laid a hand, smooth as silk, utterly uncallused, on her sternum. She swung at him, too slow, but he was already backing away. “I’ll find you,” he said. “Now that I’ve got the feel of you, I’ll find you.”

He took three quick steps, leaped into the watery ditch beside the roadway, attached to one of the Miami canals. Sylvie got a quick glimpse of something smooth and torpedo-shaped speeding through the shallow water, the jut of a not-quite fin. A dolphin?

“Crap,” Sylvie said. She clambered back into the truck, gunned it, and pulled out of the drive with a screech. “Like we don’t have enough going on.”

SYLVIE DIDN’T RELAX UNTIL SHE GOT THE TRUCK OFF THE MORE deserted frontage roads and into denser morning traffic.

She wanted to get back to her office. Needed her things—spare clips, cash—and she needed some safe space to sleep: where Riordan couldn’t rush her into killing Graves; where Marah couldn’t swan in at will; where Erinya couldn’t come calling with tales of bloody hearts and dead witches.

“Riordan won’t hurt Zoe,” Demalion said, attempting reassurance.

Sylvie nodded. She believed him, but there were a lot of levels of harm: Being held prisoner was its own kind of hurt. “Your psychic skills can’t home in on her?”

“I wish I could,” Demalion said. He sounded sincere.

Sylvie tightened her hands on the wheel, said, “I know you hate talking about this. But you’re clairvoyant. You should be able to see where she is—”

“Was clairvoyant. Then I died. Came back normal. Powerless.”

“You’re not powerless now,” she said. “You used it to survive the sand wraith, to warn the ISI about the Mora. You’ve been really quiet about how you managed that. Makes a girl wonder what it took to recover that ability.” She tried not to let her voice tighten. She kept her own secrets; he should be allowed his.

“Why do you always think the worst of me?” he said. “What do you think I did?”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem.”

“I told you my mother wasn’t happy with me, right? That she’s avoiding my calls? How much do you know about the sibyls of ancient Greece?”

Sylvie took a hand off the wheel, scrubbed at her face. Exhaustion was warring with adrenaline and winning.

“Syl?”

“Uh,” she said. “Nothing.”

“Mythic history ascribes their abilities to various gods speaking through them, but that’s not really the way it worked.”

Sylvie remembered arguing with Dunne about that while she was hunting for his lover. “The gods aren’t precognitive. At least, most of them aren’t. They can see possibilities, but it’s more like men playing chess. Experience and familiarity. But the Sphinx can see the future.”

“Yeah,” he said. “One of the few beings who can see it clearly.”

“She made the sibyls.”

“Her bite carries a venom that can alter human abilities.”

“So you found your mom, convinced her it was you, and then what, asked her to rewrite your DNA?”

“Pretty much,” he said.

“And for that, she’s not talking to you? Come on, Michael, I’m too fucking tired to beat around the bush. What did you do?”

“It was risky. Her venom kills more often than it changes. I was pretty sick for a couple of weeks.”

Sylvie’s hand flew off the wheel again, grabbed his shoulder. “Idiot. Wright died to save you, and you…

She shut her mouth, felt one step away from hyperventilating, thought back to when he’d first returned to Chicago. “Those two weeks where you were ‘unreachable’? You were fucking dealing with the venom. Dying, and you didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t die.”

Sylvie let out her breath; it rushed out on a shaky stream. She counted to ten, sucked in more air, and said, “Fine. Fine. You didn’t die, and I’ll crash the truck if we fight now. So, give me the short answer. You have psychic powers, but you can’t find Zoe.”

“I have limited abilities,” he said. “They’re all tied in to precognition and threat. I could tell you when to dodge a bullet. I can tell you that we’ve got a car wreck in our future.”

“What?” She whipped a look at him, wondering if that was an example or a prophecy.

He shrugged, apparently not sure himself.

Sylvie’s phone rang shrilly in her jacket pocket, thrown over the back of the seat. “Get that,” she said. “Maybe it’s Zoe.”

“It’s not,” he said, before he even reached her jacket.

“So your talent’s good for crushing hope,” she muttered. “Figures.”

Demalion fumbled for the phone, dragging her jacket up from behind the seats. “It’s not an ISI number,” he said, before hitting speaker.

An agitated man started talking before Demalion could say more than, “Yes?”

“Who’s this? Wait, never mind. Tell that bitch, Shadows, that she needs to come pick up whatever it is she left in my hotel. It’s freaking the fuck out, and the doors aren’t going to hold it.”

“I’ll be there, Toro,” Sylvie said, raising his voice so he could hear. “Stay away from the doors.”

“You owe me another $500 for this, Shadows.”

“Only if my client is still present and in one piece when I get there. It’ll be… Sylvie checked her dashboard clock, tried to calculate distance, traffic, endless variables that flitted through her weary mind like elusive, darting bats. “It’ll be as soon as I can make it,” she snapped, jerking her hand across her throat, and Demalion cut the connection.

“Sylvie,” he said. “Do we have time for this?”

“No choice,” she said. Toro was a lot of things, but jumpy he wasn’t. If he was concerned, there was reason. She pulled the truck over into the nearest convenience-store parking lot, nearly sideswiped a fast-approaching Mercedes that she just hadn’t seen, and thought, Car wreck in her future. Right.

She got out of the truck, staggered into the store, bought an energy drink that looked to be made entirely of caffeine and sugar, grabbed a pack of Tums to go with it, and returned to the truck on the passenger side. “You drive.”

“Where am I going?”

“Siesta-Sleep Hotel in Homestead, and hurry.” She folded herself into the passenger seat, found it warmed by his skin, and nearly dropped off then and there. Instead, she buckled the belt down, and chugged her drink and two of the antacids.

“You left your client there? Jesus, Sylvie. What’d she do, try to stiff you on your fee? That place has cockroaches the size of scorpions—”

“Drive, Demalion,” she said, closed her eyes, and tried to think of yet another place to keep Lupe.

SHE WOKE WHEN DEMALION BRAKED HARD, TIRES PROTESTING, AND she woke up angry. Fucking Lupe couldn’t even control herself for one damn day. Weak-natured, she thought, then felt something in her head click over. That wasn’t her. That was the Lilith-voice making itself felt, though more quietly than usual.

Just great, she thought. All she needed. To have it go stealth, make it even harder for her to resist its brutal pragmatism.

“Good nap?”

“Not long enough.” She looked out along the streets, said, “Make a left.”

“I know where we’re going.”

“So go there faster,” she said. That drumbeat urgency in her blood was the only thing keeping her moving. It kept a clock running down, the time she was wasting. Time she could be using to deal with a world going wonky under the weight of Erinya’s presence, of Dunne’s expectations, of the witchy manipulations.

Demalion pulled into the hotel lot, found a space in a mostly empty lot. He wasn’t wrong about the hotel’s ambiance; it did run toward rat and roach more than bed and bath, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Stay here,” Sylvie said. “I need you to keep the truck running.”

Sylvie headed out of the truck. She’d left Lupe in Room 213, sulking and none too pleased with her environment. Then again, as far as Lupe was concerned, everything in her life had been on a downward slide since the moment she was kidnapped by Azpiazu.

Given that and the manager’s call, Sylvie was less than surprised to find her knock answered by a crash and a strange animal sound. Something large, she thought, since the floorboards creaked as Lupe paced toward the door. Exactly what shape Lupe had taken, Sylvie couldn’t tell. The animal protest that traveled through the door was like nothing she’d heard before. Something like a snake rattle, like a cat’s purr, but high-pitched.

Tranquilizer gun. She should have invested in a tranquilizer gun. Another thing to set Alex on. God, Alex. She should have warned her about the ISI, told her to get someplace safe. Was there anyplace safe? Sylvie’s head spun.

She leaned on the door frame, tried to muster patience. “Lupe. It’s Sylvie.”

The door jolted as Lupe crashed into it; the thick wood bowed outward, and the rattling shriek made Sylvie wince. Up close, the sound could cut glass. Or shatter it.

“What the fuck did you leave in there?” the manager said, joining her.

“Give me the key,” Sylvie said. “Go away.”

Toro passed her the key, backed up a few feet. Sylvie eyed him, knew he was hoping to get something on her that would net him some more cash, and thought, Fuck it. She was sick of playing censor. If he wanted to see, let him. The ISI wouldn’t like it, and that was reason enough to let it happen. She waited until she heard Lupe retreat, then keyed the door open a crack. Peered inside.

“What is it? What do you see?” he asked, leaning forward.

Trouble.

Serious trouble.

Not only had Lupe changed independent of the lunar cycle, but there was absolutely no way this change could be passed off as normal. No “zoo escapee” excuse was going to cover this.

Lupe raised her head; a long forked tongue flickered out, tasting the air. Tasting Sylvie’s presence. The mane of feathers around her neck shifted and fluffed. She shrieked again, and lashed her long, tawny tail. She sprang forward, and Sylvie slammed the door just in time to avoid a clawed paw.

“I’m going to need a nonlethal weapon,” she told him. “A Taser, stun gun, or a tranq gun. Something.”

He looked at her blankly, and she said, “Get me one.”

“Shadows, I don’t know what you—”

“Toro, your hotel clients are 90 percent violent offenders of one kind or another. You’re telling me you don’t have an entire armory in your office?”

“I got an Uzi?”

“If I wanted to shoot her, I’d use my gun,” Sylvie snapped. She knew she was being irrational, that most of her anger was self-directed—she just didn’t have things under control.

“I got roofies.”

Sylvie grimaced. She hated the people she interacted with sometimes. “Fine. Get me a handful and a steak.”

“Five dollars each—”

“Toro, I could walk away and leave her to you. Make her your problem.”

“Fine,” he said, and slunk off.

Sylvie shuddered. She was so going to call Suarez and sic him on Toro. There was sketchy, and then there was sketchy.

Demalion joined her on the second-floor balcony, ignoring her scowl. “I left the motor running. What’s taking so long?”

Lupe hiss-purred through the door, and Demalion said, “What is that?”

“My client,” Sylvie said. “She’s having a bad day.”

Toro returned with a handful of pills going chalky and damp in his hand, and a steak a couple of days past fresh. Sylvie could smell him coming.

She wasn’t the only one. The door shuddered again in the jamb, the hinges jolting. Toro crushed the pills into the steak, and Sylvie took it with one hand. It took more concentration than she expected to hang on to the slimy, heavy mass, and that was the beginning of the end.

She took her eyes off the crack in the door to focus on the meat’s getting away from her. Demalion stiffened like he’d been electrocuted and swept her down to the concrete walkway, scraping her arm, numbing her elbow, and knocking the breath from her.

Lupe’s claws closed on empty air, and she leaped down to the parking lot. In the sunlight, she was a beautiful monster. She had a huge catlike body, tawny and stippled with tropical bird colors, blue, green, red. A ruff of bright feathers stood out around her serpentine head like an Elizabethan collar, and the scales on that massive snake head glimmered with an oily green sheen. Like a poison-arrow frog, everything about her screamed toxic.

“Lupe!” Sylvie yelled, hanging over the edge of the balcony. She hurled the steak down in front of her. It landed with a wet, messy splat and spread out across the concrete like a rooftop jumper.

Lupe flickered a skink blue tongue at the steak, then dismissed it.

“No, no, no,” Sylvie muttered, scrambled to her feet, and headed downstairs, Demalion shouting behind her. Maybe if she could get Lupe into her truck, the situation could be salvaged.

Traffic on the road outside the hotel suddenly bottlenecked as first one driver, then another, saw Lupe and slammed on the brakes, and got rear-ended for their pains. Horns filled the air, and Lupe let out her freaky howl-shriek again and headed straight for the traffic in a ground-eating lope Sylvie couldn’t hope to beat. Maybe with the truck, but the road was blocked.

Her breath seesawed in her chest, panic striking hard and deep. Lupe was going to get killed. Or kill someone. Or both. And it would be her fault.

Sylvie raised her gun, belatedly thinking even a flesh wound would slow her down, be better than this, but there were too many people around, and Lupe was so fast. …

Sylvie closed her eyes, shut out Demalion shouting at Toro, the sounds of panic and excitement on the street, the sounds of Lupe’s life being destroyed step by step. There had to be something she could do.

Whether it was exhaustion or panic or the catastrophe about to happen, she could only think of one thing that might work.

“Erinya!” she shouted. “Erinya!”

Her breath felt like it was torn from her, and she didn’t even know if it would work. If Erinya was listening. And if she was, if she’d come.

Lupe gained the roadway and the stopped cars, lunged atop them, and flared her neck feathers. Her clawed feet crashed through a windshield, and the carpoolers inside hurled themselves out, one man clutching a bloody shoulder.

A second later, he was convulsing in the street; Lupe was, apparently, as toxic as she looked.

Demalion said, “Shoot her. Sylvie. You don’t have a choice. She’s killing people.”

Sylvie lined up the shot, blinking sweat out of her eyes, her vision blurring. She scrubbed her face, scented the lingering aroma of putrid meat on her skin, and gagged. The gun shook in her hands.

Demalion took the gun from her, aimed, and Lupe dropped between the cars, showing that, animal or not, she still recognized danger. Sylvie got a glimpse of that snaky head peering at them beneath the SUV she’d just trashed and had only a moment to realize that Lupe was coming for them at speed.

Demalion held his ground, took the shot—head shot, too high. The scales furrowed back, exposed thick bone—another scar for Sylvie’s client should she survive turning human again—but Lupe didn’t even slow.

Sylvie swiped her gun back, holstered it, and shoved Demalion toward the truck.

“Lupe,” she said. “Lupe.” Like the name was a spell to return her to herself.

Lupe slowed in her advance, tilted her head. Listening, Sylvie hoped.

“C’mon, Lupe. You don’t want to kill anyone, right? You don’t want to hurt anyone else. Remember how bad you felt when Jenny—”

The chattering blast of Toro’s Uzi cut through her words, sent her seeking ground, seeking safety. Lupe leaped, slashed at Toro with a casual paw, and sliced flesh to the bone. He screamed in pain and kept screaming.

Lupe whined, her side torn by at least one bullet. Then her feathers ruffled; her scales shifted color, shading dark, and she lunged for the next nearest person.

Sylvie.

Sylvie had one terrifying glimpse of Lupe’s soft underside, wished she hadn’t holstered her gun, then Lupe went crashing across the parking lot, hurled away by a larger force.

Erinya had made the scene.

A BARE SECOND AFTER ERINYA’S EMERGENCE, SYLVIE’S RELIEF faded. Erinya had come ready to kill; and more, she brought the jungle with her. Vines and lianas burst from the concrete and asphalt, crumbling the ground beneath her. Scarlet flowers fell out of the air, spreading petals that oozed a sickeningly sweet scent.

“Don’t kill her. Don’t hurt her. Just stop her,” Sylvie breathed out. Her back hurt with a growing dull heat; she put a hand to her side, felt perforated flesh and liquid, something slippery inside and out. Toro’s fucking Uzi. Friendly fucking fire. She was too tired to tell how bad it was.

Erinya didn’t even glance in her direction, just sprang on Lupe, rolled her over, squalling, hissing, and snapping. Greenery erupted around them, entangling them.

Demalion’s hands latched tight on Sylvie’s side unexpectedly, and she struck at him, hurting and half-crazed. She laughed when he swore at her, came away with his hands stained wet with her blood. “Marah thinks I’m immortal,” she told him. “Guess not.” Her body throbbed. Her vision blurred.

He manhandled her into her truck, dragged out the first-aid kit, and she tried to push him off. “Got to tell Erinya. Tell her to take Lupe away. Tell her to—”

“Shut up,” he said. “They’re on their own.”

His lips were white, pressed tight between his teeth, and she said, “You’re worried about me?”

“Everybody’s got a hobby,” he said. He leaned forward, kissed her forehead. “Now, shut up. Let me get you bandaged before you bleed out.”

A thunderous crash resounded in the back of the truck, rocked them both violently in the cab, slammed her truck’s nose into the wall, and the animal shrieking cut off all at once. Demalion looked up, wild-eyed, and Sylvie let out a startled yelp as Lupe’s snake head crunched through the back window. But, despite the unlidded gaze, she was out. Unconscious or dead.

Erinya slid behind the wheel, all human delight. “Sylvie! Where’d you find her? She’s wonderful.”

“Drive,” Demalion said.

“I don’t take orders from you,” Erinya said.

“Sylvie’s in no shape to give them. Get us out of here,” Demalion snapped.

Sylvie winced against the seat; the wound was beginning to feel less hot and more hurt. “Erinya—”

Sirens were thick in the air, the approaching cops, ISI—everyone she didn’t want to talk to. Everyone she needed to protect Lupe from.

“Take us to Alex,” Sylvie said, trying to get a last bit of thought out. If things were going to hell this fast, she needed to make sure Alex knew about it.

“Heal her first,” Demalion said.

Erinya hesitated. And Sylvie thought, Dammit, Erinya might have healed me, except that Demalion was the one to ask for it.

Demalion slid out of the truck, and she grabbed at him, wondering what the hell he was thinking, but the effort jolted her and sent her, finally, into unconsciousness.

When she came to, she was still in the truck, and she wanted to scream in frustration. She was tired of fighting—

Never tire of fighting, her inner voice declared—

—and she just wanted to get some fucking sleep. Even as she complained, she realized she felt … better. Not good; still exhausted, shaky, wiped out, and stinking of blood, but better. Also, the world outside the truck had changed. Not the hotel parking lot but someplace cooler, dimmer. Someplace without screaming and panic.

Someplace that smelled strongly of exhaust and oil, a faint overlay of mall perfume.

A parking garage?

The passenger door next to her hung open, and crouched in it, a blurry shape in the dimness, was Erinya. “Don’t be mad,” she said.

Sylvie threw her head back and groaned. “Erinya, what did you do?”

“Healed you,” the Fury said.

“I thought I felt better,” Sylvie said. “Why would I be mad at you for … did you kill Lupe?”

“Lupe is the monster-girl? No. I like her. She’s fun.”

Sylvie swallowed hard, cleared her eyes enough to see that Erinya’s face was bloodstained from cheek to chin. “Demalion—” Sickness churned in her; her breath felt suddenly fragile. Ready to shatter.

“I’m here,” Demalion said from behind Erinya. He sounded all right, but when she saw him, she wasn’t so sure he was. His hands were bloody to the elbows, and his gaze had some of Erinya’s hangdog quality to it. Don’t be mad.

“What happened?” Sylvie said, pushing herself upright. “Where’s Alex?”

“Hiding,” Erinya said. “She doesn’t like me much without you around.”

“Where are we?”

Erinya huffed. “Questions, questions, questions. I’m bored with that.” She leaped into the bed of the truck, stroked Lupe’s battered feathers to smoothness, slid her hands down along Lupe’s velvety hide. Sylvie wasn’t the only one the Fury had healed.

Demalion reached into the truck, tugged Sylvie out. “Easy. She fixed the wound, but I think you still lost the blood.”

“What happened,” Sylvie repeated.

“I ripped out Toro’s heart and offered it to Erinya in exchange for healing you. I—”

“Worshipped her,” Sylvie said. “Gave your allegiance to a god who hates you?”

“You were bleeding out,” he said, “in my arms. I did what I needed to.”

“Your afterlife,” she said. “Oh God.” She leaned up against him, felt useless tears start in her eyes. An afterlife with Erinya, where she’d chase and torment and hate him for eternity. “I don’t know that I can get you out of that.”

“I won’t die anytime soon,” he said. “Give you time to work on it.”

Sylvie sniffed hard, raised her head. “Yeah. If we get the chance. Where the hell are we?”

“Dadeland Mall,” Demalion said. “You told Erinya to find Alex. She was shopping.”

“At the Apple store,” Alex said. She sidled around the truck with a wary glance at Erinya, still crooning over her unconscious playmate. “Amazingly enough, having a Fury pluck you out of it makes things tricky. On the bright side, I’ve got a new toy. Since I was holding on to it when Erinya grabbed me? I’m trying to figure out if that makes me a shoplifter or what.”

Sylvie said, “The mall, Alex? With all that’s going on?”

“The ISI took your sister out of the airport. I felt a little exposed at the office and at home. I’ve been here since it opened, waiting for you to call.”

Sylvie found herself sinking more heavily against Demalion, and he said, “We need to get you a place to rest.”

“I’ve been saying that for the last twenty-four hours,” Sylvie muttered. “But Zoe, Graves—”

“Riordan’s just going to have to wait,” Demalion said. “We need a bolt-hole. Your apartment’s not safe enough. Hotel?”

“I know where to go,” Alex said. “I’ve been thinking about it. Enough space for all of us and maybe even safety from memory modifications? From Riordan’s haranguing you to get busy?”

“Yeah, yeah, cut to the chase,” Sylvie said.

From the truck, Lupe emitted a strange groan, then began to collapse inward, shifting back to human. Erinya sat back on her haunches to watch, head cocked, curious.

“Val’s place,” Alex said. “She’s in Ischia. Which means there’s an estate with both magical and high-tech security going to waste. Plus, if Zoe somehow manages to give Riordan the slip—”

“Zoe would head for Val’s if she got free,” Sylvie said. “You’re brilliant, Alex.” She grinned, but it felt weak. “Can’t take Erinya, though.”

“You want her around full-time?”

“Nice to have a Lupe-wrangler.”

“Val’s estate will have at least one safe room,” Demalion said. “If she’s as high-tech as Alex says.”

“Great, we’re all for it. Let’s get there and stop talking about it.” Sylvie pushed off Demalion’s solid chest, staggered a bit but stayed upright, waving him off.

“We’re not taking your truck,” Demalion said. “Too many of us, and it’s full of blood.”

“Fine,” Sylvie said. “Go fetch a car, then.” She leaned up against her truck while he disappeared farther into the parking garage. Grand theft auto, coming up, committed by a rogue government agent. What the hell had their lives come to?

Alex said, “Are you really going to kill Graves on Riordan’s say-so?”

“Demalion filled you in, then?” Sylvie said. “I don’t know. If Graves is the one siccing monsters on the world? Probably. I’m just not sure. Something about the whole mess doesn’t sit right. But I can’t think straight. I’m making bad choices. Careless choices. There’s a hotel in Homestead that’s proof of that.” At least two dead men, car wrecks, witnesses to a monster-brawl, and she really doubted Erinya had tidied the jungle away without Sylvie to harass her into doing it.

Demalion rolled up a minute later in an enormous, gas-guzzling Escalade, big enough to hold them all and ostentatious enough to be unnoticeable in Val’s fancy driveway.

Erinya transferred Lupe’s unconscious shape into the back bench seat, strapped her in with careful precision, and said, “When can I see her again?”

“Later,” Sylvie said. “We’re trying to fix her. I don’t suppose you—”

“Fix her? She’s wonderful,” Erinya said.

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “Never mind. Eri, can you do one more favor for me? Get rid of the truck?” If they left it here, bloodstained and battered, the cops would be looking for her, either as victim or as a criminal. She didn’t have time for it.

Erinya waved a hand; Sylvie’s truck dissolved. It stung, watching it go. She’d loved that damn thing, battered as it was.

If she was immortal, if Marah was right, then it’d only be one of a thousand things she’d lose in her eternal life.

She stood there, shivering in the garage, blaming blood loss, until Alex tucked her into the second seat and shut the door on her. Alex took the passenger seat, and Demalion drove them smoothly into the afternoon.