Lies & Omens

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.

A key fell into her palm. Small. She’d expected a locker key, or a safety-deposit-box key. Instead, she held a curio cabinet key. Simple. Uncomplicated. The kind of key that could be bypassed entirely with a paper clip.

Graves had thought it worth a dying word.

Sylvie toured the penthouse, found room after room full of white furniture. Nothing that the key fit. Nothing that looked like the books he’d mentioned. No reading material at all though she found several computers and an e-reader.

Graves liked technology.

Sylvie looked at the key again, looked at it more closely.

Smiled.

It was a key, but not the kind she’d thought. There was a glass bead at the tip, with a glimmer of light behind it. It was an electronic key, disguised.

She went back to his bedroom, grimaced at the remains on the bed, and started tossing the room as carefully as she could; she didn’t want to stir up his dust. Really didn’t want to breathe him in.

Behind a wall mirror, she found a safe with a blank black face. She waved the key across it and it popped open, a tiny vacuum dispersing.

A book.

Journal, rather. White leather. The man was compulsive.

Sylvie dragged it out, wondered what was in it that he had felt the need to hide. To bypass his tech toys and commit to paper.

Easy enough to find out.

She sat, gingerly, on the edge of the bed, flipped it open to the first page.

It finally talked today.

It asked for water.

Sylvie grimaced. Nice. A torturer’s diary.

I had it put in the tank, and it shrieked as its torn skin hit the salt water. Hovarth looked squeamish. Weak-willed. I told him to leave. Better not let him come back. The monster’s a seducer. I’d destroy it, but … I need it.

It knows things.

Things I need to know.

Things I will know.

Sylvie flipped ahead, skimmed through accounts that turned her stomach. Mentions of how well electricity traveled through salt water, mentions of food deprivation and sound bombardment and isolation.

Mermaid? Sylvie wondered.

Maybe Marah was right. Maybe Graves did have a way of making monsters obey: He broke them.

It talked again.

It told me that I was so busy worrying about the world, I was missing what was happening in my own house.

It told me there were those who had infiltrated the ISI.

It wouldn’t tell me what. Or who.

It laughed at me.

I left it in the tank for a week without food. Without any water but what surrounded it. In the dark.

I knew it would survive. I could hear it singing to itself at night. It made the weak-minded among us cry. I had to send them away.

That’s one thing the monsters have over us. Survival. Look at Shadows. She keeps surviving. Just a woman. On the outside.

I’d love to get her on my table.

Marah was supposed to bring her to me. Fickle, stupid, bitch. Thinks I don’t see her courting Riordan. Trying to get away from me.

Sylvie flinched. It was one thing to tell Demalion that the ISI wanted her dead and dissected. Another to come across Graves’s eagerness for it.

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.

The creature’s escape means nothing. Only proves that one of mine has turned traitor. Hovarth, probably. I think he’s Yvette’s man. Traitor to me, the ISI, the country. Mankind.

Doesn’t matter. One monster free. What can it do? It told me what I needed to know. I’ll stop it. I won’t be beaten by the Good Sisters.

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.

It told me that I had only caught it because it was fleeing a more dangerous foe and stumbled into my net. It told me about the Society of the Good Sisters, told me that they were witches who tried to control monsters, the better to increase their own powers. Then it told me that they had infiltrated my organization.

I did the research. It was right.

The Society is a secret, a rumor, a ghost, but I’m a determined hunter. I found proof. Shreds of history, shreds of evidence. Their motto. Keep the secret world secret. They harvest it, steal its powers to fuel their spells, protect it, hide it from society. They will go to any lengths to hide their resources, including erasing people’s minds.

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.

They are in the ISI working against us, working to increase their power, working to hinder us in our war against the monsters. I’ve found the head of the snake. Yvette Collier and her secretive cabal of witches and freaks. Have evidence and photographs to prove it. It shouldn’t be a surprise. You can’t trust magic-users, not when the power they use is dependent on the Magicus Mundi’s existing. Can’t trust them to wipe out the monsters when scavenging power keeps them strong. I told DC that they shouldn’t allow witches in the government. Now I’ll prove it.

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.