Lies & Omens

12 Unmasking

AN HOUR LATER, SHE WAS BACK IN HER OFFICE, WAITING FOR RIORDAN to meet her, Zoe in tow. Their phone call had been short. Sylvie had dialed, said, “Graves is dead. Bring me Zoe. At my office.” She didn’t want to give him any reason to renege on his deal. She could hit him with all the truths—that Graves had died at a monster’s hand, that Graves was a scapegoat, that Riordan’s son was no such thing—when he got there.

She was poking at the phone, realizing that the other person she needed to call, she couldn’t. The Encantado, who had given her the Society info in the first place, who had asked her for her help in identifying the witch in charge of the monster wranglers, hadn’t given her any way to get in contact with him. Her mouth twisted. He hadn’t expected her to succeed.

It figured, though. He had been pretty grudging about her involvement in the first place. It just rankled. She’d lay bets that Riordan’s fake son was the local monster wrangler. She didn’t think the Encantado had it right: There wasn’t just one of them. Look how ragged dolphin boy had run himself, just trying to catch up. One human in charge of all that chaos? Far more believable to think that the Society had trigger witches in each ISI city.

The door opened, and Sylvie jerked her attention up, hand falling to her gun. It wasn’t Riordan. Wasn’t even Riordan’s fake son.

Detective Adelio Suarez. Showing the cop-sense of timing, arriving when she absolutely didn’t want him. He was unshaven, though, looked sloppy for the first time since she’d met him. He was grey with exhaustion, slow with stress.

“I thought if I had someone posted on your office, you’d show up sooner or later,” he said.

“I’m meeting the ISI head here in a few minutes.”

“Then I’m staying,” he said. “They’re supposed to protect us against magic, right? They’re not doing their job.”

“Lot of your men down?” Sylvie said.

“Enough that we’ve all been called in to work double shifts,” Suarez said. “The phones keep ringing, people reporting they’ve been hit by the plague. We don’t have people to send out.”

“Plague?”

Surprise lightened his exhaustion, sparked interest in his eyes. “You haven’t been following the news?”

“Lio, I’ve been slung from a moving airplane to Miami to Dallas and back again just since 6:00 A.M. And today’s a better day than yesterday. Alex usually keeps me abreast of the news when I’m deep in a case.”

“Why isn’t she?”

“The witches fucked with her memory—”

“That’s the plague I’m talking about, Shadows. You and I know it’s witches. But there are news reports on every channel talking about the upswing in sudden-onset dementia. They think it’s catching, and people are panicking.”

Sylvie groaned. “Dammit. Dammit.” She should have stayed in Dallas, should have prioritized catching Yvette, but Alex was hurt, and Zoe was missing, and Demalion had nodded, had all but sent her away. He had a plan of his own, but she had left him … She just felt stretched beyond capacity.

A dark SUV pulled up outside, disgorged Riordan. He looked harried; he pushed his way into her office, already criticizing her. “… just got off the phone with Collier. She said you released the Fury in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport? People died, Shadows.”

“Yeah, but does anyone remember it,” Sylvie snapped back. “She drove me to it. Where’s Zoe?”

On the street, the dark SUV pulled away. Circling the block, probably, doing their part for air pollution.

“I needed surety that I would walk away from this meeting. She’s with my people.”

“Your people, or your son?” Sylvie asked.

In the same moment, Suarez said, “Your agency kidnapped her sister? This isn’t communist Cuba. There are rules—”

“There are no rules,” Riordan said. “They’re all broken, and I’m just trying to pick up enough of the pieces to glue us all back together.”

“By sending me out to kill people. By kidnapping my sister. By condoning memory magic.”

Riordan’s aristocratic face closed off. Suarez grumbled deep in his chest, rested a hand on his service weapon. Sylvie was belatedly glad he was there.

“We have a real problem, I agree,” Sylvie said. “But I’m not sure it’s centered where you think it is. You’re blaming the monsters. You’re blaming Graves. You’re listening to the wrong people.”

“Right now,” he said, “I’m listening to you. You killed Graves, so obviously you judged him guilty—”

“No,” Sylvie said. “I didn’t. But he’s dead all right. Been dying for days. Not behind the attacks.

“My problem is, he managed to identify the villain of the piece, but I don’t know if you’re part of the solution. Yvette Collier, the woman you just talked to … She’s not ISI. Never has been. Her loyalty’s to something older. The Society of the Good Sisters.”

Sylvie paused, waiting for denial, for Riordan to declare the Good Sisters a magical urban legend as Marah had done, but, she’d forgotten bureaucracy—knowledge was doled out in increments, and only the upper-ups knew the score.

“You think she’s one of the Society?” Riordan said, shaking his head.

“She’s a ringer,” Sylvie said. “Joined up, just so she could suss out the competition. Apparently, the ISI goals of study, contain, control, are not the Society’s goals. She’s been turned from a sleeping agent into a saboteur. She’s taking out the competition, using witchcraft learned in the Society to leash monsters, then, she’s using the memory spells to clean up after herself.”

“No,” Riordan denied.

“Sounds sensible to me,” Suarez chimed in, and Riordan ignored him after a brief, why are you even here, glance.

“Yvette’s driven and yes, magically talented, and yes, she’s surrounded herself with other magically talented agents, but … no. I can believe she’s behind the memory plagues, but she’s just trying to help by making people forget something they’re not ready to accept—”

Suarez slammed his hand down on the table, cut Riordan off, and sent papers cascading to the floor. “Take a look around, Agent Riordan. Does this city look like it’s being helped? The hospitals are overflowing.”

Sylvie said, “She doesn’t give a shit about the regular people. She’s not protecting them. She’s protecting herself and the magical resources. Did she tell you that? Witches are scavengers, you know. They’re born with the ability to manipulate power, but the power’s not theirs. It’s shed by the Magicus Mundi. By the gods, by the monsters, by the very things Graves wanted to eradicate. No wonder they went after him first.

“Yvette Collier is your enemy, Riordan. Not Graves. While you were blaming him for the attacks, he was at his penthouse apartment having his life suctioned out of him by milliliters. He’s dead. I didn’t kill him. The Night Hag did. Yvette knew about it. Let it happen. Graves was a vocal opponent of magic. She wanted him dead. Want more proof? Circumstantial to be sure, but thought-provoking. Her agents helped Graves’s prisoner escape before the attack. She didn’t want to kill monsters. Just men.

“And, Riordan, pay attention, this is where it gets personal. She keeps tabs on the players in the ISI, close tabs. Graves’s aide turned out to be hers. She’s got one close to you, too.”

Riordan shook his head. “They’re all ISI agents, and we vet them all. I vet my personal staff yet another time. Their loyalty is to me.”

“Almost all of your personal staff,” Sylvie said. She almost felt bad for the man. He was clinging to his convictions, but his grip was shaky. What she was about to show him wasn’t so much something that would pry his fingers free as blow up the ground he clung to completely.

She pulled Alex’s laptop up, set it on the desk between them. Opened it. Riordan glanced at it, looked harder. Suarez leaned in and studied it, too.

“That’s my son.”

“No. It’s not,” Sylvie said. “He’s a Society witch, not even an American citizen. He was born in Victoria, British Columbia. His name is John Merrow. It’s all there.”

“No,” Riordan said. “It’s a trick. It’s just a picture.”

“You know witches, right?” Sylvie said. “They always end up with descriptive street names, pointing you toward their specialty. Like my necromantic friend, the Ghoul. Merrow’s street name is Simon Says. He’s not your son. Never has been. You just believed him when he said so. He’s Yvette’s spy.

“Don’t feel bad. He fooled me, too. I never questioned whether he was more than he seemed, not even when he didn’t fall prey to the mermaids’ singing. He’s been playing the long game.”

Riordan said nothing but shook his head again, started to stand.

“Sit down,” Sylvie said.

Suarez pushed him back. “Your agency. Your fault. You listen.”

“Here’s your file, hacked recently by Alex. Before she lost her mind. Before Yvette’s memory plague made her curl up and wish she were dead. This is your life, Dominick Riordan. One ex-wife. No children.”

He put shaking hands over his face, shuddered. Belief settling into his skin.

“That sinking feeling you have right now? That sense that you can’t trust your own brain? That’s what the city’s feeling. I want my sister back now. I want Yvette’s current location, and I want you to give me all the backup I need to take her down.”

Riordan looked up, his face blanched white. He jerked to his feet, yanked off his watch, and crushed it underfoot. “He was listening.”

“You came in wired?”

“You’re dangerous,” Riordan said. “Of course, I came in wired.”

“Fuck,” Sylvie swore. “We have to move, now.”

“My men—”

“We’re not waiting,” Sylvie said. “Let’s go—”

Too late, of course. Even as she pushed away from the desk, reached for her gun, five ISI agents were spilling in, John Merrow leading from behind, sheltered by their collective bulk.

“Bang, bang, Dad,” he said, and the room erupted into gunfire. Sylvie lunged for the dubious shelter of the kitchenette, saw Suarez fling himself toward the understairs panic room.

Dominick Riordan stood his ground in the bullet fire, then raised his own weapon and shot himself in the head. His brains pulped out against Alex’s desk. John Merrow grinned.

“Give it up, Shadows, come out and be shot like a good little troublemaker.”

Sylvie felt the words move around her like a fisherman casting a net, compelling her to obey. It felt … oddly familiar.

Dammit, he’d compelled her way back when, when the water was rising, when he insisted she hold on to him, keep him above the waterline. Bastard.

Stupid bastard. Once exposed, her resistance would kick in. She shrugged off the compulsion easily, now. “I don’t think so.”

Bullets stitched a ragged line across her wall, hit the fridge, shot metal-and-plastic shrapnel into the tiny kitchenette. Sylvie felt her skin burn and pop as the shrapnel tore into her clothes.

Small wounds. She’d heal. She poked her head out, aimed low, shot two of the invading ISI in their legs, took one in the thigh, splintered one man’s knee. They crashed down, still firing. Determined.

Guess Riordan wasn’t the only one under magical commands. Neither of the injured gunmen made any attempt to get out of her line of fire, to staunch the bleeding. They were going to die shooting, obedient to Merrow’s will to the last.

Suarez stepped out into the room, reading the situation the same as she did. He squeezed off two shots, and the men’s gun hands dropped. More brains on her floor. Sylvie shuddered.

Adrenaline made her mouth sour; her heart raced. Merrow grimaced behind his remaining two men. “Aim better, boys. And hurry it up. You. Cop. You’re shooting at the wrong person. Shoot Sylvie.”

Sylvie froze; Lio was in perfect position to shoot her. Instead, he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

Merrow muttered, “Dammit. Name, name, name. Juanez? Anyone here know his name? Shadows, tell me his name.”

“Don’t pay enough attention to the little people, huh,” Sylvie said.

Merrow had met Suarez once, but he hadn’t paid attention to him. Thought him insignificant.

“Tell me.”

Sylvie felt the force of his will batter at her, but it had its match in her Lilith core. She shook it off, breathed out.

She jerked out of her shelter, huddled between wall and open refrigerator door, put three bullets in the next agent’s stomach, felt her hair tug and pull and burn. Her ear felt wet and hot. Her cheek scalded. She rubbed her face against her shoulder, left a smear of blood behind. Creased. Not even that. Just a friction burn. From a bullet. Her stomach turned. She couldn’t die here. Not and leave Yvette to her games.

Merrow backed toward the door. His lips moved, the words unintelligible beneath the continuing gunfire. Sylvie said, “Aim for Merrow! He’s spell casting!”

Sylvie focused, tried to get her bullets where they needed to go—Merrow’s throat, but her head was spinning. Friction burn or not, she’d been knocked for a loop. Her eyes weren’t focusing quite right. Her bullets went wide. Suarez’s never reached Merrow at all, impacting instead against a magical shield.

Suarez said, “He’s your problem,” and went back to picking off the remaining agent’s shelter bullet by bullet, with a quick pause for reload.

Merrow’s spell casting reached a high note; Sylvie felt the air in the room change, grow charged. The wall behind her burst into flame. She rolled forward, hitched up at the far-less-safe juncture of half wall and open office. The fire could be illusion. Witches loved their illusions. Given Merrow’s steady retreat, Sylvie was laying bets that this fire couldn’t be ignored.

The remaining agent panicked, jerked to his feet, atavistic fear of burning alive momentarily trumping Merrow’s mind control, and Suarez and Sylvie shared the killing shots.

Now, for Merrow.

The wall to Sylvie’s right bloomed with fire, another ignition point. Merrow angled to get the third wall, too impatient to retreat and pick them off as they tried to escape the fire. His spell casting stopped short, his muttering voice cut off midword, and he went rigid before twitching and collapsing.

The fires continued, but Sylvie barely noticed them, real as they proved themselves to be. Her attention was all for the woman who’d brought Merrow down.

Girl, rather.

Zoe yanked the buzzing stun gun away from Merrow’s neck, breathing heavily. “Take that, asshole. Leave me tied up in the trunk, will you?” She held the stun gun in her Cain-marked hand, and Sylvie thought that combination would cut through any magical shielding. Zoe kicked the man while he was down, and only then turned her attention to the room.

Sylvie’s relief was so enormous she couldn’t muster a single word; her voice locked, her eyes watering. Zoe looked good. Alive and healthy and pissed. Her hair was a tangle; her fancy clothes were creased and stained and about two days past laundry time. But she was alive. Not brainwashed. Not broken.

“Sylvie, you’re on fire,” Zoe said.

Suarez lunged at her, rolled her over, smothering flames. Beneath his shirt, she felt rigid material and groaned. She really did have a bad reputation if the cops came to her office wearing their bulletproof jackets, and the government agents came wired.

Throughout it all, Zoe didn’t leave her position near Merrow, ready to zap him again. When Sylvie rose, singed, a little bloody, tugged up by Suarez, Sylvie was so proud of Zoe she could burst.

She hugged her close, and Zoe leaned back into her for a long moment before she shoved Sylvie off. “Ugh. Your clothes are wrecked and you smell.” Despite her words, her free hand lingered on Sylvie’s sleeve, fingers tangling in the dirty fabric.

“Love you, too, sis,” Sylvie said.

Two walls of the office were fully consumed now, the fires licking upward, climbing into her private office, rolling forward, reaching for the front. Sylvie thought of all her files, the computers, the upstairs office, the whole of her life’s work going up in ash and flame, and said, “Lio. Grab Merrow. Let’s get out of here.”