Lies & Omens

4 Making News

ALEX’S JEEP WAS MUDDY, SPLATTERED WITH CANAL REMNANTS, BUT it hadn’t been one of the casualties of the mermaids’ wave, hadn’t been shoved into another car or dragged into the waters.

Even better, throughout the entire business, Sylvie had managed to hold on to the keys. She got in, squelching miserably, and blew out a breath. The drive back to Alex’s went smoothly. All the major traffic—cop cars, news vans, gawkers—were headed in the other direction.

When she reached Alex’s place, she was tempted to trade cars and head home, but she needed to check in. She needed to know if Alex had heard anything on the Chicago situation, and Sylvie’s cell phone had died in the dunking.

She tapped on Alex’s door, leaning tiredly on the jamb. Guerro barked once; Sylvie heard Alex hushing the dog, then Alex swung the door wide.

“Oh my God, Syl. It’s all over the news. You’ve been all over the news.”

Sylvie put a hand on Alex’s shoulder, pushed her gently back inside. The woman was too excited to notice that she was blocking the door, and her neighbors were beginning to poke their heads out. Sylvie had had enough of gawkers. “My family call?” She’d be surprised if they had. Zoe was in Ischia, learning to be a good witch, and her parents had hit the other hemisphere, headed to Australia for an extended vacation.

“Wales called.” Alex’s duplex smelled of coffee and burned cinnamon toast. Sylvie thought toast sounded good. Warm and dry. Two words that otherwise didn’t apply to her at the moment.

“How is Tex? Burning feet to help us?” She found the bread, a thick-sliced Cuban loaf, put a smear of butter on it, a lashing of sugar and cinnamon, and stuck it under the broiler.

Alex shook her head, a little smile touching her mouth at the mention of her necromancer boyfriend. “I wish. He’s tangled up in that Alabama mess. Narrowed it down to kids playing at necromancy. Creating sort of their own zombie theme park.” The twist of her mouth was wry. As if she knew it was bad but found it amusing anyway.

“What is up with that?” Sylvie asked. “I mean, I sure as hell wasn’t a saint when I was a teen, and I know you were all juvie-girl, but c’mon, there’s a difference between raising a little hell and raising the dead.”

“Getting old there, Sylvie. Complaining about ‘kids these days.’”

Sylvie pulled her toast out of the oven, juggling it from hand to hand, and stifled any ruder retort when Alex waved a cup of coffee at her.

Sylvie, feeling as obedient as Alex’s German shepherd, sat down at the breakfast bar, shut up, and applied herself to breakfast. Killer mermaids were definitely a good thing for stimulating the appetite.

She wolfed down the slice, went back for more, and tossed the crusts to Guerro, sprawled on the couch. He snapped them down, beat his tail against the couch arm, and visibly hoped for more.

“So the ISI—”

“No,” Sylvie said. “That’s a postbreakfast conversation.” She wanted a few minutes of peace.

Alex sat down on the breakfast bar itself, swung long legs. “You can’t save everybody. I mean, they had warning, and they couldn’t save themselves. You can’t beat yourself up for this.”

“There’s a difference,” Sylvie gritted out, “between not being able to save everybody and not being able to save anybody. Including myself. If Erinya hadn’t taken out the mermaids, I’d be a floater in a magical fish tank.”

Alex’s mouth turned down. Changed the focus of the subject. Too little, too late. Sylvie felt wired, edgy. “So, you know what you’re going to say? I mean, the news is going to track you down sooner rather than later. Local woman and monster kill another monster.”

“Guess the cat’s well and truly out of the bag.” Sylvie gnawed her lip, trying to figure out if it was good or bad. If whatever erased magical evidence would act on this event.

“Yeah, hard to squelch the news vans,” Alex said.

Exposure had to happen eventually. The human world was expanding, searching, documenting; the Magicus Mundi would be revealed sooner or later. Sylvie had been hoping for that discovery for years. Secrecy allowed all sorts of nastiness to fester, be it government agencies or magical monsters. But this wasn’t among the top ten ways she would have chosen. A monster attacking a major business district in broad daylight, killing US citizens? It was going to go over about as well as a terrorist attack.

Well, that was what it was, wasn’t it, she thought.

People were going to freak.

The only thing average Americans liked more than their illusions was the chance to panic. To find an Other and fear it.

Sylvie wasn’t fond of the Magicus Mundi—too often, when it and the human world intersected, humans got the worst of it—but she was sure that total terror was not the proper response.

Maybe, this time, if the reality censors kicked in, it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing.

She couldn’t believe it even as she thought it.

Alex, puttering around her kitchen, made an “Aha!” of triumph and waved the TV remote in Sylvie’s direction.

“Take a look for yourself!” The TV turned on, savagely loud in the tiny apartment; Guerro’s ears went flat, and Alex hastily muted it.

It wasn’t like they needed sound. BREAKING NEWS scrolled across a bright red bar on the local channel. The scene was the one Sylvie had just left. Waterlogged people, destroyed properties—cars and businesses—palm trees with slimy, glistening trunks and spiky leaves that sparked with lingering beads of water.

Then the image backtracked, showed a tourist-filmed video that cut away from the palm trees to that sudden, rising wave. The video was image without sound, but Sylvie still heard the roar of that much water displacing itself vividly in her memories. She thought she’d be hearing it for days.

On-screen, the water slapped the building, slid down, and flooded outward, eating pavement in hungry gulps. The camera eye tilted—the mermaid’s song, Sylvie thought, paralyzing the cameraman into a stupor.

Through his lens, the landscape surged and fell and foamed, a world of inrushing water.

The red bar scrolled on relentlessly, reading off disaster tolls. Four dead, multiple injuries—

Alex said, “That’s not too bad.”

“They haven’t gotten inside the hotel yet,” Sylvie said. “The death toll will go up.”

“There you are.”

It was true; horrible, but true. A new video, a better video shot by a professional hand, showed Sylvie and Riordan stumbling out of the hotel lobby, looking so much the worse for wear. Riordan’s face going grey and gaping—

seeing Erinya and the mermaid

—the camera pivoted sharply, chasing whatever he was gaping at.

Sylvie winced, anticipating.

The images on TV… blinked. Gold light flickered and flared so quick it was only an impression that Sylvie took away rather than something she consciously saw. She leaned closer. “Did you see that?”

“See what? Oh, what the hell—” Alex said.

On-screen, Erinya, dressed in her gothy human form, ran up to Sylvie, grabbed her hand, and drew her down the street to where a thrashing tiger shark took up immense quantities of pavement.

“That didn’t happen,” Sylvie said.

“It was different before,” Alex said.

“Turn up the volume.”

“… freak waterspout touching down in the city, today, washing up wildlife, and causing an unknown number of fatalities …

“It was different,” Alex said again. “I mean, it was you and Erinya, but Erinya was all—”

“I know,” Sylvie said. “I was there, remember?”

Alex flipped stations, chasing news but finding only more of the same. “It’s a cover-up,” she said. “I can’t believe it! I mean, how effective do they think that’ll be? I TiVoed it the first time. I can’t have been the only one.”

“Alex,” Sylvie said. “Show me the recording you made. Wait, no. Watch the screen. Do you see that?”

Alex squinted, focused, shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re wanting me to see.”

“Image flickers,” Sylvie said. “Goes gold for a second. A break in the image. Reality before it. Rewrite after it.”

“Photoshop?”

“Too fast,” Sylvie murmured. To splice in an image of Sylvie, an image of Erinya—human form—put them in motion, change out the mermaid for the shark, do it seamlessly enough that it didn’t blur or warp the rest of their surroundings, the light and shadows? It wasn’t possible in the time they’d had. At least, not by conventional methods.

She wanted to be surprised, but wasn’t. The whole mess was confirmation of her theory that someone, somewhere was censoring reality.

Alex clicked over to the recording, and played it. “No, no way.”

It was the same as the currently airing clip.

“How the hell—” Alex said. “Wait. That flicker you see, that I don’t… This is that memory thing you’ve been researching. Alteration of public perception. How? Magical Photoshop?”

“Witchcraft, I think,” Sylvie said. “Illusion’s one of their favorite tools.”

“What about a god hiding things?” Alex said. “Gods seem to want earth to keep chugging along in blissful ignorance.”

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “But I can’t see a god doing this. For one thing, we’re too damn small. Too fragile in comparison. Plus, there’s all the godly politics. This is affecting everyone. No matter who they worship.”

Alex hmmed in response, already bent over her laptop, clicking away, her green-painted nails bright against the silver keys. “Yeah. I’m not the only one. Others saw the change. They’re calling foul. Conspiracy sites are popping up fast. What do you think the memory wiper is going to do about them?”

“I don’t know. Without knowing who or why, I can’t predict their actions,” Sylvie said. “Witchcraft covers anything from the Maudits to Val’s research coven in Ischia, and they all have different motives.”

She looked at the television clips again, playing disaster porn nonstop, and said, “More than one witch. A coven. That’s an awful lot of reality to paint over. But I can’t believe it’s a local coven, not with all the hunting I’ve been doing for a single witch with a decent grip on power. A task like this? I don’t know. It feels … big. Organized.”

Alex opened her mouth, shut it again. It didn’t matter. Sylvie had heard the thought clearly. It was the same one in her mind. Wonder if Demalion had discovered anything. Before.

“So… any word?” Sylvie went to the window, fiddled with the fraying edge of the batik curtain, wrapped her fingers in scarlet, green, and gold, and thought of macaws bursting into flight.

“Yes and no,” Alex said. “Good news? He wasn’t on the list of the dead, not as Wright, not as Demalion. Wasn’t on the injury list either. Bad news? No one’s heard from him.”

“My cell phone’s fucked,” Sylvie said. “Waterlogged.” The words were rote; she was concentrating on the peculiar sensation of relief trickling through her blood. She’d expected the worst.

“I’ve got a spare,” Alex said. “There’s a box.” She waved vaguely toward her kitchen, toward a dusty box on top of the refrigerator.

Sylvie pulled the box toward her, peered in. “Alex?”

Alex waved a hand. “My father came by, gave them to me. You know, kind of like some families taking their kid out to dinner. Mine just hands out burner phones and reminds me that The Man is watching. Take one. You can at least call people on it instead of having to leg it all over Miami.”

“What do you think I’m about to do?” Sylvie asked.

Alex looked up from the computer where she was bookmarking conspiracy sites like a fiend for later response, and tilted her head. “Hunting down the brainwashy witches? Calling to get the scoop from Val and Zoe? I mean, what good is it, having a witchy little sister, if she can’t—”

“I’m going home,” Sylvie said. “I haven’t slept. And the witches aren’t the problem. They’re just covering up the problem.” The sun streaming through the kitchen window seemed heavy and bright, but it also seemed distant. She felt cold and dark and empty. Grief, she thought. The relief that trickled through her wasn’t enough to chase it away.

She closed her eyes, was suddenly back there in the cold waters, watching people watching the water without panic even as they drowned. She’d seen a lot of terrible things, but that was going to make it into her nightmares.

“Are you okay? You want me to drive you?”

She shook the memory off, and said, “No, stay here, stay online, see if you can get a better idea of how far the illusion goes. I mean, the video is step one. What happened to the newscasters who put the real one on? Did they forget? We can figure out a lot about the witches who did this by how they treat the people who saw the truth.

“Miami’s pretty low on bad-cess witches at the moment. They’re keeping a low profile if they’re around at all. They’ve got to know Erinya’s hunting them. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t in danger from this. Charm, coerce, kill. Right now, someone’s playing at charm, at illusion. We want to keep it on that level. Illusion spells are ugly, coercion spells are worse.”

“Hey, Syl,” Alex said. “You look wrecked. Go home. Get some sleep.”

Sylvie scrubbed her face with her hands; her hair dripped down her neck and face, smelled like the churned bottom of a canal—fishy and rank. She grimaced. “Yeah. Okay. Just … call me, Alex. If you find out about Demalion. Call me at once. Good or bad. Limbo’s killing me.”

“I promise. Good or bad. I’ll tap into the Miami ISI and see if he reports in.”

Sylvie reached the door, turned back. “Wait. What? Alex, there’s no one left. The mermaids killed most of them. Any survivors are going to be scrambling for order, not—”

“Mermaids?” Alex said. The perfect incomprehension in her voice froze Sylvie in her tracks.

“Mermaids,” Sylvie said. She went back, directed Alex’s attention to the TV, to the laptop sliding off her lap, forced her to look at the pages she’d bookmarked. “Conspiracy. Illusion. The ISI taken down a peg or two.”

Alex shook her head. “Don’t shout. My head hurts. I don’t want to look at that.” She turned her face away, closed her laptop, and slid it beneath the couch. Guerro whined, rested his heavy head in her lap. Alex’s fingers tightened in his ruff as if she were falling, and the dog was her only anchor. When she opened her eyes again, her pupils were two separate sizes. A magical concussion.

Sylvie whispered, “Bastards. Bastards, all of them.” This was why she hated witchcraft. It wasn’t bad enough to force an illusion down people’s throats, to make them doubt what they had seen. Somewhere, a group of witches was very busy making people forget they’d ever had doubt at all.

Alex’s breathing was tight and hitched; her face pinched with agony. Sylvie got her off the couch, walked her into her bedroom, saw her put to bed with aspirin that couldn’t really touch the source of the pain—having her brain altered by something unnatural.

Alex curled into her sheets, hid her face in the bright teal pillowcase, passed out. Sylvie shut out the lights and hesitated in the doorway. There was no reason to stay. Alex would wake up without remembering any of it, with only a lingering memory of a killer headache.

But she was young and healthy.

Morning news broadcasts, though, had more than their share of elderly viewers, people who rose from their beds with the sun. How many sudden strokes would there be, or inexplicable heart attacks brought on by magic forcing its way into their brains and rearranging things to suit someone else’s will?

On the TV, the breaking news listed thirty-seven dead and counting in a freak waterspout. NOAA scientists were being harassed for quotes on the “anomalous weather.” Sylvie turned the TV off and headed home, chilled all the way through.

SYLVIE SQUELCHED UP THE CONCRETE RISERS TO HER APARTMENT and left a wet imprint on the doorjamb as she keyed the door open.

Her exhaustion weighed her down; her worries made her leaden, slow to realize she wasn’t alone. She shut the door behind her, flipped the dead bolt, and started shedding clothes. Her Windbreaker slapped the floor, mostly dry, but soggy around the cuffs and hem. Her boots—she toed them off, sent them thudding across the room, where they left dark marks on the white walls.

“So, crappy days all around, huh?”

Sylvie jerked around; her gun stuck in her holster, the nylon deformed by the icy water and the rough and tumble of the morning, but she got it out, leveled it at her uninvited guest.

It didn’t bother her guest at all.

Marah Stone, the ISI assassin, sat cross-legged on Sylvie’s kitchen counter devouring cold soba noodles forked up with her fingers.

“Marah,” Sylvie said. She licked her lip, nervous and unable to hide it. Sylvie had met Marah only twice, in brief meetings where the woman had been carelessly chatty and far too interested in Sylvie’s life. She might have seemed harmless, only Sylvie knew two things about her. One, the strange, mottled birthmark on her arm and hand wasn’t a birthmark, but a curse mark, which made her dangerous. Two, Marah had been the ISI’s solution to an imprisoned witch. She’d ghosted inside, evading guards and convicts with equal ease, and killed the witch without taking any damage to herself.

Sylvie could live with that. She’d killed her own share of magical baddies after all, but Marah had mutilated the body afterward, in a way that just screamed psychopathy.

“Are you even listening to me? God, what a fucking long week this has been. I mean, I dig my way out of a very premature grave, face down a lurking sand wraith with nothing but nerve, haul ass halfway across the country, and you don’t even have a clean fork. What the hell, Shadows. What kind of host are you? I had to load the dishwasher myself.”

“Are those my clothes?” Sylvie asked.

Marah licked her lips clean of brown sauce, wiped her fingers—again—on a very familiar pair of jeans. “Mine smelled really bad. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“I mind,” Sylvie said. “I mind a lot.”

“Ungracious,” Marah said. “I even brought you the mother of all hostess gifts. Thought you’d be pleased. But no, I get bitched at for borrowing your clothes, eating some really, frankly, mediocre takeout, and a gun in my fucking face!”

Sylvie stepped back, holstered the gun, raised her hands, a my-bad, sorry gesture.

Simple rule to stay alive by: Don’t piss off the assassin.

If Marah had wanted her dead, she’d be dead. Which meant this was exactly what she claimed it was. A visit.

Marah’s marked hand slowly unclenched from where it was white-knuckled around the bowl, visibly backing away from the urge to throw it at Sylvie.

“Fine,” Sylvie said. “You’ve had a bad day. So have I. Let’s not take it out on each other. I’m going to go take a nap. You can…

Get out of my house.

“… occupy yourself.”

“I’d take a shower first, if I were you,” Marah said. The last vestiges of temper in her face faded, shifted to a maddening smirk. “I left your hostess gift in there.”

Sylvie belatedly realized that the noise she heard in the background was not the leftover aural trauma of the mermaids’ watery attack, not even the homely sound of the dishwasher churning its slow way through its cycle, but the shower running.

The splash of the water was muted, not just crashing down on tile and curtain; something intercepted the spray.

Sylvie felt her nerves jangle, tighten. What an assassin considered a hostess gift might be something she really didn’t want.

“Brought it all the way from Chicago,” Marah said.

Sylvie’s attention jerked.

“Chicago?” Her voice was hungry, vulnerable.

“I told you I had a crappy day, told you I had to dig my way out. Never said I was alone. I wanted to go straight to a nice hotel with a Jacuzzi and complimentary robes, but no, he insisted on coming here—”

Sylvie, heart in her mouth, headed for the bathroom, half-terrified, half-hopeful. Marah wouldn’t have, couldn’t have brought her a corpse. She might be dangerous, but she was mercenary enough to want something from Sylvie. And Sylvie would owe her one for this.

Even though the crash and sputter of water made Sylvie’s gut churn, she couldn’t stop herself. A hand on the doorknob, her pulse ricocheting in her throat, and she flung the door open.

“Hey, Stone, a little privacy? Near death and a road trip doesn’t make us that close—”

Demalion stuck his head out from the curtain, blond hair damp and darkened, slicked to his skull, bruising on his cheek, his shoulder, but alive… His lips parted, moved silently. Sylvie.

Sylvie crashed into the shower stall with him; his arms tightened around her even as she slid and slipped on the soapy tile, trying to get closer.

Alive.

She was laughing, wild, triumphant. Surprised.

Though she’d talked a good game with Alex, she’d been most of the way convinced to thinking him dead. She clutched him closer, the sleek, wet warmth of him making her think of selkie lovers, bit his shoulder, trying to hang on.

“Sylvie,” he murmured, dragged her mouth up to his. Laughed low and hungry in his throat when she whined at having to release him from her teeth. “Too much time with werewolves?”

“Shut up,” she said and smothered that laughter with her breath. She pressed closer, bare feet unsteady on slick tiles, hanging her weight from his shoulders. He caught her around the waist, snagging her belt loops, holding her tight, holding her up.

Sylvie, who normally relegated shower sex to something best left in the movies, felt his hands pressing into the small of her back, the dip of fingertips tracing heat beneath her waistband, and thought, The hell with it. She pulled away, grabbed the hem of her tee, and eeled out of it, all awkward elbows and jutting angles in the small space.

He caught her wrists while they were overhead, leaned in, pressed her back against the cool tiles. She arched into him, hissing, and he kissed her wrists, her palms, his breath as heated as the water splashing her skin.

“Clothes in the shower, Sylvie, really?” He ducked his head; the light in his eyes familiar even in Wright’s paler shade, making it no surprise when the next kiss hovered at her mouth without connecting before descending to her throat, the rasp of his stubbled chin waking a thousand tiny nerve endings to singing pleasure.

“Tease,” she said, tangling her hands in his hair—different, she cataloged. Demalion’s hair used to feel like mink to her, back when he was original recipe. Now, it felt like raw silk, equal parts coarse and soft. Different, but wonderful.

He popped the button on her pants; she released his hair to help shimmy them off her hips. Both of them were breathless with effort and desire by the time the clinging fabric was peeled off, abandoned on the floor of the shower stall.

His hands closed on her hips, wordlessly urging her closer, tighter. She tried to climb him, cracked her knee against the tile, and swore, staggering backward, losing that brief press of connection. Missing it immediately. She whined in frustration—but that was shower sex for you, bumps and bruises and awkward clinches that broke just when they were getting really good, terrible footing, and someone’s back always got slapped up against the chilly tiles.

Her tongue tangling with his, tasting heat and the bitterness of soapy foam, Sylvie thought, awkward or not, she wouldn’t trade this moment for all the silk sheets and scented candles in the world.

At last braced, balanced, they rocked against each other, trading breathless frustration for laughter, and finally for a pleasure that had their voices cracking against the ceramic tiles, saw them sprawling in the morass of water and discarded clothes that soaked the floor. Her shampoo bottle had tipped, overlaying the scent of sex and the sea in the room with a lashing of citrus foam.

Sylvie kicked feebly at her pants, unblocked the drain, and put her head back to Demalion’s shoulder and listened to the gurgle of water receding. In a moment, she was going to get up, shake this lassitude from her veins, drag Demalion with her to the bedroom, and never mind the assassin in the living room.

He stroked her wet hair, smoothing it from the wild kinks and curls it had worked its way into. “I should check in with the locals.”

Sylvie stiffened, rolled away from him. “About that.”

He propped himself up on his elbows. “What?”

“You haven’t been watching the news.”

He rolled up to sit cross-legged. He looked tired suddenly, and past the first flush of their reunion, she saw dark bruises on his arms, his hands, his shins. Marah’s words came back to her—had to dig out of a premature grave—mixed with the memory of the collapsed ISI building in Chicago.

“The Miami ISI, too?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “Mermaids.”

He shoved his hair out of his face, scrubbed a hand over a jaw rough with stubble. “Mermaids. Fuck. What the hell is going on?”

“Don’t know,” Sylvie said. She shrugged. “Beyond my pay grade. I got my ass kicked and for nothing. I’m sitting this one out. I’ve got a client who needs me more than the ISI does.”

He stiffened all over, and said, “Are you shitting me? You’re sitting this one out? My coworkers died, crushed or ripped apart by a sand wraith, and you’re sitting this one out? What, just because we’re government, we don’t rate?”

Wow, she thought. Forty minutes, give or take, and they were at odds again.

Gunfire in the next room derailed their argument. Four shots, quickly fired, and a roar of something inhuman. They scrambled for the towel—the last towel; Sylvie grabbed Demalion’s discarded shirt, draped over her sink, yanked it on, and bolted for the living room, Demalion crying out for her to Be careful!

HER FIRST THOUGHT WAS THAT HER LIVING ROOM HAD GOTTEN A HELL of a lot smaller, filled with Erinya’s inhuman shape. Her second thought, even less useful than the first, was to wonder if Erinya had grown. Her front feet, talons extended, crushed Marah face-first into the western wall of Sylvie’s living room; Erinya’s tail lashed against the eastern wall, knocking magazines and books from the shelves. She bulked twice as large as a tiger, scented the room with pissed-off animal musk and the cloying, damp weight of ancient jungles. Black porcupine spikes, tipped in scarlet and gold, rose from her back and nape, jutting upward in threat.

The carpet beneath her hind claws slowly transformed to loam, vines twining out of the listing bookshelf.

Lost in gaping, in yanking Demalion’s shirt around her, it took her a moment to understand that there were words beneath the guttural rolling growl emanating from Erinya.

“Where is she? What have you done to Sylvie?”

“I’m here,” Sylvie said. Her voice sounded thin against the vastness of Erinya’s anger, but it was enough. Erinya’s head turned; her nose wrinkled and flared, scenting her.

“You smell like old cat. Like him.”

Marah squirmed, got her gun up, and shot Erinya beneath the chin, point-blank. The concussion of it filled the room and overflowed, much like Erinya herself. Demalion shouted in surprise, but Sylvie was just waiting for the aftermath.

She’d shot Erinya herself once upon a time, multiple bullets tearing into the demigod’s immortal skin; the Fury had shaken the bullets off, healed the wound in minutes.

This time, amped up to full god status, the bullet only bloomed against her jaw, flattening out like a flower, and dropping to the carpet.

“Eri!” Sylvie shouted. “Stop it!”

The cops were going to be called. The last thing they needed was a clueless, trigger-panicky cop added to this bizarre domestic dispute.

Erinya’s spiked hackles settled but hissed and rattled against her nape like a nest of angry snakes. “I came to see you, and she shot me. Can I kill her?”

Truthfully, Sylvie was stunned that Marah was still breathing. The assassin was tough; even now, she looked pissed instead of afraid, had her body braced in such a way that Erinya’s strangling grip was uncomfortable, not breath-stealing.

“Sylvie!” Demalion said, clutching his towel in one hand, a gun in the other. “For God’s sake, tell her not to!”

Sylvie jerked into speech. “Don’t kill her, Erinya.” At least, not now.

Erinya glared past Sylvie at Demalion, then calmed as if she’d read Sylvie’s thoughts. She probably had.

She dropped Marah, shifted direction, leaped over the breakfast bar, and yanked open the fridge. “You never let me do anything.”

Demalion slipped past Sylvie, helped Marah up from the floor. The woman rubbed her throat thoughtfully.

“What were you thinking?” Sylvie said to her.

“Hey, lay off,” Demalion said. Marah coughed when she tried to contribute to her own defense.

Sylvie refused to feel bad. What kind of idiot took on a monster like Erinya with a gun?

We do, her little dark voice said.

That’s different, she shot back. We’re different.

“You okay?” Demalion asked. He tugged Marah as far from Erinya as possible in the small space.

“Not a problem,” Marah said. Her gaze never left Erinya, shrunk back down to human size, human shape. “You often host gods in your apartment, Sylvie?”

“I host all sorts of unexpected guests,” Sylvie said.

“I don’t like her,” Erinya said. She pulled a steak out of the fridge, a monster hunk of beef that Sylvie knew hadn’t been in there. “Make me dinner?”

“Be a big girl. Put it in the oven yourself,” Sylvie said. “How about Marah promises not to shoot you again, and you don’t squish her like a bug. And, Eri? Can you get rid of the jungle?”

Her apartment was unrecognizable, and Sylvie, dreading the moment her neighbors called the cops, couldn’t help but be distracted by the new plant life turning her apartment into a conservatory. She batted a flowering vine away from her face with unnecessary vigor. It left a dusting of rusty pollen all over her hand.

Marah and Demalion had their heads bent close together, and it made Sylvie nervous. Demalion, on his own, she trusted to the ends of the earth. Demalion, with the ISI at his side? A little less.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to kill my family either,” Erinya said. “But if you had to, I’d forgive you. You’d forgive me, right?”

Sylvie said, “What are you talking about?”

Erinya shoved the steak into the oven—it flared scarlet with fire inside, and Sylvie closed her eyes. Erinya was a god, she reminded herself. Wouldn’t burn the apartment down. Even if she’d turned the oven interior into a fiery pit of some kind. Erinya wasn’t exactly up on electricity.

“Family. Her. You.”

Marah coughed again. It sounded a little like a laugh. “Told you we should have had a chat. Months ago, I told you. Properly get to know each other. You know. Hey, I’m Marah Stone. I’m not just the ISI cleanup crew. I’m your cousin on your great-great-great-whatever side.”

“Bullshit,” Sylvie said.

Demalion’s face reflected her own surprise, and Sylvie felt a flare of shameful relief that he didn’t know Marah well enough to know that.

“Truth. But she wants to kill me,” Erinya continued, hauling the steak out, barely warmed. She put it on a platter, looked at it without any hunger, and said, more quietly, “They all want to kill me.”

“She’s ISI,” Sylvie said. “Kinda their raison d’être.”

“It’s a good reason,” Marah said. “Her kind is dangerous. I mean, look at your apartment. Look outside.”

Erinya’s jungle hadn’t lessened—Sylvie’s apartment was one step away from growing moss in the damp, green heat. But a glance out the front window showed that Erinya’s stress had translated on a much wider scale. The chlorine blue pool had gone green and dark; the vines that snaked around Sylvie’s furniture also coiled around the sun deck, creeping into the laundry room. The carved, limestone alligator cracked like an egg and birthed a dozen small, squirming hatchlings.

“Erinya can control herself,” Sylvie said, hoping it was true. It might not be. Gods leaked. That was a fact. Even Dunne, who’d been brutal in his self-control, had leaked. A new god, a god with a history of indulging her appetites? “And she will. Erinya, pull it back.”

“Why should I?” Erinya said. “If I’m living on earth, why can’t I redecorate?”

“You want to play house? Fine,” Sylvie said. “Get a house, and leave the world alone. Pull it back.”

“Not the boss of me,” Erinya said, a familiar complaint. The flowering vines in the kitchen withered, crisped, and burst into dust. Sylvie would need to vacuum, but at least she wouldn’t need a weed wacker.

“Good,” Sylvie said. “Now, go do the outside. And make sure you get the little snappers out there. Kids swim in that pool.”

Erinya scowled. “Don’t eat my steak.” Then she vanished.

Marah shook her head. “Yeah, she needs killing.”

Demalion said, “Stone. Watch the attitude. Or you’ll have Sylvie on your ass as well as Erinya.”

“Not the boss of me,” Marah sniped, imitating Erinya, gaining another growl, this one from Sylvie.

Demalion threw up his hands, disappeared into Sylvie’s bedroom, slamming the door behind him. It had a distinct attitude of women!

Marah made a face as he left. “I thought he’d be in a better mood once he’d gotten laid. Of course, you two were pretty quick about it.”

“What the hell are you even doing here?” Sylvie wanted to be in her bedroom with Demalion.

Marah drew a finger across Erinya’s steak, licked the juice from her skin. “Lilith’s side. So bad-tempered. No wonder you like that damned monster-god. Our side’s a little more sensible.”

“My side, your side. Whatever. You keep playing coy with that info. I don’t think it really exists.” She wasn’t going to ask outright, no matter that she wanted, maybe even needed the answers. Marah was mercenary; Sylvie owed her one already for Demalion. She knew if she asked, Marah would add that to the tab.

“God, you’re difficult.” Marah leaned back against the counter, shifted her weight to one hip, crossed her ankles. “Go on, tell me who my daddy is. I’ll give you a clue if you like. He brained his brother with a rock.”

Sylvie hung her head. Oh yeah. Like Lilith’s side of her genetic line wasn’t enough to deal with. She tended to forget who helped father it. “Cain. You’re Cain’s line. I’m the progeny of Lilith and Cain, and you’re the progeny of Cain and whoever.”

“Got it in one,” Marah said. “This?” She held up her red-stained hand, made jazz fingers at Sylvie. “This is the infamous mark of Cain.”

Sylvie swallowed, thinking of Zoe marked in that way. Her witchy mentor—Val Cassavetes—had to have known. Had to have kept that secret from Sylvie.

“Your first kill, and it blooms if you’ve got the right blood in your veins,” Marah said. “Comes with perks, too. Like a magic shield of sorts. God does seem to like us killers. I mean, you’ve got magical resistance, too, right? The new Lilith and all.”

Sylvie didn’t say anything, didn’t trust anything Marah was saying either. No assassin was going to blithely show off their ace as simply as that. It was false sharing, designed only to make Sylvie feel obligated to respond in kind. She knew better than to fall for it.

Demalion, returning, dressed in clothing he’d scrounged from the oddments he’d left behind the last time he was in Miami, did fall for it. “So why doesn’t Sylvie have the mark? She’s half-Cain, and she’s killed people.”

He fiddled with the sleeves where they pulled a little tight across his arms. He’d added muscle to Wright’s body since the last time he’d worn those clothes. Right now, Sylvie felt like he’d added some muscle to his head.

“Hey, she’s in the room,” Sylvie said. “And she’s killed monsters.”

Demalion shrugged a bare apology. “It’s not like you know the answer, right? Aren’t you curious?” Sylvie groaned. The worst of dating an agent. It wasn’t enough for Demalion to know her; he wanted to know what had made her the person she was. Hell, he probably kept his own set of files on her, separate from the ISI’s.

“Lilith’s stronger,” Sylvie said. “See, there’s your answer.”

“But Zoe’s marked—”

“Hey,” Sylvie snapped. Bad enough they were discussing her. Zoe was off-limits.

Marah’s dark eyes were inquisitive, bright with calculation, but she was polite enough to back off the topic of Zoe. Not polite enough to drop the conversation.

Sylvie, heart beating oddly fast in her chest, wasn’t sure whether she wanted the conversation to continue or not. Marah might have answers. Marah might be full of shit. Sylvie figured it was a fifty-fifty shot.

Don’t trust her, her little dark voice whispered.

Not a problem, Sylvie thought.

Instead, Marah pushed herself off the counter, circled Sylvie, making her very aware that, of the three people in the apartment, she was the only one underdressed. “Lilith is stronger,” Marah agreed. “But harder to wake. You had to have been exposed to her influence, somehow. An inoculation to wake the body to the virus’s presence.

“You could have run into Lilith herself,” Marah continued when Sylvie stayed stubbornly silent. “But from the files, you were already nipping at her metaphysical heels when you killed her. So not the progenitrix. Lilith’s progeny? You play chew toy with a vampire? A succubus? A werewolf?”

“Does it matter?” Sylvie said. “I don’t know how it happened. It just did.”

“Details always matter,” Marah said. “Especially when I’m trying to figure out which side you’re on. You hang out with werewolves. And you’re claiming friendship with a god who’s violent and insane.”

“Marah,” Demalion objected.

“You can’t tell me it doesn’t bother you,” Marah told Demalion. “That she’s close with one of the monsters who killed you? That’s she made friends with the Fury?”

“It bothers me,” Demalion snapped. “Is that what you want me to admit. Fine. It does.”

“Yeah, Shadows,” Marah said, jumping on the wagon she’d started. “You really should put that monster down. Whose side are you on, anyway?”

She looked at them both, Marah’s expression calculating, Demalion’s more honestly angry.

Sylvie felt her own rage surge back—judge her? Over Erinya? She said, “I’m on the only side I can trust. Mine.”

“Well, then,” Marah said. “Maybe we should find more congenial company. Check in with the locals.”

“Most of them are dead,” Sylvie said, bluntly. “Riordan’s son survived.”

“He’s enough to start with,” Marah said. “You coming, Demalion?”

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “You going with her, Demalion?”

“The agency needs us,” he said.

“I can’t,” Sylvie said. “I’ve got a client in distress and some bastard fucking with people’s memories. Making them forget what they’ve seen. On a citywide scale.”

“Citywide? I know you were looking into memory alterations, but I didn’t realize the scale of it.”

“Neither did I,” Sylvie said, grimly. “And it’s getting personal. It hurt Alex.”

Demalion shook his head. “I know you’re independent, but it’s time to call Yvette in on this.”

“She survived the sand wraith?”

“Taking meetings in DC,” Marah said. “Bureaucracy saved her ass.”

“Guess that proves she’s near the top of the food chain,” Sylvie said. “They’re the only ones who benefit from bureaucracy.”

“Yvette’s surviving is a good thing,” Demalion said. “Look, you said your plate is full. You’ve got your client. You’ve got us—”

“Didn’t say I was helping the ISI—”

“You’ll help me, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“So, why not let Yvette take point on this memory thing?”

“Because I don’t trust her,” Sylvie snapped. “I can’t be the only one who’s noticed this memory gap. But I seem to be the only one who cares. So no, no passing this buck.”

“Don’t argue with her, Demalion,” Marah said. “You’ll never convince her. She’s built to work alone. The new Lilith.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Demalion said.

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “Why don’t you enlighten him, Marah. Since you know so much.” She doubted Marah knew anything of substance. The ISI files, as Demalion had said, were empty speculation.

Marah grinned, a predatory shine of teeth. “How much is it worth to you? A favor? Maybe two?”

Then again, Marah was of Cain’s line. Maybe she did know.

“One more,” Sylvie said. “But I’m not killing anyone for you—my definition of anyone.”

“Hey, I rescued myself,” Demalion protested. “I’m not a favor.”

“Deal,” Marah said, waving him off. “One favor owing. It’s simple, really. I told you. God likes his killers. Both sets of them. It’s politics at its finest. You’ve talked to gods, you know the only thing they hold sacred.”

“Noninterference with gods outside their pantheon. No more godly wars,” Sylvie said.

“No more overt godly wars,” Marah said. “But a free agent, who refuses to belong to anyone, who wreaks havoc—say a woman who disposes of the last Aztec god, strips his power, and gives it to a Fury. A woman who yanks said Fury out of her own pantheon and creates a new one—

“You’re God’s stalking horse,” Marah said. “And for all your independence, you’ll never know if you’re working to his plan or not. The eternal killer who does his bidding even while you spit in his face and assert your disallegiance. You’re his plausible deniability. Congratulations, Sylvie, you hit the jackpot. You’re going to live forever. Or until someone else gets in a lucky shot and takes your place.”

The little dark voice in Sylvie’s blood was roaring in protest, drowning out her own voice, a tight rasp. “I don’t believe you.”

“Think it’s coincidence that you’re immune to most magics? That you can kill things way above your weight class? You’re a stealth bomber in human form. He doesn’t care who you kill, as long as you keep doing it, keep picking off his rivals. It’s a long game. Maybe the longest game ever.”

“Get out,” Sylvie choked. “Out.”

“Truth hurts,” Marah said. She patted Sylvie’s cheek; Sylvie slapped her hand away, and felt a weird numbing echo in her bones as her flesh hit Marah’s. Like to like. Killers. God’s killers. Spreaders of chaos and misfortune.

“Out,” she whispered.

Demalion put his own hand out, a steadying touch at her shoulder. She shrugged him off.

“Fine,” Marah said. “I could use some real food anyway. And I doubt your Fury wants to share.” She headed out, jaunty and pleased with herself. Sylvie wanted to chuck something at her.

Demalion lingered, silent. When she met his eyes, he dropped his. Answer enough to a question she hadn’t asked. Did he believe Marah? Did he think Sylvie’s entire purpose in existence was to kill things? Yes. He really did.

Heat stung her eyes. She blinked furiously. “So how’d you hook up with her, anyway? Think you can unhook her? Maybe while dangling her over a cliff?”

“She saved my life. That’s got to count for something.”

“Yeah, it counts as another one I owe her.”

“Hey, ouch,” Demalion said.

Sylvie shook her head. “Sorry, sorry. You know I didn’t mean it like that. Hell, that’s one debt I’m thrilled to incur.”

“You know, I did my share of the digging,” Demalion said. “I could make a case for Marah and me being even. Hell, we could probably even make a case for her owing me. I warned her the sand wraith was coming. Psychic perks.”

Sylvie nodded. “Take it up with her.”

Demalion, given his cue to leave, hesitated.

“What?” Sylvie snapped.

“Are you okay?”

“Dandy. I’m going to live forever, don’t you know. Which is good because I’m busy. Got things to do. And hey, I’m waiting for Erinya to remember her steak. You want to be here when she is, when she remembers how much she dislikes you?” Her throat felt tight. She didn’t mind being a killer, but she wanted to be more than just that.

Sylvie’s new cell buzzed where she had dropped it, an angry hornet making itself known. She tore her gaze away. “I should—”

“Yeah,” he said.

“You go and take Ms. Mercenary—”

“Yeah.”

The phone rattled, and Sylvie said, quickly, “Be careful, Demalion. The ISI’s in real trouble.

Demalion’s tight, irritated expression cracked. “I know.”

“This might be a good time to quit.”

“Can’t do that,” Demalion said. “I believe in the mission.”

“I know. Just had to put it out there.”

She kissed him too briefly, let him go, and grabbed the phone, expecting Alex. No one else had the number.

Instead of her assistant, she got her sister in a temper.