Sins & Shadows

13 Art Appreciation

SYLVIE ROLLED OVER WITH A GROAN SHE TRIED TO STIFLE OUT OF courtesy for Tish, but dammit, she hurt. Wrestling with a Fury was definitely an all-pain, no-gain sort of endeavor. She shifted enough to ease the spasm in her back and cracked an eye.

Tish slept on, drooling a little, her dark hair a tangled cloud against her polka-dotted pillowcase. Sylvie found a tiny smile. Had to love those party girls. They tended to be up at all hours and were oddly blasé about strangers coming to their door, soot-streaked, battered, and begging for a bed.

Tish hadn’t hesitated at all, dragging Sylvie in, seeing her showered, pj’d, and tucked in before she had so much as asked the question that had been trembling on her lips all that time—had Sylvie found any leads to Bran.

Nearly dead on her feet, Sylvie had confined herself to slurred syllables and half answers, concentrating more on dialing Alex’s number correctly. Sylvie had pieces of a puzzle but no picture. Alex could give her that. But Alex didn’t answer, undoubtedly tucked into bed like a good girl, not like Sylvie, staggering into a stranger’s home, smelling of char and burned blood. . . . Sylvie left a message on Alex’s voice mail, a raspy, coughing, muttering monologue about the art world, a woman called Lily, about NDNM.

Tish, listening with her ears cat-pricked, had chipped in the moment Sylvie disconnected. “Is that the same Lily Bran painted?”

Sylvie’s exhaustion cleared long enough to collect facts. Brandon had painted a portrait of a woman called Lily, two months ago. A portrait he had worked on feverishly, then turned to the wall and forgotten. Tish thought it was still there, leaning up against other discards in his cluttered studio.

Go get it, Sylvie thought, staring at the clock, at the hour glowing 4:00 a.m. Get up. Get the painting. Her body betrayed her. Her attempt at sitting up had set her head to spinning, her vision to blurring, and Tish had pushed her back into the futon.

Finally it was morning—eight o’clock—and enough with the lounging about. She groaned deep in her throat, thought longingly of a vacation spent drowsing on the beach, and rolled over. Tried to. Tish’s arm dragged her back, pulled her against warmth. “G’back t’sleep,” she muttered, without ever really waking.

Party girls, Sylvie thought, not so fondly this time. She pinched at Tish’s arm until the sleeping girl let go, pulling her arm away from the sting.

Sylvie made her escape and dragged herself into Tish’s kitchenette. Coffee, now.

She found the coffeemaker, ladled in an extra scoop of grounds on principle, and the world began to smell promising. Behind her, Tish left the futon in a stumbling slide of sheets and blankets.

A moment later, a white flash filled the room, and Sylvie spun, heart pounding, thinking of balefire. Tish lowered her camera and yawned. “S’rry. Couldn’t resist.”

Sylvie turned back to the counter, rested her shaking hands on it, concentrating on stilling her breath. Coffee? Who needed caffeine when you could have an adrenaline jolt straight to the heart?

Sleep-warmed fingers traced a pattern on her back, a delicate scratch of nails between the spaghetti straps of the loaner tank top. “I wanted a picture of your tattoo. It’s Latin, right? What’s it mean?” Tish said. Her touch made Sylvie’s skin prickle.

“Cedo Nulli,” Sylvie said. “I do not yield.”

“Mm. Hostile,” Tish decided, and snagged the first cup of coffee for herself.

Sylvie filled another cup and after the first scalding mouthful, turned to the next pressing problem. Wardrobe. Hers was smoked. Her jacket gone with the Maudit, her T-shirt a tattered mess, her jeans sticky with spilled beer, and all of it reeking of charred human flesh.

Tish curled up in a tiny, tidy bundle on the futon, tucking her feet under her, and Sylvie sighed. Five feet tops. No way in hell was she fitting into any of Tish’s clothes.

“Closet’s upstairs,” Tish said. “Got some party leftovers that might fit.”

Sylvie wandered upstairs, stiff and sore, to rummage through Tish’s collection of clothes.

She hit the jackpot at one end of the walk-in closet, finding a tidy grouping of party stragglers and one-night leftovers. She pulled out a pair of men’s khakis that looked about right, and a red T-shirt that extolled a brand of firecrackers with a truly offensive logo. She flipped the tee inside out and put it on rather than waste time looking for something better. It’d be under Erinya’s jacket anyway.

A small shelf near the door yielded a giant bottle of ibuprofen, the dancer’s faithful friend, and Sylvie snagged three, taking them dry before heading back down toward the scent of brewed coffee.

She found Tish looking much more awake and unhappy about it. “You didn’t have to get up,” Sylvie said.

“I’m going with you,” Tish said. “I’ve got the key. I called, and Kevin’s not home. He should be. I mean, Bran’s missing.” Tish wouldn’t look at her, and her voice held an edge that Sylvie couldn’t decipher.

“All right,” Sylvie said. “But hurry.” Dunne’s absence wasn’t unexpected; he’d be out hunting, the sisters in tow. It did worry her a little. Sylvie had expected him to descend on her last night after she’d sent Erinya to update him. He hadn’t. And Zeus had been pulling at him. . . .

Lily herself made Sylvie antsy, generated more questions than answers. Sylvie had assumed the woman couldn’t do magic; she still found her logic sound. People who had power did not dragoon apprentice sorcerers to do their spell wetwork for them—that was like giving trade secrets to your competitors. But magic had definitely been done last night. Sylvie shuddered and chased the chill from her nerves with bitter, black coffee. Still slurping, scalding her lips and tongue, she rose to paw through her discarded clothes.

“Did you see something that looks like a broken chopstick?”

Tish said, “Maybe it’s under that gun.” The edge was stronger now, and identifiable. Fear. Sylvie dropped her eyes: The holster was there, bound up in Erinya’s jacket, but the seal had been unsnapped, the gun pulled partially free. Clumsy, Sylvie thought, remembering her exhaustion, remembering shedding clothes without any concern for the weapon, just letting it slip free with her jeans.

“This is why you don’t mess with other people’s things,” Sylvie said. She bent, tucked the gun back into the holster, and fastened the whole thing about her waist. It vibrated briefly, as soothing as a purr. “I’m sorry if it startled you—”

“That gun is not normal. It looks normal, but it’s . . . It felt like skin,” Tish said. Her voice shook, craving reassurance. Sylvie could see that fragile innocence crumbling in Tish’s eyes, the bewilderment and betrayal that the world kept secrets of its own.

Bran and Dunne had managed to hide the Magicus Mundi with its glories and its horrors from her, even with the Furies around. Sylvie, through carelessness, had betrayed the larger world.

“No,” Sylvie said. “It’s not.”

“What is it? How—”

“Give me the keys. Stay here,” Sylvie said. Stay safe.

“No,” Tish said. She passed Sylvie on the way up the stairs, and said, “I have the keys, and I know their security code, so don’t bother trying to go without me.”

Sylvie sighed and let it go. She sorted through the rest of the clothes, ducked her head under the futon, and found the stick.

In the morning light, with caffeine sharpening her brain, the broken chopstick still looked ordinary as dirt—the kind distributed with every fast-food Chinese meal in the country, still splintery where it had been torn from its other side.

Sylvie handled it gingerly. When Lily halved the stick, balefire had appeared. Sylvie didn’t want to find out it worked just the same if it were quartered.

She turned it over again in her hands, hoping for inspiration, but it was just a stick, inert in her hands. Nothing to say it was anything important at all, much less the trigger to a murder spell. If it was. Maybe Lily was the queen of misdirection and the stick was some type of in-joke, some game to send Sylvie chasing her own tail.

Sylvie groaned. She hated to do it, but she needed information. Chasing Lily was going to keep her busy enough; she didn’t have time to figure out how the woman did what she did.

Usually, with a question on magic matters, she dragged Val to the hot seat. That was no longer an option, at least not without a bigger fight than Sylvie needed at the moment. Sylvie’s options narrowed to two. Either throw herself on the mercy of this unknown Anna D, or try to winkle information out of the ISI. Neither thought appealed.

Tish thundered down the stairs and disappeared into the bathroom; the crash of water running against tile followed in seconds.

Sylvie looked at the closed door in disbelief. “Hurry, and she needs a shower.”

She took another preventative dose of caffeine and dialed, wondering what it said about her psyche and faulty memory that this number she could recall after one sneak peek.

“Sylvie,” Demalion said, picking up on the second ring. “You’re still with us.”

“Barely,” she said.

“So how was the club? It’s been on my list of places to go.”

“You had me followed,” she said. Not surprised, but chilled nonetheless. She’d killed a man last night.

“Nah,” he said. “Not once your witchy friend pushed Burke onto the tracks. He was thrilled to miss the rest. Thirty-one cases of spontaneous human combustion. Special even for you.”

“Not my fault,” Sylvie said. Her free hand found a box of raw-sugar cubes, and she started feeding them into her coffee.

“Didn’t say it was,” he said. “You okay?”

“I’m talking to you, aren’t I? There’s no in-between with balefire.”

“Good to hear it,” he said, and damn if she didn’t almost believe him. “Is there a reason for the call, or can I just think you were worried that I might be worried and wanted to ease my mind.”

Sylvie growled, borrowing wordless irritation from Erinya. “You talk too much,” she said.

“Coming from you?”

A retort hovered on her lips, along with a smile, and she stopped. They weren’t friends. “What do you know about magic sticks?”

“Aren’t they usually referred to as wands? Or is this some new slang I’m missing out on?” Demalion asked. “I can never tell.”

“Wands don’t require you to break them to make the spell work,” Sylvie said. “This did.”

“Broken,” he said. “Check. I’ll see what we’ve got in the files. Anything else?”

“Lily, no last name offered,” Sylvie said. “Connected with art, Brandon Wolf, and bad magic. Not a nice woman.”

“Our firestarter?” Demalion asked, his voice growing distant. Sylvie imagined him frowning, sorting his own thoughts for information, imagined him rolling that little crystal ball between his hands, fidgeting as he thought.

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “She killed them all to keep her trail clouded. Lily’s cold-blooded and dangerous. I can’t believe she doesn’t have a rep.”

“This is related to Dunne, right?” Demalion said. “He’s the problem we’re trying to solve—”

“Typical bureaucracy. Focusing on the wrong thing. Lily is the problem. Lily started it,” Sylvie said. “Lily kidnapped a god’s lover. Forget about Dunne. You can’t do anything about him anyway.”

“I don’t particularly feel like playing forgive and forget with him. He’s dangerous. I don’t know how much you’re following the news, but he needs to be dealt with.”

“Then you step up to the plate,” Sylvie said. “Instead of pushing me to do it. Look, just let me know what you can find on stick magic. Or on Lily, won’t turn that down, either.”

“What are you up to?” Demalion said. “Save me the trouble of spying and just tell me.”

The shower stopped, and Sylvie said, “What, deprive you of your special-agent fun?” and cut the connection. She’d shaken Tish’s trust with the meat gun; she didn’t want to be caught talking to the government. Especially not to the government man who’d been in disguise and present the night Brandon disappeared. It might be a little difficult to explain. To Tish and, God, to Dunne. Sylvie made a note. Do not let Dunne catch you thinking about Demalion, especially since Sylvie still wasn’t sure what she thought about Demalion. Help or hindrance. Ally or enemy. Trust or—a belated thought touched her.

Forgive and forget, Demalion had said. What did he have to forgive Dunne for? Something more personal than the ISI teams’ lack of success?

“Ready,” Tish said. Sylvie finished tucking her cell phone into a pocket before turning.

Hmmm. Combat ballerina. Spandex as body armor beneath cutoff jeans and Doc Martens overlaid with leg warmers.

Sylvie snagged Erinya’s jacket, making sure it covered the gun. A whiff of charred flesh touched her senses as she settled the jacket over her shoulders, but she judged it nearly unnoticeable. No worse than having lingered at a barbecue.

Outside, they both paused and stared up at the sky as one. “Wow,” Tish said. “Look at that.”

“I’m looking,” Sylvie said. She was. She didn’t like what she saw. The morning skies were sullen, cloud-heavy, and tinged green. And so still—the clouds looked carved in place, like some elaborate bas-relief. A white-backed gull fought its way through the sky, but there was no other movement. Even the planters at street level, laden with ivy and petunias, were motionless. A good Floridian, Sylvie thought it looked like nothing so much as a hurricane building up offshore. Only this was Chicago, and far from the sea.

“Cab?” she asked. She waved down a shiny new cab that was conveniently approaching, conveniently empty of fares. “Great timing,” she said to the driver. Suspiciously good timing. How long had she talked to Demalion? While he was a talker, he’d rambled more than usual. Buying time? How long did it take the ISI to locate a cell phone within a city?

Not long, apparently.

The cab driver barely grunted an acknowledgment of the address Tish gave. Maybe more concerned with the discomfort of his shoulder holster beneath the strap of his seat belt. The bulge beneath his sweatshirt could be nothing less.

The cabbie turned on the news to fill the silence and first thing Sylvie heard was the local morning DJ laughing. “Weird world out there today. A section of I-90 was reported struck by lightning and turned to glass. Don’t believe everything you hear, folks, but you still might plan an alternate way to work. And for those of you who work lakefront—massive fish kill last night. The surface is covered with dead fish and birds. So skip the picnic lunch.

“Forecast for today—rain. Tornadoes maybe. Hell, they don’t know. When do they ever? Either way, O’Hare’s grounding all morning flights.”

Are you following the news, Demalion had asked.

Cataclysms and monsters, Val had said, when gods walk the earth.

Sylvie leaned back to stare at the gloomy sky, listening to callers reporting their own run-ins with weirdness. Beside her, Tish got more and more withdrawn, until she finally whispered, “Shut that off.”

The agent did, but his eyes reached for Sylvie’s in the back. Careless with his cover, too eager to see what she made of this mess. Sylvie blanked her face and gave him nothing.

At Dunne’s apartment, Sylvie got out without even a glance at the tab. Tish hesitated, hand on her wallet. Sylvie said, “Don’t worry about it. He can expense it.”

The driver said, “Hey!” and Sylvie leaned back in and, before he could react, unzipped his sweatshirt.

“I can see the holster, Agent,” she said. “Your cover sucks. Real cabbies like to talk. Sociability equals tip. Real cabbies are never there just when you need them.”

“Demalion lets you run on a long leash,” he said. “Too damn long.”

Sylvie said, “Let me make this clear to you. I’ve never worn a leash. If there’s a dog in this relationship, it’s Demalion.”

He laughed, a quick, harsh sound. “God, I’d love to see his face if you said that to him.”

“He’ll hear the recording,” Sylvie said. “You get back soon enough, you might catch it.”

“I think I’ll stick around. Hell, I might even help you if you tell me why you’re here.”

“Don’t tell him!” Tish snapped, voice tight with stress.

“Jeez, Tish,” Sylvie said. “How ’bout a little faith.” She grinned at the agent. “Run along home, now.”

“Nah,” he said. “Don’t mind me. I’ll give you a ride to HQ when you’re through. Just don’t expect me to play backup. I know what Dunne did to Demalion.” He switched off his light, pushed the seat back, and closed his eyes.

Sylvie bit back the question that leaped to her tongue—a simple, one-word query—Demalion? To ask would break two of her personal rules: Try not to parrot questions like an idiot, and never ask information of an enemy. She wasn’t thrilled with the idea of him waiting here either, ready to pounce on any information she managed to dig up.

Sylvie pondered the odds of foisting Tish off on him, serving up triple benefit points for herself. Get Tish out of her way; keep Bran’s friend someplace safe; keep agent occupied. . . . Tish stomped up the stairs toward the brownstone, and said, “Coming?”

Win some, lose some, Sylvie thought, and headed after her. Besides, if Dunne came back, all bad mood and thunderweather, maybe Tish’s presence could knock him back into human mode. Maybe.

Tish opened the door, and Sylvie twitched. A quick wave of something sheeted over her skin and vanished, a sensation that Sylvie had always attributed to haunted houses—that elusive sense that the air was more alive than in other homes, charged, ionized, full of potential, waiting for its spark.

Tish either didn’t feel it or was used to it. Tish went in with the ease of long practice, punching the code into the alarm pad, and flipping the switch by the door, bringing light into the dim foyer.

Sylvie fought the urge to whistle. What could be done with access to money—Tish’s place was pricey because of its desirable location, but bare inside. This house was nothing much outside, a small, well-kept brownstone, but inside it was all about warmth and luxury.

Sylvie crossed from slate tiles to carpet so plush she found herself thinking maybe she should take her sneakers off. Then she recalled the Furies, their habits, and decided Dunne had a good cleaner on call. After all, carpet the color of dulce leche would show blood so easily.

Sylvie gave the rest of the main room a glance, seeing upscale bachelor furniture—a leather couch, dark rugs, state-of-the-art sound system, television, lighting, and nearly more artwork than wall space. Bran’s paintings mostly, she thought, the vibrant colors vivid against the deep chocolate walls. Landscapes. She wondered which of them had decided not to hang anything more distressing in their home. Having seen the murals at NDNM, Sylvie knew Bran was capable of distressing art.

Tish slid a heavy wooden door to the side, revealing a shallow kitchen. “Voice mail’s full,” she said, studying the flashing light on the phone. “I don’t understand. Shouldn’t Kevin be here? What if the kidnappers call?” It was a quavering wail. Her fingers hovered over the phone.

“It’s not money they want,” Sylvie said.

“Then what?” Tish wrapped her arms around herself.

“To hurt Dunne.”

Tish sucked in a breath, her eyes widening and darkening with pain. “Then, they don’t really need to—”

Keep Bran alive. Sylvie finished the thought, but left it silent, letting Tish read it on her face.

“Oh God,” Tish moaned. “God. Poor Kevin. You’ve got to get Bran back. Kevin won’t be able to stand it. He seems so tough, but he worships Bran, you know. If Bran . . . I don’t know if Kevin can take it—”

“Show me the studio,” Sylvie said, thinking Tish was more right to fear than she knew. “Show me his paintings.”

Show me Lily.

“Upstairs,” Tish said, opening another door, a foldaway set that Sylvie would have taken for nothing more than pantry access. Instead, it revealed a narrow and steep set of stairs.

“Studio access only,” Tish said. “Bran calls it his servant’s stairs. Says it reminds him that art is his master.” A brief smile touched her lips, stilling the tremor they wanted to stay in. “If Kevin’s around when Bran says it, Kevin teases him, says love is a much better master than art, and he can prove it. Usually, the sisters and I go have an awkward lunch at that point.”

Sylvie wanted to tell her to stop. Stop talking about Bran and Kevin, stop painting images that let her see glimpses of the two of them in this cozy niche of a kitchen. Stop showing her glimmers of a life that was now in ruins.

She pushed by Tish and headed up the stairs, feeling the burn as she forced stiff muscles to the task. Fucking Fury, she thought. Remind me to kick her tail feathers if I see her again.

The studio was dim and reeked of old paint. A narrow window fed in some morning sunlight, and she used it to track down the light switch. She hit it, and said, “Crap,” right after. What had she thought? Tish mentioned a portrait, and Sylvie had expected to sail in, snatch it, and use it—a sort of police sketch for Demalion, a scent trail for Dunne, a reminder to herself. Lily’s image was already fuzzy in her mind. She remembered the voice, the force of will, but the face—

“What’s wrong?” Tish said.

“He’s productive,” Sylvie said. It wasn’t a compliment. Paintings were stacked everywhere, faces leaning against the walls or slotted into narrow racks; there were cloth-covered heaps, slightly squared, that held still more paintings under their depths. “A little compulsive maybe?”

“He doesn’t like paper,” Tish said. “He goes right to canvas. If he doesn’t like it, he drops it.”

“Expensive habit,” Sylvie said. “I don’t suppose there’s a filing system.”

Tish laughed. “I told him he needed one.”

“Fine,” Sylvie said. “You start on that side of the room. Any portrait of a woman that you don’t know put aside for me.” She was counting on the fact that she would recognize that ordinary face when she saw it again.

Her phone rang and she brought it to her cheek. “Yeah.”

“Syl?”

“Yeah,” she said again, turning slightly away from Tish’s inquisitive gaze. She made a go-on gesture at Tish, telling her to get started. Sylvie tucked the phone against her chin and shoulder, and said, “You got my message? Sorry for the late-night call, but I need info on a woman—”

“Lily Black,” Alex said. “And if that’s her real name, Val’s nose is the original model.”

Sylvie paused. She wasn’t often off balance, but Alex was always the one to make it happen. “What?”

“Lily Black, art appraiser, part-time art agent. I back-tracked through Ni Dieux, Ni Maîtres’ ownership deeds, hit art news sites, added Brandon Wolf as a data point. His murals are on the Net—including a little note about upcoming ones at NDNM funded by a Lily Black.”

“Fast work,” Sylvie said.

Across the room, Tish’s attention sharpened. Irritably, Sylvie pointed back to the paintings. A name wasn’t enough.

“Like I could sleep with you out gallivanting ’round Chicago with Furies for backup.” Behind the snark and bravado, Sylvie read an entire other conversation. Despite an unsteady past spent shuttling between foster families, stepparents, and juvie, Alex had never seen anyone die. Traumatic enough, but when that first death had been Suarez, whom she considered a part of her chosen family—well, it was no wonder Alex stayed awake to worry.

Sylvie’s part in this unspoken conversation was to ignore it. To that end, she said, “Ah, they’re not so tough.” Implying, of course, that she was. “Did you get an address?”

Sylvie flipped through the nearest stack of paintings. No portraits. Still life, still life, landscape, mythical animals.

“Embarrassment of riches, really,” Alex said. “She supplements her income with land. I found her name on seven separate sites, one a condemned church in a neighborhood pending rezoning, two galleries, and four apartment complexes around Chicago. Lily’s only got a PO box listed as her own address, but I bet if you check the complexes for unrented apartments—”

“We might find her,” Sylvie said. “I’m impressed, Alex.”

“You should be,” Alex said. “If I billed you for that amount of computer time, I’d bankrupt you.”

“Just tell me you aren’t going to bring computer crimes down on me, and I’ll be content.”

Tish held up a gold-framed painting. Sylvie shook her head, shifted her mouth away from the receiver. The portrait showed an elegant blonde, clad only in an ornate set of emeralds. “Brunette,” Sylvie said. “Ordinary is the key word here, Tish.”

“Please,” Alex said. “I cover my tracks. Oh, speaking of—tell me you’re taking wolf clients again?”

“Why?” Sylvie said, aware of Tish listening in.

“Present on the store stoop,” Alex said. “Rat skulls, bones, tied up in a bow of snakeskin. The front-desk bell says it’s inert, though. Not some type of spell. Thought it might be an offering.”

“Yuck,” Sylvie said. “Maybe the sisters left it. They don’t really seem to like me much.”

“I think there’s a club for people like that,” Alex said. “Membership’s climbing.”

“Funny girl.”

Sylvie flipped another painting and forgot the small mystery. Portrait. Not Lily, but Dunne. The last of her doubts as to their uneven relationship died. She couldn’t think Bran feared Dunne, not with this in her hands. Dunne, depicted as an angel: weary, shirtless, scarred; his wings, all hawk dun and beige, were drooping and chafed by a holster and a gun. In the shadow of his wings, Bran leaned against him and was sheltered.

“Syl?”

“Yeah, e-mail me the addresses,” Sylvie said.

“Syl . . .” Alex said, held her to the line. “What if the satanists left the bones?” Her voice went tight and a little small.

Sylvie flipped another half dozen paintings face front, without looking at them, just getting them into the light. “Be very careful, or just get out of town. If you think it’s them, call the cops. The satanists carried guns instead of power; they’ll shoot first, curse later.”

“Not comforting,” Alex said.

“You came back,” Sylvie snapped. Her fingers were white on the phone. Wasn’t this what she had tried to prevent? She took a steadying breath, and said, “I doubt it’s them. We’re one for one, right now. They’ll need to back off and reconnoiter.”

“One for . . . What did you do, Sylvie? They killed Suarez. Did you kill—”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Sylvie said. Tish frowned at her, a weird look of disapproval in her eyes, as if Sylvie were cursing in church.

“I’ve seen the files,” Alex said, still soft. “The cases where the problem just . . . goes away. Cases where you go it alone. Do you kill people to make the problems go away?”

Things, not people, she thought, stifling that retort before it reached her lips. “Christ, Alex, are you listening to yourself? No, okay. No.” She glanced over at Tish and ruthlessly shifted the conversation. “It’s fine, it’ll be fine. Just be smart and call the cops if anything looks weird. Call Val if anything looks weirder. Her home’s loaded with protective spells. I gotta go.” Without waiting for a response, she disconnected.

Mask’s slipping, the little dark voice said.

“Find anything?” Sylvie asked.

Tish shook her head. “I sort of remember the painting. It had a lot of grey. So I was going to pull those—”

“Great, do it, don’t tell me about it,” Sylvie said. She dragged her attention to her own row of paintings and found her own worries blasted away by the first one in the row.

So small to pack so much of a punch. It was barely a foot square, but just touching it made her skin crawl. No placid landscape, no pretty portrait. A flayed chest, skin pulled back, revealed a glistening, tattered heart beneath a worn rib cage. Fingers squirmed within the bone cage, hooking into the heart, tugging it farther apart. The whole thing bled at her in tones of rust and sepia.

Tish’s footsteps headed her way, and Sylvie flipped the painting to face the wall. No need to upset the girl any further. Sylvie stared at the ruddy scrawl on the back of the canvas and shuddered. Devoured Heart, self-portrait.

Tish spread out three portraits, all rainy-day greys with women.

Sylvie grabbed the last one and brought it toward her.

“That it?” Tish said, excited.

“Oh yeah,” Sylvie said. She recognized the expression in the eyes more than anything else, that confident stare. Bran Wolf, she decided then and there, was one hell of a talent. And, she thought, as she studied it more closely, he should pay more attention to his subconscious. Lily stood on the edge of the lake, hair whipping in the wind like live wires. A drab brown woman on a drab grey background, and yet . . . Sylvie took it over toward the window where the sunlight streamed.

In the sunlight, the lake waves grew shadows beneath lines of paint scraped into place, and showed animal teeth, showed crosses burned and broken, showed red tinges beneath the grey, like blood in the water. All of it spiraling out from Lily’s shadow over the water.

“Let’s go,” she said. “We got what we came for.”

“But the agent outside—”

“He brought us here, he can take us back,” Sylvie said. She knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. Nothing with the ISI ever was, but she had a portrait of Lily in her hand, addresses incoming, and felt that she had a grip on things for the first time since she’d taken this case. One ISI agent seemed a simple obstacle.

She clattered down the stairs, Tish following, protesting with the fervor of a good girl unused to making waves.

Sylvie opened the front door and balked. She put her hand back, stopping Tish from joining her. Outside, on the hood of the cab, the little firestarter from the bar sat dribbling sparks from one hand to the next.

“Come on out, Shadows,” Helen said. “I have a bone to pick with you.”