Sins & Shadows

16 Riddled Through

SYLVIE GRIMACED AS SHE PAID THE CABBIE, FORKING OVER HER LAST twenty and a ten. She should have had Dunne magic her wallet after he’d magicked her gun. Cab fare had wiped her out, but there was no help for it. Sylvie had thought about taking Demalion’s ISI sedan but figured it was either traceable or LoJacked. She had better things to do than wait for him to track her down.

If she couldn’t trust Demalion to help her gain information, it was down to the wild card. Anna D, Val’s local Power. Sylvie was already regretting it. Anna D, witch extraordinaire, didn’t live near anything so plebeian as a bus or train route. In fact, she lived about as far from the city as she could get and still fit within the zip codes.

Away from the historic downtown area, the buildings were more modern, less prone to sneaking in bits of gothic frippery, or art deco details. Anna D’s condominium glittered like an icicle in full sun. All that glass . . . It made Sylvie shiver, imagining what use a witch could have for that many reflective surfaces.

Did she really need Anna D’s help, unknown quality that it was? The plate-glass exterior suggested a scrying witch at the very least, which could pinpoint Lily’s current whereabouts for her if she were lucky.

The ISI would have secured the church by now, and Lily would get another e-mail, warning her to stay away from home. Sylvie had nothing left to learn from that site.

If Sylvie were unlucky, the building was glass because Anna D had a thing for modern architecture; she might be a nothing talent, no matter what Val had said.

Besides, Sylvie could ruin Anna D’s life; after all, Lily was on Sylvie’s tail—or Sylvie on hers, it was hard to tell—and balefire didn’t care where it burned. Even if Lily wasn’t a threat, Dunne was. What if he came seeking Sylvie and burned Anna D out as thoroughly as he had Val? Hell, even the ISI might pose a threat to a witch who aided Sylvie.

Her phone buzzed from her jacket pocket, and she fielded it absently. “Yeah.”

“Stop dithering in my parking lot. Go away. Or, if you must, come see me.” A sharp click marked disconnection, as crisp and as final as the woman’s voice itself.

Fine, Sylvie thought. Make it easy for me. I already don’t like you; guess I won’t cry if I put you in harm’s way. She stalked into the lobby, a ragtag figure in the middle of bland eggshell and marble luxury. The lobby receptionist didn’t bother to look up, obviously forewarned, and Sylvie headed for the elevator. It dinged open as she approached it.

When Sylvie got in, she saw a floor had already been selected. What, too much trouble to just tell me the apartment number? Sylvie groused. Anna D was going to be difficult with a capital D. Sylvie only liked difficult if she was the one being that way. Other people just irritated her. Anna D was the type who played games while people died.

The elevator slid silently upward, releasing Sylvie onto the penthouse floor and a long hallway where the carpet was as gold as the beach at sunset. Sylvie stepped off, heard movement, and saw a woman walking away from her. Sylvie would have to jog to catch up. Games.

She growled and followed at her own speed, studying the stiff elegance of the woman’s walk, the formal suit, the low-heeled shoes. An older woman, with a crisp style to match the voice she’d heard on the phone. Guess Anna D didn’t have a servant, Sylvie thought, just as the woman reached the doorway to the penthouse, opened it, then, without turning, closed it in Sylvie’s face.

Kill it, the dark voice snarled. No, Sylvie thought, taking her hand from the gun. But Anna D had better be a font of useful information.

Sylvie expressed her feelings by ignoring the brass doorbell and pounding on the door.

It opened immediately. Games, Sylvie thought again, bit back the growl, and blamed Erinya’s jacket for bringing out the Fury in her.

The woman blocked the doorway and studied Sylvie, an eyebrow arched, the lips just slightly curled enough to express dismay and contempt. Sylvie stared back just as rudely. Society woman. An aging movie starlet in the gracious style: Hepburn and Garbo rather than Cher. Anna D was old-school elegance personified. Her sleek dark hair, untouched with grey, swept back into a tidy bob. Her eyes were the color of sandstone, her skin firm and deeply olive and oddly, she reminded Sylvie of someone she knew.

She dared another glance at those sunset-colored eyes and felt suspicion prickle. Kill it, her dark voice had said. Anna D wasn’t just a witch. Anna D probably wasn’t even human. The woman’s mouth shifted, and she spoke, clipped, precise, clinical.

I bring joy and pain in equal measure,

yet men dream on me with naught but pleasure.

I make strong men weak, and weak men strong.

I am the heart of every song.

I can ne’er be touched, but only felt.

Once forced to flight by candle melt.

If I am caught, I die if neglected,

but, like hope, may be resurrected.

Who am I?

Sylvie banged her head on the doorjamb, unutterably sick of this. “I knew you were the type to play games. Let me guess. You’re not going to let me in, or answer any of my questions until I answer yours.”

“Worse,” Anna D said, a touch of condescension sliding into that blank voice. “I will neither allow you to enter, nor aid you, until you answer my riddle correctly.”

“You do know people are dying.”

“It’s the human condition.”

“Repeat it,” Sylvie said.

“You don’t listen very well,” Anna D said. “Tell me—what did the sorcerer name you—do you remember? If you repeat his words, I will repeat mine.”

Sylvie blinked. The sorcerer? The Maudit she’d shot? How could Anna know about—

“I grow bored.”

“It was French,” Sylvie said. “I don’t speak French. Enfant. Le Enfant Meurtrier, something like that.”

“Yes,” Anna said. “L’enfant du meurtrier. He recognized you. As I do.”

“Maybe you’ve got the wrong idea,” Sylvie said. “I know who I am. I need to know who Lily—”

“L’enfant du meurtrier,” Anna D said. “The Murderer’s Child.”

After a moment, Sylvie said, “I’ve heard worse,” refusing to show that the name-calling rocked something deep inside her. Not Murderer, but Murderer’s Child. The murderer, like she should know what or who that meant. She realized Anna D, that bitch, had taken advantage of her silent abstraction to recite her riddle again, and she’d nearly missed it.

Anna D’s lips tilted up at the corners, a feline smile of triumph and pleasure. Sylvie watched it grow, become more purely about victory, watched the door begin to close. At the last moment, Sylvie put her hand out, slapped the door back, and solved the riddle. “Love.”

She grinned her own nasty triumph at the witch, and said, “I can play games, too.”

Anna D stalked away from the door, ceding this round; Sylvie had a mental image of a ticked-off cat, lashing its tail, and smiled again.

“At least you recognize it,” Anna D said, dropping into a velveteen-covered chair. “Enough to answer the question, and that’s something.” She sounded as if she were reassuring herself. She stroked the chair arms where the beige velvet tucked itself beneath brass nailheads.

Sylvie wandered around the sunken living room, with the focus not a television or entertainment system, but the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Looked like she was right; Anna D was a scryer.

“It’s like multiple-choice tests, really. When in doubt, choose B. Riddles always end in love or death.” She detoured over to a knickknack table covered in crystal globes of varying size; she picked one up and warmed it in her hand. “So many things do.”

“You guessed?” Anna D said.

“Correctly,” Sylvie said. “Isn’t that what matters?”

Anna sank back into her seat; her expression, never warm, faded to an icy hauteur. “You are a fool, Ms. Lightner. A dangerous one. You pick up shards of fact, hoard them like a magpie, pushing shiny things this way and that, and cackle over your own cleverness. You lack vision. Love, Ms. Lightner, is more than the answer to my riddle. It’s the source of the problems you face.”

“I get it already,” Sylvie said. Her ears burned. She set the little crystal down before she hurled it at something. Or someone.

“Let me be precise. Love made Dunne a god. The dissolution of love will reset the world, and both the mortal realm and the divine will be forever altered.”

“How about you shut up about me and start talking about Lily?” Sylvie said.

Anna D drew herself up in the chair; her hands flexed over the curved arms and stretched like claws. “I cannot discuss one without the other. You and the woman you misname are thrice linked, by blood, by circumstance, by purpose.”

“Like my own evil twin,” Sylvie said, pushing away another touch of chill with empty rejoinder. She sat down on the coffee table, hunched into the jacket for warmth, and tried to enjoy the way Anna bristled at the casual misuse of her furniture.

“Tell me about her then, if you know so much. Tell me how I have anything to do with her, other than being the one sent to make her give back what she’s taken.”

Anna D bridled again at Sylvie’s challenge but finally said, “There were humans even before the gods turned their interest to the mortal realm. The gods began to watch, to shape themselves to interact with the humans, and the humans reacted accordingly. Millennia passed with each of us shaping the other. Then several of the gods chose to create their own peoples—”

“Start at the very beginning, why don’t you?” Sylvie muttered, leaned forward, and put her head in her hands. She could smell the leather of Erinya’s coat, lingering smoke, and a lingering wisp of Demalion’s cologne. Damn, he smells good.

“I am not talking for my own edification, Ms. Lightner,” Anna D said, in a schoolteacher-prissy tone of voice, and wasn’t Sylvie going to kick someone’s ass for telling the witch her real name. . . .

“I get it,” Sylvie said, when the silence continued, when she realized she was going to have to listen actively, like some remedial student. “So which creation myth are we talking?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“I don’t think you like it when I guess.”

“Her name’s not Lily,” Anna D said. “It’s Lilith, and she is an immortal creature of immense will, frustration, and rage.”

“Lilith,” Sylvie said, thought she said, though no sound came from her mouth. Her lips felt cold. It wasn’t surprise; it felt like fate. After all, it was the succubi, Lilith’s daughters, that had brought Sylvie into awareness of the Magicus Mundi all that time ago, Lilith’s influence that had seen Sylvie’s innocence shattered. Lilith’s touch tainted everything. Her fingers curled tightly into fists, stretching the jacket’s pockets taut.

“Your conflict was inevitable—”

“I made some of her daughters dead,” Sylvie said. “In retrospect, not the smartest move ever.” She picked up one of the little crystals and juggled it hand to hand. No wonder Demalion had taken to carrying one; they were as smoothly soothing as meditation balls minus the annoying chime.

“She has other offspring,” Anna D said. “What’s a double handful of them gone to a woman like her? To a woman of enormous will and obsessive focus? They could not help her; she dismissed them from her mind. But you, Ms. Lightner, are fated to face her.”

“Fate’s just an easy word for not trying,” Sylvie said. “I make my own choices, make my own fate.”

“Perhaps fate was the wrong word,” Anna said, shifting in her seat to gaze at the sheet glass. Sylvie doubted that she and Anna D were seeing the same sky beyond it. “There are patterns. Cause and effect, choices so small they’re meaningless until the accumulation is clear. Do you like to look in mirrors, Ms. Shadows? Do you like what you see?”

“We were talking about Lilith,” Sylvie said.

“We still are,” Anna D said. “Answer me.”

“I always wanted green eyes,” Sylvie said.

“Do not be pert,” Anna D snapped, lips drawing into a snarl; her teeth seemed rather long and very white. “I have put up with enough of your foolishness. What do you see in the mirror?”

“Myself,” Sylvie said, intimidated despite herself. The Furies were always enraged; their sudden bursts of temper were expected. This feral distortion of an elegant woman just plain scared her. Kill it, the dark voice hissed again.

“Tell me,” Anna D said. “Is it the same face you used to show? Back when you first chose to protect? Or is it the face of a Fury, driven to punish?” Cat-quick, she reached out and flicked Sylvie’s sleeve, leaving a long, rough scratch in the leather. “You smell of blood and death.”

Sylvie slipped out of the woman’s reach and rose. She leaned up against the cool glass and closed her eyes. “I know who I am,” she said. “Tell me about Lilith.”

She opened her eyes and watched Anna D sink back in the chair, almost seeming to dwindle. The woman’s lips parted, the barest sigh soughed out. “You don’t know,” she said. “But we’ll come at it another way. Lilith hates her God. Do you know that?”

“He told her to obey Adam.”

Anna D made a chuffing sound, flicked her fingers open, dispersing nothing. “That for Adam. It was always about her God. She was created to be perfect, proud and intelligent, caring—why wouldn’t she be all those things?—she was designed by a god, after all.”

“You make her sound good,” Sylvie said. “Not a demon.”

“Lilith is as human as you, though considerably more long-lived,” Anna D said. “She walked paradise and looked outside, at the other peoples, the ones her God meant to improve upon. They suffered fear, pain, death. Lilith asked why they should suffer, when she did not? Why were they forbidden the garden, when there was abundance within that never abated? She finally began to ask why God deserved her worship at all. What made Him worthy of devotion? What separated Him from the flock outside but a happenstance of power?

“She watched as he brought Eve into existence, the serpent, the tree. Soon after that, he punished them both, casting them out.”

“Bluebeard,” Sylvie murmured. “A planned punishment. An unfair test. Death.”

“Lilith deciphered His plan. Eden was limited, even with his handmade followers. To that end, He sent Adam and Eve into exile, frightened, pathetic, hurting, so that their heartbroken, homesick wails could stir envy and longing in the hearts of other peoples. Stirring the desire to bow down, if only to earn a chance at the beautiful garden for themselves. After all, heaven is only a heaven in comparison to a hell.

“The more Lilith learned, the more she swore to depose Him. She created an army to storm his realm, an army she birthed herself. But her children were as earthbound as she, and so she turned to slaughtering men, in hopes of luring Him down to her level.

“Through every war she waged, every death she laid at His door, her God never responded, stayed remote and unconcerned with the world below. It drove her mad.”

“She kidnapped Bran to get a god’s power,” Sylvie said. “To confront God in His own realm.” She closed her eyes, finding a smile on her lips at the pure simplicity of the plan. If the mountain won’t come to you—she almost wished Lilith well. Except, of course, it was Dunne’s power, and Dunne’s lover, her client and Sylvie’s own life at risk.

“Such a god, too,” Anna D said. “One whose powers could rally multitudes of other powers behind it. She plans well.”

Justice? Sylvie thought, skeptical. Justice was a cold and abstract thing for most people, nothing to fire the blood.

“You sympathize,” Anna D said. “You agree with her choice to make things right?”

“Right?” Sylvie said, “Right rarely involves burning people to death in a nightclub. Yes, I sympathize. But I will stop her.”

“What cost are you willing to pay?” Anna D said, and waved a hand at the glass, her eyes distant, pupils narrowing.

Sylvie turned and blinked. Scrying without spell casting was an inborn talent, and didn’t allow anyone but the talented to see—but the images rippled over the glass, visible even to her.

Sylvie’s mother sat at a hotel desk, phone hunched between her shoulder and ear, one hand on her laptop keyboard, the other holding a cup of coffee, probably far from her first or last. Her father read at a table strewn with paper, red pen tucked between his fingers, sighing as he brought it into use. The usual vacation for them, in other words. Her sister crawled halfway out of the academy’s restroom window to sneak a smoke without setting off the smoke detectors. Sylvie made a note: kick Zoe’s butt when I get back.

Alex appeared in Sylvie’s office, on the phone, spinning in the chair with a look of utter frustration on her face. She tossed the cell on the desk and jumped to her feet at some sound Sylvie couldn’t hear. Alex had raided Sylvie’s closet again, wore her ’Canes Windbreaker, and the gag belt buckle Zoe had given Sylvie, the fist-sized steel plate that spelled out Sylvie in rhinestone glitter. Sylvie wondered if Alex had ever gone home, or if she, like the loyal dog, intended to camp out and pine for her mistress.

The image blurred, swirling, as the silver warning bell gyrated in its bowl. Alex slumped into the seat then, and crumpled, not frustrated but scared, crying, and Sylvie wasn’t there. . . .

The window glass cracked, spiderwebbing with impact and dispersing the vision. For a brief moment, the glass showed blowing sand, the jagged teeth of a broken pyramid. The small crystal ball, chipped now, fell to the carpet with a thunk and rolled back down the steps to Sylvie’s feet. She picked it up again, barely remembering loosing it in the first place, though her shoulder ached with the force of her throw. “Don’t bring my family into this.”

Anna D gasped, sounding pained as if the crack of the glass had found an echo in her bones. Anna D looked older suddenly, her bones etched clearly beneath tight skin.

“Your family is already a part of it. The Murderer’s Child. Lilith loved once, loved a man who she believed had been manipulated and wronged. Cain, his name. Cain, the murderer. His line continues through you. Lilith is your ultimate dam, and you are the first one of her human children to be truly awake for centuries. Do you still think you know who you are?”

It blindsided Sylvie; the crystal left her hand again, dropped from numbed fingers.

“You can’t trust yourself; Lilith is in your blood. Her strength keeps you from bowing before power, but it taints as much as it protects. All Lilith would have to do is call to you, and you’d join her—”

“No,” Sylvie said, then more fiercely. “No. You’ve obviously never seen two alpha bitches meet. Why should I believe you? You’re not even human. For all I know, you could be Lilith’s hireling, meant to keep me distracted, meant to confuse me. You sure as hell don’t like me. I can’t see any reason on earth why you’d help me, and yet, here you sit, dispensing your wisdom with a cryptic hand. And really, you’ve told me nothing.”

“I’ve told you everything.”

“You’ve told me what was. I live in the present. I have to deal with the now. It’s good to know who I face, but it’d be better to know where she is.”

“You’re right,” Anna D said. “I don’t like you. You’re dangerous. But it could be worse. You could be worse, could become a dark creature to rival your dam. Do you want to travel that path?”

“I hate backtracking,” Sylvie said flatly. “If I’m on a path, there’s only one way to go, and that’s forward. No matter where it takes me.”

“Whoever said there are no branches?” Anna D said. “You’re very near a fork in your path. Do not pass it by, unseeing.”

“I think I liked it better when you were spitting insults,” Sylvie said. “At least, that was sincere. New-age metaphors are not your thing.”

Claws shkked out; the chair arms shredded beneath her tense fingers, and Anna D sighed, contemplating the foam stuffing beneath her nails. “I haven’t lost my temper in years. Congratulations, Ms. Lightner.”

“It’s a talent,” Sylvie said. “Apparently inborn.” She turned and headed for the door. Enough was enough.

“Lilith’s chosen future promises a bloody revolution that will damn generations to agony and pit god against god. Inhuman, I may be, and old with it, but there are those whose futures I would guard, those whom I love,” Anna D said. Her voice was tired. “You seem to be the vanguard to stop it, much as it pains me. You, Ms. Lightner, are every mother’s nightmare. To know that my son’s future hinges on your actions—can you blame me for my concern? You are reckless when cornered. You trample others on your path. Worst of all, you are willfully blind to things that should be readily visible.”

“You don’t know when to quit,” Sylvie said. “I almost felt sympathy for you—before you decided to go for the free-for-all into my flaws. Look, no one’s dying today. Keep your son out of my way, and there’s no problem. I don’t put people between me and my enemies.”

“Even when they volunteer?” Anna D looked up at her, her eyes summer-sand hot, blazing with fury. “You don’t even recognize it. You truly believe my son dislikes you, distrusts you. Sometime you should ask him, what wouldn’t he do for you. The answer might shock you. It should shame you.”

Sylvie swallowed. Oh. Maybe she had been narrow-sighted too long, to miss this one. Anna D’s son wasn’t just some stranger at risk in a changing world. Anna D’s son was Michael Demalion. Sylvie walked back into the living room and took a seat, landing suddenly in a chair as her knees failed. “Demalion’s your—”

“I thought it obvious,” Anna D said.

“He’s human.”

“As was his father.”

“He works for the ISI. He studies ways to drive things like you out of this world, or at least make them uncomfortable enough to move abroad. He . . . he doesn’t know what you are.” Sylvie studied the proud lines of the woman’s face, the regal set of her neck, and laughed. “And you think I have denial issues.”

“Your opinion is irrelevant.” Anna D shifted in her seat.

Oh, Anna D regretted opening her mouth, Sylvie thought. She recognized the twitchiness, as if the discomfort were something physical that could be relieved. “What are you, anyway?” Sylvie asked.

What lies in desert sands

with a hiss?

Long-tailed,

smooth-shaled,

not a serpent,

yet deadly in her kiss?

Back to that again, Sylvie thought; to her surprise, the answer sprang up, unprompted, when she had expected Anna D to win this round. Maybe it was the sum of small things, piling up like a snowdrift, her mind working overtime to prove Anna D wrong. “Sphinx,” she said. “You’re the Sphinx.” And still speaking in riddles, still testing men. Belatedly, she wondered what would have happened if she’d guessed wrong. Historically, death had been the result. A kiss? That was one way to describe having your head bitten off, she supposed.

Anna D nodded.

“Put those pieces together right, didn’t I?” Sylvie rose. “You’ve told me everything about Lilith that you can, am I right? You don’t know where she is.”

“Lilith can veil herself, an inverse use of her self-will. As she makes herself charismatic, she can also make herself a will-o’-the-wisp.”

“Just like school.” Sylvie sighed. “All theory. No real-world application.”

“You’ll find your flippancy will mean nothing against her. You cannot win. The best you will do is delay her victory, prevent her from usurping the god’s power.”

“Sounds like defeat to me,” Sylvie said. “You’ve accused me of missing or misinterpreting facts and decided I’ll fail in my job. Let me tell you what you’ve misunderstood. Immortality is a weakness. There’s nothing Lilith can want as fiercely as I can. She has all the time in the world, after all. If she loses now, there’s always later, always a backup plan for another time. But humans know we only get a lifetime, a bare handful of years. So little time to redeem our mistakes—” She cut herself off, and shook her head, shook the thoughts away. She stood, rolled the little crystal ball back into its holder. “Never underestimate the will of a creature who begins to die at birth.”