Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel (24 page)

“So you answer to what?
Player?
”

He squinted up at her; apparently his English didn’t go so far as modern dating references. “You don’t need my name. We’re not going to be friends.”

“Fine by me,” Sylvie said.

“I want to know what the Mora said. If she told you why she was attacking those humans.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Just tell me,” he snapped. “I don’t have time to play games with a trigger-happy human.”

Sylvie crossed her arms over her chest, tapped her gun meaningfully. “Games, no. Basic courtesy? Never a bad thing.”

“Courtesy.” He looked back toward the glistening water, the oily snake ripples of slow waves beneath the moonlight. “This whole visit is a courtesy. I could have compelled you.”

“Could have tried,” Sylvie said. “Look. The Mora didn’t say much. A lot of
We were here first, you should remember us
, and one small hint that maybe she was sent. She didn’t give me name, rank, and serial number. Too busy trying to kill me by nightmares.”

“Her words?”

Sylvie huffed out exasperation. He raked water from his hair with an impatient hand, spat salt water at her feet. The wards hissed and bubbled. The air smelled of fish.

“I challenged her. Said I knew someone had to be sending them. It’s just not normal behavior for the
Magicus Mundi
.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not.” Some of the anger drained away. “You’re aware of this?”

“It was the succubus that convinced me,” Sylvie said. “I know them. They drain their victims over the course of several days. Weeks if they’re feeling sentimental. They don’t pick up automatic weapons and start mowing down government agents. They don’t waste their food.”

“And mermaids don’t come this far inland, and sand wraiths don’t like lake cities. It’s anomalous. People are paying attention.”

“No, they’re really not,” Sylvie said. “That’s the other half of the problem.”

“Not your people,” he said, lips twisting. “
Mine.
Humans. Think you’re the only ones that matter. We were here from the beginning. We’ve been around since before your kind had language.
We
are the people. You all are…

“What?” she challenged. Both irritated and curious. His attitude was regrettable, but she couldn’t help but find him intriguing. She’d never really sat down and had a conversation with a monster before—a few gods, yeah, but a monster? No. She was friends with a werewolf or two, but they considered themselves human, descendants of Lilith and regular wolves. Human, with extras.

His gaze was flat, black, and unfriendly. “Interlopers. Scavengers. Prey.”

“Nice,” she said.

“Are your words for us any better? Monsters? Nightmares? Creatures?
Things?
” He shook his head—another gesture that was subtly off. His neck didn’t seem to have the flexibility of a human’s. “It doesn’t matter. That’s not why I’m here. You didn’t learn anything from the Mora. You just killed her. So from now on? Stay out of my business.”

She felt him pressing his will on her, trying to urge her to do just that. But she was made of sterner stuff, and there was a ward between them as well. She shook it off.

“What were you going to do? Talk to her while she killed you? One thing I do know about your
people
… you turn on each other just as easily as you turn on us.”

He turned, disinterested. A patch of darkness on his neck showed, and Sylvie leaned forward. Was that a hole?

“Hey,” she said, pushing curiosity aside again. “I have a question.”

“I don’t care,” he said.

“Don’t make me shoot you in the leg,” Sylvie said. “We’ve been getting along so well. Come on. One question.”

He paused; his skin twitched and rippled like an animal pestered by an insect. Then he huffed. Water vapor burst out of his neck.

Hole,
she thought.
Blowhole. Went with the dolphin shape-shifting.
She knew what he was.

“What?” he said. “Ask me your question.”

“You think something’s coercing or confusing the monsters who are attacking the ISI.”

“That’s not a question.”

“There’s someone modifying human memories also, more confusion and coercion. That your doing?” She couldn’t believe it was Yvette, much as she’d like to. The thing was, the thing Riordan hadn’t mentioned, maybe didn’t know—the memory attacks had been going on for far longer than the ISI attacks. Why would an ISI witch cover up
Maudit
misbehavior, some of which wasn’t even in the USA? Why would an ISI witch gunning for promotion use a power that was injuring or killing the people she was supposed to protect? It just seemed messy and disorganized. Yvette, by Demalion’s accounts, was neither of those things.

She was looking for someone else. Maybe the creature in front of her. Even as she asked, she didn’t believe it. His power was small; his field of influence narrow. He’d stood outside the wards and called, and the only one who woke was Sylvie. Because he’d touched her. The memory plague was affecting people citywide simultaneously. She let the accusation stand, though. To see what he would say. The more she kept him talking, the more chance she could figure out his angle.

“Why would I—”

“It seems to me that you’ve been sent to stop these attacks. That they’re drawing heat down on your heads. You’re not doing a good job at the main source. Not stopping the monsters. Are you cleaning up after them? You said you’re charming. You’re sure as hell working the compulsion magic. You’re Encantado.”

Like the fairy-tale creature he was, he shivered all over when she named him. As if she’d diminished him.

“Your name for my people. Not ours,” he said. “But yes, I am Encantado.”

“So, are you brainwashing my people, making them forget what your people are doing? I thought it was witchcraft, but I’m willing to adjust my theory.”

He jerked his head, teeth flashing and clicking.

Sylvie took a prudent step away. Didn’t look friendly. He pressed back up at the edge of the ward, leaned close. She could smell him—something salty and pungent and
something faintly animal beneath the human skin. Legends said that the Encantado seduced women who wandered too close to the riverbanks. Right now, she couldn’t imagine any woman touching him.

She closed her hand tighter around her gun, thought of Alex and Demalion sleeping back at the house. They seemed very far away at the moment.

The ward sizzled and sang, clicks and pops that almost sound like dolphin chatter.

“It’s not our way to hide ourselves,” he said. “That’s yours. Sneaking and prying and stealing away in the dark. Aggressive, greedy, cowardly monkey-things. Someone’s taking your memories? I don’t care. Someone’s taking our
lives
and using them as
weapons
.”

His face closed off, his mouth snapped shut, his eyes shuttered. She expected him to leave, but instead he let out another huffing breath, and said, “Perhaps we can make a deal.”

“A deal?” Sylvie said. “Sure you trust a greedy monkey?”

He parted his teeth at her again; his tongue was white in the darkness.

“My people are being used. I think by the very people they attack.”

“The ISI?” Sylvie said. There was another vote for internal strife turning into a massacre.

“Yes. The better to make themselves a needed force in the world. I can’t be in two places at once,” he said. “I’ve been focusing on stopping the attacks.”

“Really,” Sylvie said. “Bang-up job. You’re what? Always an hour too late?”

“It’s my only option,” he said. “Someone’s leashing my people with magic. Leading them around like dogs. That person has to be close by. I’m hunting them. I don’t know who I’m looking for. The ISI would know.
You
can get inside the ISI and get out again. You can get me that name. I expect it’s one of their own. A secret branch within a secret branch. Your government would love to harness us.”

“Like a dolphin with a bomb strapped to it.”

He shot her an ugly glance. “Exactly like that. Except we don’t need any weapon but ourselves.”

“All right,” Sylvie said. “What do I get if I pass any information on to you?”

“Stopping the attacks isn’t enough?”

Sylvie shook off her ingrained urge to bargain, but before she could apologize, he said, “How about an answer to your problem. The Good Sisters.”

“The what?”

“Your memory witches. The Society of the Good Sisters. They’re the ones wiping out your memories. Or so the rumors say. More than that, I don’t know. Is that enough for our deal?”

Sylvie eyed him in the dimness, the sleek inhuman smoothness of him, and tried to figure out his angle. He had one, that was for sure. He had no love for humans, but he might be telling the truth. She had to go after Graves anyway, and if the Encantado was being truthful, if the Good Sisters existed, the ISI would have files on them.

“Yeah,” she said, but he was already moving away as smoothly as he’d come, heading for the ocean. He strode into the slow roll of the surf, smoothed into dolphin shape, and was gone.

Sylvie turned back toward the house and got light-dazzled for her pains as room after room suddenly illuminated. She headed toward the house at a careful trot, and met Alex rushing out.

“Sylvie,” Alex called, her voice reaching ahead of her. She stumbled as she came, too impatient to wait for her eyes to adapt from the interior light to the darkness outside. Impatient. Or afraid. Sylvie felt her spine go cold. She guessed Alex’s words even as she gasped them out.

“Someone’s trying to get through the wards,” Alex said, stopping before she tumbled head over heels. “How do we stop them from getting through? I know computers. Not magic.”

“We can’t,” Sylvie said. “The wards aren’t walls, Alex. They’re spellwork, nothing more.”

“But you did all sorts of magicky stuff to open—”

“Only because I didn’t want to spend our entire time here fighting the urge to
get out, get out
. That’s all the wards do. Give you the creeping terrors. Make you miserably ill. Encourage you to leave, posthaste. The magical equivalent of a pack of growling pit bulls. Otherwise, Val’s house would be surrounded with the bodies of solicitors and neighborhood kids who climbed the fence. It’s a pretty strong spell, though. I’ve never seen anyone defeat it. Did you see who it was?”

“No,” Alex said. “I was watching Lupe when I suddenly got the urge to get up and check the security system—that was the wards alerting me, right? The camera shows a car at the gate, but there’s no one in it. They climbed the fence?”

“It’s what I would have done. Especially if I knew the house was empty of an actual witch.”

Alex looked miserable, and Sylvie said, “Hey. Val’s place is still safer than anywhere else I was thinking of. You did good. We have a defensible place with a good warning system. And hell, if they actually try to breach the house, we’ll be swarmed with cops. Val believes in tech as well as magic.”

They’d reached the house, Sylvie ushering Alex in ahead of her. Sylvie reactivated the alarm on the door she’d come through and sent Alex to the security monitors. “See if you can get eyes on our intruder. Odds are, they’re probably either headed back toward the gate—chased out by the ward—or they’re fighting to move forward.”

“But if they got past the ward—”

“Val’s wards are nasty. You go through one, and it sticks to you. They’ll be fighting it until they’re released from it or flee. So, at the very least, our intruder’s not at their best.”

The question was, who was after them now? Lupe’s injured witch, coming back for revenge? The
Maudits
, belatedly realizing one of their own was dead?

“There’s nothing on the monitors!” Alex called out. While Sylvie had paused to think, Alex had hit the security room just off the main hallway. Her voice was shrill, pitched to carry, and it brought Demalion and Lupe out of their rooms. Demalion looked wary, bare-chested, gun in his hand. Lupe just looked tired. And toxic. Her crossed arms were swirled with color, bleeding up from within. Sylvie grimaced. Lupe might be too far gone to go back to human.

Sylvie headed toward the front door, waving at them to stay back, jerked her head toward Demalion, toward Lupe, and saw Demalion move to cover her.

A sudden
thump thump thump
sounded at the front door, muffled by the thickness of the material—steel core beneath a wood veneer.

“Alex, get eyes on the front door?”

Sylvie was surprised the intruder had made it that far. Val’s aversion spells didn’t mess around. She crept to the door, peered out through the peephole. The spyhole wasn’t a regular kind. Some sort of magic was laid on it. The figure leaning on the door was traced with layers of different-color lights. Some type of magical diagnostic Sylvie couldn’t interpret, no doubt designed to let Val know exactly who or what she was letting in.

Sylvie didn’t need the diagnostic. She recognized their inopportune caller.

“Little pig, little pig,” Marah said, her voice reedy through the door. “Let me in. Or I’ll huff, and I’ll puff…

“It’s a woman. I don’t know her,” Alex said, poking her head into the hall.

“She’s that ISI assassin I told you about. We had pictures of her, remember?”

“Sorry. Been a long few days.”

Sylvie swallowed. A long few days and some evil spellwork.

“Marah Stone,” Demalion said. “She’s okay. Let her in.”

“She’s okay?” Sylvie said. “Verdict’s not unanimous on that.”

“Sylvie, don’t be difficult,” he said.

“She works for the goddamn ISI. She’s part of the people who took my sister. You’ve seen the error of your ways. I doubt that she has.”

Demalion’s lips went white and tight, irritated. “Can’t you just, for once, trust me? Marah and I spent fourteen hours trapped under the rubble of the ISI. She’s loyal to them the same way I am. To the cause. Not the division heads.”

“She kills people.”

“So do you.”

A low blow, and that he had said it only showed her how determined he was. Demalion put his hand on the door handle. “Turn off the alarm.”

Sylvie thought of all the hell they’d been through that day, thought about Demalion’s giving himself to Erinya so she could be healed, thought about the likelihood of more violence and trouble in the near future, and decided she wasn’t going to fight him. Not on this.