Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel (31 page)

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

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

“No,” Riordan denied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s my son.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Sit down,” Sylvie said.

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

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

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

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

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

“You came in wired?”

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

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

“My men—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Tell me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, for Merrow.

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

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

Girl, rather.

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

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

“Sylvie, you’re on fire,” Zoe said.

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

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

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

“Love you, too, sis,” Sylvie said.

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

Manipulations

THEY ERUPTED OUT ONTO THE STREET, THREE OF THEM COUGHING IN the smoke that billowed out after them, Merrow a silent deadweight at the end of Sylvie’s arms. Her shoulders protested, even with Zoe taking his ankles. Suarez had refused to arrest him, saying, “I can’t hold him securely. I won’t put my colleagues at risk. We’re in enough trouble.”

“I wasn’t going to give him to you anyway,” Sylvie said. “He’s got info I want.”

For once, something was going their way. Streets that were normally busy and crowded with pedestrians were all but empty. The only witness to their exodus was a gull that shrieked and flapped toward the sea.

Sylvie said, “Where is everyone?”

“Staying home. Trying not to catch the plague,” Suarez said. “Didn’t you notice that traffic was lighter than usual?”

“I just thought I caught a break,” Sylvie said. She shook herself. “Yeah. I should have noticed.”

“You two get out of here. Talk to him. Find out how to stop the plagues.”

“You’re not coming?”

“I discharged my weapon. I shot and killed federal
agents. If I want to keep my job, I need to stay here and call it in.”

“All right,” Sylvie said. Zoe whined about Merrow being heavy and to hurry it up. “Be careful, Lio.”

“Y tú. Cuidate.”

Sylvie rubbed blood off her cheek, and said, “Yeah.”

Merrow twitched and mumbled; Zoe dropped his feet, grabbed the stun gun and zapped him again. His eyes rolled up in his head as the newest jolt left him partially conscious but in no shape to be casting spells. Good enough.

“Zoe. Leave him some brain cells,” Sylvie said.

“Whatever. Where are we taking him?”

“Val’s is home base.”

“You asked her first, right?”

“Of course I did. Couldn’t have gotten everyone past the wards without her permission.” Sylvie winced. Those wards were toast. Had been ever since Lupe ushered Erinya in. Magical wards had been replaced with a jungle that seethed and hungered. They were on the road, driving the ISI car along a pleasantly deserted highway, almost to their destination when Sylvie did a little mental head slap. She was bringing two witches to a god. While she didn’t care if Erinya burned every last drop of witchcraft back out of Merrow, Zoe was another story.