“We don’t kill people,” Riordan said.
“You can tell yourself that all you want,” Sylvie said. “Doesn’t make it so.”
He gave ground; she let herself out into the hall, breathed in the softer air of recently vacuumed carpet, slightly dusty light fixtures, and nothing of bleach and death.
Lio and Janssen broke off their staring contest when she opened the door. Janssen’s face twisted into a scowl. Lio’s didn’t warm much either; in fact, he looked downright angry. “You done playing, Shadows? ’Cause Lourdes is going to be frantic.”
“Yeah, we’re going,” Sylvie said.
Janssen said, “No, you’re not—”
Riordan just shook his head. “Yeah, she is.”
Lio pushed himself up out of his seat; the table creaked beneath his palms. Still hurting, still sore. Sylvie reached to give him some support, and he jerked away from her touch, headed slowly out the door.
“Are you giving us a ride back?” Sylvie asked. “Or do I bill you for the cab fare?”
“I’ll get you a driver,” Riordan muttered. “Don’t get used to it, Shadows. I’m still going to . . .” He trailed off.
“You’re not very good at being threatening,” Sylvie said. “Work on it.”
Sylvie made her way back out toward the front of the hotel, found Lio there, blinking and swaying in the sunlight, and reached to steady him again. He shook her off. “Don’t touch me.”
“What’s your problem?” Sylvie asked. “I should be the pissy one. You’re the guy who turned me in to the ISI.”
“You killed Odalys,” Lio said.
“I did not,” she said. “Christ, Lio, she was in jail.”
“Don’t blaspheme,” he muttered. He paced, forcing some fluidity into sore limbs, gone stiff with his hospital stay, and the no-doubt bed rest that Lourdes would have prescribed. “Janssen said the killer took her hands. That she was tortured before she died. You did that?”
“I didn’t,” Sylvie said. “You have a hearing problem? I don’t kill people.”
“No,” he said. “Maybe not directly. You have pagan gods do it for you.” His voice broke, and in the crack it left, Sylvie saw fear.
She should have expected it. She had expected it days ago, back when she first started to explain the Magicus Mundi to him, had seen a glimmer of panic in his hospital bed, but this—this was the corrosive terror that meant he wasn’t going to cope. He’d wanted to know, and the knowledge was going to break him.
She’d made a mistake telling him.
Into the silence, Lio said, “This is a democratic country. There’s a contract that we keep faith with. We arrest people, we try them, we find them guilty or we acquit them. They are sentenced. Their punishment takes their time and their freedom, or a death that we make simple and clean. We don’t torture for punishment or for proof. We don’t sentence people before their trials. An eye for an eye leaves the world blind. Vengeance destroys what makes us human.”
Sylvie growled. “You were pleased enough that your son’s killers were destroyed. You are a hypocrite, Lio.”
“Perhaps I am. But I didn’t sentence them. You did.”
A black SUV pulled up, smooth as silk, into the roadway before them; a dark-haired woman in a suit got out, and said, “So where am I taking you?” The question was directed at both of them, but the woman’s focus was all on Sylvie.
“You’re taking him home,” Sylvie said. “I’ll find my own ride.” Best to give Suarez some space, some time to calm down. He’d lived through a Castro Cuba, earned citizenship by fighting in the Gulf, worked his way up the ranks in the Miami police. He was a tough bastard.
“Damn,” she said. “I was hoping we could chat.”
Lio eased himself into the passenger seat, closed the door with a solid thud. The driver lingered, standing on the curb, waiting for Sylvie’s response. Sylvie blinked; she hadn’t thought the woman’s attention was anything more than ISI attitude.
“Doubt we have anything to talk about,” Sylvie said. She badly wanted to be out of there, away from the ISI. And this suit in particular was beginning to set off alarm bells. It wasn’t the woman’s poise or confidence, wasn’t the tough-girl vibe that made Sylvie convinced the woman was a brawler and a gunfighter. It was that she acted like she knew Sylvie.
“We could start with the favor I did for you. Or we could talk about Michael Demalion,” she said. “But if you won’t, you won’t.” She saluted Sylvie briefly, a quick twist of her fingers near her brows, a casual gesture that should have been mocking. But the woman’s hand, drawn to Sylvie’s attention, looked . . . bloodstained. A mottled, muddy crimson wash over her knuckles and palm, rising upward to her wrist and beyond.
It wasn’t a birthmark or skin ailment. Sylvie had seen that mark before, and recently.
“Wait,” Sylvie said.
“Too late,” the woman said. “Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll get together at some point.”
The agent climbed into the SUV and disappeared into the steady stream of traffic. Sylvie, despite wanting to get away from the ISI, found herself meandering gently to the nearest bench and dropping into it. The metal slats were soothingly warm through her clothes, and she leaned back. Her head was going to burst. Ducks squabbled on the green surface of the nearby canal.
Too much information—murdered Odalys, Tepeyollotl, the need to find Azpiazu, Azpiazu’s theoretical immortality, the falling-out with Lio, and now this ISI mind game?
Murderer, her little dark voice whispered, belatedly identifying the female ISI agent. Not by name, but by profession.
Even if she hadn’t mentioned Demalion and a favor in the same breath, Sylvie would have known. She’d done some quiet research on her own since Zoe’s incident, since that same magical scar showed up on her sister’s flesh, trying to figure out what that scar meant. Rumors proliferated—the only clear truths she could grasp were that the scarring was rare and only blossomed on specialized killers. What made them special, no one knew.
Sylvie plucked at the gaps in the bench, drew lines between the bars, bridging the eternally distant, and gave in to impulse. She called Demalion.
It rang, but he didn’t answer. She disconnected before Wright’s voice mail could pick up, waited.
Her phone buzzed. “Shadows,” she said.
“Sorry, honey,” Demalion said.
“You’re at work,” she said. “And not alone. They think it’s your wife calling?”
“Seemed easiest,” Demalion said.
“You got the word out on Odalys?” she asked.
“Took some careful maneuvering, but I did find a willing ear,” he said.
“Did you know they’d kill her?”
The radio sounds in the background, the tangle of voices, and the clatter of movement through a crowded room kept her from demanding an answer when he went silent. Her patience paid off; the background noise changed to wind and distant murmuring. “Taking a cigarette break?”
“She’s dead?” he asked.
“Yeah, and I got hauled in for questioning—what’s that about?”
Demalion’s voice, even in Wright’s husky tenor, sounded edgy. “Syl, the ISI’s changed. After Chicago, the factions within the agency started getting more . . . outspoken.”
“Let me guess. One faction’s all about putting down the magical threat.”
“Hey, Odalys deserved to be dead—”
“Not arguing that,” Sylvie said. “Really not. But your perky little ISI assassin cut Odalys’s hands off, and that worries me. What, one for the Hand of Glory, and one for a trophy?”
Demalion swore quietly and steadily; Sylvie had the feeling that if he weren’t hanging out at the cop shop, pretending to grab a smoke, he’d be all hissing intensity, his eyes narrowed to angry slits. Finally, he said, “My perky little assassin?”
“That’s what you focus on?”
“It’s the only part that I don’t get,” he said. “I don’t know the assassin. C’
mon, Syl, you’re the closest thing I know to an—”
“Five-eight, short dark hair, dark eyes, cheerful personality, and oh . . . red right hand. She seemed to think she knew you.”
“You sure?” Demalion asked. “She said that?”
Sylvie said, “No. Not exactly. She said we could talk about you.”
“Fuck,” Demalion said. “Look, Sylvie, don’t tell them—”
“’Cause I so often talk freely with the ISI,” she snapped.
“It’s not just them,” he said. “I’m making ripples here. Wright’s life doesn’t fit me well. I can’t afford the wrong kind of attention.”
“I thought you were going to court the ISI.”
“On my terms, yeah,” Demalion said. “But it’s not about them. Sylvie, the Furies killed me on the say-so of their god. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to stay dead.”
Sylvie’s stomach dropped. “If Dunne finds out—”
“Don’t use his name,” Demalion said. “Using a name gets a man’s attention. I doubt a god would be less attentive.”
“Hell, I’ve spent all of last night and this morning talking about a god and got nothing. But at least I’m giving him a headache.”
“You’re not trying to summon our mutual—”
“No,” Sylvie said. “An Aztec god. Case.”
“Sounds like your case got complicated.”
“You’ve no idea. My evil sorcerer–slash–serial kidnapper–slash-killer? Also immortal.”
“You managed to beat Lilith,” he said. “You can take him.”
“Hell, Demalion. I’m working for him.” She closed her eyes against the sun, the sting of it penetrating through her eyelids, heating her face. It felt a lot like shame.
“You have a reason for it,” he said.
“Five reasons,” she said. “Maria Ruben. Elena Llosa. Lupe Fernandez. Rita Martinez. Anamaria Garcia. He’s holding them as leverage.”
“You have a plan?”
“Not so much,” she said. “Know how I want it to end. Dead sorcerer at my feet. Five women going home.”
A voice on his end interrupted their chat, a raised shout with Wright’s name tacked into it. Demalion sighed, his breath a gust in her ear. “Work calls.”
“You going to look into the assassin?”
“Not unless you have to have the information right now,” he said. “I’m trying to keep a low profile, and pushing Odalys cost me some cover.”
“Understood,” Sylvie said. She let the connection drop, gnawed at her lip. She had to let it go. Odalys was done and dealt with, and it wasn’t worth risking Demalion.
Another black car pulled into the pickup loop of the drive, a wash of exhaust in her face, and three black suits came out of the hotel to claim it. Sylvie grimaced; she’d nearly forgotten she was sitting in the ISI’s lap.
She called Alex. “Come get me.”
RATHER THAN WAIT OUTSIDE THE ISI OFFICES, SYLVIE WANDERED down the street, such as it was. The downtown hotels were heavy on business, not so much on amenities. But a mile or so gave her a breathing space between the ISI and her, and brought her to a long-desired cup of coffee at a lone coffee shop that made its money catering to desperate visitors who didn’t want to pay hotel prices for food.
She had finished three cups and a breakfast sandwich, barely tasting any of it, picking at the tangled problem of sorcerer, god, victims. It was like a shell game, but with explosives. If she freed Azpiazu from the curse—he wasn’t trustworthy. Those women would be dead. If she didn’t free him from the curse—he’d burn them out. They’d be dead. She had to free him, but she had to get the women out of his range, first. Which meant Wales, untested spell-work, and a rush job, trying to do it all before Tepeyollotl came hunting.
It felt like a loser’s game.
Alex pulled up. Sylvie left the air-conditioned coffee shop, hotfooted it over the sun-soaked cement between the door and Alex’s car.
She slammed in, grateful for the heavy window tint. Alex got them moving again, and said, “Your truck?”
“Outside Lio’s house unless he’s feeling pissy and had it towed.”
“I thought you two had made nice,” Alex said.
“Temporary setback,” Sylvie said. She propped her feet on the dash. “You have time to check out anything else on Azpiazu?”
“The original or the—”
“All the same man,” Sylvie said. “Or so Cachita tells me.”
“You believe her? Little while ago, you were saying her research was crap.”
Sylvie studied the road unfolding before her, conscious of Alex’s darting glances in her direction. “It’s like this,” she said finally. “I don’t have any real proof. What I do have is a sorcerer who feels . . . off. Who practices old magic like it’s natural, and who’s entirely too confident even for a sorcerer. If he’s been cursed with immortality—there has to be a god. Hell, given the way my luck runs—I should just plan for code red every single morning and save myself the time and wasted optimism.”
Alex took a turn a little too fast; Sylvie swayed in the seat belt’s grasp, thumped the door, steadied herself. “It would explain some things,” Alex said. “While I’ve been looking for the sorcerer, hunting for anything that can be attributed to him—shape-shifting stories, missing women, attacks on women, that kind of thing—I’ve found a lot of weird shit going on. Miami’s bubbling, Sylvie. It’s like the frog in the boiling water. We didn’t notice because it’s happening gradually. But . . . there are different types of events.”
“You break it down into categories?” Sylvie asked. It was a rhetorical question. Of course Alex had. She might look scattered, act scattered, but she was ruthlessly organized. Sylvie’d been in the girl’s apartment. Alex alphabetized her CDs, her DVDs, her bookshelves, her spice racks, her pantry, her refrigerator. Her enormous array of cosmetics was Velcroed to a makeshift color wheel that took up a wall of the bathroom.
“There was the attack at Casa de Dia, a few other sudden man-to-monster sightings. One about every fifteen to twenty days, discarding the de Dia attack, which was triggered by the cops breaking the spell. A woman went missing after each episode.”
Sylvie swallowed. That was bad news. If Azpiazu lost control of his shape when his deflective spell broke down, then the regularity of it suggested that the burnout of his human components took less than a month. Maria Ruben had been missing for a little more than two weeks. Her time was running out.
“So that’s Azpiazu,” Sylvie said. “Cachita told me about some locked-room murders.”
“Oh, Cachita said . . .” Alex griped. “I’m not enough for you?” At Sylvie’s look, she dropped it. “The decapitations? Yeah, nasty. They’re on my list. But they’re not Azpiazu.”
“No,” Sylvie agreed. “Not the god, either. Forcible decapitation isn’t much in their line of things.”
Alex lifted a shoulder. “Voodoo vengeance, maybe. Those people hurt kids, Sylvie. That’s a pretty strong taboo. And their cases were public knowledge. But . . . maybe. Indirectly. You said in Chicago that with the Greek gods roaming around, all sorts of people suddenly grew powers. Might be something like that. A would-be crusader who suddenly has the ability to make it happen.”
“By the time that was happening, Chicago was really zippy,” Sylvie said. “Magical hurricanes, transformations all over the place. We would have noticed.”
“True,” Alex said. “So I’ll slap an unknown on that one. Also? Two cops found dead in their patrol car. News is keeping things pretty quiet, but something sounds weird about it.”
“Keep following it,” Sylvie said, “and the decaps. That might end up on my desk if it goes on too long.”
“Other than that,” Alex said, “we’ve got some Fortean stuff happening, small scale. A woman who claimed the cats at the animal shelter started talking. Localized earthquakes—”
“Been there,” Sylvie said, thinking abruptly of Wales and his struggle to hold Jennifer Costas’s ghost. ?
??You heard from Wales?”
“Gave him a call,” Alex said. “I was going to invite him to breakfast. He didn’t pick up, though. You think I came on too strong?”
“I think eating meals with necromancers is a really good diet plan,” Sylvie said with a shudder. “Alex—”
“Don’t date the help? I know. It’s just. It’s nice to meet a cute guy who already knows about the Magicus Mundi. Makes it easier to talk freely. Makes it less likely that he’ll go to the restroom and never come back.”
“You tell your dates?”
“I don’t like to lie,” Alex said. “If I lie, then he can lie, and I can’t even be pissed about it. Anyway, small earthquakes. People hearing strange sounds in the dark. If there are UFOs, these are USOs. Unidentified screaming objects. A lot of 911 calls that lead nowhere. Feral-cat attacks. Weird shit like that. Only noticeable in aggregate. Cachita tell you about those?”
“Nope,” Sylvie said. “You’re still the champ. Let me know if we start heading toward a rain of toads.”
“Flock of slaughtered ringneck doves?” Alex said. “The golf course was a mess.”
“Like that, yeah.” Sylvie leaned her head on her hands. They were nearing Lio’s, the highway giving way to residential streets, and she said, “Okay. This is the deal. We’ve got to find Azpiazu and the women. Immortal sorcerer or not, he’s also a man. And a man has needs.”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “Food, shelter, that kind of thing. But it’s a damn big city, Syl.”
“We’ve got three options as I see it. Profile Azpiazu. Find him where he finds his women. Problem with that—”
“He won’t hunt until one of the women is dead,” Alex finished. “Hardly the result we want.”
“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “Option two is to track Azpiazu by magic. Given that he’s managing to keep a god off his trail?”
“Option three?”
“Back to the material needs. He’s not on the grid. He has no existence in the eyes of society. He’s not going to have a credit card, a bank, or a mailing address for catalogs. If Cachita’s sources are right, Azpiazu’s a loner to end all loners.”
“If she’s right,” Alex said.