Sins & Shadows

“Closed! ¡Cerrado!” she snapped. “Go away.”

She turned toward the upper-office stairs, intending to see how much damage the cops had done, how much of her deposit wasn’t coming back. On the desk, the bell jangled suddenly, spinning in its marble orbit, ringing louder and louder, like the wail of breath over wet glass.

Behind Sylvie, the locked door opened, bringing in the sounds of distant sirens and the pungent scent of the low-tide shore. Slipping her hand into her purse, she curled her fingers around the reassuring weight of the gun before turning.

Three women looked back at her, closer than she had anticipated. They moved with a silent, animal grace, loose-limbed and long-legged, like escapees from some models’ runway.

A dark-haired girl in punk regalia of layered, fishnet tees, plaid skirt, and hefty Doc Martens sauntered forward and crouched near the base of the stairs. Her near twin, a woman demurely dressed by J. Crew, flanked Sylvie, pacing around her until she and her sisters had Sylvie pinned between them.

The third woman, pale blond in dark leather, returned to the door, watching the street. She tapped her high-heeled boot idly against the floor, waiting, counting off against an internal clock.

Not a lookout, Sylvie thought, not someone to prevent the outside world from interfering while the other two did what they’d come for. These women were bodyguards, an advance troop of some kind, and according to the ringing bell, not human.

She took a step back, feeling her way up the riser, trying to move smoothly, trying to give herself some space to work with. Two sets of eyes tracked her movement instantly.

The preppie girl raised her upper lip, showing teeth, and made a faint, querulous whine. Sylvie stopped dead in her tracks. She’d never heard a sound like that before, but it resonated in the atavistic part of her brain that recognized a predator’s cry.

The blond woman at the door stiffened, coming to alert. The sisters beside Sylvie cocked their heads, listening. The bell went silent as a tall man ducked beneath the doorjamb, filling it momentarily.

Another cop, Sylvie thought, watching his scoping of the room, the way he carried himself. A plainclothes detective who had picked one hell of a bad time to come ask some more questions about Suarez. His dark brown eyes flickered around the room, noting the boxes and the clutter, before homing in on her.

Sylvie found herself torn between demanding his assistance and warning him to flee, but while she was stymied speechless, the blonde rubbed her cheek against his arm. He stroked her hair without looking at her, his expression of weariness and concern never shifting.

“You three been good?” he asked.

“She was leaving,” the punk girl said in the dulcet tones of a schoolgirl. “We stopped her.”

“Thank you,” he said, his eyes never leaving Sylvie’s.

A sudden shudder racked her, a quick acknowledgment that he meant trouble with a capital T. She had met men like him before. Humans with power and a yen for unnatural entourages. He was exactly what the satanists aspired to be.

The two sisters sat on the floor near him, not like people, cross-legged and uncomfortable, but crouched like dogs. The punk girl yawned widely, and Sylvie had a quick flash, like an X-ray rising through flesh, of something Other. Something huge, angry and implacable.

“Ms. Lightner?” the not-cop said, his voice pleasantly deep and rough. “I need your help.”

Sylvie shivered again. Most of her clients addressed her as Shadows, assuming that she’d given her name to the business: Shadows Inquiries. But the ones who checked her out . . . She didn’t like the idea of him looking into her life without her knowing. The Internal Surveillance and Intelligence agency snooped enough for anyone.

She sucked in a breath, and said, “I’ve quit. Besides, it looks like you’ve got more help than you can handle.”

His broad shoulders tightened as if she’d struck at him, and she pressed her case.

“Really, you should be careful. I’ve seen men torn apart by help like that. Their own help.” She didn’t know why she felt compelled to warn him, except maybe—there was pain in his eyes, deep and raw, and she had no intention of helping him ease it. Her warning was the least she could give.

“The sisters?” he asked. He petted the pale one’s hair again. “No danger of that. But they’re not the help I need right now. I need a detective who can deal—”

“With the supernatural,” Sylvie finished. “I told you. I’ve retired. And I’m not the only one of my kind. There are others if you know where to look. There’s the Good Shepherd—”

“That’s the hell of it,” he said, and the veneer of calmness slipped, giving her a glimpse of desperation. “I always know where to look. I can find anyone, track them anywhere. And no one escapes my eyes—”

He fell silent, but the impression lingered in Sylvie’s mind. Raw power, harnessed. Something flickered in his eyes like a whirlwind. This, Sylvie thought, is one hell of a dangerous man.

“I want you,” he said. “I’ve heard about you. You don’t give up. And you don’t back down.”

“News flash,” Sylvie said, regretting it even as she sassed him. “I’ve given up. I’ve backed down. Permanently.” This was exactly the kind of thing that got her into trouble.

The sisters responded with the eardrum-shivering, whining mewl, all three at once, and Sylvie fought the urge to slap her hands over her ears.

“Sisters,” he said, chiding, and they stopped.

“Ms. Lightner—”

“No,” she said. “And really, if you’ve checked me out, you know I’m mostly hired out to fight your kind. I couldn’t work for—”

“My kind?” he asked.

“Sorcerers, magicians, whatever the term du jour is,” Sylvie said.

“I’m not a sorcerer,” he said.

Her fragile patience unraveled. “You’re sure as hell too damn big to be a Boy Scout. And I don’t think there are badges for ‘plays well with minions.’ ”

She trailed off as the punk girl leaned forward onto her hands like a shifter about to go beast. Sylvie had a nasty feeling it would be something far stranger than a wolf that erupted from the girl’s skin.

The pale woman said, “He is your god, girl, and you will revere him, or I will have your throat.” Her voice, the first Sylvie had heard of it, was as raspy as if she spoke around a mouthful of feathers.

Swiveling her head, the preppie girl glanced from the not-cop to her sister, trying to decide.

“Alekta,” he said. “We came here to ask for help. Not threaten.”

“She should prostrate herself—” the pale, leather-clad woman argued.

“Alekta,” he repeated, and she fell silent, sulking.

“I think you put a bit too much hero worship into whatever summoning spell you used to get them,” Sylvie said. “Either that, or you have serious egomania.”

He sighed, brown eyes downcast. “It doesn’t make sense, I admit, but I’m afraid it’s true.” His cheeks flushed as he spoke. “At least, I am a god, and unless you’re more devout than I think, there’s a good probability you’re mine by default.”

Sylvie pulled the gun from her purse, raised it, and said, “I said no.” She had let this nonsense go on for far too long, drawn by the pain in his face. Her business was closed, and even if it weren’t, she didn’t take clients like him. Crazy and powerful was a deadly combination.

“Ms. Lightner—” he said, half-raising a hand.

“Still feel divine?” she said. “It’s amazing how a little lead can bring out the mortal in men.”

“Not a good idea—” he said. He seemed concerned but unafraid, and while Sylvie tried to decide if that was good or bad, his minions lost patience.

“Insolent child,” the preppie girl spat.

“Magdala, don’t,” he chastised her.

Alekta, the pale one, lunged into the air like a raptor in flight. Panic seared Sylvie as the lean length of the woman changed, sprouting feathers and fur and scale, sprouting fangs, sprouting claws, showing a nightmare face that belonged nowhere in this world. She pulled the trigger without a moment’s thought, and the creature dodged, dropped, and rose again.

“Alekta! Here!” he snapped, then gasped. The gun’s explosion slammed distantly into Sylvie’s ears, the recoil twitching it out of her hand as if she were a rank amateur. It skidded down the stairs.

“Enough,” he said. His breath was labored. “This isn’t the way it should have gone—”

The women gathered around him, snarling at Sylvie, but tethered by his will. The blonde had snapped back to human form, and that freed Sylvie to look at him. Dreading the sight, the moment—Alekta had dodged, and he was behind her.

To kill a man, in her own office, with the ISI outside her door somewhere, watching . . . The problem with killing sorcerers was, after the deed, there was nothing to prove they had forfeited the right to be human. Sylvie had just bought herself a world of trouble.

There was blood on his hands, on his white shirt, like some crimson insignia over the heart. He had a faint frown on his tired face, more bewildered than angry. What would happen when he died? His sisters, freed?

Sylvie’s hands grew icy. The man scared her, but there had been no proof that he meant her harm.

He sighed, then the moment unwound.

Sylvie held the gun in her hands again, her finger curling on the trigger, the bullet in the chamber waiting, the metal cool and unfired. He held Alekta’s arm in a bruising grip, while she fell back toward him as if her lunge had been thwarted before it had actually begun.

“Why don’t you put the gun away,” he said. “They’re touchy of my honor and overprotective. Especially now.”

Sylvie opened her mouth, for once at a loss for words. His white shirt was pristine, no perfect chest shot, red rimmed with black, and the only pain in his eyes was the pain that had caused him to seek her out in the first place. Still wordless, she tucked the gun into her waistband.

“My name is Kevin Dunne. I am the god of Justice, and I need your help.”

2 Tall, Dark . . . Crazy

SYLVIE FUMBLED TO A SEAT ON THE STAIRS. SHE HAD NEVER SEEN A sorcerer so strong—she refused to contemplate the other. “Help?” she echoed.

“I need you to find my lover,” Dunne said.

What kind of name was that for a god, anyway, she wondered a bit hysterically. Gods had names like . . . like Thor, like Legba, like God—she met his calm eyes again and dropped her own. She supposed that gods could choose any name they liked. But he looked so ordinary in his white shirt and Levi’s. His hair had flecks of grey in it; his face had lines around his eyes and jaw. A nice face, attractive enough, but the face of a god?