Sylvie wondered abruptly what Erinya had done with the child she saved from drowning.
Things were changing and changing fast. Sylvie, sore, soaked, cold to the bone, wasn’t sure she could keep up.
She was going to need help. Erinya, unreliable, unpredictable, callously single-minded, might be the best she could get.
4
Making News
ALEX’S JEEP WAS MUDDY, SPLATTERED WITH CANAL REMNANTS, BUT it hadn’t been one of the casualties of the mermaids’ wave, hadn’t been shoved into another car or dragged into the waters.
Even better, throughout the entire business, Sylvie had managed to hold on to the keys. She got in, squelching miserably, and blew out a breath. The drive back to Alex’s went smoothly. All the major traffic—cop cars, news vans, gawkers—were headed in the other direction.
When she reached Alex’s place, she was tempted to trade cars and head home, but she needed to check in. She needed to know if Alex had heard anything on the Chicago situation, and Sylvie’s cell phone had died in the dunking.
She tapped on Alex’s door, leaning tiredly on the jamb. Guerro barked once; Sylvie heard Alex hushing the dog, then Alex swung the door wide.
“Oh my God, Syl. It’s all over the news.
Sylvie put a hand on Alex’s shoulder, pushed her gently back inside. The woman was too excited to notice that she was blocking the door, and her neighbors were beginning to poke their heads out. Sylvie had had enough of gawkers. “My family call?” She’d be surprised if they had. Zoe was in Ischia, learning to be a good witch, and her parents had hit the other hemisphere, headed to Australia for an extended vacation.
“Wales called.” Alex’s duplex smelled of coffee and burned cinnamon toast. Sylvie thought toast sounded good. Warm and dry. Two words that otherwise didn’t apply to her at the moment.
“How is Tex? Burning feet to help us?” She found the bread, a thick-sliced Cuban loaf, put a smear of butter on it, a lashing of sugar and cinnamon, and stuck it under the broiler.
Alex shook her head, a little smile touching her mouth at the mention of her necromancer boyfriend. “I wish. He’s tangled up in that Alabama mess. Narrowed it down to kids playing at necromancy. Creating sort of their own zombie theme park.” The twist of her mouth was wry. As if she knew it was bad but found it amusing anyway.
“What is up with that?” Sylvie asked. “I mean, I sure as hell wasn’t a saint when I was a teen, and I know you were all juvie-girl, but c’mon, there’s a difference between raising a little hell and raising
“Getting old there, Sylvie. Complaining about ‘kids these days.’”
Sylvie pulled her toast out of the oven, juggling it from hand to hand, and stifled any ruder retort when Alex waved a cup of coffee at her.
Sylvie, feeling as obedient as Alex’s German shepherd, sat down at the breakfast bar, shut up, and applied herself to breakfast. Killer mermaids were definitely a good thing for stimulating the appetite.
She wolfed down the slice, went back for more, and tossed the crusts to Guerro, sprawled on the couch. He snapped them down, beat his tail against the couch arm, and visibly hoped for more.
“So the ISI—”
“No,” Sylvie said. “That’s a postbreakfast conversation.” She wanted a few minutes of peace.
Alex sat down on the breakfast bar itself, swung long legs. “You can’t save everybody. I mean, they had warning, and they couldn’t save themselves. You can’t beat yourself up for this.”
“There’s a difference,” Sylvie gritted out, “between not being able to save everybody and not being able to save
Alex’s mouth turned down. Changed the focus of the subject. Too little, too late. Sylvie felt wired, edgy. “So, you know what you’re going to say? I mean, the news is going to track you down sooner rather than later. Local woman and monster kill another monster.”
“Guess the cat’s well and truly out of the bag.” Sylvie gnawed her lip, trying to figure out if it was good or bad. If whatever erased magical evidence would act on this event.
“Yeah, hard to squelch the news vans,” Alex said.
Exposure had to happen eventually. The human world was expanding, searching, documenting; the
Well, that was what it was, wasn’t it, she thought.
People were going to freak.
The only thing average Americans liked more than their illusions was the chance to panic. To find an Other and fear it.
Sylvie wasn’t fond of the
Maybe, this time, if the reality censors kicked in, it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing.
She couldn’t believe it even as she thought it.
Alex, puttering around her kitchen, made an “Aha!” of triumph and waved the TV remote in Sylvie’s direction.
“Take a look for yourself!” The TV turned on, savagely loud in the tiny apartment; Guerro’s ears went flat, and Alex hastily muted it.
It wasn’t like they needed sound. BREAKING NEWS scrolled across a bright red bar on the local channel. The scene was the one Sylvie had just left. Waterlogged people, destroyed properties—cars and businesses—palm trees with slimy, glistening trunks and spiky leaves that sparked with lingering beads of water.
Then the image backtracked, showed a tourist-filmed video that cut away from the palm trees to that sudden, rising wave. The video was image without sound, but Sylvie still heard the roar of that much water displacing itself vividly in her memories. She thought she’d be hearing it for days.
On-screen, the water slapped the building, slid down, and flooded outward, eating pavement in hungry gulps. The camera eye tilted—the mermaid’s song, Sylvie thought, paralyzing the cameraman into a stupor.
Through his lens, the landscape surged and fell and foamed, a world of inrushing water.
The red bar scrolled on relentlessly, reading off disaster tolls. Four dead, multiple injuries—
Alex said, “That’s not too bad.”
“They haven’t gotten inside the hotel yet,” Sylvie said. “The death toll will go up.”
“There you are.”
It was true; horrible, but true. A new video, a
seeing Erinya and the mermaid
—the camera pivoted sharply, chasing whatever he was gaping at.
Sylvie winced, anticipating.
The images on TV… blinked. Gold light flickered and flared so quick it was only an impression that Sylvie took away rather than something she consciously saw. She leaned closer. “Did you see that?”
“See what? Oh, what the hell—” Alex said.
On-screen, Erinya, dressed in her gothy human form, ran up to Sylvie, grabbed her hand, and drew her down the street to where a thrashing tiger shark took up immense quantities of pavement.
“That didn’t happen,” Sylvie said.