whined in frustration—but that was shower sex for you, bumps and bruises and awkward clinches that broke just when they were getting really good, terrible footing, and someone’s back always got slapped up against the chilly tiles.
Her tongue tangling with his, tasting heat and the bitterness of soapy foam, Sylvie thought, awkward or not, she wouldn’t trade this moment for all the silk sheets and scented candles in the world.
At last braced, balanced, they rocked against each other, trading breathless frustration for laughter, and finally for a pleasure that had their voices cracking against the ceramic tiles, saw them sprawling in the morass of water and discarded clothes that soaked the floor. Her shampoo bottle had tipped, overlaying the scent of sex and the sea in the room with a lashing of citrus foam.
Sylvie kicked feebly at her pants, unblocked the drain, and put her head back to Demalion’s shoulder and listened to the gurgle of water receding. In a moment, she was going to get up, shake this lassitude from her veins, drag Demalion with her to the bedroom, and never mind the assassin in the living room.
He stroked her wet hair, smoothing it from the wild kinks and curls it had worked its way into. “I should check in with the locals.”
Sylvie stiffened, rolled away from him. “About that.”
He propped himself up on his elbows. “What?”
“You haven’t been watching the news.”
He rolled up to sit cross-legged. He looked tired suddenly, and past the first flush of their reunion, she saw dark bruises on his arms, his hands, his shins. Marah’s words came back to her—had to dig out of a premature grave—mixed with the memory of the collapsed ISI building in Chicago.
“The Miami ISI, too?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “Mermaids.”
He shoved his hair out of his face, scrubbed a hand over a jaw rough with stubble. “Mermaids. Fuck. What the hell is going on?”
“Don’t know,” Sylvie said. She shrugged. “Beyond my pay grade. I got my ass kicked and for nothing. I’m sitting this one out. I’ve got a client who needs me more than the ISI does.”
He stiffened all over, and said, “Are you shitting me? You’re sitting this one out? My coworkers
Wow, she thought. Forty minutes, give or take, and they were at odds again.
Gunfire in the next room derailed their argument. Four shots, quickly fired, and a roar of something inhuman. They scrambled for the towel—the
HER FIRST THOUGHT WAS THAT HER LIVING ROOM HAD GOTTEN A HELL of a lot smaller, filled with Erinya’s inhuman shape. Her second thought, even less useful than the first, was to wonder if Erinya had grown. Her front feet, talons extended, crushed Marah face-first into the western wall of Sylvie’s living room; Erinya’s tail lashed against the eastern wall, knocking magazines and books from the shelves. She bulked twice as large as a tiger, scented the room with pissed-off animal musk and the cloying, damp weight of ancient jungles. Black porcupine spikes, tipped in scarlet and gold, rose from her back and nape, jutting upward in threat.
The carpet beneath her hind claws slowly transformed to loam, vines twining out of the listing bookshelf.
Lost in gaping, in yanking Demalion’s shirt around her, it took her a moment to understand that there were words beneath the guttural rolling growl emanating from Erinya.
“Where is she? What have you done to Sylvie?”
“I’m here,” Sylvie said. Her voice sounded thin against the vastness of Erinya’s anger, but it was enough. Erinya’s head turned; her nose wrinkled and flared, scenting her.
“You smell like old cat. Like him.”
Marah squirmed, got her gun up, and shot Erinya beneath the chin, point-blank. The concussion of it filled the room and overflowed, much like Erinya herself. Demalion shouted in surprise, but Sylvie was just waiting for the aftermath.
She’d shot Erinya herself once upon a time, multiple bullets tearing into the demigod’s immortal skin; the Fury had shaken the bullets off, healed the wound in minutes.
This time, amped up to full god status, the bullet only bloomed against her jaw, flattening out like a flower, and dropping to the carpet.
“Eri!” Sylvie shouted. “Stop it!”
The cops were going to be called. The last thing they needed was a clueless, trigger-panicky cop added to this bizarre domestic dispute.
Erinya’s spiked hackles settled but hissed and rattled against her nape like a nest of angry snakes. “I came to see you, and she shot me. Can I kill her?”
Truthfully, Sylvie was stunned that Marah was still breathing. The assassin was tough; even now, she looked pissed instead of afraid, had her body braced in such a way that Erinya’s strangling grip was uncomfortable, not breath-stealing.
“Sylvie!” Demalion said, clutching his towel in one hand, a gun in the other. “For God’s sake, tell her not to!”
Sylvie jerked into speech. “Don’t kill her, Erinya.” At least, not now.
Erinya glared past Sylvie at Demalion, then calmed as if she’d read Sylvie’s thoughts. She probably had.
She dropped Marah, shifted direction, leaped over the breakfast bar, and yanked open the fridge. “You never let me do anything.”
Demalion slipped past Sylvie, helped Marah up from the floor. The woman rubbed her throat thoughtfully.
“What were you thinking?” Sylvie said to her.
“Hey, lay off,” Demalion said. Marah coughed when she tried to contribute to her own defense.
Sylvie refused to feel bad. What kind of idiot took on a monster like Erinya with a gun?
“You okay?” Demalion asked. He tugged Marah as far from Erinya as possible in the small space.
“Not a problem,” Marah said. Her gaze never left Erinya, shrunk back down to human size, human shape. “You often host gods in your apartment, Sylvie?”
“I host all sorts of unexpected guests,” Sylvie said.
“I don’t like her,” Erinya said. She pulled a steak out of the fridge, a monster hunk of beef that Sylvie knew hadn’t been in there. “Make me dinner?”
“Be a big girl. Put it in the oven yourself,” Sylvie said. “How about Marah promises not to shoot you again, and you don’t squish her like a bug. And, Eri? Can you get rid of the jungle?”
Her apartment was unrecognizable, and Sylvie, dreading the moment her neighbors called the cops, couldn’t help but be distracted by the new plant life turning her apartment into a conservatory. She batted a flowering vine away from her face with unnecessary vigor. It left a dusting of rusty pollen all over her hand.
Marah and Demalion had their heads bent close together, and it made Sylvie nervous. Demalion, on his own, she trusted to the ends of the earth. Demalion, with the ISI at his side? A little less.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to kill my family either,” Erinya said. “But if you had to, I’d forgive you. You’d forgive me, right?”
Sylvie said, “What are you talking about?”
Erinya shoved the steak into the oven—it flared scarlet with fire inside, and Sylvie closed her eyes. Erinya was a god, she reminded herself. Wouldn’t burn the apartment down. Even if she’d turned the oven interior into a fiery pit of some kind. Erinya wasn’t exactly up on electricity.
“Family. Her. You.”
Marah coughed again. It sounded a little like a laugh. “Told you we should have had a chat. Months ago, I
