Lies & Omens

told you. Properly get to know each other. You know. Hey, I’m Marah Stone. I’m not just the ISI cleanup crew. I’m your cousin on your great-great-great-whatever side.”

“Bullshit,” Sylvie said.

Demalion’s face reflected her own surprise, and Sylvie felt a flare of shameful relief that he didn’t know Marah well enough to know that.

“Truth. But she wants to kill me,” Erinya continued, hauling the steak out, barely warmed. She put it on a platter, looked at it without any hunger, and said, more quietly, “They all want to kill me.”

“She’s ISI,” Sylvie said. “Kinda their raison d’être.”

“It’s a good reason,” Marah said. “Her kind is dangerous. I mean, look at your apartment. Look outside.”

Erinya’s jungle hadn’t lessened—Sylvie’s apartment was one step away from growing moss in the damp, green heat. But a glance out the front window showed that Erinya’s stress had translated on a much wider scale. The chlorine blue pool had gone green and dark; the vines that snaked around Sylvie’s furniture also coiled around the sun deck, creeping into the laundry room. The carved, limestone alligator cracked like an egg and birthed a dozen small, squirming hatchlings.

“Erinya can control herself,” Sylvie said, hoping it was true. It might not be. Gods leaked. That was a fact. Even Dunne, who’d been brutal in his self-control, had leaked. A new god, a god with a history of indulging her appetites? “And she will. Erinya, pull it back.”

“Why should I?” Erinya said. “If I’m living on earth, why can’t I redecorate?”

“You want to play house? Fine,” Sylvie said. “Get a house, and leave the world alone. Pull it back.”

“Not the boss of me,” Erinya said, a familiar complaint. The flowering vines in the kitchen withered, crisped, and burst into dust. Sylvie would need to vacuum, but at least she wouldn’t need a weed wacker.

“Good,” Sylvie said. “Now, go do the outside. And make sure you get the little snappers out there. Kids swim in that pool.”

Erinya scowled. “Don’t eat my steak.” Then she vanished.

Marah shook her head. “Yeah, she needs killing.”

Demalion said, “Stone. Watch the attitude. Or you’ll have Sylvie on your ass as well as Erinya.”

“Not the boss of me,” Marah sniped, imitating Erinya, gaining another growl, this one from Sylvie.

Demalion threw up his hands, disappeared into Sylvie’s bedroom, slamming the door behind him. It had a distinct attitude of women!

Marah made a face as he left. “I thought he’d be in a better mood once he’d gotten laid. Of course, you two were pretty quick about it.”

“What the hell are you even doing here?” Sylvie wanted to be in her bedroom with Demalion.

Marah drew a finger across Erinya’s steak, licked the juice from her skin. “Lilith’s side. So bad-tempered. No wonder you like that damned monster-god. Our side’s a little more sensible.”

“My side, your side. Whatever. You keep playing coy with that info. I don’t think it really exists.” She wasn’t going to ask outright, no matter that she wanted, maybe even needed the answers. Marah was mercenary; Sylvie owed her one already for Demalion. She knew if she asked, Marah would add that to the tab.

“God, you’re difficult.” Marah leaned back against the counter, shifted her weight to one hip, crossed her ankles. “Go on, tell me who my daddy is. I’ll give you a clue if you like. He brained his brother with a rock.”

Sylvie hung her head. Oh yeah. Like Lilith’s side of her genetic line wasn’t enough to deal with. She tended to forget who helped father it. “Cain. You’re Cain’s line. I’m the progeny of Lilith and Cain, and you’re the progeny of Cain and whoever.”

“Got it in one,” Marah said. “This?” She held up her red-stained hand, made jazz fingers at Sylvie. “This is the infamous mark of Cain.”

Sylvie swallowed, thinking of Zoe marked in that way. Her witchy mentor—Val Cassavetes—had to have known. Had to have kept that secret from Sylvie.

“Your first kill, and it blooms if you’ve got the right blood in your veins,” Marah said. “Comes with perks, too. Like a magic shield of sorts. God does seem to like us killers. I mean, you’ve got magical resistance, too, right? The new Lilith and all.”

Sylvie didn’t say anything, didn’t trust anything Marah was saying either. No assassin was going to blithely show off their ace as simply as that. It was false sharing, designed only to make Sylvie feel obligated to respond in kind. She knew better than to fall for it.

Demalion, returning, dressed in clothing he’d scrounged from the oddments he’d left behind the last time he was in Miami, did fall for it. “So why doesn’t Sylvie have the mark? She’s half-Cain, and she’s killed people.”

He fiddled with the sleeves where they pulled a little tight across his arms. He’d added muscle to Wright’s body since the last time he’d worn those clothes. Right now, Sylvie felt like he’d added some muscle to his head.

“Hey, she’s in the room,” Sylvie said. “And she’s killed monsters.”

Demalion shrugged a bare apology. “It’s not like you know the answer, right? Aren’t you curious?” Sylvie groaned. The worst of dating an agent. It wasn’t enough for Demalion to know her; he wanted to know what had made her the person she was. Hell, he probably kept his own set of files on her, separate from the ISI’s.

“Lilith’s stronger,” Sylvie said. “See, there’s your answer.”

“But Zoe’s marked—”

“Hey,” Sylvie snapped. Bad enough they were discussing her. Zoe was off-limits.

Marah’s dark eyes were inquisitive, bright with calculation, but she was polite enough to back off the topic of Zoe. Not polite enough to drop the conversation.

Sylvie, heart beating oddly fast in her chest, wasn’t sure whether she wanted the conversation to continue or not. Marah might have answers. Marah might be full of shit. Sylvie figured it was a fifty-fifty shot.

Don’t trust her, her little dark voice whispered.

Not a problem, Sylvie thought.

Instead, Marah pushed herself off the counter, circled Sylvie, making her very aware that, of the three people in the apartment, she was the only one underdressed. “Lilith is stronger,” Marah agreed. “But harder to wake. You had to have been exposed to her influence, somehow. An inoculation to wake the body to the virus’s presence.

“You could have run into Lilith herself,” Marah continued when Sylvie stayed stubbornly silent. “But from the files, you were already nipping at her metaphysical heels when you killed her. So not the progenitrix. Lilith’s progeny? You play chew toy with a vampire? A succubus? A werewolf?”

“Does it matter?” Sylvie said. “I don’t know how it happened. It just did.”

“Details always matter,” Marah said. “Especially when I’m trying to figure out which side you’re on. You hang out with werewolves. And you’re claiming friendship with a god who’s violent and insane.”

“Marah,” Demalion objected.

“You can’t tell me it doesn’t bother you,” Marah told Demalion. “That she’s close with one of the monsters who killed you? That’s she made friends with the Fury?”

“It bothers me,” Demalion snapped. “Is that what you want me to admit. Fine. It does.”

“Yeah, Shadows,” Marah said, jumping on the wagon she’d started. “You really should put that monster down. Whose side are you on, anyway?”

She looked at them both, Marah’s expression calculating, Demalion’s more honestly angry.

Sylvie felt her own rage surge back—judge her? Over Erinya? She said, “I’m on the only side I can trust. Mine.”

“Well, then,” Marah said. “Maybe we should find more congenial company. Check in with the locals.”

“Most of them are dead,” Sylvie said, bluntly. “Riordan’s son survived.”

“He’s enough to start with,” Marah said. “You coming, Demalion?”

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “You going with her, Demalion?”

“The agency needs us,” he said.