Lies & Omens

“I could report you and him to Collier,” Demalion said. “Make your life difficult.”

“That would benefit no one,” Riordan said. “Certainly not you. You think Yvette’s going to be pleased to find she’s been hosting a revenant like you? You think Collier would believe anything you say?

“It wouldn’t benefit Sylvie. She wants her sister. Not even the world. You think Graves would go quietly? No. He’d ruin everything we’ve been working for. Listen, Shadows, you know how I feel about the Magicus Mundi.”

“You don’t like it,” Sylvie said. “You don’t trust it. You think it should be controlled or exiled, kept out of human affairs.”

“You remembered, how charming,” Riordan said. “But why wouldn’t you? You and I might be on opposite sides, Shadows, but I think, big picture, we agree.”

“And Graves? What’s his side?”

“Graves thinks the Magicus Mundi should be exterminated.”

“Yeah? You think he hit his head and got confused about who he hates?”

“Don’t be naïve,” Riordan said. “He’s a zealot. He’ll use any means necessary to reach his goal. If that’s working with monsters to winnow his enemies, so be it. He’ll betray them in the end, just as he betrays us, now.”

“It does double duty,” Demalion said, sounding sick. “He points monsters at the ISI in big splashy kills and gains public attention. Public acclaim for when he decides to make his cause known. He’ll be the hero who fights the monsters. And those in the know who might disagree with him would be dead.”

Riordan nodded along with Demalion’s words. The idea didn’t sit right with Sylvie, but if Demalion thought it was conceivable, she’d have to go with it.

“Except someone’s working overtime erasing public memories,” Sylvie said. “Graves factor that in?”

“No one factored that in,” Riordan said.

“Any ideas on who’s behind it?” Sylvie asked. “Since we’re on the same side and all, right? I know it’s a large and powerful coven that’s well organized—”

“The most likely candidate is Yvette Collier,” Riordan said. He didn’t look pleased to be admitting it.

“No,” Demalion said.

“Why not?” Riordan said. “We all have our specialties in dealing with the Magicus Mundi. Graves is the monster wrangler. Yvette watches the witches. And I deal with the legal aspects.”

Sylvie grimaced. “Less than five years, and you’re all stepping across your lines is what you’re telling me. Graves is using the monsters to dispatch his enemies. Yvette is using witchcraft to thwart Graves’s power play, and you … you’d rather use me than risk your own life or your son’s. So the law is only the law until it endangers you.”

“Just go deal with Graves,” Riordan said. She’d ruffled him, finally. His jaw twitched; his voice deepened, rasped. “Put a rush on it. And as a gesture of good faith on my part, take Demalion with you. Get it done, and your sister will be back home before you know it. Just get the hell out.”

Sylvie bit back all the fight rising up in her. It wouldn’t get her anywhere and might cost her Demalion if Riordan got his back up. “You have a last known for him?”

“Dallas,” Riordan said.

Sylvie and Demalion traded a glance; the likelihood that he was still in Dallas? “Fine,” she said. “I’ll investigate Graves. I don’t promise anything more.”

8 On the Run

IT WAS DAWN OUTSIDE, THE AIR DAMP AND FRAGRANT WITH SALT, the grass shading from black to smudgy green, and the second sunrise Sylvie had seen after a sleepless night. Her truck surged up the last bit of the garage ramp and brought them into morning. At least that, she thought, explained the slight tremble in her gun hand, explained why her emotions were ping-ponging from rage to fear to desperation. Another night gone without sleep. Exhaustion was beating her down.

Sylvie stepped on the gas, and Demalion snapped, “Wait!” She slammed on the brakes, hair-triggered, and nearly gave them both whiplash.

“What?” Sylvie snapped.

She glanced over at him in the uncertain morning light, and felt a chill chase over her skin. Demalion’s eyes were glassy, the pupils shrunk to nothing.

“What is it?” Sylvie said. She scanned the roadway behind and before, one hand slipping from the wheel to her gun.

“Someone’s waiting for you at the canal edge,” Demalion said.

“Friend or foe?”

Demalion shook his head. “Can’t tell.”

“There’s no one there.”

“Not yet.”

Fucking psychics. Sylvie eased forward, and sure enough, just as the truck reached the narrow bridge, a man stepped out from the piling’s shadow. She stopped the truck, got out.

He didn’t look like a threat. He was smaller, slighter than he had appeared on the video feeds. His head barely reached the top of the truck’s cab. All he wore was a pair of low-slung jeans. His feet were bare. Everything about him suggested he was harmless.

But he was the same man Sylvie had seen shrug off the mermaids’ compulsion like it was nothing more than an irritating radio station, the same man who’d been at the site of at least three of the ISI disasters. He was more than he seemed.

Even if she’d been willing to buy into his appearance, the fact remained: He was enough of a threat that he triggered Demalion’s visions.

“What do you want?” she said. “This isn’t a good time.”

“What happened to the Mora?” he asked. His voice, even pitched low to carry only to her ears, held the same powerful resonance as an opera singer’s.

“I killed her.”

“Fuck,” he muttered, and Sylvie knew he was mundi, not a witch, by the way the obscenity sounded wrong in his mouth. A language poorly learned. Imitation of humanity. But not of it.

He looked human. About five-eight, slightly olive skin tone, curly dark hair dripping water to his narrow shoulders. His eyes were dark enough that it was hard to tell pupil from iris, and his irritation creased his forehead in all the human ways. But his hair was damp; his jeans were sodden, and if she looked closely, his nose seemed more for show than for breathing, a beak with dents for nostrils instead of actual breathing apparatus.

“What’d you want with her? To congratulate her on a job well-done?”

“I was hoping she’d lead me to whoever sent her out to kill your kind. I wanted to know if she was coerced or coaxed. Now, I can’t. You killed her.”

“Trust me, she wasn’t in the mood to chat.”

“Sylvie.” Demalion jerked his head toward the ISI. “Riordan’s watching. Should we have this meeting here?”

“Fuck,” Sylvie echoed, but kept her attention tight on the monster masquerading as a man. “You think she’d have talked to you?”

“Everyone talks to me. Even you.”

Sylvie twitched and realized unhappily that it was true. On the ISI’s lawn, her enemies behind her, Riordan’s goad driving her onward, exhaustion fluttering in her chest, and she had stopped to chat. “What the hell are you?” Her gun hand—when had she lowered it?—started to rise.

“Don’t shoot. I need to know what the Mora said to you. But not here. Not now. Your man is right.”

Sylvie darted a glance over her shoulder and twitched when she felt the invasion of her personal space; she