sat back on her haunches to watch, head cocked, curious.
“Val’s place,” Alex said. “She’s in Ischia. Which means there’s an estate with both magical and high-tech security going to waste. Plus, if Zoe somehow manages to give Riordan the slip—”
“Zoe would head for Val’s if she got free,” Sylvie said. “You’re brilliant, Alex.” She grinned, but it felt weak. “Can’t take Erinya, though.”
“You want her around full-time?”
“Nice to have a Lupe-wrangler.”
“Val’s estate will have at least one safe room,” Demalion said. “If she’s as high-tech as Alex says.”
“Great, we’re all for it. Let’s get there and stop talking about it.” Sylvie pushed off Demalion’s solid chest, staggered a bit but stayed upright, waving him off.
“We’re not taking your truck,” Demalion said. “Too many of us, and it’s full of blood.”
“Fine,” Sylvie said. “Go fetch a car, then.” She leaned up against her truck while he disappeared farther into the parking garage. Grand theft auto, coming up, committed by a rogue government agent. What the hell had their lives come to?
Alex said, “Are you really going to kill Graves on Riordan’s say-so?”
“Demalion filled you in, then?” Sylvie said. “I don’t know. If Graves
Demalion rolled up a minute later in an enormous, gas-guzzling Escalade, big enough to hold them all and ostentatious enough to be unnoticeable in Val’s fancy driveway.
Erinya transferred Lupe’s unconscious shape into the back bench seat, strapped her in with careful precision, and said, “When can I see her again?”
“Later,” Sylvie said. “We’re trying to fix her. I don’t suppose you—”
“Fix her? She’s wonderful,” Erinya said.
“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “Never mind. Eri, can you do one more favor for me? Get rid of the truck?” If they left it here, bloodstained and battered, the cops would be looking for her, either as victim or as a criminal. She didn’t have time for it.
Erinya waved a hand; Sylvie’s truck dissolved. It stung, watching it go. She’d loved that damn thing, battered as it was.
If she was immortal, if Marah was right, then it’d only be one of a thousand things she’d lose in her eternal life.
She stood there, shivering in the garage, blaming blood loss, until Alex tucked her into the second seat and shut the door on her. Alex took the passenger seat, and Demalion drove them smoothly into the afternoon.
9
Regrouping
LUXURY HAD ITS PLACE, SYLVIE THOUGHT AS SHE SETTLED MORE comfortably in the leather seat. The motor hummed quietly, the ride was smooth, and the car was pleasantly dim in the midday heat. Sylvie fumbled out her cell phone, found it cracked through, and said, “Alex. Phone?”
“Calling Val?” Alex asked, passing her phone back.
“Yeah. Her estate isn’t going to be much of a safe haven if it kills us as we try to get in.”
Demalion grunted from the driver’s seat. “We’ve had enough near-death moments today. I’m forbidding any more of them. My nerves can’t take it.”
“Aw, poor baby,” Alex teased.
Demalion’s glance toward her was not amused.
Sylvie ignored the start of their bickering and dialed Val. Usually, Val refused to answer Sylvie’s calls, but Sylvie was betting that with Zoe AWOL, Val would answer, no matter the time. Sylvie turned her watch, thought, actually her timing wasn’t that bad. Ischia was about six hours ahead. Dinnertime.
“Sylvie,” Val said.
She sounded so calm and competent that Sylvie felt strange, choking tears rise in her throat. “God, Val, I need your help.”
The line hummed between them for a long moment, then Val said, “What do you need?”
Ten minutes and copious notes later, Sylvie disconnected from Val, feeling better about their strained relationship than she had in ages. Nothing like knowing that your friend—no matter how justifiably pissed off— wasn’t going to leave you high and dry when your life was on the line.
Sylvie passed one part of the list to Alex, said, “We’re going to need to make a stop for supplies.”
Alex nodded.
Behind Sylvie, Lupe stirred and moaned, and Sylvie peered over the seat back. Lupe’s eyelashes fluttered, her hand flailed weakly. Her nails, Sylvie noted, were deep blue-black, another transformation that had failed to erase itself. Sylvie just hoped that the venom hadn’t made the transition back to human along with the claws. Lupe’s temper was far too dangerous.
“What happened?” Lupe said.
“Too much to explain. But hey,” Sylvie said dryly, “you made a friend.”
“I dreamed about a monster,” Lupe whispered. “Her teeth in my throat.”
“Her heart in your hands,” Sylvie said. “Her name is Erinya. She likes you.”
“It was real?” Lupe asked. “I dreamed I killed a man.” When Sylvie didn’t deny it, she turned her face away, toward the dark leather seat, hiding from reality, and nothing Sylvie said after that could draw her into speech again.
Finally, Sylvie just slumped back in her seat and closed her eyes. Not sleeping. Not yet. But she could rest her eyes.
Demalion kept the SUV running while Alex grabbed items on Val’s list and on hers, tearing through one magic bodega and one gun shop with an efficiency Sylvie envied.
Sylvie wanted to go in with Alex, keep an eye on her, make sure she got everything on the list, but she couldn’t leave Lupe unattended. The woman seemed wrung out, unable to move, much less shift shape and rampage some more, but better not to take the chance.
Alex returned, laden down with bags, and passed Sylvie the Taser. “Here,” she murmured with a sidelong glance at Lupe. “It’s got a charged battery, and the cartridges are loaded.”
Sylvie folded it against her side like the world’s oddest security blanket and let herself drowse. Soon enough, she smelled the sea, heard the city traffic stop echoing off concrete facades, disappearing out over the waves. She opened her eyes, and they were passing the Seaquarium and the Rosenstiel School, opened her eyes again, and Demalion was pulling up to Val’s driveway gate.
He stopped the SUV and she slid-tumbled out the side door; she keyed in the passcode Val had given her, and the gate rumbled into motion, pulling back. She put her hand up—wait—and went back for the bag of magical supplies. Nothing too exotic—a white feather, some salt, a few white pebbles polished to a dull gleam, a handful of red chalk. Seemed hard to believe that was all it was going to take to carve a doorway through Val’s wards.
Val had said that Zoe would be the best to do the spell; that since Zoe had lived there, even briefly, the spellwork would be like turning a key. For anyone else, Val said, it was going to take brute willpower.
Sylvie felt a little low on brute willpower, but there wasn’t another alternative. She knelt on the smooth black asphalt of the drive, in the shadow of the SUV, and took a deep breath. She wasn’t a witch. She’d used spells once or twice. Always paid for it. Magic made her sick. Part of her Lilith bloodline. The same thing that made her resistant to magic punished her for using it. She expected it would only get worse. Lilith, at the end, hadn’t been able to cast even the simplest of spells.
She marked four of the pebbles—one for each of them—with a symbol that Val swore meant
