Lies & Omens

His gaze was flat, black, and unfriendly. “Interlopers. Scavengers. Prey.”

“Nice,” she said.

“Are your words for us any better? Monsters? Nightmares? Creatures? Things?” He shook his head—another gesture that was subtly off. His neck didn’t seem to have the flexibility of a human’s. “It doesn’t matter. That’s not why I’m here. You didn’t learn anything from the Mora. You just killed her. So from now on? Stay out of my business.”

She felt him pressing his will on her, trying to urge her to do just that. But she was made of sterner stuff, and there was a ward between them as well. She shook it off.

“What were you going to do? Talk to her while she killed you? One thing I do know about your people … you turn on each other just as easily as you turn on us.”

He turned, disinterested. A patch of darkness on his neck showed, and Sylvie leaned forward. Was that a hole?

“Hey,” she said, pushing curiosity aside again. “I have a question.”

“I don’t care,” he said.

“Don’t make me shoot you in the leg,” Sylvie said. “We’ve been getting along so well. Come on. One question.”

He paused; his skin twitched and rippled like an animal pestered by an insect. Then he huffed. Water vapor burst out of his neck.

Hole, she thought. Blowhole. Went with the dolphin shape- shifting. She knew what he was.

“What?” he said. “Ask me your question.”

“You think something’s coercing or confusing the monsters who are attacking the ISI.”

“That’s not a question.”

“There’s someone modifying human memories also, more confusion and coercion. That your doing?” She couldn’t believe it was Yvette, much as she’d like to. The thing was, the thing Riordan hadn’t mentioned, maybe didn’t know—the memory attacks had been going on for far longer than the ISI attacks. Why would an ISI witch cover up Maudit misbehavior, some of which wasn’t even in the USA? Why would an ISI witch gunning for promotion use a power that was injuring or killing the people she was supposed to protect? It just seemed messy and disorganized. Yvette, by Demalion’s accounts, was neither of those things.

She was looking for someone else. Maybe the creature in front of her. Even as she asked, she didn’t believe it. His power was small; his field of influence narrow. He’d stood outside the wards and called, and the only one who woke was Sylvie. Because he’d touched her. The memory plague was affecting people citywide simultaneously. She let the accusation stand, though. To see what he would say. The more she kept him talking, the more chance she could figure out his angle.

“Why would I—”

“It seems to me that you’ve been sent to stop these attacks. That they’re drawing heat down on your heads. You’re not doing a good job at the main source. Not stopping the monsters. Are you cleaning up after them? You said you’re charming. You’re sure as hell working the compulsion magic. You’re Encantado.”

Like the fairy-tale creature he was, he shivered all over when she named him. As if she’d diminished him.

“Your name for my people. Not ours,” he said. “But yes, I am Encantado.”

“So, are you brainwashing my people, making them forget what your people are doing? I thought it was witchcraft, but I’m willing to adjust my theory.”

He jerked his head, teeth flashing and clicking.

Sylvie took a prudent step away. Didn’t look friendly. He pressed back up at the edge of the ward, leaned close. She could smell him—something salty and pungent and something faintly animal beneath the human skin. Legends said that the Encantado seduced women who wandered too close to the riverbanks. Right now, she couldn’t imagine any woman touching him.

She closed her hand tighter around her gun, thought of Alex and Demalion sleeping back at the house. They seemed very far away at the moment.

The ward sizzled and sang, clicks and pops that almost sound like dolphin chatter.

“It’s not our way to hide ourselves,” he said. “That’s yours. Sneaking and prying and stealing away in the dark. Aggressive, greedy, cowardly monkey-things. Someone’s taking your memories? I don’t care. Someone’s taking our lives and using them as weapons.”

His face closed off, his mouth snapped shut, his eyes shuttered. She expected him to leave, but instead he let out another huffing breath, and said, “Perhaps we can make a deal.”

“A deal?” Sylvie said. “Sure you trust a greedy monkey?”

He parted his teeth at her again; his tongue was white in the darkness.

“My people are being used. I think by the very people they attack.”

“The ISI?” Sylvie said. There was another vote for internal strife turning into a massacre.

“Yes. The better to make themselves a needed force in the world. I can’t be in two places at once,” he said. “I’ve been focusing on stopping the attacks.”

“Really,” Sylvie said. “Bang-up job. You’re what? Always an hour too late?”

“It’s my only option,” he said. “Someone’s leashing my people with magic. Leading them around like dogs. That person has to be close by. I’m hunting them. I don’t know who I’m looking for. The ISI would know. You can get inside the ISI and get out again. You can get me that name. I expect it’s one of their own. A secret branch within a secret branch. Your government would love to harness us.”

“Like a dolphin with a bomb strapped to it.”

He shot her an ugly glance. “Exactly like that. Except we don’t need any weapon but ourselves.”

“All right,” Sylvie said. “What do I get if I pass any information on to you?”

“Stopping the attacks isn’t enough?”

Sylvie shook off her ingrained urge to bargain, but before she could apologize, he said, “How about an answer to your problem. The Good Sisters.”

“The what?”

“Your memory witches. The Society of the Good Sisters. They’re the ones wiping out your memories. Or so the rumors say. More than that, I don’t know. Is that enough for our deal?”

Sylvie eyed him in the dimness, the sleek inhuman smoothness of him, and tried to figure out his angle. He had one, that was for sure. He had no love for humans, but he might be telling the truth. She had to go after Graves anyway, and if the Encantado was being truthful, if the Good Sisters existed, the ISI would have files on them.

“Yeah,” she said, but he was already moving away as smoothly as he’d come, heading for the ocean. He strode into the slow roll of the surf, smoothed into dolphin shape, and was gone.

Sylvie turned back toward the house and got light-dazzled for her pains as room after room suddenly illuminated. She headed toward the house at a careful trot, and met Alex rushing out.

“Sylvie,” Alex called, her voice reaching ahead of her. She stumbled as she came, too impatient to wait for her eyes to adapt from the interior light to the darkness outside. Impatient. Or afraid. Sylvie felt her spine go cold. She guessed Alex’s words even as she gasped them out.

“Someone’s trying to get through the wards,” Alex said, stopping before she tumbled head over heels. “How do we stop them from getting through? I know computers. Not magic.”

“We can’t,” Sylvie said. “The wards aren’t walls, Alex. They’re spellwork, nothing more.”

“But you did all sorts of magicky stuff to open—”

“Only because I didn’t want to spend our entire time here fighting the urge to get out, get out. That’s all the wards do. Give you the creeping terrors. Make you miserably ill. Encourage you to leave, posthaste. The magical equivalent of a pack of growling pit bulls. Otherwise, Val’s house would be surrounded with the bodies of solicitors and neighborhood kids who climbed the fence. It’s a pretty strong spell, though. I’ve never seen anyone defeat it. Did you see who it was?”

“No,” Alex said. “I was watching Lupe when I suddenly got the urge to get up and check the security system—that was the wards alerting me, right? The camera shows a car at the gate, but there’s no one in it. They climbed the fence?”