can guarantee you that Graves is no innocent.”
“It’ll have to do,” Sylvie said. She stretched, felt her back pop and crack, and thought about another few hours of sleep.
Demalion rubbed at the back of her neck, long fingers soothing as they carded through the tangles of her hair. “So. Dolphin boy was here? You let me sleep through it? Saw him alone?”
“Oh God, in the morning,” Sylvie said. “I’m too tired to argue.”
She tugged away from him, headed back for the bedroom. She stopped to move Alex’s blanket over the young woman; Alex was facedown on the couch, a few inches from her laptop. Sylvie closed it, slid it beneath the couch for safekeeping, then just stood there.
“She’s forgetting more things,” she said.
“She asked me how things were going in Chicago,” Demalion said.
Sylvie grimaced. “What did you say?”
“Not much. I started to, and she sort of went blank while I was watching her. Sylvie. Whoever these witches are. Good Sisters? They’re getting stronger. I don’t think we can count on Alex’s research skills now. Researching is making her worse.”
“Agreed. God, if Riordan weren’t kidnapping family members, I’d send Alex home. Get her out of this mess. I just hope she remembers that Lupe is dangerous.”
10
Turbulence
IT WASN’T UNTIL THEY WERE SQUEEZED ONTO A PLANE THE NEXT morning, hip to hip and knees to chair back in front of them, that Demalion seemed to recall her mention of the Encantado. “So tell me about your meeting with the dolphin.”
Across the aisle, Marah’s ears pricked up. “What dolphin?”
Sylvie sighed. Demalion had practically whispered it into her ear. Marah was too damned attentive. “The ISI’s not the only one concerned about the attacks,” she admitted. “There’s a … party from the other side who doesn’t like the precedent being set.”
“A monster,” Marah said. “Told you what? That they were
“Told me what I already knew. That the ones attacking the ISI are pawns of someone else.”
“Yeah. Graves,” Marah said.
Demalion, recalling Sylvie’s objection from the night before, said, “How do you think he’s doing it? A human controlling the monsters.”
Sylvie found her wandering attention sharpening. Did Marah have an answer?
“If anyone could figure out a way, it’d be him.” Marah leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “So what else did your informant say? Anything useful?”
“Not a lot,” Sylvie said. “You know about the Good Sisters?”
“Sounds like the Daughters of the American Revolution,” Marah said. “All prim do-gooders and charitable works.”
“The Encantado thinks their charitable works are erasing memory—”
“Oh,” Marah said. “Wait.”
Demalion leaned over. “Oh?”
“SGS,” Marah said. “The Society of the Good Sisters. They’re a rumor. Not really real. Supposedly started in the late 1800s. Industrial Revolution witches.”
“What do the rumors say?”
“That they’re secret keepers,” Marah said. “Men and women who use magic to hide magic. We thought they were a sort of magical police. But we never found any evidence they existed at all.”
“Sounds like just the type of thing that’s happening here.”
Marah shook her head. “They don’t exist, Sylvie. Trust me. The ISI looked hard. You know how the government loves templates. No, your guy was just telling you about the bogeyman that the monsters believe in.”
Sylvie thought back. But the Encantado hadn’t seemed afraid. Had seemed angry. Still, the plane was no place to get in an argument, and she had other things to worry about. Like Lupe and Alex, locked in a house together, one losing control of her shape and the other losing control of her memory.
Sylvie remembered driving out this morning, in the predawn swelter, and finding that Val’s house had become Sleeping Beauty’s castle overnight. Jungle blooms had twined and tangled and crawled over the low limestone walls, as pervasive as kudzu and as sweet-smelling as orchids. They’d had to hack through the greenery to free the gates from their tangled weave. Demalion and Marah had gawked, and Sylvie had felt eyes on her from the darkest heart of the thickets.
Erinya.
Right now, Sylvie wasn’t sure whether Erinya’s lurking presence was a good thing or a bad. She’d protect Lupe—wanted to keep her new toy safe—and she’d protected Alex before. But she was also impatient and violent and easily distracted. If she wandered off on some bloody task, would Alex remember to call on her?
Demalion’s hand wrapped around hers, slid his long fingers between hers. “They’ll be fine. All of them.”
“Or I’ll know the reason why … Vengeance gets old, Demalion. I’m tired of making people pay for hurting others. Be better to prevent it from happening in the first place.”
Turbulence shivered the length of the plane, of air pockets shifting beneath the wings, and in the skies outside, lightning flashed, white cracks in a pale, blue sky.
“Oh, come on!” she snapped, seeing Dunne leaning against the wall, watching her.
She was back in her office, back in Miami. Back where she started. With Zoe depending on her.
“You were supposed to stop her.” Dunne’s eyes were storm clouds. Lightning flashed through them, a constant angry crackle, strobing her office in washes of light.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Sylvie snapped. “But there’s a lot more going on than Erinya. She’s the smallest part of my problems right now. Take your godly envy and get lost.”
Dunne sighed. “The problem with large events,
Like magic—well, it was magic, wasn’t it—a glassine smart board appeared between them, the city mapped across it, glowing green and red and gold. Mostly green. Key Biscayne was solid red from shore to shore, and the water around it was tinting with bloody light.
Lupe was in Key Biscayne.
“She’s changing things past repair,” Dunne said.
Sylvie swallowed. “So Key Biscayne goes Aztec jungle—” She couldn’t finish her objection. Couldn’t find anything to ameliorate what was happening. Erinya’s jungle would be troublesome enough if it were just plants. Sylvie imagined Erinya’s otherworldly jungle spreading outward, sending tendrils through the waters, snaring ships, eating away at the ocean floor. But her presence brought life to alligator statues, encouraged people to pray to her with blood and stolen hearts.
Dunne didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
A spark of gold washed over the red-tinged Key, traced it like lightning, then was swallowed by Erinya’s power.
“What was that?” Sylvie said.
Dunne cocked his head and looked at his magical board.
“Is that real time? What’s the gold? Green’s real world, right? Nonmagic?” The gold light was tiny, like sparks. But it was speckled
