long. Really. I could drop some of them from here.” She held up a hand and proved her point. Sylvie turned to see two of the agents explode into a fine mist. The glass wall along the stairwell exploded, spitting shards everywhere. People screamed. Civilian casualties. The roof cracked, parted; sky peered through, mercilessly blue.
Somewhere, something was burning.
Erinya laughed. “Like nipping the heads off birds! Could cripple some others, let you catch up to them…
“This is why Dunne wants you dead. This is why you can’t stay on earth.”
Before Erinya could take offense and disappear, Sylvie grabbed hold of her sleeve, and changed the subject. She didn’t bother with subtlety. Erinya didn’t do subtle. “So you’ve been hanging out with Lupe?”
“I played in her dreams, sent whispers in with the swaying of my flowers, spoke to the beast in her, and she called to me.”
“Don’t you want to get back to her?”
Erinya shot Sylvie a flat glare, a clear reminder that Erinya might not be subtle, but she wasn’t stupid. “I could leave you here. Let you fly back the regular way. I’ve cleared the witches out for you.”
“Eri—I’m worried about Alex. Worried about my sister. Just plain worried. I’m going to go hunt Yvette, but I need to prepare first.” Like it or not, she was going to have to talk to Riordan. Not only to get Zoe back but to get a better scoop on Yvette. Find out if Riordan had been lying this whole time. Find out if he was Society also.
Thinking about his stance on magic, Sylvie doubted it.
Erinya sidled foot to foot, hissed at a single remaining security guard who had the balls to creep up on them, gun drawn, concussion be damned. He was bleeding from his forehead; his eyes looked glazed. He came on anyway. Erinya said, “Go away,” and he was gone. Vanished. He screamed as he went.
“Eri—”
“What!” the god snapped. She spun around, shifting shape as she did, her tail lashing at the air. “Do not presume on our friendship. You keep telling me what to do. What not to do. I do what
Sylvie couldn’t muster up any argument. It was true. It was why she’d tried not to ask for help, even when Erinya’s presence loomed like a solution to so many problems. Erinya wasn’t the right solution, just an easy one.
Sylvie wondered if she’d jumped the gun. If she could have escaped Yvette and her goons on her own. A year ago, she would have had to. Then again, a year ago, she’d barely been on the ISI radar.
“All right,” she said now. “You’re right. Can we go home now?”
Erinya’s tail lashed, then the Fury growled concession. Given that they’d destroyed and cleared most of the airport, and there was no one left to stop them, Sylvie took the time to collect her guns from the car and to make sure the laptops hadn’t been damaged in her mad dash. She remembered ricocheting off a wall at one point. If Riordan was involved, Graves’s protected files would name him a villain also. Alex would need the computers.
TRAVELING VIA ERINYA’S GOD-POWER WAS NOTHING LIKE THE smooth hiccup in reality that was Dunne’s method of movement. Sylvie understood why the guard had screamed; her bones felt like they twisted inside her skin, yanking her forward through landscapes that seemed slick and hungry, predatory. It was all stone and jungle and broken edges; nothing ran in any sensible way. It was as if someone had taken a puzzle of a landscape and forced it together any which way, heedless of shape or image.
Sylvie clung tight to her sense of Erinya and managed to wait until there was real earth beneath her feet to throw up. Her nails dug into damp Key Biscayne soil. Cool grass tickled her palms, and the salt air started to ease the twisting nausea. When she looked up, Erinya was peering back at her with curiosity. “You survived.”
“Was that in question?” Sylvie said. She remembered the child that Erinya had vanished and wondered wildly what had happened to him. If he had felt that pain. If he had died someplace utterly alien to the world he knew, scared and alone. It didn’t make sense. Erinya was all about justice for children.
“He’s fine,” Erinya said. “I took him the safe way. I took you through the realm I inherited from Tepeyollotl. Do you like it? I don’t. Even someone like me needs a peaceful place to call home.”
Sylvie put her hand up, a quiet demand for assistance in getting to her feet. Erinya grudgingly provided it. “I do understand, Eri. I do. But you have the power to change that place. Make it what you want.”
“It fights me,” Erinya said. “It remembers Tepeyollotl. He’s there, somewhere. Slinking around, a sulking remnant. Urging it to rebellion by his very presence.”
“You’ve never shied from a fight,” Sylvie said.
“I like to fight face-to-face, not against sneaking, crawling things. It makes me twitchy,” Erinya said. She shot Sylvie a sidelong glance. She managed to look sheepish. Sulky. Human.
A teenage pout from a creature that had just injured or killed any number of people in the Dallas airport. Sylvie scrubbed her face, frustrated. At a loss. The
“Are you two going to stand out there all day?” Lupe leaned out the front door.
“We’ll work something out,” Sylvie said. “Just. Don’t go off half-cocked anymore.”
“Unless
“I won’t ask.”
That was a promise Sylvie meant to keep.
Erinya shrugged, raced for the house, rubbed her cheek up against Lupe’s neck, coiled an arm around her shoulders. It was breaking Sylvie’s brain, but Erinya looked small and fragile next to Lupe’s lanky height. Then again, Erinya changed her height as easily as she changed her shape.
Lupe petted Erinya’s hair, met Sylvie’s gaze with a flush on her cheeks. “What. You wanted us to get along.”
Dream-courting, Sylvie thought. Whispering flowers. Beast calling to beast. Obviously, it was an efficient wooing mechanism. There was a bite mark on the back of Lupe’s neck.
“No, it’s great. Rah-rah, love, and all that,” Sylvie said. “Where’s Alex?”
“Still on the couch. I wanted to call the ambulance, but… Lupe’s mouth twisted, showed fangs of her own, the strange skink blue tint to her tongue. She gestured broadly at herself. “What was I going to say when they came to keep them from grabbing me instead? I called Erinya. She said Alex was ill, but not in danger. I had to believe her.”
“Thanks,” Sylvie said.
“She really wanted to talk to you,” Lupe said. “She found out something. Something important. She said, wake her up, no matter what when you got back. She wouldn’t shut up about it.”
“You have any idea what she was doing?”
“Hitting the computer hard. I think she was looking for leverage against Riordan?”
“She would,” Sylvie said. “Thanks again. I mean it, Lupe.” She clapped the woman on the shoulder, jerked her hand back when Erinya growled possessively, and went to check on Alex.
As Lupe had said, Sylvie found Alex on the couch, but instead of chattering and poking at her laptop, drinking coffee by the mugful, Alex was curled into a tight knot beneath a blanket; her face seemed comprised of bruising and shadows, hollows under her eyes, her cheeks, her throat.
Sylvie touched her shoulder. It felt thin. Fragile. Sylvie hated to do it, but she shook her awake. It didn’t take much. Alex jerked to awareness, panting and startled.
“Sorry,” Sylvie said.
“Sylvie—” Alex flailed for a moment, reaching for her computer. “I found something. What did I find. I can’t remember. I found it. It was important.”
“Easy,” Sylvie said.
Alex sat up, shook her head, clicked the laptop open. “So frustrating. I know I know things. A lot of things. Important things. But the more I try to remember it, the more it’s like a whirlpool in my head.” There were tears in her voice, in her eyes. Her hands shook. Sylvie was going to kill Yvette for that alone. For putting her best friend through this hell. The Good Sisters had held sway for far too long. There was nothing beneficial in turning a brilliant young woman into a nervous wreck.
