Lies & Omens

Her Lilith voice protested any giving up of control, but the thing was, Lupe was right. She had to trust these two. They were all she had.

Sylvie looked back at the house as she left and wondered how it had come to this. Sylvie had spent years fighting the Mundi; now the monsters were her only allies.

12 Unmasking

AN HOUR LATER, SHE WAS BACK IN HER OFFICE, WAITING FOR RIORDAN to meet her, Zoe in tow. Their phone call had been short. Sylvie had dialed, said, “Graves is dead. Bring me Zoe. At my office.” She didn’t want to give him any reason to renege on his deal. She could hit him with all the truths—that Graves had died at a monster’s hand, that Graves was a scapegoat, that Riordan’s son was no such thing—when he got there.

She was poking at the phone, realizing that the other person she needed to call, she couldn’t. The Encantado, who had given her the Society info in the first place, who had asked her for her help in identifying the witch in charge of the monster wranglers, hadn’t given her any way to get in contact with him. Her mouth twisted. He hadn’t expected her to succeed.

It figured, though. He had been pretty grudging about her involvement in the first place. It just rankled. She’d lay bets that Riordan’s fake son was the local monster wrangler. She didn’t think the Encantado had it right: There wasn’t just one of them. Look how ragged dolphin boy had run himself, just trying to catch up. One human in charge of all that chaos? Far more believable to think that the Society had trigger witches in each ISI city.

The door opened, and Sylvie jerked her attention up, hand falling to her gun. It wasn’t Riordan. Wasn’t even Riordan’s fake son.

Detective Adelio Suarez. Showing the cop-sense of timing, arriving when she absolutely didn’t want him. He was unshaven, though, looked sloppy for the first time since she’d met him. He was grey with exhaustion, slow with stress.

“I thought if I had someone posted on your office, you’d show up sooner or later,” he said.

“I’m meeting the ISI head here in a few minutes.”

“Then I’m staying,” he said. “They’re supposed to protect us against magic, right? They’re not doing their job.”

“Lot of your men down?” Sylvie said.

“Enough that we’ve all been called in to work double shifts,” Suarez said. “The phones keep ringing, people reporting they’ve been hit by the plague. We don’t have people to send out.”

“Plague?”

Surprise lightened his exhaustion, sparked interest in his eyes. “You haven’t been following the news?”

“Lio, I’ve been slung from a moving airplane to Miami to Dallas and back again just since 6:00 A.M. And today’s a better day than yesterday. Alex usually keeps me abreast of the news when I’m deep in a case.”

“Why isn’t she?”

“The witches fucked with her memory—”

“That’s the plague I’m talking about, Shadows. You and I know it’s witches. But there are news reports on every channel talking about the upswing in sudden-onset dementia. They think it’s catching, and people are panicking.”

Sylvie groaned. “Dammit. Dammit.” She should have stayed in Dallas, should have prioritized catching Yvette, but Alex was hurt, and Zoe was missing, and Demalion had nodded, had all but sent her away. He had a plan of his own, but she had left him … She just felt stretched beyond capacity.

A dark SUV pulled up outside, disgorged Riordan. He looked harried; he pushed his way into her office, already criticizing her. “… just got off the phone with Collier. She said you released the Fury in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport? People died, Shadows.”

“Yeah, but does anyone remember it,” Sylvie snapped back. “She drove me to it. Where’s Zoe?”

On the street, the dark SUV pulled away. Circling the block, probably, doing their part for air pollution.

“I needed surety that I would walk away from this meeting. She’s with my people.”

“Your people, or your son?” Sylvie asked.

In the same moment, Suarez said, “Your agency kidnapped her sister? This isn’t communist Cuba. There are rules—”

“There are no rules,” Riordan said. “They’re all broken, and I’m just trying to pick up enough of the pieces to glue us all back together.”

“By sending me out to kill people. By kidnapping my sister. By condoning memory magic.”

Riordan’s aristocratic face closed off. Suarez grumbled deep in his chest, rested a hand on his service weapon. Sylvie was belatedly glad he was there.

“We have a real problem, I agree,” Sylvie said. “But I’m not sure it’s centered where you think it is. You’re blaming the monsters. You’re blaming Graves. You’re listening to the wrong people.”

“Right now,” he said, “I’m listening to you. You killed Graves, so obviously you judged him guilty—”

“No,” Sylvie said. “I didn’t. But he’s dead all right. Been dying for days. Not behind the attacks.

“My problem is, he managed to identify the villain of the piece, but I don’t know if you’re part of the solution. Yvette Collier, the woman you just talked to … She’s not ISI. Never has been. Her loyalty’s to something older. The Society of the Good Sisters.”

Sylvie paused, waiting for denial, for Riordan to declare the Good Sisters a magical urban legend as Marah had done, but, she’d forgotten bureaucracy—knowledge was doled out in increments, and only the upper-ups knew the score.

“You think she’s one of the Society?” Riordan said, shaking his head.

“She’s a ringer,” Sylvie said. “Joined up, just so she could suss out the competition. Apparently, the ISI goals of study, contain, control, are not the Society’s goals. She’s been turned from a sleeping agent into a saboteur. She’s taking out the competition, using witchcraft learned in the Society to leash monsters, then, she’s using the memory spells to clean up after herself.”

“No,” Riordan denied.

“Sounds sensible to me,” Suarez chimed in, and Riordan ignored him after a brief, why are you even here, glance.

“Yvette’s driven and yes, magically talented, and yes, she’s surrounded herself with other magically talented agents, but … no. I can believe she’s behind the memory plagues, but she’s just trying to help by making people forget something they’re not ready to accept—”

Suarez slammed his hand down on the table, cut Riordan off, and sent papers cascading to the floor. “Take a look around, Agent Riordan. Does this city look like it’s being helped? The hospitals are overflowing.”

Sylvie said, “She doesn’t give a shit about the regular people. She’s not protecting them. She’s protecting herself and the magical resources. Did she tell you that? Witches are scavengers, you know. They’re born with the ability to manipulate power, but the power’s not theirs. It’s shed by the Magicus Mundi. By the gods, by the monsters, by the very things Graves wanted to eradicate. No wonder they went after him first.

“Yvette Collier is your enemy, Riordan. Not Graves. While you were blaming him for the attacks, he was at his penthouse apartment having his life suctioned out of him by milliliters. He’s dead. I didn’t kill him. The Night Hag did. Yvette knew about it. Let it happen. Graves was a vocal opponent of magic. She wanted him dead. Want more proof? Circumstantial to be sure, but thought-provoking. Her agents helped Graves’s prisoner escape before the attack. She didn’t want to kill monsters. Just men.

“And, Riordan, pay attention, this is where it gets personal. She keeps tabs on the players in the ISI, close tabs. Graves’s aide turned out to be hers. She’s got one close to you, too.”

Riordan shook his head. “They’re all ISI agents, and we vet them all. I vet my personal staff yet another time. Their loyalty is to me.”

“Almost all of your personal staff,” Sylvie said. She almost felt bad for the man. He was clinging to his convictions, but his grip was shaky. What she was about to show him wasn’t so much