“Right
Sylvie had to grin. “No. When you’ve cleaned up to your satisfaction, found fresh clothing, maybe had a latte.”
“There was no coffeepot—”
“Just ask Alex for one,” Sylvie said. “The thing is I need Erinya distracted. You’re a witch. You’re about the biggest distraction I’ve got. Sure as hell the only one I trust.”
“No,” Zoe said. “She squished Merrow.”
“She won’t squish you,” Sylvie said.
“You’re sure? I mean, really sure. Mom would be so pissed if you got me squished.”
“She hesitated to kill Marah on the grounds of being family, and she’s not even close. You should be fine.”
“Marah? The ISI agent that the witches were tracking?”
“Is that how they found Demalion—never mind, answer’s obvious. Yeah. Marah. The point being, she actively tried to kill Erinya, and Erinya didn’t turn her into chunks. But … don’t try to kill Erinya. Just to be safe.”
“Why am I doing this?” Zoe said. “What are you going to be doing?”
“Ostensibly, taking my own shower,” Sylvie said. “I need some private space to talk to someone she doesn’t like. I want her distracted so she doesn’t notice his arrival.”
“Who?”
“No names,” Sylvie said. “At least, not until Erinya’s distracted.”
“This is important?”
“Yeah, Zo. It is. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Eri’s out of control.”
“And you think provoking her will help keep her under control? Sounds sketchy. I mean, I’ll do it. But this had better work.”
“It’s a total gamble.”
Zoe grimaced. “Great. Hand me a towel.”
“Where—”
“They’re growing from that tree.”
“Ah, so they are,” Sylvie said. She wondered when she was going to stop feeling that dull shock of surprise. Probably around the same time her low-grade discomfort faded. Too much power in the air for the Lilith’s blood in her veins. All this loose magic. It set her teeth on edge.
“Towel?”
Sylvie tossed her one and headed out. Val’s mansion had six bathrooms last count. Sylvie wanted to find one as far from Erinya as she could get.
The guest room where she’d stayed with Demalion was at the back of the house, and Sylvie aimed for that with good results. Found it and its attached bath both empty, and more pleasingly, not completely changed over to Erinya’s world yet. The bathroom still had a shower, still had recognizable dials amidst the twining vines. She turned on the water, stripped down, figuring she might as well get in a shower before she had to use a waterfall, and closed her eyes. She listened for magic, listened for any shivering sense that Erinya was approaching and, instead, got a sudden screech of outrage.
Zoe had distracted Erinya successfully, it seemed.
“Dunne,” Sylvie said. “I need to talk to you. Now. Hurry up.”
One minute she was alone in the shower, the next she was way too close to an increasingly damp god of Justice. She hadn’t thought that through as well as she might. She fought the urge to leap for a towel of her own; he was a god, a towel meant nothing, and, besides, he wasn’t inclined to look. Hell, he was all but wed to Eros, and no mortal could compare to him.
He shook his head, and the shower water stopped falling on him.
“You travel by storm and lightning, and you’re annoyed by the shower?”
“You asked me here for that?”
“No,” Sylvie said. “Look. I need your help.”
“I asked for yours and you haven’t done it and now you ask me for a favor? Another one? I sent you to Dallas. To Graves. I tweaked time so you’d reach him before he died.”
“Thank you,” Sylvie said. It didn’t stick in her throat as much as she thought it might. That really had been a generous act. “I can’t do it.”
Dunne sighed. “You can.”
“I can’t kill her. Not now. I don’t have the time, the energy to waste fighting her, and honestly, I don’t have the heart. She’s fucked-up and awful and dangerous and amazing and she’s my friend. She’s creating coffee for Alex whenever she wants it.” Sylvie retreated into the spray, hid the flush of tears on her face with heated steam.
Dunne wrinkled his brow. “
“You’re no longer thinking like a human,” Sylvie said. “You were going to be different. Justice. Not godly vengeance. Think back. Think to when you were human. When you caught a criminal, what did you do with them? Execute them? Every single one?”
“No,” he said. “We jailed them.”
“So jail
“I can’t attack—”
“You’re not harming her. I’m not suggesting chaining her to a mountain while eagles eat her liver. You’re just confining her. Come on, she’s alone in her pantheon. Tepeyollotl’s a shattered shell. He’s not going to even notice, much less care.”
“And the other gods? Those not in my pantheon or hers?”
“They probably won’t notice,” Sylvie said. “Right? I mean, if I killed her, they’d notice; there’d be a huge flare of power. If you killed her, the same. There’d be a fight. But they’ve been watching her trample Miami for months now. They haven’t done anything.”
“They’re still debating.”
“They’re slow debaters, then,” Sylvie said. Immortals tended to be slow about some things. She was grateful to it right now. “Which means, if you cage her, they’ll debate that, too. Probably for generations. You can buy me time. You can teach her a lesson that she might listen to. You know she’s not subtle. It probably hasn’t occurred to her that there are other ways the gods might choose to deal with her beyond straight-up attacks.”
Sylvie’s nerves jangled. The gods might have time, but she didn’t. Every second that Dunne was here was a second Erinya might notice. A second longer that Zoe courted disaster.
“It’s a risk, I admit,” she said. “Is it one you’re willing to take?”
Dunne vanished in answer. Guess that was a no.
Sylvie punched the shower stall, winced as her knuckles impacted and shredded on the grout. She had washed the blood off and had just rinsed the shampoo from her hair when Alex came barreling into the room. “Syl, you gotta … Zoe and Erinya…
Sylvie shook soap out of her hair, grabbed a towel, and ran, tripping over her feet, the vine-matted floor, the soil, and stone.
WHEN SHE HIT THE LIVING ROOM, SHE FOUND THAT ERINYA HAD CORNERED Zoe, was snarling into Zoe’s turned-away face. Lupe was coiled in the corner, returned to the snake-woman shape, caging a frightened nutria between her palms, watching with unblinking suspicion as Erinya and Zoe faced off.
“Aren’t you going to use your witchy powers against me? Try to save yourself?” Erinya taunted Zoe.
Zoe had closed her eyes, but her face held none of the fear Sylvie had expected. Instead, she looked utterly blank, as serene as a painted doll.
“Erinya, back off,” Sylvie said.
“I don’t like witches,” Erinya said. “I don’t like her.” A huge paw crashed into the stone beside Zoe, cracking
