Lies & Omens

He turned Marah down, she reminded herself. His choice. She hadn’t asked him to. She just appreciated it. Enormously. The blue water beyond the ocean causeway glittered in the sunlight. Lupe fidgeted in the backseat.

“How’s it look up ahead?” Demalion asked the uniformed officer.

The man shrugged uneasily, cast a glance over his shoulder. “Hell if I know. They tell me that the whole island’s gone weird. Strange plants sprouting overnight. Stranger animals. Waterfalls. We’ve had to chase tons of gawkers away.”

“I see,” Demalion said. He took back his ID, and the man leaned in, rested his arm on the open window.

“So, do you know what’s going on, Agent Wright?”

“Yes,” Demalion said, and, in a move worthy of all federal assholes, rolled up the window, making the man jerk back or lose fingers. He glanced over at Sylvie before he touched the gas pedal again. “We’re sure about this? Erinya owns my soul. I don’t want her to decide to collect on it because she’s in a bad mood.”

“I’m sure,” Lupe said, leaning forward between the seat backs. “Drive.”

The island loomed ahead, and Sylvie shook her head. “Erinya. No sense of discretion.” Even from the far end of the causeway, the changes were blatant and undeniable. Vegetation curled above the island like greenish smoke. A sharp-edged hill rose high and bare out of the massed tree tangle. White-stone walls meandered along the top of it like an open mouth showing teeth. A pair of distinctive gates blocked the narrow, stony path toward the rearranged dwelling. Sylvie wasn’t even sure there were ceilings.

“That’s what’s left of Val’s house?” Zoe said. She slumped back, and said, “You get to tell her. Not me.”

“Maybe she won’t ask,” Sylvie said.

Demalion pulled up at the second roadblock, this one designed to keep anyone on the Key from leaving. Sylvie wondered how many people were stuck with Erinya. Whether Erinya was leaving them alone, or whether they were all her stunned acolytes by now.

The officer who waved them to a halt was less impressionable than the first. He looked at the ID, and said, “What’s your purpose here, Wright?”

“Same as yours, I’d imagine,” Demalion said, nodding at the line of uniformed officers preparing to take the final few steps onto the Key. “Send a man in for recon.”

“Didn’t get enough information from the flyover? The Feds buzzed Key Biscayne all night. Made our choppers stand down.”

Lupe growled, slid out of the car before Demalion could argue further with the policeman. “I’m going in.”

“Wait,” Sylvie said. She dragged Lupe around to the far side of the car, trying to keep their conversation away from prying ears. A vain attempt. The police pivoted to keep them in focus, hands on their weapons. Sylvie said, “Gentlemen. Don’t get trigger-happy. You won’t like the result.”

They hesitated just enough that she felt comfortable putting her back to them. “Are you sure about this, Lupe? Erinya’s trapped, and not in the best of moods. A drawback to being a god? Their tantrums can last eons.”

“She won’t hurt me,” Lupe said. “She likes me.”

“She liked you as a monster,” Sylvie said.

“I’m still a monster. It’s just … inside now.”

“Lupe—”

“I killed people, Sylvie. I ripped them apart and ran my claws through their guts. I’ve done a lot of things in my life. None of it has ever been as satisfying as killing. Erinya understands that. Erinya likes me. And you know. I think I like her.”

Sylvie let her go. If the world was going to change, if people were going to see the truth of things, she needed to let them act on what they knew. She couldn’t play gatekeeper for the entire world. She had to trust people to make their own decisions.

Lupe nodded, walked past the armed men, walked right to the seething vines. Their chaos continued unabated, lashing and twining, but as she reached out, they parted, swallowed her down.

The cops swore and took steps back. Sylvie watched the greenery close up again and wondered if she’d done the right thing. It seemed to be a constant refrain in the back of her mind, as if she were vibrating to the uncertainty of the world.

She shook it off. She’d pulled the wool from the world’s eyes. She couldn’t regret it. Whatever came. Whatever happened.

Better to build a world with truth than one full of lies.

19 And After

TWO WEEKS LATER, SYLVIE WAS PUTTING TINY PINS IN A VERY LARGE map as Demalion called out city names, state names, country names, listing places that were waking up. In the states, Florida had been the first to admit that there were magic and monsters and everything people had dreamed of and feared.

Of course, they had Erinya’s Key Biscayne makeover to help them along. The cops had gone in an hour or two after Lupe—shamed into it—and, surprisingly, Erinya had let them come back out, unscathed. Their report, which Alex had helped herself to, had said two women were living there, and they both could turn into monsters at will.

Then the army had invaded.

They’d been gone for four days, stumbling out with depleted weapons, shiny new PTSDs, and the word from on high: Erinya might be trapped there, but she demanded respect. Word got out. A god had taken over Key Biscayne.

The Christian fundamentalists claimed it was a devil and were holding prayer vigils for God to smite Erinya out of existence. So far, there was no response.

A temporary prison, Sylvie thought. She’d forgotten that temporary meant a different thing to immortals. It might be centuries before the other gods came to a consensus on whether Dunne’s trap constituted an act of war or not.

Another pin marked one final ISI attack in Seattle. While Sylvie and Demalion had been busy fighting Yvette, a sea monster had slipped out of the dense fogs and taken out the ISI building, two piers, and a homeless shelter. The sheer number of witnesses made Seattle the second city to acknowledge the truth, that humankind had neighbors they knew next to nothing about.

Sylvie didn’t like that pin. Not only did it mark civilian casualties, it marked her failure to track down all the Good Sisters. There was at least one out there, and a dangerous one at that. One like Merrow, who could turn monsters into weapons. Alex was struggling to crack Graves’s computer encryption. Maybe once Alex succeeded, Sylvie would have a better idea of how many more of the Good Sisters were running loose.

Demalion said, “Earth to Sylvie? UCLA just started a new scientific study on ESP.”

“Yeah?” she said. She braced her cast-encased hand against the edge of the board and stuck a tiny pin in an already crowded spot. The universities, as a whole, were reacting in two ways: sheer, unbridled fascination or utter refusal to accept the magical world. That was all right. They weren’t the ones she was worried about. Not really.

She was worried about the churches. It was one thing to believe in your gods, to get proof that your gods were real, concrete, tangible. To have your faith proved fact. It was a whole other type of shock to realize that other people’s gods were just as real. Right now, the religious groups were being very, very quiet. It made her nervous. The whole world made her nervous, hence the board— Alex’s idea to keep them up to date, trying to predict trouble spots.

“Apparently, someone at UCLA was going back through old studies and found out that the reports had —”

“Changed,” Sylvie finished. “Proved that psychic powers were possible?”