“Guess whatever it was was definitive enough. The new scientists are a group of geneticists.”

Sylvie grimaced. “Urgh. That … I don’t like that. They go too far down that road in this environment, and we’ll have genetic scans made mandatory. The government’s already strung tight.” There were seventeen red pins in DC. Each of them represented another blip on the radar, another constituent group who’d managed to get an audience with their senator or congressman for something that once would have branded them lunatic fringe.

“Tell me about it,” Demalion said. He sounded strung tight himself. She stopped putting pins in the corkboard and looked at him. “Marah’s been calling.”

“Marah tracked you down?”

Sylvie had been expecting it. Partly because Marah was just that determined. Partly because Sylvie and her allies hadn’t gone far.

Sylvie had left her South Beach office behind—not that there was much left of it—and found them discreet office space in Hialeah. It wasn’t the beach, but it had everything she needed, including a lot of escape routes. Hialeah was a transport city.

Originally, Sylvie’s intention was to pack up her business, her partner, her sister, and Demalion and get out of Florida for good. It would have been the wise thing to do. But Erinya was still her mess. She couldn’t walk away from that. Right now, Erinya was playing nice, making a nest out of her small world for herself and Lupe. If that changed, it would be Sylvie walking up the causeway, with her gun in hand.

She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Lupe had come over for lunch a day ago, and she was happy, healthy, and bringing a peace offering from Erinya—a slew of carnivorous plants in pretty pots. Sylvie had passed them off to Alex with a grimace.

Erinya hadn’t forgotten Sylvie’s and Dunne’s treachery, but … as Lupe said, “She’s occupied. We’ve got worshippers finding their way to us, daily. Supplicants asking for vengeance and aid.” Lupe had ducked her head when Sylvie asked how vengeance played out with Erinya trapped. Lupe hadn’t needed to answer after that.

Lupe was dealing out punishment in Erinya’s name.

Demalion sighed. “Marah’s trying for the hard sell. Pushing guilt. I don’t think she’s even capable of feeling guilt.” He stepped away from the desk, stretched out the kinks in his back. His shirt rose, revealing smooth flesh where there had been stitches.

Another benefit to the Sphinx toxin treatment. He healed better now. Sylvie would be lying if she said it didn’t ease her mind. But healing wasn’t where her thoughts went as she watched the small, subtle play of flat muscle over his hips. He caught her gaze and grinned, slow and wicked. “Call it a day? Head home?”

“Don’t think about it,” Alex said, from the front room, eavesdropping automatically. “I swear. I’m this close to getting into Graves’s files.”

“You’ve been saying that for days,” Sylvie said. She almost, almost opened her mouth and teased Alex about losing her touch. Then she recalled Alex, unhappy and scared and losing her mind, and shifted direction. “You’re just cranky ’cause Tex is out doing fieldwork.”

“You sent him to Georgia.”

“Look at the map!” Sylvie said. “There are pins all over Georgia! I have to know why. And there’s only so much that facts can tell me. I want to know the feel of the—”

Their room-to-room argument was disrupted by the front door opening. The bell—a Zoe special—rang once, then twice: short bright dings that told Sylvie that it was a human coming in, and an armed one. Zoe had spelled the door chimes to alert them to a lot of different combinations since she couldn’t be there to do it herself. Val had whisked Zoe back to Ischia. Sylvie’s parents, appalled and newly aware of the dangers of the world, had thought Val offered the safest alternative.

Sylvie couldn’t really argue. Look what Zoe had done under Sylvie’s supervision.

This time, the chimes’ special tones were irrelevant. Sylvie recognized the man coming in. “Detective Garza.”

“You’re a hard woman to find,” he said. He gave Demalion a quick once-over, noting the gun at his hip, then, like everyone else who’d made their way to their new office, fell silent before the map.

“Those are all … what are those?”

“People interacting with or reacting to the Magicus Mundi,” Sylvie said.

Garza let out a sigh that was more groan than breath. “I killed a man and covered it up, then I forgot about it.”

“You had help,” Sylvie said. “I helped you kill him; the Good Sisters made you forget.”

“Can I help you?” The question burst out of Garza’s mouth, raw. Needy.

Garza paced, thrust his hands into his pocket, looked embarrassed; Demalion left the room, closed the door behind him.

“That’s not usually the way this goes,” Sylvie said. “People ask me for help, not if I need—”

“Look. I can’t do this,” Garza said. “I go to work every day, and I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. We got memos from above. Telling us to stay away from Key Biscayne—it’s not even in our jurisdiction. Someone sent down a list of likely monsters we might run into. Ways to identify witches, werewolves, even vampires. But no one really knows anything. It’s not enough. I feel like I can’t do my job right because I don’t know enough.”

“You used to do just fine—”

“I know better, now. I don’t want to wait for more memos, Shadows. I want to be there, on the front line, be the one figuring this out. Not waiting for it to be a problem that crosses my path—”

Sylvie held up a hand, opened the door. “Demalion. Can I have your phone?”

He blinked but tossed it in her direction. She caught it awkwardly with her good hand, then set it down to poke through his call history. Garza vibrated with impatience.

Sylvie found the number she was looking for, hit redial. Garza said, “Shadows!”

Wait, she mouthed. When Marah picked up, her voice was triumphant. “Demalion, I knew you’d—”

“Sorry, just me. I’ve got a deal for you.”

“What kind of deal?” Marah sounded suspicious.

“Simple. Stop trying to recruit Demalion.”

“That’s not a deal—”

“If you’ll let me finish, I’ll make it worth your while. This is Detective Raul Garza. He wants a job. On the front line. He wants to know all about the Magicus Mundi. He ID’d a Maudit sorcerer as a criminal before the Magicus Mundi gossip started.” Sylvie passed him the phone.

A few minutes of impromptu job interview later, Garza handed the phone back to Sylvie, looking far more at ease than he had when he came in.

“I still want Demalion,” Marah said into Sylvie’s ear. “Do you know how useful foretelling can be in politics? I’m a professional assassin, and I tell you, I was not prepared for the cutthroat tactics.”

“I’m hanging up, Marah,” Sylvie said.

“I get what I want,” Marah said, before disconnecting.

Sylvie, despite herself, despite Marah’s cheerful tone, found her blood running cold. In the front of the office, Alex gave a sudden shriek of triumph as Graves’s files gave up their secrets.

* * *

SYLVIE STOOD ON THE RIVER’S EDGE AND THREW THE WREATH OF pale flowers onto its sluggish surface. She waited for the bait to work while the water lapped up over the white petals, slowly dragging them downward.

It was quiet around her, almost peaceful here on the isolated river basin. Made her nervous. She shot a glance back toward the roadway, toward the bulk of the rental jeep, and a moving shape that was Demalion, pacing around the vehicle. He didn’t think coming to Brazil was a good idea, thought it took them too far off their turf.

Sylvie couldn’t blame him, but the trip had been necessary. A month had passed since Alex had cracked the encryption on Graves’s files. A month since that triumph had turned to worry and set Sylvie on the hunt.

Everyone was hunting, it seemed like. Hunting for answers, for safety, for a way to stop or control the

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