Lies & Omens

changes. All across the world, people were being drawn into the Magicus Mundi’s influence as surely as the wreath continued to sink.

Marah’s ISI was on everyone’s lips; last Sylvie had heard, before she set off on this river hunt, eight separate ambassadors from European countries had come to learn from the ISI. As if the ISI was an example of anything but what not to do …

Sylvie still worried most about the religious groups. The schisms were fast and ugly—people wanting peace, wanting communion with the gods, wanting wars to glorify their gods’ names and smite the unbelievers. And people were listening to them. A lot harder to dismiss a man who declared the gods were speaking to him when Key Biscayne had an entirely-too-tangible god that could be visited, prayed to, worshipped. The Church of Wrath was growing exponentially.

Sylvie had already killed two gods who were nothing of the sort—only a jumped-up Maudit sorcerer and a necromancer who resurrected the dead. Taking advantage of the climate. Sylvie had managed to get herself on television once again, lecturing the would-be believers about the differences between gods and men, and why blind faith was no good for either. She had ended up being asked to consult on cases all over the US. She was flavor of the month; but when she could, she sent Demalion out to play nice instead of her. After years of keeping an unofficial profile, her sudden notoriety was nerve-racking.

A mosquito hummed at her ear, and she swatted it away, wincing as the cast on her hand caught her hair and tugged a few strands free. She was healing fast, but not inhumanly so. A mixed blessing. She might be the new Lilith, an immortal woman, but at least she was still human.

Demalion, not so much.

Hospitals and doctors were being subpoenaed all across the country by the ISI, trying to winkle out any Mundi living in their midst. The witches, Sylvie thought, had been the tipping point. The world seemed to accept the idea of monsters—after all, maps had declared HERE BE MONSTERS for centuries. Monsters were upsetting but part of the collective unconscious.

Witches, though, scared the fuck out of people. Made them realize that maybe they couldn’t tell the monsters at a glance. Made them pull apart from each other instead of growing closer in the face of the Magicus Mundi. And then, someone let slip about werewolves and succubi and all the shape-shifting things that looked human but weren’t, and the rare half-breeds …

Martial law had looked like a possibility for a few fraught weeks, then things settled back into a panicky détente, while the government passed law after hasty law about creatures and things they knew next to nothing about.

The water before her glossed suddenly, rolled as something slid just beneath the surface. The sinking wreath bobbed again, and the Encantado surged out of the water, shifting from dolphin to human as he did. White petals stuck to his sleek skin, and his dark eyes were languorous.

“You called for me—” He trailed off. The pleasant anticipation on his face faded to wary irritation. “Shadows. What do you want?”

“Come up here. Come out of the water,” she said.

He touched the flowers over his shoulders, testing them. There wasn’t a spell laid over them. Only tradition. He shrugged and walked up the bank to stand before her.

“What do you want?”

“Mostly, just to talk.”

“Mostly,” he said. “I don’t like mostly.”

“You played me,” she said. “From the beginning.”

If she’d thought he’d deny it, she would have been wrong. He smiled, showing sharp teeth. “You listened to me. Believed me. Even behind your magical wards, my words reached you. Because you wanted to listen.”

Sylvie said, “You fed me a lot of things I was primed to hear. That the ISI was morally corrupt—which Graves most definitely was. That there were other forces working within the ISI, even gave me a name. The Society of the Good Sisters. You told me they were the ones running the Corrective. That was true.”

“So you wanted to thank me?”

“You also told me that Yvette’s people were the ones running the monster attacks. You … encouraged me to believe it. That’s the problem with being me. I’m resistant to magic. But first I have to experience it before I can shake it off. You … enchanted me. Just a bit. Just enough.

“You told me that the Good Sisters could leash the monsters as weapons. That they were the ones setting the attacks.

“You know what? They couldn’t. None of them could. Not even Merrow. I should have known right then. I saw Merrow when the mermaids tried to drown him. He wasn’t controlling them. He couldn’t control them. He could barely hold them off long enough for us to escape. You sold me that lie, and I believed it. The worst-case scenario. You sold it to Graves also, drove him mad with the possibilities.”

His placid face twisted hard at the mention of the dead ISI agent.

“How did he catch you, anyway? Did you stay ashore too long with some woman? Or did you plan to be captured?”

The Encantado said, “You think I wanted to be caught?”

“I don’t know; I only get to judge by the results. The results are a lot of dead humans,” Sylvie said. “You ended up in his torture chambers. I thought his notes referred to a mermaid, but it was you. You told him things. Held out long enough to make it believable, and then you sent him, a paranoid man, after enemies inside his own organization. That’s one way to disable an enemy.”

He turned back toward the water; Sylvie caught his wrist with her bad hand, her fingertips scrabbling over the warm-rubber feel of his flesh.

“But that wasn’t enough. You escaped. Then you coaxed the sand wraith, using your abilities to inspire belief, to go with you to Chicago, and you told it to destroy the ISI there. It obeyed. The Encantado. The strongest of the Magicus Mundi seducers. Then you moved on, and you did it again. Johnny-on-the-spot. You told me you were a Magicus Mundi troubleshooter. Trying to figure out who was controlling the monsters. A good cover story that explained your presence at all the scenes.”

“You believed me,” he said. “So eager to think that maybe we were just like you. That we cared about murder. It wasn’t murder. It was extermination.”

“When I stopped the mermaids, killed the Mora, you had to redirect me, to get me out of your playground. So you sent me after the Good Sisters, another set of your enemies.”

“You went off like a firecracker. Funny,” he said. “You wanted to believe that the humans were the bad guys, and my kind the innocent tools. Check your allegiances, Shadows.”

“I know my allegiances,” she said. She brought her good hand up, aimed the gun between his eyes. This close, she’d blow his skull to pulp.

He twitched. “What, you want me to tell you my motives, the whole of my plan? You’ve caught me—”

“No,” Sylvie said. “I don’t care about your plans. They stop today with you. I have one question left. And I want an answer.”

“Put the gun down,” he said. Compulsion rang through his voice; a clarion call to the back part of her mind.

She kept the gun steady, her voice even. She was in control here, and from the shock on his face, he was beginning to realize it.

“One question,” she said. “Why did Marah Stone free you from Graves’s torture chamber?”

Graves’s files had shown that clearly enough. Two shocks in a row for Sylvie. That the monster Graves had been tormenting for answers hadn’t been the mermaid she assumed, but the Encantado—her bias had blinded her. Graves had called the Encantado it, he had called the Encantado creature, and Sylvie, who’d already met the Encantado, thought of him as he and man.

The second shock had been the familiar form of Marah Stone releasing him, Cain-marked hand held