Gods & Monsters (24 page)

“Dead,” Riordan said. He dropped into the seat opposite Sylvie; the tight anger on his face eased back, shifted toward skepticism. “You didn’t know.”

“No,” Sylvie said. Kept her denial flat, her surprise minimal. He was ISI; he wouldn’t believe any protestation she could make.

“Get up,” he said. “I have something to show you.”

Curiosity got her to her feet when irritation at being bossed around urged her to settle herself more firmly in her chair. Lio rose a beat behind and was waved back to his seat.

Janssen said, “Want to keep your shield, Detective? Take a seat.”

“It’s all right, Lio,” Sylvie said. Better for him to stay out of it if it was even possible.

The Miami ISI headquarters had moved since the last time she’d looked for it. Given what she could see after a trip up in the service elevator—wide hallways, plush, patterned carpets, the sheer number of doors they passed, all identical, all evenly spaced—she assumed they had taken over the fourth floor of a Miami hotel. The ISI were big on having their offices among other buildings.

When Sylvie had asked Demalion about it, he’d said that it meant they had nothing to hide. Sylvie thought it meant that they had facilities they wanted to hide very badly, and this was their way of throwing off suspicion.

Whatever their reasoning, it made it surreal—her body keeping count of rooms, of familiar proportions—to find, instead of a hotel laundry room, a makeshift morgue.

It wasn’t much of a morgue. Sterile, but small. More like a one-room research lab with a very hefty budget and very small space. Lots of technology; very narrow table in the center of the room. It actually looked more like a chest freezer than anything else. It hummed like one. A chest freezer with a plasticized white sheet draped over a humansized form.

“They found her late last night in her cell,” Riordan said. “Strung up against her bars, and”—he flipped back the sheets—“mutilated.”

Sylvie swallowed hard, concentrated on keeping her face impassive. She had a reputation after all.
Hard as nails.

She wished the word “nails” hadn’t crossed her mind. They made her think of hands, and Odalys was down two of them. Sliced off cleanly at the wrists.

“Sends a message, don’t you think?” Riordan said. “My question is from whom to whom? Can you shed some light, Shadows?” He wasn’t as calm as he wanted to be. His fingers twitched; he stuffed his hands into his pockets.

Sylvie pulled the sheet back up over Odalys’s contorted face; the woman hadn’t died easy. A vicious wound nearly bisected her chest, tearing through ribs and organs, like the world’s worst autopsy student had made a desperate last attempt to impress with effort if not competence. Another agent might take it as a weakness on her part to cover Odalys, but she thought Riordan was just grateful he didn’t have to do it himself. Besides, it bought her some time to think.

Odalys’s death was on her head. She knew that. She’d asked Demalion to pass the word along; she hadn’t anticipated them killing Odalys—though truthfully, she hadn’t thought it through. What had she expected them to do?

Demalion had passed the word along. The ISI had responded. And Odalys was dead. So why were they dragging her in and asking her questions that felt . . . honestly confused?

“Shadows,” Riordan said. “I’m waiting.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “She killed some very influential people’s children. That kind of thing makes powerful enemies.”

“
You
have a reputation for being a powerful enemy,” he said.

“Does my reputation give me the ability to walk into a secured jail, armed with what? A machete? Hedge trimmers? Sorry, Agent. You’ll have to look beyond me for the killer.”

He leaned back against the door, keeping her contained. “That your only answer?”

“The only one I have that you’ll like.”

“I
don’t
like it. You could try again. If you have any plans for the day other than babysitting Odalys’s body. I’m curious. Do you think necromancers recover from being dead?”

“No,” Sylvie said. “They’re just dead.” She studied him again, began to get his measure. He might be Janssen’s boss, her new personal spook, but he wasn’t much more than a researcher, someone dragged out of the labs to fill in a manpower gap.

Might even be the answer to why he dragged her in. Odalys’s death provided him a chance to take a crack at her, something all ISI agents wanted.

“You could have gotten into the prison,” he said, testing. “I’ve been following you. You associate with the Ghoul. Our files suggest he has the ability to break in anywhere, unseen and unstoppable. The CIA has him marked down as a threat to national security. You expect me to believe that he couldn’t get you inside the jail?”

“Are you kidding?” Sylvie laughed. Wales spent all his time trying to keep a low profile. Magical murder behind prison bars was not low-profile. “Sorry. I think the bad guy you’re looking for is much closer to home. You should be careful. You might be stepping on toes above your pay grade.”

She turned her back on Odalys’s corpse and reached for the doorknob. He put his hand down over hers; his skin was soft, unmarked. Definitely a newbie in the field. “What do you mean?”

“You said it yourself. The ISI watches me. They probably saw me dealing with Odalys. They probably recognized the threat right away. What do you think the higher-ups decided to do about Odalys’s existence?”

“We don’t kill people,” Riordan said.

“You can tell yourself that all you want,” Sylvie said. “Doesn’t make it so.”

He gave ground; she let herself out into the hall, breathed in the softer air of recently vacuumed carpet, slightly dusty light fixtures, and nothing of bleach and death.

Lio and Janssen broke off their staring contest when she opened the door. Janssen’s face twisted into a scowl. Lio’s didn’t warm much either; in fact, he looked downright angry. “You done playing, Shadows? ’Cause Lourdes is going to be frantic.”

“Yeah, we’re going,” Sylvie said.

Janssen said, “No, you’re not—”

Riordan just shook his head. “Yeah, she is.”

Lio pushed himself up out of his seat; the table creaked beneath his palms. Still hurting, still sore. Sylvie reached to give him some support, and he jerked away from her touch, headed slowly out the door.

“Are you giving us a ride back?” Sylvie asked. “Or do I bill you for the cab fare?”

“I’ll get you a driver,” Riordan muttered. “Don’t get used to it, Shadows. I’m still going to . . .” He trailed off.

“You’re not very good at being threatening,” Sylvie said. “Work on it.”

Sylvie made her way back out toward the front of the hotel, found Lio there, blinking and swaying in the sunlight, and reached to steady him again. He shook her off. “Don’t touch me.”

“What’s your problem?” Sylvie asked. “I should be the pissy one. You’re the guy who turned me in to the ISI.”

“You killed Odalys,” Lio said.

“I did not,” she said. “Christ, Lio, she was in jail.”

“Don’t blaspheme,” he muttered. He paced, forcing some fluidity into sore limbs, gone stiff with his hospital stay, and the no-doubt bed rest that Lourdes would have prescribed. “Janssen said the killer took her hands. That she was tortured before she died. You did that?”

“I didn’t,” Sylvie said. “You have a hearing problem? I don’t kill people.”

“No,” he said. “Maybe not directly. You have pagan gods do it for you.” His voice broke, and in the crack it left, Sylvie saw fear.

She should have expected it. She had expected it days ago, back when she first started to explain the
Magicus Mundi
to him, had seen a glimmer of panic in his hospital bed, but this—this was the corrosive terror that meant he wasn’t going to cope. He’d wanted to know, and the knowledge was going to break him.

She’d made a mistake telling him.

Into the silence, Lio said, “This is a democratic country. There’s a contract that we keep faith with. We arrest people, we try them, we find them guilty or we acquit them. They are sentenced. Their punishment takes their time and their freedom, or a death that we make simple and clean. We don’t torture for punishment or for proof. We don’t sentence people before their trials. An eye for an eye leaves the world blind. Vengeance destroys what makes us human.”

Sylvie growled. “You were pleased enough that your son’s killers were destroyed. You are a hypocrite, Lio.”

“Perhaps I am. But I didn’t sentence them. You did.”

A black SUV pulled up, smooth as silk, into the roadway before them; a dark-haired woman in a suit got out, and said, “So where am I taking you?” The question was directed at both of them, but the woman’s focus was all on Sylvie.

“You’re taking him home,” Sylvie said. “I’ll find my own ride.” Best to give Suarez some space, some time to calm down. He’d lived through a Castro Cuba, earned citizenship by fighting in the Gulf, worked his way up the ranks in the Miami police. He was a tough bastard.

“Damn,” she said. “I was hoping we could chat.”

Lio eased himself into the passenger seat, closed the door with a solid thud. The driver lingered, standing on the curb, waiting for Sylvie’s response. Sylvie blinked; she hadn’t thought the woman’s attention was anything more than ISI attitude.

“Doubt we have anything to talk about,” Sylvie said. She badly wanted to be out of there, away from the ISI. And this suit in particular was beginning to set off alarm bells. It wasn’t the woman’s poise or confidence, wasn’t the tough-girl vibe that made Sylvie convinced the woman was a brawler and a gunfighter. It was that she acted like she knew Sylvie.

“We could start with the favor I did for you. Or we could talk about Michael Demalion,” she said. “But if you won’t, you won’t.” She saluted Sylvie briefly, a quick twist of her fingers near her brows, a casual gesture that should have been mocking. But the woman’s hand, drawn to Sylvie’s attention, looked . . . bloodstained. A mottled, muddy crimson wash over her knuckles and palm, rising upward to her wrist and beyond.

It wasn’t a birthmark or skin ailment. Sylvie had seen that mark before, and recently.

“Wait,” Sylvie said.

“Too late,” the woman said. “Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll get together at some point.”

The agent climbed into the SUV and disappeared into the steady stream of traffic. Sylvie, despite wanting to get away from the ISI, found herself meandering gently to the nearest bench and dropping into it. The metal slats were soothingly warm through her clothes, and she leaned back. Her head was going to burst. Ducks squabbled on the green surface of the nearby canal.

Too much information—murdered Odalys, Tepeyollotl, the need to find Azpiazu, Azpiazu’s theoretical immortality, the falling-out with Lio, and now this ISI mind game?

Murderer,
her little dark voice whispered, belatedly identifying the female ISI agent. Not by name, but by profession.

Even if she hadn’t mentioned Demalion and a favor in the same breath, Sylvie would have known. She’d done some quiet research on her own since Zoe’s incident, since that same magical scar showed up on her sister’s flesh, trying to figure out what that scar meant. Rumors proliferated—the only clear truths she could grasp were that the scarring was rare and only blossomed on specialized killers. What made them special, no one knew.

Sylvie plucked at the gaps in the bench, drew lines between the bars, bridging the eternally distant, and gave in to impulse. She called Demalion.

It rang, but he didn’t answer. She disconnected before Wright’s voice mail could pick up, waited.

Her phone buzzed. “Shadows,” she said.

“Sorry, honey,” Demalion said.

“You’re at work,” she said. “And not alone. They think it’s your wife calling?”

“Seemed easiest,” Demalion said.

“You got the word out on Odalys?” she asked.

“Took some careful maneuvering, but I did find a willing ear,” he said.

“Did you know they’d kill her?”

The radio sounds in the background, the tangle of voices, and the clatter of movement through a crowded room kept her from demanding an answer when he went silent. Her patience paid off; the background noise changed to wind and distant murmuring. “Taking a cigarette break?”

“She’s dead?” he asked.

“Yeah, and I got hauled in for questioning—what’s that about?”

Demalion’s voice, even in Wright’s husky tenor, sounded edgy. “Syl, the ISI’s changed. After Chicago, the factions within the agency started getting more . . . outspoken.”

“Let me guess. One faction’s all about putting down the magical threat.”

“Hey, Odalys deserved to be dead—”

“Not arguing that,” Sylvie said. “Really not. But your perky little ISI assassin cut Odalys’s hands off, and that worries me. What, one for the Hand of Glory, and one for a trophy?”

Demalion swore quietly and steadily; Sylvie had the feeling that if he weren’t hanging out at the cop shop, pretending to grab a smoke, he’d be all hissing intensity, his eyes narrowed to angry slits. Finally, he said, “My perky little assassin?”

“That’s what you focus on?”

“It’s the only part that I don’t get,” he said. “I don’t know the assassin. C’mon, Syl, you’re the closest thing I know to an—”

“Five-eight, short dark hair, dark eyes, cheerful personality, and oh . . . red right hand. She seemed to think she knew you.”

“You sure?” Demalion asked. “She said that?”

Sylvie said, “No. Not exactly. She said we could talk about you.”

“Fuck,” Demalion said. “Look, Sylvie, don’t tell them—”

“’Cause I so often talk freely with the ISI,” she snapped.

“It’s not just them,” he said. “I’m making ripples here. Wright’s life doesn’t fit me well. I can’t afford the wrong kind of attention.”

“I thought you were going to court the ISI.”

“On my terms, yeah,” Demalion said. “But it’s not about them. Sylvie, the Furies killed me on the say-so of their god. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to stay dead.”