Gods & Monsters

10 Politics as Usual

SUNLIGHT GLEAMED JUNGLE GREEN AND GOLD THROUGH CACHITA’S kitchen window, a lacy pattern on the dusty floor. Overgrown trees pressed close against the glass, making the room feel dimmer than it should, the day later than it was. Sylvie checked her watch again—8:00 a.m., and Cachita was already gone, doing god knew what, leaving Sylvie to snoop through her house at will.

Pity of it was there was so little to see. Two bedrooms yielded two beds, and, in Cachita’s closet, a handful of discarded clothes. The living room was empty of all furniture, and the dining room held only the table, two chairs, and the walls of paper.

Sylvie closed another empty kitchen cupboard and checked out a drawer that held a collection of dead spiders. She grimaced and slid it shut again. The refrigerator, bulb burned out, held a single take-out container with a fork and knife resting on top.

Hell, maybe Cachita had gone out for breakfast, and was on her way back, coffees to hand.

Her stomach turned over in hope. Her brain suggested she take advantage of Cachita’s absence to get gone before she was saddled with an intrepid reporter for the day. She was tired; she was hungry; she was dressed in yesterday’s clothes. None of that could be fixed by dawdling in Cachita’s house not-so-beautiful.

Her phone rang. “Lio?”

“Sylvie. I need to talk to you. Now,” he said. “My house. Hurry.”

Then silence. A brief spurt of irritation flared, tramped out by worry. Lio had sounded . . . frightened. Maybe Odalys had turned her attention to the man who’d arrested her.

Sylvie gave up the search for anything edible and headed for her truck. She made a quick stop in the dining room, snagged the pics and files on Azpiazu’s victims. Cachita would be pissed, but whatever. Sylvie could do more with the names and files than she could. Most protection spells worked better if they were specific to the person. Wales might be able to ramp up his unbinding spell if he knew the women’s names. If they could find them again.

While the thought was sharp in her mind, Sylvie texted Alex. New research. Azpiazu’s black van. Caridad’s background. She clicked the phone shut, feeling accomplished all out of proportion.

Twenty minutes of driving brought her to Lio’s house. Like Cachita’s place, it was 1920s stucco, set on a small plot. Unlike Cachita’s, it was immaculately kept. The grass was plush and green, the stucco white, the tile roof burnished by sunlight and care.

It looked serene, and Sylvie wanted to bask in it rather than step inside to conflict and stress. She wondered what Lio had gotten into that brought that note of desperation to his voice. Wouldn’t find out by standing outside, admiring the lawn.

The white eyelet curtain in the door twitched.

Busted, she thought. As if her truck’s diesel growl and its coughing sputter of a stop hadn’t betrayed her arrival.

She stiffened her spine and marched up the gravel path.

The door opened before her, Lourdes scowling in the frame. “You took your time.”

“Be glad I wasn’t coming from the office,” Sylvie said. “I’d be stuck in traffic for at least another half hour. What’s going on? Is Lio okay?”

The hallway was dim after the brilliant sunlight outside, and the rooms beyond the shallow foyer weren’t lit—Sylvie jerked back, got her hand on the gun, just as the Suit entered the hall.

“Sylvie Lightner,” the Suit said. Mr. Tall, Dark, Angry from the bar. He looked like he was holding a grudge for the embarrassment of the night before. “AKA Shadows. AKA the New Lilith. Scourge of god. L’enfant du Meurtrier. Have I left anything off?”

“Scourge of god’s a new one,” Sylvie said. “I don’t like it.”

“Oh yes,” he said. “Smart-ass bitch.”

“You don’t get to call me that on our first date. Hell, you never even bought me the drink you suggested,” Sylvie said. Her back was against the door; she had the distinct feeling that if she turned, that quiet lawn and street would no longer be so empty. “So you have a name, or do I get to make up one on my own?”

“Don’t make this difficult, Lightner.”

“I’m good at difficult,” she said.

Behind him, two more Suits lurked, a man and a woman, Lio sitting stiffly on the couch between them. He met her gaze briefly, looked away, his mouth pulled tight. Her simmering anger moved to a faster boil.

You have a gun, her little voice prompted. Even a body shield in the form of one sturdy Cuban housewife.

“Sylvie,” Lio said, a rumble that carried desperation. “They just want to talk.”

“I’ve got a phone,” she said. “And I’m in the book.”

“We’re old-fashioned,” the ISI squad head said. “We like face-to-faces to be on our turf. Don’t worry. We can be gracious hosts.”

It took more willpower than she’d expected to take her hand off her gun, to let the female agent take it from her, to let them surround her. She felt a little like a tiger in a big-cat press at the zoo, and from their wary expressions, they felt like newbie vet students.

But then, the ISI’s numbers had taken a hit in Chicago. They might be as green as they looked. The woman patted her down, her touch tentative. “She’s clean, Riordan.”

The squad head—Riordan—opened the door, and she had been right. A black SUV had appeared out of nowhere; no doubt it had been burning gas circling the block, just out of sight. Sylvie took the passenger seat and dared the waiting driver to object. If she was going to be hauled in by the ISI, she was doing it on her terms.

Lio was handed into the back of the SUV, moving stiffly, his bandages evident. They were pristine white, recently placed, and with loving care. Sylvie looked out the tinted window, saw Lourdes slumped against the door frame, and when Lio said, “I had to call you,” she didn’t bite his head off.

“I know,” she said. It wasn’t forgiveness, but it was understanding. The ISI could be real bastards. She didn’t think their threats were anything more than bullyboy posturing, but she couldn’t blame Lio and Lourdes, immigrants from a Castro Cuba, for taking them seriously.

“Just next time, Lio? Give me a fuckin’ hint.”

The SUV growled into movement and Sylvie closed her eyes, wondering what the hell the ISI wanted this time.

There was so much to choose from.

SHE AND LIO WERE HUSTLED THROUGH A CLAMMY PARKING GARAGE, taken into a basement room big on white paint and cheap furniture, short on charm. They were locked in and left.

Lio swallowed. “Shadows, what’s going on? Feds don’t usually—”

“Did they tell you they were FBI?” she asked. “They’re not. They’re the ISI. Internal Surveillance and Investigation. They’re all about the magic. Did they say what they wanted?”

Lio shook his head, winced, put a hand to the healing lacerations.

Sylvie paced, thought aloud. “It has to involve both of us, or they wouldn’t have brought you along. You’re no kind of leverage against me. No offense, Lio, but it’s true.”

“Lo sé,” he said. “So, the ladies in the Everglades, then? Do you think they know you studied the bodies?”

“They do now,” she muttered.

He grimaced. “Sorry.”

“Ah, they probably knew. Though”—she raised her voice a bit, put an edge on it—“it’s amazing how many things manage to happen right below their noses. Would you believe that a crazy immortal wandered in and out of their Chicago offices at will? And they didn’t notice until she started killing them? I could tell you stories—”

Lio frowned, lost. The door to the room opened, and two agents came in. Agent Riordan from Lio’s house, and a blond fireplug of a man with an ugly expression.

The blond leaned up against the door, crossed his arms over his thick chest. The dark man leaned over the table, tried for smooth and intimidating. Demalion had done it better. “I’m Agent John Riordan. I’ve been assigned to your case.”

“Man,” Sylvie said. “Sucks to be you.” She met his stare head-on, keeping just enough focus on the rest of the room that when the blond agent rushed forward and slapped the table, Lio was the only one who jumped.

Riordan said, “Janssen.” It wasn’t quite a reprimand. Had the weary edge of a We’ve talked about this—you said you’d do better moment.

Silence fell over the room again. Lio, wincing, crossed his arms over his broad chest, gave the young agents a flat stare.

Sylvie said, “You know, I’ve got a complicated reputation. I’ll admit that. But you know what no one’s ever said? That I’m psychic. If you have a question, ask it. I’m not going to guess.”

“Odalys Hargrove,” Janssen said.

“What about her?”

“Tell us about her,” Riordan said. “You two conspired to put her in jail on charges that frankly don’t stand up to decent scrutiny. What’s the real deal?”

Lio said, “You’re here for Hargrove? What about the women in the Everglades?”

“Not my case,” Riordan said. Utterly disinterested. “You’re my purview, Shadows. Not some magical serial killer.”

Sylvie interrupted Lio’s next comment, put her hand down hard on his wrist. His cheeks, beneath the dark patchwork of stitches, flushed to a brick color that made Sylvie think of strokes and heart attacks. “Odalys Hargrove is a necromancer,” she said. She didn’t usually approve of telling the ISI anything, but hell, she’d put this in motion by asking Demalion to pass the word. It wasn’t Lio’s fault they were there. It was hers.

And if she wanted them to do something about Odalys, she needed to make her case against the woman. Otherwise, bad-tempered Janssen and disinterested Riordan would have no problem leaving Odalys to the usual justice system just to spite Sylvie. “She started a nifty little business that transferred the souls of the rich and recently deceased into the bodies of teenagers. It killed the teens, and endangered a hell of a lot of other people in the process. Odalys Hargrove is not someone that jail will keep down for long. Necromancers use organic matter for their magic, and jails are full of that. A scrap of nail, a lock of hair, a bit of blood, and Odalys could take back her power, person by person. Odalys is—”

“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.”

Sylvie’s stomach dropped. “If Dunne finds out—”

“Don’t use his name,” Demalion said. “Using a name gets a man’s attention. I doubt a god would be less attentive.”

“Hell, I’ve spent all of last night and this morning talking about a god and got nothing. But at least I’m giving him a headache.”

“You’re not trying to summon our mutual—”

“No,” Sylvie said. “An Aztec god. Case.”

“Sounds like your case got complicated.”

“You’ve no idea. My evil sorcerer–slash–serial kidnapper–slash-killer? Also immortal.”

“You managed to beat Lilith,” he said. “You can take him.”

“Hell, Demalion. I’m working for him.” She closed her eyes against the sun, the sting of it penetrating through her eyelids, heating her face. It felt a lot like shame.

“You have a reason for it,” he said.

“Five reasons,” she said. “Maria Ruben. Elena Llosa. Lupe Fernandez. Rita Martinez. Anamaria Garcia. He’s holding them as leverage.”

“You have a plan?”

“Not so much,” she said. “Know how I want it to end. Dead sorcerer at my feet. Five women going home.”

A voice on his end interrupted their chat, a raised shout with Wright’s name tacked into it. Demalion sighed, his breath a gust in her ear. “Work calls.”

“You going to look into the assassin?”

“Not unless you have to have the information right now,” he said. “I’m trying to keep a low profile, and pushing Odalys cost me some cover.”

“Understood,” Sylvie said. She let the connection drop, gnawed at her lip. She had to let it go. Odalys was done and dealt with, and it wasn’t worth risking Demalion.

Another black car pulled into the pickup loop of the drive, a wash of exhaust in her face, and three black suits came out of the hotel to claim it. Sylvie grimaced; she’d nearly forgotten she was sitting in the ISI’s lap.

She called Alex. “Come get me.”

RATHER THAN WAIT OUTSIDE THE ISI OFFICES, SYLVIE WANDERED down the street, such as it was. The downtown hotels were heavy on business, not so much on amenities. But a mile or so gave her a breathing space between the ISI and her, and brought her to a long-desired cup of coffee at a lone coffee shop that made its money catering to desperate visitors who didn’t want to pay hotel prices for food.

She had finished three cups and a breakfast sandwich, barely tasting any of it, picking at the tangled problem of sorcerer, god, victims. It was like a shell game, but with explosives. If she freed Azpiazu from the curse—he wasn’t trustworthy. Those women would be dead. If she didn’t free him from the curse—he’d burn them out. They’d be dead. She had to free him, but she had to get the women out of his range, first. Which meant Wales, untested spell-work, and a rush job, trying to do it all before Tepeyollotl came hunting.

It felt like a loser’s game.

Alex pulled up. Sylvie left the air-conditioned coffee shop, hotfooted it over the sun-soaked cement between the door and Alex’s car.

She slammed in, grateful for the heavy window tint. Alex got them moving again, and said, “Your truck?”

“Outside Lio’s house unless he’s feeling pissy and had it towed.”

“I thought you two had made nice,” Alex said.

“Temporary setback,” Sylvie said. She propped her feet on the dash. “You have time to check out anything else on Azpiazu?”

“The original or the—”

“All the same man,” Sylvie said. “Or so Cachita tells me.”

“You believe her? Little while ago, you were saying her research was crap.”

Sylvie studied the road unfolding before her, conscious of Alex’s darting glances in her direction. “It’s like this,” she said finally. “I don’t have any real proof. What I do have is a sorcerer who feels . . . off. Who practices old magic like it’s natural, and who’s entirely too confident even for a sorcerer. If he’s been cursed with immortality—there has to be a god. Hell, given the way my luck runs—I should just plan for code red every single morning and save myself the time and wasted optimism.”

Alex took a turn a little too fast; Sylvie swayed in the seat belt’s grasp, thumped the door, steadied herself. “It would explain some things,” Alex said. “While I’ve been looking for the sorcerer, hunting for anything that can be attributed to him—shape-shifting stories, missing women, attacks on women, that kind of thing—I’ve found a lot of weird shit going on. Miami’s bubbling, Sylvie. It’s like the frog in the boiling water. We didn’t notice because it’s happening gradually. But . . . there are different types of events.”

“You break it down into categories?” Sylvie asked. It was a rhetorical question. Of course Alex had. She might look scattered, act scattered, but she was ruthlessly organized. Sylvie’d been in the girl’s apartment. Alex alphabetized her CDs, her DVDs, her bookshelves, her spice racks, her pantry, her refrigerator. Her enormous array of cosmetics was Velcroed to a makeshift color wheel that took up a wall of the bathroom.

“There was the attack at Casa de Dia, a few other sudden man-to-monster sightings. One about every fifteen to twenty days, discarding the de Dia attack, which was triggered by the cops breaking the spell. A woman went missing after each episode.”

Sylvie swallowed. That was bad news. If Azpiazu lost control of his shape when his deflective spell broke down, then the regularity of it suggested that the burnout of his human components took less than a month. Maria Ruben had been missing for a little more than two weeks. Her time was running out.

“So that’s Azpiazu,” Sylvie said. “Cachita told me about some locked-room murders.”

“Oh, Cachita said . . .” Alex griped. “I’m not enough for you?” At Sylvie’s look, she dropped it. “The decapitations? Yeah, nasty. They’re on my list. But they’re not Azpiazu.”

“No,” Sylvie agreed. “Not the god, either. Forcible decapitation isn’t much in their line of things.”

Alex lifted a shoulder. “Voodoo vengeance, maybe. Those people hurt kids, Sylvie. That’s a pretty strong taboo. And their cases were public knowledge. But . . . maybe. Indirectly. You said in Chicago that with the Greek gods roaming around, all sorts of people suddenly grew powers. Might be something like that. A would-be crusader who suddenly has the ability to make it happen.”

“By the time that was happening, Chicago was really zippy,” Sylvie said. “Magical hurricanes, transformations all over the place. We would have noticed.”

“True,” Alex said. “So I’ll slap an unknown on that one. Also? Two cops found dead in their patrol car. News is keeping things pretty quiet, but something sounds weird about it.”

“Keep following it,” Sylvie said, “and the decaps. That might end up on my desk if it goes on too long.”

“Other than that,” Alex said, “we’ve got some Fortean stuff happening, small scale. A woman who claimed the cats at the animal shelter started talking. Localized earthquakes—”

“Been there,” Sylvie said, thinking abruptly of Wales and his struggle to hold Jennifer Costas’s ghost. “You heard from Wales?”

“Gave him a call,” Alex said. “I was going to invite him to breakfast. He didn’t pick up, though. You think I came on too strong?”

“I think eating meals with necromancers is a really good diet plan,” Sylvie said with a shudder. “Alex—”

“Don’t date the help? I know. It’s just. It’s nice to meet a cute guy who already knows about the Magicus Mundi. Makes it easier to talk freely. Makes it less likely that he’ll go to the restroom and never come back.”

“You tell your dates?”

“I don’t like to lie,” Alex said. “If I lie, then he can lie, and I can’t even be pissed about it. Anyway, small earthquakes. People hearing strange sounds in the dark. If there are UFOs, these are USOs. Unidentified screaming objects. A lot of 911 calls that lead nowhere. Feral-cat attacks. Weird shit like that. Only noticeable in aggregate. Cachita tell you about those?”

“Nope,” Sylvie said. “You’re still the champ. Let me know if we start heading toward a rain of toads.”

“Flock of slaughtered ringneck doves?” Alex said. “The golf course was a mess.”

“Like that, yeah.” Sylvie leaned her head on her hands. They were nearing Lio’s, the highway giving way to residential streets, and she said, “Okay. This is the deal. We’ve got to find Azpiazu and the women. Immortal sorcerer or not, he’s also a man. And a man has needs.”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Food, shelter, that kind of thing. But it’s a damn big city, Syl.”

“We’ve got three options as I see it. Profile Azpiazu. Find him where he finds his women. Problem with that—”

“He won’t hunt until one of the women is dead,” Alex finished. “Hardly the result we want.”

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “Option two is to track Azpiazu by magic. Given that he’s managing to keep a god off his trail?”

“Option three?”

“Back to the material needs. He’s not on the grid. He has no existence in the eyes of society. He’s not going to have a credit card, a bank, or a mailing address for catalogs. If Cachita’s sources are right, Azpiazu’s a loner to end all loners.”

“If she’s right,” Alex said.

Alex’s jealous mutter sparked a loose thought into place. Sylvie’s hands tightened on her knees. She interrupted her own instructions to veer to new ones. “Alex. Look into Cachita. Look deep.”

“Yeah?” Alex grinned.

“Cachita is very sure of herself. But a little careless. She claimed she found out Azpiazu’s name and history from the sorcerous community.”

“I didn’t find anything,” Alex said.

“Nor did Wales. From the same source. In fact, he told me they didn’t know anything beyond the soul-devourer nonsense. And if he couldn’t find it, and you couldn’t, Cachita didn’t either. At least not from those sources. She’s desperate, though; who knows where she’s really getting her info.”

“Desperate for the story? Jeez, she can find a new one that isn’t picking over other people’s bones.”

“Her cousin, Elena Valdes, is among the missing, presumed dead.”

“Oh,” Alex said. She studied the road, the ever-present excuse of traffic to help hide her blush.

“Just look into her,” Sylvie said. “As for Azpiazu. He is a loner, but he has . . . let’s call them dependents.”

“The women,” Alex said.

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “They need water. And privacy. Someplace he can close off and control.”

“A private pool,” Alex said. “Probably indoors. No neighbors to notice. Sylvie? Maybe he left them out in the open as bait? You said he was looking for you. Maybe he made you find him?”

“Doesn’t matter at this point,” Sylvie said. “He’s got to be squatting somewhere.” She closed her eyes, recalled their meeting. Azpiazu had dressed for the occasion. Expensive suit, tie, fancy shoes, manicure. Well-groomed. “He’s a sorcerer, which means he’s most likely a pretentious fuck. Wants the finer things in life and can take them at will. He’ll be squatting someplace nice. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’d killed someone for their house. You find anything on the black van he was driving?” She spoke faster as she saw Lio’s house growing larger in the windshield.

Things were far too awkward for Sylvie and Alex to hang around outside Lio’s place and talk business. Sylvie sighed. All the drama of a breakup and none of the fun.

“Stolen, dumped,” Alex said, picking up some of Sylvie’s conversational urgency. “But hey. Not too far from the golf course.”

“Where the doves were killed?”

“That’s the one. It might mean something. If the god is looking for him, maybe he’s closer—”

“Let’s hope not,” Sylvie said.

Alex pulled up behind Sylvie’s truck. “Okay. I’ll hunt Azpiazu. Look up Cachita. What about you?”

“I’m going to talk to Val. Wales is good. But Val is better. Even if her magic’s still burned out, she’s got a hell of a lot of experience under her belt. Maybe I can convince them to work together—”

“When Hell’s a skating rink, maybe,” Alex said.

“She can’t stay mad forever,” Sylvie said. “It’s juvenile, and Val prides herself on her civility. Besides, we need a new bell. I don’t want any more sneak attacks at the office, and I’d like to go home sometime this century.”

Alex reached out and grabbed Sylvie’s wrist just as Sylvie opened the passenger door, holding her in place. “Syl.”

“Just say it,” Sylvie said, when Alex stared at her, trying to convey something in blinks of multicolored eye shadow and violet mascara.

“Val hates gods. She’s scared to death of them. You going to warn her that there’s one headed our way?”

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “But after I get her to talk to me. Once I mention a god, she’ll be hightailing it for the Azores.”

Alex let her go, leaned her face on the steering wheel. “You ever think you might get back to being friends if you didn’t manipulate her?”

“Oh look, we’re here,” Sylvie said, pointedly. She escaped Alex’s car, and Sylvie juggled her keys in her hand before giving in and heading up Lio’s front path. She knocked on the door, heard a grunt and a groan of effort that told her what she wanted to know, and considered just leaving. But she was already in Lio’s bad books; she didn’t want to add playing ding-dong-ditch to his list of her sins.

The door opened; he leaned on the frame and just looked down at her, face stubbled and tired, a frown settling in.

“Just checking they brought you back in one piece,” Sylvie said. “That’s all.”

She walked away, and he didn’t call her back. She hadn’t expected it. Not today.

Alex was right; it was hard to find people who knew about the Magicus Mundi, harder still to find people you liked in it. Damn near impossible to find reliable allies.

She really needed to get back on Val’s good side.