Lyn Benedict - Lies & Omens

Demalion met Sylvie’s eyes and nodded. I’m okay.

Zoe drew her attention next by the simple gasp she let out. She stared at Sylvie’s swaddled hand, braced from every angle possible. “Oh God, what happened?”

“Bonebreak spell.” Sylvie took in her sister’s appearance in full light and did some appalled gaping of her own. “Oh, Zoe…

Zoe tossed her head; the brutal burn across her neck and jaw glistened in the white lights of the clinic, shiny with salve. Her hair on that side was a charred, frizzled mass. “It’s okay,” she said. “Nothing a chic haircut and a small illusion won’t fix. It’s not that bad.”

Sylvie bit her lip hard, sat on the low, padded table beside her. Her knees felt soft, fluid. When she had control of her tongue, she said, “I’m sorry.”

“I knew what I was getting into,” Zoe said. Her eyes were hard and bright; she squeezed onto the table also, a line of warmth along Sylvie’s side. “I opened up the earth below the witch who did it. Feel worse for her. She’s down amidst the magma.”

Marah grinned from her place by the door. “I like your sister, Sylvie.”

“Yeah, I meant to say—what the hell, Zoe? Earthquakes in a fault zone? That was a fucking huge risk, don’t you think? We were all underground !”

“It was not,” Zoe argued right back. “Jeez, Sylvie, use your brain. That stronghold had stood for over a century. It survived the 1906 earthquake. You know what that means?”

“They were lucky?”

Demalion rolled his eyes. The nurse in the room didn’t even look up as they argued over magic and earthquakes. Sylvie wondered if she was even listening at all. She seemed utterly practiced in ignoring anything but the wounds she was dealing with. She finished the last stitch, leaned forward to reach for a roll of gauze, and revealed a handgun strapped at her spine.

Sylvie had the strong suspicion they were in an ISI chop shop. Safe enough, she supposed. There was no one left to lead the ISI. Graves. Riordan. Yvette. All dead. No one to take their places. No one to come after her for the time being.

“You don’t get it, Sylvie. Those witches worked enough magic to make the ground completely stable. There are anti-earthquake charms all over the area. Hell, the rest of the world will fall into the sea before that place feels so much as a tremor.”

“Yeah, that might explain why it’s still standing after Sylvie got through with it,” Demalion said. “I thought that was too good to be true.”

“We were damned lucky. I kept expecting Yvette to sic one of her leashed monsters on us. I guess she was tapped out.”

“Or thought she’d get caught in the cross fire,” Demalion said. “Those monsters were pretty much the raze-it-to-the-ground type.”

“I would have done my best to make sure she did,” Sylvie said with a shrug.

Lupe slunk into the room; a toilet flushed behind her. She was changed, wearing white scrubs, and she looked very small as she curled up on another examining table. She sat silently, watching her hands open and close. Her nails shone short and soft and human. Pink and white, the traces of an old French manicure brought back from the past. She had two black eyes forming—probably a broken nose—red-yellow bruises rising on her arms, but other than that, she looked just like the girl Sylvie had seen months ago—the clean-cut college student.

Until Sylvie looked into her eyes. Lupe was never going to be that girl again, no matter that she’d gotten a reset on her humanity.

Demalion shifted in his seat, reached out, and distracted Zoe when the nurse applied one last sheen of salve to Zoe’s burned face and neck.

Too little, too late, Sylvie thought, but Zoe seemed to find some measure of relief in the application. She closed her eyes, sighed into it, tilted her head so the nurse could get her cheek.

Sylvie swallowed guilt—her beautiful baby sister—and dread. Her parents were not going to be happy. The nurse nodded impartially at all of them and left.

Zoe touched her arm. “Hey. Sylvie. It really is okay. I know a lot of healing spells. And with this? Val can’t object to me practicing them. She might even teach me some offensive spells. Mostly, she’s just showed me defensive ones. I had to make it up as I went along.”

Sylvie shuddered. “Thank you for not telling me that before we took on the Society. I would have died of worry.” Demalion reached over, twined his fingers with her good ones, squeezed.

“Hey, I’m badass even on defense. Shielding and magical pitfalls and illusions and mind reading. You can do a whole hell of a lot with those.”

Marah interrupted them. “You shouldn’t play defense, Zoe. Not with Cain’s mark on your hand. You’re a killer. It’s a waste of your talents.”

Zoe shrugged. “Whatever.”

Sylvie had never been so glad to hear that annoying word out of her sister’s mouth.

Before she could tell Marah off for trying to—what? Recruit her sister?—Demalion said. “Airport next, Marah?”

“Yeah. I think it’s safe enough. So, four tickets to Miami?”

“Four?” Sylvie said. “Where are you going?”

“So eternally untrusting,” Marah said. “If you must know, DC. There’s a job opening at the head of the ISI. It’s got my name all over it.” She smiled. Smug. More than that. Happy. Accomplished.

“ That’s what you want? That’s your plan? To take over the ISI?”

Marah let her smile widen. “Oh yeah. It’s been a long time coming.”

“You’re a lunatic,” Sylvie said.

“Related to you,” Marah said. “Seriously, why wouldn’t I? Power, prestige, loads of excitement, and things to kill. I’m an ideal candidate. Magic resistance and everything. There’s going to be more money than ever being shunted our way once people really sit down and come to grips with their shiny new memories of monsters and magic.”

“You, too?” Demalion asked.

Zoe and Lupe traded left-out, puzzled glances.

“Three out of five,” Sylvie said. “Odds don’t look good for the rest of the world.”

“Positive thinking, Sylvie. Positive thinking.”

“See, I like that,” Marah said. “You coming to DC with me, Demalion? There’s definitely a place for you in my ISI if you want it.”

Sylvie stiffened, but Demalion’s answer was quick and certain. “No.”

“Not even if I offer you a top position?”

“You’re quick to assume no one will object to your taking over,” Sylvie said.

Marah smiled. “I’ve got it locked. Don’t you worry about that. I have persuasive and powerful friends. I even have you to back me as director of the ISI. That’ll be something to show them. That I have Shadows on my side.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely,” Marah said. “After all I’ve done for you, do you really feel you can say no?”

Sylvie sighed. There might be worse things, she thought, than having Marah in charge of the ISI.

Not much, her little dark voice said. An assassin in charge of a secret government organization.

Probably not going to be secret that much longer, not if the Magicus Mundi wasn’t secret. People were going to want to know that there was a plan—Sylvie studied Marah’s smile and felt suspicion. Somehow, this was all working to Marah’s benefit. Every step of it. The attacks that killed the ISI heads, the unmasking of the Society, Marah’s easy capture by Yvette’s people, even Sylvie’s owing her debts. But she hadn’t known about the Society. Until Sylvie told her. Right?

Just a clever mercenary. Seizing the moment.

Seizing it right now .

“So, you never answered me, Demalion? If I made you a division head? Rejoin the ISI? Excitement. Molding the world. Saving people?”