Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

“You didn’t tell me another woman was missing.”

“You didn’t tell me who Maria Ruben was.”

“You’re the one who wants to make nice,” Sylvie said. “You’ve got the motive to share. And so far, you haven’t. You’ve got a list of missing people you could give me.”

“But you won’t let me work on your team. You’d have shut me out tonight if I had let you.”

“It’s for your own protection—”

Cachita’s lips twisted. “You know what? You can get your own ride back. I’ve got things to do.” She clutched her briefcase, headed into the women’s room. Sylvie propped herself on a table and waited.

She wanted to shake the names out of Cachita but thought the woman was reporter enough to bite her lips and keep silent. Didn’t matter. Sylvie had pictures and Detective Adelio Suarez. She could get the names another way.

Cachita came out of the bathroom, dressed to kill—bright green blouse that dipped low in front and cut out in back. She wore a tight black skirt, bright yellow heels; her hair had been tousled into curls. She rocked back a bit when she saw Sylvie, licked newly red lips. Everything about her was designed to draw attention, down to the leopard-print bangles on her wrists.

“Hitting the streets?” Sylvie asked, pure bitchiness, then paused. Cachita had blinked agreement before her mouth said, “It’s none of your business.”

“Holy shit,” Sylvie said. Pictures of the spellbound women flashed across her memory. All young. All attractive. All Hispanic. “You’re putting yourself out as bait.”

Cachita raised her chin, tossed her hair out of her face. “If the cops won’t, I will. I want him found.”

“And what if you do find him,” Sylvie said. “Or more to the point, what if he finds you? Then what? You’ll whip out your pen and write at him?”

“Better than doing nothing,” Cachita said. “You could always come with me. Lurk in the shadows. Ready to run to my rescue. Oh wait. I’d have to pay you first, wouldn’t I?”

They had attracted an audience, and Sylvie grabbed Cachita’s arm. Tried to. The woman evaded her. Sylvie finally threw up her hands in defeat. “Fine.”

It was irrelevant, really, she thought with a pang of guilty relief. Five women to power the spell, and there were five women she’d left behind. If Mr. Monster was the sorcerer, then Cachita could play monster chum all she wanted, and he wouldn’t bite.

It wasn’t much—there were all-too-human monsters out there—but Cachita was right. It was none of Sylvie’s business. It still felt a little like leaving the spellbound women behind, that guilty discomfort twitching in her veins, when she went outside and called a cab.

THE OFFICE WAS BRIGHTLY LIT AGAINST THE NIGHT WHEN SYLVIE entered, and even better—it smelled of dinner. She sniffed, trying to be discreet, and Alex grinned. “Cuban sandwiches, black beans, and rice. Yours is in the fridge.”

“Thank you,” Sylvie said.

“Petty cash paid for it,” Alex said. She dangled the key to the tiny lockbox from her fingertips, then dropped it back into the desk drawer, kicked back, and put her feet up.

Wales was draped across the couch, barricaded behind the enormous screen of his laptop. Sylvie drifted over, peered behind it. “You know, that’s pushing the definition of laptop,” she said. “Any luck? I’d expected to find you surrounded by occult books by now. You haven’t even cracked a box? Dinner that exciting?” Despite herself, she couldn’t help but let her gaze drift between Alex and Wales suggestively.

Alex laughed.

Wales went scarlet. “I’m a man on the move, Shadows. It’s all in the hard drive. Every occult book I’ve ever laid hands on is scanned in this baby. When you’re wanted by the CIA, you might not get time to pack.”

Sylvie eyed the boxes still piled about the office. “So what’s all this, then?”

“Nonessentials,” he said. “Just because I can winnow all my necessities to one bag doesn’t mean I don’t like having other stuff.”

Alex headed into the kitchenette, dished up Sylvie’s food, and nuked it.

Sylvie swallowed, belated hunger catching up with her.

She snagged it out of the microwave before the timer had run down, ate rice and beans while they were still lukewarm, and said, “So, Tex, the symbols?”

“They’re old,” Wales said. “It’s a strange thing, magic. Trends occur in it, too. This is an old form of symbology. I’ve got two alchemical symbols—” He turned the computer screen toward her, highlighted the images, etched in skin.

“The thing that looks like a calligraphic F on a plain attached to a lowercase y? That’s fusion. This one? The tilted V with loops? Purification.”

“What about the lumpy swastika-looking thing,” Sylvie said.

“It’s not a swastika; it’s a lauburu,” he said. “It’s a Basque symbol, but it’s older than that. It’s a little hard to be sure, but given context—shape-shifting—I’m going to assume it’s Paracelsus’s symbol for animal healing.”

Sylvie frowned. “Purification and healing—”

“Yeah,” Wales said. “I think our sorcerer’s sick.”

“He put women into magical comas and left them in the Everglades. We knew he was sick,” Sylvie said. “Sorcerers tend toward depressingly good health, though. Sick could mean cursed.” It would fit with the man that Gloria and her sons had seen—a sorcerer who lost control of his borrowed skills at shape-shifting.

Alex said, “Tell her about the eye.”

“The bull’s-eye with a line through it,” Sylvie said. “The one Maria Ruben has on her forehead?”

“It’s pretty basic,” Wales said. “It’s a blinding spell. To keep his deeds hidden.”

“It doesn’t work, then,” Sylvie said. “Tatya found them, I found them, the cops found them, we found them again.” She traded the rice for the sandwich, wanting to bite and rend at something. Even when she thought they’d gotten a clue, it was useless. “Are you sure you’re interpreting it right?”

“You’re missing the point, Shadows. That blinding spell ain’t aimed at us. It’s a specific blinding spell. Our sorcerer’s got an enemy.”

Sylvie blew out a breath. She couldn’t tell if that was good news or bad. The enemy of her enemy was her friend. But that only worked in black-and-white worlds. In the real world, there were endless permutations of evil.

The sorcerer who had abducted, enchanted, and bound the women was evil—that, she didn’t doubt. The man he feared?

“What’s the last symbol?” she asked. “The linked ovals.”

“Transformation,” he said. He traced the lightly sketched symbols with his finger, his nails ragged, bloody at the edges. He’d been chewing them, internal anxiety clawing its way out.

“Problem?”

He twitched, opened his mouth, let it close. Fidgeted. Alex leaned closer, said, “What is it? You can tell us. Even if it’s weird.”

“Not one of your clients,” Wales reminded her.

“Then don’t play coy,” Sylvie said. “My clients always hide things from me. Or try to. What’s rocking your world?”

“Two things,” Wales said. “I think I know what he’s doing. Broad strokes at least. Not the why, not even the specifics, but—”

“Tex—”

“It’s like a power filter,” he said. “Transformation. The power that’s coming in isn’t the same as what he’s getting from it.”

“Like a plant,” Alex said. “Turning carbon dioxide to oxygen.”

“More like money laundering,” Wales said. “Turning power that’s actively trying to injure him into power he can use to protect himself. Using the women’s lives as filters. He’ll have one of these sigils carved into his own skin, the better to link himself to them. To feed off them.”