Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

For a dancer, she made enough noise for a marching band, Sylvie thought. She was back in another rush of sound and movement, clutching a double handful of what looked like Polaroids. The same kind Dunne had handed her earlier as the most recent photo of Brandon.

“Pictures,” Sylvie said, smiling.

“They make fun party favors, and people like posing for them,” Tish said. “But I’m going to switch to digital—Polaroids are costing me an arm and a leg. Well, mostly Bran keeps me supplied—”

“Didn’t the cops want these?”

“They took a whole bunch, one of everyone pretty much, to look for criminal records. Didn’t find anything more than a couple of dopers and a few DWIs. But I still have these, and maybe they’ll help me remember the names better.” Tish laid them out on the floor, and Sylvie smiled again. A good many of them were taken against the wall where the wet bar had been set up, right below the kitschy ballerina clock, her legs pointing the hours and minutes. Dunne had left about eleven. . . . Sylvie started weeding through those taken when the hour was past that, listening to Tish mumbling, trying to match names to faces.

A quick flash startled her, and she looked up to see Tish lowering the tiny digital camera, frowning at it. “Hmm. I’m not sure I like it—you want to see?”

Sylvie shook her head and went back to flipping pictures. One-track mind, indeed, she thought. But if Tish couldn’t get through a single conversation without snapping pics, the odds just went up that whoever scared Bran was documented. It was only a matter of recognizing it.

Sylvie flipped another shot, looking first at the clock, then at the partygoers beneath. She dropped the photo and stared at the blank black back of it for a moment.

Surely not. She picked it up again and took stock. A woman and a man, the woman whippet thin, her face petulant and of no interest to Sylvie. But the man with dark, sleek hair, eyes concealed behind dark glasses, and leaning on a white-tipped, crystal-hilted cane—recognition shocked her anew. She flicked her eyes to the clock above his head, as if she even needed confirmation of the time. Michael Demalion could only have been at Tish’s party for one reason.

“Whatcha got?” Tish said, peering over Sylvie’s shoulder. “Oh, the yummy blind guy. Came with Denise, that slut. Can’t see it in that shot, with the glasses, but he has really pretty eyes. Sort of—”

“Dark brown with little bits of gold? Like a cat,” Sylvie said. She took the shot from Tish again, not waiting for the girl’s nod. There was a government agent after all, Sylvie thought. Brandon’s paranoia was founded in fact.

“You know him?” Tish said.

“Yeah,” Sylvie said, calm as ever, though her heart thumped at the unexpectedness of it. Michael Demalion of the ISI, the constant thorn in her side, had shown up in Chicago just in time for Bran’s vanishing act. It couldn’t be coincidence.

WITH MORE HASTE THAN GRACE, SYLVIE SHOVED ALL THE PAPERS back into their tattered folder. “Thanks, Tish.”

“Wait,” Tish said, and caught at her arm. “That’s it?”

“For now,” Sylvie said.

“Who is he?” Tish said. “You can’t just say you know him and walk off. Bran’s my friend. I have a right—”

“People have fewer rights than they think,” Sylvie said. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

At Tish’s startled and hurt eyes, Sylvie blinked.

“Sorry. It’s been a long day, and it’s not near done yet. The man in the photo is a government agent. He doesn’t work for very nice people.”

“If he comes back?” Tish said.

“If he comes back, we’re in real trouble,” Sylvie said. “If he comes back, it means they didn’t take Bran. And while they’re generally assholes, and dangerously shortsighted, they’re not casual killers. If they have Bran, there’ll be a happy ending.”

“Why would they even want him?”

“Don’t know,” Sylvie said. “Gonna ask.”

“They’ll tell you? If they have him?” Despite the hope-fulness of Tish’s voice, some deep doubt lurked beneath.

“I can be very persistent,” Sylvie said. She freed herself from Tish’s sinewy grip and headed down the stairs. Tish clattered down after her.

“You’ll come and tell me what you found out?”

“Sure,” Sylvie said. An empty promise, really. Her first duty was to Dunne, and she might uncover things he preferred to keep quiet.

Tish studied her, then nodded. “I’ll be waiting.”

Sylvie let herself out, and behind her, Tchaikovsky started up again, the sound mingling with the thumping bass of a sedan passing on the street. Tish working out her anxiety on her body.

Sylvie sighed. Now what? Her temper nagged, urging her to go drag information out of the ISI, out of Demalion in particular, but there were good reasons to wait.

First, she wanted to walk Bran’s path, see if she could find something the cops hadn’t been looking for—something magical and malevolent, some tangible proof of a kidnapping, even an occult one.

Second, she and the ISI were not friends. She’d lived under their watchful and condemnatory gaze for too long, and Dunne’s place-hopping might have swept her out of their sight. She wanted to have a damn good reason before she put herself back in their sights.

If the ISI had taken Bran, had locked him away in some magically shielded cell, she’d find it. The ISI were many things; subtle was not one of them. They didn’t have to be. They had the monetary weight of the US government behind them and the instinct of pit bulls. Once they seized something between their teeth, they never let go. At least, not without a firm smack to the nose. Sylvie had administered such a smack before. The price she paid for winning was their nonstop attention.

The last time she dealt with them directly, they’d taken a three-year-old child right out of preschool when the boy had given in to his genetic potential and gone wolf on the playground. It had been a bad situation to start with and ended immeasurably worse.

One of the lesser casualties was Sylvie’s brand-new relationship with Demalion grinding to a savage halt when she realized he was one of them .

No, better by far to avoid the ISI as long as possible, to gather all the proof she could before confronting them. Before confronting Demalion.

Sylvie started down the sidewalk and was jostled by a young man running past. Reflexively, Sylvie checked her bag, her gun, her papers. All there.

She sighed. It was really the wrong time of day to be doing this. Not only would she lack that all-important feel of the late-night street Brandon Wolf had traveled, the taste of who and what hung about at 3:00 a.m., but it was difficult to keep an eye out for some nebulous clue when she was playing dodge ’em with a growing crowd of the homeward-bound.

Sylvie evaded a tangle of leashes and a woman walking three huskies at once. The lead dog growled low in its throat as Sylvie passed, and she shuddered. Dogs just reminded her too much of the freaky, frightening Eumenides sisters.

She bit her lip, wondering how much damage those women-things would cause in her city, wondered if Alex would, for once, have the sense god gave small kittens and stay the hell away from the office.

The way things were going, though, Sylvie thought Alex might have gone straight back to the office to have it out with her and run headfirst into the sisters.

Her stomach clenched and roiled. The gun at her back throbbed in time with her accelerating heartbeat. She couldn’t lose Alex. Then you’d better stop whining and find Brandon Wolf, her internal voice said. Soonest found, soonest Dunne and his bitches are gone. Sylvie started walking again; she hated that voice, its spit and spite and rage. But hell, it could always be counted on to keep the goal clear.