Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

Demalion picked up the photograph, stared at his own picture, some unreadable emotion touching his face, before moving to the one of Brandon Wolf. He raised a brow and Sylvie’s temper in one move. “You think the ISI has nothing better to do than detain a pretty-boy artist?”

“That’s not a no,” Sylvie said. “Just in case you weren’t clear on my question.”

Demalion settled down behind his desk with a sigh, leaving her looming across it. He rubbed his hands over his eyes, reached out, and rolled the crystal ball from palm to palm.

“We didn’t take Wolf. Hell, I didn’t even know he was missing.”

Sylvie felt like swearing. She hadn’t really thought they had, not once she found the spell circle; the ISI was generally a technological menace, not a magical one. Still, it would have been nice to pit herself against a known entity instead of fumbling in the dark for someone new.

She wished she could believe he was lying to her. “But you were watching him, stalking him, playing blind man at parties with him?”

“Not him,” Demalion said. “Like I said, the ISI has no interest—”

“No, of course not,” she said. “Not Brandon for himself. But how about as an avenue to his lover? To Kevin Dunne.”

“Shut the door,” he said quietly. “Shut the door and sit down.”

Sylvie’s jaw wanted to drop. Was he really going to share information, just like that? This couldn’t bode well. She did as he asked, listening to the door suck closed, realizing the room was soundproofed. She perched on the seat before the desk.

“You think we watch you, make your life a Candid Camera moment, and you’re nothing much—”

“Make a girl feel loved, why don’t you,” Sylvie muttered.

“A small-time vigilante with a dangerous mouth. A useful barometer of the occult in the country.” He sighed, closed the crystal in both palms, then rolled it between his fingers. “No power yourself but good at ferreting out those with powers. Then came Dunne, who made us reset our conception of scale and power. We don’t know what he is or how he got that way. He was an average guy, a better-than-average cop, and the only thing not strictly by the books was his relationship. Then boom . A year ago, and suddenly he’s everywhere. All our psychics could see was him, like a bomb gone off in their minds.”

Sylvie shrugged. The ISI had been cruising for trouble; they thought they knew everything. A momentary thought sidetracked her. “You have staff psychics? Slick. Bet it makes the interoffice pools a bitch, though.” Maybe she should rethink the magical-menace part of the ISI.

“You have no idea,” Demalion said, setting his crystal down again, uncharacteristic fidgeting done. “What did Dunne want with you? I heard he visited your office this morning.”

Sylvie’s temporary good humor evaporated at the reminder of the ISI eyes on her life. “If you can’t even add one and one to get two, I don’t know why I thought you could help me,” Sylvie said.

“Maybe I don’t want you to retire,” he said. “You’re not the retiring type.”

“I learn my lessons,” Sylvie said. “My associate died . Maybe you heard about that, too. Hell, maybe you and yours watched it happen, took notes on it.” Her temper prowled her skin, tensing nerves, quickening her breath. She forced her hands to unfist.

“Bullshit,” Demalion said. “People die around you, Shadows. You’re used to that. You’re . . . running scared.”

“You get a whole coven of would-be demons on your tail, planning to cut out your still-beating heart, then we’ll talk.” Sylvie scraped the two pictures from his desk with shaking hands, crammed them into her pockets.

“Monsters have never scared you before.”

“Don’t be more an idiot than your paycheck makes you.”

“Not scared like this,” he said. His dark eyes were on her again, searching, and she’d forgotten how penetrating they could be. She turned her head, looking longingly at the door. But she still had answers to get. “There’s only one thing that scares you that badly. Yourself.”

“Could we stay on topic?” she snapped. “Brandon Wolf. Missing. Dunne. Unhappy. Bad news all around.”

“We’re not here to help you,” Demalion said.

So angry even her voice failed her, Sylvie yanked the door open; there’d be no answers here, and if she stayed . . . Demalion might get a closer look at her weapon than she could afford.

Behind her, he said, “Sylvie.” Not Ms. Shadows. Not Ms. Lightner. Sylvie. She waited, breath coming fast.

“I didn’t hear about Suarez until after,” he said. “If I’d been there, I would have helped.” Quiet footfalls in the carpet warned her of his approach; he put a hand on her shoulder in what felt like honest sympathy.

“Words are easy,” she said. “Belief’s harder.”

She’d trusted him once, and the memory was powerful, with him standing so close, smelling so good, so familiar, his warmth mingling with hers.

Six months prior, Sylvie had taken him out to celebrate, though she hadn’t explained what. Hard to say to a new guy, yeah, I had a good day at work. I pried a werewolf cub from the government’s hands through sheer persistence and at least one screaming argument about children belonging with their mothers, whether they were furred or fleshy on the outside. She felt good, picked Demalion up at his apartment, and headed for the Keys.

They’d been dancing close in the un-air-conditioned bar, slick and easy in the tropical night, and he’d licked a traveling bead of sweat from her breast. She’d clenched her hands in his hair, mussed out of its sleekness, and thought this one , this one she was taking home and keeping.

Then his cell had gone off, and she, teasing, had plucked it from his hip over his protest—fast fingers, trained by Alex—flipped it open, and found herself listening to the ISI: Come on home, Demalion. We got the mother, too.

Result? One crushed cell phone, one shattered relationship. One battered heart. Played from the first.

She met his eyes, remembered that he couldn’t be trusted, and shied away from his sympathy. Crocodile tears or not, she didn’t want it. “Back off, Demalion. We don’t dance anymore.”

When he retreated to his desk, she found another question. “When you played your spy games with Wolf and Dunne, you get a sense of anyone else watching? Anyone who might want a shot at Dunne through Bran?”

“No,” he said, glancing away. Her breath caught.

“Such a lie,” she said. “C’mon, Demalion, we are talking about dirty deeds being done, and you’re going back to Mr. I-Know-Nothing, I-Say-Nothing?”

“I don’t know anything,” he said, voice dropping to a growl. “Yeah, there was someone else watching. No clue as to who or why. It was like having a shadow. We knew it was there, but couldn’t touch it.”

“Not so fun when it happens to you, is it?” Sylvie said.

“Do you want to hear this or do you want to take pot-shots?” Demalion said. “It’s your client, right?”

Sylvie sagged back against the doorjamb and waited.

“Dunne found out about the surveillance,” Demalion said. “He didn’t like it. He nailed them, and he got the mystery observer right alongside the ISI team.”

He continued, voice low and intense. “I don’t know what’s happened to Dunne’s boy. But things are getting ugly. Be careful, Sylvie.”

“Who’s this?” Another ISI agent stopped in the hallway, seeing Sylvie framed in the open door. “Is she authorized to be here? To know about Dunne?” He seized her arm. Sylvie twisted free and stepped back into Demalion’s office, the nearest shelter from a storm.