Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

“Back off,” Demalion snapped. “Jesus, Rodrigo, give us all a break. A pretty girl comes downtown for a pastry and a chat, and you go Nazi on her ass. Don’t you have a dick?”

“I’ll see her out,” Rodrigo said. “You might do things differently in Miami, Demalion. Here we follow the rules.” When he tried to take her arm again, Sylvie flipped him off and stormed down the hall. Rodrigo caught up to her at the elevator and keyed the doors open.

“I know who you are,” he said, shoving her into the elevator; he jabbed the lobby level and locked it in. “I’m not impressed with your mouth. And you’d best stay away from Dunne.” Slackness touched his face, left him staring blankly at her as the doors slid shut.

Sylvie looked at the closed doors thoughtfully. “Okay, that was freaky, even for the ISI.”

At the lobby, she wasn’t surprised to be met by Stockton, as well as two other guards, mustered from God knew where. She smiled at them, showing all her teeth, and stalked out the front door.

Pastry? She had passed a pastry shop two blocks from here. She walked down the street, bought herself a cruller, two double espressos, and took a seat. She knocked back the first espresso, chased it with powdered sugar, and tapped her nails on the cheap Formica table. She had the second espresso at her lips when Demalion arrived.

“That better not be mine,” he said.

She passed it over.

“It’s almost cold,” he said.

“It was almost gone ,” she said. “What the hell do you want, Demalion? Not help, you’re not in the helping business.”

He bit his lip, as if he could unsay his earlier words, but then shrugged. “A bargain of sorts. I’ll keep an eye out for Wolf. More than that. I’ll institute a search. If—”

“If,” she parroted. “If what, Demalion?”

“If you tell me what you know about Kevin Dunne.”

“You’ve been watching him. What makes you think I’ll know more than you?”

“I hate to admit it, but you seem to know what’s going on when no one else does—why do you think we watch you so much? You’re like ISI Cliff’s Notes to the Magicus Mundi .”

“That’s flattering,” Sylvie said. She stood and snagged another coffee from the counter clerk, plain old black this time; if she had another espresso, she might find herself throttling Demalion.

“Surveillance has failed on Dunne,” Demalion said, when she sat back down. “Three teams—”

“Dead?” Sylvie interrupted. Her nervous fingers ceased their drumming on the side of her paper cup. “You said—he nailed them.”

“No.” Demalion leaned forward. “Look, it’s this way. The first team we sent—they got nothing. Dunne spotted them right off, went over, and asked them to leave. They did. Now, we even mention Dunne’s name, and they get all huffy, demanding that we leave him alone.

“The second team kept their distance. Dunne and Wolf found them anyway, invited them to dinner. They went, contrary to instruction, then discontinued surveillance and returned to base against orders.”

“So, Dunne threatened them, made them back off. I can see it; he’s a scary guy,” Sylvie said. At least he was spreading the scary around, and she couldn’t think of anyone more deserving than the ISI.

“They weren’t scared of him,” Demalion said, shaking his head. “It’s like they worship him.” She twitched at his choice of words, but, caught up in his problems, he didn’t notice. “One of the men on that team, Erickson, keeps talking about how nice Bran and Kevin are, that we should just leave them alone. He gets heated about it.”

“Guess he met a different Dunne than I did,” Sylvie said. “But hell, there’s no accounting for taste. Look at you, talking to me. Voluntarily.”

Demalion sighed. “Before the ISI took Erickson on, he’d had some disciplinary actions for harassing gays. Enough of them that his career was in a nosedive. You’re not in law enforcement—”

“That’s not what he says,” Sylvie muttered.

“But if he’d been disciplined, it wasn’t just a matter of name-calling. It was sticks and stones and broken bones.”

“So, not an easy convert,” Sylvie said, trying to imagine Dunne winning someone over with charm. She failed. Admittedly, she hadn’t seen him at his best. He’d been stripped-down angry and scared. Maybe Bran was the lovable one. Tish seemed to think so.

“And you saw Rodrigo back at the office. He was all over you merely for mentioning Dunne’s name. He was team one.”

“So that wasn’t just an ISI fit?”

“No,” Demalion said. “That was lingering contamination.” He shrugged, fumbled in his suit-coat pocket, pulled out the crystal again, went back to moving it hand to hand. “For a while, we tried purely electronic surveillance, but all our bugs failed. A third team went out, consisting of three experienced field agents, one a clairvoyant, who would warn them of any magical influence.” Demalion set aside his espresso, mostly untouched, rubbed his face.

“What happened?” Sylvie asked. “More bestest of friends?

“No,” Demalion said. “Dunne lost patience with playing nice. None of team three will ever be watching them again. I would imagine the same holds true for our mystery observer.”

“But not dead?” Sylvie asked again, trying to imagine what she felt about that, some evidence that maybe Dunne was what he seemed. A nice guy who didn’t like to kill. She remembered his snatching the orchid-girl from beneath her heel, and grimaced. She wasn’t used to being more reprehensible than her clients.

Her phone buzzed; she looked down and caught a glimpse of a text message. Flight information. Val was on her way.

“Bespelled. Or something. It wasn’t a spell. It just was . One moment, things were one way, the next moment, they weren’t. We don’t understand what type of ability Dunne’s tapped into but—”

“All you know is that he’s powerful? That’s pathetic,” Sylvie said, rising. “I learned more than that in the first ten minutes of meeting him. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to work.”

“Bullshit,” Demalion said, his temper fraying to match hers. “You talk big, Sylvie, but you’re full of it. I’m trying to help you, talking shop when I should just keep my mouth shut and let you sink. But the hell of it is, I’d rather not see you dead. Let me help. You tell me what you think you know, and I’ll set men to look for Wolf.”

“Your bargain sucks,” she said. “Your men are already looking for Wolf, whether they know it or not. Dunne wants it that way. Dunne’s not a witch, sorcerer, psychic, or even some type of master hypnotist.”

“If you know so much—what is he then?”

“He’s a god,” Sylvie said. She swept out of the pastry shop, leaving Demalion behind her, sinking back into the booth.

SYLVIE WAITED OUTSIDE O’HARE, SITTING ON A METAL BENCH brought to oven warmth by the heat from passing car engines. She shifted, pulling sweat-damp cotton away from her nape, and went back to watching the airport police.

Earlier, they had been everywhere, running in packs of five or more, like confused hounds casting about for scent. Now, they were back to that deceptively slow cop stride, in pairs or singles, and the only signs of interference was the occasional freeze of movement coupled with a blank stare, like the stutter-stop of a petit mal seizure. Like a seizure, the symptoms disappeared with the cops unaware of them.

Sylvie couldn’t decide if this was an improvement or not; she lacked facts and was left with empty speculation. Did their return to near normal mean Dunne’s influence had faded? If so, why? Had he lost interest or hope in their ability to find Brandon Wolf? Or was it a simpler thing altogether? Had he regained some of his concentration, keeping his powers close to home? Sylvie gnawed her lip, checked her watch, and moved on—nearly time to meet Val.