Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

She reluctantly added, “Alex sent me some addresses. Stop by an Internet cafe, I’ll print the list. They’re places she thought Lily might be living in. We . . .” The word felt strange on her lips. Good, in a way she didn’t want to think about. “We could check them out.”

He took his eyes from the road for a long moment, looking at her. Then he nodded once, and said, “Lead the way.”

“SHE’S NOT HERE,” SYLVIE SAID. SHE HADN’T EVEN GOTTEN OUT OF the car, and she knew, just knew , they were on the wrong track.

Demalion, hand paused on the ignition key, said, “Why?” Not another direct start to an argument but a definite call against her instinct.

Sylvie looked again at the apartment buildings, a series of interconnected town houses, at the children playing in the park across the street, the casual everydayness of the area, and shook her head. “Not a chance in hell.”

“She owns the place; there are empty units,” Demalion said. “I need more reason than that.”

“I saw her,” Sylvie said. She wasn’t used to explaining herself. But she and Demalion had agreed to a detente, so she should try to cooperate. “Lily pretends to be ordinary,” Sylvie said. “Everyone I talked to described her as ordinary. I saw her, though, and she’s not ordinary at all. She’s just good at masking herself. If you were like that, if you wore a mask all the time, would you want to live in an ordinary place? Would you want to have to worry about blending in, even in your home? You’d find someplace else. Someplace you could be yourself in comfort.”

“All that from one look across a crowded room?” Demalion said. “You don’t think your impression came from her burning everyone alive a moment later?”

Sylvie shrugged. “You said it yourself. Even the ISI uses my instincts as Cliff’s Notes.”

She didn’t want to share more than she had to, really didn’t want to get into what she had felt when Lily’s eyes had met hers: instant recognition, so strong that it might as well have been a physical shock. Logic be damned; Sylvie knew her, and more, knew what they were up against. A woman as determined as Sylvie herself. And deadlier.

“Let me see that list,” she said, fishing it out of the space between the driver’s seat and the gearshift.

“Where to, then, guru?” Demalion asked.

Sylvie dropped her eyes to the paper, edges crumpling in her hand. “Um, Bucktown apartments, no, too normal. MTV Real World trendy. Wicker Park—”

“A lot of artists, which is likely given her tastes, but there are also a lot of businessmen and loft living, which would make it a no by your criterion. Too normal.”

Sylvie skimmed the list; only a few addresses were left, and if she hadn’t felt so pressed for time, she’d have simply continued as they’d begun. Go down the list one by one. But she did feel harried by an unseen clock, by the fact that the children in the park were gasping, laughing, and the sand below their swing set was swirling and lapping at the grass in wavelets. Sharks would be next, she thought. Didn’t little kids always see sharks in water? And one of those children, latently talented, obviously saw the sand as water.

“Shit,” she muttered, as a sharp fin rose, and the children’s shrieking laughter just turned to shrieks. “Go get them off—” But Demalion was already on the way out of the car. He ignored the screamers and focused on the little girl with the fixed stare and the incredulous horror in her eyes. He snatched her up, pressed her face into his shoulder, and as parents came out to investigate the crying, handed her off. Behind them, the fin collapsed to falling sand.

Demalion lingered outside once the mother left, cell phone in hand, and Sylvie’s mood soured. Her great ally, reporting a nine-year-old to the government.

“What will you do with children like that?” Sylvie said. “You can’t charge them with anything, even if you join those who want to try kids as adults.”

Demalion said. “It’s a flaw in our justice system. They don’t recognize the supernatural, therefore—”

“There are no charges, no trials, no prison,” Sylvie said.

“We’re working on it,” Demalion said. “ISI’s got a ten-year plan. Five for concentrated study of the supernatural. Three for making and testing a security plan. Two for convincing the rest of the world—”

“You’re behind then,” Sylvie said. “I haven’t seen any hints of understanding on the news.”

Demalion laughed. “We’ve only been active for four years, Sylvie. We’re still newbies. Before 9-11, the ISI was only a maniacal gleam in some bureaucrat’s eye. After that, there were a lot more people willing to throw money at even the most undefined problems.”

“It’s the church,” she said. “Gotta be.” Changing the subject, and fast, before he saw that he’d shaken her.

Two years of tangling with the ISI, two years of running them in circles, and she thought she’d been winning. Too tough and too smart for the government. To find out they were still in a larval stage, that perhaps her success against them had more to do with their fumbling first steps into a bigger world, made her reassess. Just how much had she overrated her skills?

“The church?” Demalion parroted. He flipped through the list for the more-detailed reports. “That was condemned after a fire nearly twenty years ago. You think she’s living there? She’s got money. We know that. Rich women like their amenities.”

“Regardless,” Sylvie said. “It’s Sesame Street training. One of these things is not like the others. The church is the odd man out, and anomalies are always worth a look.”

“Your point,” Demalion said with a smile. He restarted the car, pulled them smoothly back into the traffic. “I’ll have the ISI check out the apartments anyway.”

Sylvie bit back protest. The apartments were meaningless. The church dangled before her like the brass ring on a carousel.

She stifled her doubts, even when the neighborhood they drove through grew progressively run-down. The church was a hulking shadow on the street, a reminder that nothing evaded entropy. Its spire crumbled near the top, the bell long gone for scrap, and its gargoyles had worn to near-featureless stone.

They approached the church cautiously, noting boarded-up windows, a chain across the great double doors, and, with a glance at each other, turned and went around the side, hunting a door out of sight of the street.

All the way around the back, there was a narrow door, cast in shadows by the stone around it. “Prep room, I bet,” Demalion said.

“Altar boy?” Sylvie asked.

“Yup,” he agreed. He knelt, eyed the lock, and nodded once. From a pocket, he pulled a key ring dangling with filed-down keys. He forced one into the lock, thumped it once, and popped the latch open.

“Somewhere, a priest just cried,” Sylvie said.

“Never said I was a particularly devout altar boy,” he said. “After you?”

Sylvie kicked at the door. It flew open, and she watched for a moment, waiting for Lily to come at them, for any other esoteric security to make itself known.

“She’s not home,” Sylvie said.

“I could have told you that,” Demalion said. He put away a gun she hadn’t seen him draw and ducked inside. “I’m more than just a pretty face, you know.”

“Yeah?” she challenged. He merely smirked and gestured her in.

“It’s all about the eyes,” he said, tapping just above the bridge of his nose.

“Whatever,” she muttered. She was more concerned with the security measures Lily might have in place. No magical wards, Sylvie noted, as she stepped over the sill. If Lily were arcanely talented, there would have been wards.