Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

“Just,” she agreed. “Don’t you think Lilith would make a nice addition to the pantheons? Spreading balefire with a thought instead of a borrowed spell?”

“What’s the plan?” he said.

Sylvie fidgeted. Trust Demalion to hit her weak spot. “See if we can find any other address for Lilith. See if Dunne will come check up on our progress. Maybe we can get him to hunt her.”

“That’s not much of a plan—”

“More ’n you have,” Sylvie snapped. “I might be stalled for a moment, but that’s ISI modus operandi.”

He glanced away from the road, frowning. “Truce?”

“Mea culpa, just frustrated,” Sylvie said. She shrank in her seat; they were just crossing back into the city proper, and the traffic was getting interesting. “Eyes on the road, blind man.”

“So we’re looking for her less likely hangouts, and continuing to watch the ones we know about,” Demalion said. “The ISI could put out a bulletin, get the cops in on it.”

“Most of the cops are either hunting Bran or dealing with the Magicus Mundi ; the last thing they need is to be sent after a woman who throws balefire party favors around.” She wasn’t going to put people between herself and Lilith. She licked dry lips, said, “You know, you don’t have to help me.”

“I’m going to,” he said.

“Fine,” she said. Take that, Anna D. She’d tried. No one could say she hadn’t.

Demalion pulled the car to a stop, and she followed him into his apartment building, workaholically close to the ISI base. She bit back a comment, at least until he opened the door to the tiny apartment and revealed piles of labeled cardboard boxes that showed clear signs of being lived out of. She looked at him again, all crisp and clean in his charcoal grey suit, and said, “Good call on getting the suits out first. Not like you’ll ever want to eat on plates or anything.”

“Hey,” he said. “Hosting you, remember? Play nice.”

“If I were nice,” she said, “I’d offer to help unpack.” She sat on the couch, admiring his forethought in keeping it, at least, clear of the clutter.

“I’m pretty sure my heart would stop,” he said, dropping down at the other end of the couch with a woof of displaced air and dust.

“That better not be some oblique comment about my housekeeping skills, ’cause I’m not really in the mood to remember my apartment is on the ISI daily tour.”

“Too tired to get mad?” he asked. “That’s a first.” He tugged out the little quartz globe, cracked now, and rolled it between his palms.

Sylvie pounced, grabbing for it. He jerked back, startled, and slid to evade her. She snarled one hand in his shirt, caught his wrist; they grappled for a moment until he fell from the couch. Sylvie grinned, crouched over him, crystal in her hand. “So, how does this thing work? And how often have you used it on me?”

“I haven’t,” he said. At her raised brow, he repeated himself. “I haven’t.” No excuses, no proof, just a statement. She was annoyed that she believed him.

“So, how does it work?” she said. “Do you need a new one, now that this one’s chipped?”

“No,” he said, relaxing from his cautious tension. He lay back, watched the crystal sparkle between her fingers. “It’s only a focus. I’m clairvoyant. I see the images inside my head. It’s not like real vision. It’s color-reversed, or black and white. Sometimes it’s blurry.”

“Like satellite TV for the brain,” she said. She dropped the crystal onto his stomach, rested her weight on his thighs. The crystal rolled with his breathing, and she put her fingers on it, pushing it along his rib cage, then chasing it down his belly and catching it in his navel. She pushed up his shirt to admire the gloss of glass against his warm skin, the way his flesh goose-bumped and shivered at her touch. “The talent’s innate in you, and it never occurred to you to wonder why?”

“We have psychics on staff. They’re human.” There was unease in his voice. He rolled his head to the side, avoiding her gaze.

“Maybe they just think they are,” she said. At the quick wash of pain that crossed his face, she regretted saying it. After all, as far as her honed senses could tell, he read human. She opened her mouth to say so. “You really never wondered about your mother?”

He squirmed beneath her, and she answered for him. “You took her being human for granted. Like most of the normals out there who don’t recognize the Magicus Mundi until it waves hello up close and personal.” She rose and reseated herself beside him, braced comfortably between his hip and the low-fronted couch.

She poked the crystal into movement again. “Do you want to know what she is? What’s lurking in your genes?”

“I’ll ask her myself.”

Sylvie studied the reflection of her fingertips in the glass and slid it between two ribs, using his tie as a net when the orb slipped away from her. He sucked in a breath. “Sylvie, not that this isn’t . . . pleasant—what are you doing?”

“Do you think she’s looking at you right now? Or when you’re looking in the glass, does she look back? How do you manage to feel unwatched?”

“I try not to think about it,” he said, breath catching as she pushed his shirt farther up to chase the rib all the way to his sternum, letting the orb slip and slither over his nipple. “We’re talking about this now?” He licked his lips, laughed, but his eyes were wary. “I don’t think this is the time to talk about my mother.”

Sylvie said, “I don’t think anytime is that time. I really didn’t like her.”

“I’m sure it was mutual.”

“You say the sweetest things.” She let the crystal roll away like a bead of water. She wanted to taste his skin, see if the crystal, like water, had left a trail. “But you’re right. This is not the time.” The ache in her chest told her that, the weariness in her bones, the brittle edge to her mood. She felt lazy now, but the rage still simmered, waiting to be woken to life again.

He leaned up, leaned close, and said, “Answer a question?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

“What’s up with the clothes? How bad did you piss off Cassavetes?”

She blinked at him, flashing back to six months on the run, learning that all the monsters of her childhood nightmares were real, before realizing he meant Val , not her dead husband. “Did cracking that crystal crack your head? What about the clothes? Yeah, they’re kinda wrecked but—”

He tugged on the collar of Erinya’s jacket, pushed it back, touched the lumpy seam of the inside-out T-shirt. “That jacket belongs to one of Dunne’s bodyguards, the punk one. The T-shirt isn’t yours either, unless you have some tastes the ISI isn’t aware of, and is inside out, besides. The pants are cut for a man. Supernaturally speaking, you’re running under a stealth shield.”

“Like that would work,” she said, then paused. “Would it?”

“Traditionally,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve ever tested it.”

“All talk,” she said. “Here I thought the ISI was going to be a good resource for a moment. But no, you were picking my brain.” She lifted herself off the floor just enough to slide herself onto the couch; the hard floor was beginning to create new aches. “Besides, maybe this is my T-shirt, and the ISI doesn’t know all about me. Not all of us can have a formal sense of style, you know.”

“Don’t dis the suits,” he said. “If you want fresh clothes, you’ll be wearing pieces of them tomorrow.”

Sylvie sighed. “This one’s too small, this one’s too large. I’m living in a Goldilocks world.”

She eased herself up from her not-so-comfortable slouch, finding her ribs bothered her more now that she wasn’t enjoying herself. “Aspirin?”