“Demalion,” Sylvie said, releasing her grip on the butt of the gun. “Super. Just the man I wanted to see.” She kept her tone flat just in case he might try to read that as a compliment.
He brushed past her, still talking. His cologne drifted across her senses, spicy, earthy, and too appealing for her comfort.
“You should have recognized her. Her name is in the files. Her face is in the files. She’s posted as trouble on all the boards, all over the country, and hell, even if you didn’t, you should have put the pieces together. How many pretty women carry a big gun and an even bigger mouth?”
Sylvie turned her back when it began to get embarrassing. Huh, from this side of it, Demalion almost sounded pleased with her presence: He must really dislike Stockton.
Then he was at her side, his hand sliding out to take her elbow. She shrugged him and his tasty scent off automatically. His lips thinned. “Let’s talk, Ms. Shadows.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said. He always did, and it made her wild; he knew her name, knew her family, had made a point of studying her life and habits, and yet, deliberately called her Shadows.
“You know, the one bright spot in this entire day was that I got whisked out of Miami, out of your jurisdiction. Then I got here, and damn, if you didn’t just creep out of the woodwork.”
“I transferred. Got family here,” he said, ushering her toward the elevator, sliding the keycard into the lock on it. “You didn’t think I followed you, did you? Sorry, Shadows, I was here first.”
There was a faint gleam in his gold-flecked eyes that could have been amusement or malice. He put a hand at the small of her back as the elevator doors slid open, not out of friendliness, Sylvie thought, but to confirm she was armed. Beneath his hand, the gun twitched. They both flinched.
He jabbed the button for the third floor, and said, “Interesting new weapon you’ve got. Am I going to get a look at it?”
“Are you going to answer some questions?”
“I always talk to you. It’s in self-defense,” he said, his lips curving up, mocking her again. The elevator doors slid closed, sealing her in with him. They hadn’t been so close together since that night in Key West, and she wasn’t thinking about that at all.
She leaned up against the far wall and studied him, the sleek dark hair, the Byzantine eyes, the Egyptian cast to his face. He always reminded her of pharaohs, somehow exotic and ancient. When she’d first met him on the blind date Alex had set up, she’d had the creeping sensation that he might not be human, even while he chatted her up, oh so interested in her and her life. Then, of course, she learned about the ISI and knew he was all too human, and a bastard suit at that.
“No cane today?” she said. “An interesting look on you, I thought.”
“Is that what this is about?” he said, the skin around his eyes tightening, as if up to this moment, he’d been enjoying himself. “I should have known.”
“I didn’t know an ISI agent could have a sense of humor,” she said, still staring at him. “A spy masquerading as a blind man, though, that’s pretty funny.”
“Glad to amuse,” he said. The door dinged open, and he took her arm again. “My office.”
Sylvie opened her mouth to protest but hesitated. He seemed oddly on edge. As if the ISI world, that orderly snow globe, had been shaken.
He keycarded his office and let them both in. She looked around with reluctant interest, the first time she’d ever been behind the scenes at the ISI. Earlier visits in the Miami facility had been in the equivalent of interrogation rooms. ISI offices were apparently small but elegantly laid out, dominated by a cherrywood desk covered with high-tech toys and a stack of paper beneath a pyramid paper-weight. There was even a framed photograph on the desk, propped up alongside a palm-sized crystal ball. A real home away from home.
Sylvie reached for the photo, feeling it was only fair; after all, they knew whose pictures she kept on her desk, on her walls, in her albums. Demalion beat her to it, tucking it inside the drawer, catching the crystal when the motion started it rolling.
“So ’kay—” she said. “Don’t want to look at that one, how about these?” She dropped the Polaroid of Brandon Wolf on the desk, followed it with one of Demalion in blind-man guise. “Do you have him in your lockup? And please, keep in mind, I’m not in the mood for plausible denial or any other government bullshit—he’s the only thing between me and my retirement.”
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.”