Demalion cursed under his breath and got out to corral her. Sylvie shook her head. Both of them idiots. Nothing good could ever come from a grown man chasing a screaming young woman around a major highway. Sylvie hit the horn and stuck her head out. “Demalion, get back here. Call her a damn cab if you’re worried.”

He got back into the car and dialed a number. “It’s Demalion. I need a cab pickup. . . .”

Sylvie snatched the phone from his grasp. “A real cab. Not the ISI!”

“She needs to tell us what she saw,” Demalion said.

“She needs to go stick her head in the sand and pretend nothing happened.”

“You think that’s okay?”

It was what Dunne wanted, Sylvie thought. She didn’t want him angry at her. “Leave her alone, Demalion.”

Lips tight, he recovered his phone, and dialed Airport Cabs, holding the phone out so that Sylvie could hear the dispatcher.

Then he put the car into gear and pulled them back into traffic. “Well, you saw what happened better anyway. Saw and understood . . .”

“I’m not going to talk to the ISI, either,” she said. “I should be hunting Bran. Hell, I should be at home,” she said, still mulling over that increase of ability that Helen had shown. “Dunne was in Miami. Talents will be ramping up there, too.”

“Best to find Wolf and be done with this. What could you do in Miami, anyway?”

“Whatever I had to, to protect it,” she said. “But maybe that concept’s alien to a government drone who thinks every problem can be handled with the appropriate paperwork.”

“Maybe your track record’s not the best at protection,” he snapped back. “Or was Suarez one of your success stories?”

She punched him, lost in rage, ignoring the common-sense rule that hitting the driver was a bad idea. Close quarters, but he managed to hunch a shoulder up to take the blow and keep the car from swerving. Much. A horn blared beside them.

“You’re reckless,” he said, his own temper burned out. “You’re dangerous. You used to think, Sylvie. What changed? Keep going the way you’re going, and you’ll be no different than the people you fight against.”

“Fuck you,” she muttered. She slumped against the passenger door, as far from him as she could manage. “Just drive.”

Traffic slowed and snarled as they approached orange cones on the street. Sylvie thought road work with minimal interest, more caught up in wondering what Dunne would do if she did pick up and run home. He’d send the Furies to retrieve me, she thought. But I could kill them if I laid a trap, made plans. They’re monsters. Fair game.

But she didn’t want to kill them, not Erinya with her quick tempers and childish ways, not elegant Alekta, or Magdala, who proved even deadly creatures could be dull. She was sick of killing things.

“We need to do something, or Wolf will die,” Demalion said, in uncanny echo of her thoughts. “You don’t want the ISI, then what?”

“Consensus is he’s already dead. Dunne’s the only holdout,” Sylvie said. She gritted her teeth as the car came to a dead stop. Becalmed in the asphalt sea, she thought. She hated this city.

“He’s a god,” Demalion said. “You don’t think he might know something you don’t?”

“You sure jumped on the bandwagon easily,” Sylvie said, “and you haven’t even seen him in action.” She blinked. That wasn’t right. The cab/agent had said something. I know what Dunne did to Demalion.

“Seen more ’n enough,” Demalion said. She met his steady gaze, and he reached out slowly, touched her chin, turned her head toward the street before them.

“Oh,” Sylvie said. No wonder the traffic had stopped. The worn lane markings on the roadway were peeling away, winding upward like airborne ribbons and spilling backward, touching down and gluing cars into place, creating a spiderweb that slowly sucked vehicles into the asphalt. A busload of tourists had gotten out and were snapping pics as drivers crawled out of windows of trapped cars.

“It’s been happening all day,” he said. “Not this. But things. You say Dunne’s shedding? I say, tell me something I couldn’t have guessed.”

“All day?” she said, staring at the webbing with more creeping terror than fascination.

“Transformations have happened all over town,” Demalion said. “People have died. But you don’t want the ISI to help. You want to go it alone.

“We really could help, Sylvie. You want to go home, worried about what? Your family, your friends? I could have the ISI pick them up—”

Wrong thing to say, Sylvie thought. So terribly wrong. She went cold all the way through. “If you do, I’ll dig around, Demalion, find your family—you said they’re local—drag them into this,” Sylvie said. “Do they know what kind of job you have?”

“Point made,” Demalion said. His jaw tightened. “I don’t like threats, Shadows.”

“You started it.”

“It wasn’t meant as a threat.”

Sylvie stopped further explanation by drawing out the meat gun, setting it in her lap. “Stay away from my people. Or you’ll find out how dangerous I really am.” Even she was unnerved at the quiet fury in her tone.

Demalion raised an eyebrow like an aristocrat being abused by a peasant. But, and Sylvie had to admit it, Demalion had always had common sense as well as smarts. He merely nodded.

Sylvie continued in the same quiet tone, “We’ve come to a truce, you and I, am I right? Let’s not jeopardize it.”

“I’d call it a detente, myself, and one-sided at that,” Demalion said.

“I gave you Lily’s name. I gave you Dunne’s identity.”

“You didn’t,” he said. “You didn’t say which god.”

“Does it matter?” Sylvie felt the exasperation seep in and, even as she bridled with annoyance, admired the technique. Demalion backed her away from the killing edge, transforming shouting to bickering.

“I’d just like to know what pantheon I should convert to,” Demalion said.

“Not funny,” she said. “He’s the Greek god of Justice, and it’s a new position, so don’t give me grief about there being no such god.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “You’d be surprised at how little I want to make you unhappy.”

“This is trying to make me happy?” She slipped the gun back into the holster. “You’re right, as much as I hate to admit it. I find Wolf, I get Dunne to clean up his mess. Without Wolf, it only gets worse.”

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.”

15

Trails and Dead Ends

“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.”