“You sympathize,” Anna D said. “You agree with her choice to make things right?”

“Right?” Sylvie said, “Right rarely involves burning people to death in a nightclub. Yes, I sympathize. But I will stop her.”

“What cost are you willing to pay?” Anna D said, and waved a hand at the glass, her eyes distant, pupils narrowing.

Sylvie turned and blinked. Scrying without spell casting was an inborn talent, and didn’t allow anyone but the talented to see—but the images rippled over the glass, visible even to her.

Sylvie’s mother sat at a hotel desk, phone hunched between her shoulder and ear, one hand on her laptop keyboard, the other holding a cup of coffee, probably far from her first or last. Her father read at a table strewn with paper, red pen tucked between his fingers, sighing as he brought it into use. The usual vacation for them, in other words. Her sister crawled halfway out of the academy’s restroom window to sneak a smoke without setting off the smoke detectors. Sylvie made a note: kick Zoe’s butt when I get back.

Alex appeared in Sylvie’s office, on the phone, spinning in the chair with a look of utter frustration on her face. She tossed the cell on the desk and jumped to her feet at some sound Sylvie couldn’t hear. Alex had raided Sylvie’s closet again, wore her ’Canes Windbreaker, and the gag belt buckle Zoe had given Sylvie, the fist-sized steel plate that spelled out Sylvie in rhinestone glitter. Sylvie wondered if Alex had ever gone home, or if she, like the loyal dog, intended to camp out and pine for her mistress.

The image blurred, swirling, as the silver warning bell gyrated in its bowl. Alex slumped into the seat then, and crumpled, not frustrated but scared, crying, and Sylvie wasn’t there. . . .

The window glass cracked, spiderwebbing with impact and dispersing the vision. For a brief moment, the glass showed blowing sand, the jagged teeth of a broken pyramid. The small crystal ball, chipped now, fell to the carpet with a thunk and rolled back down the steps to Sylvie’s feet. She picked it up again, barely remembering loosing it in the first place, though her shoulder ached with the force of her throw. “Don’t bring my family into this.”

Anna D gasped, sounding pained as if the crack of the glass had found an echo in her bones. Anna D looked older suddenly, her bones etched clearly beneath tight skin.

“Your family is already a part of it. The Murderer’s Child. Lilith loved once, loved a man who she believed had been manipulated and wronged. Cain, his name. Cain, the murderer. His line continues through you. Lilith is your ultimate dam, and you are the first one of her human children to be truly awake for centuries. Do you still think you know who you are?”

It blindsided Sylvie; the crystal left her hand again, dropped from numbed fingers.

“You can’t trust yourself; Lilith is in your blood. Her strength keeps you from bowing before power, but it taints as much as it protects. All Lilith would have to do is call to you, and you’d join her—”

“No,” Sylvie said, then more fiercely. “No. You’ve obviously never seen two alpha bitches meet. Why should I believe you? You’re not even human. For all I know, you could be Lilith’s hireling, meant to keep me distracted, meant to confuse me. You sure as hell don’t like me. I can’t see any reason on earth why you’d help me, and yet, here you sit, dispensing your wisdom with a cryptic hand. And really, you’ve told me nothing.”

“I’ve told you everything.”

“You’ve told me what was. I live in the present. I have to deal with the now. It’s good to know who I face, but it’d be better to know where she is.”

“You’re right,” Anna D said. “I don’t like you. You’re dangerous. But it could be worse. You could be worse, could become a dark creature to rival your dam. Do you want to travel that path?”

“I hate backtracking,” Sylvie said flatly. “If I’m on a path, there’s only one way to go, and that’s forward. No matter where it takes me.”

“Whoever said there are no branches?” Anna D said. “You’re very near a fork in your path. Do not pass it by, unseeing.”

“I think I liked it better when you were spitting insults,” Sylvie said. “At least, that was sincere. New-age metaphors are not your thing.”

Claws shkked out; the chair arms shredded beneath her tense fingers, and Anna D sighed, contemplating the foam stuffing beneath her nails. “I haven’t lost my temper in years. Congratulations, Ms. Lightner.”

“It’s a talent,” Sylvie said. “Apparently inborn.” She turned and headed for the door. Enough was enough.

“Lilith’s chosen future promises a bloody revolution that will damn generations to agony and pit god against god. Inhuman, I may be, and old with it, but there are those whose futures I would guard, those whom I love,” Anna D said. Her voice was tired. “You seem to be the vanguard to stop it, much as it pains me. You, Ms. Lightner, are every mother’s nightmare. To know that my son’s future hinges on your actions—can you blame me for my concern? You are reckless when cornered. You trample others on your path. Worst of all, you are willfully blind to things that should be readily visible.”

“You don’t know when to quit,” Sylvie said. “I almost felt sympathy for you—before you decided to go for the free-for-all into my flaws. Look, no one’s dying today. Keep your son out of my way, and there’s no problem. I don’t put people between me and my enemies.”

“Even when they volunteer?” Anna D looked up at her, her eyes summer-sand hot, blazing with fury. “You don’t even recognize it. You truly believe my son dislikes you, distrusts you. Sometime you should ask him, what wouldn’t he do for you. The answer might shock you. It should shame you.”

Sylvie swallowed. Oh. Maybe she had been narrow-sighted too long, to miss this one. Anna D’s son wasn’t just some stranger at risk in a changing world. Anna D’s son was Michael Demalion. Sylvie walked back into the living room and took a seat, landing suddenly in a chair as her knees failed. “Demalion’s your—”

“I thought it obvious,” Anna D said.

“He’s human.”

“As was his father.”

“He works for the ISI. He studies ways to drive things like you out of this world, or at least make them uncomfortable enough to move abroad. He . . . he doesn’t know what you are.” Sylvie studied the proud lines of the woman’s face, the regal set of her neck, and laughed. “And you think I have denial issues.”

“Your opinion is irrelevant.” Anna D shifted in her seat.

Oh, Anna D regretted opening her mouth, Sylvie thought. She recognized the twitchiness, as if the discomfort were something physical that could be relieved. “What are you, anyway?” Sylvie asked.

What lies in desert sands

with a hiss?

Long-tailed,

smooth-shaled,

not a serpent,

yet deadly in her kiss?

Back to that again, Sylvie thought; to her surprise, the answer sprang up, unprompted, when she had expected Anna D to win this round. Maybe it was the sum of small things, piling up like a snowdrift, her mind working overtime to prove Anna D wrong. “Sphinx,” she said. “You’re the Sphinx.” And still speaking in riddles, still testing men. Belatedly, she wondered what would have happened if she’d guessed wrong. Historically, death had been the result. A kiss? That was one way to describe having your head bitten off, she supposed.

Anna D nodded.

“Put those pieces together right, didn’t I?” Sylvie rose. “You’ve told me everything about Lilith that you can, am I right? You don’t know where she is.”

“Lilith can veil herself, an inverse use of her self-will. As she makes herself charismatic, she can also make herself a will-o’-the-wisp.”