Faint hissing, the scent of must and mice—Sylvie backed toward the couch, collected her gun with one hand, and tucked herself into the cushions, sweeping the room with her gaze.
“Sylvie?” Demalion padded into the room, bare all over, and she tore her eyes away.
“I’ll take first watch,” she said. She spotted her sneakers, set down the gun long enough to drag them onto her feet, and curled up against the couch’s arm again, gun in hand. “It’s just midnight. I’ll wake you in—”
“The door’s locked. The alarm’s on. The apartment’s secure. Come back to bed, Sylvie.”
“There are things out there that scoff at locks,” Sylvie said. “You know it. I’ve seen it. Never let your guard down.”
“You need sleep,” he said.
“Sleep when you’re dead,” Sylvie said. She stared hard at the crack beneath the apartment door, at the pale line of light seeping through from the hallway beyond. Anything that crept through there would be seen. She needed to worry about the less overt entry points.
“What will it help anyone if you’re too tired to think straight?” He shook his head and closed the bedroom door behind him.
It was the ISI, she thought, that weakened him, made him rely on external safety precautions, like alarms, like backup and calls for help being answered. A bureaucrat’s world. He didn’t understand the dangers here, not down deep in the bone the way she did.
Sleep? No, she couldn’t risk it. Not when her nerves felt as shaken as a rattlesnake’s tail. But she didn’t need all of herself to keep watch. Only her senses, the gun in her hand, like an animal lying in wait. Her world degenerated into fragments. Sit still, shift in the darkness, aim the gun, assess. Relax. Repeat.
The shadows gave way all at once to daylight, a blue sky washing her dreamscape, and she jerked awake. Even she had limits. Three in the morning, and she couldn’t stay awake another minute. She ghosted toward the bedroom; Demalion slept through the faint creak of the door opening, through her path to the bed. He roused when she touched his shoulder, coming awake with an alacrity that pleased her.
“Your turn,” she said, gesturing to the living room.
“What am I guarding against?” he asked. His voice was delicious with sleep, a low rumble in his chest. She wanted to shuck off the clothes, drop the gun, crawl into his arms, and listen to his voice from up close. She didn’t.
“Anything,” she said.
“Something,” he corrected. “You’re afraid of something specific.”
“Snakes,” she said. “I see them, hear them. They’re not there. Not yet. Maybe it’s some warning.”
She waited for him to give her grief, to play the paranoia card, the exhaustion, the hallucinations; instead, he touched her cheek and slid out of bed.
“Put the gun on the nightstand, huh?” he said. “Not beneath the pillow. Be stupid to shoot yourself by accident.”
He stood over her until she laid it down, the soft thunk of it leaving her hand, and kissed her hair, still shower-matted and sex-tangled. “Go to sleep, Sylvie.”
The bed beckoned; she slid into his warm spot and nearly moaned at how good it felt, the smooth cotton, the lazy heat lingering, and his scent, sandalwood and lime, steeped in it. Sleep dragged her down like a sinkhole opening beneath her.
“It’s about time,” a woman said. “Stubborn creature.”
Blue skies arched above Sylvie, a blue so pure and deep that the heavens looked hot to the touch, and shot through with veins of gold fire. Lapis lazuli, she thought, but freed from cold stone; lapis lazuli, alive.
Her eyes watered; she blinked but couldn’t check the tears. She raised her arms before her to block it out and nearly fell from her seat when it proved to be backless.
“Too much, hmm?”
The world shifted. The sky fell in and darkened, turned teak netted with fishermen’s floats in worn and pitted glass. Sylvie’s stone cup of a chair turned to leather and grew a back and arms. The walls shifted from white marble to plaster, and Sylvie smiled. She knew this place, the Mucky Duck, a vacation restaurant she used to go with her family, when she was still young enough to giggle over the waiter’s bottles of string ketchup that they pretended to squirt on customers.
“A dream. This is all a dream. But you’re not,” she said to the voice. Familiar voice. It hadn’t been a wrong number after all. And Erinya had said that Kevin was smart, that he’d find a way to contact her. Guess this was it.
“Quick,” the woman said, making her appearance. A tiny woman wearing something out of Sylvie’s onetime art-history book approached. A toga, Sylvie thought, the woman’s arms bared from fingertip to shoulder bone, showing multiple semicircular scars. No, chiton. But as soon as she identified it, the fabric changed, adjusting itself to the setting. The woman, now sundressed and sandaled, sank onto a stool next to her. “I’m Mnemosyne. Kevin Dunne sent me.”
19
All Gone to Hell
SYLVIE SAID, “DOESN’T HE GET AROUND,” BUT HER ATTENTION WAS gone. Outside the plate-glass windows, beyond the scrubby parking lot, two girls played on the narrow shell-strewn beach, one all gawky legs and windblown hair, racing into her teens, the other a toddler, chasing after her sister so fast that she fell. The older girl turned, dusted the child off, and comforted her with a hug and a smile.
“Things change,” Mnemosyne said, and waved her hand irritably. The window closed over, turned into another netted wall. “You cannot go back. That is the nature of history, that it is in the past. All that can be done is study it, to see the seeds that were planted and anticipate the growth coming.”
“Shut up,” Sylvie said. “I’ve had a long day, and this might be a dream, but I bet it’s not helping my sleep deficit.”
Ignoring her, Mnemosyne continued, “I do not usually involve myself in these matters, but I owe Dunne a great debt.”
“Yeah?” Sylvie said. “Save your life did he? Like a god’s life is worth it. You’ve all lived your share and more.” Sylvie bit her lip and made a note to herself: Dreamworld equaled no rein on her mouth.
“He did,” Mnemosyne said, still placid, which, perversely, Sylvie found more irritating than a relief. “Do you know how we are created, what we are?”
“Power, flesh shell, broken or unmade, big puff of stealable stuff, got the gist.” Sylvie squinted into the dark corners of the empty restaurant and sighed. She was hungry. She was in a restaurant. Didn’t seem right. A waiter loomed out of nowhere, green duck on his white shirt, and asked for her order.
Mnemosyne squeaked and made the moment sweeter. Guess she hadn’t expected the dream to be more Sylvie’s than hers. But just because she set the stage didn’t mean Sylvie couldn’t control it.
The waiter turned around, her food instantly ready; Sylvie sank her teeth gratefully into the French dip, but it tasted nothing of food and everything of memory. Of sandy days, of salty air, of skin gone sticky with seawater, and the ever-present scent of coconut oil and rubber flip-flops. It exploded in her mind like a little bomb, and she set the sandwich down, near tears. Innocence tasted strange on her palate now. Inedible.
“I apologize,” Mnemosyne said. “History lives around me. It is my task to keep it, to record it, to watch it. I am the Muse of history, and I see all.” The bare skin of her arms rippled, and what Sylvie had taken for dozens of tiny scars blinked open into eyes. In each of them, in the heart of the pupils, Sylvie saw bits of her past.
“Stop it,” Sylvie said. Mnemosyne turned her palms up, showing two moments that Sylvie could only identify as Before and After, Then and Now. In Mnemosyne’s right palm, Sylvie saw herself striding across campus, determined, head held high, and anger in her eyes. Portrait of Girl with a Cause.