Sometimes she thought that the conflicts between the two worlds—human and magical—were more recognized than people let on, that it wasn’t blind stupidity, the utter failure to observe what was really happening, but was, instead, a vast conspiracy to deny the
Magicus Mundi
any toehold in real-world society. After all, if you knew it existed, you had to make laws to deal with it. The world wasn’t doing so hot with the rules it already had.
She took a slug of her cooling coffee. “So. What’s on offer?”
“Parents who tried to deprogram their kid—thought he was in a cult, not a coven—now their house is cursed.”
Sylvie grimaced. “Pass. I’ve pissed off enough witches lately.”
“A werewolf who wants you to mediate—”
“Pass,” Sylvie said. “They squabble worse than high-schoolers, and someone always ends up peeing on my shoes.”
“Missing woman, disappeared in the ’Glades. Car found, but no sign of foul play. Husband thinks it was aliens.”
Sylvie propped herself up on her elbows, the better to convey her exasperation. “Aliens?
Magicus Mundi
’s bad enough without little green men. Did you give him the Good Shepherd’s number?”
“You keep it close,” Alex said.
“Sorry,” Sylvie said. “Any missing persons like that, call him. He does this thing with magical gates—” At Alex’s opening mouth, Sylvie shook her head. “Don’t ask. I don’t know how it works. I’ll get you his number for your files.”
Alex nodded, grinning. Sylvie closed her eyes, the better to miss that triumphant smile. She still had reservations. There was a distinct difference to Alex’s knowing that Sylvie took on cases that involved the supernatural and Alex helping Sylvie in that world. The
Magicus Mundi
killed people.
We kill people,
the dark voice that haunted her said abruptly, like a drunk startled awake to join a conversation. Sylvie counted to ten under her breath, thought of waves stroking the beach, and the voice subsided, still conjugating the ways she had, did, and would again, kill people. Some genetic legacies were purely good. Some were more complicated.
An enhanced survival trait like the voice in the back of her mind might keep her alive, but it also liked to dwell on blood.
Opening her eyes, she caught Alex making the “sneaky face,” biting her lip, frowning slightly, the face she made when she was about to try to convince Sylvie to do something.
“Don’t spin it or sell it. Just tell me,” Sylvie said. “What’s the case?”
“There’s a cop—”
Sylvie was already shaking her head; her hair rasped across her shoulders with each shake.
“He’s having an identity crisis, strange dreams, voices in his head, all that; he thinks he’s possessed or haunted.”
“Psychiatrist, psychologist, priest, or rabbi,” Sylvie said. “Anyone but me. That it?”
Alex slapped the notepad onto the desk. “He needs help.”
“Not the kind I can give. Anything else on offer?”
“What
do
you want?” Alex said. “Might be easier to narrow down what you do like in a case. Your dislikes apparently fill a phone book.”
“Don’t snap at me,” Sylvie said. “Cops have big problems and bad attitudes. I don’t want big problems. What I want? No dead things, no mayhem, no weeping relatives, missing people, long-lost loves, and just in case you missed it the first time,
no life-and-death struggles
.” She thumped the couch for emphasis, raising dog hair, dust, and the scent of coconut oil from long-ago sun-lotion spillage. Guerro thrust his head under her hand, and she petted his ears absently, aware, very aware, of Alex studying her. Judging her.
“Okay,” Alex said, and put humor in her tone, a deliberate step away from touchy subjects. “Slacker Sylvie. Who’da thought?”
Sylvie flipped her off, though the tight knot in her belly was already easing. Part of the reason she hated it when Alex tried manipulation games was that she was so damn good at them. She set her feet down, gave the couch back to the dog, and stretched. “Let me know if something good comes in. Something nice. Clinical.
Easy.
”
“Like what?”
“Surprise me. Until then, you know where I’ll be.”
“Upstairs, making sure I didn’t screw up the books, dooming us to bankruptcy, auditors, and ultimate penury.”
“Bingo,” Sylvie said. She went around the desk and climbed the narrow stairs wedged between the little kitchenette and bathroom. Her office door creaked ominously when she opened it, and she yelled back down, “Stellar job with the WD-40, Alex.”
A rude mutter floated upward, and she shut the door, smiling. Her desk waited, nice, neat, only one file in the center position, a man’s name written on the tab. Adam Wright. She flipped it open. Yup. The Cop with Issues.
Sylvie slid it to the side and opened the right-hand drawer. She tugged the gun out, rested its weight in her palm, settled her finger on the trigger. She sighted along it, aimed at the stress crack in the far wall’s stucco. “Bang,” she whispered. The little dark voice roused, waiting to see what bled.
Sylvie was afraid that, despite a month off doggedly avoiding conflict of even the tiniest kind, she was exactly the same as before. Aggressive. Belligerent. A trigger-happy trouble magnet prone to holding grudges. And still, no matter how she tried to pretend, she was still The Murderer’s Child. The descendant of Cain, the first murderer, and Lilith, the disobedient.
Lilith the dead,
the dark voice purred.
Yes,
Sylvie answered back, wordlessly.
Yes.
She and the dark voice shared a moment of utter satisfaction before she tamped her vicious pleasure down. Her ancestry gave her a few useful perks: healthy paranoia, boundless determination, and a sense of self that refused to roll over even for the most powerful of magical denizens. On the downside, it brought an array of character flaws: cynicism, overconfidence, and an easily roused rage at life’s inequities, at abusive systems, at anything that presumed to call itself an authority.
It had been a peculiar sort of wake-up call to realize that Lilith and she shared a personal motto:
Cedo Nulli. I yield to none.
Lilith’s refusal to obey her god had burned so deep and so long that it entered her bloodline and came out in Sylvie’s. All unknowing, Sylvie had tattooed the motto on her skin the first moment it occurred to her to do so.
Maybe, if Sylvie had never involved herself in the
Magicus Mundi
, that spark of Lilith, that little dark voice that preached survival and dissension, would never have roused. It made her twitchy, made her wake at nights wondering what she had loosed into her psyche.
Alex tapped on the door and came in; her face tightened as she saw the gun, a dark splotch on the weathered pine. Sylvie flipped the file folder open to cover it, and Alex said, “You’re going to take Wright’s case?”
“No,” Sylvie said. “Did you need something?”
“Your dad called earlier. I forgot. Zoe’s coming over. She’s grounded or something, and you’re supposed to watch her.”
“What?” Sylvie asked. “Now?”
“Yeah,” Alex said.
“All right, then. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.”
Alex nodded and headed back downstairs. Sylvie rolled up the thin file on the troubled cop and chucked it after her. “Take that, too!”
Desk cleared of imminent problems, she sat back to enjoy the peace. With Zoe on the way, it would be short-lived.
Sylvie sighed. She shouldn’t begrudge her sister her attention. She hadn’t seen her for a month, barely saw her before that. This year had been hell for family responsibilities; she was up for the bad-sister award. Zoe had called her several times, but Sylvie had always had other things to do. First, it had been relocating werewolves, then Rafael’s dying, followed by the whole Chicago clusterfuck and Demalion—
Her hands tightened, made empty, impotent fists. Her shoulders knotted. Sylvie let her breath out, as steadily as the tide, dropped her shoulders, rolled her neck. The monthlong retreat was supposed to have put an end to that kind of tension. Dwelling on all the ways she was a screwup wasn’t helping.
She had to give herself at least one virtue point: When she’d made her impromptu retreat to Sanibel, she’d invited Zoe to join her. Zoe had been tempted. Gnawed her lip, eagerness in her eyes, but her best friend, Bella, had clutched her round the neck and laughingly told Sylvie that she couldn’t take her Zoe away, that they had school finals, plus a special project due.
Zoe, reluctantly, had agreed.
Sylvie had been as relieved as she’d been disappointed. She’d forgotten about school. These days, high school was barely a blip on her radar. Her parents would not have been pleased if Zoe’s junior-year finals took second place to a meaningless vacation. So she’d taken Alex instead. Alex had lasted a bare week before boredom sent her back to Miami’s faster-paced days.
But Sylvie was back now, and there weren’t any cases on deck, so Zoe could come first. Hell, if Alex honored her wishes—if the new cases fitted her new criteria—there’d be time enough to spend with her sister. Last summer for it, really. Zoe was headed into senior year, and all her plans revolved around her friends and college, a future Sylvie couldn’t even imagine. A normal life.
Sylvie leaned back in her desk chair, fighting a tinge of envy. She’d had that kind of future planned out once, had been on the right path—college, a business degree almost within her grasp. Then a friend from her high-school days came to her with an impossible story—her husband was trying to sacrifice their child to gain immortality—that turned out to be true. Sylvie’s normal future had never materialized.
Spend too much time with Zoe, and you’ll blight hers,
the little dark voice murmured. It sounded almost sad as it dished out unpalatable truth. Zoe was observant, determined, clever; she’d find out about the
Magicus Mundi
if she spent any real time with Sylvie. And the genes were the same. If Zoe got a good look into the
Magicus Mundi
, what might wake in her? Her own dark voice? Her own bloody determination? A violent life to rival Sylvie’s?
New plan,
Sylvie thought. Forget about the crazy lunch tour they had launched in an attempt to eat at every restaurant in Miami. Forget about the late-night phone calls where Zoe giggled and dished gossip that Sylvie could barely follow. Forget it all and fuck sisterhood. Keep Zoe at a safe distance.
Yeah, that was going to go over well. Zoe didn’t need a magical wake-up call to be determined. She’d been born that way.
The quiet below was broken. The front door banged open, Guerro barked, and Alex’s voice rose up the stairs, faintly muffled by the closed door. “Sylvie?”
A walk-in? Zoe earlier than anticipated? Sylvie pushed herself to her feet, grabbed the Hurricanes Windbreaker hanging over the back of her chair, tucking the gun into its pocket. Just in case.
Thumping down the stairs, she drew to a halt, a smile forming as she saw the young man waiting by the doorway. “Frankie?”
“Hey, Shadows,” he said. “Got a minute?”
“For you, sure,” she said. She leaned on the reception desk next to Alex.
Frankie was the boy next door, in this case literally; he and his partner, Etienne, ran the bar across the alley. Frankie, she liked. The woman lingering in the doorway behind him, she didn’t. Lisse Conrad, owner of the art gallery down the street, had started her relationship with Sylvie by passing a petition to deny her business space. PIs, apparently, were not posh.
Conrad looked uncomfortable now; high spots of color bloomed on her sculpted cheekbones when she met Sylvie’s eyes. Her mouth twisted. She jumped when Guerro barked. That was all right with Sylvie. Art dealers weren’t high on her happy list right now. Not after Lilith had nearly brought about the end of the world in the guise of one.
“Don’t tell me,” Sylvie said. “You want my help.” Conrad looked to Frankie. Sylvie looked at him also, at his hands stuffed in his chinos, rocking back on his heels, trying for the look of an innocent schoolboy and failing.
“What gives, Frankie?” Sylvie asked.
“Things have been kind of weird around here last month or so; don’t know if you two were in the loop?”
“Consider us excluded,” Sylvie said. Alex coughed. A warning of bad behavior.
“Please, have a seat,” Alex said, gesturing toward the sofa. Frankie led Lisse to the seat, settled himself beside her. “Coffee?”
“No,” the woman said. She flicked her fingers, pushing dog fur away from her skirt.
In the gaps of the miniblinds, Sylvie saw an older-model grey Taurus slowing to a halt, holding up traffic just outside the door.
Sylvie opened her mouth to kick the woman out; she wasn’t interested in helping. Alex cut her off. “Syl, your sister’s here. Why don’t you let me talk to Lis—” At the woman’s sour expression, she continued, “Ms. Conrad.”
Sylvie hesitated. Letting Alex talk to Conrad was as good as taking the case. Alex was a soft touch, and she approved of income.
The front door slammed open, slammed shut, and brought in a teenage girl, all bad temper and self-importance.
On the desk, the silver warning bell rang twice uncertainly. Alex set her fingers to it, stilling the echo, but looked around warily. The bell was a witch’s gift, alerting them to any dark magic entering their shop.
Sylvie turned her attention away from the bell as it fell back to inert metal. Just a fluke. It wasn’t bad magic walking in, only a teenager with a penchant for slamming the door. Even the window had rattled briefly; no surprise, then, that the bell had shifted.
“Nice,” Zoe said. “You can’t have a bell over the
door
like everyone else?”
“You can’t come in without slamming doors? How old are you, six?” Sylvie sniped right back. Ah, sisterhood. She waved at her dad as he drove on by, having committed his personal hit-and-run on her life.