She faltered. It had a point. They were her enemies. How much of this determination to save them was her hoping to save Demalion by proxy? If they were all dead, all trapped below the water—it had been twenty minutes since the wave first broke. And the mermaids’ song had never faltered. Twenty minutes of concentrated ill will.
A new sound impinged on her hearing. A rhythmic percussion traveling through the water, amplifying itself as it came.
Thumpthumpthump.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Thumpthumpthump.
Sylvie didn’t need to know Morse code to recognize that; the pattern was a part of pop culture.
SOS.
She’d never been able to turn away from someone pleading for help.
She delved back into the water, seeking to grab that intangible something. To break it apart. It slipped like a shoal of minnows through her hands, cold and slimy, her grasp slowed by the water.
No, you don’t, she thought at it, and dug in harder, wet to her elbows, scratching her nails through the liquid, snagging that magic. It thrashed like an eel, stung her palms with a near-electrical protest that made her grimace and curse between tight-locked teeth. But she held on, and, millimeter by slick millimeter, she dragged it toward her, through the door, spurred on by the drumbeat SOS.
Just as her wrists breached the glittering surface of the water, her little dark voice spoke again. Wait!
Too late.
She broke the magic’s hold, and the water crashed into the stairwell, sweeping her from her feet, slamming her—pinball style—wall to wall, then plunging her down the stairs.
Sylvie flailed, locked a hand on the guardrail, and hung on for dear life.
WHEN THE FLOOD SUBSIDED, WHEN SHE’D BEEN BATTERED BY CURRENT and cold and the dead agent slamming into her as his corpse swept inexorably by, she uncrimped her hands and staggered to her feet. She felt bruised all over, sodden, cold, more in need of a rescue than a rescuer. But she had to get moving; there was no guarantee that the waters wouldn’t rise to drowning levels again.
She labored up the half flight she’d fallen, headed into the hallway, water swirling about her ankles. She scanned the area swiftly, wondering where the SOS had come from. The first two doors she opened sent more water crashing down, turned corpses into driftwood. The water level, she thought, was rising again. The hiss of water pressing in through the broken windows.
Morgue, she thought. The ISI had a makeshift morgue. She’d been in it. The room had been baffled, had sucked the air into the room when the door closed. Close to soundproof. Maybe close to waterproof.
She tried to remember which door it was—in the refurbished maids’ supply room—and found it, not by memory but by the SOS starting up again, more desperate. She tapped on the door, got voices responding.
“Is there anyone out there? Is it safe to come out?”
“No,” Sylvie said, “Not safe. But safer. Open up.”
“Is that you, Grace?”
“Just open the damned door,” Sylvie snapped.
A furious set of whispers, then the door popped open, revealing four soaked and shivering ISI agents. The room, thankfully, was mostly dry. The water had only been up to their shins, and it flooded out past her.
Sylvie stepped in, shook off like a dog, and looked at them. “Let’s move.”
“Who—”
“That’s Shadows,” the agent in the back of the little huddle answered. She recognized him: John Riordan, the local ISI chief’s son.
“Hey, Junior. Want out? We need to go now. I broke the spell but only briefly. If they put it back up while I’m inside the barrier? We’re all dead.”
“We’re safe here,” another agent said. “We can wait.”
“For who?” Sylvie said. “Your security? They’re dead. They’re all dead.”
John’s teeth set; he shoved past the other agents. Sylvie braced herself for a fight, either physical or verbal. The look on his face was pure rage. But he only gained her side, and said, “Let’s go, people.”
Being the boss’s son has its perks, Sylvie thought. The three remaining agents fell in line like good little ducklings.
Sylvie opened the door again. Looked out. A wet hallway shouldn’t look that intimidating. But the water had risen noticeably in the few minutes they’d debated, moved faster, in purposeful ripples and rills as if snakes undulated beneath the surface. The hallway smelled like the sea, and it stretched out like a football field. The morgue had been nearly at the blind end of the hall, two hundred feet of enemy territory.
“Elevators?” John suggested.
“No,” Sylvie said. “We’d have to pry them open first.”
“First?” he said.
“You don’t listen well, do you. You think water floods one floor of a hotel naturally?” Sylvie asked. “There’s a spell calling the water. And there’s a spell holding the water in place. The better to drown you with.”
One of the agents said, “What’s that sound?” His lean face was tight with longing; green eyes drifted closed, the better to focus on the thin threads of the song he heard.
“I don’t hear anythi… wait. Yeah. What is that?” And there went agent number two. His heavyset body slowed, eased, relaxed.
The third agent, showing some sense, stuck his fingers in his ears, looking wild-eyed. It seemed to help, at least a little.
“Shit,” Sylvie muttered. Fucking mermaids. She yanked the door closed, dragging it through the rising waters. “Junior. Earplugs?”
He shook off his own stillness more easily than she’d expected. The other men were close to catatonic. “Earplugs?”
“Cotton balls, paper towels, rags, anything?”
Sylvie glanced around, but the room was as empty as a broken eggshell. White and wet and useless.
He opened his mouth to ask, then shook himself, started ripping fabric from his shirtsleeve. Shoved the first scraps at the agent with his fingers in his ears. The others followed suit. Makeshift. Sylvie hoped it’d buy them enough time. If they all froze on her, they were dead.
Sylvie took a big breath, hoping that if the spell lock was restored—which she had to assume it was, given the rising water—that she could disarm it again and do so from the inside.
“Close the door behind us,” Riordan said to the other agents. “If we can’t get out, we can retreat.”
They nodded, and Sylvie kept her mouth closed. She wasn’t going to burst their bubble, but if the water filled the hallway again, that door might as well be glued shut. Water pressure would ensure it. The doorway opened out.
Riordan’s jaw clenched, released; he cast a sidelong glance her way, and she raised a brow. He knew.
“Move,” Sylvie said.
They waded into the hallway, the last agent forcing the door closed through the frigid water.
It hadn’t been that cold before.
On her way in, the water had been chilly, water from below the sun’s reach, but this… this was icy. Deep-sea icy. Abyssal-plain icy. It leached heat and energy, set her teeth to chattering. It swallowed light, turned the hallway to rolling shadows and splashes. Worst of all, the water reached above her knee.
“What’s happening?” Riordan asked, as they headed into the hallway. Two hundred feet to go.
“You tell me. What’d you all do to piss off the Mundi so bad?”
“I don’t know,” he said. His teeth chattered. “I don’t even know what’s attacking us. The Maudits?”
“Mermaids,” Sylvie said.
One hundred eighty feet. The water reached midthigh.
A new sound penetrated the hallway, a low moan, the complaint of masonry giving way. Doors burst behind them, before them, spilling icy torrents into the hall. Fingers-in-his-ears shouted, stopped cold, changed trajectory.