“What exactly is a sand wraith?” Sylvie asked.
“Monster out of the Texas, New Mexico, Arizona area. I think it’s a type of djinn that migrated eons ago. Anyway, that’s not the important part. Focus, Syl. I’ve been searching through iReports on CNN. Look. Right there.”
She cued the scene up: nighttime, the rubble illuminated by emergency lights, stone and wiring and metal making crazy, nonsensical shadows, not helped by the shaky-cam hand of the filmer. “What am I—”
Sylvie shut up. She knew what Alex had wanted her to see. Six hours ago, it would have filled her with relief. Now, she watched Demalion and Marah Stone pick their way out of the rubble, dwarfed by the slabs of concrete, limping, braced on each other, and felt her heart tighten up. Christ. One thing to know Demalion had had a close call, to see him bruised but whole in her shower, full of attitude, full of life; another thing to see him like this—his eyes dark holes in his skull, face a mask of concrete dust and blood.
“Syl? This is good. He’s alive—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sylvie said. “Alive and in Miami. He made it here this morning. He’s off hunting down the Riordans. Being a good little agent and reporting in—”
“You didn’t call me? Fuck you, Sylvie. I spent hours scouring the Net and for nothing? When my head feels like it’s about to rupture?”
“Thought you were fine,” Sylvie said.
Alex burst into tears and flung the stapler at her; Sylvie dodged, listened to the metal crack against the front window, winced. Another thing for Emmanuel to fix.
“Hey, hey, I’m sorry, really sorry,” Sylvie said. “I should have called you. I was going to. I thought you were sleeping.”
“You should have left a message. A text. A fucking e-mail. I was so damn worried.” Her words tangled, choked off, left her rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.
“About Demalion?” Sylvie felt like she was walking across an unexpected minefield. Alex was the calm one. Alex was the sensible one. Alex didn’t throw office supplies, break windows, or curse her out. Alex didn’t usually have her memory scrambled either.
“About you, stupid. You do dumb things when you’re angry. And I’m tired. I can’t keep up with you.” Alex dragged her hands away from her eyes; she looked as tired as she claimed. More, she looked ground-down. Sylvie frowned. She couldn’t be to blame for all of that. Some of that was Alex fighting the memory modification, courting the pain by poking around similar events.
“I’m sorry,” Sylvie said again.
Alex jerked the laptop around, lips tight, not forgiving her that easily. “I compiled and skimmed about two hundred videos. My head’s still spinning.” She stabbed at the keys, brightly colored nails flashing like daggers. She turned the laptop back toward Sylvie, showing her window after window of stored video. A barrage of flickering information all set to a disaster backdrop. All of them with gold flares marking where the sand wraith had been erased from the world’s memory. CNN, Sylvie noticed, was saying that two newspeople—a reporter and her cameraman—had died when the rubble shifted unexpectedly. Sylvie looked at the last images they recorded, caught another glimpse of Marah and Demalion, running fast from … something washed out in a flicker of light … The camera image jerked forward, following the reporter, who was, in turn, following a basic journalistic rule. If you see someone running, find out what they’re running from.
Then the reporter disappeared into a cloud of dust and rubble.
“All of that. For nothing? Because you couldn’t be bothered to call?” Her cheeks were flushed, feverish.
“Alex,” Sylvie said. “I’m sorry. I can’t go back and undo it. Can we move on? Hey—”
Sylvie reached out, jabbed at the keys, trying to get one particular video to stop, and only succeeded in losing that screen altogether. “Dammit. Can you find that again?”
“Is it important?” Alex asked.
“Might be,” Sylvie said. “If I’m not seeing things. There was a bystander who looked familiar—”
Alex sighed. “And there goes my second surprise. You know, sometimes it’s just no damn fun working for you, Shadows. This the guy you meant?”
Sylvie came around to Alex’s side of the desk, dragging the visitor’s chair around with her. It couldn’t be healthy to spin the laptop around and around like a top. Sylvie looked at the image—slightly blurry, but the one she’d spotted. A wiry, dark-haired man with a beaky nose, wearing the American uniform: worn blue jeans, white T-shirt, sneakers. He should have been totally nondescript. Except … Sylvie pushed play.
He was studying the wreckage, trying to be discreet about it. Not gawking like the rest of the onlookers. Scoping it out without drawing attention to himself. He walked out of one video into the next, his damp dark hair collecting a mottled coating of dust and sand, a clear sign of how close he’d managed to get.
“So he was in Chicago,” Alex said. “Playing looky-loo. He was also in Memphis.”
“Memphis,” Sylvie said. “Did we ever find out what happened there?”
“Not a clue, but our guy was there. Maybe he knows,” Alex said. She reached over Sylvie’s shoulders, clicked another set of images onto the screen. Same man, same outfit, same damp, dark hair. Same careful prowling the border of chaos, betraying his interest by trying not to seem interested at all. Memphis. Chicago. Miami.
“So how’d you pick him out?” Alex said.
“Saw him here,” Sylvie said. “Outside the ISI. Moving when no one else could. Immune to the mermaids’ song.”
Alex whimpered, and Sylvie swallowed back further comment, waited for Alex’s eyelashes to stop flickering, her mind rewriting itself to someone else’s commands. Finally, Alex sighed, said, “What were we talking about?”
“Him,” Sylvie said, hoping she hadn’t screwed things up, hoped she hadn’t managed to link their mysterious bystander inextricably with the forbidden parts of Alex’s memory.
Alex wrinkled her nose. “Oh yeah. I’m trying to find him at the other scenes, but it’s harder. Savannah and Dallas didn’t rouse so much excitement, you know? The Savannah site was isolated. And the Dallas site was effectively cordoned off. Hard to be a face in the crowd if there’s no crowd. Even harder to film a face in a noncrowd if there’s no one to man a camera. And my head is killing me. The more I research, the worse I feel.”
Alex let out a breath, drained her coffee like it was booze after a too-long day.
Fighting the conflicting memories. Whoever was doing the changing hadn’t gotten into the ISI files to alter them. So Alex remembered those. But they were erasing the truth outside of the ISI, and Alex was dutifully trying to forget.
“Why don’t you give it a break?” Sylvie said. “Lock the door, pull down the blinds. Take a nap.”
Alex’s eyes swept the couch; she leaned forward in her chair, as if she could simply fall into the couch by wanting it. “What are you going to do?”
“Check in on Lupe,” Sylvie said. “I was supposed to do it this morning, but Demalion was at my apartment, and I got distracted.”
“Distracted, huh?” A brief smile touched Alex’s lips. “I guess I can forgive you for not calling me immediately.”
“Distracted like he brought trouble with him. You remember the ISI assassin who killed Odalys?”
“Not like you ever introduced us,” Alex said. “I know she exists.”
Sylvie found the image of Marah and Demalion whirling to confront the sand wraith, Marah’s hand upraised. She showed it to Alex. “That woman Demalion’s leaning on? Marah Stone. ISI assassin. Big trouble.”
“How big?” Alex asked.
“She’s been in town for a few hours, and she’s already tried to kill Erinya.”
Alex clicked her jaw shut, then said, “I’m too tired to deal with that. Go away. I’m taking a nap. Check on Lupe. She left a message on the machine. She’s found a witch she wants you to vet.”