“She what?”
“She’s impatient, I guess. Can’t really blame her,” Alex said, digging a camp pillow and blanket out of her deepest desk drawer.
“No one listens to me,” Sylvie said. “I gave her the speech. I told her that you had to be careful, I told her—”
“Yeah, yeah, I was there. Go tell her again and let me nap.” Alex dragged herself to the couch, sprawled over the cracked green leather, tugging the blanket over herself.
“See if you can find anything else on our mystery man. He had to have come from somewhere. For that matter, the monsters, too. Even if they were living among us, there should have been signs. Why attack now?”
“I don’t know,” Alex muttered.
“Crap,” Sylvie said, glancing at her watch. “Alex, do me a favor? Pick up Zoe at the airport? I have a feeling Lupe’s going to eat time.”
Alex sighed hugely. “So unfair. Come in, tell me to rest up, then give me things to do. I will look into our mystery man. I will pick up your brat of a sister. But after a nap. Go away, before I throw something else at you.”
Sylvie waved off the threat but headed out, right into the full heat of the day.
THE MOTEL LUPE WAS STAYING AT WASN’T IN THE BEST PART OF town; sirens were a familiar background melody, and the palm trees embedded in the sidewalk cutouts were hardly the type to gladden even an indie director’s location scout, being stunted and soft.
But the motel was reasonably cheap, catering to long-term guests, and the neighborhood wasn’t so bad that Lupe couldn’t take her morning runs. There were even coffee shops and restaurants and a movie theater in the area—so why the hell couldn’t Lupe just occupy herself in some safe way?
Sylvie found herself gritting her teeth as she parked her truck, made herself stop. She stepped out of her truck and found her teeth locking tight again as she heard muffled shouting. That was never a good sign. Even in a crap hotel.
Also not good? The fact that Sylvie could feel the tiny flare of unnatural forces rippling in the air, like a storm about to break. Guess Lupe hadn’t waited for Sylvie to approve of the witch but dived in headfirst.
She booked up the stairs, felt the morning’s bruises protest, and pounded on Lupe’s locked door. “Lupe!”
“Help us!” a woman shouted. “Help!”
It wasn’t Lupe. Lupe’s voice had a thick rasp to it, an animal huskiness when she spoke. Sylvie hadn’t asked if the rasp was original or if it, too, was a change forced upon her.
She tested her balance, her aches, then pivoted and kicked the door, with the expected result. She bounced off it. Even cheap motels tended not to skimp on the doors. Easy road to a lawsuit.
“Lupe,” Sylvie said. “Let me in!”
The shouting on the inside broke off to a series of hushed whimpers and a low, feral growl. “Lupe,” Sylvie said. She leaned on the door, slapped her palm against it repeatedly.
“I called the cops,” a voice said. Sylvie jerked, found the day manager staring at her. Truculent, even in the face of her gun. Then again, he probably had one of his own.
“Great. You got a key?”
He stared at her, dark eyes under a crew cut, tattoos running the breadth of his thick neck. “Don’t sue.” He threw her the passkey and stomped back toward his office to wait for the cops.
Sylvie slapped the door again, said, “Lupe, I’m coming in.”
Another whimper, another growl, a groan that was another voice altogether. What the hell was going on? She swiped the card through the reader, shoved the door open, and fell through the door.
Blood on the bed nearest the door. Bright and wet and freshly shed.
Dammit.
A crying woman in a long skirt huddled near the bathroom alcove. At Sylvie’s entrance, she raised her head, eyes flaring wide with alarm. “Behind the door!”
Sylvie caught Lupe’s wrist as the woman lunged—and it was Lupe-the-woman, which Sylvie was grateful for—and used Lupe’s momentum against her, slung her onto the bed, crashing into the headboard. Crystal crunched beneath Sylvie’s feet, cracked quartzite.
Lupe growled, a deep, inhuman rumble in her chest, and Sylvie snapped, “Stay there.”
“She hurt me,” Lupe said.
“It doesn’t look like your blood,” Sylvie said. Her client looked furious, close to insane, her hair a wild tangle, her eyes bloodshot, her hands clawing at the sheets, but she didn’t look hurt.
“It shouldn’t have hurt!” The woman—the witch—by the bathroom shrilled. She had reason to sound scared. It was her blood; the patterned skirt she wore was shredded. Her leg beneath the fabric was streaked and stippled with blood. Claw marks.
“Can you walk?” Sylvie said, cutting over her protests that she’d just been trying to help, that Lupe had gone berserk, that she’d tried to kill her—
“What?”
“Get out of here,” Sylvie said.
“Not without Peter,” the woman protested.
“Peter?” Sylvie echoed, and the low groan rose again. Keeping a careful eye on Lupe in case she freaked out again, Sylvie peered into the only space another person could be in: the gap between the beds.
The shadows separated themselves into a man in dark clothing crunched down into the gap.
“Fine,” Sylvie said. “Get him up, go.”
“But he’s heavy—”
Sylvie lost patience. Sirens scaled through the air, getting closer. She leveled the gun at the witch, and said, “Should I motivate you?”
The woman scrambled to her feet, tripped over the edge of her skirt, gained her feet again, and started dragging her boyfriend out of the room. Sylvie waited until they had cleared the door to slam it closed.
“Get your stuff, Lupe.”
“That bitch tried to do something—” Lupe said.
Sylvie did rapid math in her head. Another minute, maybe two for the cops to reach the motel, two minutes for them to get directions from the day manager, a minute to get their asses up the stairs.
“No time to talk,” Sylvie said. “Move your ass, Lupe, or I’m leaving you here to deal with the police.”
Lupe’s jaw slammed shut; she snatched up her shoes. Sylvie grabbed her duffel bag, grabbed the woman’s arm, and pulled her out the door, nearly tripping over the witch. No sense of self-preservation, Sylvie thought. The witch and her boyfriend should have been long gone; instead, the witch was trying to wake him, while they were still in the danger zone.
Lupe snarled; the woman yelped, and Sylvie jerked hard, her nails digging in to Lupe’s skin. “Ignore her.”
They descended the stairs in a slithering rush, half-falling, half-pulling, and Sylvie slammed Lupe up against the truck. “Get in.”
Sylvie darted around the nose of her truck, got the engine started, and was backing out at speed before Lupe even had the passenger door shut. “You check in under your own name?” Sylvie’s truck was distinctive, but not enough to randomly ID her. Not unless she was really unlucky, and it was a cop she knew.
Lupe’s lips went tight and thin. Answer enough.
Sylvie slued the truck around and headed out of the lot as the cops were pulling in. She waited two heartbeats, three, checking her rearview to see if they were U-turning, then punched the accelerator.
They drove ten miles down the road before Sylvie pulled into a movie theater’s crowded lot, parked her truck in a morass of other vehicles, and got out. She paced a tight circle, swearing, trying to figure the angles. So the cops had Lupe’s name. They didn’t have hers. Sylvie’s truck was distinctive, but there were so many red Ford trucks in the city that the cops would get bored long before they ran down the one with the jagged scars in the hood.
Unless she was unlucky, and the cops were part of Suarez’s brood. Then they’d know exactly who the truck belonged to.
Fuck.
All right. If that was so, Suarez would come to her first. She could put him off. After all, no one was dead. No one was that badly injured. Sylvie hadn’t committed the crime herself. She could come down hard on “I know nothing. Where’s your warrant?” if she had to.