That was the kind of thought that ruined her morning, sent her scrabbling out of her bed, grabbing at clothes, her gun, her keys, and heading for her truck at a dead run. Not the way she preferred to begin her days. Ideally, they’d start with waking before the alarm went off, having time for a leisurely cup of coffee, a morning jog, or swim if the day was too hot, then a late breakfast at her office, while Alex caught her up on potential clients.
If it were a really good day, when she woke, Demalion would be beside her, lashes dark on his face, the glint of blond stubble in slanting sunlight, sleeping as determinedly as a cat. If it were a good day, she’d get to lean over and nudge him awake, watch his pupils flare and fade as he blinked into morning light.
It hadn’t been a good day for months.
Sylvie laid on the horn, cursed rush-hour traffic, and stomped on the gas, jerking her truck around a multitasking driver who had one hand full of coffee cup, the other full of cell phone, and was failing to steer with his knees.
Her throat was tight, worried about Lupe. The woman had been through so much already. Kidnapped by Azpiazu the soul devourer, used as a magical conduit, finally freed through Sylvie’s actions… only to find she wasn’t as free as everyone thought.
Azpiazu had slapped a shape-shifting spell on his victims as part of his attempt to control his own unmanageable shifting. When Sylvie had killed him and broken the spell that linked him to his victims, she’d thought it was over. Had seen the women home with the sense of a job well-done.
Then Lupe had called her the first full moon after, in total hysterics; the moon rose, and Lupe shifted into a werewolf in her screened-in patio. Reason enough for hysterics, but it had been far worse than that. Lupe hadn’t been alone. Her girlfriend, Jenny, had been curled next to her on the patio swing. Jenny had needed 134 stitches in her face, chest, shoulder, and arm, lost three fingers on her right hand, and gained a cracked skull. She’d nearly bled out before Lupe woke the next morning and called 911.
Unsurprisingly, the two broke up. Jenny didn’t really remember what had happened; the concussion and blood loss saw to that, but at the same time, Lupe said, Jenny was afraid of her.
Lupe was afraid of herself.
Sylvie had taken her out to Tatya and Marisol in the Everglades, two women, two werewolves, who she thought might be willing to help deal with the change. They had been. Again, Sylvie had thought, problem solved. Or at least shelved.
Sunlight lancing through her windshield from the car before her made her squint and wince, and realize she’d torn out of her apartment without grabbing her sunglasses. A small pain, though, compared to what Lupe was going through.
Finding out she was a werewolf was bad and freaky enough—curse-inflicted lycanthropy was insanely rare—but spending the full moon with Tatya and Marisol had proved that Lupe’s problems were larger than that. With Tatya and Marisol at her side, Lupe had been braced to deal with the wolf-change, assured that no one would be hurt this time.
The problem was that Lupe didn’t shift into a wolf. She changed under the moon, wasn’t left a human between two monsters, but she didn’t turn into a wolf either. For her second full moon, Lupe turned into a jaguar, all fury and rage at being caught between the two werewolves. No one came out of that unscathed.
Lupe didn’t heal like Tatya and Marisol did, either; she was left with bloody bite marks that bled and scabbed for weeks. She bore the wounds without complaint, saying Jenny had had it worse.
Sylvie had started looking into witches, hoping to find someone who could break the curse. It was a slow, too-slow, process, trying to find a witch with the right ratio of power to trustworthiness, and they’d run out of time. It didn’t help that three months ago, the ISI had helped themselves to Sylvie’s files. The ISI was supposed to deal with the intersection of the Magicus Mundi and the real world, but they had chosen to use the information gleaned from Sylvie’s files to run the few remaining local witches Sylvie could work with out of town. Business as usual with them. They would rather inconvenience Sylvie than do anything productive.
So for the third moon, last night’s moon, Lupe had made her own arrangements. She’d gone to her parents’ home while they were on a buying trip in New York City and locked herself in a zoo-quality cage that she’d set up in the home gym. Obviously, something had gone wrong. Again. Lupe couldn’t seem to catch a break.
Sylvie changed lanes, got off the highway, and hoped Lupe hadn’t killed someone. If that happened, she didn’t know what she’d do.
Put a bullet in her brain, her little dark voice suggested. You kill monsters.
It was true. If she had been coming into the case from the outside, she would have shot Lupe already and fed her bones to the sea. But Lupe was hers. Sylvie had saved her from the sorcerer, and she was responsible for her well-being.
She was forced to a stop outside the gated community’s security station and bit back her impatience. She’d forgotten Lupe’s family had money and the paranoia to go with it. The guard leaned out of his station, eyed her beat-up truck, eyed her, said nothing. “Sylvie Lightner,” she said. “I’m here to see the Fernandezes.”
“Yeah, all right. They got back this morning.”
He waved her on; the security mostly for show. He hadn’t even asked to see her ID. But he’d answered at least part of her question. What had gone wrong? Well, for one thing, Lupe’s parents had come home early.
Sylvie felt her lips thin, press tight. She hit the gas, let her urgency spill out with that last rush to get to the house.
She pulled into the long, curving, palm-shaded driveway, and cut the engine. The stucco facade, golden in the morning sunlight, seemed peaceful, at odds with the shrieking phone call.
The driveway was paved brick and stone, money spent on decoration because it could be, and led her to a double front door with a brass knocker kept well polished. It was cold in her hands despite the growing heat of the morning.
The door opened a bare person width to a middle-aged woman Sylvie didn’t know and presumed was Mrs. Fernandez. Behind her, the house was dim and dark. Quiet.
“I’m Sylvie—”
“It’s in back,” she said as she opened the door. She didn’t look at Sylvie.
“It?” Sylvie didn’t wait for an answer. The woman’s expression told her enough. Fear and distaste and horror all admixed.
Lupe. Her daughter. It.
Sylvie headed for the back of the house, for the exercise room Lupe had mentioned. “I’ll set up there. At least then, if I get loose, I won’t shred the furniture.” Another woman stood in front of the gym door; this woman was younger, her face miserable with fear as she blocked the entrance.
Sylvie said, “I need to go in.”
The woman—not sister, Lupe didn’t have a sister, but maybe sister-in-law?—grabbed at Sylvie’s arm. “She tried to kill him. We had to do it.”
Sylvie shoved past, frightened now for Lupe, expecting to find her dead. It wasn’t that bad. Close, but not that bad. Lupe huddled in the base of the cage, arms wrapped tight around herself, face hidden in her knees. Two men stood outside the cage, their backs to Sylvie but their stance unmistakable. Guns in their hands, aimed at the cage. Blood smell hung in the air, sharp and sweet and strong in the sterile confines of the home gym.
“Hey,” Sylvie said. “Put ’em away. I got this.”
“It tried to kill him,” the younger one said. Lupe’s brother. Sylvie tried to remember his name. Alex, thorough as always, had put together one of her overkill files on Lupe and her family. The brother’s name was in it. Miguel?
“Manuel,” Sylvie said. “Put it away. She’s your sister.”
“It’s an abomination,” Lupe’s father—Alberto—said. “We should kill it.” His words were brutal, his face cold, but his hands wavered.