The irritation of knowing she’d been stupid itched beneath her skin. She could have gone directly from Dallas, attacked them on her own. She could handle a group of witches; she’d tackled gods.
“Going it alone would have been stupid,” Zoe said. “You don’t even know how many of them are there. That’s not even counting the monsters they might be controlling.”
Sylvie gritted her teeth. “Undo that mind-reading spell. Now.”
“No,” Zoe said. “It wasn’t a whim, Syl. We’re about to head into enemy territory. This way, I can keep up with you. Even if we get separated.”
Sylvie couldn’t argue with that. That was sound planning.
Zoe grinned, said, “You’re going to find out I’m all sorts of useful.” After picking up a scrap of broken wood and two small stones, Zoe stepped onto the empty roadway. She laid down the stones, laid the scrap across them, and whispered, “Catch and hold.”
A wash of silvery light, the burning itch of magic, and the road was suddenly barricaded with a police-grade roadblock. Zoe sauntered back and said, “Next car that stops, we take.”
Sylvie wanted to disapprove. Her parents would want her to disapprove—carjacking was not a skill set her family aspired to—but looking at her sister, at Lupe lurking slick and deadly in the shadows, she couldn’t feel anything but pleased.
IT TOOK SYLVIE AN HOUR TO TRACK DOWN THE ISI BUILDING IN San Francisco, and it was an enormously long hour. Zoe and Lupe, in combination, made hellish car companions, especially when the car that Zoe had liberated from a spell-stunned driver was small enough that Lupe and Zoe, divided by front and back seat, were still in constant physical contact, a fact that pleased neither of them.
As Zoe said, sliding into Lupe’s outspread tail when Sylvie took a curve more quickly than the car was really capable of, “Erinya’s going to be pissed enough that she’s trapped. I don’t need Lupe going back smelling like I’ve been rubbing up against her all night long.”
Sylvie wanted to snap at them to shut the hell up, to just stop, to impress upon them how serious this whole matter was, but Zoe had to know. She was jacked in to Sylvie’s brain after all. Knew the constant flashes of terror that she was suffering—not for herself, but for Alex, for Demalion. What if she wasn’t fast enough, good enough? What if Demalion was already dead? The ISI seemed to have nothing on the Society of the Good Sisters when it came to magical experimentation. Demalion, having died once, was a curiosity they’d be dying to take apart.
If they had—
Sylvie pulled the car to a graceless halt streetside; the engine cooled and pinged, way overdue for an oil change. Or a new engine. Zoe had stolen a lemon.
But it had brought them here.
The San Francisco ISI building, unlike many of their other branches, was isolated, an entity in itself. That was a plus. It meant the only people she had to worry about were her own. No close bystanders. There were shops on the other side of the road, closed at this hour. A few houses, owned by people rich enough to afford sizable plots of land in California.
An iron gate barricaded the oyster-shell drive, which led to a dimly lit building backed up against the jagged coastline. The sea was a constant growl, unseen but threatening. Helpful, too. The crash it made as it hit the rocky shore would mask their approach.
Zoe said, “The gate’s not spelled.”
“Wouldn’t be,” Sylvie said, giving it a good shove. “Not if this hosts real ISI agents as well. With non-Talents coming in and out.” The metal screeched, salt air eating away at the hinges.
Lupe slipped through the gap, darted toward the building, pulled up short, wincing. Oyster-shell drive, Sylvie thought. Sharp-edged, uncomfortable to walk on even in her boots. Lupe’s bare footpads were going to slow her down.
This branch occupied a turn-of-the-century bed-and-breakfast, and it still looked more like a hotel than a government facility: The stone facade was ivy covered, the grounds were manicured and landscaped with flowering bushes that perfumed the night. The only thing that gave them away was the dull shine of replacement windows—bulletproof. Dark, angular blotches studded the roofline, and Sylvie thought they were security cameras. Inactive ones: no movement, no light.
The Good Sisters wanted privacy.
Worked for her.
“One entrance,” Zoe said. “You think there’s a back door?”
“Depends on whether the ISI has to abide by fire codes,” Sylvie said. “But I was thinking more about hitting them head-on.”
Unlike Demalion, who would have been muttering about stealth and discretion, Zoe and Lupe merely nodded, trusting her.
Sylvie checked the solid weight of her weapon, reassured herself that the spare ammo was still in her pockets, and moved up the drive, sticking to the shadows. They were nearly on the house when the tiny stone shed leaning up against the side of the building cracked open, sprouting a door where none had been.
Three people walked out into the predawn light, talking quietly among themselves. Lupe snarled in animal surprise, and the agents looked up and out and spotted them. The lead agent—witch—gestured at the gravel pathway, shouted out a harsh-edged word. The ground before him roiled, rolled up into the world’s largest mole trail, then erupted. A monster shook dirt and sharp shells from its back and blocked their path.
Sylvie shot once at it, wondering what exactly it was that this witch had had leashed and following him beneath the ground’s surface, and where the hell its weak point was. First glance argued that there weren’t any: It was all scale and scute and armored legs. Her bullet spanged off it with a sound like breaking pottery.
She wasn’t even sure it had eyes. She lined up another shot, but Lupe beat her to it, lunging into her line of fire and engaging the monster directly.
Eager, but reckless.
The monster, something even Sylvie’s Lilith voice struggled to name, moved like a centipede, hundreds of jointed, armored legs, and evil pincers at the head. A long, stinging tail curved above its back. It raised all the hairs on her neck, made her stomach squirm in ingrained squeamishness. She really wasn’t wild about insects. Especially when this one might as well have been designed out of an insectophobe’s nightmare.
Though it seemed blind, or, at least, eyeless, it moved confidently enough to get Lupe on the defensive and keep her there. Lupe whimpered after one stinger strike; her side ran blood. She fell back.
Sylvie jerked the trigger, put another two bullets into the creature, trying to maim its front pair of legs and failing, trying to keep an eye on the witches as well. Be stupid to be killed by them while focusing on a monster.
The monster ignored Sylvie, oiling back on itself to make another attack on Lupe.
Take out the witch that controls it; free the monster, the Lilith voice suggested, guided her gun hand ’round to the man who had summoned the monster out of the earth. His mouth was a black slash in his neat beard, urging the monster on.
Free the monster, and who’s to say it’ll run? It might want to finish what it started, Sylvie thought, but shooting a witch was well within her plans. The witch, sensing his danger, pressed back toward the shed and shelter.
Zoe stepped between the monster and Lupe just as it charged again and slapped it hard right in its blind face. Zoe’s entire body was within the cutting grasp of the pincers.
Sylvie unloaded bullets into the monster’s tail end, trying to get it to turn, to forget her suicidal sister. But the monster was dissolving, starting from Zoe’s slap mark and crumbling back into gravel and dust.
“Illusion,” Zoe said. “Good one, though. Lupe. Stop believing you’re hurt.”
“Cassavetes’s protégé,” the illusion master said. His tone was dismissive. “You’re an acolyte. Nothing more. Your creature illusion is unconvincing. No chimera looks like that.”