Still, they were making it work.
She pushed away from the desk, spun to stare at her filing cabinets, assessing. Even without Lupe’s case, she had too many small irons in the fire to go to him.
Before he could make apologies, she said, “Hey, you heard anything about memory modification?”
“Magical?”
“Would I ask otherwise?”
Demalion hesitated, thinking about it. “Individual or big picture? Are we talking Chicago?”
“That and others.”
“No,” Demalion said. “You know, it’s weird, now that you mention it. I just sort of accepted it. People don’t like to look beyond the ordinary.”
“This is true,” Sylvie said. “To my everlasting chagrin. You know how many of my clients wait until things are holy-fuck bad instead of coming in at first trouble?”
“You and the doctors. You really think there’s something there? Something you want me to look into?”
“If you’ve got time.”
“That’s the problem,” Demalion said. “Yvette is running us all kinds of ragged. Trying to get everything in place to impress whoever it is who funds us. Apparently, there was some type of … incident.”
She could hear the air quotes through the phone, and said, “Let me guess. Someone served the big boss shrimp, and he’s allergic?”
“Hell if I know,” Demalion said. “Seriously, Syl. She’s got things locked down tight. It’s all need-to-know, and I’m a new hire as far as Yvette’s concerned. Her inner circle is so busy that none of us low-levels have even laid eyes on them for days. But it’s all trickling down.”
“Things like that do,” Sylvie said.
“I don’t know when I’ll be able to get a day off. God, I don’t know when I’ll even catch up on my sleep.” If it hadn’t been for his nearly tangible frustration, she might have shared hers.
“You have any idea what’s going on?”
“Big picture, yeah,” Demalion said on a sigh. “Political infighting. Yvette, Riordan, and Graves are all duking it out to be the new head of the ISI. They’re all hell-bent on impressing the money man with their dedication and efficiency.”
Sylvie grimaced. She knew Riordan. Wouldn’t have liked him even if he hadn’t been the one who had sent a SWAT team armed with tear gas into her office to collect her. He was too prone to attacking the little guys and leaving the big threats to sort themselves out.
“What happened to the old head?”
“Gods in Chicago,” Demalion said. “They found a charred pelvis and skull in his office. Typed it for DNA. He’s toast. It just took a while for the paperwork to go through.”
“So Riordan’s down here, posturing at me. Yvette’s making your life difficult. What’s Graves doing?”
“Nothing good, I bet. Man’s a bastard. I worked for him for two months when I first came out here. Bad temper. Bad attitude. Distrustful.”
“Sounds like typical ISI to me.”
“Syl—”
“All right, all right. No job bashing.”
“Graves hightailed it down to Texas after Yvette stole the Chicago office out from under him. He’s pissed. Been making our lives hard by accusing this office of all sorts of things. Magical misconduct, mostly. He’s heard rumors that Yvette is a witch.”
“Is she?”
“Yeah,” Demalion said. “Makes sense if you think about it. Who better to deal with the Magicus Mundi than someone who can step in and out of it.”
“I do all right,” Sylvie said.
“Yeah, don’t try to pretend you’re ordinary.”
“So Graves doesn’t like witches.”
“Witches, psychics, half-breed monsters.”
“Not a fan of yours, then,” Sylvie said. It was more than just a comment; it was an invitation to confession. There were some things they’d talked about endlessly. Demalion’s difficulty in adjusting to his new body. Demalion’s relief when Wright’s wife figured out that the man in her apartment might look like her husband but wasn’t, and left him. Demalion’s careful plan to rejoin the ISI without tipping them off that he had been with them before. He wanted to work for them, not be studied by them.
The one topic made conspicuous by its absence was Demalion’s clairvoyance. He’d been born with it, a genetic gift from his inhuman mother, and he’d died with it. Sylvie wanted to know if he’d managed to reshape Wright’s body to bring it with him, and he wasn’t talking.
Lupe’s voice rose sharply downstairs, but after a reactive jerk to her feet, Sylvie diagnosed the sound as brittle laughter, not a threat.
“Watch your back,” Sylvie said. “Political infighting can get ugly and violent fast.”
“I think Graves is more focused on Yvette than me. She’s his target. Everything he hates in one tidy package. A high-ranking woman, a rival, and a witch.”
“Graves sounds like a peach.”
Demalion said, “Hey, Sylvie—”
“Yeah?” The tentative sound to his voice made her wary, made her tense up as his pitch went tighter, higher, noticeable only because she’d gotten to know this new form of his voice so well.
“I don’t know that it matters, but Yvette and I—”
Sylvie went cold, flushed hot, read that little pause too clearly. “What, you hooked up with your boss? I guess she’s convenient.”
“No!” Demalion said. “Not currently. Then. Years ago. Before she was up in the ranks. Before you. Way before you. When I was a different man. I just thought it was something you should know.”
Sylvie sighed. Just what she needed. An irrational reason to add to the rational reason she already had for disliking the woman: a government agent who was keeping her lover from visiting her. “Some things you should keep to yourself. Does she know? You said she’s a witch. Will she recognize you?”
“She looks at me funny every now and then.”
“Just great,” Sylvie said. “Hope you had an amicable breakup, or you’ll be on the damn dissection table before you know it.”
“She wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t she? It would be a great way to get Graves off her back. To show him that she wasn’t a crazy Magicus Mundi wannabe.”
“You’re ridiculously cynical—”
“You’re ridiculously trusting for a government suit.”
An argument hummed along the wires between them, ready to break out, and Sylvie wrenched them to a new topic. “I called because I need some info,” she said.
“Anything.”
And that right there was why he kept her on her toes. How he could go from defending the ISI to implicitly agreeing to give her information out of their files if she asked… Sylvie thought the inner workings of Demalion’s mind might always be a mystery to her. Either he was the king of compartmentalization, or he judged and scaled every moment and every request.
Or, of course, he still had his psychic abilities, and knew what she was going to ask, knew it wouldn’t tax his relationship with the ISI.
She waited, let the space stretch between them. But Demalion was too cagey to be caught out that easily. “Should I be worried that you’re taking a long time to ask? Trying to think of the perfect way to phrase it?”
“You seen your mother recently?”
“Why do you ask?” The hesitation in his voice was enough to tell her that psychic or not, he hadn’t foreseen that question.
“It’s just a question. One with an easy answer, I thought.” She spun her desk chair ’round. Now he had her doing it, overthinking every word.
Downstairs, the front door opened and closed, Alex heading out on a food run. Lupe’s footsteps were soft on the terrazzo, but Sylvie, listening to Demalion’s breath in her ear, could hear when Lupe’s pacing faltered, when she sank onto the couch with creak of leather and the soft gasps of someone fighting tears.
“Sylvie—”
Sylvie lost interest in the game. “I was hoping she could find me a reliable witch. One with a healthy slug of power and a good attitude. One who will make house calls. I’ve got a client with one hell of a nasty curse.”