“It’s hard to believe we’ve never crossed paths before,” Yvette said. “I knew we’d meet sooner or later. I must admit, I’d hoped for later.”
“Then you shouldn’t have worked so hard to get my attention,” Sylvie said. Yvette was exactly what she’d expected. Competent. Confident. Arrogant. All the hallmarks of a high-ranking witch.
Sylvie’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, to that sense of motion when no one in the room was moving. It was the spell—the Corrective. The entire room was dedicated to the spell, and the glossy slick that she’d stepped over hadn’t been a puddle or a rainwater rivulet seeping down from the earth above but actual flowing water. It traced an infinity loop around the room, following channels laid into the stone floor, but it was like no water Sylvie had ever seen or heard. It flowed in utter silence, a rush of black silk chasing itself, as heavy as oil, as black as space between the stars. It wound between two tall, slim stones like a cat’s cradle spun between two upraised palms.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Yvette asked.
“Yup,” Sylvie said. Something about the water was so unnatural, it was hard to take her eyes from it, even in a room with three witches and so much at stake. “Impressive. Deadly. You’re making people stroke out with your shiny little spell. Ruining lives.”
“Tiger by the tail,” Yvette said. “I do admit that we’ve lost our … finesse of late, but you’re partially to blame, crashing around without the slightest subtlety. You do keep stirring things up.”
“You’re the one who sicced monsters on your own people,” Demalion said.
“Not my monsters, not my people,” Yvette said. “Not my problem.”
“You lie about everything,” Sylvie said. “This is definitely your problem now. Or I wouldn’t be here with a gun.”
“If I had monsters at my beck and call, would I be trying to talk sense into you? Appealing to your better nature while your … friends are killing my people?”
“Maybe you’re just tapped out, used up all your monster spells,” Sylvie said. “Or maybe Merrow, with his persuasive ways, was your only monster talker. Don’t know. Right now, I don’t care. Shut down the Corrective, Yvette, or I will.”
Yvette nodded, and Demalion growled. Sylvie echoed his irritation. She knew that gesture. It wasn’t agreement, just Yvette conveying her understanding that this was how it was going to be: that Sylvie was unreasonable. “You don’t want me to do that.”
“I really do,” Sylvie said.
“Sylvie—” Demalion said. Warning: Close her mouth, get the job done.
She kept her eyes, her gun on Yvette, but nodded that she was listening.
“I don’t think it’s that easy,” Demalion said.
“She made it; she breaks it—”
“I don’t think she did. It’s not her spell to break.”
“Oh, Michael,” Yvette said. Her tone was disappointed and fond at the same time. “This is why I headhunted you for my team all those years ago. Why did you have to change sides? Always so quick to see the problem.”
“So it’s not her spell,” Sylvie said. “But it’s her coven, her people. She knows how to—”
“Do you know what powers this spell?” Yvette asked.
“The two stones,” Sylvie said. They reeked of god-power to her. Strong beyond human skills, despite the witch sigils carved into their surfaces. “The water isn’t just flowing around them. It’s coming from them.”
“It’s been doing it long enough to wear a deep groove in the stone,” Demalion said. “To make its own path.”
Sylvie jerked her gaze downward. He was right. The lip and side of the grooves were as smooth as river rocks. The river had made itself at home.
“Those stone pillars are extraordinarily rare,” Yvette said. “Do you know what they are? Where they come from? What had to be braved to bring them back?”
Water and memory together gave her the clue, and Sylvie robbed Yvette of the satisfaction of telling her. “They’re from the River Lethe.”
“Our founder,” Yvette said, “planned it. Dedicated her lover to Hades, sacrificed him, then traveled down to Hades to barter with the god of the dead to bring him back. All a ruse, of course. Hades said no, and she begged at least, let him forget her. Hades acquiesced. Took them both to the River Lethe, where she stole a pebble from both banks before Hades ushered her out. The god thought he’d won, never thought of her again. She took the stones and ran. It took her twenty years of experimentation and effort to grow them. Another ten to create the Corrective.”
“It’s the same one,” Sylvie said. She got it now. Yvette’s awe, reluctance, even the fear of the spell she was using. The age of the surroundings, the rarity of the ingredients. The difficulty of the spell … “The very same spell. You never reconstituted it; your people never let it lapse. It’s been running for—”
“A hundred and seventeen years,” Yvette said. “Long enough for the river to grow along with the stones. For the strength behind it to grow enormous. For it to reach out to any part of the world that we need changed. If you break this spell, the backlash of it will kill me and most likely everyone here.”
“I’ll take that chance,” Sylvie said.
BEFORE SHE FINISHED SPEAKING, THE ROOM ERUPTED INTO MOVEMENT, their cease-fire broken. Demalion’s free hand latched onto Sylvie’s waist and yanked her aside just as bullets furrowed the space where she’d been.
Yvette, that liar, had only removed part of the illusions on her guards. No wonder they had stayed as still as they had throughout Yvette and Sylvie’s chatter—too much movement would have revealed the truth. They were holding semiautomatic pistols.
All of this went through Sylvie’s head even as she was returning fire, even as Demalion hustled them toward the nearest defensible place—ducking into the shadow of a Lethe stone. She fought him. She didn’t want to duck and cover and play at armed groundhog, taking turns shooting at each other. She wanted to take the fight to them. To kill them all. To break the damn Corrective and restore the world to its regularly scheduled way of life. To give Alex her life back.
She lunged out; Demalion hauled her back. Bullets spattered the Lethe stones, doing no damage at all to them.
“Would you stop that?”
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he spat.
“Is that foresight or fear?” Sylvie craned her head, trying to keep an eye on the guards, on Yvette. One guard—dark-haired, dark-skinned, dressed to disappear, his gun held loosely but confidently in his hands—near the entryway, blocking their path out. Sylvie almost laughed. Yvette didn’t know her at all if she thought that retreat was on her mind. The guard laid down another line of fire, wasting ammunition. Whatever magics were done here, the Lethe stones weren’t the only things made stronger. All those bullets, and no shrapnel from the walls.
The second guard—so blond his hair was nearly white—was skirting the wall and the trapped river, trying to come up behind Sylvie and Demalion, trying to put them between two sets of gunfire.
That wasn’t the real plan, Sylvie thought. The gunmen weren’t even aiming well. They were distraction for Yvette. She was where the real danger lay. Sylvie had faced tougher opponents—Lilith, Odalys, a fledgling god—but Yvette was clever, and a lucky shot could kill Sylvie as easily as a powerful one.
The less time Yvette had to plan, the better. That in mind, Sylvie shifted forward again, dodged the desultory shooting from the dark guard, and rolled across the unyielding floor with a wince. She came up behind him and kicked out.
Utterly graceless, still effective. The man stumbled forward a few steps, and Demalion yanked him further off balance, yanked him directly to the edge of the narrow river and over.
The witch fell just right, slipped into the river. Sylvie had expected him to get wet, splash hip deep or so, and momentarily lose his bearings, maybe even lose his memories. Demalion moved forward as if he expected the same, expected a chance to wrest his gun away.