Instead, he was slumped down low behind the steering wheel, studying any car in the lot that looked suspicious. A plus for the clinic over the hospital, Sylvie thought. The ISI drove high-end sedans, carefully maintained.

Sylvie clambered into the truck, said, “What’d you do with Alex?”

“Took her home, came back,” he said. “You’re running low on gas.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly. It was marred by a fit of coughing. She checked her palm. No blood. She wouldn’t have said no to a lozenge.

“Where to?” Wales asked.

Sylvie paused. “Did the witch say anything? Say who sent her?”

“You didn’t say a lot with your belly full of pins. Neither did she. She just died. Marco killed her.” He swallowed hard. “I killed her. Didn’t even think about it. I was just . . . angry and tired. I could have told Marco to drop the pins. I’m not that guy, Shadows.”

“This world brings it out in all of us,” Sylvie said. “Can’t say I’m sorry. Not about the witch, anyway. How’d you know what to do?”

“Poppet magic,” Wales said. “Had a brief resurgence in popularity in Texas some years back. Had a grudge against a cattle ranch. Drained the cows. Lamed the workers. Finally, fed the owner a bellyful of death, and the ranch died with him. That’s witchcraft, mind you, your cleaner magic.”

“Charming,” Sylvie said.

She leaned her cheek against the air-cooled window, closed her eyes.

“Something wrong?” Wales asked. He sounded about ready to drag her back inside the clinic.

“Just . . . surprised I guess. Pins and poppets are messy and old-fashioned. Odalys likes lethal. But she also likes subtle. Low-profile.”

“She’s in jail,” Wales said. “And she’s a snob. That kind of woman loses friends fast. She might not have a lot of choice for allies.”

It made sense. Made the inexplicable less so. “Hey, Tex?”

“Yeah?”

“Get out of my seat.”

Once they’d traded places, Sylvie said, “Hotel for you?”

“Not like I have anyplace else to be. Not like I need to find a new apartment or anything.”

“You don’t want to look for one now, anyway,” Sylvie said. “Wait a few days. The ISI’s attention span isn’t that long if you’re not me.” She found a sudden laugh in her throat, black humor forcing its way out.

He shot her a questioning glance.

“Just . . . I always knew they’d sit and watch while I died. Lazy bastards.” Her stomach ached dully, kept her amusement brief and bleak. She hoped that Demalion had managed to get the word out. Her life would be just that much easier if she didn’t have to worry about Odalys’s attempts to kill her every few hours or so. Sylvie didn’t mind a challenge, but she had five women depending on her.

“Don’t suppose you know any defensive magic,” Sylvie said.

Wales shook his head. “Marco mostly takes care of that for me. Shouldn’t have pissed off your witchy friend.”

Sylvie chewed on her lip. She was bad at groveling. Even if she went to Zoe instead of Val, there was no guarantee that Zoe had learned enough magic to make herself useful.

Once she’s brought in, her little dark voice suggested, it can’t be undone.

She turned her attention to the traffic. No. No to groveling. No to asking her baby sister for aid. For now, she’d rely on the simplest method of survival. Keep moving. Make herself hard to predict, hard to hit.

Steer clear of the office, her home. Wales was going to have a bunk mate in his hotel-room squat. As if tuned in to her thoughts, he said, “If you come knocking tonight, bring dinner.”

“I think I might be late,” she said. Odalys was out of her reach; she had no leads on how to find the soul-devourer, much less fight him. Tepé was still an utter blank, and maybe not even in town yet. But Patrice was, and Sylvie—thanks to Alex—knew where the woman planned to spend her evening.

She dropped Wales off at the hotel, headed to her parents’ home. If she was going out, and her apartment was a potential minefield, she was raiding Zoe’s closet.

An hour later, she looked into the mirror, grimaced, and called it the best of the lot. Black slacks, boot cut, the hem ripped loose to make up for the extra inch or two Sylvie had on Zoe. One of her sister’s tank tops—black, shiny, stretchy, but not too strappy. Sturdy enough in a fight.

She found a leather jacket lurking in the back of her sister’s color-coded, season-sorted closet, and pulled it out with an appreciative smile. Not Zoe’s usual taste at all. The leather was dark red, but the cut skewed motorcycle instead of fashion plate. Sylvie shrugged it on, strapped the SOB holster back on, checked the look, and called it done.

Caught in the fragrance of her sister’s room—Chanel and cosmetics and the tiniest lingering hint of rot from her sister’s foray into necromancy—it suddenly felt intolerable that she hadn’t spoken to Zoe. Hell, she hadn’t even heard back from Val about her warning.

She dialed Zoe, got voice mail, and called Val, expecting more of the same. Surprisingly, Val picked up. “Your sister’s fine,” she said. “I confiscated her phone so she’d stop texting her boyfriend while I was trying to explain magic to her.”

“Of course she was,” Sylvie said. “Where’d she find this one—”

“Sylvie. Stop calling. She’s fine. Stop calling.” Val disconnected. Apparently, answering the phone didn’t mean Val and she were friends again, just shared a weird sort of custody over Zoe.

An hour later, she was parking her truck on the streets outside Caballero. It was early still, as these things went, but she’d prefer to be in already when Patrice came.

She forked over a cover charge and headed in. Caballero had started out as a gay club but had changed over, slowly but surely, to a goth dive with a steady flow of European-styled heavy metal. Patrice was definitely slumming. Rich girls like Bella Alvarez, even while underage, frequented high-end clubs with long lines and bouncers that were there primarily to play fashion police. Rich girls like Bella Alvarez went to clubs where the clothes were Miu Miu, not Hot Topic.

At Caballero, Sylvie got waved in without even a sneer for her scuffed-up Docs. She found a decent vantage point and waited. She saw the goth boy Alex had mentioned first; he was hard to miss, even in a like-minded crowd. His hair, dead black, was plumed off his skull in a series of fluffy spikes that seemed more akin to feathers than human hair. Dead white skin, red stripe across his eyes—she almost missed Patrice tucked into his side. He felt her attention, winked, and nipped Patrice’s neck with cheesy white vampire veneers. He worried at the ruby beads on her earring, and Patrice frowned.

Sylvie’s hatred for Patrice kicked up another notch. Patrice had cheated death, and now she played with would-be vampires.

Patrice pushed him off with an irritated hand, saw Sylvie, and locked up.

Sylvie slunk toward Patrice, taking advantage of the crowd hemming her in, and grinned, trying to show as many teeth as Patrice’s pet goth did. For some reason, Patrice didn’t find the effect as pleasing in Sylvie’s mouth.

She clawed at her goth boy’s leather jacket, jerked backward, and Sylvie’s smile faltered. This was more than concern. It was shock and panic.

It was surprise that Sylvie was alive.

It was awareness that she shouldn’t be.

It was fear.

Sylvie laughed, loud and free and angry. “I blamed Odalys for it all, you know,” she said. “The magical attacks as well as the physical. But it was you who set the witch on me, wasn’t it. Tell me, were the pins your idea? Did you want to make me hurt?”

Goth boy laughed. “I like her, Bella my Bella. She’s fierce. Can we bring her home with us tonight?” He ran black-painted nails up under Patrice’s lacy black blouse, showed Sylvie that Patrice wore a belly chain, strung with silver charms. Magical or mundane?

Patrice slapped at his hands, her nails raking his skin, pinned by the crowd that held her in Sylvie’s space. She backed up, and Sylvie closed the space between them, got her gun out, pressed it just under the curve of Patrice’s rib cage.

Pushing things, she thought. That restraining order was going to be a sure thing at this rate. But the crowd was tight, and visibility was poor. The only witness was the goth boy, and his pupils were wider, blacker than even the dim club light could account for. Stoned close to insensible.

“Usually, I warn people to stay away from me and mine,” Sylvie said. “But I’m not giving you that option. I will find a way to rip you out of that body.”

The goth boy laughed into Patrice’s teased hair, inadvertently pressing Patrice closer to Sylvie and her gun. “So tough,” he giggled. The woman was shaking, fine tremors that traveled through metal and stirred Sylvie’s predatory nature.

“Not if you’re dead first,” Patrice said. “You’ve been lucky so far. How long do you think you can keep it up?” Her trembling was rage, not fear. Not even rage. Outrage. The rich-old-woman personality coming out, furious that someone would dare question her.

“Ding-dong, your witch is dead,” Sylvie chanted. “Got a bellyful of pain and died of it.”

Patrice raised a brow. “What makes you think she was my only option?” She leaned back, let the goth boy support her. She reached up, petted the young man’s pale cheek. “You don’t think I picked Aron here just for his skill with eyeliner. . . .”

The goth boy smiled, ducked his head again, let the feathery spikes of his hair brush Patrice’s skin. He never took his gaze from Sylvie. “It’s true,” he said. “I’m magic from my head to my tippy-toes.”

Sylvie said, “I bet I can shoot her before you whip out a spell.”

“You’re not that stupid,” Patrice said, a smile curving her mouth. It was a smile Sylvie had seen so many times before; Bella Alvarez, her sister’s best friend. There had never been such a level of malevolence behind it, though. “Shoot me, Aron’s good enough to keep me alive. And all these lovely witnesses will see you in jail. Maybe even alongside Odalys.”

In the perpetual-motion machine that was a nightclub, their careful immobility drew eyes like a mountain set down on a beach. The bouncer, a tattooed Cuban cowboy in a wifebeater, waded in their direction.

Sylvie holstered her gun as smoothly as possible, but the bouncer picked up his pace; he’d recognized that movement. Sylvie slid her own hands onto Patrice’s curving waist as if they were dancing. Patrice went rigid and still, but Sylvie had found out what she wanted to know. The belly chain wasn’t magically active, wasn’t the thing that kept Patrice safe, no matter the decorative charms.

“Hey,” Aron said, pulling Patrice out of Sylvie’s grasp, slipping her behind him. “You want to grapple with someone, try me instead.” He insinuated himself into her space, so close she could smell his greasepaint and cologne. Acrid with a strong swell of musk and incense beneath. He closed his hands on her coat, pulled her against him; if the belly chain Patrice wore wasn’t magic, something Aron wore most definitely was. Magic burned against Sylvie’s skin, a ripple of energy as lively as a snake, even through two layers of leather jackets.

“Get off me,” Sylvie said, her words tangling with Patrice’s, “Let’s get out of here.”

A puff of laughter in Sylvie’s ear, Aron’s breath oddly hot on her nape. “I hear and obey. See you later, Shadows.”

Just as the bouncer reached them, Aron backed away, taking Patrice with him, disappearing first into the crowd, then, on a wash of heated tropical air, onto the street. The bouncer glowered at Sylvie, and she held up her hands. “I just want a drink.”

“No trouble,” he said.

“Of course not,” Sylvie promised. It was easy enough to make; trouble had just left the building.

She crunched her ice with growing anger. Self-directed. She hadn’t thought that confrontation through at all. She’d meant to rattle Patrice’s cage, and all she had to show for it was a woman more determined to kill her than ever.

The music throbbed in her ears, loud, discordant, reasonably enjoyable for all that. Some rock fusion; metal in an eastern scale, twisty and rhythmic. Sylvie reminded herself to mention the band to Alex. She sipped her soda—if Aron the witchy goth boy was going to come gunning for her, it was no time for alcohol—and chewed the ice, and tried to decide what to do with herself. Wales was expecting her, but was it fair to take her troubles back to him?

He’d already killed for her once today.

She kept remembering him rubbing bruises into life beneath his eyes, that tired and shell-shocked brittleness to his voice. I killed her.

Wales had lost a lot when he started working in the Magicus Mundi; today, she’d helped him lose another piece of innocence. He needed some downtime to deal with it. She couldn’t give him much time—they had to break the women free—but she could give him a single night.

“Sylvie,” Cachita said. Shouted really, over the screaming, jangling guitar solo.

Sylvie looked up at Cachita. The woman was dressed to be sorcerer bait again, this time in a short white halter dress with a leopard-print belt. Gold jewelry. Red heels. Sylvie heard Zoe drawling, ta-cky, in her head, and bit back a grin.

Cachita pointed at Sylvie’s feet, and Sylvie reluctantly tugged them back, opening up the other side of the booth. Cachita plopped down into it with a sigh more seen than heard. A man followed her to the table, some local businessman drowning his sorrows, his tie loosened, his suit jacket rumpled. He tried to squeeze in beside Cachita, and Sylvie propped her feet back up, blocking him from taking a seat.

“Aw, c’mon, I’ll buy you drinks,” he grumbled.

“Sorry,” Sylvie said. “No room.” She tipped her glass at him, and he stomped away. He retreated across the room, leaned back against the bar, and watched them. Cachita crossed her arms protectively across her chest.

“Pig,” she said, then shook her head.

The band switched over to a softer tune, and Cachita said, “The problem with attempting to lure out a sorcerer with a taste for young women is that you also catch a bunch of mundane assholes.”

“What would you do with the sorcerer if you ran into him?” Sylvie asked, her mind still dwelling on her failed attempt to scare Patrice.

Cachita smiled, her expression going wicked. “Taser him. I’ve been reading up. Sorcerers can be shot if you’re fast enough. So I figure they can be electrified.”

Sylvie reluctantly gave Cachita some credit. It was an ingenious idea. It might even work. The sorcerer might have a bulletproof shield of some type, but a Taser might be a loophole. Nonlethal. Maybe something that would penetrate the magical defenses.

“Then what?” she asked. “Say it worked?”

“I’d call you and say, ‘Hey, Sylvie, got a sorcerer all trussed up.’”

Sylvie laughed. “Nice way to deal with your problem.”

“I’m a reporter, not a vigilante,” Cachita said.

“You’re stalking the streets, hunting an evil sorcerer with a Taser,” Sylvie said. “What’s your definition of vigilante, again?”

Cachita flashed a smile, then grew serious. She leaned across the table, and said, “Actually, I came out tonight to find you. Your assistant said she thought you might be here.”

“Alex’s getting pretty talky around you,” Sylvie said.

“Maybe I just know how to ask. Oh, don’t get huffy,” Cachita said. “We were getting along so well. Look, I brought you stuff.” She put her purse on the table, a smaller thing than Sylvie had seen her carry before. When she opened it, it held only a few items. The Taser, a wallet, a digital recorder, her smart phone, and a memory stick. She held the memory stick out toward Sylvie, pulled it away when Sylvie reached for it.

“I’m not giving it to you,” Cachita said. “But I want you to see what’s on it.”

“The missing women,” Sylvie said. “You going to give me their names now?” She did want that information. Wanted it badly.

“Come back to my place,” Cachita said. “I’ve got more than their names. I’ve also found a pattern of similarities among the missing women. And some other mysterious murders you might wanna see.”

“One conspiracy at a time,” Sylvie said.

Cachita rolled her eyes; the decibels rose exponentially, and Sylvie caved. There’d be no talking in the club.

Outside, the silence fell over them like a balm. False silence, really. The streets hissed with traffic; the bass followed them onto the street; people hung out beneath streetlamps and talked.

Sylvie scoped the area, and sighed. “You bring your car?”

Cachita shook her head. “Took the metrorail.”

“All right. My truck. Now.”

Cachita followed Sylvie docilely enough, but her eyes were busy. Sylvie saw the moment she got it; her brows closed in over her nose. “The man from the bar’s following us. He doesn’t look so drunk now. ISI?”

The woman really was too well-informed for her own good. Sylvie needed to warn her about the dangers of knowing too much; it attracted the wrong kind of attention. But not just then. Sylvie picked up the pace, aware of the probable agent on her tail, imagined she heard the soft slap of his loafers on her shadow.

She’d seen the gun bulge under his coat back in the bar, hadn’t said anything, Cachita too much a wild card to confide in. While Sylvie had no trouble giving the ISI agents hell, she preferred not to do it around witnesses.

But she’d kept an eye on him, watched his dark-featured face grow more sober, more openly watchful as Sylvie and Cachita had talked. For an employee of the Internal Surveillance and Investigation agency, he was crap at surveillance, got so engrossed in watching that he forgot to be sneaky.

Maybe he didn’t need to be, her little dark voice suggested. Not if he was herding her toward something.

ISI tended to work in teams of two minimum, four more often. That meant there were probably others around.

Beside her, Cachita was scoping the scene. “They’re Feds. They work in teams, right? You think they’re after you or me?”

“Don’t know,” Sylvie said. “You do anything they’d be interested in?”

Cachita shrugged, a nonanswer if Sylvie had ever seen one. From a woman as casually chatty as the reporter, that twigged alarm bells. Sylvie made a mental note. Get Alex to look into Caridad Valdes-Pedraza’s history. Freelance reporter was a job description that could cover a number of sins.

“Our friend just picked up another friend,” Cachita said. “You think they want to talk to us? Or arrest us?”

“I’m not in the mood for either,” Sylvie said. “But if I had to say . . . a nice quiet talking-to in an undisclosed location.”

Cachita tottered along beside her on those ridiculous heels, moving with a quicker stride than Sylvie expected. As they approached Sylvie’s truck, a dark SUV popped its side door. It gaped blackly, an open mouth ready to swallow them up. “Shit,” Sylvie said.

“I hate them,” Cachita said. “They’ll ruin everything.” The venom in her voice surprised Sylvie, and it showed. Cachita elaborated. “They don’t care about the women, or any of it. They just want to—”

“Ladies, a minute of your time?”

“Go to hell,” Sylvie said. His face flushed beneath the streetlamps; Sylvie hadn’t bothered to lower her voice and the passersby on the street were beginning to gawk. Not interfere, of course, but gawk.

Still, maybe that was good enough. Before she could put her hasty and crappy plan into action, Cachita stamped her foot suddenly, a sharp clack like gunfire echoing into the night.

The man drew his gun, jumpy, and the crowd mood shifted.

“We’re over with,” Cachita shrilled. “I told you and told you! I’m with Sylvie now, and you’ll just have to—I got a restraining order. You’re not supposed to get this close. Someone call the cops!”

Cell phones sprouted everywhere, and most of them were probably just filming so that people’s Twitter feeds could be enlivened by someone else’s drama.

Sylvie smirked at the suddenly wary ISI; they were screwed. Demalion had had the same problem when she’d met him. Secret agencies weren’t allowed to just flash badges. She draped an arm around Cachita’s heaving shoulders, shoved her toward the truck.

Sylvie opened the passenger door, slid across, dragged Cachita in after her. Key in the ignition, and Sylvie got the hell out of there before the ISI could really regroup. Cachita had been loud. And quite a capable actress.

Cachita flung herself up onto the seat beside her, grinning. “Take a left up at the light.”

Sylvie huffed but did. Guess she was going to see what Cachita had to show her.

Cachita looked back over her shoulder. “Who would have thought?”

“‘Thought’?” Sylvie prompted, watching the traffic ebb and surge around them, a smear of red taillights and dark asphalt. She didn’t see the ISI.

“They’re not really very good at their jobs, are they?” Cachita asked.

“They’re big believers in retreating to fight again,” Sylvie said. “They’ll be back. We’re not done with trouble, yet.”