“I want you,” he said. “I’ve heard about you. You don’t give up. And you don’t back down.”

“News flash,” Sylvie said, regretting it even as she sassed him. “I’ve given up. I’ve backed down. Permanently.” This was exactly the kind of thing that got her into trouble.

The sisters responded with the eardrum-shivering, whining mewl, all three at once, and Sylvie fought the urge to slap her hands over her ears.

“Sisters,” he said, chiding, and they stopped.

“Ms. Lightner—”

“No,” she said. “And really, if you’ve checked me out, you know I’m mostly hired out to fight your kind. I couldn’t work for—”

“My kind?” he asked.

“Sorcerers, magicians, whatever the term du jour is,” Sylvie said.

“I’m not a sorcerer,” he said.

Her fragile patience unraveled. “You’re sure as hell too damn big to be a Boy Scout. And I don’t think there are badges for ‘plays well with minions.’ ”

She trailed off as the punk girl leaned forward onto her hands like a shifter about to go beast. Sylvie had a nasty feeling it would be something far stranger than a wolf that erupted from the girl’s skin.

The pale woman said, “He is your god, girl, and you will revere him, or I will have your throat.” Her voice, the first Sylvie had heard of it, was as raspy as if she spoke around a mouthful of feathers.

Swiveling her head, the preppie girl glanced from the not-cop to her sister, trying to decide.

“Alekta,” he said. “We came here to ask for help. Not threaten.”

“She should prostrate herself—” the pale, leather-clad woman argued.

“Alekta,” he repeated, and she fell silent, sulking.

“I think you put a bit too much hero worship into whatever summoning spell you used to get them,” Sylvie said. “Either that, or you have serious egomania.”

He sighed, brown eyes downcast. “It doesn’t make sense, I admit, but I’m afraid it’s true.” His cheeks flushed as he spoke. “At least, I am a god, and unless you’re more devout than I think, there’s a good probability you’re mine by default.”

Sylvie pulled the gun from her purse, raised it, and said, “I said no.” She had let this nonsense go on for far too long, drawn by the pain in his face. Her business was closed, and even if it weren’t, she didn’t take clients like him. Crazy and powerful was a deadly combination.

“Ms. Lightner—” he said, half-raising a hand.

“Still feel divine?” she said. “It’s amazing how a little lead can bring out the mortal in men.”

“Not a good idea—” he said. He seemed concerned but unafraid, and while Sylvie tried to decide if that was good or bad, his minions lost patience.

“Insolent child,” the preppie girl spat.

“Magdala, don’t,” he chastised her.

Alekta, the pale one, lunged into the air like a raptor in flight. Panic seared Sylvie as the lean length of the woman changed, sprouting feathers and fur and scale, sprouting fangs, sprouting claws, showing a nightmare face that belonged nowhere in this world. She pulled the trigger without a moment’s thought, and the creature dodged, dropped, and rose again.

“Alekta! Here!” he snapped, then gasped. The gun’s explosion slammed distantly into Sylvie’s ears, the recoil twitching it out of her hand as if she were a rank amateur. It skidded down the stairs.

“Enough,” he said. His breath was labored. “This isn’t the way it should have gone—”

The women gathered around him, snarling at Sylvie, but tethered by his will. The blonde had snapped back to human form, and that freed Sylvie to look at him. Dreading the sight, the moment—Alekta had dodged, and he was behind her.

To kill a man, in her own office, with the ISI outside her door somewhere, watching . . . The problem with killing sorcerers was, after the deed, there was nothing to prove they had forfeited the right to be human. Sylvie had just bought herself a world of trouble.

There was blood on his hands, on his white shirt, like some crimson insignia over the heart. He had a faint frown on his tired face, more bewildered than angry. What would happen when he died? His sisters, freed?

Sylvie’s hands grew icy. The man scared her, but there had been no proof that he meant her harm.

He sighed, then the moment unwound.

Sylvie held the gun in her hands again, her finger curling on the trigger, the bullet in the chamber waiting, the metal cool and unfired. He held Alekta’s arm in a bruising grip, while she fell back toward him as if her lunge had been thwarted before it had actually begun.

“Why don’t you put the gun away,” he said. “They’re touchy of my honor and overprotective. Especially now.”

Sylvie opened her mouth, for once at a loss for words. His white shirt was pristine, no perfect chest shot, red rimmed with black, and the only pain in his eyes was the pain that had caused him to seek her out in the first place. Still wordless, she tucked the gun into her waistband.

“My name is Kevin Dunne. I am the god of Justice, and I need your help.”

SYLVIE FUMBLED TO A SEAT ON THE STAIRS. SHE HAD NEVER SEEN A sorcerer so strong—she refused to contemplate the other. “Help?” she echoed.

“I need you to find my lover,” Dunne said.

What kind of name was that for a god, anyway, she wondered a bit hysterically. Gods had names like . . . like Thor, like Legba, like God—she met his calm eyes again and dropped her own. She supposed that gods could choose any name they liked. But he looked so ordinary in his white shirt and Levi’s. His hair had flecks of grey in it; his face had lines around his eyes and jaw. A nice face, attractive enough, but the face of a god?

Belatedly, his words filtered through. “You’re a god. Find her yourself.” Her lips were numb; she was running on autobitch, as Suarez had called it.

“I can’t,” he snapped. “Don’t you think that’s driving me mad? I should be able to—I don’t know why I can’t. I can find anyone I’ve ever seen, ever laid eyes on.”

“So don’t even think of running,” Magdala, the preppie woman, muttered.

Sylvie tore her eyes away from the woman, met his. Underneath their earnestness, she found herself talking again. “Dead maybe? Not among the living?”

His mouth twisted, his eyes squeezed closed, and the women’s expressions grew fiercer.

“No,” he said. “No.” She wasn’t sure if it was knowledge or hope that drove the denial. He opened the door to her shop and gestured to the women. “Go on, wait outside. I can’t talk to her when you’re distracting her.”

“But—” Magdala objected.

“Go,” he said. “I’ll call you when I need you.”

The sisters rose and filed out, obedient but not happy. The punk girl paused to stick her tongue out at Sylvie. Dunne shut the door on her.

“What are they?” Sylvie asked. “Some sort of Aztec werewolves? I saw feathers and fur—”

“They’re the Eumenides,” Dunne said, taking a seat on the cardboard box nearest the stairs. It sagged a moment, then firmed beneath him, transforming from a standard cardboard box to a heavy chair, lattice-backed, in a golden oak that looked like it belonged in some homey kitchen somewhere. He hooked his feet around the support rungs automatically.

Sylvie swallowed, her attention diverted. A sorcerer at the very least. A common magic-user couldn’t transform an item worth a damn; give cardboard the appearance of strength, the look of oak, no problem, but actual strength? Even sorcerers preferred illusion to actual transformation, saved them the effort of reshaping the world. Dunne didn’t look bothered. Dunne didn’t look like he had thought about it at all. More to the point, Sylvie thought, there was rather more chair than there had been box. Creation of matter—

The files inside, she thought. He’d transformed paper to oak. Her files had just become woodwork, and wasn’t that one way to hide the evidence.