Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel Read Online Free

know and presumed was Mrs. Fernandez. Behind her, the house was dim and dark. Quiet.
    “I’m Sylvie—”
    “It’s in back,” she said as she opened the door. She didn’t look at Sylvie.
    “It?” Sylvie didn’t wait for an answer. The woman’s expression told her enough. Fear and distaste and horror all admixed.
    Lupe. Her daughter.
It
.
    Sylvie headed for the back of the house, for the exercise room Lupe had mentioned.
“I’ll set up there. At least then, if I get loose, I won’t shred the furniture.”
Another woman stood in front of the gym door; this woman was younger, her face miserable with fear as she blocked the entrance.
    Sylvie said, “I need to go in.”
    The woman—not sister, Lupe didn’t have a sister, but maybe sister-in-law?—grabbed at Sylvie’s arm. “She tried to kill him. We had to do it.”
    Sylvie shoved past, frightened now for Lupe, expecting to find her dead. It wasn’t that bad. Close, but not that bad. Lupe huddled in the base of the cage, arms wrapped tight around herself, face hidden in her knees. Two men stood outside the cage, their backs to Sylvie but their stance unmistakable. Guns in their hands, aimed at the cage. Blood smell hung in the air, sharp and sweet and strong in the sterile confines of the home gym.
    “Hey,” Sylvie said. “Put ’em away. I got this.”
    “It tried to kill him,” the younger one said. Lupe’s brother. Sylvie tried to remember his name. Alex, thorough as always, had put together one of her overkill files on Lupe and her family. The brother’s name was in it. Miguel?
    “Manuel,” Sylvie said. “Put it away. She’s your sister.”
    “It’s an abomination,” Lupe’s father—Alberto—said. “We should kill it.” His words were brutal, his face cold, but his hands wavered.
    “Put it away and get out,” Sylvie said, losing patience. Lupe still hadn’t looked up.
    “You’ll get rid of it?” Alberto demanded.
    “I’ll take care of her,” Sylvie said.
    He huffed, jerked his head at his son, and they ceded the ground. Sylvie waited for the adrenaline rushing her system to fade, but it, wiser than she, refused to go.
    They could change their minds; they could come backat any moment, worked up all over again, guns firing. Sylvie and Lupe weren’t out yet. Relief was premature.

    THE HEAVY PADLOCK ON THE CAGE WAS SNAPPED TIGHT, LOCKING Lupe behind bars, a beaten prisoner in her own family home. “Lupe. You have the key?” Sylvie tried to keep her voice steady, but blood smeared the pale tiles surrounding Lupe, a jumbled finger painting in shades of crimson and rust. The woman was injured, maybe seriously. Not dead. Sylvie could see the fine tremors running the angles of her bent elbows and knees, the shaky bellows of her rib cage.
    “Lupe. Answer me!”
    “… they took it,” Lupe breathed. “Put me back in and took it away.”
    Back
in. She’d gotten out. Not good.
    “Oh, fuck this,” Sylvie said. She looked around, focused on the weight bench and free weights. That would do. She seized up a twenty-five-pound weight, swung it around, and brought it crashing against the padlock. The noise made Lupe scream, and it was echoed in the rest of the house. Sylvie dropped the weight on the broken lock, turned to greet Manuel with her gun raised.
“Out!”
    He held his hands up, gun pointing toward the ceiling, and backed out. “Your life,” he said. “Your risk.”
    Sylvie followed him to the door, locked it behind him, dragged the weight bench in front of it, metal legs screeching over the tile.
    “Lupe,” she said. “Come on, what happened?”
    “I changed,” Lupe said. Her voice was a husk, ruined and wet. “Sylvie, I can’t live like this.”
    “It’s okay—”
    “It’s not!” Lupe jerked to her feet, faster than she should have been able to after trying to fold herself into origami. She was in Sylvie’s face almost before Sylvie could blink. Sylvie stiff-armed her in the chest, knocked her back.
    “Calm