Laura Anne Gilman - Tales of the Cosa Nostradamus

by Laura Anne Gilman

  "The last time you said something like that, we spent two nights in a Saskatchewan jail. And if you say 'wasn't boring' so help me I'll fry your innards."

  The sound of the shower started up, and Sergei allowed himself a faint smile. "Wasn't boring."

  oOo

  Under the pounding of steaming hot water, Wren swore she could feel the particles of her body coming back into focus. She ducked her head under the stream of water, then reached for the shampoo, massaging it into her scalp with a sigh of pleasure as the deep herbal scent wafted through the air. She could rough it with the best of them but after a night wrassling with earth spirits peevy at everything that moved, a little luxury was nice. And if the coffee's any indication, this may be the last luxury I get for a while. He only buys the Dog's coffee when he wants to soften me up.

  Rinsed, dried, and dressed, she walked out of the bathroom drawing a comb through her hair, wincing at the tangles. Her partner leaned against the counter in her tiny kitchen, drinking a mug of tea and reading the newspaper. "All right, you know you're dying to tell me. So spill."

  "Seven grand down." He gestured to the counter where the coffee machine was working already, just starting to send out scented steam. "Another ten when you retrieve their package."

  "We're working cut-rate this week, I see." They had three price scales. High-end was the stuff that was snore-worthy: divorce settlements, insurance reclamations. Situations that required thinking and ingenuity were slightly cheaper. Sergei knew, by now, what would pique her interest, and was willing to dicker a little less sharp for them. And third…

  Don't think about the third. If you think it, they'll call.

  Third was working on retainer for the organization known as the Silence. Wren had been with them for a little under a year now, Sergei for far longer than that. Human, non-magical, and utterly without mercy or compassion, the Silence were nonetheless one of the Good Guys. She thought. She hoped.

  "So, what's the deal?"

  "Stow-and-show. Special interest group, wants 9/10ths of a particular display." Translation: Several someones, acting in concert, wanted her to steal something—possession being 9/10th of the law—from a museum, the 'stow-and-show.'

  "You have got to stop watching those godawful heist movies. Life's not a caper, Sergi." The coffee machine finished perking, and she grabbed a mug from the sink and filled it. She breathed the fumes in then drank it black. "Paperwork?"

  He jerked his chin at her kitchen table, and she noticed the sheaf of papers awaiting her perusal.

  "They're organized, I'll give them that."

  "Organized, and chatty. Guy wanted to tell me every detail of his life, this job, and the weather in Timbuktu."

  Coffee in hand, Wren sat down at the table and drew the blueprints toward her. "And how is the weather there, anyway? Oh Christ on a crutch, the Meadows." She had hit them twice in four years—by now she and the alarm system were old friends. "And still people loan them exhibits. I just don't get the world, I really don't. What's the grab?"

  "Painting. Smallish, should be easy enough to stow in the tube. In and out, seventeen minutes, tops."

  "I can do it in eleven, if it's in the main gallery." It wasn't ego if you really were that good. And she was. Possibly—probably—the best Retriever of her generation.

  He waited a beat, then dropped the other shoe. "And we got a Call."

  She heard the capital letter in his voice, and her head lowered to rest on her crossed arms on the table. "Of course we did. Because my life just wasn't full to the brim with joy already."

  "Beats unemployment."

  "Easy for you to say, Mister Stay At Home and Cash the Check."

  Which wasn't fair, she knew. Sergei had warned her about working for the Silence. They wanted first call on her time, always and ever. But it had seemed a worthwhile tradeoff at the time.

  And their checks always, but always cleared.

  oOo

  "You going to need to charge up?"

  "Now you ask?" They were sitting in the car—a yellow sedan, mocked up like a cab, the quintessentially invisible car in Manhattan—outside the Meadows. Although she knew the answer, Wren reached deep into her core, touching the roil of current that always rested within her, the sign of a Talent. A gentle stroke, and it uncoiled inside, sparkling like glitter in her veins. "No, I'm fine. Soaked up a bit when the last batch of storms rolled through, in case things got ugly in the Park."

  She had loved storms since she was old enough to lurch against the windowsill. "You're a current-user, kid. You're always going to crave the storm." Her mentor's voice, years and lifetimes gone. You could recharge current off man-made sources, and there were lonejacks who preferred that. Safer, more readily accessible, and no hangover if you pulled down too much. But Wren went to the wild source every chance she got.

  She didn't have much chance to rebel, these days.

  "If you draw down too much, remember that there's a secondary generator over here." His index finger stabbed the blueprint on the seat between them.

  "Yeah, saw that." They'd been over the plans half a dozen times already. But it made Sergei feel better if they rehashed everything just before she went in. Normally he wouldn't be anywhere near the scene on a simple grab like this, but the transit workers had gone on strike, and she couldn't risk hailing a real cab to get home. So he would drop her off, go drive around for a while, and come back for her.

  "Try not to pick up any long distance fares while I'm gone."

  "Not even if they offer to tip like a madman," he promised.

  She laughed, touched his check for luck, and slipped out into the darkness.

  In some ways, the strike was a nice bit of luck. In her dark grey tracksuit and black sneakers, if stopped by anyone she could claim to be heading home from a late night at the office. A knapsack slung over her shoulder held a lightweight dress and strappy heels to back up the story, plus a thin, strong nylon rope coiled in an inside pocket, her lockpick set, and a wallet with realistic looking identification and enough cash to get home for real should something go wrong.

  Pausing just beyond the reach of the closed circuit cameras, Wren took a deep breath, let it out. Ground. That was the key. Focus. Center. Ground.

  As though she had grown from the earth, Wren felt the weight of its comfort rise up through her, from bedrock into flesh and bone. Soothing the serpent of energy and coaxing it up her spine, into her arms, down her legs. It was like an orgasm, a muted one; pleasure sparking every nerve ending until she was completely aware of everything around her, but not so much that she was overwhelmed by it. Balance. Balance…There was a thin line you had to ride, when you directed current. It wasn't enough to be able to sense it, or to be able to direct it. You had to convince it to do what you wanted, when you wanted.

  Taking the faintest hint of current, she lifted her hand, drawing the camera's attention. It was like finger-painting, or weaving without a loom. Flickers left her fingertips as she concentrated on the circuits and wires of the camera system. Too much, and you burned it out, setting off alarms. Too little, and a sharp-eyed watchman might spot her. Just a hint of static, something that could be brushed off, so long as it didn't go on for too long. Just long enough for her to move, crouched low and flowing across the grounds like the low-flying bird she was named for, until she reached the relative safety of the decorative overhang. God bless old buildings. The Meadows had started life as a mansion, and still boasted any number of odd architectural details that created enough shadows for Wren to wrap herself in.

  Letting her heart rate slow down to normal, Wren pictured the assignment in her mind. It was a small thing, barely 12x12, set in a severe silver frame. Part of a traveling exhibit of paintings that were as of yet unattributed but considered by a number of experts to be 'rediscovered' works by various Impressionist masters. The art world was wild over the find; Sergei had been to see the exhibit twice even before they got this gig. If she knew her partner, he'd want to hold onto th
e painting for a few days until they handed it back, just to have one of the so-called "Fabulous Finds" in his possession.

  Actually, if she'd been prone to liking artwork, she thought she might want to own something like this, too. The colors were almost alive, creating a wash of light on the landscape that reminded her of the photograph Sergei had in his own office, by the black and white nature photographer, the guy who took all those pictures of national parks.

  Art critique later, she told herself. Clock's tick tick ticking...

  The thing about museums was, they weren't stupid. They knew that technology was fallible, and humans were fallible. But most of them also had serious budget restrictions. The Meadows had a top-of-the-line electrical alarm system. It would probably have stopped any casual intruder, or at least alerted the police to the incursion. But the Board of the Meadows had one serious disadvantage. They had never heard of current, the magical kind, or the Cosa.

  Magic wasn't the fairy dust and wild imaginations science liked to claim. It was real, and tangible...if you were part of the small percentage of the human population able to sense it. An even smaller percentage of those humans, like Wren, were able to direct the current into anything useful.

  And Talents like Wren, who honed her skills for the specific purpose of larceny, were called Retrievers.

  A light touch to the door, and she felt the tingle that meant elementals were around, drawn to the current that was bound into electricity, no matter what form. A quick push of current bridged the gap in the alarm system long enough for her to open the door and slip inside. She started to move in the slow-slide fashion she had perfected for not creating footfalls, when she stopped and returned to the lock. Placing her hand on the alarm pad, she waited. Elementals had the reasoning ability of inbred hamsters, but you could use them, if you knew how. She did.

  Come on, you know you're bored with that stale, man-made electricity...come taste some of mine...

  They came to her tentatively at first, then swarming in their eagerness. Natural current 'tasted' better to them. She let them feed for a few seconds, nibbling around the edges of the current curling up from her belly, twining around her spine. All right. Earn your keep. She visualized clearly what she wanted them to do. A faint hesitation, and the swarm was off, splitting into a dozen different directions as they moved along the museum's state-of-the-art wiring.

  A pity they couldn't call back to warn her if someone else was in the hallways, but if a person didn't have current, elementals didn't know they existed.

  The painting was in a little alcove off gallery #11, in a space that had probably once been a servant's room. Or a closet. What did she know, Wren thought, listening with part of her Talent to the sounds of the elementals causing chaos in other parts of the building. She grew up in a double-wide trailer, for Pete's sake. They didn't even have any mansions in Redwater.

  Palms held over the frame, and the current surged, creating the illusion again that the alarm hadn't been breached. Moving quickly, she fit a small ceramic knife into the frame and slit the painting carefully along four sides, sliding it out and rolling it up. Tucked into an aluminum tube, the tube stowed in her backpack. And then it was time to go. She checked the digital readout on her knapsack, far enough away from her body that the current didn't futz it too badly. Fourteen minutes. Damn. Getting old, Valere. You're getting old.

  oOo

  By the time she made it out to the edge of the museum's property, it was almost 12:30. She perched in the vee of a large oak and contemplated the street. The empty street.

  "Damn it, Didier…." She'd had to duck and wait while a guard went by her; too close, that one. They were getting smarter. She'd have to put a no-go on any jobs here for at least two years. Maybe three.

  Not for the first time she wished for a cell phone. But even if they hadn't been too risky—too easy for someone to check the last few numbers dialed—she still couldn't carry one. No cell phone, no PDA…even the old watch was prone to odd fluctuations under current, and when she pulled down a surge, all bets were off.

  Another fifteen minutes, and she had to accept the fact that Sergei had probably been forced to call it a night. The glitches she had the elementals set off might have caused a patrol car to take a swing by, even though it none of it had been enough to trigger an actual alarm.

  "Good thing you wore the comfy sneakers," she told herself, swinging herself down from the tree and landing with lazy grace on the grass. It was going to be a long walk back.

  oOo

  It might have been the night air. Or the current still running high in her system. Or, as Sergei claimed, just a natural born stupidity. But at the time, the idea to kill two jobs with one evening seemed just a matter of common sense and practicality. She had to walk by the site anyway, so why not?

  "Why not," Sergei said over his tenth mug of high-test tea, the first five of which had cooled while he was waiting for her, "is because a) you were carrying a Retrieved object. And b) because you hadn't done anything more than a cursory glance at the job write-up."

  She knew he was mad, then, when he called it a job instead of a situation.

  "And c) because you got caught!"

  Wren winced, fighting the urge to duck under the diner table. "Not so much caught," she protested meekly. "More like… "

  oOo

  "Who's there?"

  Wren swore, wrapping herself in current and fading into the shadows. The store was a hodgepodge of clichés, down to the moth-eaten thing stuffed and mounted on the counter, its crystal eyes reflecting light back at her. At least, she hoped it was just crystal reflecting light…

  "I said, who's there?" An old man to match the shop stomped downstairs, a mega-powered X-Files quality flashlight in one hand. Wren closed her eyes so she wouldn't reflect the light. The beam flashed across her face, passed on…then came back.

  "I know what you're here for," the old man cackled. "But you can't have it. Can't, can't can't!"

  Nobody said anything about the guy being a Talent she thought with irritation, then common sense reasserted itself. He wasn't a Talent, or a seer, or anything that would have allowed him to sense what she was or what she intended. He was just old-fashioned bugfuck. Crazy had a way of messing with the brain in ways even current couldn't work around.

  "Yeah, old man?" Her voice was low, dangerous. She'd copied it from Blue Angel, practicing until she had it down just right. If anyone reported her to the cops, they'd get laughed out of the station for claiming they'd been robbed by Marlene Dietrich.

  "Yeah. It's mine. Mine I tell you. I bought it, I got it, and I'm going to keep it."

  Any moment now Wren expected him to break into a round of "mine, my precioussss." If he did, she was out of there, and the Silence could keep their damn retainer that month.

  "My staff, mine. Going to make me a wizard. Going to teach me how to talk to the birds."

  "I think you're halfway there, old man," Wren said, relieved that he was nattering about something other than her goal. And if the staff that he was talking about actually was an Artifact—an item used like a battery to store current—the Silence would just have to hire her to come back and get it. Sergei's cat would have better luck working a manual can opener than the man in front of her actually accessing current.

  "What's that? You, stop there. Who are you? How did you get in here?" The hand not holding the flashlight came up, the dark shape unmistakable even to someone as gun-shy as Wren. A sawed-off shotgun.

  Think quick, Valere!

  "I'm a djinn, come to gift you with a treasure," she said, punting madly. Maybe, in her dark clothing, the shimmer of current still wrapped around her, visible or no, she'd be able to pull this off. "A painting, though which magic you might transport yourself instantly."

  A combination of Bugs Bunny cartoons and Star Trek reruns, but he leaned closer, the rifle not focused quite so threateningly as a minute ago.

  Moving carefully, she withdrew the tube from her knapsack, having
to tug it free when it snagged on the dress's folds.

  "All shall be yours…for one simple gift in return."

  The old man checked himself, glaring at her suspiciously. The shotgun began to rise towards her face. "What's that?"

  "A trifle, a trinket. One of no use to mortals but great significance to djinn." She was dancing as fast as she could, the sweat crawling under her scalp and running down the side of her face and back of her neck. "A bell, a silver bell with a golden clapper, a bell that does not ring. You have such a thing, I am told. Give it to me, and the magic painting shall be yours".

  oOo

  "You traded one job for the other." Sergei was trying, really trying, to be his usual hard-assed self. Wren reached across the diner table and snagged the pseudo-cream in its little tin pitcher; poured it into her coffee until it went from mud to diluted mud. "Hey, no problem. I'll just go steal it back."

  She drank her coffee, pretending not to hear the muffled, pained noises coming from her partner.

  oOo

  "Oh...hell." Disgust dripped from every word as she stared down at the body of the pawnshop owner. Someone had staved in the back of his head with his own staff. There was a moral in there somewhere, but the smell of stale blood and feces was rising off the body and she didn't want to waste time thinking when she could be working. Wren wrinkled her nose, wiping her palms on her jeans as though there was something sticking to them. "If I'd wanted to see dead bodies I'd have gone to work for the morgue, damn it."

  Ten minutes since she'd walked in the door. Daylight retrievals usually weren't her thing, but it wasn't as though the guy was in any shape to report her.

  She risked another look down. Even less shape, now.

  Normally working current just required an internal adjustment and some finely focused concentration. But there were times that shortcuts were useful, and words were the surest way to focus current fast, if a little dirty.