Staying Dead

by Laura Anne Gilman

  With the portion of her self still inside the system, she gathered up as much energy as she could take. But instead of storing it within, the way she had at the Frants building, she punched it up into a ball, and released it back into the system like a fastball pitch.

  Seven seconds later, the entire lock system had shorted out, and Wren was in through the now-unlocked window. Fail safe had another meaning entirely for those on the breaking and entering side.

  Wren took a few seconds to let her body recover, and to orient herself. The mark might be some kind of hot-shit collector, but he wasn’t much in the way of interior decorating. The room she had entered through was almost astonishingly bland. A business traveler could be down here, and expect to get a newspaper under his door in the morning. Moving through the room, she kept off the area rug, staying to bare floor as much as possible. The door to the hallway was ajar, and a light shove with her shoulder pushed it open.

  She spotted the cameras almost immediately. They weren’t hidden—it was almost as though the mark was making a point, putting them where anyone could see them. And the light was on, indicating they weren’t in the same power loop as the locks. “Great,” Wren muttered. “He likes to watch.” She reached into her belt pouch and pulled out a small bone charm. Yellow with age, and lined with a thousand hairline cracks, it had a strange warmth to it, almost as though it were alive. It was a one-shot, but a very efficient one. Clenching it in her fist, she felt the cracks give way, the charm crumbling into dust. She opened her hand and flung the dust at the camera lens. A spoken command—”puzzle”—activated the charm as the dust clung to the lens. Somewhere in the house, the bank of monitors would only be showing a fragmented picture, as though static had gotten into the wires somehow.

  But it wouldn’t last forever. Time to get a move on. She recalled the floor plans again. “I’m…here…and you are…there. Right.” Satisfied, she set off down the white-painted, white-lit hall without hesitation.

  Even without the floor plan, Wren wouldn’t have had any trouble discovering which wing held her quarry. The trouble was getting to it without making any unscheduled detours. While the guest wing she had entered in was well-appointed, the private wing was a thief’s buffet. Delicate silver sculptures made her fingers itch to caress them, and paintings which triggered her hodgepodge memory of Sergei’s lectures on the Masters practically sang for a cutting blade to liberate them. And the tall, blue-white marble figure set in the corner of one room made her swear under her breath. Did the Museum even know they were missing a piece?

  But all those were mere distractions compared to the pull she could feel, in the part of her that recognized the presence of magic. Faint, but undeniable, she was drawn down hallways of polished wood floors and priceless artworks to a closed door at the end of the camera-lined corridor. The door looked like all the others; no handle, indicating a magnetic lock. A nice piece of machinery, to ensure that the house could be locked down from a central control. Assuming, of course, someone hadn’t already shot down the control getting in. Ooops.

  This was it. She was somewhat surprised that the stone was giving off that much power, but she wasn’t here to make judgments, just to get it back to its rightful owner. Let Mages squabble over the technical details.

  She paused for a moment, kneeling at the door. A faint buzz of electricity, remnant from the alarm she had already disabled. Nothing else. The back of her hand pushed at the door, and it swung open without a sound.

  “Hello, baby,” she whispered as the magic stored in the room hit her. As though in response, the currents running through the room thickened, raising the hair on her arms. The space was practically overpowered by the Artifacts stored there, and Wren had her answer about the mark’s abilities—only someone completely Null would have arranged them like this, fully charged. Null, or remarkably arrogant.

  “Easy there, fellows,” she said, the way one would to a growling dog you were pretty sure wasn’t going to attack. She was anthropomorphizing horribly, of course—Artifacts weren’t alive, not even in the most basic way. They absorbed the energy they stored, that was true, but the way Tupperware might absorb the smell of the food stored within. Nothing more.

  She kept telling herself that as she edged carefully past the green marble pillar that, to her eyes, almost pulsated with energy. It was old. Very old. And very much not for the likes of her.

  Not for the likes of him, either, she thought, resentful on behalf of the pillar, then circular-filed the thought. She wasn’t here to rescue anyone else’s talismans. Not if they weren’t paying her.

  The clear crystal, on the other hand, actively repelled her. Contrary, she stopped in front of it, trying to see into the depths. Taking precious seconds she didn’t have, Wren let her eyes unfocus, then clicked into a working trance. Not as effective as a fugue, it should nonetheless allow her to gather more information about the stone. Reaching out with the ability that made her a Talent, Wren touched something slick, sweet and disgusting. Her eyes widened and she snapped back the probe in that instant of contact.

  Blood.

  Wren grimaced, trying to get the taste/smell/feel out of her brain. Current was flavored by the user, the more so the longer it was held, and so were the spells they made with it. This was nasty, particularly nasty. And…what was the word? Malevolent. All she wanted to do was find a nice nasty thunderstorm somewhere and let a few lightning bolts slam through her, to wash the taint away.

  Backing away from the crystal, she turned to face the concrete slab she had been hired to retrieve. A pocket flap on the arm of her bodysuit gave way with the snick of Velcro and she pulled out a slender ivory wand the length of her finger. It might, in fact, once have been someone’s finger. You didn’t ask too many details when you were buying someone else’s work.

  Wren was lousy at making talismans. Unfortunately, she was even worse at translocation. So she’d had to rely on someone else’s skill. Pointing the wand at the cornerstone, she rubbed the ivory between her fingers until it began to warm up, then said the incantation under her breath. Haste made disaster, but the awareness of that crystal at her back created an intense desire to be gone from that place. Subconsciously she moved closer to her target, and the wand dipped dramatically, like a dowsing stick hitting pay dirt, tapping the cement once, sharply.

  Wren barely had time to moan in dismay before a thick black smog came out of unseen vents, turning the air into an impenetrable barrier. A basic security system—confuse a thief, make it impossible for him to see his goal and nine times out of ten he’ll flee empty-handed.

  No time to flagellate yourself now, she thought. Finish it. Holding the wand more firmly in fingers suddenly slick with sweat, Wren completed the incantation. But even as she felt the current wave itself into the proper patterns, something felt off. There was too much magic in the room, and her concentration had been fouled. Something was wrong….

  “When I bid you—go!” she cried, trying to gather her own magics as a protection against whatever might be happening. There was a terrible noise, like the scream of a dying man, and a flash of electric light shot upward from where the cornerstone lay, up toward the ceiling.

  In that instant, she felt the spell snap into place, and the cornerstone vanished, leaving behind the usual rush of incoming air that indicated a successful translocation.

  And in its place, rising tall and solid in the space where the stone had been, a figure formed, shaking crumbs of concrete off its incorporeal shoulders.

  Aaahhhhhhh

  It was less a sound than an exhalation of pure energy. If Wren thought she had been spooked by the crystal, she hadn’t known the meaning of the word until then. This was old, and dead, and not quite human any longer—

  And it was very, very angry.

  Wren came back to awareness as her feet carried her down the hallway, the talisman room already a distant memory. Her lizard brain had taken over, reading the blueprints in her memory and directing the body through her e
scape route. An alarm was bleating throughout the house, and she had a vague memory of it going off when she first touched the cornerstone, but nobody came out of the walls to apprehend her, and she wasn’t about to question things that went right. Not now. To the other side of the house, out the window, sliding down the wall like a squirrel in free-fall, up and down the trunk of a tree, landing with a bone-jarring thump on the ground and jinking and dodging toward the trees without hesitation. The gate would definitely be juiced now—trying to get over it would be suicide, even if she had the time to prep. And who knew what the hell was happening back at the house? No, safer to risk the madmen with guns next door. All they could do was kill her.

  Ghosts! Nobody said a damn thing about ghosts, she thought with justifiable irritation. Not that it would have mattered worth a damn if they had. She didn’t know a thing about ghosts, or poltergeists, or anything of the undead variety. Nobody really did, or if they did they weren’t talking. Common theory was that the soul was dispersed after death, not inducted into any kind of afterlife. Holding someone after that had to be some seriously wicked mojo.

  “Great. Next thing, I’m going to run into vampires. Okay, ixnay on the jinxing of self!”

  The car was a darker shadow in the night. She opened the door and slid inside, fumbling for the keys, since she’d disabled the overhead light before leaving it earlier that night. Her arm trembled as she turned the ignition, and she was suddenly aware that her entire body was shaking.

  Get home, she told herself. Get home, and then you can collapse.

  twelve

  For once, Matthew Prevost’s office was not immaculate. An entire folder of papers were splayed across the expensively-carpeted floor, their arc indicating that they had been swept off the desk with a significant amount of force. A pile of small beige and brown colored chips were all that remained of an ancient Navajo pot. And half a dozen books, their leather bindings cracked and pages scattered, were mute testimony to a temper tantrum of extreme proportions. Prevost himself wasn’t in much better shape, standing in the middle of the office and raving like a madman. Although he stood in one spot as if locked into place, his arms flailed wildly, his face twisted like a Halloween mask while he roared his anger, paused to grab a deep breath, and then started again. All that was missing was froth at the corner of his mouth to finish the picture.

  For once, for the first time, he wished he had a staff, so he could kick a few of them to make himself feel better. His foot jerked, as though imagining someone cowering in front of him.

  After another half an hour of this, Prevost finally ran down. His fingers unclenched, and his shoulders straightened, giving his slight, desk-jockey body a suggestion of authority once again. His expression smoothed out as well, the face of a prosperous businessman sliding down over the rage that had been there a moment before. The sudden calm would have been more frightening to an observer than the madness earlier.

  He exhaled, then went to sit behind his desk, ignoring the mess underfoot. Picking up the phone, he dialed a number from memory. Why the hell did he have a magician on call if she couldn’t get the job done?

  “Your precautions failed,” he said without preamble. “Someone got in tonight and took it. I don’t know how. I don’t care how.” His voice started to rise, and he paused long enough to get it back under control. “They took the cornerstone.”

  The voice on the other end of the line asked a question.

  “Of course I want it back!”

  His well-manicured fingers began to drum on the desk as the other voice spoke again. His eyes narrowed as she finished speaking, but his voice remained even. “I’m perfectly aware of this. The amount I paid for the original acquisition is a more than reasonable fee for the same job, despite the higher profile. You agree?” It wasn’t a question. “Good. Contact me when it is done.”

  Hanging up the phone, Prevost leaned back and surveyed the room, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. His little mage was starting to show too many signs of independence, questioning his requests, dragging her heels when he summoned her. He was going to have to do something about that, and soon. But not tonight. Not while he still needed her. And right now he had more important matters to deal with. Whoever had broken into his home tonight had defeated not one but two security systems. And his highly-trained, extremely expensive dogs had run off, howling at the moon and not responding to their collar-summons. The loss of one of his possessions was enough to drive him into a rage, but this breach of security left him with a deeper, colder anger. This was unacceptable.

  Picking up the phone once again, he dialed a different number. “Your system was compromised. Fix it.”

  Beth Sanatini had been freelance for almost twenty years. Halfway through her apprenticeship she had realized that the Council and she were going to butt heads on a regular basis, so why even bother trying to toe the line? But before she left—went rogue, in their eyes—she had studied the layers of power, judged who was an up-and-comer, who was there for the long haul, and what they might do in order to keep their power. And once you knew that, there was no need to cut all ties completely, no matter how rogue you were. Just good business, after all.

  But in the end, it had been the Council itself that came calling. Or, rather, one member in particular. They had offered a deal Beth couldn’t refuse, and it would be funny if it weren’t so damn annoying. It was that member Beth contacted now.

  Three rings, as always. Someone was tapping into the line to see who it was. Caller ID was a piker compared to a magical tap. Beth crunched on the carrot stick, and waited until someone cleared her ID code, then picked up on the other end.

  “Apparently, someone took Mr. Prevost to the cleaners tonight.”

  “Really?” The voice on the other end of the line didn’t seem at all surprised. Just once, Beth wanted to be able to give them something they didn’t already expect. If you were going to be a stoolie, however reluctant, you should at least be a useful one. “And I assume that he has asked you to retrieve said object once again?”

  “You would be correct,” she admitted. Suddenly the carrot didn’t look anywhere near as appetizing as the chocolate chips stashed in her freezer. It was horribly unfair that you couldn’t magic off excess weight.

  “You will not accept this commission.”

  Beth watched as her fingers clenched so hard on the carrot that it broke in two. Not a surprise, really. If they could have stopped her from taking the original job, they would have. The Council didn’t like to be embarrassed, especially by escapees like her own little self. “Will I be compensated for the loss of that commission?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  “We allow you to operate without interference,” her contact told her. “Do not presume upon that goodwill.”

  Goodwill. Beth would have smiled, if she weren’t so damn tired. That translated to “we’re not going to yank the leash we keep you on—yet.” If they’d had anything to do with the retrieval—and she suspected they did, from sheer pride if nothing else, they would be determined to have it end here, now. You didn’t trespass on Council deals. Except she had, and lived to tell the tale.

  Maybe it was time to twist that smug bastard once, just because she could. “Were you also aware of the fact that the item Mr. Prevost recently acquired through my services was showing signs of breakage?”

  There was the sound of someone sitting upright in a chair. “Details,” the voice ordered crisply.

  “He brought me in to judge what he perceived to be leakage of the spell. He was correct—apparently our Mr. Prevost has a touch more Talent than anyone suspected. Barely enough to notice, but it did alert him to the problem. It also, I suppose, explains why so many of his pretties have a magical element to them.”

  “Did you correct the damage?”

  “I patched it. But that’s not going to last. And if someone else has it now, odds are their workings—”

  “It is no longer your concern.”

  The line
cut off, replaced by a dial tone.

  “Well, damn.” She hung up the phone, and leaned back in her own chair, twirling one of the carrot halves between her fingers. Someone was playing games. Big, ugly, complicated games that were going to get people killed.

  She smiled now, and bit into the carrot with a satisfying crunch. Just so long as it wasn’t her.

  The security camera showed a van pulling into the driveway. Dark blue, with a discreet white logo on the doors. A transmitter placed inside the car signaled to the security box at the front gate, and they passed through the checkpoint without a hitch, the doors opening smoothly for them. As they moved down the graveled driveway, the headlights caught flashes of large bodies loping on all fours alongside the truck before deciding it wasn’t a threat and falling away.

  The van pulled up in front of the house, and two men dressed in dark blue coveralls got out, one of them going around back to open the sliding door and retrieve a small toolbox. The other man waited for his companion to rejoin him, then pulled a cap out of his pocket, fitted it to his head, and together they went up the stairs.

  They rang the doorbell, then waited patiently until the door opened.

  “I thought I told you people to use the side door,” Prevost groused as he opened the door. “Well, come in, come in. I wasn’t expecting you for another hour or two.”