Sergei took a moment to gather himself, to lock his emotions into the box built for them. The box men like the one on the other end of the line had shown him how to build. Steadied, his response was cool, in control of himself and the moment: “It was never about impartiality. It was about judgment. And my call is still that her skills, while impressive, are too limited, not worth the risk. Nor is she well suited to the…discipline of what would be required.
“You’ve not questioned me before. Has there been a reason to suddenly, now, doubt my evaluation?”
A final, formal vote of no-confidence from the voice on the other end of the phone line meant more than a sudden career-change for both of them. He had wanted to hold his breath, hang on the next words. But instead he breathed normally, back relaxed against the support of his ergonomically correct leather chair, arms resting by his side, the very picture of open body language, as though that would somehow transmit over the phone. I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear.
“Sergei. Please don’t insult my intelligence. We’ve humored you for several years because we could afford to. But it’s time to come home now.”
“Go to hell, Matthias,” Sergei said softly.
But as he ended the call, staring blankly at the painting on the far wall of his office that normally brought him intense emotional satisfaction, he felt tendrils of fear stir, wrapping themselves around him until he could barely move. His thoughts were like pigeons, scattering as soon as they landed, over and over again, until he wasn’t sure what he was thinking at all.
The computer pinged to indicate an incoming e-mail, and Sergei broke himself out of the memory, wrenching his brain back to the chore at hand.
Action was the only cure for fear. Action was the only way out of the threads he could feel closing more and more tightly around them both. If only he knew what the right move was.
fourteen
He was sitting in a tropical bar, breathing the smell of night-blooming flowers and salt spray. A soft breeze kept the humidity at bay. His drink smelled of gin, and the ice cubes clinked pleasantly as he took a sip.
A hand touched his shoulder, running light fingers across the back of his neck. He shivered in pleasure and reached back to capture the hand, intent on pulling her forward, and onto his lap.
There was a faint noise in the background of his dream. It was familiar, category nonthreatening, sub-category comforting. So he ignored it, concentrating on the elusive woman behind him….
“Oh no you don’t,” he heard the nonthreatening voice murmur, and a sudden mental alarm went off—too late to keep the icy-cold hand from wrapping itself around his neck.
Sergei let out a shriek and bolted upright, causing the office chair he had fallen asleep on to roll backward, hitting the wall and rebounding, the swivel seat twirling slowly until it finally came to rest. He stared, a little wild-eyed, at his partner, who was grinning like a kid at the circus.
“You’re so cute when you freak.”
His hand went to the back of his neck, rubbing the skin as though to try and bring some warmth and feeling back into it. “Bitch.”
“Hey, you’re the one drooling all over my keyboard.”
“What time is it?” He had fallen asleep some time around three in the morning, based on his last recollection. Sergei vaguely remembered being able to handle the odd hours of a case better than he was feeling this morning.
“Almost seven. Had a passing recollection of you saying you had to be at the gallery this morning. New installation, right?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” He stifled a moan as his joints woke up fully and started sending urgent messages to his brain. “I’m getting old, Wrenlet. Old and achy.”
She flicked him a glance, clearly assessing how much of that grousing was for show.
“Poor baby.” She shifted the baggie of ice from hand to hand as though to keep her hands cold in case he balked. “I do have extra pillows, you know. Next time, use ’em. That chair is not comfortable to sleep in, even for me. Much less your ancient bones.”
“Hah. So funny.”
“Any luck with whatever you were doing?”
Sergei shrugged, then winced when that movement set off more internal complaints. “By the time I fell asleep, I couldn’t have told you what I was looking at, much less looking for,” he admitted, unbuttoning his sweat-sticky shirt and taking it off. “I’m way out of my league when it comes to the supernatural stuff, you know that.”
“You’re learning, grasshopper. You’re learning. It’s just—”
“Tough if you’re not born to it,” he finished for her. “Yeah, I know.” Sergei rolled his shoulders, then clasped his hands and stretched his arms straight over his head until he heard something crack and felt his spine move back into alignment. “Ah, God, that’s better.” He turned to see Wren staring at him. “What?”
She started a little, a flush coloring her cheekbones. “Your hair is standing on end,” she told him, then giggled. “Looks cute.”
He grumbled at her, then headed off to find the spare toothbrush and a comb.
Wren watched him walk down the hallway, enjoying the visual as one of those unspoken perks of her job. Sergei in dress slacks and nothing else was a sight no red-blooded, breathing, hetero female should miss. It wasn’t so much that her partner was built—he wasn’t, really. Big guy, yeah, very nice shoulders and his forearms made long-sleeved shirts a crime, but he wasn’t exactly underwear model material. But the muscles he did have were clean and smooth, and he walked like a tiger.
Nice to look at. And so warm…She giggled, remembering his reaction to her iced-up hand. The skin on his neck was so sensitive, he told her once, that he had to use a special shaving cream to keep the razor from irritating it.
That ice cube was cruel, but effective, she thought. There really wasn’t any other way to wake a man who slept that deeply. Not when he knew he was here, safe: not without letting a stranger off the street come in and stand behind him. And then pity the poor stranger.
Drawing in a deep breath, she exhaled, feeling her own tension start to creep back into her shoulders. Despite a full night of sleep, in a comfortable bed, there was still a gut-deep unease riding her. They needed more information. Fast.
Tossing the ice bag into the kitchen sink, she went into her bedroom and got a shirt from out of the lowest drawer of the dresser, added a pair of dress socks and boxers to that. Stacking it into a pile, she stuck her head into the bathroom to make sure he was safely in the shower.
“I’m leaving fresh clothing on the toilet,” she told him, raising her voice to be heard over the water. She assumed the muffled groan she heard was acknowledgement. “I’m gonna run down to Unray’s for a calzone. You want anything?”
The groan this time had a distinct negative to it.
“Okay. Back in ten.”
By the time she got back, he had boiled water for tea, and was ensconced at her breakfast table, reading the newspaper. Reading glasses he denied needing were perched low down on his nose, and his eyes darted back and forth, scanning the articles, mining them for anything of interest. When his eyes slowed down, she made a mental note to read the article he was studying.
She sat down on the only other chair and unwrapped her breakfast. The smell of warm cheese, dough and tomato sauce filled the air, and her stomach rumbled. By now, Sergei was used to her odd eating habits, if not reconciled to them, and he ignored both her and the smell.
Finally he folded the paper, put it down on the table, and folded the glasses and put them away. “What’s the game plan for today?”
She shrugged, mopping up the last of the sauce with a scrap of dough. “Poke around. See what pokes back.”
“Be careful,” he said. “I don’t think the client is very happy with us right now, and I trust him about as far as I can throw that damn building of his.”
“Gut feeling?” Nice to have confirmation, even if it was of bad news rising.
An exhalation through
the nose that might have been a laugh. “A little. Maybe. If you think maybe you’re getting onto shaky gossip-ground, back off.”
“I’ll be delicate as a butterfly.”
“And the beating of your wings therefore causing a typhoon in China. Not reassured, Wren.”
“Go do your sober business guy thing,” she said, flapping a hand at him. “And leave the real work to the Talent.”
After Sergei left, Wren took a quick shower, then put together a plan of attack. She needed fresh veggies anyway, so that was a place to start. Grabbing her oversized shoulder bag, a lime-green monstrosity she hadn’t been able to lose for almost five years now, she shoved her sunglasses, the mini-recorder, a protein bar and her wallet into it, got her keys out of the bowl, and hit the stairs. It was gorgeous out; blue sky and warm air, and the scent of new leaves and early flowers drifted over from the park. The tension didn’t leave her shoulders, but it did shift a little to let a moment of pure enjoyment in, and she swung around the corner and down the street with more energy than she’d thought she had in her half an hour ago.
“Charlie! Morning!”
The young man putting cans away in the back of Jackson’s E-Z Shopper looked as though he’d had a worse night than Sergei. Or maybe a better one, the way he winced at her greeting.
“Whoops, sorry,” she stage whispered. “Why don’t you do something for that hangover?”
“Can’t,” he said. “No focus.”
She looked around, saw that the only other customer was at the front of the store paying for her purchases. “C’mere.” He leaned forward, and she rubbed her hands together briskly, feeling heat build in her palms, then placed the palms on either side of Charlie’s skull. She might not be great at it, but even a mediocre healer was better than none at all. After a moment or so, he sighed in relief, and she let her hands fall away.
“Thanks.” His eyes were already brighter, his skin a healthier tone. “What can I do ya for?”
“A bunch of almost-ripe bananas, the best tomatoes you’re hiding from the rest of the customers, a pound of coffee and some information.”
Charlie’s skin lost some of its color again, and his eyes shifted to the left and up, the giveaway of a liar, or someone about to lie.
What now? Wren thought in irritation.
Four hours later, Wren was in what could be best described as a flaming snit. Charlie had actually been the most welcoming of all her contacts. Not that anyone had shied away from greeting her, but the moment she tried to dig even the faintest butterfly touch, they got skittish and silent.
And that is just so not Cosa style. She paid for her coffee and looked around the tiny, crowded Starbucks for a place to sit down. A couple got up to leave, and she snared their table quickly, ignoring the irate looks from another couple who had also started for it. No, not the usual at all. More often you can’t get them to shut up! Especially if you’re admitting you don’t know something they might. I should have just gone to the damn simurgh up on 80th and bartered something for the answer. More expensive, but a hell of a lot faster.
Wren frowned, that thought tapping into something else in her brain. She had been sticking to the human contacts at this point, simply because they were easier to meet in public, but now that she thought about it, stirring a packet of sugar into her coffee and stirring absently, she hadn’t seen any of the fatae recently. Not even P.B.
“Mind if I join you?”
She looked up into wide-set black eyes, and grinned. “Think of the devil—sure, please, save me from the coffee-swilling masses.”
“We are the coffee-swilling masses,” Lee said, folding himself into the molded plastic chair. At 6’5”, Lee Mahoney was almost Wren’s polar opposite. With his shock of white hair contrasting with golden skin and ebony black eyes, there wasn’t any way you could not see him in a room.
It served him in good stead at gallery openings where the press honed in on him like bees to pollen—she had in fact met him through Sergei’s studio, where he had been part of a group show. His sculptures, for the most part, made the critics happy. His appearance made the reporters happy. And both made Sergei happy, for the money he could command for a Mahoney original.
Wren was happy because Mahoney was the first lonejack she’d met on moving into the city. Which meant that they had been friends now for almost five years, and a happy successful friend was a useful friend.
“How goes married life, Tree-Taller?”
“It goes,” he said, taking the lid off his coffee and sipping carefully. “Although she told me she’d divorce me if I ever came to her studio again.”
Wren snickered.
“Not funny. All I meant to do was help them move some furniture, so I gave a little push, and—”
“Let me guess, shorted out their entire signal?” His wife was a morning DJ for a local alternative station. They operated on a shoestring, probably including skimping on anything but the minimum practical protections. Not that anything Wren had encountered did a hell of a lot of good against major current-usage—she had once burned out an entire shopping mall—but it would have deflected a minor push like that.
“Not quite that bad. But close. Radio stations are way sensitive, Wren. Way sensitive.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Five or six years ago she’d had to retrieve something from a building next to a power station. When it went bad and she had to pull down current hard and fast…well, that power grid had needed overhauling anyway.
“So, what’ve you been up to?”
And that was another reason Lee was so refreshing. Unlike most of the Cosa, when he said he wasn’t interested in gossip, he meant it. And when he was interested in you, it meant, well, that he was interested in you.
“Job turned scurvy,” she said glumly. “So, you know anything about a guy named Frants, or maybe a Talent who had a mad-on for him?” So much for butterfly wings, she heard Sergei sigh in the back of her head.
Lee stirred his coffee with maybe a little too much deliberation.
“Ah Lee, not you, too? What? Did I step on someone’s toes? I checked with all the usual suspects beforehand, I swear I did.”
“No, nothing like that. At least, I don’t think so. You know me, Wren, I’m not exactly in the loop.”
“Then what is it? Lee, I swear, I’m getting the cold shoulder from everyone. Even you. What did I do?”
Lee looked at her, unhappiness plain in his expression. “It’s not you, Wren. It’s just…Council’s been squirrelier than usual, last month or so. They’ve come down hard on their own people—they shut whats his name, Blackie, over in Staten Island down entirely—mage-locked him in his house for an entire week!—and I think everyone just expects them to come down hard on us, too.” Us being lonejacks. “And, well…odds are you’re going to be the first they come down hard on. As an example.”
Wren sighed. “Great. Round up the usual suspects. Why me?”
Lee took the question seriously. “Because you’re good. The best, not to feed that ego of yours too much. And because you hang with everyone. Lonejack, fatae, wizzarts…you’ve even got friends who are mages.”
“One,” Wren corrected. “And I’m never really sure if we’re on speaking terms from day to day.”
“She spoke for you back during the Fleet Week debacle.”
“I seem to remember a few other people at this table being involved with that.” Not their finest hour. A prank gone out of hand, and people got hurt. They’d both sworn off pranking after that, otherwise Lee would have been the first suspect in that tag attempt earlier in the week.
“Point is, they remember you. And now you go and get involved in something the Council’s watching—yeah, I’ve heard about Frants. He hired a lonejack ’cause he’s already too far in debt to the Council, rumor says.”
Wren nodded. She’d heard the same thing, doing her prelim research. She had run across a lot of rumors. Half of them contradicting the other half and the half that remained usually
weren’t true anyway.
“So suddenly nobody wants to talk to me, ’cause they’re scared the Council’s going to think they’re linked to me and treat ’em to the same heavy fist?” Could that have been what the tag was about, someone looking to take out a potential problem? But why? And who?
Lee shrugged. “Lonejacks,” he said. “We’re a selfish, self-centered bunch.” He patted her hand. “If it makes any difference, everyone, well, mostly everyone respects you. We just don’t want to be thought of as…in the same league of trouble as you.”
“So everyone will send flowers, but nobody will come to my funeral, huh? And you’re not afraid of being overheard telling me all this?” Her stomach did a slow roil, the acid from the coffee churning into full-blown indigestion.
He shrugged, taking his hand back. “I’m an artist. All my current goes into my work.” His sculptures had been described as “electrifying” by one critic. Since he actually molded the steel with current, that review had given them all the giggles for an hour. “And my connection to the fatae is limited, since I don’t use them in my work.” Null-tempered steel responded better to current than one that had already been molded or shaped by a Talented worker. “Short version, the Council doesn’t care about me or mine. Suddenly crossing the street when you show up would raise suspicions, not stopping to have a coffee and a chat.
“Hey, if it’s any consolation, this too shall pass. Like you said, the Council’s always getting squirrely somehow or another. Just hang tight, stay low, and we’ll all be right as rain.”
“Yeah. I’d love to do that. I really would.” But there’s still a job to be finished. One that’s already got Council fingerprints all over it, even if they do claim to be quits with it. Maybe after that I can talk Sergei into a vacation somewhere that’s not here.
“Thanks, Lee.” She stood, picking up her bag from the floor at her feet. “Really. For everything.”
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