Staying Dead

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Yeah, I know,” Sergei interrupted, still seething. “I assume that you have a file on Frants?” And then oh, good going he snarled inwardly, turning the beast on himself. A tyro’s mistake, to allow anger—any emotion—to push him into such a stupid error. You never, ever gave away information—in this case, their client’s name—without an equal exchange. Never assume they know anything. Their poker face might just be better, that’s all.

  “We do, yes,” the older man said in a tone that rebuked him for asking such a foolish question, “but our interest is rather more with the man who…acquired your client’s item.”

  And Wren thinks I dance around the topic, Sergei thought without showing any of his momentary amusement. But the break allowed him to regain his calm, to step back a half step and get some perspective. So they followed her. Think of it as unexpected backup. They weren’t going to harm Wren. Not intentionally. Not while they still think I can be used to manipulate her into working for them. And not after, not unless they take us both out. And there’s no reason to do that. We’re potential benefits, not liabilities. “Why?”

  Irritation broke through Andre’s calm exterior. “Oh, come now, Sergei. We taught you better than that.” Sergei gave himself a point for the lapse. Maybe a point and a half, the way the vein in Andre’s neck pulsed.

  “You knew about this ‘collector’ and didn’t think to tell us.” The redhead spoke for the first time. His voice was Eastern Seaboard boarding-school perfect, his accent just as clearly disgusted. With Sergei, with the situation, with having to waste his time in this apartment on a matter that should never have become a matter at all, if people had just hewed to orders and regulations and Told All the moment they learned it. A True Believer. Sergei wondered if he’d ever been that bad. Probably.

  Time I took back control of this situation. Taking off his suit jacket, he draped it over the back of the leather recliner. His favorite reading chair, with a gooseneck lamp perfectly positioned to shine the best illumination on a book. He resisted the lure of its cushions, wanting to remain on his feet and alert. “What was there to tell? A lot of people think they want to rub up against the magical. Most of them wouldn’t know it if they got slapped in the face with a true Artifact. I had no reason to believe that he was any different.”

  “It’s not your place to make judgment calls like that. You should have reported him—and any other individual who came looking for items they should not have.”

  The hell I should have. “Andre, get your dog off my ankle.” Sergei knew he was screwing this up; they had gotten him on the defensive, second-guessing his own actions, but there was a spark of righteous indignation fueling him now, in addition to the anger and fear. Where the hell did they get off, harassing him like this? They’re desperate. There’s blood in the water, somewhere. And he cursed himself again for dropping so completely out of sight that he didn’t know the gossip that was going around the Silence. Didn’t know what had driven them to push so hard for the thing he’d told them they could never have—Wren. He should have read the tone of Fatal Friday better. Dancy, Adam; they had both tried to warn him. So had Douglas, in his own rat-bastard way….

  “I’m just one man. You telling me no one has been assigned to tracking things like this, that you have to rely on one burned-out Handler and a twenty-something lonejack to solve your problems?”

  “You’re hardly burned out,” Felhim said, trying to soothe the roiled waters like the diplomat he had once been.

  “I am,” Sergei said without rancor, the calm coming at the cost of sudden, total exhaustion. “And you know it. That’s the only reason they let me walk away ten years ago. First, you wanted me to report in—then, to report on what I’m doing, report on what I’m seeing and hearing. And now, suddenly, you need more. You start to order me around, like I was one of you again. Are things really that bad….” He paused, purely for effect, then decided the hell with it and went for the kill. “Or is it that you know Genevieve won’t go anywhere without me?”

  “You so sure about that?” the redhead asked, a challenge.

  “Jorgunmunder,” Andre said, warning him off that avenue of attack. But Sergei didn’t even have to process the question.

  “Yeah. I am.”

  Yeah, he was. It was astonishing, really, how obvious it should have been to him, this sureness. Like a chair when you desperately needed to sit appearing directly behind you, as though by…and now he did chuckle. As though by magic.

  “It’s a simple enough proposition, Didier.” Having failed to intimidate, Jorgunmunder was trying for reasonable like a shirt he knew wasn’t going to fit. “Find out who was giving this Prevost fellow the direction of so many Artifacts. That’s all. We’ll do the rest, if you’re too mercenary to deal with it.”

  By “mercenary” he meant working for a living, not lapping at the Silence’s teat. And by “deal with it,” he meant exactly what it sounded like. The Silence was named that for a reason. Nobody talked.

  Sergei refused to rise to the bait. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed comfortably across his chest, watching the two of them with a carefully upturned quirk to his lips. Just because he hadn’t played the game in years didn’t mean he had forgotten how. And with Wren to practice on for all that time, he knew for a fact that the expression on his face was guaranteed to frustrate anyone it was turned on.

  “Christ,” Jorgunmunder went on, reacting to Sergei’s body language as though he’d read the script beforehand, “it’s in everyone’s best interest that the information be shut down, before someone who isn’t content to just look at his pretties gets hold of too many!”

  And that, Sergei thought ruefully, was always the problem. Everything the Silence did was reasonable. Was for the better good of humanity—as the Silence saw it. And for the most part he agreed with their goals, their reasons.

  It was just the way they used up their people. People who saw too much, did too much. Cared too damn much. And all the doing and seeing and caring doesn’t do more than stem the tide.

  He would have done anything—had done everything—to keep that weary, bitter awareness out of his Wren’s eyes.

  And yet…they had a point. He’d worried about Wren’s description of what she’d seen at the mark’s house, too. “Look. I’ll get what information for you I can. I always have.” Without him, they’d still have nothing more than rumors about the Council’s existence. “But back off. No more shadowing, no more harassing. No more manipulating. If you’ve talked to Douglas then you know the most you’re going to get is me, not her. Leave Wren alone. She’s not to be any part of your plans.”

  “Don’t you think maybe that’s for me to decide?”

  All three men jerked to attention. Sergei cursed both his inattention and the standing order that, no matter what time of night or day it was, a woman matching Wren’s description would always be allowed into his flat, no questions asked. He had meant it to be for her safety. Another good plan gone to hell. Seems to be a theme for the day.

  She stood in the doorway, arms firmly planted on her hips, and stared at them. No way to tell how much she’d heard. No matter, it was all damning.

  “All right. Since I’ve crashed the party, do I get an invitation after the fact?”

  Andre turned so that he was facing her completely. “This is Genevieve?”

  Sergei gave him an “are you kidding?” look. “Would you believe me if I said no?”

  Andre didn’t bother replying to that. “Ms. Valere. My name is Andre Felhim, and this is my associate, Poul Jorgunmunder.”

  “Generally speaking, people who have associates who look like that tend to say things like ‘I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse.’ That your deal?” She ran her hand against the wall, as though testing the texture of the paint. Sergei recognized the move for what it was, a gathering of current from the wiring that ran behind the plaster.

  “Wren…” he warned, even as Felhim rushed to reassure her.

 
“I assure you, there will be no need for…violence. On either side.”

  She flicked a glance at Sergei, asking for feedback, which reassured him somewhat. She might be angry, but it wasn’t out of control. Yet.

  “It’s okay, Wren.”

  Her hand dropped from the wall. Sergei hoped that the Silence agents didn’t make the mistake of thinking that meant that she was unarmed. No Talent ever was, a lonejack even less so. Paranoia was how they stayed clear of the Council. He should have been paying more attention to that lesson. He sighed inwardly. Douglas had been right. He was better suited to working within the system, not without.

  “Right. Felhim and Jorgunmunder. Harassing my partner—” A subtle emphasis on the words, a touch heavier on my. “Talking about something my partner—” Again the emphasis, this time on partner. Sergei hid a wince. She was definitely angry. “—doesn’t want me to know about.” She moved farther into the room, her boots making solid noises on the hardwood floor. Of the four in the room, Wren should have been the one overwhelmed. She was barely five-four—five-six in those boots—and hid her gymnast’s strength under a deceptive softness. The unthreatening, unmemorable look she cultivated was so effective that you hardly ever saw her standing right next to you, and could rarely describe her five minutes after she left the room.

  Sergei could, though. He knew where she was every minute they were in the same room, the same apartment. He knew the color of her eyes, and the shape of her chin, and the way that she stood, the way she slept. And he knew that underestimating her was the worst mistake anyone in this room—himself included—could make. He held still, as though a cobra had him in her gaze, and prayed he would survive uneaten.

  “Secrets. Whispered conversations. Threats. I find things like that…very interesting. So talk to me. Who are you, Felhim and Jorgunmunder?”

  The muscle shifted uncomfortably, but nobody bothered to look at him. “It’s very simple, really,” Andre said. “I am an old…friend of your partner here, come by to see if he—and by extension you—would be interested in a business proposition.”

  Sergei growled at the inclusion of Wren in his comments.

  Wren raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing more. Encouraged, Andre went on.

  “We work for an organization that has a vested interest in…ah, call it neutral good, if you have any familiarity with Dungeons and Dragons.”

  “None whatsoever.” Wren rolled her eyes as she answered. Why did everyone always assume that Talents were all geeks and role-players? Why would you need pretend when you had the real thing?

  “Ah.” He was a little nonplussed, but recovered fast, she’d give him that. “Then say that we are more interested in the long-term balance of the world, rather than righting specific wrongs, although we do take action on cases as needed.”

  “And we are…?” She prompted him. Felhim looked at the redhead—Jorgunmunder, his name was—who made a “get on with it” gesture.

  “The Silence.”

  Like that was supposed to mean something.

  “And…?”

  “He never told you about the Silence.” Jorgunmunder laughed, a short, harsh bark. “Figures.”

  He, meaning—“Sergei?”

  Her partner, leaning against the wall, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, his hair finger-combed until it was standing on end, refused to meet her eyes. Suddenly his unhappiness at the two men showing up made a lot more sense than just him declining a business deal. That was, technically, his job: to deal with offers. Except what was this group offering? Who were these guys, and what else had her partner been hiding from her?

  “Mr. Didier has been an associate of ours for quite some time. It was he who first brought you to our attention, in fact.”

  Wren didn’t trust this guy—he was too smooth, too sincere—but she wanted to hear him out. Mainly—she admitted to herself—because Sergei obviously didn’t want her anywhere near the others. And right now she was pissed at her partner. Royally, majorly pissed, so much so that she could feel the current stir within her involuntarily.

  It wasn’t just that Sergei had kept secrets. She’d known there were depths in him, secrets, past stuff. Whatever. It wasn’t the fact that there were secrets that made her so angry. It was that someone else should be telling her about them. A betrayal of some vows she didn’t even know they’d taken. Her gut seized up, her eyes burned, and she wanted equally to hurt everything in her path, and hurt herself as well. Physical pain had to feel better than the glass shards tearing their way inside her, right?

  The last time she had given in to that urge was when she was fourteen and Paul whatshisname had stolen her bike and then dared her to do something about it.

  Then, she had caused the tires of the bike to blow out while he was riding away on her bicycle, sending him careening into traffic where a car hit him, leaving him with a concussion and a broken leg.

  Sparks danced around her hands, which were clenched so tightly her close-trimmed nails were about to draw blood from her palms.

  And somehow her partner knew she was close to breaking point, because there he was, moving like the Wrath of God toward the older guy.

  “Get out.” Calm but cold. And maybe not so calm underneath.

  Jorgunmunder made a dismissive gesture. “Didier, I know you’re upset but—”

  “Get out!”

  It was a roar this time, and the redhead took an involuntary step backward. “We’ll call you….”

  Felhim edged Jorgunmunder toward the door, one hand on his companion’s elbow. “You’ll call us,” he said calmly. “When you’ve made your decision. Ms. Valere. Sergei.” And the door closed softly behind them.

  There was silence in the apartment. Sergei stared at the seascape watercolor on the wall over the sofa. He had bought the painting with his first paycheck, too many years ago to think about. The artist had gone on to command seven times the sum for one of her pieces. He had the eye for talent. And Talent. It had always been a double-edged sword.

  “Wren…”

  “No. Just…no. Don’t…don’t talk to me right now.” She glared at him. “Arrggghhh.” It was a long, strangled noise, then she stormed out of the room. He could hear her in the kitchen, opening cabinets and slamming then again while The sound of glass-ware, the refrigerator opening and closing.

  She was angry; well duh, to use a phrase Wren had thankfully grown out of. He’d if not lied to her, then certainly omitted information. And possibly endangered her as well, although she couldn’t know that. Or maybe she was angry because he was withholding a job possibility from her? But that was his job, to winnow through the offers and only bring her the ones he thought were worthwhile. So she couldn’t be angry about that, could she?

  Maybe he could have done things differently. But it had made sense at the time, keeping the parts of his life separate. He hadn’t wanted to be Softwing anymore, hadn’t wanted that life anymore. There’s always a price to pay. His own words, twisted but still true. He only hoped the cost of this revelation wasn’t more than he could afford.

  He just had to trust her. And wait.

  It didn’t take more than ten minutes.

  “How long?” She stormed back into the main room and stood there, one hand on her hip, the other holding a Diet Sprite, glaring at him. “How long have you been tied up in this, whatever this is, and not told me?”

  Oh. Sergei rubbed his palms against the fabric of his slacks. Whatever he said, she was going to be unhappy.

  “Sergei? Come on.”

  “You never wondered why a mage wanted me dead?” Their very first meeting, when Wren had used her Talent to save him from a car accident caused by a mage seeking to hide some nasty doings.

  “Yeah, yeah. You were poking around in his business. Mages get peevy about that, especially when they’re not being good citizens.” She paused. “Since then? Since before then. You bastard!” Sergei had been prepared, but the soda can still nicked his ear as he ducked, and the stream
of Diet Sprite splattered across his shirt. He controlled his instinctive reaction, keeping his hands loose and still by his side. Any movement right now would be risky. He said a quick prayer of thanks that Margot, Wren’s mother, had instilled in her daughter a firm grip on her temper, and risked a glance at his partner.

  She was seething. Literally. The nearest lamp flickered and then the bulb popped, the glass breaking with a faint crack. Sweat tracked under his collar, and he suspected that if he could see current, he would be close to wetting himself. Stay calm, Zhenechka. Stay calm and we’ll both make it through this intact. Normally he could talk her down. But he’d never been the target before. Not like this. He could feel his little boat not only rocking but capsizing under his feet.

  “Ten years. Ten years you’ve been working with these people…”

  “No.” He risked interrupting her, to head off that misunderstanding before it got worse. “Not with them. I’ve been inactive—I haven’t worked any jobs for them in almost eight years. Not since we went full-time.” He willed her to hear him, hear what he was saying.

  She did, he could see it in her expression, but she wasn’t cutting him any slack. And her fists were still clenched.

  “Why? Why couldn’t you tell me? I’m your damned partner, right? Why did this have to be some deep unspoken secret?”

  A memory, the two of them sitting in a diner in New Jersey, the rain coming down heavy outside. She was so young, but her eyes were already shadowed with loss. “Partners?” she had asked. “Partners,” he had agreed. “Although I’ll be handling the money….”

  Senior partner. Why hadn’t he—hadn’t either of them—realized that the balance had shifted?

  Because you were afraid to look, his conscience told him. Because once you looked, you might see other things.