Staying Dead

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Destroy him.

  eighteen

  T he message was waiting for her when she got back from the gym the next morning. Wren’s natural inclination was to sleep, not exercise, but recent events had reminded her that when you never know when you’re going to have to outclimb, outrun, or outdodge in the course of a job, it pays to have given some attention to your body. And it gave her something to do that didn’t involve worrying at the various nets that seemed to be closing around her. Council. Silence. And this damn job, still unfinished and hanging over her head like a nasty, sharp blade.

  Yeah, a couple hours of heavy sweating, just her and the weights and the treadmill, were exactly the thing for her situation. Although living in a walkup was its own sort of mindless exercise. She reached her floor and sagged against the apartment door in exhaustion. The city was warm today, unseasonably so, and the fact that the gym had blasted the air-conditioning made it worse, not better.

  Unlocking the door, she started peeling off clothing the moment she made it inside, dropping things in a trail behind her as she went into the bathroom and turned the shower on full blast.

  Heaven is good water pressure. Thank you, God, for the blessings of good water pressure. Her building would never be featured in Architect’s Weekly, but it had excellent plumbing.

  Something pinged at her memory and she frowned, trying to remember what it was she needed to deal with.

  “Oh. Right.”

  Grabbing a towel off the rack she wrapped it around herself and walked back to the kitchen where she had seen the message light on her answering machine blinking.

  “Miss Valere. This is Andre Felhim. I was calling to see if you would do me the honor of having dinner with me tonight.” There was a pause. “I have not cleared this with Sergei, as I suppose I should have—”

  “He’s my agent, not my keeper,” Wren told the answering machine in irritation.

  “—but I was not sure if he would be pleased at our having direct contact. I do, however, feel that it is needful, as you, I am sure, have questions that Sergei may not be able to answer.”

  The old curiosity lure. God, like that’s not so transparent.

  And so effective, a voice that sounded a lot like Sergei’s replied.

  And so effective, she agreed without hesitation. Hey, they become clichés for a reason…

  She picked up the phone, and, ignoring the shower waiting for her a few minutes more, dialed the number he had left.

  Wrapped in a thick plush towel grabbed off the top of a pile of mostly-folded laundry, Wren sat down on the side of her bed and started to comb her hair out, careful of ever-present snarls. She really needed to remember to braid it, not put it into a ponytail.

  Sergei liked it braided.

  Right. So much for putting all thoughts like that on the shelf until you’re a little less busy. As though she’d be able to. He was in her thoughts on a daily basis before; how did she think she was going to banish him now, when there were more things to think about? Like the thought that maybe the affection she’d always felt under his heavy dose of senior partneritis might be more than just, well, affection?

  Or it might not be. She had to deal with that thought, too, before things got way too weird.

  “But later. Later.” Jumping off the bed, she tossed the comb onto the dresser and pulled on her underwear, then a pair of jeans and a tank top. Seeing the laundry still sitting there from weeks ago reminded her that there were other things she had to deal with today, and top of the list was the one she dreaded doing the most.

  Cleaning.

  For a small apartment, she thought twenty minutes later, the place could get bad. It wasn’t that she was a slob, exactly. I can just think of half a dozen things I’d rather be doing. A full dozen, even.

  On the worst-last theory, she attacked the kitchenette first. Once the counters were cleared away and she had washed everything in the sink, she was about to head into the bathroom, armed with a scrub brush and Lysol, when a pile of drab green tossed into a corner caught her eye.

  Her rucksack.

  “Damn.” In the exhaustion after the job, she must have put it there, or maybe Sergei had. She retraced the steps in her memory, and determined that Sergei had been the one to take the rucksack from her. Frowning, she put the bathroom supplies down and sat down next to the bag to sort through what was in there.

  “Bodysuit, filthy. Into the wash. Underwear and socks, likewise. Whew.” She sweated a lot on that job, apparently. Something felt hard under her fingers as she sorted through the cloth, and she frowned, patting through the fabric to find out what it was. From the arm pocket, she withdrew the ivory talisman, now broken in two unequal pieces.

  I don’t remember that. Or saving it. But then, there was a lot after the ghost appeared that she didn’t remember. Just the wand tapping the stone, and then…

  The wand had touched the cornerstone. A glimmer of an idea came to life in her mind, and Wren closed her hand around the talisman. “Bingo!”

  Scrambling to her feet, she left the other contents of the rucksack scattered in the hallway, going into her office, then looking around, shaking her head, and heading back up to the roof.

  She thought maybe this needed fresh air and open space if it was going to work.

  The sky was pale blue, with just a few storm clouds scudding along over the river to her west. But Wren wasn’t looking for a storm—she still had enough in her to work this particular spell.

  She didn’t have any words ready, and nothing was coming to mind. Neezer had frowned on improvisation, but sometimes you just had to make do.

  Holding her palm open and facing the sky, the smaller of the wand pieces—the tip that had touched the cornerstone—resting on her fingertips, Wren reached inside and pulled out just the thinnest strand of current. It wrapped around the ivory almost without command or direction, wrapping it in a faint pulse of blue-green power.

  All current took a user’s signature; the longer it was held, the deeper the impression went. The wand had touched the cornerstone, which was deeply imprinted not only with the original mage’s power, but the current she had sensed in the ghost itself. So, with any luck, the wand would have retained a hint of that signature. Maybe enough to “tag” the ghost.

  Cosa forensics. She wished now she had been nicer to that cop, Doblosky? Maybe she’d stop by and do some shop talk, some night.

  With her frustration distracted by that thought, the words came to her.

  “Bone within casing

  Bone long removed from its skin

  In sympathy, connect!”

  The glow zizzed at her, then sank into the ivory piece, disappearing…but not dissolving. She could feel it humming if she concentrated, working its way through the atoms that made up the bone, searching for that signature, that connection. When it found it, with luck…well, she didn’t know what would happen, actually. That was the problem with making spells up as you went along. But once the connection was made, she should be able to use the ivory to track the ghost.

  “Should being the operative word.”

  She pocketed the ivory, and forced her shoulders to relax. Their client didn’t want to pay them, the Council was maybe—probably—out for her hide, her partner had been hiding deep dark secrets, she was about to have a late lunch with a guy who was doubtless very very bad for her, and she was pretty sure the reason she’d never dated anyone seriously since she moved into Manhattan was because she was in love with aforementioned secret-keeping partner, who might or might not feel the same way about her.

  “I really do love my life,” she told the pigeon sunning itself on the ledge without the slightest trace of irony. “I really do.”

  Wren had chosen to meet at Marianna’s, thinking that it would be her home territory. But the moment he walked in, it felt more like some weird kind of betrayal. Nobody should be sitting at this table with her except her partner.

  From the way Callie handed them the menus, she wasn’t the
only one to think that.

  “Nice place.” He shook out his napkin, placed it on his lap. Horn-rimmed glasses made him look like a college professor, or a politician playing the academic side.

  “It is. Don’t think about coming here on your own.”

  “No, I think not,” he agreed easily. “Our waitress might poison me.”

  “Probably,” Wren agreed, not even bothering to look at the menu. This guy was hard to dislike. Anyone that smooth, that easy to talk to, Wren didn’t trust on principle. And when you added in what Sergei had said…

  Suddenly, she wanted very much not to be here. Not even for a free meal.

  “My partner doesn’t like you.” Might as well cut to the chase.

  “Is that you meaning me, or you meaning the entire organization?”

  “Yes.”

  Felhim closed his eyes, visibly gathering himself. “I did walk directly into that one,” he admitted. “Are you going to take his dislike for your own, or make up your own mind?”

  Wren snorted. “You really don’t know me well at all, do you? For all your snooping and your spying—oh yeah, I know you’ve been following me, harassing my partner—you don’t have a clue about me, Wren, the person, as opposed to The Wren, lonejack.” She bit at her thumbnail, thinking, then looked directly into his eyes. “Learn this right now, and everything will go a lot smoother. You tried manipulating me via Sergei. It didn’t work. You won’t be able to manipulate him through me, either. We’re partners. So if he doesn’t like you, or your organization, I’m going to assume that there is a good and logical reason to not like you as well.” She saw a faintly surprised look in his eyes. “Neither of us is exactly even-tempered, not when it comes to people trying to headcase us.”

  “We’re all a team now, Genevieve.”

  “Ms. Valere. You don’t get to call me by my birth name until I say otherwise.” Casual acquaintances could call her Jenny. And only family and total strangers got to call her Wren. She waited to make sure he’d gotten it. “As for teamwork…don’t assume. Ever. I haven’t signed on any dotted line yet, and I may not ever. I’m a lonejack, remember? I don’t play well with others.”

  “Your partner excepted.”

  “My partner excepted,” she agreed.

  Seeing he had closed his menu, she gestured Callie over. Andre ordered a salad and the fish. Contrary, Wren decided on the spur of the moment to have the hanger steak. Callie almost dropped her pencil in shock.

  “Never think you know someone,” was all she said as she walked away. Wren was pretty sure Andre had gotten the point.

  “So tell me about the Silence,” she said after Callie had delivered their salads. “Your take on it, not the official PR brochure.”

  “We don’t have any PR,” he said. “We take our name rather seriously.”

  Okay, no real sense of humor about the organization. Noted.

  “Not the official line. You want me to make my own opinion about the Silence? Accept the fact that I’m not impressed by Ideals and tell me what really goes on.”

  He put his fork down and considered her across the table. His skin was slightly mottled over one cheek, she noted; the light played on the faint tracings of lighter skin, as though there had once been markings there.

  “I always feel as though I’m channeling Men in Black when I say this, but…we are the court of last resort. Not only because we’re the only ones who can deal with certain cases…but because oftentimes we’re the only ones who know about it.”

  Pretty much what Sergei had said. And she got the feeling they were both leaving things out, each for their own reasons.

  “Sort of like a multinational Star Chamber, huh?” She sniffed at his surprised look. “Again with the assumptions. Okay, only an Associate degree. But I do read, you know.”

  “I apologize. My surprise was unwarranted.”

  “Damn straight.”

  No need to tell him that Sergei had typed the phrase into a search engine and let her read up on it that night in his apartment. Another difference to keep in mind when she was looking for someone to get mad at. Felhim wanted to woo her over by sheer force of whatever. Sergei wanted her to make up her own mind. Well, mostly.

  “And in response to your question, only in the widest sense.”

  “Yeah. You guys authorize killing. The original Star Chamber didn’t.”

  Not that Sergei had said so much, in so many words. But it made sense.

  And Felhim didn’t deny it.

  Wren supposed that if she had any real delicate sensibility, she would refuse the meal, refuse the deal, and walk out. Do the whole “I may be a thief but I have some standards” routine. She did a systems check, just to make sure there wasn’t anything she was missing. Nope. All quiet on the outrage front. Not that she didn’t disapprove of killing. She did. But she was also very much against getting killed. And if it came down to it, she thought she might have less trouble with being a killer than being dead.

  Besides, she was a thief. Her specialization was in getting in and out without conflict. And it wasn’t as though she’d have a lot of contact with the Silence, beyond getting assignments, right? Sergei dealt with their clients, not her. It was a good business model.

  You’re rationalizing, Sergei’s voice said to her. She could hear the resigned amusement in the tone, see the raised eyebrows, one higher than the other, softening the otherwise severe lines of his face.

  Bite me, she told her hallucinatory partner, and cut into her steak.

  It was, after all, very good food.

  The teakettle was whistling when she opened the door. She’d known, anyway—the moment she started working the locks on the apartment door she’d felt the urge to boil water herself.

  That was probably why she resisted picking up the tea habit herself. Better to know it was him causing it, and not some weird craving of her own.

  But the time delay of opening three different dead bolts gave her a chance to come up with a cover story. Where had she been? What had she been doing? Telling him would only upset him, for no reason. Even if it was a perfectly innocent meal.

  “Have a good meeting?”

  She blinked at him, mouth open.

  “Jorgunmunder told me. He took great pleasure in it, actually.” Sergei pulled at the string of the teabag, watching the water darken as though that was the most important thing on his mind. “He’s so blatantly obvious it almost takes all the fun out of it.”

  Wren remembered to breathe again. She closed the door behind her, reactivating the locks out of habit.

  “Why?”

  “Why is he so obvious? Because he lacks imagination, I think. Or maybe it was beaten out of him as a child.”

  “No. Why…play the games? Lunch, head games…why do they bother? Why isn’t ‘no, go away’ enough for them?”

  “Partially, I think, because that’s the way they operate. Nothing is as on-the-surface as it seems, nothing is as easy as it should be. They operate in the shadows, so they think everyone else does, too. Metaphorically as well as actually, Wren,” he said when she opened her mouth to point out that she did, yeah, work in shadows. “Also…they think I’m going to fight them for you. Make their…acquisition of you difficult.”

  Her temper, kept in check all lunch, flared. “I’m nobody to be acquired!”

  Sergei smiled, sipped his tea. “Just so. And yet, you did go to lunch with Andre.”

  Wren narrowed her eyes at him. “All right, mister. Into the kitchen.” She didn’t wait for his response but brushed by him, going through her arrival ritual—keys in the bowl, bag on the counter, start the coffee machine—only to discover that Sergei had anticipated her.

  “Bless you. I so wanted to get lunch over with I didn’t bother having coffee afterward.”

  “Andre was less than charming?”

  She snorted rudely through her nose. “Andre couldn’t be less than charming if he was nailed in a pine box with a ghoul on his chest.” She dumped sugar into th
e coffee and took a long drink, swallowing with relish. She could swear she felt the caffeine hit her brain like a syringe. Then the weight of recent events dropped back down on her shoulders, and she put the mug down and turned to look at her partner.

  “I don’t want to get mixed up in their games. Not when there’s so much else going on—and stuff I haven’t told you about, either.” He gave her a Look, a cross between curious and disappointed. “I know, and I will. It’s nothing urgent, though. I don’t think. Just…making it difficult to focus. Damn it, we need to get this job dealt with and done before anything else.” She ran one hand through her hair, tugging at a snarl she found near the end, then muttered a curse as she felt the hairs break and give way. She really should have braided it. “They’re not going to go away, are they? The Silence, I mean. They’re just going to stand there and push and push and push….”

  Sergei must have heard the despairing tone in her voice, because he put his own mug down on the counter and reached for both of her hands, holding them between his and looking her intently in the eyes.

  “They will give up. Eventually. We just have to…hold firm against them. I’ve told them no for so many years now—the two of us should be able to shut them down once and for all.”

  He sounded less than convinced, or convincing, but Wren couldn’t work up the energy to challenge him on it. Easier to pretend. “Damn straight. And you should have thought of that before you kept secrets. Damn it, Sergei…” She pulled her hands free, paced around the confines of the kitchen, which took her all of five steps. She ended up facing her partner again, who stood so still she could tell that he was keeping himself on tight rein, not wanting to say or do the wrong thing.

  “God, we so don’t have time for this right now.” Too much else going on, things maybe she really did need to tell Sergei about. She slid her hand back into his, this time lacing their fingers together and pulling him in close. When he was within satisfactory range, she reached up to touch the end of his aquiline nose with the tip of the index finger of her other hand. “I know what you’re scared of, partner. And so do they. So listen up, and listen good. You’re mine, stupid actions and overprotectiveness and the entire deal. What you said the other night…it goes for this end too, okay? You’re stuck with me, got it? So they can go as big bad wolf as they want and it won’t do them any good. Right?”