Staying Dead

by Laura Anne Gilman

  He swallowed hard, his gaze meeting hers like a physical impact. “Right.”

  “Right,” she echoed softly. Okay, breathe, Valere. Breathe! And then let go of fingers, let go of partner, step away…and breathe!

  But she couldn’t seem to let go of his hand. It was too warm, too firm, too…right. And the look in his eyes was making promises she hadn’t heard…or given…yet.

  “So,” he said finally, an ironic, self-aware, self-mocking smile turning his lips at the corners. “Did you make any headway on figuring out how to force the ghost back into the stone?”

  “Yeah.” Speaking seemed to release her muscles; she slid her fingers out from his and took a step back, turning to reclaim her now-cooled coffee. “Lemme show you.”

  She led the way back to the office. It was the same as it ever had been. The same as it was just a day before, a week before.

  And it wasn’t. At all.

  Wren wasn’t sure she liked this new awareness; the feel of him a step behind her, the same emotional sense of him, but now coupled with a physical location. She’d always thought of him as a man, as an attractive man, as, hell yes as a sexy man.

  But now he was…

  Hers.

  She thought about that for a while, as she sat down in front of the computer, and smiled, an expression disturbingly similar to the one on Sergei’s face earlier.

  Yeah. She could live with that.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. It all depends on how they actually got him into the cornerstone in the first place. If he was willing or not, I mean. Also how they actually did it, but intent is really key.”

  Sergei leaned over her to look at the screen, his hand on the back of her chair. A part of her brain noticed, but the rest was focused on what she was explaining to him.

  Partners, she thought. First and foremost. Anything else—if there really was anything else—is gonna have to wait.

  nineteen

  The last of the rain had moved out into the ocean overnight. Wren woke to discover that Sergei had, at some point, carried her to bed. She had a vague memory of his hands pulling off her jeans, tucking her into bed. “Sleep, my wren,” he had said before turning out the light and closing the door behind him. She thought. That part might have been a dream, right?

  She also discovered that he had left all of her windows wide open in order to catch the breeze. Normally she’d like that. But the air was surprisingly cool, as she discovered to her shock when she pushed the covers away.

  “Great. Thanks heaps, partner,” she grumbled as she moved through the apartment, shutting and locking the windows. Clad only in a pair of cutoff gray sweatpants and a boxy pink T-shirt, she used the back of her hand to cover a yawn, then continued grousing. “What, you think some kind of honor code’s gonna keep me from getting ripped off? Not a chance of tha—aiie!” She jumped back when a large, furry white arm reached in to prevent her from closing the kitchen window. “Jesus, P.B., you scared the hell out of me. What the hell are you—Oh, God. Get in here!”

  She helped the demon crawl through the window with none of his usual energy. The fur on his left side was filthy and matted with blood, and he stood as though something in his gut hurt.

  “I was waiting for tall dark and prissy to leave, and I guess I kinda passed out,” he said, sitting gingerly in the nearest chair. “Didn’t want to deal with the disapproving stare thing. Not today.”

  Wren was already busy, wetting a dish towel with warm water and wringing it out. Sitting on the table in front of P.B., she wiped carefully at the worst of the muck around his eyes. She ignored his usual slam at her partner, having heard Sergei call P.B. much worse over the years. Some males just couldn’t get along. “What trouble did you get yourself into this time?”

  “Crazy vigilantes,” he muttered, not moving under her ministrations, even when she hit a particularly sore spot. “I think you’re right, Wren. Council’s not involved in this. Or if they are, it’s way deep, so these guys don’t know they’re being played.” He shivered. “Too nasty, they’d think the Council all sons of the devil, too. And not the way we usually mean it, either. They were screaming all sorts of weird shit, slogans, like they were having a rally. Mostly folk were ignoring ’em…. Then one of them spotted me over by Eighth Avenue, minding my own damn business. Decided I’d make good doggie treats.”

  “You hadn’t heard Eighth Avenue wasn’t safe anymore?” Wren said in disgust, using her fingers to comb through the fur and make sure the cut underneath was clean as well.

  “I heard, yeah. But this is my city too, isn’t it? Aren’t I as much a New Yorker as they are?”

  “They’re crazy, P.B. I don’t think they get the whole demons-have-rights-too gig.” They’d taken out an angel, tried to seriously damage an adult leshiy. And now they had attacked P.B., who looked pretty damn fearsome when he wanted to. They were escalating. And based on the comments the member had made during their fight, she wasn’t confident that they were going to stop with the fatae members of the Cosa.

  “Hey!”

  “Sorry.” She took the towel away and inspected his face again. “Okay, turn.”

  P.B. obligingly turned in his seat, allowing her access to his side.

  “Looks like you took a slide in a gravel patch,” she said. “I’m assuming the dog looks worse?” She shook her head violently when he grinned evilly, showing all his teeth. “No, never mind, don’t want to know. It wasn’t the dog’s fault, you know.”

  “You’d feel better if I ate the human?”

  “I said I didn’t want to know!” she yelled. “And yes.”

  “I’ll remember that next time. Speaking of which, do you know you’ve got a shadow on the house?”

  “What?” She handed him the towel, now almost saturated, and stalked to the window to lean out.

  “You can’t see him from here.”

  Wren pulled back into the window, her momentary ire fading into a calmer consideration. A shadow was a stalker, a watcher, not someone who made direct overtures. But he would be reporting back to someone…. Before recent events, Wren would have just shrugged and ignored it. Before, it had been her and Sergei against whatever situation they were working on, and they could handle whatever came up between the two of them. Now…they could still handle anything that came up, but it was way more complicated, and that was making her a little jumpier than usual. “Pro?”

  Might be Silence, still. They’d been the ones giving her the creeps, according to Sergei. Might even have been behind the tag attempt, if they had Talent on the payroll, although she still liked the Council for that. Besides, Sergei had said most of the Talent they recruited was low-level. And anyway, if it was them, why would they be lurking so obviously now, when they were all out in the open and reasonably aboveboard?

  “Yeah, he’s too good to be an amateur—but not Cosa, not the way he’s fidgeting. Flatfoot, would be my guess.”

  “A cop? Oh hell.” Wren threw her hands up in the air in a perfect mimicry of Sergei at his most indignant. “What have I done to piss off the cops lately?” That would be all she needed, for the city’s Finest to finally start putting two and two together and coming up with 3.5. Unless it was whatsisname, Doblosky…no, he’d let her know if he had some reason to be lurking. Right? I mean, after giving her the warning and all.

  “Not asking, don’t tell,” P.B. said, getting up stiffly to run the towel under more water to rinse it out. “You got any aspirin?”

  “Yeah. I’ll go get it.” She left him dabbing at his side and muttering about stringy terriers, and went into the bathroom. Opening the old-fashioned medicine cabinet, she shook out two aspirin into her palm, then reconsidered and took the whole bottle with her. “Here,” she said, going back into the kitchen and tossing him the bottle. He caught it in one clawed hand and flicked open the childproof container without effort, shaking half a dozen tablets into his palm and dry swallowing them.

  “So tell me about this shadow,” she said, reseating h
erself on the table and letting her legs dangle, feet several inches off the floor.

  “Nothing to tell. Saw him while I was trying to get up the fire escape—and did it never occur to you to live somewhere with an elevator? Anyway, he ignored me when we passed on the street, even though I know for a fact he saw me, then did a start when I got to your window, so it’s definitely you he’s looking for. Unless you-know-who’s got someone’s panties in a twist.”

  Wren considered it for about half a second. Sergei had said that the Silence was pissed at him, too—the thought that he might be in danger made her stomach seize up for an instant, then she started thinking again. The Silence knew where to find Sergei if they wanted to. And, despite her partner’s words last night about their motives, she didn’t think they would hurt him to get her cooperation. They didn’t seem that dumb, not even Jorgunmunder. And certainly not after her little conversation with Andre over lunch. “Possible, but unlikely.”

  “Job-related?”

  She had already considered that. “Also unlikely. Client’s probably not happy with us right now, but he knows we’re still on the case, so I doubt he’d go to the expense of shadowing me personally. Besides, if he did, he’d never be able to get another Talent to work for him ever again, and he strikes me as somebody who is right now way dependent on what we can give him.”

  “Which leaves us with the cops,” P.B. said. “Fine. That’s your problem, not mine.”

  “A cop who saw you and didn’t react?” Talents on the force were notoriously even more bigoted than Sergei when it came to the fatae, and especially demons.

  P.B. looked like he would have shrugged, if he didn’t think it would hurt so much. His black eyes twinkled, and Wren was reminded suddenly of the abominable snow monster from those old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer cartoons. She shuddered to get rid of the image. “Cops are the least of my problems.”

  He dropped the now-filthy towel into the sink, and went to her fridge, clawed paw sorting through the contents with a depressing familiarity. “Do you ever go food shopping?”

  “Don’t you start,” she told him. Going back to the window, she rested her palms on the sill and felt the morning air against her skin. Despite her words to the demon, she wasn’t so sure her client hadn’t set the shadow after all. He had a very good reason, one she had been too crazed and emotionally off-kilter to think of before. The ghost had been inside the cornerstone. And, more importantly, the client had known that. Which meant that the client was—in all likelihood—an accessory way after the fact to murder.

  Okay, so that wasn’t anything you could prove in court, not after this long. And she wasn’t about to go to the legal system anyway. But it was enough to make any cautious man nervous. And from what Sergei had said, their client was nothing if not cautious.

  And if a mage had done the original spell under specific Council orders… Thinking hard, she was reaching up to shut the window when something burned the side of her neck. She flashed back to the summer she had disturbed a hornet’s nest under the eaves of her grandmother’s house. It had been one of the few visits they had made, her grandmother a stern old woman who disapproved of her daughter’s lifestyle choices, not the least of which were centered on the little girl whose father she refused to name. Wren had been sent outdoors to play while the two women argued. She had climbed up the drainpipe—even then, she had been agile and stupid—and discovered the hard way that stings can hurt.

  This didn’t hurt anywhere near as bad. But the second sting, sharp to her upper arm, did.

  Then P.B. was on top of her, the damp, bloody smell of his fur gagging her.

  “Shut up!” he snarled in the vicinity of her ear when she protested. He was shaking, she realized. And that fact was enough to quiet her down immediately. Unable to move, her brain clicked into fast-forward. Someone shot at me, she realized. Damn it, someone shot me!

  Out of habit, Sergei checked the street outside Wren’s apartment building, scanning the sidewalks and stoops casually. Nothing triggered his warning system; the usual number of kids were hanging around, the same shopkeepers leaning in doorways watching foot traffic going by, the usual sounds of traffic and slams of doors. But something was off. A sound, or a lack of sound, a smell, or a feel…whatever it was, it made him want to break into a run. Instead, he forced himself to walk at his usual stride, neither slowing nor hurrying. His left hand slipped into his coat pocket, touching the reassuring weight hooked to his belt through a carefully-sewn slit in the fabric. Damn Wren’s phobias. The Sig-Sauer looked like a toy, and practically disappeared in his palm—but when a situation got ugly, you generally didn’t need a howitzer to do the cleanup. Small and deadly was the trick.

  He forced his shoulders to relax. It might be nothing. It could be anything. Wren wasn’t the only person to live on this block, by a long shot. He could name half a dozen residents of that building who could be in trouble at any given time, either with the police, or a less uniformed organization. Taking the three steps of the stoop one at a time, he unlocked the exterior door and headed for the staircase. Even without his daily regimen at the gym, the walk up to his partner’s apartment would keep him in shape, he thought. They were narrow, but surprisingly well-lit, so he didn’t complain. Good footing on the treads, combined with visibility, made for a staircase he could live with.

  Two feet from the door to her apartment, he could hear the muffled swearing. His hackles rose, even as the tension reduced further. Whatever was wrong had already happened, the threat either gone or neutralized. The pistol was in his hand when he opened the door anyway.

  Blood was splashed all over the kitchen floor, although someone had made a halfhearted attempt to mop it up. A scuffle of footprints, then a disgusting-looking towel and Wren’s sneakers in a pile by the kitchen doorway. He followed the noises to the bathroom. From the sounds, he could pretty well guess what he was going to find inside.

  The sight that greeted him confirmed his pessimistic guess: Wren was sitting on the toilet, shirt off, wrapping a gauze bandage around her arm. His entire body tensed again, the anxiety level skyrocketing until he saw that she was clearly more annoyed than injured.

  “Do I want to know?” he asked as gently as he could. “Or is this one of those things where I’d be happier not asking?”

  She snarled at him, not looking up from the mess she was making of the gauze and tape. Blood loss apparently made her testy. He took both materials from her, unwinding what she had already done in order to get a good look at the damage. Expecting a slice, or at worst a burn, his expression hardened at the sight of the ragged flesh torn away from her triceps. Someone had treated the wound with less than surgical precision, tearing her arm up further in the process. There’d be no way to avoid scarring. But a hospital was out of the question—they’d recognize a gunshot wound as easily as he had, and then there would be questions Wren wouldn’t be able to answer.

  He touched one long red scrape on the side of her arm, leading to the wound, and she hissed in pain. He’d seen marks like that once before. A sniper’s weapon. Neat, precise: not deadly unless used by a marksman. So was this meant to be deadly…or a warning?

  “P.B.?” His voice was flat, cold. Being fair, the demon had done as good a job as possible, considering—the site looked clean, and any germs he might have been carrying on his claws wouldn’t take in a human; that much even he knew. But that didn’t mean Sergei had to like the thought of the ugly little fur-face using those claws on Wren, even in a good cause. She nodded, and he moved on to the next logical question. “Shooter?”

  “Gone. P.B. spotted a shadow, I made like a moron and went to look. Less shadow, more assassin. Who’d want to kill me?” She was pissed, you could hear it in her voice. Pissed, but curious. And more than a little angry. “If it was our so-called client, I swear, I’m going to find that ghost and ram it down his murdering little throat, and client privilege be damned.”

  Despite the cold anger that was growing in his own g
ut, Sergei chuckled. That was his Wren; business was business, but make it personal and she wouldn’t ever let it go. Unfortunately, he was going to have to put the kibosh on that. Unfortunately, because the more he learned about the entire situation, and their client specifically, the more he was inclined to agree with her intention. Even if it was shockingly bad business.

  “I don’t think it was the client,” he told her, cutting fresh gauze from the roll and expertly winding it over the injury site, putting just the right amount of pressure to keep it from bleeding again, while still allowing it access to fresh air. “Not if it had anything to do with the stone or the ghost. Our client wants the ghost returned to the stone, right? Can’t do that if you’re—” He hesitated, unable to say the word.

  “Dead?”

  He swallowed hard. “Right. Anyway, no point offing his best hope of that.” His voice was shaking, and he could feel her eyes on his face as he focused on making sure the bandage fit perfectly.

  “Yeah, my thought, too. Frants may be many things but I’m thinking he’s not dumb. Or at least his people aren’t. They might hire someone to off me, if they really were pissed at my screwing up the retrieval, but they couldn’t risk alienating every other lonejack around. And word would get out; it always does.” Wren took pity on her partner, looking away while she tested the bandage by moving her arm carefully. She was the one who got shot, and he was the one who was freaking out. Love was strange. “And the Silence wants me alive, if leashed. No, it feels right, this being related to the job. What if there’s someone else—a competitor, maybe, like we thought originally might have done the grab—who doesn’t want that restoration to take place?”