Staying Dead

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “That was my next thought too, yeah. Someone who has an ax to grind against Frants, who might have pointed our original thief to the cornerstone in the first place?” He cut a piece of tape off, and secured the bandage. “Do you still have that sling around here?”

  “I hate wearing that,” she complained. “I feel like a cripple.”

  “You’re not going to be doing any work until that heals,” he told her. “So deal with it.”

  She grumbled, but indicated the storage area under the sink. He opened the door and rummaged past boxes of tampons and unopened bottles of mouthwash and shampoo until he found the triangle of mesh and cloth, and had her arm adjusted to his satisfaction within it. Then he escorted her to the kitchen, and set about boiling water for tea.

  “I don’t want any,” she told him petulantly.

  “Tough. You’re not Bogey, you’re not going to drown the pain with booze.”

  “Spoilsport,” she said in accusation.

  “Guilty as charged. There’s more, which is why I think something hinky is going on with the situation. Prevost’s dead.”

  That stopped her mid-complaint. “How?”

  “A rather pretty slash across the throat, followed by arson to take care of the house itself. Since several items were noted to be missing from displays in the rubble, based on the display stands still intact, the local police are assuming that the thief killed him, then set the fire to cover his tracks.”

  Wren muttered something unpleasant under her breath that he pretended not to hear. “Theft and arson…you think the client—I’m being set up for murder?” Fire would destroy magical traces better than anything except being dropped to the bottom of an ocean for a hundred years or so. Current came from nature, and so nature took it back into herself.

  Sergei shook his head. “If so, he still wouldn’t have a reason to kill you—he’d want you alive to take the fall.”

  “Yeah, unless it’s still two different players? Damn! No, then they’d kill me, so I couldn’t go to trial. The ghost remains at large, Frants is left to swing in the breeze, unprotected, and nobody ever gets called to account for anything. Y’know, between this, your Silence…teaching school’s starting to sound like a better career choice all the time.”

  He started to pace, two steps into the kitchen, turn, another three to take him into the hallway, then back again. She watched him move, fascinated enough that the pain in her arm began to recede. They really had taken on each other’s habits. That was scary. “It’s too messy,” he said as he paused in front of her. “Too many strings and unknown players. Murder’s usually much simpler than all this. Passion, greed…”

  “I had been thinking…could it be that Frants has just decided that the sooner everyone who knows about the murder which caused the ghost is silenced, the safer he will be?”

  “The client wasn’t even born when the ghost died,” he reminded her. “He can’t be held responsible, can he?”

  Wren tried to shrug, then winced as the pain came back with a sharp blast to her shoulder. “Legally? None of this holds up legally. But I don’t think the ghost, for one, much cares,” she said, jumping a little when the kettle began to whistle. Another wince.

  Sergei got two oversized mugs down out of the cabinet, two herbal teabags from the jar on the counter, and poured the water with the concentration of a sommelier at a four-star restaurant. He’d rather have had caffeine, but that was the last thing either of them needed right now. His brain already felt as if it was vibrating at too high a speed.

  “And you know damn well the cops won’t care,” she continued. “But there was murder committed, in his grandfather’s name, if not his. It’s not exactly habeas corpus, but the rumors are more dangerous to a businessman than an NYPD investigation. Especially a businessman who has traffic with the Cosa.”

  Since he was the one who had taught her that, back in the early days of their working arrangement, he couldn’t argue the point. Handing her one mug, he got the sugar out and carefully measured three teaspoons into his cup, stirring until it was mixed to his satisfaction.

  Her mug was white, with small red paw prints along the side. A Cheshire grin stared back at you when the cup was empty. His mug was blue, with the Chinese symbols for warmth and comfort stamped in white on the surface. An entire cupboard filled with mugs, and not one of them matched. And, he suspected, not one of them actually legally purchased. He wondered what she had thought of the black jasper Wedgwood china in his kitchen. Probably thought you were gay, he thought glumly.

  “Wait a minute.”

  Sergei looked up, and could almost hear the pieces falling together in her brain, like locks clicking. “Yeah?”

  “You said only some pieces were taken?”

  Sergei nodded.

  Wren blinked. Then blinked again, her normally pink-flushed skin taking on a ruddier tint with anger. “Figures. Betcha I know which ones, too. Bastards!”

  Wren slammed her mug down on the table, causing the tea to slosh over the sides unheeded. She stood, pushing the chair back with too much force, her entire body an expressive declaration of disgust. “We’ve been played.”

  “What?” Sergei was pretty sure he had heard her correctly, but he wanted to be sure.

  “It wasn’t the client,” she repeated, enunciating clearly. “All of this—the theft, my being hired—it was the Council. They want me to think it was Frants, setting him up to take the fall for everything. Bastards are cleaning up their own mess—and I’m the damned mop.”

  She went on to tell him the gossip, everything from the rumors on the street, the Council’s increasing paranoia, to P.B.’s comments about the fatae maybe finally having had enough.

  “Even their meeting with you—they were setting the stage. Giving us enough rope to hang us and Frants.

  “They did the original spell—or one of their own did, which makes it Council business even if they didn’t authorize it beforehand. They might have balked at ritual murder, at least officially. But what’s done was done, until Prevost started sniffing around. I’ll lay good money they pushed him toward the cornerstone. Maybe they just meant to leave Frants vulnerable; sort of a payback for putting them in that position in the first place. Council’s big on eye for an eye. Everything else—him hiring us, the ghost actually escaping—could have been taking advantage of the situation. But if the retrieval failed, Frants was left open to attack, my reputation is damaged so I’m less of a perceived threat to them, and hey, maybe the ghost and I will take each other out in the meanwhile. And the Council sits there and washes their hands clean.”

  Sergei considered that as he took a sip of his own tea, almost but not quite too hot to drink still. She had a good theory. A damned disturbing good theory. “So what do you want to do about it?” he asked her, taking a seat on one of the chairs and looking up at her, one brow raised in the manner he knew drove her crazy, because she couldn’t do it. At this point, you took whatever release valve you could.

  “What do I want to do? I want to find that damn ghost, and squeeze it back into its box so we can get paid.” He could almost hear the “duh” in her voice, though she refrained from actually saying it. “And I want the Council to know it’s been done and that I know what they were trying to do, even if I have to take out a damn ad in the trades to do it. Let them chew on that, for a little bit. Make ’em wonder if maybe lonejacks aren’t the second-class Talents they’ve always claimed. And then let them stew about maybe I’m going to go after them next. Money is money, but when you shoot at me, it gets personal.”

  “Nice plan. How realistic is it?”

  “Not very,” she admitted, deflating a little. “But it’s good to have goals.”

  She took a sip of her own tea, then put it down and reached for the sugar canister, dumping in a heaping teaspoonful of the sweetener. He was pleased to see that she managed the maneuver without the slightest hint of awkwardness. She had been training herself to be ambidextrous ever since she fractured he
r right thumb during a Frisbee game in the park last summer, but he’d had his doubts as to its effectiveness. She still wouldn’t be up to picking locks any time soon, though. Or climbing over walls.

  “But we do have to take care of that damned ghost, one way or another,” she said, breaking in to his thoughts. “So where the hell is it? I put a catch-spell on it, but I have no idea if it will work. And I think it would require the ghost to manifest, the way it did when I first saw it, to trigger the spell. Which, who knows if it will do?” She put the mug down, adjusting the sling to rest a little more comfortably. “Any luck turning up potential spook gathering places?”

  “Actually, yes. Considering the fact that ghosts seem to be the second most widely ignored topic next to the whereabouts of Jim Morrison among the so-called magical intelligentsia—”

  Wren snorted. “I keep telling you, he got himself sucked into a tornado being too wizzed to come out of the wind.”

  “—regardless,” he went on, “a contact of mine came through with some interesting information. Ghosts are tied to this plane by one of three things. Unfinished business, ties of strong personal emotion—a loved one or thing—and a nasty little curse that doesn’t seem to be the case here, as it was able to actually leave the stone once it was cracked open.”

  “Great. A lot of help if we knew who it was when it was at home. Failing that, let’s go with unfinished business.” Putting the mug down, she chewed on the thumbnail of her left hand. “Almost everything we’ve learned about ghosts is alleged and hypothetical. Fine. Allegedly, a hypothetical ghost would appear at the place where he was killed, not where he was buried. But our ghost was tied to the cornerstone by his death, yes?”

  Sergei nodded slowly, thinking along with her.

  “I’d been assuming they did a ritual interment, maybe some bones, some blood. But what are the odds that our boy was killed on-site, as it were, rather than being brought there for disposal?”

  “Before the foundation was laid, allowing his killer easy access to a place to dump the body? You’d know more about the specifics of spell-casting than I would, but I’d say it was probably pretty likely.”

  Wren spat out a bit of fingernail, looked at her thumb, then went back to chewing on it. “Or it all might just have been a crime of passion. Y’know, see person you hate, bonk ’em over the head, toss the body into a specially prepared block—the world’s most grotesque time capsule, never meant to be opened. If—”

  “If it weren’t for the spell,” Sergei finished for her.

  “Right. That’s one thing that’s not hypothetical. Again constructing out of maybes and what-ifs, but from what we’ve found out it sounds like blood magic is nasty and unpredictable, but if it works it’s a surefire way of making something last. Hollow out a receptacle, cold-cock the victim, create the spell, seal it to freshly-spilled blood and use the power released in the instant of actual death…Quik-Crete for a spell of intent. And if the person killed had some kind of connection…” She raised her face to look at him, at the same moment he stopped, mug halfway to his mouth, to look down at her. Sergei didn’t have a shred of magic to him, but he could have read her mind at that moment. Without another word, he got up and headed to the office, Wren half a step behind him.

  “1953, 4…when the hell was—”

  “1955,” she supplied, pulling the number from the file he had sent her a little over a week ago. “Damn. You think there’ll be anything archived from there?”

  “Not obits, no. But we’re not going to look for the obits.” He sat down at the computer and logged on to the Internet, long, capable fingers moving over the keyboard like Mozart on speed.

  “Please tell me you’re not hacking into the NYPD records again?”

  “All right,” he said agreeably.

  “All right, you won’t, or all right, you won’t tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  Wren grinned. Their definition of “law-abiding” was remarkably flexible, she thought, not for the first time. If you looked at it too closely, it would probably make you froth at the mouth. Her mother would be horrified.

  “Oh, hell.”

  “What?”

  “I forgot to call my mom. You keep doing whatever it is you’re not doing. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  Wren went into the bedroom, where the other phone line ran, sat down on the bed, and prepared herself mentally for talking to her mother. Deep breaths. In…out. Don’t mention the gunshot. Don’t mention the storm. Don’t mention…

  The list was too long. She loved her mother dearly, but it seemed as though they were always walking across a minefield with each other. A minefield someone else planted, at that.

  Letting out a last breath, she picked up the phone, held it awkwardly with her left shoulder and dialed. “Mom? Hi! Yeah, I know, I’m sorry—Sergei had me working on a project for him, and you know how he gets. I know, he’s a horrible slave driver, and in no way deserves me.” Wren leaned against the headboard, adjusting her arm in the sling more comfortably against her body. “No, same kind of thing. Someone wanted to authenticate a piece of sculpture.”

  Well…it wasn’t exactly untrue…. Margot Valere knew what her daughter was—tough not to, considering the way her talent manifested when she was a kid, in the middle of a screaming mother-daughter fight. And Neezer had insisted on honesty; the teacher-student relationship raised enough eyebrows, when the student was a teenaged female. But her mother pointedly chose not to know what Wren did with that talent. As far as her mom was concerned, Wren was a researcher and general dogsbody for Sergei, who was merely an eccentric but well-off gallery owner.

  Everyone was happier that way.

  When she came out of the bedroom ten minutes later, the only thing on her mind was hitting the kitchen for something sweet. P.B. had made her drink half a gallon of orange juice before he left, but the post-stress munchies were hitting hard, and she was craving Oreos. Preferably dunked in chocolate milk.

  Sergei was on his cell phone, speaking urgently in a language once again Wren didn’t recognize. It wasn’t Russian—she’d heard enough over the years to recognize that, nor was it Spanish, German or French. She thought. More guttural, for one thing—a little like German, if it were spoken by trolls. Another damned language in his damned repertoire. If she didn’t love him so much she’d—and backtrack that thought. Hold it for later. Way later.

  He saw her, and made an urgent gesture that translated into “stay where you are, don’t move.” She obediently stood still, leaning against the wall and watching him pace in the limited space. Even on her grumpiest days she had to admit he was nice to look at. And today, his jacket off, shirt rumpled and a little bloodstained, hair sticking up in the front where he’d obviously been running his fingers through it—okay, was it weird that she thought that was sexy?

  Yeah, probably, she decided. Blood loss, Valere. Blood loss and stress.

  And also nice the fact that he liked her mom. Not that it mattered or anything, but it was nice. As long as she was going to indulge in a little blood-loss thinking. Odd, though. In the decade they’d been working together, she’d never heard him mention a significant other, or any family other than the mother who had died when he was in college, and a father who stayed behind in Russia to make sure they got out.

  Okay, fair enough, she didn’t as a rule share with him much of what went on in her life outside the job, either, but…suddenly, she wanted to know. Wanted to share. She had almost died today, might have if P.B. hadn’t been there, and then all the stuff that had been kicking around between them would have been…

  Nothing.

  It was all the ghost’s fault, she decided, a little freaked by the direction her thoughts were going in. She was thinking about dying, and hereafters, and things she had no business contemplating. Here and now, that was always their motto. Focus on the moment. In fact—

  Something stung against her leg and she yelped. Slapping at her pocket with her bad arm, and then yelping a
gain as she remembered why it was in a sling.

  “Bloody be-damned stupid…” She managed to dig into her pocket and pulled out the ivory talisman, which was glowing a deep ugly red, and stinging her skin like a handful of nettles. She held on to it through sheer willpower, trying to focus on anything it might be able to tell her.

  “Where are you?” she asked it.

  “There’s a disturbance in the Frants building.”

  Distracted, Wren looked up, almost dropping the talisman. “What?”

  “That call was one of the cleaning staff. I left a sizable request for information, if anything happened. Cleaning staff’s usually the best source for information, and they work cheap.”

  “And?” The talisman was pulsing now, and she could feel it doing…something. Could the two be related? How could they not?

  “Loud thuds, screams and a broken window, but nobody can get onto the executive floor to check it out. According to the log-in sheet, the only ones there are Frants and three of his bodyguards, a security guard who was doing rounds, and one of his top-level executives.”

  Wren swore. “There’s no way in hell I can get there in time, if it is the ghost—damn, damn damn!” She kicked the talisman in frustration. “Right. Stand back.”

  “What are you going to do?” She ignored him, getting a piece of chalk from the office and drawing a small square on the floor in the middle of the hallway. “Genevieve?”

  “I’m going to transloc, okay? I don’t have any choice.” She put the chalk aside, wiped her hands, then went around the apartment turning on all of the lamps and overhead lights. Sergei had never really noted before how many light sources she had.

  “I’m glad I had a chance to recharge,” she said, almost to herself. “This sucks major stores enough on its own, I don’t want to have to do it running on empty.”

  Sergei wanted to argue, but couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t sound both stupid and overprotective. Translocation was not a talent Wren could manage well; transporting oneself was the simplest use of it, and about all she could do, and that only with risks, so there was no point in demanding to go with her—he’d have to take normal routes, and arrive long after he could have been any help.