Staying Dead

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Lessee. Saved her, saved the client, at least for a couple more years, laid an unquiet spirit to rest for a while longer, anyway. Oh, and earned us the last of that damned fee ’cause Jamie’s back in the cornerstone. Don’t forget that. No way Frants is gonna weasel out of paying us now, no matter what deals were made.”

  She had no idea, now, how she was going to realistically enforce that, but she would do her best. Jamie deserved that much from her, at least. Nobody else alive knew him. Nobody else, really, would care.

  “A gentleman to the last,” she said, and Sergei stared at her, the look on his face almost amusing in its concern. She must sound as though she were babbling, probably incoherent, hallucinating. Maybe she was.

  I promise, Jamie. I promise. Nobody’s going to screw you over again.

  Another security-type was standing by the elevator bank, talking into his walkie-talkie, and a woman in a severely tailored suit was stalking down the hallway toward them, taking notes.

  Of course, she had also in effect sentenced a man to death (however deserved), and probably set herself up for the Council’s extreme wrath (even more than rumor claimed). Those facts didn’t bother her too much, even though she knew they should be giving her the screaming meemies. She wasn’t feeling much of anything, actually. Brain, like body, was numb. Very odd.

  You’re drained. Stupid, stupid girl. Neezer’s voice? No, Max. You can’t afford to get that drained, girly. Not anymore. Not with the enemies you’ve been making.

  Sergei must have seen something in her expression, because he drew her in close, his arms heavy around her shoulders.

  “It’s all right, Genevieve,” he murmured. “It’s all right.” Wren turned her face into his chest, and closed her eyes with a sigh. It wasn’t all right. Not by a long shot. But for a moment, just a moment, she could pretend it was. That the case was wrapped up with neat little ribbons, and nothing waited for her outside this embrace but the usual sleep-for-two-days aftermath.

  The warmth of his embrace made her begin to feel human again, his natural energy leaching into hers. Just a little. Just enough.

  Just enough for all the hurt to come flooding back into her system.

  “Take me home,” she said.

  They took a cab back to her apartment, Wren tucked into the crook of his arm the entire time. He could feel her shivering slightly, despite the day’s warmth, and he pulled her closer, trying to share as much of his own warmth as he could. Her skin was too pale, and there was a faint sheen of sweat on her face, as though she was running a fever, but her skin felt cool to the touch. In all the years he’d known her, she’d never even had a cold.

  “It’s depletion,” she said, so soft he could barely hear her. “I’ll be okay once I’ve rested.” He ended up having to carry her up the stairs, almost dropping her when a shadow rose to meet them at the fifth landing.

  “She’s okay?”

  “Yeah. Just worn out.” For the first time he looked P.B. in the eyes and saw only concern there. “Get the door for me, okay? Keys are in my pocket.” The clawed hand felt odd, brushing against his jacket, but the emon had the keys out quickly, racing up the last flight of stairs to turn the locks and open the door so he could carry Wren in without stopping, going directly into Wren’s bedroom. P.B. turned the covers down, and Sergei laid her onto the sheets.

  “Bunch of worrywarts,” she said sleepily, her eyes barely open.

  “That’s us, yeah.” P.B. sat on the edge of the bed while Sergei stripped off her shoes and socks. “Word’s out on the street, Wren. Everyone’s talking. Rumor says Council’s shitting bricks. Nice going.”

  Sergei frowned at that news, but Wren waved a lazy hand in the air as though to say it was nothing. “Gotta sleep now,” she told them. “Sleeeeeeeep and I’ll be fine. Promise. Go’way.”

  Her partner nodded, pulling the cover up to her chin. She grabbed his hand, tugging him down closer, then slid her hand up to the back of his neck, managing even in her exhaustion to find his lips with her own.

  It wasn’t a graceful poetic first kiss, but there were sparks. Literally. Wren’s eyes opened wide again, and she smiled sleepily up at her astonished partner. “Gonna haff ta talk about tha, too.”

  “Later,” he promised, echoing her own words. “Sleep, Wrenlet.”

  Sergei—gently—kicked P.B. out of the apartment, and went about brewing a mug of tea. He picked the largest mug in the cabinet, rinsed it with warm water, and then pulled the tea ball out of the sink and filled it with the loose tea she kept in a tin on the counter. While the water boiled, he sat at the kitchen table and fiddled with the spoon, dipping it into the sugar bowl and stirring the white granules around. He pulled his cigarette case out of his inside jacket pocket, looked at it, then put it away.

  The case was over, for the most part. But all that meant to him was that there was time to worry about everything else. The things they had put off. The things he couldn’t avoid thinking about any longer.

  His Wren had made powerful enemies with this case. Too many people knew that the Council had a hand in what went down, with the death of the architect and recent events alike, even if they didn’t know the why or how. Reputations were at stake, and he didn’t think they would be willing to let bygones be bygones. Especially not if what she said about the split in the Cosa between Talents and fatae were true.

  And, he admitted it, the attack on her life was still making him see red. Which was another problem. Things had changed. Not for the worse…he didn’t think. But definitely changed. And they were going to have to deal with that, too.

  He picked up the cream-colored business card on the table in front of him, turning it between his fingers for a long moment, then tucked it back into his pocket.

  Deals. Deals were what he knew how to do.

  twenty-two

  Two days later, Wren had finally regained enough strength to demand to be let out of her apartment.

  “No.”

  When raising enough current to throw a steady stream of paperback books at Sergei’s head left her limp and exhausted, they compromised. She could get out of bed and sit in the music room, and maybe, if she was able to handle that, they’d go for ice cream.

  “Tyrant,” she complained. But since she said it while he was making her breakfast, he just smiled and told her to drink her orange juice.

  Three days later, Lee and his wife Miriam had stopped by to see her, filling the two of them in on the latest gossip. The Council had apparently agreed to talk to fatae leaders, and they were off somewhere unknown, holding conversations.

  “It’s not going to come to anything,” Lee said. “But it’s keeping anything else from happening, too. And while the Council’s occupied with that they’re off our backs as well.”

  “I give them a month,” Wren said, using her spoon for emphasis, the container of yogurt half-eaten and forgotten. “A month of yelling and sulking and denying everything, and everything’s back to normal.”

  Sergei hoped so. But he wasn’t counting on it.

  She still had nightmares. Of Jamie, his face staved in, falling forward into the wet cement prison. Of Frants, groveling for his life as she held him at the chopping block. Or Barbie Doll, eyes vacant and mouth screaming as the spell sucked the life out of her marrow. She woke from every one coated in sweat, Sergei holding her in the darkness. He sat beside her every night as she fell asleep, and was there when she woke. And they never talked about…anything.

  We’re so screwed up, she thought ruefully on the fourth day afterward. Before, they’d at least had denial on their side. Well, denial on her side and obliviousness on his. Or was that the other way around? But now…

  But did it really matter? She combed out her hair, consciously plaiting it the way she knew Sergei liked. Did it matter if she said anything, or if he did?

  Yes, damn it.

  She laughed at herself, relieved that it was morning, the sun was shining, and he had finally agreed that she could go for a walk.
“A short walk,” he had added. “Around the block, no more.” You couldn’t push Sergei. Well, you could, but you wouldn’t get far. Enough that he knew that she knew and she knew that he knew. They’d work all the details out later. When she had the strength for it.

  Her mood sobered suddenly. When other things were dealt with once and for all.

  “So?” she said as they walked down to the corner the next afternoon. Strolling, really; all she could manage, although she refused to admit to it. Sergei had matched his pace to hers automatically, wordlessly, so there was no need to pretend.

  He had been gone the night before and this morning as well, talking to people, and she had missed him when she woke up. Wren pushed her sunglasses farther up on her nose. The sun was warm, and brighter than she remembered after so many days inside. “We should talk, I guess.” She glanced sideways at him as she spoke, and he nodded.

  There was a little coffee shop down the next street that always had the same three old men sitting at the counter, and a young woman reading the newspaper at one corner table. Wren had never been in there before—it was a little out of her usual route—but the windows and table were clean, and the regulars looked well-nourished, so it seemed as good a place as any.

  “Coffee,” she said to the waitress, a middle-aged woman who looked as though she had been born in her uniform. “Black, no sugar. Tea for him.” It would be disgusting, the way restaurant tea always was, but he’d drink it anyway.

  He had pulled out the cigarette case, and was extracting one of those damned cigarettes from it, rolling the brown paper between his fingers.

  “So?”

  “I made them your counteroffer,” he said, staring intently at the cigarette.

  “And?” She frowned. “Don’t make me pull it out of you, Didier. And I mean that literally.”

  He almost smiled at that. The counteroffer was one they had worked out, in the long early-morning hours of her recovery, waiting for the nightmares to recede. She—they—would work for the Silence. But on her own terms. If Wren was on a job already they couldn’t yank her off it, if their job conflicted with her lonejack ethics (“don’t you dare laugh,” she had warned Sergei, her head resting on his shoulder and feeling the laughter shaking his body although he didn’t make a sound) she could refuse it.

  “And…they accept. With a few conditions of their own.”

  “Of course. Nothing’s ever that easy.” Making this counteroffer hadn’t been easy at all. She was giving up so much. “So? What are they?”

  “Information. If you or I hear anything—anything at all—that might be of interest to them, we’re to pass it along immediately.”

  “Which you were doing anyway. Without my consent, I remind you. Right, okay, letting that go. So what the hell might the Silence be interested in?”

  “More of a question what aren’t they interested in. But we have discretion. Mainly gossip, I’d guess. Cosa gossip.”

  Wren sighed. She wasn’t happy about that. At all. But from what Sergei had told her, it wasn’t as though the Silence didn’t have other Talent on the payroll…and she’d be the one to decide what got passed along. She weighed the balance, decided that she could live with it.

  “In return, they will pay a small monthly stipend into your account. Don’t get too excited, we’re talking small. But it’s something.”

  “Something’s always good.” He was still fiddling with the cigarette. “What?”

  “And they’ll protect you. If it becomes necessary.”

  “Pro—” Her eyes narrowed as she understood. “The Council isn’t going to put a price on my head, Sergei. We talked about this.” Obviously it hadn’t taken in his overthick, overprotective brain.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. But if you’re wrong…” She took the cigarette away from him when he started to shred it.

  “If you’re wrong,” he said, “all you have to do is ask and they will shield you.”

  “And that will do what, against current?”

  “If current were all-powerful, the Council would have a lot more real-world power than it already does,” he said, looking her in the eye for the first time since they sat down.

  Point taken. The Council’s actions toward the rest of the Cosa might not be mirrored in the real world, but she’d bet that wasn’t from a lack of inclination. The Council board was made up of people who had a taste for mundane power, too.

  “What about the fatae…?”

  “Don’t push it, Wren. The Silence has no interest in supernaturals.” He paused, shrugged. “Not right now, anyway. If we can prove they’d be useful…”

  Wren snorted. “More likely they’d see them as something to be exploited. And let me tell you, past experience says not a good idea.”

  The waitress finally came back with their drinks, and she sipped her coffee, watching him doctor his tea to his liking. It was a ritual with him, the stirring and measuring, and soothing to watch. His hands were precise but not fussy, and she remembered the feel of them stroking her hair as she faded off into sleep.

  It might have been that that decided her. The realization that something doesn’t stop just when you’re out of the picture. That Sergei would still be sitting there, stroking her hair, while she was dead to the world. That things set in motion don’t always stop when, as he would say, the situation was finalized. She hated the knowledge. Resented it. Couldn’t, no matter how hard she tried, stuff it back into its box.

  “So.”

  “So,” he echoed. “That’s the deal. It’s your choice, yes or no.”

  “Me, gainfully employed. Well, sort of.” She grinned a little, then reached out to take one of those capable hands in her own. “You good with this?”

  He shook his head. “No. Not really. But it’s your decision.”

  “And you…”

  “We’re partners.” There was a vow in his dark eyes. “Whither thou goest, etcetera. We’re going to have to get that engraved on our foreheads or something, we seem to have trouble believing the other means it.” His mouth twisted a little, and he sipped at his tea, put it down. “They wanted you most of all, but they’d prefer both of us. Saves on having to match you with a new Handler. The Silence is all for using what works.”

  She almost smiled at that, pulling back to her side of the table. “It’s weird. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, the past couple of weeks. And…”

  “And?”

  “It’s not about the money. Or the protection, although yeah I’ll admit it’s always nice to know that if I’m wrong, here’s a place to run to. But…”

  This time, she was the one fiddling with the remains of the cigarette. How to say what had been ticking in her brain since that moment she translocated?

  “I’ve spent my entire life thinking small, Sergei. Me, the stuff around me. It’s not a bad way to be, I guess…but if I walk away from this, this thing the Silence is offering, the chance to do some actual good in the world…. I get the feeling I’m going to always wonder—”

  “What if?”

  “What if,” she agreed. “But when you go back to them, ask for more money first. You never know, right?”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “That’s my Wren.” He finished off his tea and stood up. “Okay, let me see what I can do.”

  Two weeks later, Wren placed a stem of lilac on the sidewalk. Her fingers lingered on the bloom before pulling away, standing up.

  “Why lilac?”

  She shrugged, feeling the bandage pull as she did so. The sling was long gone, but she still didn’t have a full range of movement back. “Seemed more appropriate than roses.”

  There had been the faintest whiff of something floral, when Jamie finally disappeared. She had spent half an hour in the florist this morning, trying to recognize it.

  Sergei reached forward to place a fist-sized chunk of smoky quartz beside the flower, his fingers brushing the small brass plaque workers had affixed to the side of the building just that morning.

&n
bsp; “James Koogler. 1927 to 1955.” He shook his head, dark glasses hiding whatever expression was in his eyes. “You’d think they could have done more for the man who gave his life for this building.”

  “Hey, you don’t want to go around telling people a man was killed in the very spot where they work. People might start talking about ghosts, or curses, or something.”

  Wren’s attempt at humor fell flat.

  “It’s not enough, is it?”

  “It has to be,” she said. “For now.”

  She had told him that first night, crying in his arms, about the deal she’d struck, the oath Oliver Frants had sworn. With her as the only living witness, there wasn’t any way to ensure he would honor it, despite her bloodthirsty thoughts at the time. But somehow, Sergei still thought it would all work out in the end. He believed in karma, did her partner. And justice.

  She wasn’t sure what she believed in. And she really wasn’t sure there was any justice at all in the world. Not the kind that satisfied. But that was what she hoped to find with the Silence. Maybe.

  “I’ll watch him, Jamie,” she promised. “And I’ll never let him forget.”

  As though on cue, a jacketed security guard came out of the building. Not Rafe.

  “Excuse me. I’m going to have to ask you two to move on.”

  Sergei looked at him over the tops of his sunglasses, and the smaller man blinked but didn’t retreat. “Please. I really don’t want to have to have you arrested for trespassing.”

  “It’s okay,” Wren told her partner. “We can go. It’s no big deal.”

  He held the guard’s gaze for a long moment, then let him go. “You want coffee?” he asked Wren, as though they had never been interrupted.

  “Do I ever not? But back to my place. Jackson’s had an order delivered, including this new blend he swears will put curl in my hair.”

  As they walked away, Sergei glanced back. The guard had already removed their offerings, tossing them into the city trash bin on the corner. He thought briefly about arranging with a florist to have more lilac delivered the next day. And the next, and the next, until they got tired of tossing them. Then he let the idea go. It wasn’t needful. Jamie, if he was still there at all, knew the attempt had been made.