Tricks of the Trade psi-3

by Laura Anne Gilman

  That was how I felt right then, even before it grabbed me.

  The shark image was all wrong. This was like being nailed by an octopus, an eight-armed thing with tentacles that dug into you and held on like a thousand tiny grappling hooks that stung like antiseptic on an open wound. I could feel Nick’s current-signature flowing over me, surging into where the hooks met magic-skin and melting them away as fast as they were placed, but he was barely keeping up.

  Hold.

  The thought came, cold and dark and deeper than anything human could manage. Nick ignored it, flowing onto the next series of hooks.

  Hold it said again, and the hooks started to untangle themselves. I let out a tiny sigh of relief, resisting the urge to rub my physical – and untouched – arms in reaction.

  You are the dogs of the Flame?

  The what of the who?

  An image came, of current strung out long and bright, the orange-red color a dead giveaway, the magical interpretation of Stosser’s unmistakable ponytail. My first image of him, dressed all in black, his hair loose, had been of a satanic candle, too.

  Oh. “Yes,” I told the voice, feeling Nick tense beside me, ready in case that turned out to be a bad answer. “We’re pups.”

  We are to exchange.

  The voice opened – a door? A drawer? – and the scene flowed out and into our memories.

  An overhead view of a large room, lit by a red glow that didn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular. I didn’t recognize it, but there was a sense of familiarity, anyway, as though one or more of the figures below knew it well. The mental camera angle swooped in, and the mike went live.

  “They are not objects. They are people. You know this, you helped transform them.” If you knew Stosser, you could tell that he was wildly curious about how the Old One had accomplished that, but knew better than to ask. That was a trap alchemists used to fall into regularly, and the truth was that no human could manage it. Not without paying a price our boss was too smart to offer. I hoped.

  The human failed his agreement. They are mine.

  The voice that had caught me; it was the same entity that was arguing with Stosser. Okay, I’d known that, I guess, but the knowing sent a cold prickle into every inch of my skin.

  “You don’t want them.” Stosser’s voice again, an absolute certainty replacing the curiosity.

  The doing was mine. The agreement in my holding. The objects were surety against payment. The human failed to pay.

  Stosser’s comprehension became ours: the voice we were dealing with was tied to the rules of the agreement, just the same as Wells. We weren’t dealing with an all-powerful Old One here, not directly. Or it was, but not all of it, an offshoot still tangled with the world, while the rest of it slept? Maybe: it was still old, and powerful, and scary as hell, but not going to rip the city apart if we pissed it off.

  Probably.

  Stosser shook that off, and went back to his argument, gathering steam as he went. “Your agreement is valid. Yet. The objects are humans. They contain souls. An older law than your agreement says that you may not take a soul without its permission.”

  There was a silence, as though the other was searching through pages of parchment, looking for the relevant clause.

  This is true. But they were pledged as surety. The balance must be maintained.

  First rule: there’s a price for everything. I could feel the pressure build, and knew what Stosser was going to say, even as I reached – far too late, since this was a memory, not reality – to stop him.

  “Then take me, instead. Let them go, the unwilling souls, and take me in their place.”

  The door closed, the drawer slid shut, and I was back in my own head again, still staring at the veins of current pulsing on my skin. Now, though, I could follow them into the ground, deep into the stone, to where the creature waited. I didn’t know what it was, but I could taste Ian Stosser within it, waiting. Contained. I hadn’t known anything could contain Ian Stosser.

  “He agreed to it,” Nick said, following my thoughts, or simply airing his own conclusions along the same path. “He’s held by the agreement.”

  The Flame burns me; restless and... annoying.

  I stifled a totally inappropriate grin at the almost aggrieved tone in the creature’s voice, and waited. Something had sent the creature here; sounded like we were about to find out what. Hopefully, it involved getting the boss out of hock.

  He suggested a new trade, to please us both, and put final paid on the debt. We are to exchange for the one in your holding, who owed the original payment.

  I got the feeling, suddenly, that the payment had not been in cash, and shuddered.

  You will do this.

  It wasn’t a question. Nick and I exchanged a glance, and I could see the same question in his expression as was inevitably setting on mine: How the hell were we supposed to manage that?

  “Go get him,” I said to Nick. “Tell him... we’ve got the guy who stole his stuff here. He’ll either come, or he’ll run. If he runs, drag him back. And don’t bother being too careful with him, either.”

  You couldn’t send an unwilling being into this sort of agreement, but this guy had made like a pack rat with two human lives, presumably against their will. I was done playing nice-nice with him. The hell with holding the facts up to light: we were the only ones who could fix this, and we had to do it, now. Somehow.

  It was only a couple of minutes later that Nick returned, holding Wells firmly by the ear. Literally – he had the guy in a gentle headlock – and magically, as I could sense the loop of current around Wells’s neck. Probably not approved methodology, but we’d gone a bit beyond that.

  Wells looked around, like expecting to be confronted with something, and visibly relaxed when it was just us on the porch.

  “He tried to run?”

  “Like a bunny.”

  I tsked sadly.

  “This him?” I asked the voice, still waiting in the rocks deep below us. I needed confirmation before I took the next step.

  Yes.

  The client didn’t flinch; he couldn’t hear our visitor. Interesting. I wondered if that was intentional on our visitor’s part, or not. Not that it mattered; I’d just have to explain it in small words.

  First, though... “Why did you do it?” I wasn’t sure it mattered, but I’d always been curious about the why as much as the who and the how. “How could you do that?” When he looked at me blankly, I elaborated. “Your wife, and your son. Yeah, we know. You took away their lives. You turned them into objects, inanimate possessions. Why?”

  He stared at me, his eyes going cold, all hints of the genial host fading, and I understood, and felt stupid for not getting it, before. Venec had known; that’s why he’d been hired, the first time. Why he was so angry at himself for not following up on them, after. “That’s all they ever were to you, anyway, weren’t they? Things that made you look better, things you owned.”

  “They belonged with me,” he said, and he didn’t sound like a power-mad monster; more like a man who’d been told his team sucked; sulky and belligerent. “They belonged here, not out there. I was taking care of them, protecting them.”

  “Yeah, well, you should have kept paying for their upkeep then,” Nick said, before I could even really process what that bastard had just said. “’Cause we bought your marker, and they’re ours now.”

  Wells’s eye brightened, and he tried to stand up in Nick’s hold. “You have them back? Oh, excellent! You really are as good as your reputation. There might even be a bonus if – ”

  “Wow.” I thought I was going to be sick. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

  “Oh, he gets it,” Nick said, giving him a gentle shake. “He gets it completely. He just doesn’t know that we get it, too. They’re free, you bastard.”

  Actually, we didn’t know if they were free, yet, or still stuck in their object-form. If the latter, hopefully Stosser would be able to do something about that,
once he got free, himself. Which was the point of this little confab.

  “You defaulted on your payment,” I said, turning to stare into his face, as grim as I could manage, which right now was pretty grim. “And guess who’s here to collect?”

  “But... you took them back.”

  “No, we bought them back,” I corrected him, Stosser’s plan unfolding in my brain, even without Venec’s prompting. “And as per our contract with you, any and all expenses incurred in the execution of our job are paid in full by the client.” I smiled, not sweetly. “Guess what just came due?”

  His eyes flickered back and forth, then tried to roll back in his head, like they were trying to escape. “You can’t do this!”

  “You signed the agreement,” Nick said.

  “I don’t have them in my possession! You haven’t given them back yet!”

  Damn. And also, damn. I wasn’t a lawyer or a Council scholar, but that sounded like it was enough of a loophole to get him off.

  *venec?*

  With the barriers down, he returned my ping almost immediately.

  *bit busy here* Grumbly dog, distracted and worried.

  *us too. we have a Situation*

  fourteen

  The contact with Bonnie was brief but thorough, summing up her Situation in the time it took her to think it. Ben was almost grateful to the Merge; trying to explain it all via pings would have been tiresome, and distracting at a time he needed to focus here-and-now.

  Fortunately, he wasn’t working alone. “Hold up a minute,” he said to Nifty. The pup’s shoulders lowered, but he didn’t let go of the hold he had on the two figures, one in each hard hand, and outside the barrier, in the larger, shadowy space of the garage, Sharon and Lou waited, specially modified stun-sticks locked and loaded in case the warding failed.

  “Pull yourself together,” Venec told The Roblin. “I have a deal for you.”

  The Roblin stopped struggling, and the two forms slid together, merging back into one, a gnarled, gray-skinned figure, like tree limbs bound over in badly tanned hide. Venec wondered, idly, how many times it could split like that, and if they each caused equal amounts of trouble, or if it diminished geometrically with each split.

  He suspected he wouldn’t ever get an answer to that.

  “Let it go, Lawrence.”

  “What?” The pup was moderately outraged. “After the crap we went through – ”

  “Let it go. It’s not going anywhere. Not so long as I have its attention – and interest. Right?”

  The gnarled, gray-skinned figure folded its thick arms across its chest, and glared at the human. “But only so long as you are of interest,” it said, in a voice to match its form, scratchy and bitter.

  Venec nodded at Nifty, who reluctantly released his grip on the imp’s shoulders, stepping back a half pace; still within reach if the imp tried to do anything.

  They could practically see the fatae testing the wardings again, and knew when it determined that they were still holding.

  The garage was cold and damp, but this late at night – or early in the morning – the only other people around were the two guys in the cashier’s box at ground level, and they weren’t going to come out no matter what noises they heard.

  The moment Bonnie and Nick had Translocated out – in a moment of intense frustration that he had to send them out, splitting the team at a time when his every instinct was to gather them together, creating a barrier against all possible threats – Venec had known how to trap the imp.

  With minimal instructions to the rest of the pack, he had headed out across town, shrugging into his jacket, letting himself think – no, not think but feel intensely about Bonnie, and how frustrating she was. His current swarmed around that thought, the Merge building and intensifying his emotion, almost but not quite reaching the point of him losing control, until the cab’s meter stopped working with a little whimper of shorted-out protest, and he had to get out a block early, shoving a handful of bills at the driver, and walk the rest of the way to the garage where his bike was stored. The streets were empty, at this hour, and he was painfully aware of the streetlights that died as he passed underneath.

  He had also been aware of the prickling, swirling sensation just outside his awareness. The Roblin was being cautious, watching, waiting... but unable to resist.

  The moment Nifty had appeared in the garage, bellowing at him for abandoning them, leaving them at the mercy of the Old One while all he could think about was Bonnie, the damn fatae had scampered in like a rat on the scent of an overturned Dumpster, thinking to catch him away from the warded office, ripe for chaos.

  Sharon and Lou had been waiting in the shadows to raise a warding around them; they’d all been locked down so hard and tight, there was nothing for the damned imp to get its claws into, even if it had sensed them.

  It had been a risk, but it had worked, and in the end that was all that mattered.

  Once inside the wardings, with Nifty’s bulk and his own current-lock, no matter how the imp had wriggled or threatened, or how many parts it had split itself into – four, and that had been a surprise – the trap had held, and they had the bastard fair and square.

  And if there was one thing a mischief imp hated, it was anything fair and square.

  “What?” the imp demanded of Venec, still glaring.

  Before they got to the deal-making, Venec wanted to get one thing clear, so there would be no room for misunderstandings. “You had your fun, imp. Christ knows, we were probably irresistible to you, from a certain viewpoint. But Bonnie and I are dealing with this now, so the fun’s going to end.” Venec was sure he saw the corners of the imp’s mouth droop a little at that. “We’d therefore appreciate you getting the fuck out of our city.” As tempting as it was to ask for more than that, a mischief imp was a mischief imp, and The Roblin couldn’t not be true to its nature. Venec would have to be very careful about what he demanded, and what was promised.

  “Big city. Lots of people.” The Roblin’s fingers twitched, like it was counting all the possible toys it could find.

  “Lots of people who are used to dealing with shit on a regular basis,” Ben replied. “You’d have to ramp it up pretty high, for that, and while I’ve no doubt that you’re more than capable of it – we know you’re here. We can very easily spread the word that anything odd or unusual is your doing. Once people know that... it’s not as much fun, is it? Not so much fun to fuck with people if they can see your hands pulling the strings.”

  Whatever The Roblin muttered under its breath, then, Ben was pretty sure it wasn’t polite.

  “So yeah, big city. Lots of people. But also, us.”

  The Roblin managed, without moving its body, to look at Nifty behind him, and the other two just beyond the barrier, and then back at Venec.

  “Us... and the rest. And every contact we have, every ally we’ve made, all spreading your name, telling your every secret.”

  The Roblin’s eyes narrowed, their golden fire brightening. “Not believing you.”

  Venec shrugged, like it didn’t matter a damn’s worth to him. “Your boredom, then. Stay as long as you want. But you’re not leaving this garage.”

  “What?”

  “Did you think we’d come here without a backup plan?” Of course they had; they’d barely had a front plan to begin with, but none of that tainted Venec’s smug confidence. “You’ll stay here, trapped, only able to reach those who come here... and everyone will know that you are here. They will laugh at you. The Roblin will become a name not of fear and awe, but amusement and scorn.”

  He was probably laying it on too thick; Ian used to warn him about that.

  “But it doesn’t have to be that way. In exchange for your agreement, we will release you, allow you to leave the city unharmed and intact. But! – ” and he cocked his head slightly, giving back as fierce a glare as anything The Roblin managed “ – only if you agree not only to leave town without any parting shots, but not come back for a
period of... seventy years.” Nearly a human lifetime, but barely an inconvenience to an imp. “Is that agreeable?” Before the imp could reply, Venec held up a finger, and caught The Roblin’s gaze with his own.

  “If you cross me,” he told the imp, “I will come after you. No matter where you go or how long it takes. And I will be in no mood for mischief. And if you behave... there may be something in it for you, too.”

  The imp scowled, his old-man face looking even more like a dried apple as he did so. “How can we resist an offer like that? And what is this parting gift?”

  Venec smiled then, a cold smile that gave Nifty the chills, even though they were on the same side. “The scent of a human in this city, a man proud of his power, who thinks himself above judgment or punishment, and the promise that we will not retaliate, if you go after him.”

  The Roblin considered, trying to see where the catch might be lurking, and then nodded. “Deal.”

  “Nifty, apologize to the nice imp for breaking its arm.”

  “Twice,” The Roblin said, its mood souring again.

  “Twice breaking its arm. But you only have to apologize once.”

  While the pup and imp glared at each other – The Roblin had gotten some nasty bites in during their struggle, and showed no signs of apologizing for those – Venec turned away slightly, craving the illusion of privacy even though it was only the five of them in the garage. It cost him a small fortune to rent the entire space for only his bike, but occasionally it came in handy when he needed a place nobody would wander into accidentally. Admittedly, he had never thought to use it for this, but life was a series of learning experiences, and you either learned, and adapted, or you died.

  Benjamin Venec had no intention of dying.

  *bonita* He didn’t mean to call her that, had meant to use her last name, or even her usual nickname, but it slipped out. He was more tired than he wanted to think about, if his control was that shaky.