The tear sheets dated back to the 1970s, and some of the reports went all the way back to World War II, but the majority of them were less than two years old. It was these that the agent focused on, one well-groomed hand lifting the most recent to look below it at the one before then, silently comparing facts and observations.
A long strip of the remaining salt was taken off the pretzel rod, as buffed nails tapped the sheets in thought.
An observer would note that the reports were of a similar nature, following a track of murders and assaults, gang-related crimes and break-ins. A blue-and-red graph charted the rise—and the sudden decline—in those crimes over a two-year period. The chart ended on a flat line near zero, the most recent data point charted being last month.
Whatever it was causing the activity, it seemed to have ended.
The agent knew that sometimes cases were like that. You accepted the fact that you’d never get an answer, and moved on to the next, because the one thing you knew was that there would always be a next. The world was like that.
It was why there were people like them, in offices like this. To catch the ones they could, and not drive themselves crazy over the ones they couldn’t.
And yet, something about this case still bugged the brain, itched the instincts, and left questions hanging. You couldn’t let those cases go.
The agent went back to the desk, dropping the pretzel stick long enough to reach for a yellow-tagged file, pick up a pen and jot down a new comment in the margin of one of the sheets. The motion held the weary but still determined air of someone who is no closer to a solution than a week before, but can’t stop. It didn’t matter that the search had been going on for almost a year now: if you are determined enough, the Bureau teaches, and you follow all the leads through to the end, luck will be on your side. Eventually.
A phone rang somewhere, outside the office and down the hall. Someone answered it on the third ring, and the echo of low voices carried faintly into the office and was swallowed by the shadows. The figure didn’t even look up.
The annotated paper was returned to the file, and two photos were pulled out: one, of a tall, lean man in a dark suit, talking to two other men in the middle of a crowded food court. The other was of that same man, more casually dressed, in a subway car. A much shorter woman stood with him, their body language suggesting both familiarity and tension. Both photos were clearly taken without their knowledge, the angle and grainy texture suggesting a surveillance camera of some sort.
Two years ago she had heard whispers of something the higher-ups knew, of a group or organization in various American cities that the government might or might not consider a threat, a group that might or might not be causing those ups and downs in specific crimes. Of individuals who were more than human. Casual queries had gotten her stonewalled, left with the impression that this was a Secret only a few select were allowed to know.
Very few things got up the nose of an obsessive investigator like a Secret they were told they couldn’t share.
Her first probe had gotten her a name, and that had led to another name, and she’d pulled enough strings to get a temporary watch put on those subjects, and who they interacted with. But the lead had faded and gone cold, and when there were no more incidents in that city, her line of investigation was cut off. Officially.
A man came to the office door, pushing it open just enough more to stick his head in. “The Old Lady wants to see us,” he said.
“Uh-huh.” The room’s original resident didn’t seem impressed with the news.
“I don’t think it was a request, Chang. I think it was something like an order. As in, right now she wants to see us.”
“I’ll be there in a minute.” Chang said, reaching for another pretzel rod, then being distracted midthought by a new possibility.
“Christ. You are trying to get yourself fired, aren’t you?”
“She won’t fire me. I work too cheap.”
“Nothing’s cheap enough for this place,” the second agent said with mordant humor, then shook his head, coming into the office and looking at the papers on the desk. “Are you still working that lead? Give it up, already. I think someone’s pulling your leg. All you’re doing is wasting Bureau time, and you know how they feel about that.”
The only response he got was the wave of one arm, middle finger extended in universal sign language. He shrugged. “Your funeral. I’ll see you upstairs. Now, Chang. Seriously. The Old Lady is not in a good mood today.”
The figure pushed the chair back with a squeak of wheels and a muttered curse, reaching with the right hand for one of the less-chewed pretzels, the left hand being preoccupied with writing something down. Numbers, possibly, or some sort of intricate code. The muttering was cut off as teeth slid across the length of the pretzel, harvesting the salt with the heedless competence of a beaver stripping bark.
The photographs were joined by several pencil sketches of another figure, this one much shorter and, at first glance, wearing some sort of furry costume under a trenchcoat. The only color in those sketches was the dark red used to indicate the eyes, and the comments written in navy-blue ink along the margins. Having recovered them from the pile, Chang was sorting through those now, shuffling them like some sort of static cartoon book as though hoping to see it suddenly start to move.
A phone rang, this time in the office.
“Agent Chang.”
A familiar voice was on the other line; the same voice that had originally brought in the lead a year ago, off her half-joking comment about a seemingly impossible, almost supernatural event that had occurred on her watch.
He was an old friend, a trusted source and a general pain in the ass. Chang half suspected that the other agent was right, and he was playing this out for his own twisted amusement, to see how far she’d buy into his claims of something powerful and weird just out of reach.
The thought that it might be true, that there might be a source of power—of information—out there that she might be able to tap into, to use, was the only reason she hadn’t told him to take a flying leap, and his wild stories with him. But maybe it was time. There were other ways to climb the ladder, other sources she could cultivate, if she spent the time and energy…
“Either give me something useful or go the hell away,” Chang said now, and this time she meant it.
Surprisingly, her source came through. “I can get you a meeting.”
“Why now?” The timing seemed suspect; why now, just when she was about to give up? How had he known?
Her contact, surprisingly, answered that, too. “He wouldn’t talk to you before, would have shut you down, hard. But things have changed. If you can convince him you’re useful to them.” A pause, and then, in a thoughtful voice that made her believe him, “I really think you two should talk. And soon.”
Chang agreed to let him arrange it—as if she was going to argue?—and hung up the phone. Was it more of his game? Or was the situation, as he suggested, really reaching a point where the contact—one of these alleged supernaturals—might welcome a Federal ally?
Suddenly recalling the Old Lady’s summons, Chang swore, then grabbed a thick file out of the in-box perched precariously on the edge of the desk and headed out the door, forgetting to turn off either the desk or overhead lights before heading upstairs. Despite her coworker’s jokes, she wasn’t obsessed enough to forget to handle the current caseload before going off on a wild-goose chase, no matter how interesting the goose might look.
six
Given her druthers, Wren Valere would prefer to spend her Saturday morning lazing around on the sofa with hot, quality coffee and fresh bagels, a New York Times, and absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to go except maybe the gym, if she felt like being good and dutiful.
Wren Valere did not want to spend her morning getting dressed up and going across the river to New Jersey. Wren rarely wanted to go to Jersey, except to meet with her mother, who still lived there in the town Wren had grown up
in, although not—thanks to Wren’s urgings—in the same crappy place Wren had grown up in. One of the benefits of being reasonably successful was that she had convinced her mother to move to a much nicer condo several years before.
“Over there. That building.” She pointed, and they stepped off the curb in almost perfect physical accord.
Given her druthers, Wren would definitely never have spent her morning getting dressed up and going anywhere near a Tri-Com meeting, in Jersey or anywhere else for that matter. But Sergei had suggested it, reluctantly bringing up the possibility during the postjob rundown that recent events were something that the Tri-Com should know about. Despite her initial, immediate, rather strong response, he was right. Damn it.
No, she absolutely did not want to be walking across the street, heading toward the second-to-last-people in the world she ever wanted to talk to again. But she would do it. Because she had stuff that needed dealing with, and that’s what the Tri-Com was all about—taking care of loose ends and undealt-with problems.
Despite a long history of not playing well with each other, the humans and Fatae of the Cosa Nostradamus in the New York area had finally gotten their act together during the recent Troubles. Out of that had come the Truce Board, a joint program of street guards and organized information-sharing, a way to protect themselves from the Silence-funded human vigilantes who wanted them out of the city—on cold slabs, if possible.
The vigilantes had lost. So had Wren. Lost friends, lost faith, lost her way…and then gotten it all back, if shattered into a pile of bits and pieces. When the dust and blood had been cleared away, all she had wanted was to enjoy life again, work and love and figure out how all the pieces fit back together. She knew everything was stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster, but she didn’t know how well those stitches would hold, if she put too much weight on them. She didn’t want to find out the hard way, either. So, walking delicate and not getting heavy in deed or thought, if she could help it. Not yet.
Meanwhile, the Truce Board had also collapsed in the messy, finger-pointing aftermath, and the recobbled-together remains dissolved soon after she’d Retrieved the Lost from the Silence’s distinctly unpaternal hold. But when life came back to what passed for normal, some of the lessons they learned in the process sank in, and enough lonejacks remembered the benefits of hanging together to try and keep those lessons alive.
Tri-Com—the Trilateral Communications Group—was the result, created to facilitate the flow of communications between the Fatae breeds, the human Talent and the human Null community. Direct quote. A neat trick, that, considering that most Nulls didn’t know that either the Fatae or Talent existed. But considering the rather high-profile and public—and messy—events during the Troubles, enough people who did know had started to get nervous. “Head small problems off now, and we have fewer nasty problems later,” Bart, one of the leaders of the Truce Board had said, when he told her what they were planning, and he was entirely correct. After Burning Bridge, the entire Cosa had nothing but distrust for any and all Nulls, even ones they had known for years, even members of their own flesh-and-blood families. Even Sergei, who had done more for them than most.
That might have become a fatal rift, doing the work of the Silence after the fact—except that during the last of the Troubles, the night now just referred to as Blackout, Nulls had gathered to protect the Talent within their ranks, most notably the firefighters at the Plank Street station. The smoke-eaters there had not only defended their Talent coworker, they had become a rallying point for the counterstrike, giving everything they had—and it was considerable—to help save the day. Or, in that particular case, the night. Bringing outsiders in had been a risk, but one she approved of—so long as they were careful about who they brought in. So far, brains prevailed, and rather than politicians, the Nulls chosen were taken from the working levels of the city—firefighters, sanitation workers, social workers. People who would actually be on the front lines, if anything happened again.
Wren herself had come out with a particular fondness for New York City’s Bravest, as it was one of their trucks that had gotten Sergei and P.B. to her in time to keep her alive when the Silence and overrush combined to take her down. That fondness didn’t mean she wanted to get involved again, though, no matter how good an idea this new oversight board or whatever was. She had paid her dues, damn it. So when Bart came to her with his new idea earlier that year, Wren had wished them Godspeed, and beat feet out of the room before they could “suggest” that she take part in the new organization.
They had respected her wishes; not once since then had they called, officially. The fact that she hadn’t consulted or even considered any of the major players when she went after the Silence probably had a lot to do with that; some noses were still out of joint at being ignored. Unofficially, Bart sometimes called to see if she wanted to meet for coffee, and Wren had gone, a time or two. They talked about books and movies, bitched about New York City politics and the weather, and never once, not once, talked shop, or about any of the people they had lost in those days.
She would have been very happy to keep it that way. Unfortunately, that little walk in the park yesterday—and the discussion she and Sergei had about the job—now drove her, oh so reluctantly, to make a report. In person, because that was how lonejacks did things. You looked people in the eye, and lied to their faces.
“Stop shaking. They’re not going to rope you into anything.”
That reassurance would have been more reassuring if Sergei had sounded as if he believed it. They both had very clear memories of how they both had gotten roped into things before, by some of the same people. Things that had almost gotten them both killed.
“Go in, give report, get out.” Wren shifted, thankful that at least the Tri-Com didn’t have any kind of dress code. Bad enough she had to get dressed, hell if she had to actually wear a skirt and heels, as you did to get in the front door of the much more formal—and tight-assed—Council. Jeans and a dark brown pullover sweater, and clunky hiking boots that made comfortable, clunky noises on the hardwood floor made her feel slightly better about the whole deal.
What made her feel even better than that was the fact that, despite the clunky boots and her own not inconsiderable notoriety within some circles, people in the building were saying hello to Sergei and ignoring her—almost as though they couldn’t see her standing right there.
Which, in point of magic, they couldn’t. She grinned, feeling the current hum quietly under her skin, making her slide from people’s sight without any conscious effort. After a lifetime of walking in shadows, it had made her deeply uneasy when suddenly she had been front and center and being noticed during the Troubles. This was better. This was much, much better.
So too was the hand Sergei had slipped into her own as they entered the building, palm to palm, fingers twined together. His hand was firm without being hard, calloused but not rough, dry and warm; the hand of a man who could turn that hand to just about anything he needed to do.
The hand of a man who was there, totally and without hesitation.
They’d been through rough times, the past few years: moving from business partners to lovers, with the added complications of divided loyalties and a war coming between them. But that was in the past. They’d survived, in all the ways that mattered. The only thing they still had to deal with was Sergei’s kink about current-touch during sex.
It was her fault. She knew that, even if he was in denial. She had started grounding in him as an emergency measure, during some jobs that had gotten a little squirrelly and she’d pulled too much current, and neither of them had thought much of it. They had discovered, purely by chance, that it enhanced the sexual experience for him, when she let some of her current ground in him during orgasm, as well. In another Talent, that wouldn’t have been a problem. But Sergei was a Null, which meant that the current was doing damage to his internal organs.
The thing was, it turned out not to be jus
t a kink. It was an addiction for him, that pain-pleasure thing. Thankfully, it seemed to start and stop with her, and specifically during sex. She didn’t have to worry about him being out alone among other Talent, or being on a job with her. But it was putting a serious damper on the physical side of their relationship, and that meant that the emotional side was hurting, too.
He couldn’t stop asking, and she couldn’t always resist. But not having sex wasn’t a solution either of them was happy about.
Still. He was here. Holding her hand. It was sappy enough to make you sick.
She gave his fingers a squeeze, and then reached out with her other hand to push open the door to the conference room.
The Tri-Com headquarters was actually a surprisingly relaxing place; Sergei was impressed. Unlike his former employers, the late, unlamented Silence, the Tri-Com had no budget at all to speak of, and was renting the first floor of an undistinguished office building across the river in Jersey City on a middling-to-respectable block. The space was filled with basic metal and pressboard office furniture that could have come from any rent-a-desk store. Despite that, the feel of the office itself was homey and welcoming. Once you got past the generic lobby, the walls were painted a golden cream, the lights set to daylight-neutral, and there were huge potted plants in every alcove, leaves swaying gently under the air vents.
The receptionist checked their names against a printed sheet of paper, and sent them on to where, she informed them, “The pooh-bahs were waiting.”
“Pooh-bahs?” Sergei mouthed, looking at his partner, who merely shrugged.
When they reached their destination at the end of the hallway, the expected conference room decor had been replaced by a much more domestic look, complete with sofas instead of a traditional table and chairs, and a small water feature that filled the background with gentle, soothing noises.
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