Blood from Stone

by Laura Anne Gilman

  His feet hurt, but everything felt better as he stood barefoot in the mud and watched the boots go sailing out to splash splish splash thunk into the water and sink down down down and never be worn again….

  That was all there was. No sense of when; it might have happened yesterday, or a year ago, or the day after he first disappeared.

  No. Even as Wren felt herself leaving that spot, rising back up into the atmosphere, her current sparking and reshaping itself, she knew that it had been more recent than that. Neezer left when he was still mostly sane, was only starting to slip away. The man who had thrown those boots was more than a cracker shy of a full barrel.

  And someone had given him money. Max? Or someone else? The Council maintained safe-homes, places with limited electrical power, where their wizzarts could rest if they wanted to, not distracted or tempted by easy access to current. But Neezer had been a lonejack, like her; the Council didn’t take care of freelancers.

  Someone was, though. Someone a little more together and coherent than Max was taking care of her mentor.

  Wren should have, she supposed, been relieved. Instead, she was livid. Hurt, and angry, and mainly just pissed off.

  That should have been her job, damn it. She was his student, his only student, and she should have been the one to make sure he was all right. Not someone else, not Max who barely held it together himself, who killed his own dog, for God’s sake! Was that who had sent Max after her, this person or persons who had taken over her obligations, her responsibilities?

  Or was it Neezer himself, denying her, cutting that final tie? Why?

  She tried to catch another scent to follow, but her emotions screwed with her control, and she felt her concentration snap and fling her backward, ass over teakettle, knees over ears. She fell up and sideways, then was tumbling without any sense of direction or distance, her nonexistent body breaking under the stress until her sense of self started to disintegrate and dissipate, as well.

  She reached out, grabbed at nothing, found a fingerhold somewhere of something hard, warm, accepting and unyielding at the same time. Bedrock. She clutched, felt it shake, as though undergoing seismic seizures, and she cried out in fear and loss. The cry echoed, and as though in response the bedrock stilled itself, like a horse shuddering to a heaving halt.

  Once the virtual ground under her fingers stabilized, she could feel it slide under her, trying to support her, but the panic—and the crumbling loss of self—remained, making it impossible to stop the disintegration.

  If she didn’t stop it, she would not be. Not here…and not there. Trapped, forever.

  Home, she thought wildly, grabbing onto the word and hugging it tight. Safe-home.

  Safe-words were like cantrips. You didn’t really need them, but it made it easier to focus. Safe-home landed her, like Neezer’s boot, solidly thunking back into her body on the bed in her apartment in Manhattan.

  Feeling as if she had been beaten with bamboo rods by a mad percussionist, Wren lifted one eyelid and was dismayed to discover that the room was dark, much darker than even her blackout curtains could make it. Was there a blackout? Oh, shit, am I blind?

  The bed shifted under her, and the darkness moved a little. She squinted until Sergei’s shadowed form came into focus. Her panic subsided, and she let out a little gasp of relief.

  “I’m going to turn on the light,” he warned in a low, rough voice, and she braced herself. He had placed something over the lampshade, though, and so the light was filtered. Her eyes watered anyway, and when she went to place an arm over them, to shield them from the glare, her entire body screamed a protest against moving.

  “You scared the hell out of me,” Sergei said, his voice still that same unnerving quiet roughness. “I came in and you were just lying there, naked, and I couldn’t tell if you were breathing…. Your skin was cool and damp, and you didn’t move.”

  “How long?” Her voice was cracked and dry, and she almost didn’t recognize it.

  “Since I got here? Two hours.”

  Wren would have sworn she was only “away” ten minutes, tops. She rested her head back down on the pillow and sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would take so long.” Or that she would hurt so much. Fuck, it hurt.

  “What were you doing?”

  “I…I was doing a scrying.” Her voice still sounded bad, but talking was a little easier. “Sort of astral projection, kind of.”

  “I didn’t know you could do that.” Still too tight, too rough, his voice.

  “Me, neither,” she admitted. “I mean, I knew about it, but…” It had been a scrap of an idea she had pulled from memory. Not every Talent could do everything—there were distinct strengths and weaknesses, and by the time you were an adult you usually knew your skill sets. Wren didn’t know if it was wizzing, or being the focus of that damned battery, but she was finding new things every month that she could do, or do better. This…not better enough.

  “You were looking for the papers?”

  “No. I…I was trying to find Neezer. I think he’s alive. I think Max was hiding him, or helping him to hide.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, less because it hurt than because she felt foolish.

  Sergei shifted on the bed, and sighed, years of history in that simple sound. “Wren, why? What difference does it make, if he is alive? He’s not the man you remember, not anymore. Why can’t you just let him go?”

  It was a valid question. She wasn’t sure she knew why. A year ago she had thought he was dead, and the memory of his voice was fading, and she had been okay with that. Things came and went and she didn’t love her mentor any less for his not being there. She had P.B., and Sergei, and her mom, and it wasn’t as though she needed a mentor anymore….

  And then the shit hit the fan with the vigilantes; she nearly went all wild-eyed Dark Side, and was blasted with the battery-current of the Fatae, and the carefully constructed mental boxes she had been keeping things in got shifted in the resulting shake-up, shifted, yeah and some of them got busted open.

  Part of the resulting mess led to her insistence on Sergei getting help. Part of it led her to consider leaving the city. And part of it…part of it was jostled loose by the encounter with Max, and suddenly it was important that she know.

  Know what?

  I don’t know.

  Maybe she was the one who needed to be in therapy.

  “It’s almost nine,” her partner said cautiously, as though uncertain of her temper. Or her sanity. “Do you want dinner?”

  Nine? As in, p.m.? That bit of information shocked her out of her funk. She had been out-of-body much longer than two hours—more like six. No wonder she was exhausted. And no wonder he was freaked—they were supposed to have met almost four hours ago.

  “I don’t…soup, maybe,” she suggested. The thought of anything heavier than that—or more effort to eat—made her just want to close her eyes and float away again, but something told her that would be a very bad idea. Her head was fuzzy and her body felt weightless and leaden at the same time, and although the last thing her stomach wanted was food, using current burned an amazing number of calories, even if the body itself wasn’t doing a damned thing. Between the crap at the docks, and now this, all in twenty-four hours, she was seriously scraping the tank. If she didn’t eat now, there would be hell to pay, later.

  “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll see what you have in the kitchen, or I can order in.”

  “There’s some canned stuff. I think.” She had no idea how old it was, though. “Call Caesar’s and get a quart of their daily special. Their kitchen’s open until ten.”

  He nodded, and some instinct made her reach out an aching arm and grab his wrist before he could get up off the bed.

  “I’m okay,” she told him.

  “I know.” But his voice still sounded awful.

  “I’m really okay,” she repeated. “But it wasn’t fun, and if I ever do that again, which I hope I won’t, I’ll make sure someone’s here with me.” Her
e, at her side, connected, not in his own apartment halfway across the city. She let that surrender drip through her body and soak into the psychic bedrock. There was no answering response, but she suspected the demon heard, and understood.

  She wasn’t sure that was enough to reassure the human listener, but some of the stiffness left Sergei’s posture, and when he leaned down to brush his lips against hers, just a brief caress, his whispered “thank you” was in his normal toffee-smooth tenor.

  Wren closed her eyes again and listened to the sounds of her partner moving around the apartment, and the muted but still-busy traffic on the streets below, and felt a warm tear prickle under one lid. It might have been exhaustion; she was tired enough to cry. Or it might have been frustration; all that, and the only thing to show for it was an old boot.

  Or it might just have been for all the things lost, that could never be found again.

  No answers. No closure. No absolution, no assurance that she had been a good student, that he was proud of her, that she’d done right by his teaching…

  “Let it go,” she told herself. “Focus on what you can do now. All this is just muck that’s been stirred up by that damn kid. You’ll feel better when the job’s done.”

  For a minute, she even managed to convince herself.

  Museums at night were always, by their nature, a little spooky. During the day, the past was just another artifact, something gone and dead, by its nature an object lesson rather than promise or threat. At night, however…Hallways that during the day were filled with hundreds of thousands of soles tapping on the tile fell silent, save for the sound of the occasional night guard walking his route or talking on the phone while monitoring a bank of remote cameras. Artworks normally lit for ideal viewing now lurked in half-power shadows, and red lights came on in the place of incandescent white, giving structures an unearthly glow. Worse than all of that, though, was when the normal hum of conversation was replaced by the inaudible whispers of history.

  In some museums, the whispers are genteel, civilized, the passions of their creation now aged into a more mellow and fond remembrance. The two renovated mansions that housed the museum held more immediate energies; mankind forgot, Nature did not. Old ills, slights, and catastrophes still lingered, hot and raw as the instant of occurrence, until the floors and walls and windows were saturated.

  Most humans never noticed. The Fatae had no use for museums, carrying their past with them unforgotten, so they never visited, and if they felt it outside those thick walls, they never told anyone.

  The exhibits on display at least had the chance to be seen and admired. It mitigated the worst of the ills, softened the pain of misfortunes, and brought more positive energies to the front. For every child who smeared the glass, or every teenager who lost their poise or cool, the saturation came down a notch. Below, in the basements and storerooms, where every major and most minor museums locked away the items they were not using, had no space to show or had not yet identified the provenances of, there was less room for positive energy flow.

  Some items moved in and out of storage. Some spent weeks, months, occasionally years being examined and studied, placated.

  The rest sat in the dark, numbered, cataloged and all-too-often forgotten. Large or small, all things became dangerous when ignored.

  A figure slid through the door from the upper floors of the museum just as the final closing bell was rung. He paused to wave a thin electronic wand over the nearest camera, freezing it in place, and then casual street clothing was shed, revealing a thin, black nylon catsuit underneath covering the lithe body of a tumbler—or a thief. Now that he was dressed head to toe in dark clothing, exposed skin was powdered with a dark substance out of a palm-size vial, in order to reduce any unfortunate reflection of light. Hands were gloved, head covered with a surgeon’s cap under a black silk hood. The street clothing was folded into a small plastic bag that, at the touch of a button, squeezed itself into an impossibly small package that was placed carefully into a half-filled trash can by the doorway.

  If the figure felt anything other than the usual burglar’s caution, it was not evident in his smooth glide as he moved from the entrance, deeper into the storerooms.

  Whatever the wand had done soon wore off, and the security camera overhead moved in its usual pattern of scan-and-pan up and down the hallway. The figure flowed one step behind the lens, obviously having timed it to precision. Every step was choreographed, even the side step from one door to another, designed to avoid an alarm trigger for the unwary. The museum might not know what was in these particular storerooms, in terms of provenance, but they had paid enough to acquire these items that spending a little more to protect them made sense.

  Handwritten and computer-printed labels pasted on each door were ignored, the figure clearly having a specific goal in mind. Down one hallway, turn left at the branch, then turn right. Two doors down that hallway, then the figure swiftly jimmied open the next door, fitting something into the lock mechanism and closing it gently. The next camera tracked up and down the hallway, and the thief took a breath to judge the pattern, determining the difference from the other camera, before starting in motion again.

  That unmarked door led to yet another short hallway off which there were two more exits. Without hesitation, the figure went to the nearest door and, rather than opening it normally, jerked the handle upward.

  The door slid up into the ceiling, and the figure disappeared into the darkness within. There were sounds of boxes moving, the muffled noise of a toe hitting something, and a small blue glow appeared, lighting the interior for brief seconds before going out. The intruder reappeared a moment later with two objects: one a small metal box the size of a Manhattan phone book, and the other a slightly larger and longer object, wrapped in oilcloth.

  Job complete, the thief turned to leave, but came face-to-face with an unexpected problem: he was unable to bring the door down with both hands already in use.

  There was an instant of hesitation as though the figure was weighing the possibilities. Everything was to be left as it had been found, those were his instructions. But once he laid hands on his prize, he never let go, not until it was handed over to the client. That was how he worked.

  Deciding that the one door, so far inside the labyrinth, would not be noticed until well after he was safely gone, the thief paused to gauge the timing of the camera, then ducked back out into the hallway, prepared to resume the choreographed hide-and-seek.

  No sooner had the figure turned, however, than a light flashed, brighter than sunlight. He was blinded, but reacted without panic, dropping low and crawling toward the exit, the layout as memorized as the motion of the cameras. Every exit option was anticipated and planned for, well before he ever entered the site. At no point did either object leave his grasp, even though it undoubtedly slowed the thief’s escape.

  Slowed it enough that when the jimmied door opened from the outside, the figure was only halfway there.

  The two security guards who entered were off-duty cops, well-armed and in no mood to play games. One of them gave a command and the other circled around to make sure that there was no one else in the room, while the first one held a gun aimed at the thief’s torso. Even if the rent-a-cop missed the heart-shot, the odds were good that he would hit something significant.

  The thief, being a professional and a pragmatist, rolled over and rested the objects carefully on his chest, waiting for them to bring out the cuffs. You never wanted to get caught, but the risk was always there. There was a plan for this, too.

  twelve

  It only took Wren half the morning to track her quarry down, and when she found him, he merely looked up and cracked half a smile. “Of all the java joints in the city, you had to walk into mine.”

  “Can it, willya? Too tired.” Wren dropped herself into the booth opposite Danny, folded her arms on the table, and rested her head on top. Was it really only Wednesday? Tuesday was a blur of sleep and being spoon-fed soup and
listening to Sergei’s blues music playing low on the stereo in the main room. She was back on her feet now, however battered she still felt, and the world wasn’t waiting on her exhaustion.

  But God, she needed a weekend. She needed the week to end, period. Not that she had anything even remotely resembling normal work hours. And she was starting to spend too much time in this coffee shop. It was probably safe to go back to Starbucks. Probably. Then she looked at her companion and remembered how that last foray had ended. Maybe not. They might still hold a grudge about the broken tables.

  “Long night?” The ex-cop-turned-investigator waved the waitress over, and ordered another pot of coffee, extra strong. In his dark blue jeans and cowboy boots under a chunky black sweater, Danny—the former Patrolman Daniel Henrickson, and still in damn fine shape—could have been one of the less-pretty cologne models Madison Avenue used to use, or maybe the hero of a B-grade Western romance. Until, that is, you looked more closely and saw the small horns peeking through his crop of brown curls, or pulled off his boots to see the hooves inside.

  Rumor had it that fauns also had nubby—and cute—tails that could and did wag, but Wren didn’t know anyone who had ever seen one. For a member of a breed that were reportedly randy and rude little bastards, Danny was almost annoyingly discreet. Words failed to express how thankful she was for that.

  “Oh,” he added before she could respond, “Bonnie says hello.”

  “Now is really not the time to change your policy of not kissing and telling,” she muttered from her face-plant on the table.

  “Hah.” He sounded amused. “She and I ended up working the same investigation, Valere, that’s all. I saw her last night, and she said she hadn’t made it home in almost two days, and to tell you she was alive and okay.”