Blood from Stone

by Laura Anne Gilman

  And, more to the point, he hadn’t seemed to feel the need for her to ground in him, either. Her partner had a good time—she had a very clear memory of how good a time he’d been having and the finger-bruises on her hips to prove it—without the need to enhance it by having her ground current in him. He might have wanted it, might have thought about it, but that want or thought hadn’t limited his participation, or put a strain on their mutual satisfaction.

  That was—cautiously—grin-worthy.

  It didn’t prove anything was cured or solved or whatever. But it was more progress than they’d had in months.

  Of course, waking to memories and no actual body was less than thrilling. She felt the space in the bed next to her: cool. If it was as late as she thought, he would already be up and showered and having breakfast—or even gone off to work. Drat. She moved enough to look over the side of the bed. Her clothes were still scattered there, but his were gone. Shoes, too.

  Oh, well.

  She collapsed back into bed, pulling the covers up over her bare skin, and snuggled down into the pillow. As long as she was in bed, she might as well sleep a little longer.

  And then of course, the phone rang. Wren considered letting the answering machine get it, but the fact that it was already midmorning made her throw the covers off and pad, bare-assed, down the hallway and into the kitchen. There was another phone in the office, but her instinct was always to go to the main line.

  The fact that the coffee was there, as well, probably had something to do with it.

  The coffeemaker was on and there was in fact a full pot waiting, hot and strong-looking. She picked up the phone in one hand and reached for a mug with the other.

  “Hello?” Her voice was scratchy and she had to clear her throat and try again. “Hello?” She got the mug, and put it on the counter, then turned to reach for the coffeepot. Her kitchen was small enough that everything was more or less within arm’s distance no matter where you stood. She looked out the window to check the weather, and was annoyed and then thankful, considering she hadn’t put on her robe, that the shade was pulled down.

  “Oh, good, you’re awake.” It was Sergei on the other end of the line, sounding far too chipper. She twisted the phone cord with her fingers and tried not to grin even more widely.

  “Barely. Bless you for turning the machine on.”

  “Figured you’d need it.”

  They were both very blasé, very casual, very matter-of-fact. Wren wasn’t going to mention the fabulous noncurrentical sex if he wasn’t. No damage, no mention, no jinxing, no big deal. But it was, and she knew that he knew it, too. Not saying anything didn’t make it any less.

  “I’ve arranged a meeting,” Sergei said, and it took her a minute for her brain to catch up and remember what he was talking about. The Fed. Right.

  “This morning?”

  He laughed a low, amused chortle. “Valere, it’s two in the afternoon.”

  “Holy mother of God.” Wren actually looked at the new solar-powered clock on the wall—a replacement for the old battery-operated one she had fried on a particularly bad day—and shook her head. “I guess I really was tired. Or tired-out.”

  He ignored the comment. “Can you make yourself presentable and get over to the coffee shop near the gallery by three?”

  Thank God, a different coffee shop. She didn’t want to start getting so predictable her enemies—or even her friends—could target her movements or probable destinations. A little paranoia was never a bad thing. “Yeah no problem. Any suggestions on who I should be?” She rarely met with clients, or even anyone who might be tempted to hire her; not so much to keep herself unknown, since few people ever remembered what she looked like anyway, as to not get involved in the hiring discussions or negotiations. The few times she did she deferred to Sergei’s opinion as to what sort of look she should project, depending on how he was selling her.

  “Comfortable,” he said. “Oh, excellent, Lowell has a large fish on the line. I need to go close the deal. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  “Okay,” she said, but he had already hung up, hot on the scent of money. Wren finished pouring a cup of coffee into the oversize yellow mug she had stolen from a store in Grand Central Station and carried it with her to the bathroom. “Comfortable. I’m going to assume he didn’t mean pajamas.” Although that would certainly set a definite tone for the meeting, absolutely. “Hi, I’m The Wren. Trust me, I’m Comfy.” She grinned again. Probably not, not even for the look on Sergei’s face.

  He really was fun to tweak, though. She hadn’t been doing enough of that lately, caught up in the seemingly unending Sturm und drama of their lives. They deserved a break, damn it. Hopefully the recent bits of playfulness from both of them, like last night’s vanilla-but-tasty sex, were a good sign.

  She put the coffee mug on the edge of the sink, balancing it with the casualness of long practice, and turned the shower on. While she waited for the water heater to kick in, she finger-combed the snarls out of her hair, wincing periodically. Sergei was a finger-tangler when he was in the moment, and her hair tangled if you looked at it wrong.

  Detangled, she got under the shower head and let the hot water take the edge, pounding into her skin and raising a mottled flush. It wasn’t good for her, probably, but it felt good. A quick shampoo and rinse, and she turned the water off, standing there dripping in the tub a moment.

  “Awake. Yeah,” she decided, and reached for a towel.

  In the end, she settled on a pair of unripped, reasonably unfaded jeans and a dark blue v-neck sweater. Her hair, brushed out but still damp, hung past her shoulders and made her face look very young, if not innocent. She used blush and a pale lipstick, just enough to give a polish that contradicted the youthful look, and then added a pair of brown leather boots that added another three inches to her height. She had bought them on a whim when they were on sale, and never had a place to wear them until now.

  By the time she was done it was almost two forty-five, and she had to double-time it down the stairs, grabbing her battered leather jacket and shoulder bag as she went out the door. A bus happened to be going past as she hit the nearest stop and she madly flagged it down. The driver must have been in a good mood, or maybe someone on the bus had pissed him off specifically, because he stopped and let her get on. Nobody glared at her from the few seats that were occupied, so maybe it was just good karma day.

  The traffic wasn’t horrible, and she ended up walking into the coffee shop only a few minutes late.

  All right, ten minutes. For mass transit time that wasn’t too bad, she thought. Sergei was already seated in a booth in the back, facing the door so that he would see her—or anyone—as they came in. She noted that he was also able to see the entrances to both bathrooms and the kitchen, as well, and didn’t know if she should be impressed that she noted that he had done that, or unnerved.

  The woman with him had black hair and good posture, and that was all she could tell from here. Dodging a waitress balancing two pots of coffee, one with the terrifying orange handle of decaf, Wren crossed the space and joined them. From the way the woman started as the Retriever slid into the booth next to Sergei, the agent hadn’t seen or sensed her coming. From the way she collected herself after that start, she hadn’t been expecting to see or sense Wren, or was really good at public recovery.

  “Agent Chang.”

  “Ms. Valere.”

  Wren took the other woman’s measure quickly. Damn. And also, damn. Gorgeous, yeah: and if Wren could read people at all, not entirely thrilled with the fact. Like Wren she was low on the face paint, her sleek black hair cut bluntly at chin length so it was easy to care for, dressed more formally than Wren in a pantsuit that skirted being standard government issue by being a dark forest-green herringbone rather than navy blue. Summation: a woman who knew what worked for her, and what was expected, and how to make them work together, but didn’t take anything nature had given her too seriously. The kind of woman Danny would k
now, yeah.

  Wren liked her immediately, but didn’t let any of that show.

  “I’m told you wanted to be able to say you knew me.” She caught the agent’s gaze, one pair of brown eyes and one pair of black watching the other carefully.

  “I suspect you were told no such thing,” Chang replied evenly.

  Sergei looked as though he was going to say something, but a light tap on his foot from Wren’s boot silenced him. Danny’d had his fun, now she was going to have hers.

  “Not in so many words, no. But it all comes down to bragging rights, doesn’t it?”

  “I try not to brag. It gets in the way of actual accomplishments.”

  Wren snorted, and broke the gaze-hold by turning to attract the waiter’s attention and asking silently, in universal coffee shop sign language, for a menu.

  “So now that you’ve…accomplished this, what now, Agent Chang?”

  “I would like to pick your brain, if I may,” she said. “About what it is that you do, who you are. How many of you there are.”

  “There’s only one of me,” Wren said, fully expecting Sergei to chime in with a fervent “Thank God.” He remained silent, however.

  Chang sized her up again, clearly thinking through her words before asking the next question. “You are not the only person with extraordinary abilities, even if you are deeply extraordinary. How do you refer to yourselves?”

  P.B.’s comment, that most groups merely called themselves some variant of “true people” came to Wren’s mind, but she wasn’t sure how far she could tweak this woman without her getting pissy, so she decided to mix things up a little with straight truth and see how she reacted.

  “We’re not very original. Talent.”

  “Talent.” Nope, she didn’t sound impressed.

  “Well, it’s a talent, what we do, and we are what we do, and so…Talent.” Truth, all truth, as far as it went.

  “And there are a lot of you.” That wasn’t a question, the way it was said, so Wren didn’t feel the need to respond. There were a lot, by some standards. By others, their population was depressingly small. Certainly they would qualify for minority status in any census. “And you are all…human?”

  “The way you ask that implies that you think that we’re not.”

  “You’re human,” Chang said.

  Some devil made Wren ask, “Are you sure?”

  Chang blinked at her, and Wren thought she felt Sergei quivering with barely suppressed something next to her. Hopefully, it was laughter.

  “You’re close enough to pass in a crowded elevator,” Chang finally said. “If I was to start determining what was human and what wasn’t, I’d have to back out half the population and almost everyone I work with.”

  Sergei did laugh, then.

  “What do you already know, Agent Chang?” Wren leaned back, resting one arm comfortably along the back of the banquette, behind Sergei’s shoulders. Not that she was being territorial or anything. But Agent Chang was damn gorgeous.

  “Anea,” the other woman said. “My name is Anea.”

  “Genevieve,” she offered in return, acknowledging and accepting the no-poaching, no-foul discussion without anything more being said. “What do you already know, so I don’t waste your valuable time repeating anything?”

  What she really meant, and what Chang understood she meant, was that Wren wasn’t going to risk giving anything away she didn’t have to.

  “Our mutual acquaintance didn’t tell me much. I know that you…your people, are able to manipulate electrical power for rather impressive results, up to and including blacking out entire cities. And that you, yourself, have a reputation for being able to lay hands on items that others have not been able to obtain.”

  Well, that was one of the more diplomatic ways of describing her job, certainly. Agent Chang—Anea—could go into advertising, if the Fed thing didn’t work out.

  “And that you were involved in a recent fracas here in Manhattan that resulted in a rather impressive body count and absolutely no publicity, no charges filed, and no repercussions.”

  The idea that there had been no repercussions would have been funny, if it weren’t so painful. Wren’s humor in the situation faded slightly.

  “I admit to being…very interested in the details of that, and earlier, incidents, as a law enforcement official, no matter that they were never formally investigated.”

  Wren’s amusement faded a little more. That was what she—and pretty much every other lonejack in the city—had been afraid of: official attention.

  “I also know—” and the Asian woman hesitated, playing absently with her coffee spoon in a way that suggested that she didn’t actually know, but was fishing “—that you have…associates who are not human. Specifically, an individual known as Polar Bear?”

  Hearing P.B.’s nickname actually said in full took Wren a moment to process, but she didn’t lose track of the question.

  “I know someone who is called that, yes. I’m not sure I’d call him an associate, though.” Friend, yes. Mooch, occasional roommate, protector, demon. Brother, if she was going to be sappy. But not associate.

  “He is not human, though. What is he?”

  “You don’t need to know that, Agent Chang.” Wren’s words were casual, friendly even, but they were made of steel.

  “Actually, I do,” Chang said in tones of matching steel, but her body language remained open, and those almond-shaped eyes were good-natured. “Curiosity, you see.” She let the question drop, though; they hadn’t forbidden her to dig for answers on her own, after that implied challenge, even if they weren’t going to spoon-feed her what she wanted to know.

  Oh, yeah. Wren liked this woman a lot. Be damned if she’d show it, though. Interesting or otherwise, she was also a Fed. Wren didn’t need those sorts of complications, no matter what Danny thought.

  “Could I…Could you show me?” the Fed asked. “What it is that you do?”

  Sergei seemed taken aback, but Wren had actually expected that to be one of the first questions asked. It was what she would have asked, anyway, were the positions reversed. And if Agent Chang already knew this much, a little more wasn’t going to make the situation any better, or worse.

  “It’s really not all that impressive,” she warned. “Like watching someone turn on a light switch, mostly.” If Anea thought it was electricity, Wren was perfectly willing to continue with that metaphor. It was as close as she wanted to explain, anyway.

  The waitress came with the menu, finally, and Wren took it from her, but didn’t open it. “Watch,” she said, once the waitress had moved far enough way.

  She tapped a thread of current, letting it rise up through her arm, down out through her fingers. It was a simple trick, and one that used to drive Neezer crazy when she did it as a teenager: rearranging the ink molecules on a printed sheet. She used to change the wording of Neezer’s tests when she didn’t know the answer—which was often; biology had never been one of her strong points.

  All she intended to do was rearrange the name of the restaurant. But the gasp Anea let out before anything had even happened made her startle, and the words instead faded entirely off the page, leaving a large blank spot on the menu.

  “Wow.”

  “You saw that.” Interesting. The ability to see current was far more common than the ability to use it—maybe a full third of the human population could see some aspect of it or another, especially if they were already aware and looking for it—but that meant that Agent Chang wasn’t entirely Null. Gooey, she thought, and squashed the thought. She was so damned tired of that word, and cursed Bonnie for ever putting it in her brain.

  “That was…”

  “Magic. Yeah.”

  “Wow.” Then the agent looked at the menu. “Wow.” Her voice sharpened. “You can put the letters back, too?”

  Wren did so, going back to her original plan and making the lettering read “MaliWho” rather than “Malibu” Diner.

  “An
interesting skill. Definitely something that could be useful.”

  Wren cocked her head, not sure what Anea was talking about. It was a parlor trick….

  “Very few of the Talent are criminally minded,” Sergei said, his voice dry, and Wren finally clued in. The ability to alter words on laminated paper—or unlaminated but otherwise specially treated—would indeed be of interest to a government agent. Oops.

  “Jesus wept,” she said. “I never thought of that. That is really…sad.” Her money worries would have been over a long time ago, if she’d just gone into counterfeiting instead of Retrieval.

  “It’s refreshing, actually,” Chang said. “I think you may have just restored a drop of my faith in human nature.”

  As though Wren’s words were in fact the sign the other woman had been looking for, she reached down into the battered leather portfolio case at her feet, and extracted a number of sheets: two printed reports, and a grainy, black-and-white photograph.

  “As promised, my share of the exchange. This photograph was taken four days ago, during an attempted break-in at a certain privately operated museum here in New York.”

  Both Wren and Sergei sat upright at that, and Agent Chang smiled grimly. “I see that gets your attention. Our mutual friend thought it might. Transcripts of the post-arrest interview”—a nice way of saying the interrogation—“seemed to imply that the burglar was hired by a member of your community.”

  A Retriever? Wren was amused at how indignant she felt, that someone would hire an out-of-towner for a local job. Then she looked again at the photograph, and shook her head. “He’s not one of ours.”

  “You recognize him? Or is the community so small that you would know everyone?”

  Oh, Chang was good at this, yeah. But Wren was just as good.

  “I don’t know him, but that doesn’t mean anything. But he’s not one of ours.”