When Wren wizzed, the final straw that had broken her, sending her spiraling down, was being attacked by several Nulls who thought that they would have some fun with a slight, slender female witch—their term, not his, although he suspected they used a B, not a W.
The anger and the hatred she felt, from them and from inside herself, piled on top of the stress every Talent in the city had been under for a year by then…she never said what happened to those Nulls, exactly, but he knew. He knew her well enough to know.
Just as he knew, even though she had never said anything, how much it hurt her to kill, both then, and later. How she never wanted to be in that situation ever again.
She wasn’t a killer. Even P.B., for all that he was built for inflicting violence, wasn’t a killer.
It didn’t bother Sergei at all, to have blood on his hands. He slept better when his family was safe.
“Well. You’re not who I expected to see here.”
He had come in through the first floor window; he was good at not being seen by most people, if not anywhere near Valere’s class of sneaky, but he didn’t know if the doc’s secretary was Cosa or not. Cosa might have spotted him. And there was always the matter of his friendly neighborhood shadow, who was still on his literal tail. He had been tempted more than once to turn and attack, but common sense stilled his paw. Forcing violence wasn’t the name of the game. Yet.
“What, I can’t have an existential crisis, too?” he asked the doc, instead.
“Are you?”
He had wondered that, himself. “I might be. But that’s not why I’m here. I need you to do something for me. If I…if I have to disappear, or nobody can find me. I need you to promise to do something for me.”
The words came out fast, and he didn’t have time to slow down or explain. Doc had been through the Blackout, he was overseeing the reclamation of the Lost. He knew bad shit when it hit the fan.
“This has to do with The Wren?”
“Wren…and Didier. If I disappear.”
Doc nodded. He either knew, or he knew enough to suspect. Either way, it made things easier. “What do you need?”
“You need to be there. When it all goes down. In case it goes down bad. And bring backup.”
“You think that will be needed?”
“I don’t think anything, Doc. That’s your job, all the deep thinking. I’m just trying to keep everyone alive.”
“Alive…and intact.”
“Yeah.” Doc knew enough about what had happened to Valere to be worried about what might happen if she came unglued again. Good. “That, too.”
seventeen
This time, she woke up expecting to be alone. She had gone to bed alone, by her own decision.
Sometimes, the night before a job she liked sex-and-snuggle. This time she was twitchity, restless. Better to burn that out alone, running through the details, fine-tuning the moves, and put herself down early, get a solid night’s sleep. She slept well after sex, but it was a…less restful sleep, and something made her think she was going to have to be a hundred and ten percent on, today.
Her precog was for shit, but she knew her job.
This morning, the air was comfortably cool on her skin when she got up. As she stretched in the darkness of her bedroom, bare skin feeling a slight burn but not sweating, yet, she let her mind run lightly over the details one last time, her eyes slowly adjusting to the shadows in front of her.
There was no reason to not have turned on the lights; she wasn’t worried about anyone watching her apartment—their competition, as far as they could tell, was still focused on P.B., not her. When she finally got in touch with him late last night, through a conference call with Sergei and a one-use cell phone bought for the purpose, the demon had told them, with a heavy sigh, that he was still trapped. Despite his losing his shadow during the day, the woman had called in for help, and been joined by a male, trading off shadowing duties. “They’re outside now. Looks like they’re settling in for the night.”
The demon didn’t live in a great neighborhood. Wren might have felt sympathy for anyone else stuck on stakeouts there.
She had mentioned, without giving details, that she would be taking care of the problem they had discussed today, and the fewer disturbances she had to deal with, the better. Anything he could do to make them focus on him, without, she emphasized, actively putting himself in danger…He had laughed, a dry, barklike laugh, and told her his only plan for the next day was to, overtly and ostentatiously, sleep in, go down to the corner to buy the newspaper, and then come back home to sit on the sofa and read that newspaper. Maybe he would make a few phone calls to a few friends, about getting out of town for a few days over the weekend, meeting up in some out-of-the-way spot.
So she wasn’t too worried about anyone watching her: she just liked doing her stretches in the dark, listening to her body as it came awake without being distracted by sight.
Lift the arm over her head, and feel the muscle pull all the way down the torso, down the leg. Stretch the leg, and let the spine lengthen in response. Bend, and let the body fold in on itself like a well-made fan. She might not be happy with her gym routine lately, but there was no question but that she was ready for whatever might come, physically.
“So long as nobody asks me to lift anything, anyway.” She was lithe and limber, yeah, but she was still a petite-size, light-boned female, and not all the exercise routines in the world were going to make her that much stronger. Not without taking away some of that agility, and that was too stupid to consider, in her line of work.
That was one “pro” to moving to another place. In a proper apartment—one the size of Sergei’s, for example, with its open floor plan—she would have room in her bedroom to do full stretches, maybe even some yoga. She could even put in one of those compact weight lifting stations, and never have an excuse not to go to the gym.
Although she kind of liked her gym; it was low-tech and low-noise, with no chirpy aerobics types in spandex or Gymborees for babies, just a weight room and another room for treadmills and ellipticals, and a pool and a racquetball court, and showers that made you bring your own towel.
Her palms flat on the floor, her spine not crackling at all from the effort, Wren tasted that thought in her mind. Shower. Yes.
Her muscles comfortably warmed up, and her brain starting to kick over at a more acceptable rate, she grabbed her robe off the hook on the back of the tiny closet and wrapped it around her, then walked down to the bathroom. She looked around, trying to see it the way a new renter might. Mediocre to moderate, on the surface. The bathroom was nothing fancy: white ceramic and aged chrome, with old-fashioned fixtures and chipped black-and-white tile, but it was as close to religion as she ever got; the application of hot water externally followed by hot water—coffee—internally. This morning, though, services would have to be abridged. A quick scrub under cool water with unscented soap rather than her usual hot-and-scented was the physical signal to send her brain into the right place, and by the time she was toweled off, her entire self was focused on the job to come.
“Museum opens at ten,” she recited while the spray dug into her scalp and washed away the soap. “There aren’t any new exhibits, nothing particularly hot, so crowds will be average. Security’s solid but not so much of a worry.” She could get past the usual front security check while running a fever, playing a trumpet, and carrying a bag full of contraband. Hired security guards weren’t even a factor in her plans.
The first thief had come in from the main floors. It was a time-honored approach for a reason; there was no way to entirely protect any entrance that needed to be used on a regular basis, especially if your budget was limited by practicalities. She had done it a number of times, dressing like an ordinary member of the public and then sliding into work gear once she was past the initial guards.
In fact, normally she would use an entrance that was almost-but-not-exactly the same as the previous failed attempt, under the assumption th
at while they might be alert they would also be cocky that their security worked.
Not this time.
This time she was worried less about security than she was about running into her counterpart doing the same thing the same way. It was one thing to Retrieve an object under the competition’s noses. It was another entirely to be actually under their noses. Who needed that kind of stress?
All right, it might be kind of fun. But not today.
Humming to herself, a tune she had heard in the subway, blasting through someone else’s headphones, she bopped her way to her bedroom, where her slicks lay waiting on the dresser.
Turning on the single lamp, she went through the final rituals of preparation. Unscented corn powder went on her limbs, smoothing the skin and masking a little more of her own scent. She had learned that from an old deer hunter, back when she was twelve, and never forgotten it. Human noses were much less keen than deer. Even better, the thin black material slid over her powdered skin like an old friend’s caress, covering her from ankles to neck, and down to her wrists. She left off the slippered feet and the hood this time; in the daylight, having your face shadowed attracted more attention than a cheerfully bright face front and center. The microfiber pouch strapped to her thigh, and a matte black plastic case, a smaller version of the ones bike messengers used to deliver blueprints, strapped to the small of her back. Black socks and black running shoes completed the picture; if she were, God forbid, stopped on the street, the slicks might pass for some kind of high-tech running suit.
Fully dressed, she stood in front of the mirror and combed the tangle of her hair back off her face, weaving the wet locks into a tight braid and securing it with a soft, textured clip against her scalp. Nothing that might set off a security scan. Nothing that might carry a clear fingerprint. These were things she didn’t even think about consciously anymore, except when she forced herself to stop and run through the steps in her mind.
She stared at herself in the mirror. Genevieve Valere. The Wren. Retriever. The shadow no one ever saw clearly. The one who could steal the shine off a pair of headlights: the lonejack who stood up to the Mage Council and made them blink. The one some folk said was the best Retriever of her generation.
The woman who went after the Lost, the young Talent who were stolen and brainwashed, and took them back.
It should have been over. But it wasn’t. Nobody would tell her what happened to the kids—the teenagers, the adults, she had taken out of the hell of the Silence’s training hall. She hadn’t ever seen any of them on the street. None of them had ever come to thank her, or to curse her, or just to stare at her in silence.
In silence. Irony, yes. Oh, she knew where they were: in the home set up for them, trained professionals weaning them off the diet of self-hatred the Silence had fed them, bringing them back to some semblance of…something. That much she’d been able to learn, before walking away. They owed her nothing. She had not been kind to them; she hadn’t had time or sanity to be kind to them, too busy ending a private little war. At least now they were surrounded by those who loved them, who cared for them. She took some small comfort in that, in the fact that some had been reunited with parents, siblings. Some might even have been able to forgive what had been done to them.
She held on to that fact and tucked it inside, like a warming stone.
Next, she pulled on her gloves. The same fabric as the rest of her slicks, but even thinner, their abraded surfaces for gripping, and backs textured for protection. Almost unrippable, no matter how roughly she treated them. Gloves of a thief. The gear of a Retriever.
It shouldn’t matter if any of those kids hated her, or thanked her, or even thought of her at all. It didn’t matter if the target was a piece of jewelry, or a cursed artifact, or a blond-haired blue-eyed kidlet with parents who didn’t have a clue, or…or anything. You didn’t form attachments to what you Retrieved, not the good, the bad, or the cute. Or the broken. Lonejack creed: take care of yourself.
She was what she was. She did what she did. Time to do it, and not look back.
Wren reached down and shook out two pills from a small brown vial waiting on her dresser, a new and unwanted addition to her job routine. She dry-swallowed them, then turned and walked out of the room, down the hallway and out of the apartment.
“Valere.” The sky was only starting to lighten when she hit the street, but the streetlamps had already turned off. The Talent waiting for her was seated cross-legged on top of the mailbox. The shadow lurking behind him was no shadow, but Danny, cleaning his fingernails with a knife like some parody of the classic street hoodlum in his jeans and a leather jacket, his head bare for once, the brown curls not quite hiding his nubby horns.
“Tony,” she greeted the Talent in turn. “Thanks for coming out. Danny, you pain in the ass, what the hell are you doing here?”
Danny ignored her attitude. “Body-guarding.”
“I don’t need—”
“Not you. Me.”
Wren eyeballed Tony, who eyeballed her right back. “I’m too old to risk my hide on one of your crazy gigs, and don’t even try to pretend, Valere, because everything you touch is crazy.”
“Even when it works?” She was more than a little offended.
“Especially then,” he said, refusing to take offense himself.
He had a point, damn him. “Just do this, okay?” Her nerves were starting to creep in, poking with needle claws for access, and the only way to deal with that was work.
“Did you take the pills?”
“Yeah.” He had warned her, when she approached him, that there might be side effects, even at his best. The pills were supposed to counteract that. “Supposed to” being the operative term.
A bottle of water appeared in Tony’s hand, and he handed it to her. She took it, noting that the seal was untouched.
“Drink,” he ordered. “You need to be well-hydrated for them to work.”
“I’ll just chuck it when I get there,” Wren muttered, but unscrewed the plastic cap and took a long swallow, then another, suddenly thirsty.
“Stay alert,” Danny said. “Get the job done and come home.”
“Yes, Mother,” she said, just as Tony raised his hands and started to mutter something in a language Wren had the feeling she should recognize, but didn’t. And then the world disappeared in the sickening swirling nothingness of being Translocated.
I goddamned hate this, she thought, dropping to her knees and readying herself for the usual course of vomit. This time, though, she only dry-gagged a little, coughing up nothing but a little water. It might have been the pills, or the fact that Tony was considered one of the best, but she only felt slightly as if she wanted to die, not a lot.
She reached out to grab at the wall for support, then stopped herself, getting to her feet slowly but unaided. Her knees wobbled a little, and her throat and head ached, but otherwise she was okay. Her slicks were unmarred by vomit, for which she was doubly thankful.
Most talented Retriever of her generation, maybe. But shit at Transloc, even when she’d been flooded with Fatae-magics. Neezer had said everyone had a blockage on something, to keep them humble. She could do humble, as long as the vomiting part went away.
Tony was worth every damn penny she overpaid him, until then.
Her hand still gripped the water bottle, and she drained it, luxuriating in the cool water going down her suddenly parched throat. She started to toss the bottle, and then reconsidered, and shoved it into the pouch tied to her thigh. It just barely fit, alongside her tool kit and emergency supplies. Pity that bags of holding, like telepathy and fairy godmothers, were so much bunk.
Hydrated and alert now, Wren did a mental shakedown. She was inside the museum, down in the lower warrens, thanks to Tony’s handiwork. It was an hour before the doors opened for general employees, and three hours before the public would be let in, among them Sergei with her change of clothing and a lead-lined box for the items she would be Retrieving. In through
current, out through ordinary. Leave ’em guessing. With luck, she would be in and out before the other thief even arrived. Let him or her take the fall.
Clock’s ticking. Get moving.
“He hasn’t even gotten out of bed yet.” It was still early, but the servant was normally awake by now, if not out and about. The break in routine was worrisome, and warranted a phone call to check for new orders.
His contact, hours ahead in Zurich, was annoyed. “You may have been spotted, chasing it around all week. I knew that we should have left it alone until the last minute.”
There was no response to that that would not provoke useless squabbling. What was done was done, and there was no way to undo it.
“Where is Julia?”
“Back at the Embassy. I did not think that we would require her services any longer.” The woman, a longtime resident in this city, had been useful while they were here, but would serve no purpose once all the parts were collected. She was a granddaughter of the Kreis, but not skilled in any way, either in the sciences or magics. She was not part of the elite, and had not earned the right to be in on the Discovery.
“No, a good decision,” Zurich agreed. “She would become a handicap at this juncture. However, we can’t afford to wait much longer. We are ready to begin at this end. If it does not emerge within the hour, go in and get it.”
“By myself?” The man sounded slightly taken aback, even though it was no more or less than he had expected.
“It is a servant.” The voice on the other end of the line was thin with distance, and sharp with annoyance. “It will not dare resist.”
“As you say.” He bowed his head in submission, even though Himself could not see it. They might argue with each other in meetings, but once a decision was reached, his word was law. “I will collect it and meet Rog at the airport, on schedule.”
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