Sliding the phone back into his pocket, Jef looked dubiously at the still-dark window of the basement apartment. An hour. Word as law or no, it was easy enough for Himself to speak of servants and collecting. He was the one who had spent the past week researching the creature, observing it, while Julia was the obvious threat. He was the one who had seen the creature up close. More specifically, he was the one who had seen the creature’s claws and teeth up close. Fine for Himself to be casual about servants who served; he wasn’t the one who had to go down and get the thing.
Fortunately, his discussions with local veterinarians had proven fruitful in one way, if not exactly as hoped. He checked his pocket for reassurance, feeling the capped syringe and capsules secreted there. He was assured that the sedative contained therein would put even a raging bear out, if needed. All he had to do was hit square in the flesh, and then get out of the way. It was important, vitally important: this servant was one rumored to be viable. They needed it, to test the Discovery.
He patted his pocket one more time, took a deep breath, ran a hand down his tie to erase nonexistent wrinkles, and took a better position to watch the apartment door.
Wren could feel the hum of her current, reacting to her mood. She slipped through the hallway, counting steps under her breath, making her movements almost like a dance. The ceiling-mounted cameras turned and tracked up and down the hallway but she ignored them, letting the crackle of current just under her skin do its job in hiding her. When she was just starting out it would have taken her a good ten minutes to prep that; now it was like slipping into bathwater. Nothing to do with her increased flow; just experience.
She could feel the energy pulsing around her, shimmering in the walls like a living thing, like a thousand living things, but it was purely electricity; the museum didn’t use anything current-based at all. Either they had no Talent on staff—possible—or the ones they did have were smart enough to keep their current to themselves and out of the system. Some Nulls were cool with having coworkers who were different—there was that entire firehouse who had rallied to defend their Talented brother, had become the base of operations for the main stand against the Silence last year, and they’d probably get cookies every Christmas until the building was torn down, for that—but even with the Tri-Com working to improve relations, “outed” Talent in the workplace were still rare, as much because of the Cosa’s hard-learned preference for obscurity as humanity’s distaste for the differently abled, especially the supra-abled.
Still, it wasn’t smart to get cocky until the job was done. She dialed back a little, dampened her current until it was merely what was needed to bypass the cameras, and let her own physical abilities handle the rest. Right now it was her memory that she needed more than anything, since she couldn’t trust any of the signage on the various doors. A Null thief could commit plans to a PDA or microchip. Unless she wanted to haul around miniaturized blueprints and a magnifying glass, she had only her gray matter.
Thankfully, the layout of these rooms was simple enough, echoing the public rooms she knew so well, and once she had her bearings, it was just a matter of getting there. After the first, failed attempt, the inventory had been taken from cold storage and brought up to these rooms, where items of possible interest were poked and prodded, photographed, and deciphered. Exactly what they had hoped to avoid.
But there was a silver lining, even now. The active rooms were, well, active. People went in and out of them all the time. Therefore security would have greater holes to exploit.
Of course, she thought, there were also negatives to that too, as the sound of confident footfalls on the linoleum flooring alerted her that someone was coming her way. Slipping up against the bare white walls, Wren took a deep breath and brought up another layer of current. The worker—an early-morning curator? A janitor? Who knew?—passed within a foot of her, and didn’t notice a thing.
Don’t get cocky, Valere, she reminded herself, and started breathing again. In, grab, out. She moved on down the hall, running through the plans in her memory. Neither Sergei’s contacts nor Chang’s influence had been able to shake loose exactly where the materials had been moved to, only that they were under new scrutiny by the museum staff, to determine why a thief would be interested in that exact bin.
Wren never thought that she’d regret Retrieving something nonmagical. The truth was, in a situation like this, if the papers had been anything more than merely papers, she would have been able to open herself to the flow, and find where current was concentrated oddly indicating something more than normal or customary. Current picked up the signature of its user, and so did Artifacts and ritual objects.
That thought stopped her cold.
Duh. Idiot.
Herr Doktor had been a Talent, even if a low-res one, and he had spent his entire life, according to P.B., trying to perfect demons to a specific purpose. It was a madness—not like wizzing, but not unlike it, either. And madness was one of the strongest influences of signature there was…like finding Neezer’s boots because he had been so frustrated, these papers should carry Herr Doktor’s signature, as well.
Fainter, oh, so much fainter, but they had much more of an emotional connection to him in the first place; his entire life’s blood might have been used, rather than ink, to make those notations.
You’re an idiot for not thinking of that sooner. Although to be fair, if you didn’t have the inside scoop on the guy’s focused single-mindedness, and the fact that he was a Talent, and the fact that he wrote them out himself, old-style pen and paper, it wasn’t something that popped to mind right away. And there was no reason to assume any signature at all would remain after all this time. And no guarantee that even this close, in the same building, she would be able to pick it up, not having known the guy.
You didn’t, no. But you know someone who did. Intimately.
Ducking into a broom closet in case anyone else had come into work early or unexpectedly, Wren leaned up against a mop that smelled rather disgustingly of ammonia and fake pine, and reached not inward, as usual, but out.
*P.B.?*
Fatae weren’t usually able to ping, using thin strands of current like telegraph wires to speak to each other, but demons seemed to be a major exception to every “usually” she knew. Or maybe it was just their connection, hers and P.B.’s, working the way it was supposed to when she needed him.
*Trouble?* A sense of alertness, coiled and ready for action, marbled with a faint sense of boredom, waiting.
*No. Need your memory.* She shoved as much an apology as she could manage into those words, trying to impart what she needed. It was difficult, and foggy, and she could tell it wasn’t getting through. *Him. His signature,* she clarified. *Current. What did it feel like?*
Comprehension, and a reluctance to dig into that memory, then a surge of determination so fast the earlier reluctance was swamped and erased. For her, he would do this. The feel of heavy doors unlocking deep in his memory, so different and yet similar to her own mental storage boxes, and as simple as that she was brought down into the memory, and given what she needed.
*You okay?* she asked, once she had pocketed what was there.
*Bored.* A stronger sense of frustration, being kept cooped up in his apartment, more than any injury from what she had asked. She chuckled, sending as much sympathy as she dared.
*Over soon. Hang tough.*
Shutting herself down, she cupped the sense of the old man. It wasn’t at all what she had expected, braced for something slimy, maybe, or at least unsavory.
Instead she got straight-backed and eagle-eyed, cruel and kind all at once, wise and foolish in his obsession but never once actually inhumane to those in his care, even the ones not human. Merely…careless of them, as one might be to a horse or dog that was not particularly beloved. Selfish, God yes. Astonishingly so. Talent, but P.B. had been right, more brilliant than Talented; driven and dedicated enough to make up for it in all areas…all except one.
She touched the memory of that Talent, felt it course through her veins the way it must have for P.B., when he was young and malleable. Felt the sting of unwanted intimacy, and the weight of slavery, even if it was called servitude.
There. That was it. She held the spark of memory, cradling it in her mental palms, and drew it out into a thin strand, copper-red with age. A strand of her own current, thicker and a darker blue, joined it, twining around it, and then she let them both go with a simple command: like to like.
Assuming there weren’t too many objects with the creator’s signature on it the strand should take her to wherever the crate of materials had been moved. Hopefully.
“And away we go,” she said, feeling the tug somewhere in her gut. She slipped out of the closet, thankful to leave the smell behind, and moved down the hallway. The tug brought her to a stairwell, and up a level. From the change in the way the building felt, somehow, she thought that she had left one wing and entered another, where they had cobbled the two old brownstones together when the museum was established. She was still in the off-limit areas, though, she could tell that much.
The pull grew stronger, leading her up another level to a wider hallway where the doors, rather than being solid slabs, were lighter wood, with frosted glass insets. It looked more like…
Oh, hell. She was out of the storage areas, and into the actual workrooms.
No matter how good the blueprints, there was something about museums, even the smaller ones, that just never translated from floor plan to actuality, and no matter how sure you were you knew where you were, most of the time, you weren’t.
She pulled up that part of the plan from memory: one hallway, seven rooms, each separate from the other, like classrooms, or offices. Easier to search: also easier to be trapped in. At least there were fewer cameras here.
There. Behind the fifth door. She slipped inside, praying that nobody had decided to make an early morning of it.
Chaos greeted her: wooden crates on the floor, and plastic bins on tables, a whiteboard the size of her living room wall against one side, covered with boxes that she supposed were meant to represent rooms in the museum itself.
Damn it. She risked looking over some of the items that were unpacked on the tables, skimming the notes taped to the surfaces. They’re putting together an exhibit. Of Herr Doktor’s work?
The inked placard gave her an answer—Mad Science: Real Life Dr. Frankensteins and the Pursuit of Life.
Oh, hell. Oh, damn it and twice damn it and three times more. Exactly what she had wanted to avoid: some bright thing bringing the material to the public view and banging a drum over it.
What, because you’re afraid someone’s going to figure it out? A little late for that, isn’t it, considering they’ve already made a first grab.
But right now, the damage was limited. Once this was on display? All it would take was one wiseass Talent to come through and see the exhibit, and put two and two together to get five, and she knew damn well how easy it was for Cosa members to do that. And hell, if a Council Mage were to hear of it…
She glared around the room, furious at the universe that seemed determined to make this as complicated as possible, willing the specific material she needed to appear before her out of the organized mess.
“paperwork to file
buried deeply out of sight;
it must first be found.”
The strand of copper and blue appeared in the air in front of her, quivering and pointing like a bird dog on the job.
“Come to me,” she commanded, focusing not on the strand but the materials it had found. A heavy book, two rolls of paper, and a small notebook rose off their various desks, and an ornate, old-fashioned ink pen rose out of a small rosewood box.
Too much, more than she was looking for. Her irritation and her enhanced current were working against her, now. Ease back, clarify, and control, she reminded herself.
Ignoring the pen—she wasn’t here for memorabilia, even though it would probably get a nice price from a collector—Wren grabbed the scrolls and tucked them into the short carry-tube that was strapped to her left calf. She removed the water bottle from her thigh pouch, and tucked the small notebook there in its place, tossing the water bottle into the small recycling can under the desk. With luck, nobody would even think to sort through and pull one water bottle from the power drink cans and soda bottles already there.
“And what the hell will I do with you?” she asked the large book. It was the size of a phone book, hardbound and locked with a brass lock that had been carefully, almost expertly prised open.
“Give it to me,” a gravelly voice behind her said. It wasn’t phrased like a suggestion.
eighteen
Think fast, Jenny-wren.
This time, it wasn’t an echo of her mentor’s voice she heard, just her own awareness using his voice. Old habits died hard, even imaginary ones.
When Wren first went into partnership with Sergei Didier, she had been a small-town teenage shoplifter with some basic talent as well as Talent. Seeing potential in her itchy fingers, he encouraged her to stretch exactly the skills and inclinations her mentor had once despaired of, and found her teachers for the things she needed to know. But it had been Wren’s own idea to work with a woman who trained agility dogs. The woman used to run her through obstacle courses that were similar to what the dogs trained on—up ladders and over jumps and through tunnels—with the added fun of throwing things as Wren did so. Wren’s reflexes, always good, had gotten better.
Those reflexes were screaming at her to throw something at that voice, but the only thing to hand was the book he was demanding, and that was the one thing she wasn’t about to give him.
Should have paid Tony more to stick around, she thought with annoyance, even as her brain was running through possible responses. Translocating the hell out of here now would have been worth the price. Although maybe not—once, the pills seemed to work. Twice, in close proximity…the last time she tried that many Translocs, she was damn near incapacitated for a week.
Those thoughts took less than a second to race through her mind, and she was already moving by the time they finished. Rather than swing around to confront the speaker, or drop to the ground to try and escape, Wren went up.
“What the hell?” Gravel-voice asked, his voice squeaking in surprise on the last word.
Sergei had been right; they had gone to the Null population again for their thief. A Talent wouldn’t have blinked at the sight of a Retriever clinging to the ceiling like some kind of real-world Spiderman.
The pull from the wiring in the ten-foot-high ceiling was just enough to make her palms and knees itch to draw more down, and Wren was careful to keep the touch of her own current light. The last thing she wanted to do now was overload the already stressed wiring of the building and cause a power outage that would bring every cop in the city wailing to the front door, sure a heist was in progress.
Especially since one was.
Carefully matching her drawdown to the flutter of current leaking naturally, using it like a spider’s web to keep her attached to the ceiling, she scrambled over the other intruder’s head, the large book pressed against her stomach like a mutant baby possum looking for mama.
Getting down was as easy as falling, which was pretty much what she did—right on top of the other intruder, toppling him to the ground. As she hit, a weird, nasty feeling skittered over her skin, and she shuddered, rolling quickly to get away from him, and it. As she rolled, she got a look at the other intruder for the first time: tall, dark, stocky and pissed-off. Also, wearing a uniform, dark blue pants and jacket with a patch on his shoulder, and a walkie-talkie—but no gun—at his leather belt Ooops. Not a thief. Museum security.
Where the hell did he come from? He was off his rounds, damn it. Nobody was supposed to be patrolling this floor for another twenty minutes!
“Sorry,” she muttered, pitching her voice as low as she could in order to sound masculine, and use
d the spine of the book to knock him one across the chin, praying she didn’t do any damage to the book. She wasn’t trying to hurt him, either, just keep him down long enough for her to get away. Her gym routine paid off, giving her the upper body strength needed, and he blinked and fell back again, the back of his head clunking against the floor.
Reaching down even as she scrambled up to her knees, Wren touched the walkie-talkie and the cell phone clipped to his belt, and sent a surge of current through them both. With luck, when he came to, he’d spend a few essential minutes trying to figure out why nobody was responding to his calls before he chased after her.
“Follow me,” she told the book, and it obligingly attached itself to her like a dog on “heel” command. Dashing out the now-open door, Wren left the guard ass-down on the floor, and fled down the hallway.
Time check. How much time had passed? Her internal clock was usually pretty good on these things—when you couldn’t wear a watch, you learned how to estimate time to within a few minutes’ accuracy. The doors should be opening for staff soon, if they hadn’t already. And someone was going to find the guard sooner rather than later, even if he sat there fiddling with his nowjunked radios until then. Why did he have to come in just then, to see her boosting the book? Damn it, she should have tied him up, should have—bingo!
Wren skidded to a halt before she reached the stairs. It wasn’t a brilliant idea, and it had a high probability of failure, but it was better than anything else she could think of and had the added advantage of being simple. Simple sometimes was better than brilliant, especially under stress conditions.
She flicked a finger, and the book came into her hands. It was dark brown leather, scuffed and battered at the corners even before she used it as a weapon, as if it had been shoved into a lot of trunks and desks over the years. There was nothing written or embossed on the front or back, and the spine had lettering that was too faded now to read. The pages looked to be heavy paper, and had at one time been edged in gilt. The temptation to open the book and see what was inside was intense, but Wren resisted. With her luck, Herr Doktor had bespelled the pages to trap any Talent who dared peek. That seemed like the kind of thing a mad mage-scientist would do, didn’t it?
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