Pack of Lies [2]

by Laura Anne Gilman

  I made a shallow, mocking bow. Sharon wasn’t being obnoxious, much; her country club-style lush blondeness might turn some heads, including mine, but when it came to ferreting my way into the good graces of Goth-club bartenders and hyped-up bouncers, I’d perfected the art by the time I was sixteen. Like I said, I never made any secret of being a club kid.

  Stosser didn’t like being second-guessed, and we’d already gotten the lecture months ago about learning to adapt, and not to rely on another teammate’s strengths to get the job done. Thankfully, he spared us another sounding of it. “Go upstairs and put together a report of everything you saw, everything you heard, even if it doesn’t seem useful. Total brain-dump, down to the faintest flicker. Then go get something to eat and take a nap. You both look like shit.”

  “Thanks, boss,” Sharon said, but Nick looked relieved. Knowing Sharon, I’d bet good money she’d been running them both ragged all day.

  Down on street level, we split up to go our separate ways, Nifty downtown to the 6th precinct to hunt down his cop, Venec hailing a cab to go god knew where to talk to god knew who, and me and Pietr left standing on the street corner, looking at each other.

  “So.”

  “So, I said.” It wasn’t funny, at all, but I felt the urge to start laughing, mainly because the depression and weird vibes off Stosser were gone, leaving me feeling suddenly light-headed. Stress was seriously whomping my ass. “Where the hell do you find fatae when they’re not asking to be found?”

  “A Gather,” a familiar voice said from over my left shoulder.

  Seeing Pietr jump and yelp was fair payback for all the times he’d managed to scare a month off my life with his random disappearing/reappearing act, but I had sympathy. The first time I’d met Bobo, he’d done the same to me.

  I turned to deal with the newcomer. “Damn it, aren’t you only supposed to lurk nights? No, don’t tell me, your employer broadened the terms of your contract?”

  Bobo looked moderately sheepish, which on him was a good trick, considering he was a brown-furred, black-eyed fireplug that could have been the inspiration for Wookies, only shorter and sweeter-tempered. Proof that Manhattan was home of the terminally jaded; people passed right by us and didn’t even blink.

  “Ahem?” My companion coughed gently, but pointedly.

  “Oh, sorry. This is my coworker, Pietr Cholis. Pietr, this is Bobo. He’s…” How do you explain having a Mesheadam bodyguard? “He’s under obligation to my mentor to keep me—” I almost said “unmolested,” but changed words between throat and tongue “—out of trouble.”

  “That’s full-time work” was all Pietr said. “What’s a gather?”

  A Gather—capital G—was, apparently, exactly what it sounded like. A bunch of fatae in a local area gathering together to eat, talk, eat some more, and generally make nice and reform alliances—or smooth over harsh words before they caused real trouble. Sort of like a neighborhood cocktail party, except without the alcohol. Most of the fatae never developed a taste for the stuff, which was lucky for them. And lucky for us, too. Some of the breeds were nerve-wracking enough without having to worry about them being drunk.

  Normally, we’d never even know about a Gather, much less be allowed to attend. Bobo figured he’d be our ticket in.

  “Thank you,” Pietr said.

  Bobo shrugged, which on his bulk was a particularly impressive thing. Pietr and I looked like skinny kids next to him. Skinny, furless kids, specifically. “Hireman says watch out for her, keep her safe. You two go wandering around looking to stick your noses in fatae business…. Not so safe. Better we keep it in a controlled situation, where folk are already in a good mood.”

  We hailed a cab that was willing to stop for us, Bobo barely fitting into the yellow sedan, and directed the driver to drop us off on 72nd and Central Park West, where Bobo said a Gather was happening today. I didn’t know if they were regular things, or we just got lucky, but I’d take it, either way.

  The local fatae had chosen the Pintum, a small section of Central Park next to the Great Lawn specially planted with pine trees, for their meeting place. It was nice: There were swings, and a circular walking path, and a bunch of wooden picnic tables, and signs that forbade any kind of sports or unleashed dogs. A place specifically set up for lazy lounging, according to the signs posted everywhere. I approved.

  A quick glance around as we walked down the path showed about twenty fatae, half a dozen different breeds ranging from small, winged creatures clinging to posts like large bats, to a griffon and her cub playing catch with a soccer ball. Years ago, before I’d met more than a handful of piskies, I’d gotten my hands on a DVD of Labyrinth, that movie with David Bowie as the Goblin King. Singing, dancing, insane giggling, the whole works. It built up certain expectations. This Gather was…nothing at all like that. I think Pietr was disappointed. I know I was.

  “You expected a bonfire and roasting oxen?” Bobo asked, I guess sensing our mood.

  I glared up at him. “Thanks. Now I’m hungry.”

  “Oi! And…oi!”

  A man strode up to us, his cowboy hat askew on his head, a glass bottle of Coke in his hand and stuck a warning finger up in Bobo’s face. Wow, that was ballsy. “You’re new in town so maybe you don’t know the rules, but no humans here, pal!”

  Funny, he looked human enough to me. But a closer look showed that his ruggedly good-looking face was a little too symmetrical, his ears a little too pointed, and his hat, when removed for emphasis, showed small nubby horns peeking through the curly brown hair.

  A faun. A taller, bulkier, more human-looking faun than I’d ever heard of before, but seeing the ki-rin had been a reminder that pictures and descriptions could and often did lie. First-person observation. No preconceptions.

  Fauns were just as cute as they were alleged to be. That I observed firsthand.

  “They with me. I bring.”

  Bobo, despite his name, spoke excellent English. Gerunds and everything. He was playing dumb-big-brute for a purpose. I was put on alert.

  “I don’t care if they’re king and queen of the prom.” The faun gave us a once-over, then stopped and gave me a once-over again. I smiled at him the way I would one of J’s business contacts: not quite showing teeth but letting him know they were there. Polite, but promising nothing. He smiled in return, but showed his own teeth, white and even and too perfect to be real, except they probably were.

  “You’re puppies,” he said.

  “We are.” I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, from his tone.

  “You’re here about the incident yesterday morning? The one down in the meatpacking district?”

  There were enough incidents he felt the need to be specific? “We might be. We might want to talk to anyone who was there, if they want to talk to us.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  I tilted my head, working the little girl cute for every dollar it was worth. “Then I’ll talk to you.”

  Pietr had totally disappeared from the faun’s sights. So had Bobo, probably. The thing about fauns is that they could be serious sons of bitches, until you got their…ears pricked up. Then they could only think with their pants.

  “Are you trying to seduce me, girly?”

  Bastard had the startled “Mrs. Robinson” inflection down perfectly, and I started to laugh. All right, honors about even. If we’d met outside of work situations, I might have tried to seduce him, in fact. Not that it would have taken much doing. I’d never had sex with a fatae before, but fauns were historically polyamorous and not all that shy about species lines. They were also supposed to be impressively inventive, and gloriously hedonistic.

  And he wasn’t tripping any of my “caution-male” alarms, the ones that had been going subvocal-but-strong since this damn case started. Interesting. Was I recovering, or was it a nonhuman thing, like the mer’s come-on?

  “We’re trying to find out what happened,” I said, switching over to a more professional m
anner, lechery off the table for the moment. “If you know about PUPI, then you know we’re not here to take sides or run an agenda. We’re here for the facts.”

  The faun looked cautiously scornful. “Not the truth?”

  Ow. What do you say in response to that? I took the fallback position. “Truth is subjective.”

  His eyes narrowed, but there was suddenly a spark of humor in his expression. “Kierkegaard wanted to eat his cake and have it, too.”

  Smart and horny, and he got the cake quote right. I really might be able to love this guy.

  “I’m Bonnie,” I said, extending my hand.

  “Danny.” He shook my hand, the palm-to-palm contact showing me a guy with a firm grip and well-manicured nails—maybe his feet were hoofed? Hmmm.

  Pietr gave me a quick shove in the back with his elbow. Oops, had I said that last bit out loud? From the twinkle in Danny’s eyes, I had. As J often lamented, I didn’t have an ounce of shame, and just smiled cheerfully at my companions. Pietr was used to it; Danny recovered quickly, as I’d suspected he would.

  “Let me introduce you around, introduce you to a few people. No offense, pal,” he said over his shoulder to Bobo, “but like I said, you’re new. They’re not going to trust your vouching for her…or her Retriever friend. Is he here to work, or…?”

  “I’m not a Retriever,” Pietr said wearily. He got that a lot, along with the jokes. Retrievers were Talent who were supposed to be able to use current to disappear even when you were looking right at them, making them natural-born thieves. Pietr was too damn stand-up for that, though.

  “No?” Danny looked mildly surprised at Pietr’s denial. “Man, you should be. Okay, come on, both of you. And try not to rile anyone, okay? Things are a little jumpy these days, and even vouched-for humans might not get a nice reception from everyone.”

  Danny hadn’t been kidding. The fatae were mostly social—nobody hissed at us, or turned their backs, or brought out poisoned claws or quills—but there were a few conversations that dropped dead as we approached, and nobody really seemed to know anything at all about what happened except as how the ki-rin really couldn’t be blamed, could it?

  “No, sir,” I said for the tenth or thirteenth time to a grizzled lizard-fatae wrapped up in sweaters against the raw spring air. I wondered if it was related to a salamander, and what it was doing out and about before the temperature got above 70. “I don’t see as how any blame could be assigned. A ki-rin has honor to consider.”

  It nodded, and Danny took my arm like we were strolling through the park…which, actually we were. The thought almost made me laugh. Thankfully, Danny either didn’t notice or didn’t want to know what made me grin this time, and we moved on through the crowd. The pattern was the same with every fatae; Danny would introduce us, and then one of us—Danny, Pietr or myself, Bobo having stayed off to the side—would slide the conversation along to where we wanted it. It wasn’t subtle, and I don’t think anyone didn’t know what was up, but they were talking to us. I prided myself on the fact that Council-sent investigators—even the diplomatic types like J—wouldn’t have been able to get so far. They were talking to us, not because they were scared, or needed something, but because of who—and what—we were. For the first time, being a pup meant something. But was it enough?

  “It’s really a matter between humans,” the griffon said, when Pietr asked her if she’d heard anything about the incident. “You are all so…difficult to understand. I can barely tell you apart, half the time, it amazed me you find so much to disagree about.”

  “They’re not investigating a political dispute, Hrana,” Danny said. “A girl was attacked.”

  “Oh. Well, the ki-rin took care of it?”

  And that was it, as far as she was concerned. Honor had been satisfied.

  “You PUPI should stay on your side of the fence,” a schiera said suddenly, looking at me from its upside-down perch with oversized, almost liquid-black eyes. Its claws flexed nervously, and I shoved Pietr a few inches back, away from the implied threat. This breed was one J had made me read up on. Schiera were not only obnoxious, but they were also deeply poisonous, and I had my doubts anyone was carrying antitoxin—or that they would share any with us, if they decided we’d deserved to be scratched. “We don’t need you, and we don’t want you. We don’t want any humans.”

  A few of the fatae around him looked amused or wearily patient, as though they’d heard that rant before, but some others nodded their heads in agreement. So much for goodwill….

  “Yeah, you schiera’d do really well without humans to mooch off of.” A foxlike kitsune snickered, but I noticed that it kept its distance from the schiera’s claws, too. The fact that the bat-winged fatae were garbage-eaters was definitely not the sort of thing that you brought up at a polite gathering—or Gather.

  “Are you saying we’re parasites?” the schiera asked, its screech making my ears ring and my head ache. Obnoxious, poisonous, and loud, I amended my earlier description.

  The kitsune fluffed its three tails slightly in what might have been amusement. I got the feeling it wasn’t so much defending us as settling an old score—or just causing trouble. “If the shoe fits, as our human cousins say…”

  “They’re no Cosa-cousins of mine,” bat-wing screeched, and my headache went up a notch. Next to me, I could feel Pietr wince. “No cousin at all!”

  Oh, shit. I tensed, not sure what was going to happen next.

  “Am I a cousin, Ardo?” Danny asked the schiera abruptly, and the kitsune’s tails went still, his eyes brightening with interest as his gaze flicked between the two. Uh-oh… What was about to go down?

  The schiera glared at the faun from its upside-down perch. “You are fatae.”

  Wow, that was grudging.

  “Am I?” Danny demanded again, stepping forward into the schiera’s personal space, and making a big deal about exposing himself, arms spread, to a 360-degree view. “Am I a cousin?”

  There was a short silence after that, and my new friend’s appearance suddenly made sense to me. Cross-breed. Wow. That was…unusual didn’t begin to cover it.

  “Am I a cousin, Ardo?” he demanded again, waiting.

  “You are Cosa-cousin,” Ardo said, finally, its liquid-black eyes rimming a little with red. It wasn’t happy, no, but it wasn’t going to deny the faun. Interesting. My new friend might be more important than he was letting on.

  “Then these humans are my cousins,” Danny said, maintaining eye contact. “And therefore they are your cousins, as well. You will treat them with at least a smidge of your usual gracious and delightful courtesy—” there was a smothered laugh from someone at a safe distance “—or I will be deeply annoyed with you.”

  The two locked stares, one upside down and one right side up, like cats measuring up who was boss-tom. It reminded me a lot of Stosser and Nifty’s dance earlier, except that there wasn’t the accompanying buildup of current, since fatae didn’t use it that way. And this one felt nastier.

  “Do you understand me, Ardo?”

  Hitting his breaking point, the schiera launched itself off the perch, claws out, a shrill noise that nearly shattered my eardrums coming from its throat like a miniaturized war cry. Danny managed to jump aside and push me out of the way, all one almost-smooth gesture. Pietr, of course, had already disappeared, although he could have been right beside me for all I knew.

  Bobo was standing over me before I could do more than blink, growling deep in his furry chest, a seriously scary noise. His thick fur was ruffled, making an impressive barrier against claw or fang, and while his own teeth were canines, not fangs, they were capable of biting through the schiera’s wing with one hard munch.

  The schiera, being mean and bigoted but not stupid, got the hell out of Dodge, straight up and away.

  “You all right?” Bobo didn’t look down at me, but scanned the crowd, waiting to see if anyone else was going to be stupid. The kitsune snickered, but everyone else suddenly needed to Be
Elsewhere in the crowd.

  “Yeah.” I did a quick self-check. Bruised and out of breath, but okay. “Danny?”

  The faun was already back on his feet, and I noticed, from my vantage point on the ground, that he was wearing seriously scuffed but gorgeously tooled brown cowboy boots.

  “You little fucker!” he yelled, slamming his hat down on the ground and yelling into the now-empty sky. “You come back here and try that again! I’ll turn you into schiera jerky with your own damn venom, you little ass-wipe excuse for a flying rat!”

  All of a sudden, it was all too much. The stress of repeatedly viewings the attack, the chasing after news, the sudden reversals and the sniping…and now a half-faun cowboy wannabe having a hissy fit in the middle of Central Park.

  I lay back on the cold, pine-needle-coated ground, and howled with laughter until my eyes started to water and my ribs hurt, and Pietr reappeared next to me, looking worried, like I’d finally gone around the bend.

  “Bonnie?”

  I was laughing too hard to answer, and finally he just left me alone until I calmed down and could hoist myself up to a sitting position, still giggling a little. It wasn’t funny, but I felt a lot better. Most of the remaining fatae had moved off to another area of the Pintum, and the party went on, although it looked and sounded a lot more subdued.

  “Better?” Danny was sitting on a nearby bench, watching me.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” I didn’t hold a lot of emotion pent-up inside me, normally; this blowout had been unnerving, but useful. “You?”

  “I’m used to it.”

  Ouch. Yeah, I could imagine being a half-breed wasn’t fun at the best of times.

  Danny stared at a nearby pine tree with that thousand-yard stare that meant he wasn’t really looking at anything in the park, and then turned back to us, his good-looking features composed, like he was about to recite a speech someone else wrote for him.