Pack of Lies [2]

by Laura Anne Gilman

  At night, when he didn’t have to be Big Dog, didn’t have to be the boss, the teacher…in the privacy of his own overheated imagination, sometimes her face overrode his current partner’s appearance, and he let himself pretend, just for a moment.

  “Thanks, but no,” he told Lizard, not without some regret. “I kind of like my knots where they are.”

  six

  What happened in New York City didn’t always stay in New York City. In this case, what happened there was of great interest to a man in a quiet office building in Corpus Christi, Texas.

  Two men, actually, although Ray West was more concerned with his brother’s interest than his own.

  William West did not, at first glance, appear particularly important or imposing, despite the luxurious corner suite he occupied. Seen on the street a bystander would notice that his hair was brown and slightly shaggy, his suit was nice but not particularly stylish, and that he had the attitude of a man who had somewhere to be, right now, and get out of his way. And that bystander would, if he or she were a smart human, get out of his way.

  Ray had worked for his brother for twenty years now, and not even the memory of the scrawny kid with a lisp Bill used to be kept him from feeling a sense of awe and menace hanging around his brother as an adult. Something had changed in Bill during college, or maybe it had just come to the fore once he had enough power to not worry what others thought, but Ray didn’t question it. Not when that hard, cold willingness to use people made them all a great deal of money.

  As his right-hand man, Ray worked very hard to keep Bill from getting upset. Some days it wasn’t possible—there seemed to be so many things that annoyed his brother. Today, though, would be different. He had just gotten in from the airport, barely stopping to drop his bags off before coming to report on the results of his trip. “She agreed to your proposal. Things are already in motion.”

  Ray had brought their pet Talent—a young man with the ability to do what they called the Push—with him, ready to start work, assuming that his negotiation would be successful. You assumed success, you got it; that was the West way.

  The fact that their target was Talent as well was no barrier: human or fatae, Talent or not, they were all tools to be used.

  Bill nodded, placing the dossier he had been reading down on his desk, and getting up from behind his desk and going to the oversize sideboard that ran the length of his office. He lifted the hinged door and took two wineglasses down, holding one up in question. Ray nodded. It was first thing in the morning, but they had both clearly been up all night—he on the plane, his brother doing whatever his brother did in this chilly office, all alone.

  “Of course she has,” Bill said in response to his brother’s comment. “It’s an obsession with her, to stop her brother from successfully establishing his plan to keep Talent accountable for their actions. She will snap at any straw, and we offered her a very tempting one.” He poured a measure of ruby-red liquid from a decanter into the glasses and offered one to Ray, who took it with pleasure. They clinked glasses lightly, toasting to their new venture.

  Oskar, their Talent, wasn’t good for much else—he was a straw of a human, jumping and starting at every noise, but he could convince a nun to do a striptease, if that’s what you wanted from him. Their Talent, augmented by Aden Stosser’s knowledge of her brother’s personality and thought process, and especially his weaknesses…it was a perfect match. With her directing their Pusher, they could undermine not only her brother, but also his partner. With both of them incapacitated by doubt and uncertainty, their cadre of half-trained investigators would be ineffective at best, and ideally fall apart completely. Even if anything were traced back… Aden was the one with the known grudge, and the black mark already attached to her name. Oskar would claim that she hired him, and nobody would doubt it for a moment.

  Neither Ray nor Bill were Talent. Ray never felt the lack; he couldn’t say if his brother did or not. Certainly they had enough Talent working for them, one way or another. West Enterprises, Inc. was a consulting firm with specialized clientele worldwide, ranging from media to military, with fingers in both the Null and Talent communities.

  You could work with Talent, but you didn’t have to like them. Ray felt that Talent were…not quite normal, not quite predictable, like cats. Dangerous cats. Having met with the woman, unlike his brother, Ray had a hesitation—not to the plan itself, but the possible consequences. He thought about phrasing it delicately, or not mentioning it at all, then shrugged. Bill was in a good mood; it was probably safe to say something.

  “You know she’s nuts, right? We can’t trust her a step without our hand on the back of her neck, because god knows what she’ll hare off to do, and take our Talent with her.” Not that he was worried Oskar would implicate them in any way; he was well-paid to behave, and his heirs would be even better-paid if he died loyal.

  “She is not crazy,” his brother said in correction as he returned to his desk and sat down in the chair, motioning for Ray to sit down as well. Bill’s voice was calm, almost amused, and deeply confident, as though the universe would not dare order itself any way other than he planned. “She is obsessed. Much the same way her brother is, ironically, if toward a conflicting goal. A family characteristic I am quite pleased to make use of, for my own purposes.”

  Ray sat down and looked into his glass, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

  Bill had read the dossier; he knew how Aden Stosser thought, and how she would react—that was his skill, in judging people’s basest instincts, and then making use of them to accomplish his goals. That, he always said, was the secret to his success. Aden Stosser was just another such tool.

  But Ray remembered the look in the woman’s eyes, the way she had practically quivered at the thought of getting another chance at her brother’s organization, and a faint unease settled in his mind. Tools could break, or slip, even under the most cautious hand. No. He was tired from the flight, that was all. Aden Stosser was crazy, and powerful, and that made her dangerous, yes. But his brother was just as powerful and, Ray admitted to himself, just as crazy in his own way.

  Bill didn’t seem to notice his brother’s unease. “I have to go to Cincy tomorrow, for a meeting. You’ll be able to keep an eye on things here?” He didn’t look up to see his brother’s reaction: of course Ray would cover things. That was his job.

  “You’ll be back on Thursday?” Ray leaned back in his chair, a heavy mahogany piece older than he was, and forced himself to appear unconcerned and in control of things, taking another sip of his wine. Aden was the last piece they had needed, and now she was theirs. Nothing would go wrong. Nothing would dare go wrong.

  “Friday at the latest. I’m not expecting any difficulties.”

  “Difficulties. No, I can’t imagine they would give you any at all.” The two brothers smiled at each other, for once in perfect accord. The project Bill would be closing—the acquisition of a particular piece of legislative support—had been in the works for a year, and the final deal was a foregone conclusion.

  But the word plucked at the unease, again. Difficulties. Humans were always the variable, the thing you couldn’t be sure of, and when you brought magic into the equation…. Ray chewed at the inside of his mouth, thinking, then brought the subject up again, despite his better judgment.

  “This Aden, why does her brother’s little project bother her so much?”

  Bill looked at him, and Ray wished he’d kept his mouth shut and his hesitations hidden. But it was too late now—falling back was worse than stumbling forward. “Much as I don’t want Stosser’s eye turned on me, personally,” he went on, “you’d think these Talents would want everyone in compliance with their own laws, not breaking them.” It didn’t make sense, and he wasn’t comfortable with things that didn’t make sense. Human reactions weren’t always logical or practical, but they made sense, once you understood the players and their desires. Aden Stosser…her desires were contradictory, confusing, making an
already unpredictable situation even more difficult to gauge. “So what’s her game?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Bill said. He took a sip of his wine, looking deep into the glass, following some thought of his own. Ray got the feeling that he was barely in the same room anymore. “I know what she wants, though, and it’s what I want, too. If she can stop him, then we won’t have to worry about his brats causing trouble, later.”

  West Enterprises was legal…but their clients weren’t always. And for that reason, it was in the interests of West Enterprises, Inc., et al to ensure that the so-called Private Unaffiliated Private Investigators never became any sort of player. Bill West believed in taking care of potential problems before they became actual ones. That was how his business had thrived over the years.

  “I won’t have one of our projects derailed because they were sniffing around.”

  Ray let himself chuckle, considering the expensive wine in his glass. “Careful, you’re one step away from sounding like the foiled villain in a Scooby-Doo cartoon.”

  Bill stared at his brother, his gaze even and cold, making Ray immediately regret his moment of levity. “I have no intention of being either foiled, or a villain. Merely successful.”

  And what Bill West wanted, he got. No matter how many bodies it took.

  Dreams stalked me though the night, some of them in black and white, like the movie Sharon and I had watched, and some so saturated with color it made my eyes hurt. And there were faint mutterings, like someone in the room next door speaking my name over and over, so I couldn’t hear details but couldn’t tune it out, either. Kenning while you slept was a one-way ticket to headacheville.

  Despite the dreams, I somehow managed to sleep through the usual garbage trucks and car alarms my neighborhood was heir to, but a sharp noise inside my own apartment finally woke me up. I lay in bed, tangled in my sheets and still groggy from crap sleep, and tried to figure out what the hell that noise was. I didn’t own an alarm clock—hadn’t since my freshman-year roommate’s alarm had shorted out the third time. So what the hell…

  The third ring gave it away. The phone. Right. Half the time I forget I even have a phone, because nobody ever uses it. If the team wants to reach me, they pinged, and…there wasn’t really anyone else these days who needed to talk to me.

  Except one.

  A glance out the window showed me it was still early, although well past dawn. He would have been up and had breakfast already, counting down the minutes until he could risk calling without me snarling in his ear. Sometimes having someone who knew you that well was…

  Well, it was nice. Even if he was a morning person with a morning person’s impatience to get things started.

  I slid down off the loft bed and padded naked across the space to pick up the phone. “Heya, J.”

  “Bonita.”

  Uh-oh. J only used my full name when he’s in formal mode. Well, two could play that game. “Yes, Joseph?”

  He chuckled, letting me know that there wasn’t a catastrophe waiting to leap, just him yanking my chain. “Will you be joining me for dinner this weekend?”

  This wee…ah, shit.

  “Of course I will,” I said with an assurance that I don’t think even he could tell was faked. I hadn’t ever missed J’s birthday dinner, not even when I was doing my semester in Madrid. And this year I’d totally, completely forgotten about it.

  Damn it, I was total crap. I bet Bobby—J’s first mentoree, now a high-powered lawyer out in California—had not only remembered, but already booked his flight home.

  I reached across the desk and grabbed a pen, and scribbled dnr J Sat on the back of an envelope that came in yesterday’s mail. “The usual for gifties?”

  “What, I should suddenly change my stripes now?”

  I laughed at that, despite feeling that I was a disappointment, a loosah, all that crap. I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to work out the kink there that was making my head ache. “Just figured I’d ask….”

  We made some more small talk, and then hung up, leaving me feeling not quite out of sorts, but moderately fey and feckless. Loosah, the voice muttered in the back of my brain. Disappointment. Failure.

  I hated not being the perfect student for J. On top of being an overachiever, I loved him as much as I’d loved my dad—maybe more, part of me admitted—and it hurt to think I might have missed his annual birthday dinner. Especially since he wasn’t a young man, and each one, god forbid, could be the last.

  I sat at the desk, and stared down at my phone. It was a battered relic of the pre-cell phone age, and wasn’t safe-wired—because my core ran cool, it didn’t usually interfere with the phone lines—but I’d grown up in a household that had everything grounded to a fare-thee-well, and it still bothered me, a little, that I didn’t need to take those same precautions. J had reassured me, over and over, that my running cool didn’t mean I was any less powerful than anyone else, but it was true, I wasn’t high-res the way Nick was, or Pietr. Even Sharon and Nifty could generate more buzz than I could, and the Big Dogs? They could take us all in a blackout, and not raise a sweat, I suspected.

  Yeah, I had the recall, and the kenning, and a fair hand at crafting useful spells but…in the Cosa you weren’t judged by how much money you had or how good-looking you were, but by how much power you could channel. Current was currency. At least if you were a Talent. The fatae had other ways of counting, but they did count.

  I frowned, two fingers drumming the top of the receiver as the thoughts sparked and jumped in my brain, driving the doubts to the sideline. Counting. Who counted?

  The scene at the Gather emphasized that there was politics everywhere. Lonejack, Council, even the fatae had their levels, from the piskies at the bottom and the greater dragons at the top, second only to the old ones nobody ever talked about anymore. It was all about how much power you could contain and control.

  Power. Power and prestige. It was starting to come together in my brain, although I wasn’t quite sure what “it” was, yet. Status. That girl had been—was—lo-res. The dossier Venec had put together said she was blue collar through and through, the first in her family to go to college, probably at the ki-rin’s urging. Her mentor had disappeared from the picture when she was seventeen, not unusual, but… The ki-rin had shown up the year after, and had seen something in her, something special. I got the feeling that she’d hung her entire sense of self, her well-being, on that, on being a chosen companion, and now that was gone, or at least damaged, broken.

  If you suddenly weren’t special anymore, couldn’t stand out in the crowd, what chance did you have?

  I shook my head violently, trying to knock the thought out of my head. Enough self-pity, Bonnie-girl, I told myself sternly. That was her. That wasn’t me. My self-esteem was and always had been perfectly fine and not hung on any one thing, thank you very much.

  I stood up and headed for the shower, hoping that hot water would soak this mood off me. I’d been living with shortcomings, current-wise, my entire life. I had achieved more than my dad had, and less than J, and that was all right with me.

  Look where wanting to be special had gotten our victim.

  That shower, and the unexpected gift of a subway car sliding into the station the moment I passed through the turnstile, didn’t quite banish my fey and gloomy mood, and I climbed the stairs at my destination still distracted.

  It was a block from my subway stop to the office, taking me past a row of brownstones that had seen better decades. The weather was dry and reasonably warm, so some of the boyos were there, hanging out.

  “Hey, mama!”

  I shot a dirty glare at the one who had shouted, all of fourteen, wearing a pair of jeans so new they squeaked, and a battered Rangers jersey.

  “Ai mama, pretty lady,” he said, staggering back with his hands to his chest like I’d actually wounded him, “who done you wrong this morning?”

  I reined in my mood and slapped it soundly. No need to take
it out on someone just trying to say good morning.

  “Do yourself a favor, Jack-O,” I said to him. “Don’t ever miss church. God gets you. Maybe not that Sunday, but eventually.”

  I don’t think Jack or his buddies had been inside a church since the last time their mothers dragged them in by the ears. That was okay: it had been at least that long for me, too. But the comeback amused them enough that I was forgiven for not playing our usual flirting game.

  They were good kids, mostly. Bored and restless, but good kids.

  “Kids, hah. They’re all of maybe six years younger than you,” I reminded myself as I went into the lobby, the current-lock on the door buzzing me through without a pause. When we started, that buzz-in had been a puzzle, a challenge. Once I’d figured out how Venec set it up, it was just another useful bit of current-tech.

  Those six years might as well be a lifetime; I felt at least a decade older than my street-corner homeboys. I was being too good a girl, that was all. Upstanding Citizen Blues. All work and no play was making Bonita a very sober girl. This weekend? I was dying my hair again. Definitely. Magenta. Or maybe a nice dark purple. Give Nick something new to rag me about. Hell, maybe I’d get him to dye his hair, too. Strawberry-blond would look good on him. And then we’d go clubbing all damn night.

  I stopped in front of the elevator, intending to brave my inner turmoil there, too.

  A spark of life, suddenly gone out, even as we heard the clang and crash of the metal box hitting the basement floor.

  I chickened out before the doors opened, and took the stairs instead, justifying it as exercise. There wasn’t anyone in the break room, but the coffeepot was hot and half-full, so I wasn’t the first one in. I grabbed my mug and poured a shot, then tested the milk for consistency. Still liquid, still safe to drink. All it took was one solid mass glopping into your morning coffee to make you forever suspicious.

  My movie-watching buddy came in from the inner office. “Hey.”