“No, you moron. Because it had blood dripping from its horn and hooves and even if I’d been a vestal virgin I’d have been careful about going near anyone who’d just been through that kind of trauma.”
Pietr caught the tail end of that statement. “You think it was traumatized?”
I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “No, it was perfectly mellow and unfussed. Give me a break, of course it was traumatized. Or at least seriously upset and angry. It saw its companion attacked, and killed another being, a Cosa- cousin, even if he didn’t know it at the time, and I suspect it did—”
Memory of my earlier thought came back, and I stopped. “Damn. Pietr, we looked for emotional resonance, and then we were distracted by the crap we found in the memorial piles, and I think we screwed up. Did anyone think to check for trace of actual current-use at the scene?”
“We looked for emotional trace….” he began, not sure where I was going.
“Yeah, but not actual current-trace. Damn it!”
Nick scowled at me. “It was a physical attack, not a current-blast. The guy died of horn-and-hoof disease.”
“Think, Nick,” I said, feeling a surge of energy run through my legs, making me want to swing around on my stool. That meant I was on the right track, somehow, even if I didn’t know what it was, yet. “It was physical, yeah, but all three of them were Talent. Something like this, even a lo-res player like our girl should give off sparks. A guy fighting for his life against a ki-rin?”
“We looked for emotional trace carried on current, but not the current-trace itself. Damn.” Pietr got a sort of hazy look in his eyes. “I pinged Sharon, gave her a sense of what we’re worried about. She’ll check it out in the morning.”
Sharon’s train passed by the site, coming in, so that made sense. My brain raced on ahead, trying to figure out how to use that new evidence, if there was any. Odds were, there wasn’t anything left to find, but if there was, Nifty had been talking a couple of weeks ago about sifting current-trace into a time-graph. If he could manage that, we’d be able to tell who shot first, as it were. That would be a huge piece of the puzzle, especially if we could prove that the girl tried to defend herself after the attack, but before the ki-rin waded in, supporting her version of the story.
And if we didn’t find anything, or Nifty couldn’t make the time-sift work, well then, no need to mention to the Big Dogs that we’d overlooked it in the first go-round.
“Do you think it can be trusted?”
My thoughts were on the bosses, so it took me a minute to figure out what Nick was saying, and about whom. The ki-rin. The creature everyone’s original assumptions rested on, because ki-rin could not lie.
“As much as anyone or anything with their own reasons for doing things can be trusted, yeah,” I said, finally. “You used to be a total fanboy about the fatae. Why the doubts now?”
Nick got a little puffed about that. “I’m not…most of the fatae we’ve met so far have been okay, if a little standoffish. But this—ki-rin are supposed to be perfect. Everyone says the ki-rin can’t lie, don’t lie, paragons and champions of virtue, et cetera. But can it really be trusted? I mean, it doesn’t seem to have much use for humans overall, except its companion, and look at how fast it dumped her.”
He had a point. I didn’t pretend to understand the fatae, but would it have killed the ki-rin to go with the girl to the hospital, or visit after, or something? Hell, maybe it would. We didn’t know enough. Nobody knew enough, thanks to the ki-rin’s fetish about privacy.
The burst of energy ran out, and I stopped swiveling in my seat, suddenly exhausted again.
Nick went on, oblivious to my mood change, building up steam. “And why virgins, anyway? Like not having had sex makes you a good person or something?”
Ooooo. I suddenly wondered if we’d hit a nerve…and if the ki-rin would have been willing to talk to Nicky-boy. The thought was…novel. Also slightly horrifying.
“It’s not the virginity per se,” Pietr said. “From what I’ve read, they’re not looking for a lack of a sex life so much as lack of desire.” He paused. “They’re not real big on the passion or drama sex stirs up, the ki-rin. I guess virgins are restful.”
“Hah. Here’s to being unrestful,” I said. We clinked glasses again, and called for a refill.
“You should sleep with Venec,” Nick said suddenly, doing one of his wild topic-changes.
Next to me, Pietr made a noise I don’t think I’d ever heard before, and I turned to see him gasping, tears in his eyes, and his glass held out from him as though protecting it.
“Oh, good job,” I said to Nick, trying very hard not to think about what he had actually just said. “You made him snarf his bourbon. Man, that’s gotta sting.”
“Motherf— Yes,” Pietr managed to reply. “It did.”
“You totally should,” Nick went on. “You think nobody noticed that little goo-up back in the office?”
I started—how the hell?
“Au contraire, my dear Dandelion. You held each other’s gaze a bit too long and moved away a bit too fast for a room full of investigators not to notice.”
Oh. He’d only seen the physical reaction, the first time. All right. That I could explain away. If I wanted to. I decided to just smirk, instead. That was more in character. Less likely to raise suspicions, or give either of them anything to chew over.
“Anyway, it will do you both good,” Nick said, clearly not sensing that the conversation needed to end. “I’m your bestest buddy and I know what you need.” He made a determined little nod that was disgustingly cute, and I had to bite back a giggle despite my annoyance. “Reduce stress, give you a lilt to your step…keep Venec from being such a hard-ass on the rest of us…”
“Good luck with that,” Pietr muttered. I had to agree. Even assuming I ever went there, which I wasn’t going to, I suspected he’d still be a hard-ass. I’m not sure I’d want him to be anything else, either. It would be…weird. Like…like seeing J in a dress, or something.
That image made me blanch, and I finished the rest of my drink in a rush, hoping the booze would burn it away.
“I’m not sleeping with the boss.”
“So don’t sleep with him during office hours,” Nick said, with the air of a man solving all the world’s problems, and Pietr choked on his booze again.
Paula came over then, and leaned against the bar like an old-timey barkeep from a Western. “Don’t you kids have to go to work tomorrow?” It was almost last call—or maybe past it, I realized, looking around the almost-empty bar.
“Do we?” Pietr asked me. I gave him a wide-eyed stare back, my best “you’re asking me this why?” look.
“We do,” Nick decided. “’Cause there are still bullies out there to be put down, virgins to be rescued, and paychecks to be deposited. Not in that order, though.”
“You’re drunk,” I told him.
“I am.” Nick sounded proud of it, too.
Pietr snorted. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he gets home,” he told Paula, hauling Nick off the stool with one hand while he slid his credit card across the bar to cover the tab. Pietr and I were the only members of the pack who could carry credit cards with us on a regular basis—like cell phones and laptops, the magnetic strip on credit cards reacted badly to constant exposure to a Talent’s too-often unstable core.
We walked out into the cold night air, and I could feel myself sober up. “You guys go on….”
“Hell we will,” Nick said. His voice was a little slurred, but he was standing and walking fine, and Pietr let go of him. “Two blocks out of our way isn’t going to damage either of us, and I have ghost-boy here to take care of me on the way back to the subway.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Unlike my acceptance of Nick’s pet naming habits, Pietr let it get to him. Nick usually knew better—he really was drunk.
A shadow fell over us, noticeable even in the darkness, and I flinched, while Nick’s body language w
ent into tough-guy mode, and Pietr became a shadow within the shadow. If you didn’t know what to look for, you’d swear he had disappeared.
“Bonnie. Pietr. And Other Human.”
“Bobo.” I relaxed. “I should have known.”
“Yes, you should have.” The pidgin English of before was gone, his normal conversational tones much more comforting.
“What the hell is…” Nick caught himself when I glared. “Sorry. Who the hell is this?”
“Bobo, this is Nick. You already know Pietr.” I really didn’t feel like explaining anything to Nick right now—friend or no friend, drunk or not, he’d just insulted both Pietr and Bobo in the space of three minutes, and I was annoyed at him.
“You’ll take our girl from here?” Pietr asked.
“That is the plan,” the fatae said.
“Good. ’Cause I’m knackered. ’Night, Bonnie. See ya tomorrow. Come on, Shune. Walk, or I’ll leave your drunk ass on a street corner somewhere.”
The two of them strolled down the almost-empty street, bumping shoulders and insulting each other loudly. Men. I swear, I loved ’em, but I completely did not understand them, and did not, most of the time want to.
Next to me, Bobo coughed gently, a reminder that we were standing outside on a cold street corner, and offered me his very large, very hairy arm. “Home?”
“Home,” I agreed, suddenly very, very tired.
Of course, lying in bed, every inch of my body whimpering for Morpheus to put me out of my exhausted misery, I couldn’t actually fall asleep. My brain was too wound up to stop, but too tired to do anything useful. Thoughts about the case, about the weirdness with Venec, about how much we were drinking these days, about the fact that I really needed to recharge before my core collapsed, they all chased around my brain and kept me awake but without any results.
I considered pinging J, thinking maybe the old man would still be awake and willing to chat, but squelched the urge. I’d made it clear to him—and he had, however grudgingly, accepted the fact—that I’d made my career choice and he had to respect it. Touching base with him mentor-to-mentee was well within our ground rules, and I could always call on him professionally if needed, but turning to him every time I had a bad day…not so much.
Normally this wouldn’t be a problem. The best way to get out of your head, when it got too messy in there, was to focus on your body. Good clean healthy distraction. Going for a long hike, or dancing up a storm, or…yeah, sex would have been nice, but doing it alone was getting depressing, and while I had that little black book of people I could call—new friends and old, and even a number of exes, since I liked to end things on a positive note—the thought of calling any of them left me feeling surprisingly…uninterested. Not just because of the unease brought on by the case, either. The moment my brain went there, my body remembered that hot, intensely sexual charge I had gotten from Venec earlier. It wanted more of that, please.
It wasn’t going to get more of that, damn it. I might be casual about my relationships, but they were always relationships, and I was not going to fall into bed—or against the wall, or any other place—with my boss. Either of my bosses, although the thought of having sex with Stosser was enough to cool my libido down considerably. Ew, and also, no thanks.
I sighed again, and punched up the pillow under my head, as though that would make me able to sleep, suddenly. Times like this, I really resented not having a television, even if I would have to replace it on a regular basis.
Why was I suddenly insomniac? I’d gotten a handle, I thought, on the fear—hanging out tonight with the guys had restored most of my natural equilibrium. So why was I still feeling this discomfort, this doubt, deep in my bones, stirring my current uneasily? It wasn’t natural for me, at all.
I followed the thought back to the source: it wasn’t natural. Therefore, it was external, the weight pressing on me from outside, not in. All right. It’s not as though I couldn’t identify the stress, easy enough: I’d seen what should have been pleasurable physical release turned into a crime. The thought wasn’t new, but it sunk into a new spot this time, a slow glide through my brain that set up a tingle of disturbance. Crime. Assault. The mutation, the mutilation of affection into violence. My own feelings about casual intimacy, turned into something terrible. I was doubting myself, because if she could have been wrong, so could I.
Okay, that made sense.
I frowned up at the ceiling, just a few feet over my head. It made sense, but it didn’t fit. Something like that would explain my skittishness, maybe, and I’d taken steps to deal with that, facing it down and dissecting it to harmless bits. But the self-doubt…that felt different.
I just couldn’t think of anything else that might have triggered it.
Easier to turn the searchlight on our victim. Why had she been so casual about meeting the two men at first? Why hadn’t the ki-rin been with her, to protect her? Had she trusted them? Why? The shadowy images flickered inside my lids, the gleaning echoing inside me, and wouldn’t shut down, even when the skittery panic and uncertainty flared again, and I tried to slam that door shut.
My core flared in distress, and a responding flicker of current touched it, as though it had been waiting for a summons.
Venec. I knew even before the signature identified itself.
*all right?*
A sparse thought, touched with a glimmer of worry, and a sharp tingle that ran from the top of my spine all the way down my arms to my fingertips, sharp enough that I lifted my hands above the covers, expecting to see current sparking above the skin.
I was used to feeling sparks between us, but this was different; way more intense, if not quite on the same groin-searing level of that earlier connection. And just like that the burn was gone, instead becoming a soothing coolness, easing my tumbled and troubled thoughts. It was invasive, the touch on a level with that first recruitment a year ago, but for some reason this time it didn’t bother me. It should have…but it didn’t.
*all right?* he repeated, more urgent this time.
*yes. no*
His touch soundlessly asked permission to go even deeper, and I granted it without asking what, or why. A cool touch, like menthol on the skin, only inside me. It should have freaked me out; I knew, intellectually, that I should be freaked out and objecting, but I had let him in, and it felt…good. Not orgasmic. But like the time after, when you’re soothed and sated and too comfortable to move to clean up.
*sleep* he whispered. *for this moment, forget, and sleep*
My eyes closed, and I slept.
In a prewar apartment building across the Hudson River in New Jersey, with a very expensive half-view of the Statue of Liberty, Benjamin Venec folded his newspaper in two, carefully, and placed it on the desk in front of him. His gaze was distant, as he looked at something far beyond the walls of his home, and his expression was troubled.
“Is there a problem?” his companion asked, stretching lazily on the sofa where she had been paging through a book.
“No,” he said. “No problem.” And there wasn’t. Bonnie was sleeping peacefully, now. His mentor would have had him doing laps with a twenty-pound backpack if she’d known what he’d done: there were rules for those who had the Push, rules and ethics drummed into your bones from the first flash of current in your core. He wasn’t a stickler for rules—for himself, anyway—but that one stuck and held. You didn’t Push casually or without consent, and never mind he told himself it was within the job description, that he had her tacit, if sleepy, permission.
He’d gone too far, though; he had only intended to make sure Bonnie got a good night’s sleep. But once there, the lure of her psychic scent had almost overwhelmed him, the ease of contact drawing him far deeper than he’d intended, and what started as a gentle Push to soothe her restless thoughts, to direct them toward something peaceful so that she could sleep, had…
Had what? What had happened between them, in the space of those few seconds of contact? He didn’t k
now, and that made him uneasy as hell. His lips twisted into a rueful almost-smile, and he shoved his fingers through his hair, pulling at his scalp gently as though that would make the headache he could feel building go away. Hell, the entire situation with Bonnie had started with uneasiness, and with yesterday’s fireworks it was rapidly escalating into… What? He didn’t know, but it wasn’t anything good.
He was very used to being in control—demanded it, in fact. Of himself, if not the situation, and this…
Had not been under his control. Not the attraction, not the spark, not the way he had known that she was startled and upset—and certainly not how he had responded instinctively, current gathered as though he himself were under attack.
“Ben?” Malia was looking at him, her lovely eyes narrowed as though she knew that his thoughts were on someone else entirely. If she really knew, she’d cut his throat.
“I’m fine. Just thinking.”
All the events of the past few days—it was too much for coincidence, too intense to brush off as part of the physical attraction they’d been dealing with since day one. It was also obvious that their current-spark wasn’t Bonnie’s doing, as he’d thought at first; her emotions tonight had been almost painfully innocent of guile.
And it wasn’t him; he’d checked on the others before without anything like that ever happening, nudging and corralling as needed, just as he’d done since he’d started recruiting, back when PUPI was just a glint in his partner’s eye. Ian was brilliant, no doubt, and burned with the desire to put things to rights, but it was a cold fire, at heart. He saw people, even his own people, as extensions of himself, and assumed they reacted the way he did. It would never occur to Ian Stosser to check on how a case was affecting the team, because it wouldn’t affect him.
Ben didn’t mind, really. Let Ian handle the publicity, the schmoozing, the bright light and glare of the Council’s scrutiny. He’d take care of the people side of things, make sure the team was working well, no jars or cracks, no exhaustion or doubts keeping them from doing what needed to be done. For the most part, it was a matter of nudging them one way or other, of making sure that their teammates were aware of something, and letting them handle it from there.
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