Pack of Lies [2]

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Trouble was, what had happened tonight went well beyond that, beyond anything he could justify as work-related. The fact that Bonnie had allowed him in, the fact that she had…hell, they both had enjoyed it, he admitted to himself, remembering the cinnamon-sweet taste of her in his mind, the warm feel of her current twining against his; none of that mattered. Combined with the current-spark they’d shared, that he would swear neither of them had intended, the situation was dangerous as hell on several levels.

  So he wouldn’t do it again. He’d stick to purely physical interactions—and there was irony in that that he wasn’t willing to examine. Work only. Nothing personal. It wasn’t as though there wasn’t enough on his plate already to keep him occupied.

  Like the situation he was looking into, off-hours, with these alleged “exterminators.” The thought made him frown, distracting him from the memory of Bonnie, warm and restless in her loft bed. The advertisement had seemed simple enough at first—a basic sheet of paper, white with black print, offering an office extermination service. He had seen four now, all with slightly different ads. Tonight’s, stuck in the poster-frame in the PATH car on his way home, had been more overt:

  Tired of your clients encountering unwanted visitations? Concerned about the infestation of your building? Your neighborhood? Call us. We can clean things up for you.

  On the surface, it read like a hundred and ten other flyers that circulated regularly around any decent-size city, fly-by-night companies feeding on the city-dwellers’ eternal infestations. But Benjamin Venec had years of listening to Ian and his Council cronies speaking the fine art of doublespeak, and he knew propaganda when he heard it, especially when it was escalating like that. The malice practically oozed off the page of the most recent flyer, if you were sensitive. Malice and hatred, and a particular scent that came from fear. These exterminators might be out to rid the world of something, but Ben would bet every bill in his wallet it wasn’t bedbugs and cockroaches.

  The moment he thought that, he was surprised by an odd twinge of doubt. It touched on his call on this, then spread to his ability to handle all the things pressing for his attention, the idea that he was capable of keeping so many things in the air and under control at the same time. It felt like the whisper of rot in his ear, and he frowned, forcing himself to stillness.

  That wasn’t him. Those weren’t his thoughts. When he doubted himself—which he often did, although he would never admit it to anyone other than Ian—it came loud and harsh, not sickly sweet and slithering.

  Outwardly, he was still contemplating the wall, to all observances a man deep in thought. Inside, a single spider silk–thin filament of current, shivering with energy, reached up from his core, slinking like a cat in the grass, intent on its prey. Keeping a steady, grounded control, barely daring to breathe, Ben let the hunter flow over his skin, and then snapped it forward, lashing out at the sensation of that whisper, trying to trace it back to its source. It disappeared, half a second ahead of his attack, and Ben clenched his molars together, forcing himself to show no reaction, even as the current dissipated into the air. If there had been someone there, trying to Push him, they’d gotten away clean. But if they tried again, he’d know.

  Pushers were rare, but not unknown. It wasn’t the first time someone had taken a shot at him, and it wouldn’t be the last; he had pissed off too many people in his career, and he would doubtless piss off many more. He noted the attack, filed it under “problem; later,” and went back to his real concern: the rising sentiment against the fatae, the violence that was seething under the melting-pot veneer of New York City. The “tributes” at the attack site. These flyers. The general mood: something was up. Something ugly.

  Lizard had sworn he didn’t know anything, nobody knew anything about any violence, but other sources had been more forthcoming, about things whispered in dark corners and private cafés where humans weren’t invited, of violence committed against the weakest of the fatae, the defenseless. Of piskie nests being destroyed, and nets thrown where selkies slept, drowning them in the night. What Bonnie and Pietr had learned from their faun contact had just confirmed the things he had already heard.

  And Sharon’s investigations tied these flyers to it; no Talent was willing to admit hiring the service, but at least one person had commented to her on how much better, how much cleaner their neighborhood was, for someone else having that service in. Fatae were in danger—and starting to react with violence to that danger.

  There was nothing in anything he’d learned to tie that into an attack on a young girl, companion to a ki-rin…but nothing to say they weren’t connected, either.

  If the angeli, those human-hating sociopaths, got involved…

  “Damn it.” He got up and stalked across the apartment, stopping in front of an oversize photograph of a lightning storm at sea, and frowned again, this time letting his irritation and frustration rise to the surface.

  “Ben? Seriously, what is it?” Malia had abandoned her practiced kitten-pose, and was looking at him with real worry now.

  He started, having completely forgotten that she was there. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry. I’m just not very good company tonight. You probably should just go home.”

  A look of hurt flashed across her face, and he felt like a shit, but he suddenly needed his own space back; space and quiet to think.

  Malia picked up her things and left, noisily, without her usual kiss goodbye. He noted it and then forgot it, already back in his somber thoughts.

  Something was happening in the city; something that involved the fatae. He couldn’t run the risk of it involving PUPI, too. Not without knowing what “it” was, anyway. There was already too much pressing at them, too many people eager to see them fail, and they couldn’t afford the distraction of violence breaking the surface. And that meant, if nobody else was going to do something about it…they had to. Ian had to take these problems seriously, now, before they erupted.

  Convincing his partner to do anything outside of his narrow, if diamond-focused, vision…that would take some doing. And yelling. But that was part of his job, too.

  The visual, of Bonnie now sound asleep in her bed, came back to him, and he smiled a little. She slept like a little girl, sprawled and careless. As though drawn by the thought, a tendril of her dream reached out and enfolded him. It didn’t negate the concern or urgency, but in that one instant, he was somewhere far more peaceful, far more sweet.

  So sweet and peaceful and natural, he didn’t wonder how that tendril had escaped her sleeping mind and touched his wakeful one without conscious thought or intent—a thing he had always been taught was impossible.

  nine

  I’d thought, with the exhaustion of everything that was going on—not to mention the alcohol in my system—I’d wake up feeling shaky and starved. Instead, the first ray of sunlight coming through the windows found me coming awake naturally, feeling as though I’d slept for ten hours—almost disgustingly bright-eyed and proverbially bushy-tailed, like someone had slammed the door shut on the doubts and worries that had been nipping at my heels. Because of Ben’s late-night virtual tuck-in? Maybe. Embarrassing, if so, but maybe. Whatever the reason, I’d take it.

  I slid down from the loft bed and zipped through my morning routine with a cheerful hum in my throat, and came out of the stairwell bright if not early at nine-fifteen, thanks to the subway. The weather had finally, grudgingly, agreed that it was spring, and the air had a softness to it that hinted at green grass and lazy afternoons to come.

  Two of my boys were already on their stoop, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.

  “Ai, you’re going to stunt your growth drinking that stuff!” I warned them as I walked by, waggling a finger in mock-instruction.

  “My growth’s jus’ fine, momma,” the younger of the two catcalled back, making a rude gesture with his free hand, while the older boy—Dee, his name was, I thought, or DJ—whapped him over the head with the newspaper. Even after months of
back-and-forth, they weren’t quite sure if I was one of them or not—I didn’t look barrio, but I could talk it—and we walked a line between casual teasing and disrespect. I guess Dee thought that had gone over. I let myself grin a little. I might have spent years twelve to twenty-one living in an upper-crust Back Bay apartment, but I’d spent enough summer afternoons as a preteen hanging out on stoops a lot like theirs, down off 4th Avenue, where I’d lived with Zaki.

  “You just keep eating your Wheaties,” I told them, “and I’m sure some day you’ll make a nice little girl very happy.”

  They whooped at that, and I chalked up a point for my side. Girls are much tougher than guys when it comes to trash-talking, really.

  I buzzed myself into the building, took the stairs double-time—not even out of breath, go me!—and heard…something. A low rumbling growl, was my first thought, or a drill being used somewhere in the building. Walking into the office itself, the growl resolved itself into two voices…male, angry.

  “Ben, we don’t have time for this.” Stosser.

  “Then we have to make time.”

  I felt a shiver run through me that had nothing to do with the change in temperatures from raw spring rain to the still-overheated offices at the raw unhappiness in Ben’s voice. This wasn’t argument, this was out-and-out disagreement.

  Stosser again, firm and determined like the knees of god. “No. We don’t. It’s not our concern, and we’re not going to make it our concern.”

  “Damn it, Ian, stop being such an arrogant shit and listen to me.”

  “Wow.” It wasn’t the noise—although the voices were carrying clear through the walls—as much as the harsh static in the air that made me wince. The pleasant float I’d been carrying crashed and burned away, leaving me with an ache between my eyes and a sense of foreboding. “Do I want to know what’s going on?”

  Nifty shrugged. “Don’t know myself. Came in, heard them going at it, decided to stay right here until someone sent out the all-clear. Told shadow-boy to do the same.”

  Nifty was occasionally arrogant and obnoxious, and always opinionated, but he was also nobody’s fool.

  Pietr, curled on the other end of the sofa, looked like hell. I was guessing he’d not had as good a night’s sleep and the atmosphere in the office wasn’t helping: harsh current and hangovers did not mix. I was just as glad that Nick hadn’t staggered in yet; he’d be hurting, based on how trashed he’d been the night before.

  “Anyone thinking an out-of-office breakfast meeting might be a good idea?” I asked, fighting down the urge to find out what exactly was making Ben—Venec—so unhappy. It might have been happening in the office, but Nifty was right, I didn’t think it was our business, and we had no business messing with anything else. You did not get between the Big Dogs when they rumbled.

  Nifty raised one thick-fingered hand in agreement. Pietr was already off the sofa and grabbing his coat by the time I finished the question.

  By the time we came back, filled with greasy hash browns, crisp bacon, and runny eggs, it was almost 10:00 a.m., and the office was quiet.

  “Too quiet,” Nifty said. Funny, he wasn’t usually the one who could pick up my moods. There seemed to be an awful lot of it going around, though.

  “Anybody else in?” I asked Pietr, who was hanging up our coats.

  “Yeah, Sharon’s coat is here. Not Nick’s though. Lightweight may still be sleeping it off.”

  “You hurt him last night, didn’t you? Bonnie, you’ve got to stop being so hard on the kid,” Nifty said. “He wants to keep up with you, and he can’t.”

  “Not yet,” I said, playing along, trying to lighten the mood. “Give him another year. But nobody can drink you under the table, big man, so you’re safe.”

  “Hah.”

  Nifty outmassed us all by a considerable margin, but he drank on par with Pietr—steady but not impressive in terms of consumption. None of us were heavy drinkers, actually, despite the previous night’s activities. I had a feeling that might change, though, if the jobs kept going like this.

  Suddenly I had a lot more sympathy with all the noir detectives in the old movies, who always had a bottle stashed somewhere nearby. I might take up smoking, too, if it weren’t impossibly expensive. And if J wouldn’t put me over his knee the first time he smelled tobacco on me.

  I looked at the door that led into the main office, and smothered a sigh. We had two choices: wait for one of the Big Dogs to come find us, or dig them out. The former was more appealing but the clock was ticking and the urge to get working outweighed everything else.

  “Come on, guys,” I said, and led them through the door, in search of boss-shaped objects.

  Ian and Sharon were in the midsize workroom. The boss looked up when I stuck my head in, and looked pleased to see me. I so didn’t trust that pleasure, not after the last go-round with Sharon’s latest concoction.

  “We think we have the hiccups in the truth spell worked out,” he said, confirming my fears. “Come in, come in.”

  “Do I have to?” I asked, even as Pietr elbowed me through the doorway.

  “Relax,” Sharon said. She had her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail, was wearing a gorgeous—and seriously expensive—dark red cashmere sweater that should not have looked that good against her pale coloring, and looked like she’d gotten ten hours of sleep, too. I didn’t think it was for the same reasons, though—or if it was, it was because she’d had someone actual flesh and blood in her bed, not ghosting through in her head.

  “I figured out what went wrong, before,” she went on, resting her hand on a pile of papers; the documentation of her work, I was guessing.

  “That’s reassuring.” I sat down next to her anyway, mainly because I knew I wasn’t getting out of there short of fighting my way out, and putting the table between me and the boss man felt like a good idea. There was a vibe coming off Stosser that I didn’t quite trust. His eyes were too bright, his smile too wide, and it wasn’t the usual glamour he threw on whenever he had to be charming in public, either.

  He didn’t like fighting with Venec, a little voice told me. I was pretty sure it was my own voice, but it could have been a nudge from Sharon, too. Being on the outs with Venec made him uncomfortable…he relied on his partner to be his mirror, his conscience. When they argued, it made him question his own decisions. He, like me, wasn’t used to doubting himself.

  Definitely my own voice. I don’t know how I suddenly knew that about Ian, but I did. It was like looking out a fogged-up window and then having someone clear it away and everything was sharper, brighter.

  “Where’s Venec?” Nifty asked, fitting himself into one of the chairs at the other side of the table. The look Stosser gave him made even Nifty’s cocoa-dark skin turn a few shades paler, and Pietr faded out of view a little.

  “Walking off his snit,” Stosser said, and I was right, his voice wasn’t so much angry as worried. I wasn’t sure anyone else could tell, though, and when I tried to focus on it, the sharp awareness faded back to the usual softer edges.

  I think I liked it better that way. Even in our job, there were some things you didn’t want to know, and Stosser’s thoughts were high up on that list. Like I’d said before, genius brains were scary things, and my own smart-but-not-scary brains were overworked enough right now.

  “The problem was,” Sharon said in the bright tone that she used when she thought she’d been dumb about something before and was by-god going to do better now, “I was projecting too much, trying to draw the truth out. So it went deeper than it should have, and, well…”

  “Yeah. And well,” I mimicked. Sharon flushed, and I relented. Wasn’t like I had room to mock, the way I might have screwed up the scene read. Had Sharon been able to stop this morning, to read the scene for us? No way to ask, not right now.

  “It’s okay,” I said to her, instead. “Thankfully for all concerned, I don’t actually have any secrets.” Which was a lie. Especially now. For the first time in my life
I had something serious that I didn’t want anyone else to know.

  “You’re young yet,” Stosser said, absently. “I’m sure you’ll collect some as you go. But I’ve been working with Sharon on her ideas, and I think that we’ve modified the spell enough that it will now focus on the thing we’re asking about, rather than…being a blanket all-truth spell. Specifically, it won’t trigger the anxiety Bonnie reported.”

  Oh, good. So glad my trauma was useful. I knew better than to say that out loud, though.

  “And if the person is resisting?” Nifty asked, his brain already leaping ahead to problems.

  “Then I’ll know,” Sharon said. “Not what they’re lying about, but the fact that they’re resisting telling the truth, yeah.”

  “But we won’t be able to isolate what they’re resisting, specifically?” That was Pietr, picking up the subtleties, as usual.

  “Fine-tuning the spell can wait until we have the leisure for that. All we are concerned about is the specific matter at hand,” Stosser said, and his voice was crackling with current, enough that everyone dropped the side discussion then and there. “The Council, as expected, has indicated to me this morning that they are not going to pursue this matter any further, and would strongly prefer than we not, either.”

  That went over real well, especially since it seemed, for a minute, like Stosser, of all people, was going to tell us to drop the investigation.

  “However,” he went on, “Ben has uncovered some information that suggests the issue may be more involved than I had originally thought. If so, then it is even more important that we determine exactly what happened—and the Council be damned.”