Burning Bridges

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Sergei didn’t understand the appeal of standing in the cold and staring up at a garishly lit, oversized tree that definitely had looked better standing in its original field, covered with bird shit and squirrel nests, but then, he didn’t have much holiday spirit at the best of times. Or so he’d been told. Christmas was midnight mass, and presents exchanged in the morning, and then you went back to work. But Wren’s childhood, as far as he’d been able to determine, had been about scrimping and saving and making festive with whatever they had. He’d rather get frostbite than cut into her enjoyment of the season, as much as she let herself indulge in. Especially this year.

  “I wonder how many volts it takes to run those lights,” she said now, her eyes dangerously dreamy. “Do you think Christmas lights have a different flavor than regular lights?”

  “What, you never shorted out your own Christmas tree, as a teenager?”

  “My mother would have killed me,” she said. “Anyway, we usually had one of those tabletop dealies. Night-lights used more voltage than those.”

  She stared up at the tree, and he could almost see the moment she went away from him, sliding into what she called the fugue state, where she could draw most easily on the core of current within her. As best he could understand, it was a little like meditation, and a little like orgasm, and the smile on her face made him more than a little nervous.

  “Wren, I really don’t want to be trapped inside a crowd of thousands of pissed-off tourists a week before Christmas, when you put the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree out of commission.”

  “Spoilsport.” But she shook the fugue off, and came back to him. “Come on. Buy me a massive hot chocolate. No, a peppermint mocha. Two shots. With extra whipped cream, and one of those cookie straws.”

  “Because a sugar high combined with a caffeine rush is just so what you need right now,” he grumbled, but slid his arm into hers, and escorted her away from the crowd, down the stairs into the lower level of Rock Center.

  It was a maze down there, filled with hallways and stores and subway entrances, but they both knew where they were headed: there was a food court off to one side, with a Starbucks. The line was as long as expected, so Wren went to find them a table while Sergei stood to place their order. One tall tea, one grande peppermint mocha with extra whipped cream. They weren’t serving those crunchy cookie-straws here, so he grabbed her a chocolate-dipped biscotti instead. It wasn’t the same, but it was the thought that counted. Plus the chocolate-dipped part.

  “Ooo, Santa,” she joked when he sat down at the little table next to her, and handed her the drink and the biscuit. “I guess I’ve been very, very good this year, huh?”

  He merely smiled, thinking of the gift already wrapped and hidden in her apartment—she might search his place, but never think to look in her own space. He hoped. They’d agreed, early-on in their partnership, that one gift each for Christmas was a reasonable limit. But this year he’d gone on a little splurge, as she would say. This year was special: being partners as well as partners required something…more. Difficult as it was to buy presents for a woman who didn’t wear much jewelry, couldn’t use personal electronics, and had a deep-set habit of stealing whatever she liked, he thought he’d done well.

  “I take it that the meeting this morning did not require your taking minutes?”

  “Hah.” She sipped at the mocha, making a happy little contented noise as it hit her taste buds. “They’re going along gangbusters, yowling and screaming and waving arms and generally accomplishing absolutely nothing.”

  Sergei’s experience with meetings was more along the lines of small groups being told what to do; he almost wished that he had been able to sit in on this one, simply to see how the Cosa did it. Then again, considering the Cosa members he already knew, he suspected that her description was, if anything, underplaying the chaos.

  “In the end, though…?”

  “Oh, in the end, they’ll hammer the details out. Bart and Beyl won’t let anyone out of the door until they do. But they didn’t need me there to get to that point. And, honestly? Being in the room with that many people was starting to make me itch. Nobody had a damn thing worth lifting except Ayexi’s wallet, and if I asked him he’d just hand it over to me. What’s the fun in that?”

  Sergei drank his tea rather than answer. While he understood and appreciated his partner’s need to keep her hand in, as it were, he sometimes understood her mentor’s reported exasperation with her light-fingered tendencies. For Wren, Retrieval wasn’t just something she did—it was what she was. And if she wasn’t either working on a job, or recovering from a job, she was wondering where the next job was going to be. Time to find something for her to do.

  “At the risk of being rude, I gotta go pee.” She grinned at the expression on his face. “Sorry—I have to use the facilities to relieve my dainty female form, how’s that?”

  “Worse,” he said.

  “Don’t drink the last of my mocha,” she warned, and grabbed the last chunk of the biscotti to nibble on as she walked, as though not willing to trust him with it while she was gone. It was amazing, the calories she managed to put away. Current burned a lot of energy, even in passive mode, but she used to at least moderate her intake. The past few months…

  The past few months she’s been using current almost continuously, between the Cosa and the jobs, and the general chaos…and you. She didn’t touch him with current every time they had sex, but often enough that he was starting to feel the cumulative effect internally—and he knew that it had to be draining her, too. He tried not to ask for a jolt, but it was like putting a chocoholic into a fudge factory and handing them one of those little plastic knives; you were just asking for something to snap.

  Thankfully, Wren was well trained; he had never met Neezer, but even by the time Wren was a teenager, she had some of the best emotional and physical control he had ever seen, and her mental control—as befitted an almost-Pure Talent—was even more developed. As she often said, current was power, and skill was all about controlling that power.

  And yes, he admitted, he got off on that, too. Like a high-level sports car, knowing that there was so much horsepower under the attractive frame. You didn’t have to be in the driver’s seat to appreciate the surge of speed.

  He thought about getting her another biscotti, but to do so he’d have to get up and stand in line, and then they’d lose the table to one of the groups cruising the food court, looking for an empty space. He watched a few of them; people-watching was something he didn’t do very often, but it was always interesting. His gaze moved past the gaggle of teenaged girls exclaiming over something one of them had bought, paused on two overbulked teenage males long enough to rate them not a threat, then lingered for an enjoyable moment on an attractive woman with skin the color of Wren’s mocha, wearing a bright red shirt and skirt. She was moving with the long stride of someone who only had so long to do something before she had to be back upstairs in her office, and he felt a moment’s smug superiority before something else snagged his attention.

  A single bright green sheet, tucked under a plate on the now-empty table next to him. He didn’t know why it attracted his attention, but he knew better than to ignore that kind of mental hijacking. As nonchalantly as he could, Sergei leaned forward and snagged it from the abandoned tray.

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

  The company was Midtown Pest Control Services, and there were two phone numbers and a Web site listed at the bottom of the page. A plain sheet, black type against the green paper: impossible not to read, once your eye found it.

  Scanning the food court, aware now, Sergei could see half a dozen of the lime-green sheets and a packet more of them on one counter, in a plastic dispenser. Son of a…

  He crumpled the sheet in his fist, and tossed it into the nearest trash can, taking grim satisfaction at making the
shot. Could he grab all the sheets and the dispenser, too, before Wren got back? Or would she come back and see him, and see the ads, and make everything worse?

  He decided to risk it. If this was an innocent bug-disposal company, he’d feel guilty later. But the wording they used was exactly the same as the ads Wren had gotten, the ads the vigilantes used to spread their “services” back when this all began. And that was a coincidence he wasn’t willing to ignore. Not if they were advertising again, soliciting “business.” Recruiting new bigots to the cause. Building their troops against the coming confrontation. Or even just spreading their own brand of intolerance and filth into a city that already had enough, thanks.

  Sergei wasn’t unaware of the irony; he had once been deeply uncomfortable in the presence of any fatae, even before he knew how many were out there, passing as human. Even now, the thought of them occasionally made his skin crawl in a way he didn’t care to investigate. But these people…They were targeting not only the fatae, but anything magical.

  And that included Wren.

  Keeping one eye on their table, with the coats draped over chairs to indicate it was still in use, Sergei snagged four of the sheets and shredded them methodically into strips before dumping them in the trash can. He moved back to the table just in time to prevent three office workers from sitting down, despite the coats, and glared at them until they backed away.

  There probably wasn’t any way to get the pile of flyers off that counter, without attracting someone’s—

  “Sergei. What a surprise.”

  All thoughts of the flyers got tucked away for later, as he turned to face the speaker.

  Andre Felhim, dapper as ever in a charcoal-gray suit and a burgundy tie that emphasized the dark mahogany of his skin. He was followed a step behind by a taller blond-haired, pale-skinned man: Poul Jorgenmunder, his second-in-command.

  Sergei used to stand just that way, at Andre’s elbow. For about two years, before they started to disagree on almost everything. He didn’t envy Poul his spot, although Poul was clearly jealous of Sergei’s history with Andre.

  Relationships were the most confusing of all human inventions. That was a quote from somewhere, but Sergei couldn’t remember who had said it.

  “Andre.” He didn’t acknowledge the other man. It was petty, but satisfying.

  The two men had laminated ID tags around their necks, with Visitor stamped on them in large red letters. That explained what they were doing here, then, although Sergei wondered what company in this complex had cause to call on the Silence. He hoped it wasn’t NBC, although their fall lineup had certainly been a crime of inhuman proportions….

  “Here alone? How…unusual for you, these days.” Poul looked around, obviously looking for something. “No, no obvious freaks here, unless they’re hiding.”

  Lonejacks weren’t the only ones who knew how to control their emotions. Poul’s baiting was too obvious; what was he really trying to get at?

  “I received your letter. And your e-mail,” Andre said quietly, ignoring Jorgenmunder.

  “And filed them appropriately, since you declined to respond?”

  His former boss spread tapered, manicured fingers in an openhanded gesture. “I wish that you would reconsider…”

  “You know I can’t. And won’t.” They had been over this ground in previous meetings, before he sent the letter.

  That letter had merely been a formal breaking of their contract, the devil’s bargain that had tied Wren to the Silence, in return for a monthly retainer. Effective next month, January 1, the deal was null and void. If he could get Andre to sign off on it.

  Sergei went on, quoting the letter almost verbatim. “The situation has changed on both sides, making the agreement impossible. If you try to fight it—”

  “The Silence will not contest your right to end the agreement,” Andre said. He looked older, more tired than even the last time Sergei had seen him. The difference between this man and the man who had recruited him out of college, trained him, was striking; far more than could be accounted for simply by the passing of years. “I made the offer in good faith and yet, as you rightly pointed out, we have not followed suit.”

  The weight of guilt settled again on Sergei’s shoulders. It wasn’t Andre’s fault, entirely. He, Sergei, should never have gotten Wren tied up with them, no matter how much they thought they had needed the Silence’s help.

  Once he had called himself an Operative with pride. Even when he left, it was burnout from the cost of the job, not dissatisfaction with what they did. Now…Now, he was afraid that the Silence was the greater threat than the Council; their motives less clear, their end purposes more shadowed. The organization he had once sworn his life to no longer existed; he was unsure what stood in its place, now.

  He did know that he would mortgage the gallery rather than allow Wren to take any more of their money, and risk her life for their ends.

  “I really don’t have anything more to say to you,” he said to the older man. “Andre, I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  “Afraid someone will see you talking to us?” Poul asked, still looking for a place to push the verbal needle.

  “No,” Sergei said, turning to look at him full-on for the first time. “You merely bore me.”

  Sergei picked up the coats off the chair, snagged Wren’s mocha in his free hand, and walked away. With perfect timing, he intercepted Wren at the hallway leading from the food court to the bathrooms.

  “Hey,” she said, surprised. “Sorry, there was a line like you wouldn’t believe…You have to get back to the gallery?”

  He grabbed at the excuse, which had the virtue of not being a lie. “Yes, I’m sorry. If I’d time I’d take you out for lunch, but…”

  “S’okay, I’m not hungry, anyway. I’ve got some more errands to run, as long as I’m in midtown. And then I suppose I should go back and see if our fearless leaders have a new assignment for me, or if they’re still wrangling over how to arrange the patrols.” She rolled her eyes, and he chuckled: he had more faith in the Cosa than most of the Cosa did.

  “Maybe I’ll get you a new job.”

  “That would be nice. Something—”

  “Without hellhounds. Yes, I remember.”

  She laughed. “Catch you later tonight?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll pick up dinner on my way home.”

  He helped her into her coat, gave her the mocha and kissed her, lingering a little more than he usually did, in public.

  “Stay safe, Zhenchenka.”

  “They won’t even see me going,” she replied, and he smiled; it was what she used to say, when he sent her off on a job, back in their early days.

  When had she stopped saying that? He didn’t remember. Probably around the time he stopped sending her off personally, every job. He thought he might start doing that, again.

  “Stay safe,” he said again. But she had disappeared into the crowd, and even he couldn’t find her.

  Wren hadn’t actually gone anywhere, using the crowd to backtrack to the food court. From there, she watched two men sitting at a table, one of them drinking a coffee, the other flicking an unlit cigarillo between elegant dark-skinned fingers. She had seen that restless motion before; Sergei, with his thin-rolled cigarettes. She had never seen him actually light one, never known him to inhale anything other than the aroma of a good wine. But he would roll a cigarette between his fingers like a magician with a coin, whenever he was deep in thought. Or nervous.

  Now she knew where he had learned it.

  “Idiot man.” If she’d come back and surprised the three of them together, she would have known by Sergei’s reaction what was up, end of story. He could pull the poker face only so far on her, these days. She thought, anyway. But the way he rushed her off…

  It didn’t matter. Much. Keeping her and his Excellency Andre Felhim far apart was an excellent idea, no matter the circumstances. Someday she really was going to forget what manners Neezer had taught her, and give that
arrogant, supercilious know-little a good shocking-to.

  So. Sergei probably had the very best of intentions. Let it go, Valere. She really did have errands to run, of a sort, and this was as good a place as any to do them.

  She found a quiet place to sit, on the edge of an indoor planter, with weird frondy things that almost hid her from sight. Closing her eyes and letting the clatter around her fade into white noise, she grounded and centered, reached inside and stroked one thin snake of current inside her. Prepared, she sent out a flurry of pings, directed mental knocks, to half a dozen Talent that she knew worked or lived in the immediate area.

  Then she sat back to wait. It took exactly six and a half minutes for the first response to come in.

  Wren lifted the lid of her gingerbread latte and inhaled the aroma as though it were oxygen, and she hyperventilating.

  “Are you going to drink that, or have sex with it?”

  “I can’t do both?”

  There were three of them around the small, round table: Wren, in jeans and sweater dressed for warmth and comfort, an older man with a smooth-shaven head and dark blue eyes, wearing a white shirt over dark cords, and a woman with a thick black ponytail setting off her red sweaterdress. She looked like a college student compared to their crisp professionalism.

  The man watched while she took a deep sip, tracking the liquid as it slid down her throat.

  “You must be a hell of a co—”

  “Michael!” The woman in the dress slapped his arm before he could finish the thought.

  Michael’s eyes twinkled innocently, and Wren managed to swallow before laughing.

  “Seriously,” he went on. “You called. We’re here. What do you want from us?”

  Wren put her drink down on the table, needing to take a moment to collect her thoughts. The last time she had tried to canvass for information, half the Cosa had crossed the street rather than talk to her, and the ones who couldn’t get away balked at every question. Now, all she had to do was ping a Talent, and they showed up. And paid for the coffee. All it took was a rumor that you were responsible for lifting the darkness of the summer heat wave, even if nobody was quite sure what the darkness had been or how it ended; of being the lonejack who faced down the Council; of being…all things she wished she’d never become. But today, it was useful. So she’d use it.