Burning Bridges

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Be damned if she was going to become the weakest link, loose lip, leaky pipe, whatever cliché rocked your world. She might not lead, but she sure as hell didn’t squeal.

  “C’mon, Valere…” Danny didn’t wheedle. But he walked a fine line next to it. “I’ve always shared with you….”

  He had, too. When it suited him to. Although he had been first-on-the-spot when someone set off a psi-bomb next to her office, he hadn’t actually told her anything useful, and certainly nothing she couldn’t have discovered on her own. On the other hand, he had saved her a little work, then. More, he had cared enough to use the excuse of investigating the blast to check in on her. There weren’t so many people in her life who would do that, that she couldn’t just diss them.

  “The Truce is holding,” she said, not looking at him as they walked. She could just have been talking out loud to herself, something she was known to do. “Council is sharing their resources, whatever they know about the attacks on the fatae. Which, by the way, isn’t much.”

  “So they really weren’t behind the attacks on us?”

  Wren would have shrugged, if she weren’t suddenly so dog tired it was more effort than the effect was worth. Too many days sitting in rooms, waiting for the infrequent moments she could say something useful, listening to everyone and their sister play verbal games with each other, sifting and evaluating, processing everything she saw and heard the way she would on a Retrieval, and none of the adrenaline rush or payoff she actually got during a real Retrieval.

  She was brain dead, physically bored, and craving a bowl of sweet-and-sour and a month-long nap, neither of which was going to happen, for various reasons.

  “It may be the vigilante movement was nothing more than badly timed bigotry,” she said. “Not exactly unheard of. Sometimes, Occam’s Conspiracy of Razors is just paranoia. You know?”

  “You believe that?” It was clear from his voice that Danny didn’t. “Valere, these bigots aren’t long-term thinkers. Someone had to be directing them. Or using them.”

  “Hell, Danny, I don’t know. I’m not being paid to believe anything. I’m being paid to watch and advise.” And she wasn’t being paid anything even close to enough. “And you’re not the one doing the paying, so you don’t get the advice.”

  “Sheesh. Who taught you to play almost-hardball?”

  Sergei, actually. And her partner thought she didn’t listen to him…

  “How ’bout I buy you lunch, bribe you with a bowl of Jimmy’s best?”

  The mention of her favorite addiction sent a cold chill down Wren’s spine, and she increased her pace as though to escape the words. “Thanks, but no thanks.” She hadn’t ordered from Noodles in over a month, long enough for P.B. to notice, and probably Sergei, too, although he hadn’t said anything. She was in Chinese food withdrawal, bad. But she wasn’t going back there. Not while all this—and by “this” she meant her entire life, right now—was still such a disaster.

  It was simple, if not logical: going to Noodles meant getting fortune cookies. Getting fortune cookies from Noodles meant getting a fortune written by his Seer. His Seer was one of the most terrifyingly accurate in the city, maybe in the state. Wren didn’t want to know. She really, really didn’t want to know. And once you got the fortune, you Knew. That was way worse than suspecting.

  She wasn’t sure if that made any sense. She was way too tired to be philosophical right now, and if she was leaking, anyone with any sense would be backing away from her right now.

  “Dan. Buddy. Pal. I really don’t want company right now. Job calling, you know? Real job, as pays the rent, feeds the tummy, shoes the feet? So go pester someone higher on the food chain, okay?”

  They weren’t friends, her and Danny, but close enough that he took the blow-off with decent grace. Someday he’d dig his hooves in and get stubborn—but today wasn’t it.

  “Keep your light under that bushel of yours, Valere,” was all he said in parting. “And eat something. Sergei’s a Russki, he likes some meat on his women.”

  He’s from Chicago, she thought reflexively, silently, not giving the fatae the pleasure of eavesdropping on her response.

  They parted ways at a huge snow pile on the corner, Wren having to step carefully to get around it, while her companion simply clomped through it. Physical memory, and Danny’s offer almost made her turn north instead of continuing east, and she checked the inclination ruthlessly. If she wanted soup that badly, she could go somewhere else. Noodles wasn’t the only Chinese restaurant in town. It wasn’t the cheapest, it wasn’t even the closest, anymore. Never mind that eating anyone’s Chinese but Jimmy’s felt like ethnic adultery, or something.

  “Change out the brain, Valere,” she warned herself. Pick up one of the other thoughts still shoving for front space. Sergei had dropped off the client’s dossier last night, but she hadn’t taken the time to even flip through it, knowing she had to be at Truce-table at oh-fuck-early. Bad of her. Worse, it was lazy. Normally she didn’t much care one way or the other when she had to work—dawn, dusk, noon and midnight all had their useful points. What she hated, beyond all else, was having to get out of bed. Didn’t matter what time the wake-up call came, even if it came with a soft-voiced partner bearing a mug of coffee.

  What all that meant was that she didn’t have anything more than Sergei’s preliminary briefing on the client in her head, which meant that she was in dead space, mentally. Wren worked best on her feet, pacing as she thought. Wasting the blocks until her apartment because she didn’t have anything new to work on was…annoying.

  “All right, what do you know? Get it rolling. Null, the client, yeah.” So was her last—nothing unusual in that. If she relied on the Cosa for her jobs, she’d be living in a studio in Queens, not her relatively spacious Village walk-up. “Not a crook, or a creep, or a lost cause, according to Sergei’s quickie evaluation.” Which was usually pretty accurate.

  “Retrieval’s papers. Nothing currentical about them.” Currentical was her new favorite nonword: it meant anything touched by, dealing with, or likely to contain current. She’d coined it during an argument with Bart, and he hated it so much she just had to keep using it, even when he wasn’t around to be annoyed.

  A guy scraping ice off the walkway stopped to stare at her, then went back to work. The only difference between a crazy street person and a CEO these days seemed to be the level of tech carried around. Most street people didn’t have earpieces, for one: they really were talking to themselves.

  Besides, she had taken a shower that morning, and homeless people didn’t usually smell of sage and lavender soap. Usually. She hoped. She’d paid too much for that soap to be eau de vagabond.

  “Problem’s going to be finding the guy as took him. Client’s political, even if unscummy, he’s going to have pissed people off. Need to get Sergei running down recent public and private scuffles, if he’s not already, and generate a list of possible suspects. Once I have that, I can scry for cause.”

  Wren was so preoccupied with her muttered thoughts, she didn’t notice the figure behind her, out of the other pedestrians passing her by on the street, until the gnarled fingers closed around her upper arm.

  Then she yelped, like a pooch whose tail got trod on. Current boiled up, reflexively, and she swung around to blast whoever it was that was attacking her.

  “For you. I look for you, find you. You take.”

  Total confusion reigned, as Wren struggled between the instinct to defend herself, awareness that the being, rather than a threat, was so hunched over and wizened that Wren couldn’t tell the species, much less the gender, and the fact that he—she, it?—seemed less intent on causing harm than inducing her to take whatever it was it was trying to hand her.

  Normally, she was invisible to panhandlers, pushers, and religious glad-handers, same as she was to regular citizens. From the look in the tiny, but very bright black eyes almost lost in the wrinkled face staring at her, this being had zoomed in on her like it was f
itted with a Wren-scope. What had it said, that it had been looking for her? Great.

  “Take! You take!”

  She took, almost a reflex. The moment her fingers closed around the small object, feeling the too-familiar folds and ridges even through her glove, she groaned and tried to shove it back.

  “No, no! Yours, for you! You take. No more delay.”

  Wren looked down at the fortune cookie starting to crumble in her hand, then looked up again. The figure had disappeared faster than it had appeared.

  “Sweet Jesus….” Figured. Seers. They just didn’t know—or care—when they were being avoided.

  Hounded into a figurative corner, Wren gave in gracelessly, and pulled her fortune out of the cookie, then popped the remains into her mouth and crunched, loudly.

  Jimmy’s Seer was the best around. Maybe even the best, period. But his cookies weren’t bad, either. She didn’t look at the fortune, though, shoving the crumpled scrap of paper into her coat pocket. You couldn’t put it off forever, not once the damn fortune found you, but she was going to need nourishment first. And a chance to put her feet up, and maybe take another shower, and…

  One bright glimmer broke through her sulk. And now she had no excuse not to go get sweet-and-sour soup.

  When she walked in the door of her apartment, Sergei was already there, lounging in the one comfy chair in the main room, drinking a mug of tea and listening to some weird-ass tech-sounding music.

  “You like?” he asked.

  “I hate,” she said. She was surprised to see him there, then realized that the overcast day had fooled her; it was already after five, and the gallery wasn’t open on Tuesday nights.

  He turned off the stereo with a snap of the remote, and looked at the bag in her hand. “Noodles?”

  “Nope. Wan Moon’s.” A distant second place in the Chinese food sweepstakes, but she was still pissed at Jimmy and his back-room Seer. Besides, it was easy in, easy out, on her way home. And as far as she knew, they bought their fortune cookies in bulk from the local fortune cookie factory. No personalization. Or none that had bitten her on the ass—yet.

  “What ended the embargo?” He had gotten up and followed her into the kitchen, all of four steps away.

  “I got delivery service.” She put the soup down on the kitchen counter, and dug the fortune out of her pocket, handing it to him while she got down to the important business of feeding her addiction.

  “A hungry man might as well cook his soup off a burning bridge as a campfire.”

  Sergei placed the slip of paper down on the table and shook his head. “Nice to see that Jimmy’s Seer hasn’t lost his touch.” They were always obscure, that was what was so frustrating about them. They were all true, and really important to what you were about to do, but you never knew what they were talking about until you were already in it. Useless.

  “Her touch. I’m pretty sure she was female. Although when you get that old, does it make a difference anymore?”

  “How old do you think she was?”

  Wren shrugged. “Cricket-old, probably.” Her partner was always curious about those things. She wasn’t, except as it impacted her life. And the damage was already done.

  “Bitch came after me.” She wasn’t letting go of that any time soon. This was the second time a Seer had sought her out, specifically. That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. It meant she was being all pivot-ish and important to the ordering and occurring of things, and Wren wanted to be very much not pivoting, thanks all the same.

  “Weren’t you the one who told me that you can run but not hide from a Seer once they have you in their Sight?” her partner asked, watching her carefully, with a sort of wary sympathy.

  “Yeah, but if you dodge long enough…” She sighed and gave up. “Damage done, and since I can’t understand it, I’m going to go the time-honored route of ignoring it.” Had the Seer actually been useful—“Avoid gatherings on a full moon” or “stay out of the councils of crazy people,” then she could do something about it. Cooking? Not her thing, over a stove or a campfire, or any kind of open flame.

  She finished the container of soup, scraping her spoon around the bottom for the last drop, then got up to toss it into the garbage. No more reason to procrastinate. To it, Valere.

  “So. List?”

  He indicated the manila folder on the counter by her change-and-keys bowl. “Our client’s been a busy boy.”

  “So haven’t we all,” she grumbled, taking the file and wandering down the hallway to her office, flipping it open and scanning the typed list as she went. Oh yeah, lots of folk the client might have ticked off. Bless her partner, it was annotated and color coded, cross-referenced, and all those things he did so well.

  “Right then, I’ll leave you to it” she heard her partner say, before he—and everything else—faded from her awareness. She had a job in-hand. She could already feel her mood starting to improve.

  ten

  “Wren.”

  She could smell coffee, as she surfaced. That was nice. But the pillow was nicer.

  “Wren, come on, I know you’re awake.” The voice was cajoling, deep, and just on the edge of laughter.

  “N’mnot,” she mumbled into the pillow.

  The laughter won out, thick and rich and familiar. Nicer than the pillow, if only just. “I made you coffee. It’s here, on the dresser.” A pause. “I have to go.”

  “Mrrrmmph.”

  Slowly, the sense of what the voice was saying got through, and she opened one eye enough to locate the mug of coffee steaming just within reach.

  Once she had ingested enough to feel human, she pried open both eyes enough to see her partner lounging in the doorway, backlit by the hall light. He was already showered and dressed, even though it was still dark outside.

  “Go?” Her mind was slow moving and foggy.

  “Yeah. I told you about this, last week. I have to go to a meeting in St. Louis. New artist, the one who works in pewter and leather? I want to get him in before the trend-makers discover him. Could get me splashed in a couple of magazines…” He trailed off, aware that she really wasn’t interested, and wouldn’t have been even if she’d been awake.

  “Oh.” She didn’t remember. She figured she had been a little busy when he was telling her about it. There was a lot going on. Understatement, she could almost hear him say, as though she had voiced her comment. Still, this was his job, his other job, and the least she could do was try to pay better attention. Bad Wren.

  She stretched, toes digging into the sheets, wishing they were both still asleep and neither of them had any jobs to worry about. “You’ll dazzle ’em. You always do.” He did. He had that way about him; artists responded to it. Lee had said it was because he understood art, the way artists did. Wren thought it was just the way he got enthusiastic about it all, made ’em feel like they were the only artist he’d ever gotten the hots for.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow.” He sounded as though he were considering canceling the trip, then and there.

  Wren shook her head, trying to clear more of the fog. Not good. Oh, she wanted him here, yeah, but he needed to do this. She used to joke that the gallery was his real lover; truth was that he needed it, the same way she needed current: it was what made him whole. That was why he was so good at it.

  And she wanted him gone, too. Not forever, just a little while. Last night’s sex had been amazing, and comforting, and all that, but she’d felt it, the moment when he’d wanted to ask her to ground in him, and had held off…but only just.

  Current-intensified sex; there was a reason why the old-time sex magic was so popular, even now when there were smarter, more effective ways to renew current. But it wasn’t smart. It wasn’t safe. And she couldn’t fix the damage it was doing to him, and she wasn’t strong enough, right now, to tell him no.

  A little time apart would be good for them both. She hoped.

  “You’ll go and do the job, take as long as it takes. And then you come
home, yes.”

  He hesitated. “You’ll be careful?”

  “Didier, you’re going away for what, twenty-four hours? I’ll be fine.”

  He waited, staring at her. “I’m always careful.” He knew that. “And I got Bonnie downstairs.” Bonnie, the other Talent in the building. A paranormal forensic investigator, one of the new young hot-shit careers for eager and curious Talent, Bonnie was a good kid—more, she came with a covey of coworkers who were all also good, hot-shit kids, and seemed fascinated by her upstairs neighbor Wren, but drew the line at poking too closely at the details of what Wren actually did for a living. If there was sudden, urgent need for help, Wren need only yelp. Which there wouldn’t be, so she needn’t, but Sergei did worry.

  “P.B. should be coming by today, anyway,” she told her partner. “I sent him off to pick me up something in Albany. A friend of a friend had some materials I needed for the job.”

  Like most demon-breed, P.B. was a courier, trusted with all sorts of private or dangerous information. Partially that was because demon had no loyalties other than to their employers—they did not form social groups with their own kind, or even seem to like their own kind very much. Mainly P.B. was a courier because very few people, Cosa or otherwise, wanted to tangle with a four-foot-tall fireplug of fur and muscle and claw. He was also a fierce friend, and for all that Sergei had some lingering knee-jerk humancentric reactions to the fatae, she knew that he trusted P.B., maybe more than he trusted anyone else in the world, at least when it came to keeping her safe and steady.

  Not that she needed the help. But she always felt better when the demon was around, too.

  “All right.” But he stood there, not moving.

  “You called a cab?”

  “Yeah. He’s outside.”

  “You’re letting the meter run?”

  “I didn’t want to wake you until I had to.”

  She got out of bed, then, stark naked and shivering in the cool morning air, to go wrap herself around him. “Go safe, do well, come home soon.”