Burning Bridges

by Laura Anne Gilman

  It happened so fast, there was seemingly no transition between being upright, and being horizontal.

  The horse snickered; she swore she heard it snicker, but the current-built case held, and it stayed put.

  “Yay, me,” she said from her prone position, even the cold snow not dimming the sense of accomplishment she felt. Finally. Fin-bloody-ly, she could put this case in the Closed drawer. After she figured out how to transport the damn thing back to the owners, that was, but even that thought didn’t dim her satisfaction.

  The thought that followed hard on the heels of that, however, did.

  Technically speaking, she hadn’t found the bansidhe. Sure, she’d been told where to look, but there was no reason the creature had to return to that spot, for the third, final appearance just when she was there. There hadn’t been anyone around to announce its message of disaster incoming, no witness to its presence. Except her.

  Looking at it one way, it was coincidence, maybe bad timing on the bansidhe’s part, to not have an audience. Or it could be considered good Retrieval, arriving before witnesses hit the scene.

  Looked at another way…she didn’t know who had sent her that e-mail. Pure luck she had looked then, been able to react as fast as she had. Except luck was sometimes someone’s hand, offstage, stirring the pot.

  Either way, it was as easy to say that, instead of her finding it, it had found her. Which meant that its historically accurate “warning of great and dire portent” could, reasonably, be assigned…to her.

  Wren let her head fall back into the snow, staring up at the now-black sky.

  “Oh boy.”

  thirteen

  Something was bothering him. It took an hour of letting it nag at the back of his head, and two cups of execrable coffee, before the vague something crystallized into a determinable fact: the office was too quiet.

  Andre Felhim was used to being in and out at odd times; the benefit and cost of being middle management; the work never ended, but you had your own office to settle in with it. But this quiet wasn’t the sort that you got early morning or late at night, when everyone was either gone or buried under work. It was the quiet of people trying very, very hard not to be noticed.

  And yes, the irony of an organization nicknamed the Silence being too quiet was not lost on him. He did have a sense of humor, despite what many thought.

  That humor was absent from his face today, however. The silence was a worry, but not the most pressing of them.

  His primary source of all information, researcher par excellence Darcy sat in front of him, her tiny frame radiating concern. From anyone else, he might have questioned the findings she had delivered to him. You did not question Darcy; she was that good. She was better than that good, actually.

  “So. Where are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Darcy knew everything, or knew where to look to find it, and she never gave up until she tracked it down and understood it. For her to come up here, to make a report, and to say that…

  “People do not simply go missing,” Andre told her.

  They did, of course. All the time. But not their people.

  She didn’t bother to contradict him, merely restated her data. “Seventeen, to date. All FocAs.” FocAs—Silence slang for Focused Actives, field agents who were also Talent. Once, there were only half a dozen within the Silence. In the past decade, that number had more than quadrupled, and then doubled again. Seventeen of those nearly fifty were now missing in action. And no reports had been filed to that effect. Nobody had noticed they were gone. Nobody had cared.

  Or nobody had dared to care.

  They had been the first to note something was coming, Andre suddenly remembered. Almost a year ago, the rumblings had begun. Darcy had been the one to warn him about it, a merest muttering she had overheard, a scrap of discontent, the whisper of a rift, a schism….

  He had been distracted then. He had asked her to follow up on it, but never followed up himself on what she had discovered. You couldn’t cover every base, every time. Things slipped, especially in the press of more urgent, more immediate disasters. But even if these individuals hadn’t been under his direct management, they deserved better than to be filed and forgotten.

  He touched the intercom button on his phone. “Bren. You got a minute?”

  “No. But I’ll be there in two.”

  Bren, the office manager, dogsbody, and all-around dragon. If he trusted Darcy to give him every detail in existence, he trusted Bren to guard his back. She was an Amazon, in more ways than her build, and totally without fear.

  “Three of their Handlers have taken a leave of absence in the past six months. Their FocAs were assigned to others.” Darcy’s voice had gotten flat, the way it did when she was reciting facts she personally did not enjoy knowing. If he hadn’t worked with her for years, he wouldn’t have been aware of that.

  The detail about the Handlers was an interesting fact. A very interesting fact. Handlers were usually possessive unto death of their Operatives, and would rather work with a life-threatening injury than trust someone else with the running of the Op—especially a FocAs, with their temperamental personalities and quirks and the not-totally-unsubstantiated feeling that nobody at Headquarters understood those personalities and quirks.

  Sergei had been an excellent Handler; still was, if you extended the job description to include his work with Wren Valere. But he had been terrible at every other aspect of the job, limiting his usefulness.

  Sergei’s successor, on the other hand, had lacked that particular directed empathy, and moved over to the administrative side with obvious relief. Andre sometimes wished that he had been able to merge the two, Didier and Jorgenmunder, into one perfect second-in-command. Although, the way the dice rolled, he would likely have ended with all of their negative traits rather than the desired ones….

  “Have you been able to contact those individuals?” he asked Darcy while they waited for Bren to arrive.

  “One. She checked in for a rest cure at a rather exclusive detox facility. The Silence is picking up the tab.”

  “Of course.”

  Andre steepled his long dark fingers in front of him, and stared at his fingertips. They were perfectly manicured, as was everything about him. Appearance was everything, even in the middle of a crisis. Never let them see you sweat, or otherwise indicate anything out of order. He had cut his hair short, to keep himself from tugging at it once he became aware of that habit, and even now that he trusted himself to manage stress better, it remained short. Nobody should ever know it was anything other than a stylistic choice.

  Bren appeared in the doorway, clearly mentally juggling a number of things but equally ready to drop them at Andre’s request. He wasn’t the only manager she reported to, but he knew damn well that he was the most interesting.

  “Has anyone seen Poul in the past week?” The question was casually worded, but the fact that he was asking spoke volumes. Poul Jorgenmunder was his protégée, his successor-in-training, and should have been at his side constantly, in times like this.

  Bren frowned, shook her head. “Not since last Tuesday, when he came in to pick up an expense check.”

  Darcy looked at Andre’s fingertips, and said nothing. Andre noted that, as he knew that she knew he would.

  So. The wind blew that direction. Hardly surprising, although it was of course disappointing. Still, Poul was a grown man, and had the right to choose and discard his own alliances.

  “Bren, take this list of Operatives, find out if they’re still drawing salaries, benefits, anything. Quietly.” The last word wasn’t needed, but he said it anyway.

  She nodded, holding her hand out for the paper. No questions why, no reasons needed.

  “Darcy. I need to know what’s happened with our AWOL children. Whatever favors you have to promise, whatever money or goods has to change hands, do it.”

  He didn’t tell her to hurry. He didn’t need to. They both knew, through Sergei
, what was happening in the city around them. It wasn’t a good time for a Talent, any Talent, to be missing.

  And these were their people, when all was said and done. The Silence took care of their own.

  Sergei walked in the back door of the gallery, not wanting to frighten any potential customers with his unshaven, jet-lagged self. It had been a hellish couple of days, and not even the fact that he’d gotten signatures on an agreement, and dates set for the fall, was enough to cushion the eventual crash he was going to have. Adapting from an overnight trip to a three-day enforced exile—even in a comfortable hotel—shouldn’t have taken that much out of him. He just wasn’t as young as he used to think he was, and no getting around it.

  Still. He was home. He could drop the papers off for Lowell to deal with, make sure nothing had blown up in his absence, go take a shower and shave, get some fresh clothes, and find out what the hell was happening with the Cosa. It worried him that Wren hadn’t called back, but he took some comfort from the fact that if things had really gone into the proverbial hand-basket, he would have heard.

  He thought he would have. Now that he considered it, he wondered…would P.B. think to contact him, if something went wrong? Would P.B. even know how to reach him, if he wasn’t at home or at the gallery?

  That brought him to a full halt. “You aren’t seriously thinking about giving him your mobile number, are you?” he asked himself out loud. The question bounced against the narrow walls, mocking him. Of course, the demon had called him once before, when they were in Italy. Technically, Lee had called, but P.B. had been part of that. So odds were that yes, the demon already had his cell number. And yes, he would have called if anything had gone wrong. Even if Wren had told him not to call. Probably especially if Wren had told him not to call.

  Reassured, he strode forward again. The rear of the building was where deliveries were made; it opened up into the lower level, where the storage rooms were. The floors were concrete, the lighting was bare and harsh, and his steps echoed against the pale green walls and bounced down the corridor in front of him like a herald to announce his return.

  “You’re not supposed to be down here.”

  Lowell. Why was Lowell down here, and not upstairs schmoozing clientele? Sergei adjusted the strap of his carry-on more securely on his shoulder, and sped up to the room where the voice came from, already knowing fairly well whom his assistant was speaking to. Lowell only ever got that tone in his voice when he was dealing with Wren.

  Sure enough, when he got to the main installation storage room—a grand name for a cinder-block-lined space, even if it was large enough to qualify as an apartment by New York standards—Lowell was in full bristle mode, hands on his hips, carefully styled blond hair quivering with outrage, pretty-boy blue eyes full of righteous indignation.

  Wren was standing in front of a wooden crate about the size of an SUV, which filled half the available space, forcing her closer to Lowell than she usually cared to get. In contrast to Lowell, she looked less indignant—or even evilly amused, her usual reaction to his assistant’s temper tantrums—then…he looked closer. She looked like shit, actually. Wrung out and worn-out and several shades paler than even she should be. Her hair hung down her back in lackluster strands, rather than being pinned up as usual, and the lines of her body—so familiar to him now—were too tense for such a common thing as a showdown with Lowell. Usually Wren treated that like catnip, not a cause for stress. Was it just that he’d been away, that he was seeing this, suddenly? Had she been so worn before he left? Or had something happened while he was away?

  “What’s going on here?”

  He didn’t mean to use his Dad-voice. Just like Lowell’s tone, it always seemed to slip out when confronted by the two of them hissing and spitting like cats.

  “Your…friend seems to think that she can waltz in here and use the gallery instead of renting a storage room like everyone else.”

  Lowell knew better than to diss Wren to Sergei’s face, but he’d never been able to refer to her as his partner, even after they started being obvious about it. It wasn’t a sexual jealousy, thank God—his life was already complicated enough, thank you—but pure possessiveness.

  “I didn’t have a choice.” Wren wasn’t apologizing, not exactly, but the look on her face said “please understand, I can’t go into it now.”

  In other words, it was Cosa—and possibly Retrieval-related. Please God, do not let it have anything to do with the murdered angel, or anything smelling of violence. Not here, in this one sanctuary… “Lowell, do we need this space for any incoming installations?”

  His assistant didn’t have to go upstairs to check the database. “No.” Grudging, but honest. “The current exhibit is almost entirely sold. The new owners will be taking possession in the next ten days.” Sergei Didier Gallery did not let things go as they were sold—they were there to highlight the artist as much as sell the works, and so nothing left until the exhibit’s run was over. “The new exhibit’s already in Storage D. We won’t need this space until March. But—”

  “You’ll have this out before then?” he asked his partner.

  ‘Well before then,” she said, a hint of desperation under her words that made him madly curious as to what was in there. But first things first.

  “That’s settled, then. In the future, please try to check with us before you have anything delivered, all right? And, Lowell, did you close the gallery, or are people waltzing in and out with our livelihood under their arms, unpaid for?”

  His assistant had the grace to look abashed. “I put the Back in Ten sign up when I heard someone down here.”

  “It’s been ten. Go back upstairs. I’ll take care of this.”

  Lowell nodded, shooting another look at Wren. No, not at Wren: at the crate behind her. And the look was less annoyance than…a step below fear, but above discomfort. Interesting.

  “Go.”

  Lowell went.

  “All right. What is that, and why is it freaking my assistant out?” And him, too, now that he thought about it. He was more on edge than he had been when he walked in the door, when he should have been more relaxed. And it couldn’t just be chalked up to their spat—Lord knows he was used to it by now.

  She mumbled something, he couldn’t quite make out.

  “What was that?”

  “It’s old sally.”

  “Again?”

  “It’s. Old. Sally.”

  “Sal…The bansidhe?”

  “Yeah.” Wren looked up, and behind the desperation there was pride. “Got her.”

  His first reaction was one of pleasure—he knew how hard she had worked on this job, and how much it bothered her to leave it open. Having it off her to-do list would be one less thing for her to stress over, and he would be able to say with absolute honesty and no dancing in semantics, that The Wren always got the job done, rather than the “never walked away from a job” he had been using.

  Hard on the heels of that thought, however, came a wave of more negative reactions. The damned thing was a harbinger of bad tidings, a warning of doom and disaster imminent, and while Sergei wasn’t particularly superstitious, he had noted over the years that bad news tended to attract more of the same. Not something they needed in their life, right now, and certainly not here. Especially if Lowell was picking up on it.

  “And this…thing is in my gallery…why?” The moment he asked, he had a bad—worse—feeling about the answer.

  Wren shrugged, that pale and worn look back on her face. “Because I can’t leave it unprotected. Here, I can put in extra wards, and know nobody’s going to stumble over it by accident.”

  The reference, even unsaid, was clear. Stumble over it like unfortunates had stumbled over the Nescanni Parchment; stumbled upon it, and been eaten by it, mind and soul as well as body, before they—Wren—were able to box the damned thing up and drop it somewhere deep.

  She was worried, too. Only she was worrying about everyone except them.

/>   “That’s not just a crate, is it?” he asked warily.

  “Umm.” If she were the type, she would have dragged one toe in the dust. “It’s not a crate at all, actually. It just looks like one, ’cause…You really want to hear all the details?”

  Sergei could feel a headache coming in on top of the one he had already. “No. I don’t think I do. You’ll get it out of here pronto?”

  “As soon as I can arrange a pickup,” she promised.

  It wasn’t specific enough to satisfy him, but he had to settle for it. “And next time? Ask me before you bring Cosa business here, all right? Not that I mind, as such, but I like to know what’s going on under my nose, if at all possible.”

  The look in Wren’s eyes changed, and his uh-oh alert kicked into high gear. She only ever got that look when she was about to, in brutal terms, get out the pointy-toed kicking boots.

  “Yeah.” The way she drawled the word out made him start to worry about himself, rather than her, or Lowell, or the gallery. “About that whole ‘in the know’ thing.” She paused, and he couldn’t tell if it was for effect, or merely to gather her thoughts for the most devastating attack. “I stopped by your place before I came here.

  Needed to get the keys—didn’t think you’d want me futzing with the alarms to break in.”

  “I appreciate that.” He waited, warily, wondering…there hadn’t been anything even remotely incriminating at the apartment—he didn’t have anything incriminating that she didn’t know about, anymore.

  “The phone rang. I answered it.”

  He waited, the headache splintering off and having devil-babies that kicked at the inside of his skull, screaming bloody murder.

  “Your doctor is a very ethical man. Even though I was clearly in your apartment, he refused to give me any of the details of the test results.”

  Oh chyort. He hadn’t expected the office to get back to him for at least another week.

  “You didn’t break into his office to get them?”