She had left a message on Sergei’s phone that day, but he had never returned the call. She was told that he had made a formal report, in writing, to what remained of the Double Quad: Bart, his ribs taped and his leg splinted, Susan, still recovering from second-degree burns, and the nausunni elder, who had been protected by the river’s depths. Beyl had taken a current-bolt through the lungs, and died that night, surrounded by the flock she had led for so many years. Gentle, madbiker Rick had died of current overrush on the scene. Michaela was in a coma, and not expected to ever open her eyes again. Wren was too tired to mourn. There were too damn many deaths to mourn.
She didn’t even have the strength to mourn Sergei, the death of whatever it was that had died between them. His fault, her fault. She only hoped that he would have the sense to stay low, stay out of sight. Stay alive. And not do anything stupid, jonesing for another rush of current.
Nobody trusted Nulls anymore. Nobody trusted anyone who might be part of the Silence, or their agents. Not after what they had done to the lost ones, the children, the Talent they had destroyed and turned into monsters.
The golden locket had been rescued from her pocket, but rather than replacing it in her jewelry box—a small wooden case—she had hung it over the edge of the mirror in her bedroom. In the night, when she lay in her cool bed, she would see glints from outside lights reflect in the metal, and wonder where her own innocence had gone.
It was February. Her bruises and cuts were healing. The wounds inside…she touched one, gently, and felt the pain like it had happened to someone else. It was there, it might always be there, but it was distant, observed more than experienced. Locked and sealed and not anything to deal with, anymore.
She had bought a rug, and a love seat for her apartment. Had hung framed and matted photos of her mother and grandmother on the wall. Kept the curtains drawn so that she could sleep in, and let P.B. fill her refrigerator with food, some of it even healthy.
She didn’t miss Sergei. She didn’t have the energy.
“When was the last time you slept?” P.B. finally asked.
“Every night, I sleep.” Just not well, and not for long. She could have taken a sleeping pill, but she rather liked the edge exhaustion was giving her. She thought maybe she was going to need that edge.
“It’s not over, you know.” They were sitting on the new sofa, eating kung pao chicken and Jimmy’s justifiably famous sesame noodles out of white cartons. Two fortune cookies sat in the center of the also-new coffee table. “All of it…it’s not over.”
“I know,” P.B. said.
He had been gentle with her since they had staggered back into her apartment that god-awful morning. Had been treating her like handblown glass, rare and fragile. It made her want to scream, but she was afraid that, if she did, she really would shatter and prove him right.
“It’s not over,” she repeated a third time. “It’s really only just begun. If what was in Sergei’s report is true.”
There was controversy over that; nobody was quite sure how much faith they could put in the words of a Silence Operative, someone who had been responsible, however indirectly, for the creation—the brainwashing—of the children who had been used against them.
Wren would never believe that Sergei had had anything to do with that, not after what they had been through, but she didn’t argue. She was too tired of trying to be seen, trying to be heard. And she was just as glad that he was keeping his distance. She could survive anything, so long as she knew he was safe. And safe, right now, meant nowhere near her.
“It’s not just us. It’s not just this city, this coast.”
The demon knew all this. He had heard her go over it before, in different words all leading to the same conclusion.
“The Silence…What they did to that girl, to the others…If we let it be, it will destroy us, down to root and stem. The Council—all the Councils—no longer have a choice about getting involved. This isn’t only a regional squabble anymore. It never was.”
“It’s a new witch hunt,” P.B. said, agreeing as he had agreed before. “Null against Talent. Null against fatae.”
“Only this time, fatae and Talent are working together. God, P.B. Do you have any idea what we did? Did you see?” Fatae and human, marching together. Some of them arm and arm, singing. Carrying signs. Covered with blood still, staggering out of the police station the morning after. Someone had thought to bring a camera to the fight—idiot, but brilliant.
“What we were building…it can’t be allowed to fall apart. Independently, we lose.”
P.B. sighed, stretched, sucked garlic sauce off his claw. “We’re gonna lose together, too. You know that, right?”
She knew. But she had to hold on to the victories of the moment, and hope that they would be enough.
“Shut up and pass me the dumplings.” P.B. reached, then paused. Scooping up the fortune cookies, he got up and walked out of the room. She heard the window open, the sound of something being pitched into the snow, and then the window closing.
When he came back, empty-handed, some of the tension around his muzzle was lessened. She almost smiled.
Uptown, blues played softly over an expensive sound system, a woman’s voice crooning in French. Sergei Didier sat on his sofa, barefoot, wearing a pair of black dress slacks and a crisp button-down shirt. There was a glass of wine on the table in front of him, and a square cloth next to it. On the cloth, a number of metal and plastic pieces were laid out with surgical precision.
He finished cleaning the barrel of his pistol, and placed it down next to the cloth, the blued steel making a clink on the surface that barely disturbed the sound of the woman’s voice.
She could think whatever she wanted to think. They could call him a traitor: God knew the Silence already did. But the flames that had surrounded the bridge last month were a portent of what was to come: her fortune had warned them about that.
He might not be wanted by her side anymore: he couldn’t blame her for that. He understood. That didn’t mean that he was about to let Wren go into this alone, whatever “this” might turn out to be.
I can survive anything, he told her silently. So long as you’re safe.
BURNING BRIDGES
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4775-2
Copyright © 2007 by Laura Anne Gilman
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Burning Bridges Page 32