Hard Magic

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “She’s a nurse?” His grin almost ate his face. “Oooo, mama!”

  “She’s a doctor,” I said, cutting off his fantasies at the knees. “And you’re not her type.”

  “Figures. That’s the story of my luck. If you’re her type, can I watch?”

  I wasn’t her type, either—she liked them big and Italian. “No.”

  Then Nifty got the first bottle open, and things started to get a little hazy. I woke up the next morning with a serious headache, half a dozen wine bottles—all empty—in the sink, and the feeling that my little apartment had just been dubbed PUPI party central.

  It was… A pretty good feeling, actually.

  I lay in bed, stared at the ceiling, and, for the first time since all this started, I let myself believe that it was going to last.

  But first, I had to get through today.

  twenty

  “Bonita Torres and Sharon Mendelssohn here to see Will Arcazy.”

  The receptionist behind the chrome-to-impress desk—an older man this time instead of the young woman who was there my first visit—gave us both a once-over that should have been insulting but instead felt coolly, impersonally professional. He was either a security guard or a slaver, in his other job. I was glad I’d opted for a crème-colored linen blouse and dark green knee-length skirt out of my “look adult and responsible” wardrobe. The shoes were crème-colored, too, and cost more than the rest of the outfit combined.

  “Is he expecting you?”

  Yeah. That was the question, wasn’t it?

  “We don’t have an appointment. But I think he’ll see us,” I said, trying to channel Sharon’s natural cool. Curiosity, if nothing else, should motivate him. That was what we were betting on, and why Venec had—reluctantly, I thought—sent us out, rather than the guys. Even the least chauvinistic male was going to see a female as less of a threat, at least if he liked women, and we knew that Will did. So two women—even if the attention wasn’t flattering—wouldn’t be seen as threatening or off-putting.

  I was beginning to understand the way they thought, our tricky guys. It gave me a headache, but I figured I’d get better with practice.

  The receptionist picked up his phone and spoke quietly into it. I didn’t try to listen in. Sharon might have—I didn’t look at her to see. The trick was to ignore her so much that everyone else would, too.

  The phone went down, and the receptionist’s expression changed from politely noncommittal to an impersonal sort of friendliness they must teach at receptionist school. “He is with a client right now, but if you’d like to take a seat, he will be with you as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Nice place,” Sharon said as we made our way over to the cream leather love seats in a square around the glass-and-chrome coffee table. “If we ever need a lawyer, you think they’d take us on?”

  Same thought I’d had, the first time I was here. That made me smile. “I don’t think we can afford them,” I said.

  “Mmm. Yeah.” Sharon stared over my shoulder, I guess at the wall, then suddenly said, “Speaking of money, you think the client’s going to pay us? Honestly? Because if she’s not, I’m going to have to put my résumé out there again. This job is…it’s crazy and it’s great, but I need some stability in the paycheck, you know? Walking in some day to find the office empty ’cause the furniture got repossessed is not my idea of fun times.”

  Wow. Not that the thought itself was a surprise, just that of all of us, I’d figured Sharon for the last-woman-out, not first rat overboard. “She’ll pay. It would be a matter of respect—all the Guys would have to do would be to let it out that she failed to pay a legitimate bill, even if it was to a disreputable-by-her-standards firm, and the embarrassment alone would destroy her standing in the Council.”

  “And that’s important?” Sharon was looking directly at me now, really needing to know the answer.

  Again I felt that gulf between us, the divide in our upbringings, that something so obvious to me eluded her. “Yes.” No hesitation in that response. “To someone like our client? It’s that important. More to the point, she knows that the boss knows it’s that important, and won’t hesitate to use it as a stick, if he has to.”

  It struck me then that we had all fallen into the habit of not using names outside the office. Interesting.

  Sharon looked as though she was digesting what I’d said. “That’s…a whole level of politics I’m not used to considering.”

  “It’s Council.”

  “Yes, I understand that. In a sort of don’t-understand-it way.” She crossed her legs, adjusted her dark blue skirt to lie neatly across her knees, and double-checked the attaché case that rested at her feet. It was empty—just a prop—but it looked as expensive as my shoes.

  “You see people differently than I do,” she said finally. “I look at someone and see an individual, whole unto themselves. You…you see how they’re connected, don’t you? Not just one person, but this endless web of ties and obligations around them. I guess that’s Council, too.”

  Did I? Now it was my turn to digest her words. So we sat there, two well-dressed women in the waiting area of a very expensive legal office, indistinguishable from any other client-in-waiting, mulling over our thoughts, deep and shallow. When Will came out through the frosted glass doors, it was a relief to be shaken out of them, and back into the game.

  His gaze took me in first, and then slid sideways to include Sharon. There was a moment of understandable appreciation before he recalled his manners, or something, and turned his attention back to me. “I take it that this isn’t entirely a social visit,” he said.

  “I wish it were.” I really did.

  Give him credit, despite Will’s confusion he was a gracious host, escorting us to his office, offering us coffee, the whole deal, like we really might be potential clients for the firm. Maybe he was just putting on a good show for the partners.

  “All right,” he said, after we’d refused refreshments and gotten settled in the guest chairs. “What’s going on?”

  The plan wasn’t so much good cop/bad cop as talky cop/silent cop. Sharon was here to observe while I, hopefully, prodded him into revealing more than he meant to. More of Ian’s on-the-job-training, since I was the demonstrably better observer. Not that I didn’t trust Sharon to see things, but I was on overdrive, trying to make sure every twitch and flicker registered, just in case she missed something. And, yes, because I felt that I had something to prove, now.

  “You didn’t play fair with me, Will.”

  I could see it in his eyes. He was genuinely confused; he didn’t know what I was talking about. I didn’t need Sharon’s confirmation to know that was real.

  “Your association with the Reybeorns. You concealed details.”

  “Ah.” He leaned back in his chair, like every television show lawyer I’d ever seen, confronted with something tricky. “I answered every question you asked.”

  “You didn’t lie, and you didn’t evade,” I agreed. “But you didn’t play fair. You didn’t tell me about your silent partner—or the deal that was still in play when the Reybeorns died.”

  “What does Katie have to do with any of this?” He blinked, and again I could see in his eyes when the penny dropped. He leaned forward, all pretense at relaxation gone. Interesting, that he focused in on that part. “You weren’t investigating their deaths, before. You were investigating me?”

  “Only incidentally,” I said, hoping to hell that Sharon was picking something up, because I had to pay attention to the words, both his and mine, and not the deeds. “Because of your connections to the victims. Your possible connections to the killer.”

  Even half-distracted, I could tell when he went from hurt and confusion to anger.

  “I told you, I would never do anything to hurt them! I liked them! And you…you’ve been investigating me. All this time, even when…even at dinner? You used me.”

  I hadn’t, damn it. I had done eve
rything I could short of quitting to not use him. So why did his words make me feel guilty? I could feel my current stir, cool but awake, and I had to take a second to quiet it. That never used to happen, damn it. I didn’t want to constantly be on the offensive. It took too much out of you. Was it because of Will? Or the fact that I was using so much current lately, it assumed every flicker meant that it was time to play? I needed to ask J about that. Later.

  “If I’d been using you, Will, I would have returned your calls. I would have asked questions over dinner, after a bottle of wine—” or in bed, I thought but didn’t say “—not sober in your office with a desk between us.

  “So tell me now. Tell me everything, Will. Tell me why you didn’t mention Katie, or the deal. Because it might be important. It might be really important to finding out who killed them.”

  “I can’t help you.” His gaze flicked from my face to Sharon’s. I guess he didn’t like what he saw there, because he flicked back to me, as though I was the better hope. “I really can’t. Even if I wanted to, which I’m not sure I do right now, I told you everything useful.”

  “Why don’t you let us decide if it’s useful or not?”

  He looked again to Sharon, who stared at him with that unreadable can’t-shock-me expression I was starting to understand was a total put-on, and he crumbled. “Katie…we were friends-of-friends. I met her at a party in Chicago—that’s where she’s from. We got to talking one day about investments, and I told her about the deals I’d done with the Reybeorns, and she was interested, but I knew they wouldn’t be interested. They were, um—”

  “They ran a closed shop,” Sharon said, more polite than I would have been, and he nodded.

  “Katie knew, a little, about…what we are. So I just told her it was like that, that they weren’t going to trust anyone who wasn’t Talent, that it wasn’t personal, and she suggested that we partner up, her money supplementing mine. That way we had a larger slice of the pie, and more say about what was done.”

  “And you were okay with deceiving your friends like that?” I asked.

  “I…I thought it was tacky, to keep someone out because of what they could or couldn’t do, something they had no control over, in a situation where Talent was not an issue. Whatever you may think of me, discrimination’s discrimination, okay?”

  I slid my gaze toward Sharon, whose fingers were still on her lap. That meant she thought he was telling the truth.

  “I figured, if they never knew, and Katie and I made money, who could it hurt? All the paperwork was in my name, and I had a side agreement with Kate, so it was all up-and-up.”

  Legally, yeah. Morally… I didn’t know. I didn’t support Talent-only any more than I’d not hang with Nifty because he was black, or Sharon because she was WASPy…but something about the way Will wiggled around honesty made me uncomfortable. He had his reasons, and they sounded like good ones, but…

  “And that last deal? The one you said you got out of?”

  “I had gotten out. I asked them to sell to the developer who was sniffing around. We’d already made enough profit, even without the renovations. But they wanted to hold the course. So Katie bought me out. That way I had the cash I needed, and she got to ride the full term of the deal, and make even more money. It was a done deal, nothing in my agreement with the Reybeorns said I couldn’t sell my shares, and they’d have no choice but to accept it.

  “Honestly, I figured that they would dump the property when Katie showed up, rather than work with a Null.”

  Sharon’s fingers twitched, then went still.

  “Only it didn’t work that way,” I said. “They still owned the property when they died.”

  “They refused to honor the paper Katie and I signed. They just…they refused to accept it. Said it was worthless, that without me there was no deal.” He sounded like a little kid who had been knocked off his bicycle. I didn’t have to look at Sharon to know that this, at least partially, was what he hadn’t wanted to think about. He’d taken a hit to his ego—he’d been wrong—and wasn’t dealing with it. Did he also suspect, somehow, that that chain of events might have been what led to the Reybeorns’ deaths?

  “And you didn’t think it was important to mention this, when we talked the first time?”

  “I didn’t know. I didn’t know until…”

  “Until you had lunch with her in Chicago.”

  I shriveled a little even as Sharon’s words fell into the air. Will looked at me like I had just told him there was no more chocolate in the world: disbelieving, hurt, and a little panicked.

  “You were following me.”

  Damn it, Sharon… “You showed up at the auction, Will. You made yourself a person of interest. As a lawyer, you know what that means.”

  “I can’t believe you followed me.”

  I was starting to get a little pissed off. He was the one who had screwed up, not me!

  “When did you sign the papers over to this woman?”

  He thought a bit, then shook his head. “About three months ago, I think. I can’t remember the exact date.”

  Sharon’s fingers flicked up and down, once.

  “Do you have copies of the papers?”

  “Do you have a warrant?” he asked in return.

  Current coiled, cool and slow, deep in my gut. This time, I didn’t hush it. “You know we don’t. If you want us to, we can go to the Council and ask them to push you on it.”

  A Council push wasn’t binding, but it had a lot of weight. Like shunning, among the Amish. I didn’t know if Ian had enough influence to swing one…but I was betting that J did.

  We played stare-me-down, and I was the first one to blink…but Will backed down. “I have copies here.” He stood up and walked over to a small filing cabinet. A double tap on the door, and a current-lock was released, the drawer smoothly rolling out.

  He ruffled through the files, more for show than anything else, I thought, and pulled out a slim folder.

  “Here.”

  I took a quick skim, and the name “Kate Walker” jumped out at me. So far, so good.

  “If you could make us copies?”

  “These are copies. I keep everything in triplicate. Take them and go.”

  I took the folder. “Will…”

  “Just go, Bonnie.”

  The subway back uptown was packed with everyone fleeing their offices for the day, so we didn’t have a chance to talk. I’m not sure what I would have said, anyway. The papers were in Sharon’s attaché case, and I’d swear they were magnetized, the way I couldn’t stop glancing over, like there would suddenly be glowing letters floating midair, proclaiming his innocence….

  Please, let him be innocent. Even as I was whispering a prayer, though, I didn’t believe it. I wanted to…but I didn’t. It wasn’t cynicism, just pragmatism. There were too many omissions in his story. A layperson might do that without realizing it. A lawyer? He might not be guilty, but he wasn’t innocent.

  “Hey.” Sharon had gotten out of her seat and tapped me on the shoulder. We were coming up on our stop.

  “He’s hot.”

  “What?”

  “Your Will. He’s hot. And he couldn’t take his eyes off you, even when he was pissed off.”

  “And he lied to us.”

  Sharon couldn’t deny that, since she was the one who had identified it. “I can only tell when they’re lying, not why. It may be he had a reason…one that’s not related to the case. Maybe he really didn’t know, or was defending a friend he thought got a raw deal?”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  I wanted to go home, crawl into my new bed, pull my old quilt over my head, and not come out for a month. Instead, we buzzed our way into the lobby, and back to the office where the Guys were waiting.

  Sharon handed over the papers, and Venec stalked back to the main workroom with them. I left Sharon getting debriefed by Ian and followed Venec, drawn by some masochistic impulse I hadn’t known I had, until then. He spread the papers ove
r the table, then without even looking at me said, “Close and seal the door.”

  Current lashed out to establish a sealing block almost before I could formalize the thought. I wasn’t sure if that was impressive control on my part, or an impressive lack of control, and didn’t really care, right then.

  “Are they—”

  “If you’re going to stay, sit down and shut up.”

  I sat.

  Sometimes, current is a tidal wave, knocking everything else out of your awareness. Sometimes, it’s just a single thread, stitching up a hem you didn’t realize had fallen. Inside that sealed room, without any other distractions, I couldn’t sense Venec’s current, even sitting a foot away from him. Even more than Nick’s focus while hacking, that took depth, and training, and control that, honestly, scared me a little. Because it meant that when I did feel him, it was because he meant me to.

  His hands hovered over the papers. Since I couldn’t sense anything magically, I looked with my physical eyes. He had rolled his sleeves up, exposing his forearms. They were muscled, but not overly so, and tapered to thick wrists and those surprisingly long fingers. Nice hands. I had no idea what he was doing, and without a tail end of current to track, I couldn’t extrapolate, either.

  “Well?”

  “Only one ink was used. Here. Follow this.”

  I took a deep breath, set myself into a calm, receptive mode, and waited. A crack in the wall appeared, and an invitation was issued. I accepted it, and followed the stream of energy that was now visible. I hadn’t done this since I was fourteen, but this was one of the basic teaching tools every mentor used. You couldn’t actually interfere or influence the spell, but you could see it, exactly the same way the caster did.

  The papers were black, in mage-sight, the computer-generated letters thin glowing lines of silver—traces of the energy used to create them? Maybe. The signatures and addendums on the side where someone had inked their initials were what drew my attention: they were all the same dark orange, pulsing against the black paper.