Bring It On

by Laura Anne Gilman

  At some point, they had stopped even specifying where and when they were going to meet for dinner. Before they were sleeping together, but after she’d moved into the apartment on Hanover Street. And wasn’t it sad, that she marked her life not by years, but events? She couldn’t even remember, without looking at her lease papers, what month she had moved in. Autumn, she knew that, because her mother had been worried about an early snow or some other insane thing interrupting the move. All four pieces of furniture she had, at the time, and two suitcases of clothing…

  Things like that, now, made her laugh. God, what she wouldn’t give for a life where a little snow was a major catastrophe.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the window front, and paused to check her teeth for lipstick. She still hadn’t gotten used to wearing it. She still wasn’t sure why she even bothered. Even if he noticed, he never said anything.

  Of course he notices, she told herself with mild irritation. Sergei notices everything. Even me.

  “You’re late,” Callie said when the Retriever walked through the front door. It was early enough that the restaurant was mostly empty, the very last of the very late lunchers cleared away but the local dinner crowd still caught in their nine-to-whenever office jobs.

  “I’m always late,” she said, and then, just to get it over with, “No, don’t bother to get up, I’ll find my own way.”

  The hostess/waitress just waved an indulgent hand in acquiescence as Wren moved between the tables of the small restaurant, moving unerringly to the table for two at the back corner where Sergei was already waiting. Her partner was reading a paperback while he waited, which was unusual. Typically he had his face buried in one of the endless trade rags the art world produced, or the apricot-colored pages of the Financial Times. The years had been gentle on him; the guy she had met more than a decade ago had worn his hair shorter, carried a dozen fewer pounds around the torso, and had more of a military precision in his posture. But the lines of the jaw were still as square and clean, and his wide-set brown eyes still had that same pale glow to them.

  Or maybe it was just the way he looked at her. Saw her, the way the rest of the world seemed incapable of managing. It was, damn it, sexy as hell.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “I ordered you a diet ginger ale. I thought you might need it, to ease the headache.”

  They had been partners for almost eleven years now. Lovers for less than a year. She really did love him for his mind.

  And, okay, the bod that housed that mind, too. But mostly his mind. And the way he did shit like that.

  “Headache, huh? Someone’s been doing some research while they were waiting.” Good. If he knew what was going on, that would make life easier for her, in the “what the hell is going on” category. And maybe he could explain the “why” of it to her, too.

  “Actually Doblosky called me, after we talked.” Ben Doblosky was a beat cop in the Midtown South precinct whom they had met three—no, four jobs prior, when the vigilantes were still a new threat on the block. He was also a Talent, and so part of Danny’s network. “All he said was that you were going to have a nasty current-back-lash headache, and would probably need a place to crash, somewhere out of attack-range of your apartment.”

  His tone was still mild, but there were undercurrents there only someone who had known him a long time would hear; striations of, “Were you going to tell me you were the target?” blended with, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  She sat down and picked up the menu, just to have something to do with her hands. “I really wish that people would stay out of my personal life. I already have a mother, and she’s more than enough.” Wren didn’t appreciate people deciding that she needed taking care of. Not even Sergei. Especially not when she was fine, damn it.

  Her mom went through fourteen hours of labor to push Wren into the world. She got dispensation to fuss, much as she wanted. Nobody else.

  She looked around. “Where’s the chalkboard?” The specials were always written on a chalkboard.

  “Broken. There’s a sheet in the menu.”

  She signed, opening the menu and staring at it. She didn’t know why she bothered. She had been on a veal kick lately, and that’s what she had gotten the last six times they were in. Or maybe seven.

  “The incident outside your apartment, the one on the news. It was—”

  “Cosa business.” Wren suddenly wasn’t in the mood to discuss it. She hadn’t been able to figure out why the blast was bothering her so much. Or, not the blast, but the why of it. “Just someone being cranky.”

  “At you.” Sergei stared at her over the top of his reading glasses.

  “Probably.” Definitely. Danny was right, there wasn’t anyone else the message could have been for. She was the only lonejack on her street, unless someone had moved in over the summer. Council members waging a little intramural rivalry she’d gotten caught up in? Unlikely. Council membership had its perks, and one of them involved protection from things like this—both from other members, and from outsiders. That was the appeal of the Council, the carrot they were offering lonejacks.

  Ignoring the fact that the main problem they seemed to be offering protection from was—according to lonejack paranoia—the Council itself.

  “Some sort of mini-blast. Danny stopped by. He’s looking into it.”

  “You’re staying with me tonight.” Sergei caught himself before she could even give him a Look, proving that he knew exactly how she was going to take that particular pronouncement. A deep breath, his hands flat on the table, fingers not clenching by sheer force of will that she could appreciate. “If you want to stay with me tonight, I’d be glad of the company. I’m a little unnerved by anyone setting off explosives in your general vicinity.”

  Slightly mollified, Wren lifted her water glass and studied the way the fluid inside it moved around the ice cubes. “You think they’re not going to set them off if you’re around?”

  “My building is a little more secure. Not to mention my apartment’s farther from the street.”

  A psi-bomb could be set off right next to his window. Right next to his bathroom sink, if he’d left the window open even a crack. No need to tell him that, if Doblosky—that blabbermouth—hadn’t.

  “You gonna cook me breakfast?” He might be the master negotiator, but she could haggle a bit, too.

  “I think I’ve got a few eggs I could scramble, somewhere in the fridge, yes. You’d know that, if—”

  “Don’t go there, lover.”

  There was no way she would ever give up her apartment, bare walls and unnerving memories aside. But even at her most stubborn she had to admit that there were real plusses to Sergei’s place, not the least of which was a state-of-the-art kitchen, and an owner who knew how to use it.

  “Let me guess.” Callie appeared tableside, despite the fact that Wren still had the menu open. “You’re going to have hanger steak, rare, and she’s going for the veal scaloppine. You want a glass of wine, too?” That last was to Wren.

  “No, I’m good, thanks.” Callie was a professional waitress, not an actor-waiting-break. More, she was a New York professional waitress. But as used to them as Callie might be, they were accustomed to her as well, which took half the fun out of it. She just nodded like some sort of benign dictator, picked up the menus, and walked away.

  “Now that that’s settled. What kind of Cosa business, that involves things exploding and Ben worrying about your safety?”

  Figured. Trust Didier not to be distracted, not when it involved her. She had to give him something, or he’d be impossible. Make that more impossible. “The kind everyone tells me they want me to stay out of while they keep dragging me in. P.B. came by earlier.”

  “Oh?” He took a sip of his wine, swallowed appreciatively, and raised one narrow, probably professionally plucked eyebrow, inviting her to continue.

  In for a dollar, in for a euro, or whatever the saying was. She took a deep breath, l
et it out. “Some of the more usual suspects have put together a letter to the Council, wanting to know if they’re behind the recent…problems. Walks a real pretty line between threat and whimper, I have to admit. And despite my advice to the contrary, I suspect that they’re going to send it.” Hopefully a revised version. Hopefully using her suggestions. If not…

  Sergei digested that; she could almost see the wheels and gears turning in his brain. “And it will do…what?”

  Wren drained half her water, and put the glass down with a thunk on the table. “Not a damn thing, if we’re lucky. If we’re not, which we never seem to be, it’s going to piss off the Council, whether they had anything to do with the disappearances in the first place or not. And then the real fun begins. Not. Fuck. Look, you’ve reassured yourself that I’m okay, can we just drop it?”

  Sergei frowned, wrinkles forming between his eyes as he stared at her. She met his gaze with as much inner calm as she could manage with her head still aching, willing him to accept the fact that she was okay, all right, present and accounted for.

  She knew what he was afraid of. Had been afraid of, deep down inside that stoic business-guy exterior, ever since all this began, six months ago.

  Afraid that the lonejack paranoia was true. That the Council was behind the disappearances of the Talents. That the Council had been behind the attacks on the fatae, had been funding the so-called vigilantes. That they—the Council—were plotting something. And that Wren, by taking a public stand against them and winning, during the Frants case, had put herself on their to-do list.

  And that their do-ing was of the fatal kind.

  She didn’t know how to reassure him. She wasn’t immortal. She didn’t even heal particularly well. And Lee’s death over the summer had just driven that home all the harder. No matter that the other Talent had died because of fatae politics raising its ugly head at exactly the wrong moment, or that the violence had been driven by the malign influences of the job she had been working on, an influence now, hopefully, locked away in a lead-lined, current-sealed box and sunk a mile deep into the floor of some cold ocean somewhere.

  Death sobered you. It made you think about things like the people you loved, term life insurance, next of kin, and how badly your friends were going to screw up your wake if you didn’t leave them explicit instructions.

  “Y’know what I really want to do?” she said suddenly.

  “Get dinner in a doggie bag, go back to the apartment, and screw like maddened weasels?”

  Wren widened her eyes in mock shock, even as she felt the heat rise in her face. “I was thinking about getting a hot fudge sundae for dessert, actually, but that sounds good, too.”

  Sergei smiled, that half grin that made her insides do a nice-feeling woogly, and gestured for Callie to make their order to-go.

  She really did love him for his mind. Really.

  “Did she give you a message?”

  P.B. didn’t like this guy. At all. The feeling seemed to be mutual, from the glare the human was giving him. Maybe he was a bigot. Maybe he just didn’t like demon. Maybe he glared that way at his mother, too.

  “No, she didn’t give me a message. She gave me the paper, which I gave to you. That’s what I do.” The rhyming pattern, unintentional, made P.B. think of the spells Wren used to direct her current. She didn’t rhyme, but the words always had this singsong pattern to them. If he had access to magic, he’d use it to turn himself invisible and get the hell out of here. “Here” being a small, smoke-filled room like he didn’t think they made anymore, with way too many hard-eyed humans who smelled like stale fear.

  Demon didn’t sweat. When nervous, P.B. blinked a lot. He hoped that these humans didn’t know that, and ascribed his constant twitch to the layers of smoke.

  “What did she say?” That gravelly voice belonged to a seated human; grossly overweight, like Santa gone bad. He might have been jolly once, but not now. The stub of a cigar rested between thick pink fingers.

  “She didn’t say anything,” P.B. started to explain again, when he realized the man was speaking to the guy holding the papers.

  “That we were idiots, but if we were determined to slit our own throats, she wouldn’t stop us.” He looked past the scrawled note on the top sheet and skimmed the rest of the papers. “She marked up the actual letter with red pen, made some suggestions about wording.”

  “And…?” A third human, this one covered in dark hair like a badly evolved orangutan and a surprisingly squeaky voice. It should have been funny, but P.B. didn’t ever want to meet that guy in a dark alley.

  “And nothing. That’s it.”

  “She won’t sign on with us?” Human #4, with skin as black as P.B. could ever remember seeing, and deep green eyes that were absolutely not natural—and not colored contacts, either. The Force was strong in that one, and it was Sith, all the way. “Even after they tried to kill her?”

  “She didn’t say she would.” Back to the first speaker, who held the papers.

  “Damnation! We need her!”

  “She didn’t say she would,” the fifth and last man said. A small, weedy, whiskery-looking man, wearing Bermuda shorts that showed off impressively knobby knees, he held a cigar that was still unlit, and looked like it had been chewed at by a nervous rat. “But does she say that she won’t?”

  The four other men and one demon stared at him. He shrugged, twirling the cigar idly. “If she says she will, she will. If she says she won’t, she won’t. If she hasn’t committed…she’s thinking. She hasn’t ruled either answer out. She’s being a smart lonejack, and keeping her options open and her opinions to herself.” He sounded like he envied her. From what P.B. knew of lonejacks, he probably did. The first order of business was something like “don’t take jobs you hate,” or something like that.

  “We don’t have that option anymore.”

  “Neither does she,” the fat man said. “Demon, thank you. Payment will be made in full, by the end of the workday. Now, go.”

  P.B. would have hung around, despite the smoke and the glare from Human #1, just to hear what was being said. Even if it hadn’t involved Wren, knowledge was currency. Especially these days. But the choice wasn’t his.

  The door of the town house shut firmly behind him, and the demon took a breath of the relatively cleaner air outside. But the stink of smoke clung to his lungs, and made him feel dirty.

  “They’re going to get themselves killed. All of them.”

  Not that it should matter. Humans, even Talents, even lonejacks, were none of his concern. He was demon, the stepchild of the fatae. None of them were his concern, just like he had never been theirs. Wasn’t just lonejacks who played by those rules.

  For most of his life, all he had wanted to do was survive. When the vigilantes started targeting the fatae last year, he had thought about leaving town. But he had stayed, to help the only fatae breed more helpless, more friendless than he was: the piskies.

  And then, when Wren had been targeted by her own kind, he had come to her aid. He had brought her information and watched her back, hers and her partner’s. He hadn’t even seriously considered abandoning her, not while she needed him. Not only because she had played fair with him all the years they’d known each other. But because he liked her.

  That had been new. Nice, but new.

  And when the other fatae had started coming to him—to him!—with their worries, their concerns, he had listened. And done something, become part of bringing the lonejacks and fatae together, using Wren to create the possibility of…something. A bridge. A chance.

  The ties he had avoided for so long were tight around him now. And he still didn’t know how it had happened, or why.

  Or maybe, he thought, looking down the street and watching the usual flow of bodies and cars doing their usual oblivious-to-each-other dance of the crosswalks, he did.

  Whistling a disturbingly cheerful dirge, P.B. put his slouch hat slantwise on his head, and set off down the street, confident in
the fact that this was New York, and nobody would even take a second look at a four foot tall white-furred demon walking past them. In their minds, if they processed it at all, they’d shrug and think “well, why shouldn’t there be something that looked like that walking down the street?”

  This was his city, damn it. His home. If it was going to go down in flames, he would go down with it.

  3

  She is in her apartment, filled with twisted bodies, sweat-sheened faces, like something out of a mid-Level of Hell: cocktails and damnation. She turns, looks for the door, and suddenly there’s something holding her, pulling her arms off like a little boy tugging fly wings. It hurts. She twists, trying to get free, back arching until her leg muscles strain in sympathy, tendons snapping, sweat pouring off her, and the current would. Not. Come.

  “Help me!” A silent scream, and she aches worse than her body inside to answer that plea. But she can’t do more than twist in death throes, unable to do more than relive the agony of realization, the moment of Lee’s death, even knowing that this wasn’t how he had died, this wasn’t the way it went at all—

  Her arms finally free, her body falling forward, landing hard on the floor, and she inches forward like a worm to the tall, bleeding form and looks on his face to say goodbye, and…

  The face that looks back at her, eyes wide and staring with madness, isn’t Lee’s but John Ebeneezer’s. Her mentor. Her father, in all the ways that mattered.

  And he stares at her, and says:

  You killed me.

  Sergei’s bed took up most of the sleeping loft of his apartment. It was huge, comfortable, and damned difficult to get out of in the morning, like a feather-bed hug. He was a solid lump of heat, and the urge to snuggle in next to him, rest her head on his chest and go back to sleep, was so overwhelming Wren almost gave in.

  Almost. Not quite. Not after that particular nightmare.

  Easing out of bed with more care than was needed—he could sleep through an earthquake, when he was in his own bed—Wren located the nearest shirt from the pile of hastily dropped clothing on the floor and slipped it on over her head, then went down the spiral staircase that led from the sleeping loft to the rest of the apartment. Large, open and modern, it was the total opposite of her own place. Hi-tech, carefully furnished, and very, very expensive.