Bring It On

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Come in, both of you. Sit, please. Would you like some tea?”

  Darcy and Bren looked at each other, then nodded.

  “Yes, please,” the researcher said. “Would you like me to pour?”

  “Please.”

  The teapot was an elegant silver Art Deco set, the tea poured into tall glasses with silver chasers. Sugar lumps, not packets, from a silver bowl. Bren poured out, and sat back with the glass balanced easily on one knee, waiting for it to cool. Bren, bless her, was dog-loyal. He had no doubts of her.

  “Sir?” Darcy asked again. She moved the glass from one hand to another, her delicate hands making the glass seem oversized. He hated to see that look of fearful anticipation in her hazel-blue eyes. Still, she was valued within the Silence not for her courage, but her almost frightening ability to uncover things other people tried to hide. If Darcy did not know something, there was nothing to know. Her knowing; that made it real. She knew that there was a problem. Therefore, there was a problem.

  The thought that she might be party to this disinformation, that she might be hiding or redirecting that lifeblood of the Silence—unthinkable. Not because—unlike everyone else he had trained—she had any undying loyalty to him, but because her true love and loyalty was to information. She truly believed that it needed to be free. The thought of impeding it would make her head implode.

  Despite this, he trusted her to know who had protected her, who continued to ease the way for her to do her job without outside interference, or undue political influences. She would file away what was said here, would bring her mind to bear on what he pointed her at, and know everything there was to know—but she would not sell it to another player. Not while he continued to protect her.

  He therefore merely held up a hand, indicating that she should drink her tea, and wait.

  Jorgunmunder, his protégé/lieutenant would arrive soon, the third of the three he had called to this specific time and place. And then, they could begin.

  One of the great dividing lines between Manhattan residents, even more than Mets versus Yankees, was “subway or bus?” Wren was firmly on the subway side. Subways had track problems, yes. And they ran late, and occasionally stank, especially in the summer. Buses were just as crowded, and got stuck in traffic, to boot. Add to that her tendency to be “overlooked” even when she was jumping up and down trying to flag a bus down…at least the subway trains stopped at every stop, no matter if they saw someone waiting on the platform or not.

  Unfortunately it was also the middle of the morning rush hour, which meant that no matter what sort of mass transit you took, it was going to be packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Thankfully today was that in-between sort of day; cool enough that the levels of human sweat were down, and not cold enough yet that people were wearing bulky coats that took up twice the available room.

  Some people claimed that New Yorkers were rude. Wren had asked Sergei about that once; he, being from Chicago, had merely shrugged, as confused as she was. It wasn’t until she had spent time riding the subways waiting for a target to appear before she understood what it was outsiders were reacting to; not rudeness, but extreme politeness. Everyone in Manhattan was living in their own space, the lack of eye contact or acknowledgment others bemoaned actually allowing their neighbors the illusion of privacy, keeping noses down in newspapers or books, or eyes closed and shoulders moving to noises from their iPods.

  Wren’s fingers twitched—the desire to Take overwhelming, for an instant, the fact that she had no desire to own an iPod, nor any market to sell one, even assuming she was interested in that. Which she wasn’t. She was a Retriever, not a garden variety thief.

  But sometimes, sometimes, that itch hit, a throwback to her adolescent stint as a thrill-shoplifter.

  The moment passed, the way they always did. Self-control was key. Focus was everything, the only thing, and the foremost part of focus was self-determination. Wren found a spot in the corner, leaned against the wall, and rested her eyes on nothing, letting her mind run over the material she had read that morning online until an inner-timing sense warned her that the train was approaching her stop. She slipped through the crowded car, shoulder and elbow acting like the prow of a small boat, moving people aside without them even realizing that they had been moved.

  Neezer had taken her to see Chicago, back years ago when it was on Broadway, when she was still a teenager and he was still sane. A birthday outing, it had been. That evening had convinced Wren that Manhattan wasn’t so much a ballet as it was a Bob Fosse jazz routine, all hands and shoulders and feet constantly moving. If you did it right, you looked cool. Wrong, and you were a spaz.

  When she had told Neezer that, expecting her mentor to laugh, he had merely blinked at her, long and slow, and nodded his head as though he’d never thought of it that way before but it made everything make perfect sense.

  God, but she missed the old man. A lot. If he’d stayed, if he hadn’t wizzed…

  Is as it is, Jenny-Wren. His voice, sad and slow, across the years. He hadn’t, he had, and she only had his memory to consult with, now. A memory that was starting to fade, no matter how tightly she clung to it. The things people think are forever? They’re dust before you know it. Wren was surprised by how bitterly angry that thought left her.

  Coming up the stairs to street level, Wren stepped over the homeless person sleeping in the entryway, resisting the sudden urge to shove him out of the way with her foot. If you didn’t want to go to a shelter, that was your own choice. But there was no reason to sprawl in the path of people just trying to go about their day.

  A tingle of guilt struck, and she shoved it down. Get rid of that anger, Valere. It just messes with you. She wasn’t a bad person—a bad person would have kicked him. She was just cranky, was all. Maybe she should have gone to Starbucks, gotten a mocha mood-adjustment or something, before heading for home….

  Let yourself start to procrastinate and you’ll wallow in it for weeks, she told herself sternly. Go home. Get it done. Then it’s mocha-time. Maybe even a gingerbread latte. The only good things about November—molasses mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving, and gingerbread latte at Starbucks.

  Her shoes crunched leaves that had fallen onto the sidewalk; random, not the thick, colorful carpet of leaves she remembered from her childhood. But it was enough to put her back into a more peaceful frame of mind, the crunch and crackle mixed with the odd, almost-unpleasant smell of autumn in the air.

  By the time she walked the three blocks from subway to her apartment, Wren had decided on a preliminary course of action. Identify the piece of jewelry. Case the location. Blueprint entry and exit points. Execute. Cash checks. Nice, simple, unfussy. A photo of the item would be ideal, but unless Rosen got hold of a digital photo for insurance purposes, that was unlikely. So, a sketch, or, more likely, a verbal description. Aldo, on the first floor, was a decent enough pencil artist—she’d used him before to turn vague verbals into something she could identify.

  The first floor apartment door was closed, which meant that Aldo was either working or sleeping. She left a note on the glossy white-painted splotch on his door with the grease pencil he left tied to his door for just that purpose. Just her apartment number and an exclamation point. He’d know what it meant.

  In the meanwhile, she didn’t have the luxury of sitting around and waiting for people to bring the answers to her. Time to hit the paperwork trail, earn that retainer, at least.

  At least it was something to do, rather than waiting for another psi-bomb to land, or another fatae friend to be attacked, or another lonejack to go missing….

  She took the last few steps to her apartment with caution, listening with her ears as well as her core. “May you live in interesting times” was great if you were a newscaster, or a photojournalist. But for a simple Retriever trying to make a living, it was a pain in the ass.

  Nothing. For the first time in what seemed like months, there wasn’t anyone lurking in the hallway. No spybugs planted i
n her ceiling. No demon waiting to pass news. Just her, and her new furniture, and the spotlessly clean apartment rebuking her for the amount of time she was spending away from it.

  The door locked behind her, Wren dropped her keys in the dish on the counter and placed her obnoxiously yellow—and impossible to lose—bag next to it, shrugging out of her leather jacket and hanging it up, carefully. One lecture from Sergei about the care and feeding of good leather was all she ever wanted to sit through, thanks.

  She opened the bag, pulling out the printouts she had shoved in there at Sergei’s place. The lump of papers made the shoulder bag bulge strangely, and once again she thought that she might need to break down and buy a briefcase to replace the old one. It had died a grisly death, eaten by a disgusting bio-sludge that Walter, a Coast Guard ensign and moderate-level Talent, had accidentally let loose over the summer while he was trying to encourage a newborn kelpie harboring just off Ellis Island to eat all her proteins.

  Humming under her breath, Wren set the coffeemaker to work, pulled a diet Sprite from the fridge to tide her over in the meanwhile, then grabbed the printouts and went down the hallway to her office. She could work anywhere in the apartment, but the vibes for concentration were best in that room.

  “Damn. Also, damn.”

  Wren carefully placed the printout she was reading down on the floor in front of her, and stared at it as though the words were about to leap off the page and bite her. In a way, they just had.

  She was sitting, as usual, on the floor, with her research materials in small piles around her. Also as usual, she had begun by sorting all the available material into “useless,” “possible,” and “bingo.”

  That printout absolutely went into the bingo pile. And then some. That changed everything. Or at least a few certain, possibly very important, things.

  “I hate it when clients don’t give you all the details.” Although, to be fair, Rosen had told her everything Wren needed to know. The Retriever just hadn’t realized it at the time.

  “So that’s how you knew the term Null,” she said to her client. “Stepmomma used it on you one time too many?”

  Because Melanie Worth-Rosen was a Talent. Like Wren, but unlike. Because one of the many social-page articles Wren had printed out that morning mentioned stepmomma as being a member of the Greater Hartford Crafting Society. The GHCS—a group that Wren knew from firsthand experience accepted only Talented members. Specifically, Talents who were also Council members, as opposed to lonejacks. Like the D.A.R., only magical.

  “Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?” she wondered out loud. Being a Council member in and of itself wasn’t a black mark, despite Wren’s negative experiences with the leaders of the Council itself. She had tried explaining it to Sergei once, the difference between Council and being a Council member, but the best she could manage was that it was sort of like the difference between being a dues-paying member of a union, and being Jimmy Hoffa. That wasn’t quite exact, but close enough for horseshoes, and he had pretended to understand.

  Normally Wren didn’t give a damn about the target of a Retrieval, so long as she knew ahead of time anything they might counterpunch with. Null or Talent, museum or private citizen, government or nonprofit. The situation outside of the Retrieval, though, was anything other than normal, and the last thing she needed was more reason for the Council (the Hoffa version) to start spreading rumors that she was targeting Council (union joe version) members.

  “All right. Stop a minute, think this through. Client, Null. Target, Talent.” She got up to pace as she talked, feeling her knees pop and crackle as she stretched. It was still easier for her to be in action than it was to sit still.

  As much as she loved her apartment, as good as the vibes were, it had one major drawback: the rooms were too small to pace in. The T-shaped hallway leading from the bedrooms to the front door, however, was perfect.

  “Client is a Null. Stepmomma is Council. What about dearly departed Daddy?” Nothing in her research had said, one way or another. It was easy enough to keep secret, if you didn’t make a fuss about it, but Talent tended to marry Talent. Which would mean that Momma had also been a Talent?

  The jury was still out on the influence of genetics in Talent, but it did seem to cluster in families more often than not. So odds were that one of the birth parents was Null, too. Based on Rosen’s attitude…yeah, odds were it was Momma of blessed memory. So there might be some bias involved to go with the estate-squabbling. Did it matter? Maybe.

  What bothered Wren more was stepmomma’s affiliation.

  “Council has made my life miserable for the past year, because they think I’m some sort of threat. Threat to what? Unknown. Council may or may not be—probably is—behind the recent disappearances of lonejacks of a specific age and ability. Mainly older ones, strong ones, who haven’t wizzed or otherwise gotten anti-social. Rumor is: Council is up to something.”

  Seven, eight, nine steps, reach the door, pivot. Walk back to T. Go right, three steps. Pivot. Three, and another two, always forgetting that the top of the T hallway was off balance, and pivot again. Two steps, turn right again, walk down to the front door. There should have been grooves worn in the floor, after all the times either she or Sergei had done this, working through the details of a job.

  “So. Assuming a suitable level of paranoia…is this also something they’re up to? Or did I just get caught in a relentlessly normal family squabble?”

  Worth-Rosen might be exactly what she looked like—a Talent who got greedy on the wrong Null. Or she might be a dupe of the Council, if not actually one of their catspaws. And if so…Sometimes, as her partner was fond of saying, paranoia was the only thing between you and the sharks.

  So. A change in plans.

  A phone call started things rolling, but it would take several hours before she would know the results. In the meanwhile, she still had to get the description from Rosen and talk to Aldo, then get her hands on the layout of the mark and…

  And somewhere in there she needed to do some food shopping. She had tried ordering online, but after the sixth or seventh time she crashed the system because she got frustrated at not finding what she needed, Wren had decided that the old-fashioned way worked better for her.

  Stopping in the bedroom-office, Wren grabbed the client info sheet off the floor. On her next pass down the hallway, Wren snagged the phone off the wall and dialed the number penciled at the top of the sheet.

  “Anna Rosen? Yes, I’m calling about the discussion we had yesterday.” Was it really only yesterday? Almost exactly yesterday, in fact. Twenty-four hours and all the chaos of the psi-bomb seemed to fade into happened-last-month. “I’m going to need a description of the item in question…you have a photo? No. All right, then.” And she grabbed a pencil and a scrap of paper out of the junk drawer, leaning on the counter to write more easily. “Could you describe it for me, please? As completely as you can.”

  Rosen clearly had studied the necklace at length—she was able to describe it quite well. A silver mask of a woman’s face, eyes closed and a slight smile—a smirk, Rosen said, but not an unkind one—surrounded by a silver-beaded headdress/cowl with tendrils off to one side, like a showgirl’s headdress. A small silver skull was set on a chain hanging from the headdress, over her forehead.

  All in all, Wren thought it sounded like a horribly gaudy bit of junk, the kind that Great-Aunt Hortense bequeathed to you and you sold at the rummage fair the week after, but the client clearly loved it enough to hire her to steal it back, so she wasn’t about to judge. Everyone had different levels of emotional attachment, God knew. Maybe it was a Null thing.

  Hanging up the phone, Wren looked at her notes, making sure everything was legible enough to read back to Aldo. She should have gotten all this from the client yesterday, during their meeting. Sergei would have. Sergei would have gotten the description, and the address of the target, and all the little things that yes, Wren could track down now but would have made life
so much easier to have already.

  “And you decided to do this one on your own, why again?” The answer wasn’t as clear as it had been when the first nibble came in. The nightmare still jangled on her nerves, and the normally comforting vibes of her apartment, the thing that had made her decide the first time she walked in behind the Realtor that this place was hers, was just making her feel jumpy and twitchy now.

  She really, really wanted to feel the urge to brew tea that meant Sergei was walking up the stairs. Which, considering she had run from him—and the entire sense of being too-much-togetherness—this morning, meant that she was probably losing her mind.

  Speaking of minds, and details, and the slacking off on them, she should check in with Danny, see if he’d found out anything about that psych-bomb. If it was Council work, that was another thing to consider. The timing was odd…Jesus wept, if it were tied into the Rosen case, and not the general intimidation shit they kept trying to pull…

  “It would mean what, exactly?”

  The voice was hers, but the logic was Sergei’s.

  “Would it change what you’ve already decided to do?”

  “No,” she answered herself. “In which case, stop worrying, and get back to working.”

  She picked up the phone again and dialed a number, this time from memory.

  “Joey. It’s Jenny. I know you’re there, Joey, pick up. You really don’t want me getting annoyed with you while I’m on the phone.”

  All Joey Tagliente knew about Jenny Valere was that his electronics had a way of going bad when she was around, which was why she was restricted to call-ins and e-mail. And why she always got fast service.

  “Babe. So good to hear your voice. Tell me what you want and I’ll tell you what it costs.” He oozed, but it was a mostly harmless ooze.

  “The address for a Melanie Worth-Rosen.” She spelled the name out, just to be sure. “The real address, not a mailing drop or her bodyguards, or whatever well-to-do people are doing these days.”