There was a faint hum, like that of a generator somewhere starting up, and a voice rose from the book: “The stiffening and then relaxing of muscles after death, as caused by the change in the body’s chemical composition from alkaline to acid. Process typically begins in the face and spreads down the body, beginning approximately two hours after death and lasting twelve to forty-eight hours. A body in full rigor will break rather than relax its contraction.”
Wren flicked her fingers again, and the voice stopped. “The body was stiff but not rigid when I picked it up,” she said thoughtfully. “And it stretched out okay when we got it in here—nothing broke off or went snap.” She grimaced, then bent down to touch the skin, at first gently, then jabbing harder. “The skin is plastic, not hard. So I guess it’s safe to say rigor’s pretty much wearing off. So he’s been dead at least half a day, maybe more. Not too much more, though—he doesn’t smell anywhere near that bad.”
Sitting back on her heels, she looked at the book. “Next paragraph,” she told it. The voice continued: “Also to be considered is liver mortis, or postmortem lividity. When a person dies, the red blood cells will settle at the lowest portion of the body. This can be identified by significant marking of the skin. Markings higher on the body would indicate the victim was moved after death.”
Wren made a face, then she sighed, gave herself a quick, silent pep talk, and reached down to take off his shirt.
“There better not be anything disgusting hiding in there,” she warned him. “Or I’m so going to throw up on you.”
Her fingers touched the skin at the base of his neck, and the jolt that went through her knocked her backward on her rear and halfway across the room.
“The hell?”
“What am I looking for?”
Wren shook her head. “If I tell you, you—just touch him.”
Sergei shot her a look, but knelt to do as she asked. He was still wearing a tie, but his shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows. Long, manicured fingers touched the corpse’s hair, then the side of his cold cheek, flinching slightly away from the feel of dead flesh. You never got used to it, he thought.
“Go on. His torso.”
Sergei placed the palm of his hand flat over the corpse’s chest, where Wren had left the shirt half-undone. He waited. Then frowned. “What the hell?”
“You feel it?”
Sergei nodded, astonished. He was reasonably sensitive to the natural flow of magic—magic was how they’d first met—but this was different somehow. “I feel . . . something. What is it?”
“Overrush.”
Sergei pulled his hand away, wiping it on his slacks as though that would erase the taint of death. “Which is . . . ?”
“Current. Only, more than that. There’s current residue in him that’s impossibly high. This guy’s—God, I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t even know what it is! But it feels right. That’s what you’re feeling. It’s the only thing that could explain—”
“Genevieve!”
He hated shouting at her, but it seemed to do the trick; she pulled herself together. “Right. It looks like he got caught up in current, major mondo current, pulled it in—and got ungrounded. Which is impossible. I mean, any lonejacker worth their skin knows how to ground. You don’t make it past puberty if you can’t.”
“So this fellow should have been able to ground and dispel any current he couldn’t use.”
“Unless,” Wren said, even slower than before, “unless somehow, he was stopped . . .”
Sergei stared at the body. “How? By whom?”
Wren shrugged, hugging herself. “Damned if I know. I didn’t think it was possible. Grounding’s as much mental as physical—like breathing. Which he’s not doing, either, anymore.”
Sergei sat down heavily on a velvet-covered stool and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You couldn’t have just left him there?”
She didn’t even bother glaring at him, looking at her watch instead. “Almost seven,” she told him. “You’d better get upstairs and meet our new client. I’ll see about finding the old boy a more final resting place.”
Sergei caught her by the arm. “Be careful,” he told her. “I don’t like this.”
She put her hand over his. “That makes two of us, partner.”
Sergei never asked what she’d done with the body. She never offered to tell him. He told her, instead, about the new client. “It’s something a little different,” he said. Different was good. Different required planning, plotting. That was what they did best, the different ones. The difficult ones. That was why they were the best Retrievers in the business, on either side of the law.
And different distracted her from the memory of a man torn apart from the inside by too much of the stuff she depended on to exist.
Talents were all current junkies. Didn’t matter that you were Mage or lonejacker; it got in your blood, your bones, and if you could jack, you did. And if you jacked too much . . .
Her mentor had gone crazy from current. She had always thought that was the worst thing that could happen. Maybe it wasn’t.
Sergei’s hand touched her waist, his breath warm in her ear. “Stop thinking. We’re on.”
Wren nodded once. It wasn’t the usual run for Sergei to be with her on a job, but you had to mix it up every now and again. If they start expecting one, give them two. If they expect two, don’t hit them at all that night, that week, that place. And when they expect stealth, walk in the front door.
“Mr. Didier, a pleasure, a pleasure indeed . . .” Wren tuned out the host’s nervous bubbling. If lonejackers were bad about hanging around each other, gallery owners were worse. At least a lonejacker would let you see the knife before it went into your back. She detached herself from Sergei’s side and began to wander around the gallery. It was larger than Sergei’s and more eclectic. There was a series of oddly twisted wire shapes that she thought she might like. Then she saw them from a different angle and shuddered. Maybe not. Snagging a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter, she took a ladylike swig, licked her lips, and in a heartbeat effectively disappeared from the awareness of everyone else in the room. There wasn’t any real magic to it—herd-mentality clothing, a perfectly ordinary body and face, and a strong desire not to be noticed, sewn together by the faintest of mental suggestions that wafted along the current that was humming in the lights strung along the room, illuminating the exhibits.
Walking slowly, she made a half-circuit of the main floor, then moved up the short, straight staircase against the back of the wall. Nobody saw her lift the velvet rope barricading the steps, nobody saw her move up into the private areas of the gallery.
She barely paused at the primary security system at the top of the stairs. Her no-see-me cantrip was passive, neither defensive nor aggressive, and she passed through the barrier of current without a hitch.
Wren cast one look back down the stairs, picking Sergei out of the crowd with ease. He was leaning in to hear what an older woman was saying, his shoulders relaxed, his right hand holding a glass, his left gesturing as he replied, making the woman laugh. If you didn’t know what to look for, you’d never recognize the break in the line of his coat as a holster. The one time Wren had picked up the compact, heavy handgun, she’d spent the next hour dry-heaving over the toilet. Psychometry wasn’t one of her stronger skills, but she could feel the lives that gun had taken.
But hating something didn’t mean it wasn’t a good idea to bring it along.
Moving down the hallway, Wren counted doorways silently, stopping when she came to the seventh. A touch of the doorknob confirmed that there were elementals locking it. Trying to use magic to force them out would bring smarter guards down to investigate, exactly what she didn’t want.
Going back to the stairs, she leaned against the wall, just below the protective barrier, and took a deep breath. As she exhaled, slowly, she touched the current, sending a wave of disturbance racing down the stairs.
The twinklin
g lights in the gallery window went out with a satisfying pop, followed in quick succession by the lights over the exhibits. As the crowd milled about in confusion, Wren raced back down the hallway and slipped inside the seventh room, trusting the chaos downstairs would hide her own intrusion.
Inside, the room was dimly lit, three paintings stacked against the wall like so much trash. Sergei would have had conniptions if he’d seen them treated like that. But Wren wasn’t interested in their artistic value. A razor let her slice the bottom painting out of its frame and remove the piece of carved bone pressed between two layers of canvas. The relic went into a small, rubber-lined case that fit in her pocket, and the painting was placed back into the frame. A finger run along the serrated edges and a tiny drawdown of power, and the two layers sealed themselves together again. Done, and prettily, too, if she did say so herself.
“Sssst!”
She managed not to freak by the skin of her teeth, turning to glare at Sergei standing behind her.
“They’re frisking everyone downstairs,” he told her, heading off any questions. “We need another exit.”
“Right. This way.”
“This way” ended up being a long hallway without a single door off it until they came to a T-intersection. Sergei looked decidedly unhappy, his gun now out and ready in his hand. Wren barely spared it a glance, too busy listening to the hum of current throughout the building. It was alert now, singing in activity. The building was locking down, tucking itself up tight. “No, down here,” she said suddenly, grabbing his free hand and tugging him to the left, concentrating on the patterns. Down the hall, through a heavy fire door, a pause on the landing to determine up or down, then up to another fire door and into a hallway that was the exact replica of the one they’d left behind. They took a corner at a full-out run and stopped.
“Oh hell.”
Wren stared at the blank wall. She could smell the sweat on her skin, Sergei’s. She could feel the thrum of blood racing in her veins. Panic bubbled just below the surface. But Sergei’s voice, next to her, was calm.
“Get us out of here.”
She knew what he was asking.
I can’t!
We’re dead either way. Or worse . . .
She reached, grabbing every available strand of current, draining every power source in the building, siphoning off Sergei until he staggered. Filled and overflowing, practically sparking and glowing from within, she grabbed her partner in a bear hug and threw—
There was no transition. Her chin to the ground, palms abraded by macadam, vomit pouring from her mouth. Her body ached and quivered, and she was drenched in cold, sticky sweat.
When the torrent finally released her, she fell to her side, panic filling her brain.
“Serg?”
“Da.”
Utter relief filled her at the sound of his voice, faint and worn-out, somewhere behind her. “I told you I was no good at this,” she said, wiping her face with her filthy sleeve. There was a scrape of flesh against pavement, then a slow stream of curses in Russian.
“You ’kay?”
She managed to find the energy to roll over and watched as Sergei fussed with his cell phone. Throwing it down in disgust, he reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out his PDA. He glared at it, then her, then threw the equally useless device next to the cell phone.
“Oops?” she offered.
He closed his eyes, picked up the gun from where it had fallen when they translocated. It seemed to click and spin in all the right places, and some of the lines on his face eased as well. He replaced it in the holster, then leaned forward and took her hand, pulling her up with him as he stood.
They leaned against each other for a few moments, listening to the sound of their still-beating hearts. In the near distance, a car hit the brakes too hard, squealed away. Farther away, the hum of engines, horns, sirens wailing—all the normal sounds of the city at night.
“You got it?”
She nodded, touching her pocket. “Got it.”
“Then let’s get the hell home.” He paused. “You have any idea where we are?”
Wren tried to laugh, couldn’t find the energy. “Not a clue.”
They came to the end of the alley and paused to get their bearings. “Wow. I managed to toss us farther than I thought.”
“In the wrong direction.”
“Bitch, bitch, bitch.” She paused, her head coming up like a dog catching a scent. “Sergei?”
A strangled scream answered her, and they whirled: bodies, exhausted or not, tensing for a fight. A figure staggered toward them, its skin crackling with fire like St. Vitus’ dance, blue and green sparks popping and dancing along his skin. He jittered like a marionette, jinking first to the left, then right, forward and back, moaning and tearing at himself all the while.
“Oh God . . .” Wren went to her knees, her already depleted body unable to withstand the barrage of current coming off the man in front of her. “Oh God, Sergei . . .”
The burning figure lurched forward again, and Sergei reacted instinctively. A sudden loud crack cut across the buzzing of the current in Wren’s ears. The figure jerked backward, his eyes meeting Sergei’s with an expression of relief, gratitude, in an instant before he pitched forward and fell to the ground.
The lights disappeared, and Wren heard a faint whoosh, as though all the current were suddenly sucked back inside his skin.
Sergei went to the body before she could warn him not to, flipping it onto its back. Long fingers tipped the man’s head back, and then Sergei nodded once, grimly, and released him, getting back to his feet and putting the pistol away.
Wren looked at what her partner had been looking at: a pale blue tattoo under the dead man’s chin. “A Mage.”
“That the same thing that killed the other stiff?”
Wren touched the rapidly cooling skin just to make sure, but it was a meaningless gesture. “Yeah,” she said with certainty.
“Right. We’re out of here.” He put one large palm between her shoulder blades and steered her toward the sounds of traffic and cabs. Neither of them looked back.
Wren was still nursing her first cup of coffee when Sergei arrived at their usual meeting place the next morning, sliding into the booth across the table from her. The waitress brought over a carafe of hot water, tea bags, and a mug without being asked, and Wren watched him as he went through the ritual of testing the water, then stirring in the right amount of milk. She couldn’t stand the stuff herself, but she liked watching him make it.
Finally, he took a sip, then looked at her.
“His name was Raymond Pietro,” she told him. “Twelve years with the Council. Specialized in research, which is their way of saying he was an interrogator. Truth-scrying, that sort of thing. Only the past tense isn’t just because he’s dead. Rumor has it he went over the edge last month.”
“Over the edge” was a gentler way of saying he had wizzed. That the chaotic surges of current had warped his brain so much that he couldn’t hold on to reality any longer. But that didn’t explain his death. Wizzing made you crazy, dangerous, but your ability to handle current actually got better the more you gave yourself over to it. That was why wizzarts were dangerous. That, and the raving psycho loony part.
“They dumped him?” It might have seemed like a logical explanation to Sergei, but Wren shook her head.
“Council takes care of its own. They have a house; really well warded, totally low-tech, so he wouldn’t be distracted by electricity. He disappeared from the house two days ago. Council was freaking—the guy I talked to actually thanked me for bringing news, even though it was bad.
“They also said Pietro wasn’t the first of their wizzarts to go missing. They never found the others.”
Her partner’s face, not exactly readable at the best of times, shut down even more. She finished her coffee, putting the mug down firmly on the table in front of her. “One might have been an accident, or a particularly crude suicide, b
ut not half a dozen. Someone’s killing wizzarts, Serg. Pietro, our stiff, the others. Who knows how many others? Council thinks—and I think they’re right—we’ve got somebody fine-tuning a weapon. Goes right through the nulls, but fries Talent.”
“And they’re testing it on the wizzed population?”
“Nothing else makes sense. Nobody cares about the ones who’ve wizzed. You can’t, not really. They’re as good as not there anymore. So they’re easy victims.”
She was rather proud of how steady her voice was until she made the mistake of meeting her partner’s eyes. The quiet sympathy she saw there destroyed any idea she might have had of remaining calm.
Oh, Neezer . . .
John Ebenezer. Two short years her mentor. Five years now since he started to wiz. Since he walked out of her life rather than risk endangering her.
Are you out there, Neezer? Are you still alive?
“And if he—she, that—are?” His voice matched his face: stone. “From everything you’ve told me, what I’ve seen, wizzarts are wild cards, dangerous, to themselves and others. And quality of life isn’t exactly an issue.”
Wren bit back on her immediate reply. He wasn’t trying to goad her; it was, to his mind, a valid question. And she had to give him the respect of an equally valid answer. “Because that could be me someday. Council might poke around, but they don’t care about lonejackers. If they discover anything, they might not even do anything so long as they can cut a deal to protect their own.” She hated asking him for anything, but they had to take this job. She would do it alone—but their partnership had been founded on the knowledge that their skills complemented each other; she didn’t want to handicap herself by working solo if she didn’t have to.
A long moment passed. Finally, Sergei sighed. “It’s not as though the Council will ever admit they owe us anything, least of all payment,” he groused, signaling to the waitress for a refill of Wren’s coffee. “First things first—is there any way to keep track of wizzarts in the area?”
Murder by Magic Page 17