An Interrupted Cry

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Not mine.” I back-tracked out loud, as though disavowal now would placate any eavesdropping gods. But it was too late, I’d claimed him, and now I had to go over there and find out what had happened.

  At least whatever had caused that glow seemed to be gone. Maybe it’d just been an odd reflection, an emergency light that flickered and was turned off. I’d worry about it in a minute. Even if a victim’s obviously dead, you check just to be sure.

  Gun lowered but still ready in my hand, I knelt at the body’s hip, far enough away a sudden flip couldn’t catch me, and checked for a pulse. The flesh was still warm, muscles soft enough to give under my touch, but nothing was happening underneath.

  It didn’t take a trained PI to figure out from the evidence what had happened.. Joe Doe here, stumbling around in the sudden dark, maybe blinded by whatever the light had been, had fallen over his laundry delivery and broken his neck.

  I let my finger slide back to the safety, tension sliding out of my gun arm. “I knew dirty laundry could be dangerous to a person’s career, but deadly? That’s a new one….”

  Some days, if it weren’t for morbid humor, we wouldn’t have anything to laugh about at all.

  Because it was just then I realized I’d been wrong.

  I wasn’t alone in the office, after all.

  oOo

  “Beer! Beer half price, while it’s still cold!” The guy leaning in[out of?] the doorway of the bodega on the corner didn’t have many takers—most people were drinking what was in their own fridges, not running out to buy more. He’d probably have better luck trying to sell ice cream—although it was too cold, in Ellen’s opinion, for anything frozen. She shoved her free hand into a pocket and wished she’d stopped to pick up a pair of gloves as well as her flashlight before she left her apartment.

  Ellen had been safe and settled for the night, shoes off and her feet up, when the power went out. There had been no reason for her to have abandoned her comfortable if butt-ugly sofa, shove her feet into hiking boots, and walk the length of Manhattan in the middle of a blackout, when her boss had told her, flat out, to stay on that butt-ugly sofa and not worry.

  Except. Except.

  Ellen was a born worrier. She knew it, Danny knew it, at this point people she’d never even met knew it. But usually she had enough to worry about without taking on random and probably non-event things like her boss alone in his own office. Her boss who was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, and had been doing so long before they met. Decades of taking care of himself, in fact, although she wasn’t entirely sure how old he was, faun genetics mixing with human ones. But he was forty by looks, at least, and probably twice that in actuality, and he didn’t need a twenty-something Talent checking in on him.

  And she really didn’t need the exercise, walking nearly the length of Manhattan at night—although she had to admit it was more pleasant than she’d thought: the power might be out but the city didn’t stop for darkness. Nearly every street she walked past had some sort of block party going on, makeshift bonfires in tailgating grills or metal trash cans, and sometimes the occasional portable generator; instruments being played, children too wired to go to sleep playing with glow-in-the-dark Frisbees or just running wild among the adults sipping their slowly-warming beers and telling stories about past blackouts.

  Unlike most of them, Ellen knew that there were other things out there, too. Things as a child she’d been told were impossible, figments of her imagination, now taking advantage of the darkness to mingle more freely than usual. She heard the chittering of piskies overhead, and refused to give the pranksters the satisfaction of notice, but nodded a greeting to the river troll who had perched on a stool, sucking down a beer he’d lifted from someone’s party, and smiled at the tumble of satyrs who’d ventured from their park to see what was up—and possibly hook up. They were related to fauns, she knew that, but not how closely, and the one time they’d run into a tumble while on a job, they and Danny had oh-so-politely ignored each other. There was probably a story there…….

  She didn’t know much about Danny’s family, except his mom had been military and was dead, and his father hadn’t ever been in the picture. Since she could relate, they didn’t talk much about it, where ‘much’ meant ‘not at all.’ If there was anything about satyrs she’d needed to know, anyway, Wren would have told her.

  A tendril of current reached her, rising from the crowd gathered on the corner, a tentative, polite, *Hey,* and she raised the hand holding the flashlight in acknowledgement. A tall white man lounging on a stoop with his friends raised his hand back, a sense of curiosity and the offer of a beer before they got too warm to drink following the ping. She didn’t know him, except that he was, like her, Talent.

  And for him, that was enough for the offer of a beer, conversation, company.

  Ellen had spent her entire life isolated from her family, told she was insane for the things she claimed to see and feel, ignored when she wouldn’t—couldn’t—stop the visions that rocked her as a teenager. Now, she walked through the city and knew that she was part of something larger, connected in a way her fourteen-year-old self wouldn’t have believed.

  But the odd sense of urgency made her decline the offer, walking on. It wasn’t particularly directed at anything, the feeling—nothing like the sharp, insistent pressure of her visions, the ones that threw her into someone else’s fear and danger. Just a sense of wrongness that made her feel like she needed to be out and about.

  For most of the trip, she could tell herself that’s all it was about: stretching her legs, touching base with the net of Talent and fatae living in New York City, enjoying the cool air and sense of muscles warming up after a day of laziness, not moving with purpose toward the office. Until she was actually there.

  Their building was dark as everything else, no surprise, but the doors opened with a push—she supposed with the power out, the locks were designed to open rather than stay shut, in case anyone was caught inside. It took her a moment to adjust to the dim yellowish lighting, turning off her flashlight and slipping it into her pocket to save the battery.

  “Hey.” She pulled her building pass out of her wallet, flipping it for the security guard to see. He just jerked his chin and grunted, then went back to whatever he was reading, clearly uninterested in her right to be there. She supposed it wasn’t as though there was much in the building to steal: most of the offices were one- or two-person operations, not the kind of places that had expensive equipment, or cash in their safes. Other than one private investigator’s office—theirs—and a film agent, their neighbors were mostly accountants and lawyers, that sort of thing. Based on the building directory, anyway: she hadn’t gotten around to knowing their neighbors. Danny had been in the building for over a decade; she suspected he knew the names of everyone who’d been there longer than a year, even if he’d never actually spoken to them.

  Danny. The tension that had driven her here didn’t increase, but it hadn’t decreased, either. She climbed the stairs, keeping one hand on the railing, feeling her chest burn a little, hearing the soft clump of her boots on the risers disappear against the walls like all noise was being swallowed.

  She grabbed at that thought and shoved it into the box she kept for things she didn’t want in her head, slamming the lid down tight. The building was safe, her imagination was a pain in the ass, and when she just happened to pop into the office, Danny was going to roll his eyes and sigh, and probably put her to work, saying, “as long as you’ve hauled your ass downtown, you might as well be useful.”

  That thought kept her company as she turned the corner and saw their office door. Closed. That was good, right? She reached for the doorknob and—

  Their faces were covered in muck, tear—streaked, eyes too wide, not the surprised kind of wide but shock, or maybe drugs, making their vision unpredictable. Teenagers, late teens, a boy and a girl, clutching each others’ hands and side by side.

  No, not side by side. Tied up
next to each other, their fingers the only things loose enough to grasp, tangled with each other for comfort, for humanity in the dark….

  And there was something near them, shifting in the shadows. Something dangerous. Something that could see them, but they couldn’t see it.

  As visions went, Ellen thought as her knees hit the floor, that hadn’t been too bad: quick and sharp, not the bone-grinding agony of some of them. But the sense of panic, of disaster not-yet-averted, that sank its claws into her gut, made her skin crawl and her heart beat too fast? That was always the same.

  At least she knew what it was, now. Knew how to manage it. No denial, no panic, no hyperventilating. No being told she was insane, over-imaginative, doing it for the attention. Let it roll over her, let it seep out and let her come back to herself. She felt the floor underneath her, solid, the thin carpeting still holding layers of chemicals, the texture scratchy under her fingers. She forced air to move slowly into her lungs, then out again, concentrating on calming her heart, until the weird spacey feeling that always followed a vision passed, and she no longer needed to throw up.

  Maybe that had been it, the feeling she’d been having. There’d never been any warnings before, but she’d been repressing them before, then learning how to handle them, so maybe…this was a good thing, right? Having warning?

  “Whatever. Get on with it,” she told herself. Danny had trained her to sit down and write down everything she’d Seen before it faded or got corrupted, but she was right outside the office; if she could get there, she could tell the boss directly.

  Ellen pushed her hands against the floor, forcing herself back to her feet, thankful that nobody had seen her collapse. Her leg muscles trembled a little, but after that first shock seemed perfectly willing to hold her. She made it to the door, surprised to find it locked. She hadn’t even thought to bring her key, but since this door had been the first she’d practiced lock picking on, it only took her a minute to get through, even with her hands trembling slightly, still. The sense of triumph warmed her for an instant.

  But the outer office, her space, was still and quiet, and there was no movement, no welcoming sounds from the inner office where Danny would have been working, no hint of candle or flashlight from under the door. She sighed, exhaustion hitting her suddenly, as she slid the pick into the palm—sized case, sliding it back onto her belt. He’d already gone home, despite the subways not running.

  And now she had to go find him, because visions didn’t wait, always sharply insistent that they move on it, now, before the people she saw died—or more people died. She would grab a cab, she’d seen them cruising the streets, looking for fares, even with the traffic lights being borked, and have it trace the walk all the way to Danny’s apartment, catch up with him that way.

  “Boss?” She called out, just to be sure. Maybe he was taking a nap in the back—unusual but not unheard of….

  And because Danny had trained her to be thorough and careful, she checked his office, just to be sure. It was dark, but she could see clearly enough that he wasn’t there, boots propped up on the desk, chair pushed back, baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, hands folded across his midsection and making that half-whistling sound he swore wasn’t snoring.

  But there was a shadow on his desk that made her frown, working her way carefully over to it.

  His laptop, still on the desk’s surface and surrounded by a pile of pale folders, not locked in the drawer the way it usually was when he closed up shop for the night. Lid up, and when she cautiously touched a key, it came back up, running on battery power.

  He wouldn’t have just left it like that, not when he didn’t know when the power might come back up, not when he knew that the building wasn’t protected—he kept all his financials on that laptop, and his current case notes…..

  Her heart thumping loud enough she’d swear it had actually shifted up into her throat for real, she reached her hand down and checked the top drawer of the desk, the narrow one that was always, always locked.

  It was open. And empty.

  Danny was gone, he’d left his computer up and running, and he’d taken his gun.

  oOo

  “Fuck. Fuck fuck and also fuck.” Ellen stared at the open drawer for half a second longer, then was out the door, running down the stars without any concern for possibly breaking her neck, sprinting through the lobby, past the still-oblivious security guard, and out onto the street. She was gathering current within her as she went, not the usual careful coaxing but a spastic grab-and-throw, a net cast to catch the nearest Talent cabbie in the area, even as a narrower ping stretched across town, reaching for a very specific signature.

  *I need help*

  The response was immediate: *Office. Now. Hang on*

  And Ellen had only half a second to think that what she was being told wasn’t possible before she felt herself flung into a dark, cold nothingness…and out, the dizziness sending her down to her knees, the remains of her dinner rising up into her throat. She gagged, willing her stomach to settle down, to not throw up on the vaguely-familiar carpeting of the Paranormal Scene Investigations office.

  “Sorry,” a deep voice said, and a hand offered her help getting to her feet. A man’s hand, dark skin and calluses over hard bone. Benjamin Venec, the head of the PUPs, and, Ellen guessed, the source of the translocation that had just flipped her across half of Manhattan without warning.

  She tested her knees, found them steady enough to hold her upright, nodded her thanks. “I didn’t know anyone could do that.” Transloc was difficult enough for a Talent to do, doubly so to bring someone else with them. To grab someone like that…

  Venec had the kind of steady stare that could make an honest person twitch. “I don’t advertise. It makes people uneasy.”

  Yeah. Yeah, she could see that. Ellen frowned. And she could see—there were lights in the office. She supposed, if you were home base for a dozen powerful—and active—Talents in the business of poking and prodding at magical crimes—and evidence—having a backup generator in-office was a basic business expense.

  “And it’s crap for him,” a voice cut in from behind Ellen. “Go home, before you fall over.” The second voice was lighter, a woman’s, and offered no room for argument. Venec’s poker face softened slightly and he gave his companion a weary salute before he nodded once at Ellen, and left the room.

  Before Bonnie could say anything more, Ellen blurted, “Danny’s gone missing.”

  Ellen had, somewhere, picked up Danny’s habit of pacing while she thought, and the office they’d been in was too small for real movement. Bonnie finally took pity on her, taking their conversation out into the hallway between conference rooms, where Ellen’s longer legs could pace.

  Finally, the PUP broke into Ellen’s increasingly frantic retelling of the night’s events, including her vision. “I hate to say this, kid, but you need to calm down.”

  Bonnie had been one of the first people to take then-teenaged Ellen seriously, who had helped her to understand that she wasn’t crazy, that magic—current—was real, and that Ellen could see the things she saw, that they weren’t hallucinations. She could tell Ellen to stand on her head in the middle of Times Square and sing God Save the Queen, and Ellen would probably do it.

  Or try to, at least.

  “He took his gun,” she said, for the third or maybe fourth time, after taking a few calming breaths that didn’t help. “But he left his laptop up and running, and he just doesn’t do that. Not ever.”

  Bonnie did that narrow-eyed stare thing she did, sometimes. “Did you try calling him?”

  Ellen stopped mid-stride, and stared at her. “I…no.”

  Talent didn’t use cell phones, as a rule—the current they manipulated did horrible things to tech carried too close to their body, and cell phones and credit card were usually the first to go. Ellen hadn’t thought of it, but Danny wasn’t Talent.

  Bonnie steered her toward the front room, where a landline rested on a
sleek receptionists’ desk. “Call him.”

  Ellen dialed the number from memory, and listened to it ring. And ring. She hung up, and tried his home phone, and then the office again on the off chance he’d gone back there. Then she called them all again, in order, leaving a brief message on each machine: “It’s Ellen. Call me.”

  She hung up the phone and looked at Bonnie, who held up a finger, clearly focusing on something else. Then she blinked, and refocused on Ellen. “Venec stopped by his apartment on the way home. Nobody’s there, no sign of any disturbance.”

  Danny was going to hate that someone had been in his apartment; he was intensely private about it. But they would worry about that later, after they’d found him.

  “He’s in trouble, Bonnie.”

  Bonnie shook her head, her short curls — dark red this month — looking almost black in the low light. “It’s still inconclusive. He could be at any of half a dozen blackout parties—okay, he’s not a party animal, but he knows a lot of people. And his phone might have died—sorry, bad choice of words, the battery might have run down, and it’s not like he could recharge it anywhere right now, is it?”

  Danny never let his phone battery die. They both knew that. “He didn’t leave me a note.”

  The PUP rested a hand on Ellen’s arm, fingers gripping lightly; if Ellen wanted to throw her off, she could, and they both knew it. “He didn’t know you were coming to the office.”

  Ellen let the hand stay there, feeling not restraint but support. Even so, she argued. “He’s not at his apartment, and he’s not in the office, and he took his gun.”

  It all came back to that. Maybe, maybe his phone had died, or he’d turned off the ringer, or he’d dropped it somewhere and not noticed. Maybe. But Danny Hendrickson was an ex-cop, with a solid weather eye for trouble that had only been honed in his years as a PI. He had a permit to carry, but he didn’t most of the time, preferring to leave it in the safe-locked drawer. For the pistol to be gone meant that wherever he was, he’d expected trouble.