“Not really,” Pietr said. “Don’t you want to know why he’s dangerous?”
“No.” I did, of course I did. But be damned if I’d give him the satisfaction, after he made me jump like that. His gray gaze lingered on me, solemn as a judge, and I couldn’t read a damn thing that might be going on inside.
Unlike Nick, seeing Nifty come around the corner was a surprise. He’d said he needed a job, yeah, but I just hadn’t gotten a joining-up kind of vibe from the former athlete.
“Are you people going in, or are you waiting for the bagel fairy to come by and drop off a pump and a schmear?”
Nick and Pietr looked blankly at Nifty, like he’d just spoken Swahili or something. I just shook my head, amused.
“You totally stole that line from someone else,” I accused him, following the boys into the foyer, where the same invisible someone buzzed us in the moment we approached the door. I listened, but still couldn’t pick up any hint of current in use, which just made me more determined to track it down as soon as I had a spare moment.
“My coach,” he admitted, holding the door for me. “I don’t even know what a pump is. I just hope it’s not rude.”
“Pumpernickel. A kind of bread. Or bagel, in that case. You haven’t been in New York long, have you?” If he was a native East Coaster, I’d eat J’s favorite hat.
“Nope. I was in Detroit, talking to someone about another job, when I got the message. I guess I’m going to have to find a place to live…you know of anywhere?”
“Soon as I find something, I’ll let you know.” The hotel was nice for a short term, but I needed to find an apartment. Something I paid for, not J, and that was going to be another argument. Or maybe not. We’d see. Part of the directed, non-mercenary vibe I was grooving on right now included less of a need to be totally independent. NYC was expensive.
The office door now had a small, nicely discreet copper-plate sign on it: PUPI Inc.
“Woof,” Nick said, half joking.
“Woof-woof,” Nifty echoed, an octave deeper, as though he had to prove he was the bigger dog. Like there was any doubt of that, physically at least. Save me from boys and their egos….
“That makes me the bitch, and don’t you forget it.” I really hoped Sharon was going to take up the job offer, too. Much as being surrounded by males could be fun, it also got boring after a while, and being the only female in the pack was not going to be a laugh riot on bad days. The vibe I’d gotten off Sharon yesterday was that she might be a control freak know-it-all, but she wasn’t going to be a tight-ass about it. We’d be fine.
I hoped. I really, really hoped. I liked having female friends, but my college buds were scattered to the winds of employment now, and without e-mail or a cell phone, it was going to be tough to keep up with them. Knowing that it was inevitable didn’t make the knowledge any less painful, so I tried not to linger on it, instead looking forward. New job. New friends. New—
“Wow.”
Nifty had gone in through the office door first, and stopped so suddenly I almost broke my nose against his back. “Hello? What? Brick wall, do you mind moving?”
“Oh, sorry.” He went all the way into the office, and I heard Nick behind me say something rude when he ran into my back as I stopped dead, too.
“Sorry,” I muttered in turn, and moved aside. Nick, still pissed, didn’t even look, just walked in…and then stopped dead.
“Ah, glad you’re here.” Stosser was sitting on a new, damned comfy-looking chocolate-brown sofa, looking up at us over a clipboard on his lap. His orange-red hair was tied back in a braid, and he was dressed in black jeans and a black pullover, making him look even more like some kind of satanic candle. “Try to be prompt in the future. We have a lot to hammer into your heads and not a lot of time to do it in.”
“Good morning to you, too,” Nick muttered, sounding offended, and not just because we’d done a three-body pileup in front of the boss.
“Right. Good morning. Sorry.” Stosser’s reportedly famous charm made a brief appearance, and then he turned it off. “You all dressed appropriately, good. Come with me.”
He stood up and walked through the now totally redecorated space that had blown our minds for a moment, clearly expecting us to follow. The half-assed kitchenette of yesterday was now a full beverage station, with a brand-new coffeemaker, a hot-water dispenser, a wet-sink, and an open cabinet filled with plain white mugs and boxes of really nice teas and coffees. There was also a larger refrigerator that, I was guessing, had real cream in it now. The old rental-style waiting room furniture had been replaced with the brown sofa and a matching loveseat over a dark cream carpet where there’d been linoleum before. A bookcase took up the entire length of the wall, next to the door into the inner office, and was filled with what looked like textbooks. The room seemed larger now, somehow, although I knew that it had to be an optical illusion. Right?
Obviously, the office design fairies had been through overnight. J’s concerns about them not having enough money to back up their paycheck promises seemed less likely now. Unless, of course, they were putting all the money into set-dressing…
“Are you four coming, or not?” Stosser asked over his shoulder, and walked through the inner door.
We were.
It was easier to accept the transformation of the inside office, but only because we were all a little numb at this point. Instead of the cheap mock-executive layout, the room was now dominated by a dark wood table, oval shaped, with nine conference chairs placed around it. The walls were covered with more bookcases, filled with more textbooks, and I had a sudden thought that I’d walked right back into college. It wasn’t a good thought. I knew we were going to need training, but I could do without the reading assignments.
There wasn’t anyone else in the room, and Stosser didn’t stop, either, walking across the room and reaching for a sliding door I was embarrassed to realize I hadn’t noticed before.
Or maybe it hadn’t been there before to notice. Current can’t bend time or space, but if you’ve got enough money, enough mojo, or enough people working hard, you can do a lot of internal renovations. Evidence to date was pointing to Stosser and Venec having major mojo and money, both.
A hallway, painted a flat white with a neutral pale green carpet, led to three doors on the left-hand side, and a blank wall on the right. I figured at this point they had put at least two of the offices on this floor under lease, a long enough term lease to allow them to connect doors. No wonder they hadn’t taken space farther downtown; even if the Guys were made of money, this still had to be taking a major crunch out of their funds.
We turned at the first anonymous door and went in.
“About time you got here.”
The room was likewise flat white, with one window, the shade drawn, and more of the green carpet. Sharon was sitting at a small conference table, about large enough to sit five comfortably, and all seven of us if we squeezed. DB—all right, Venec—was there with her, still looking as sleepy-bored as he had yesterday. I guess we were all on board, then. Even dressed down in black slacks and a plain white shirt, Sharon still looked classier than anyone else in the room. Some people had it; some didn’t. She did. At least I could enjoy looking, since I didn’t get any vibes she’d be interested in me, even if I hadn’t gotten the lecture last night from J, over his second beer, about not dating in the workplace.
As if I didn’t know that already. Sometimes he really did forget I wasn’t fourteen anymore.
“I wish we had time to ease you into things, allow for a gradual learning curve. But we don’t. You all have a lot to learn, and fast. We either sink or swim from the word go, and we are determined to swim.” Venec was up and moving this time, while Stosser took one of the empty chairs around the table, and we followed suit. My boots kicked the table with a solid thunk, and I flinched, but nobody else seemed to notice. I made sure my soles were planted firmly on the green carpet, where they couldn’t make any more noise.
It was funny, but nobody laughed. Stosser seemed to have gotten all the showboat comic timing of the pair.
“Make no mistake,” Venec went on, fixing that dark gaze on each of us in turn. “We are not lunatics. But we have the potential to be quite dangerous. Not to each other, and not to the Cosa as a whole, but to individuals within the community. To those who have had a stake in upholding the status quo, in remaining out of the light, beyond any official notice or censure. And there will be some who do not want that to happen.”
Venec talked like J did, not so much with the big words and flourishes Stosser used, but a quiet deliberation, knowing exactly what each word meant and how best to use it. Stosser was the showboat, the ringmaster. Venec… I didn’t know what Venec was, yet. But I thought, with the part of me that thought like my mentor, that it might be smart to watch Venec’s hands whenever Stosser was talking.
“What he’s trying to say,” Stosser interjected, “is that the Cosa as a whole is not on board with what we’re trying to do—particularly the lonejack community. Although getting them all to agree that they disagree with us is…a slow process.”
There were several snorts at that. What made lonejacks lonejacks was an inability to play well with each other. It made sense that they’d resist anyone policing them.
“What they don’t understand is that we’re not here to police them.”
I started guiltily, then decided it was sheer coincidence, not Stosser somehow reading my mind or, god forbid, me using my thinking-out-loud voice.
“We are not here to enforce laws, or interpret them, or pass judgment in any way, shape or form.” Venec picked up the narrative again. “We will investigate, and report our findings to all concerned, evenly and without bias. If you have an agenda, dump it on the table now. If you can’t…get out.”
There was a short silence, and both of the Guys watched us carefully. Convinced that nobody was leaving, Venec went on. “The lonejacks will, as always, make up their minds on an individual basis—”
Nick snorted, and Sharon almost smiled, and I sensed an inside joke I wasn’t privy to. Venec ignored them, and kept talking.
“While not actively opposing us, the Council has formally renounced our organization. This is what we are up against: They will not demand that their members comply with any requests we make, nor will they be held by anything we discover. We have, in fact, been told that the Eastern and South Councils have refused to allow us access to…pretty much anything they can control, up to and including their members. The Midwest Council hasn’t ruled in or out yet, nor has California.”
Midwest—which meant Chicago for all intents and purposes—was the closest to lonejacks Council ever got: they were pretty rough and ready, and seriously cranky about their independence. California? The San Diego Council never said anything before they had to. I bet a lot of them remembered the Madeline case, too.
Stosser’s turn. “We’ve been dubbed CSI wannabes.” His pale skin flushed a little, but his voice remained steady. “It’s a fair, if unkindly meant, assessment—Cosa crimes, as committed by Cosa members, investigated by Cosa members.”
Nick raised his hand then, as though we were back in grade school, and I swear his nose twitched. “Does that include the fatae, too?”
Oh, good question. Nicky was a couple of steps ahead of me, damn it. I should have been on that already. Not that it was a competition…but it felt like it. First day on the job, got to prove you’re the brightest and the bestest.
“For now…we’re focusing on the human component. The fatae have long dealt with their own problems, without asking us for help.”
Stosser’s dry response was an understatement. The East Coast had probably the largest population of Cosa-cousins, the nonhuman magicals, but only a few of the more human-shaped breeds spent much time mixing. Manhattan was different in that regard but there was probably still the same “you to yours, we to ours” mentality that the Cosa specialized in.
“If the fatae come to us, we will offer our services equally, without prejudice or bias. Again, if you have a problem with that…”
Sharon shifted slightly, and Nick had a vaguely constipated look on his face, but nobody moved.
“Shune. You have a problem?”
Nick shook his head. “No sir.”
Venec narrowed his eyes, and tilted his head just slightly to the left. “You sure about that?”
“I just… I’ve never met a fatae.” Nick sounded like a scolded six-year-old. “That I know, anyway.”
Venec laughed, maybe the first unscripted thing he’d done since we walked into the office yesterday, and my reaction was totally, overwhelmingly visceral. I could resist a hot bod, or a nice smile, or even a good line, but damn, I was a sucker for a real, rich laugh, and Benjamin Venec had one that should have been illegal. Damn.
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll be just as jaded as everyone else in a few weeks.”
Then he was back to hard-ass drill instructor, and I could breathe again.
“Now you know the deal. Expect resistance, not acceptance. People won’t want to talk to you, they’re not going to help you out, and no matter how much the client says they want the truth, nobody’s going to thank you for anything, especially if you tell them something they don’t want to hear.
“But you will be telling them the facts as discerned from the available evidence, nothing more or less, and that is your sole concern.”
He paused, then sat on the last unused stool and set his hands flat on the white tabletop. “And now we will begin to teach you how.”
I didn’t know it then, but even as we were getting rolling, so were others.
“Ian Stosser is a sick man.”
A scoffing noise from one of her companions made the speaker shake her head, shoulder-length auburn curls trembling with the movement. “I know what I am talking about, Michael. Brilliant, perhaps, I would not deny that claim, or that he probably, somewhere in his head, means well. But Ian is mentally unstable, and totally incapable of considering the cost of this mad plan of his. The cost to others individually, and the Cosa as a whole. He has never shown any regard for the lives of those around him, lives he would risk destroying for his Cause.
“He cannot be allowed to continue. It is not safe to allow him to continue.”
“Oh come on, now,” the scoffer chided her gently. “Don’t you think that’s just a bit…overly dramatic?”
The woman leaned toward him, her entire body conveying a sort of desperate conviction, her gaze including the others so that they too leaned in, making sure not to miss what she had to say.
“Dramatic only to make my point. I would not be here, none of us would, if it wasn’t urgent. You know that. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, all of you? Not just to humor me—but because you know it’s not right.”
There were five people seated around the table, three men and two women somewhere between thirty and fifty; to all outward appearances a group of friends meeting for drinks at a fashionable hot spot after work. The buzz of the crowd around them, sliding up to the bar, or waiting for their table, was the perfect mask for their conversation.
None of them denied her claim. None agreed with it, either, although the other woman nodded her head thoughtfully. They all knew Ian.
The first woman went on, selling her position. “I’ve kept my mouth shut until now. I’ve not interfered with Council decisions even when I thought they were dangerously misguided. But this… Ian’s gone too far now. All indications are that he’s gathering his tools even as we speak, and despite what he may say—despite what he may even believe!—nothing good will come of this. Nothing.”
She might have been desperate, but her words carried a sound conviction to them, the undertone of authority almost impossible to deny.
“What would you have us do?” a second man asked, raising his now empty glass over his shoulder to signal for a waitress to bring a refill.
Her own glass was still half-full: she had been too busy talking to do more than taste the contents. “Help me stop him. However and with whatever it takes. For our safety—and his own.”
Six
“Focus. Stay focused….”
“I am focused!” Or I would be if Nifty would stop hovering over me like a huge, dark-winged moth on steroids. “Back off, big guy. You’re supposed to be helping, not pestering.”
Trying to ignore my partner’s looming presence—no easy thing considering the sheer bulk of him—I returned my attention to the pattern on the paper in front of me.
I could do this. I knew I could. It was easy, once you knew the steps, and the steps had been hammered into us for two weeks now. I could do it.
When Stosser had told us, that first day, that we were going to learn, I’m not sure what we were expecting. Handouts, maybe, or lectures, based on how many books there were in the office? What we got was hands-deep in the guts of magic theory. Most of what you learn in mentorship, past the basics, involves memorizing spells handed down, tested and true, that have a distinct result to a specific invocation. What we were doing here, now, was none of that. It was stripped-to-basics logic and intent-to-cause current-use. If anyone had ever thought that magic was a game, that current was a soft skill, they knew better now. This was pure New Ways—current as hard science.
The past two weeks we’d been under a strict no-use rule in the office—no current allowed for anything. Instead, the time was filled with lectures, and readings, and theoretical exercises designed to break down what we thought we knew, and rebuild it in the service of whatever Benjamin Venec and Ian Stosser told us to do; reading up about blood splatter and bullet trajectories, fingerprinting and footprint identification as it was done in the Null world—and then talking, endless talking, about how it might be done with current—and, more important, how it might be hidden by current. Because that was the thing; using current to bring down current. Theoretically. We were, as Nick said more than once, making this up out of hope and whole current. And that meant we had to understand it.
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