"He didn't say anything that first day, with Anna and Saga." I moved over to sit on the side of Kiku's desk, so I could see the screen, too.
"And not when we asked him about his second wife, either," Glaive added.
"Has anyone else been talking to him?"
Anna walked out of her office just then, wearing a gorgeous tangerine dress and jacket ensemble. Gold hoop earrings swayed almost to her shoulders and matched the chunky gold and citrine necklace at her throat. "I was. I dropped into his office one day to ask him more details about the staff at his home and his employees. He didn't mention anything about this deal then."
Glaive frowned. "Doesn't it seem like the kind of thing that would stick in a person's mind? You piss someone off to the tune of millions of dollars and then six months later someone wants you dead? Wouldn't you make the connection? Or at least think there might be one?"
Anna shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe we're reading more into it than was actually there. Maybe it was more amicable than we're imagining, or it wasn't worth that much money. This kind of thing could happen all the time in Coro's world."
"I guess we'll know more once LemurCandy gets back to us," I said.
"I'm going to check into the situation surrounding the last Murder Prophet message before Coro's," Anna said. "It hasn't been solved yet, and I want to get the access codes for all the details, just so we can be sure there's no connection."
"Mind if I tag along?" asked Glaive. He grinned. "I don't want you pulling a Saga on me and disappearing."
"Har-de-har," Anna said. "I'm quite sure I'll be safe at the police station." She made a show of inspecting him from head to toe. "However, you look acceptable today, so I suppose you can tag along."
Glaive grinned in response, since he looked exactly the same as he did every day. They left and I went back into my office, but I couldn't settle into anything. I was contemplating the awful possibility that I would have to clean my desk when a phone call rescued me.
The call came in, and Kikufaax answered it in her usual cheery tone. Turned out to be a client who'd asked us to do a little tailing for him a month back, then called and changed his mind before he'd actually laid any money on the table. He thought an employee was stealing from him, but then started to doubt his suspicions.
Seemed like those suspicions had caught fire again and he wanted the guy tailed—right now. He'd instant-transfer the money over the Netz if we'd send someone to track the employee when he left the store.
"I'll go," I mouthed to her over the top of her screen. I could hear both ends of the conversation since he was using vid and audio and Kiku had the speaker on. I went to the door and pulled my light jacket on over my turtleneck to conceal the shoulder holster.
She couldn't make a face at me since the client was looking straight at her, so she told him we'd have someone there within half an hour, got the funds transfer straightened out, and broke the connection. Then she could frown at me, and did.
"Are you sure? I don't know if you should be going alone..."
"Look, it's nothing at all to do with the Coro case," I said. "And keep your voice down before Trip hears you, or he'll be demanding to come along as my bodyguard."
She pressed her lips into a straight line and tugged at a silvery earring. Saga hadn't come in today, and with Anna and Glaive gone it was either me or her. I'd volunteered, and she couldn't pull rank and tell me I couldn't go. Except for Saga and Anna, there were no ranks. "I should tell Trip exactly what you're doing. That would teach you."
"Haha. You say a word to him and I'll tell Glaive you have a secret hankering for men who wear black."
"Very funny." She shrugged. "Oh well, I guess I can't stop you."
"That's exactly right," I agreed, grinning. "Show me this guy's mug."
***
The thing you tend to forget about tailing someone, if you haven't done it for a while, is how deadly boring most of it is. I found the business with no problem, slipped on my dark glasses, and glanced inside to see if my mark was there. He was, standing behind a cash register and backed by a wall of computer equipment, rocking slightly from foot to foot. He checked his watch a couple of times, and I figured the boss had managed to keep him there long enough for me to arrive.
I went across the street to a little cafe, ditched the glasses, reversed my jacket in the ladies' room, pulled my hair back into a twist, and ordered coffee and two oatmeal cookies. A grey tabby cat came in and ordered straight cream, but she wanted it to go so I didn't have to extricate myself from potential conversation. Magic-sapient cats are more chatty than I ever imagined they'd be. I took a tiny table next to the window. Here I was directly across from the door of the business, and if I squinted, I could make out my mark behind the counter inside.
While I sipped coffee and nibbled at the cookies, I wondered idly why the client was going about things this way. I mean, if he really thought the guy was stealing, why not hire a lie-detector Mancer (like me) and just ask him straight out? Why not install vidcams? Really, if I thought about it, there were quite a number of easier ways to catch an inside crook, without hiring someone like me to follow him home. What was I supposed to see, anyway?
But those lines of thought don't get you anywhere, because the only real answer lies with the client, and he wasn't here to ask. Once I'd come to that conclusion, my mind drifted toward LemurCandy and the way our relationship seemed to be evolving—but in what direction, I wasn't sure. I didn't get to dwell on it for long. The guy I was watching came out and locked up the door behind him, pulling on a blue windbreaker. That should make him easy to keep in sight.
I got up from the table and strolled out, standing in front of the cafe for a minute as if wondering which way to walk. My mark had already set out on foot heading east, toward the downtown. Casually I started in that direction, glancing in windows stuffed with sale items as I went and generally trying to give off an air of going nowhere in particular.
We'd gone about a block when, even though I had most of my attention focused on the mark, I had that feeling again. The feeling that someone, probably equally casually, was following me.
Damn that Trip, I thought, If it's him again...
Now I had to do two things without being observed—keep my own guy in sight, and try to catch a glimpse of my own follower. I managed the first, but the second was impossible. Whoever was tailing me, if indeed someone was, they were good.
My own mark seemed oblivious to the possibility of being followed. He walked with purpose but didn't hurry, and didn't glance back once. He wasn't heading home, though; he passed the cross-street that would take him quickest to his apartment. I'd retrieved that address from Kikufaax before I'd left the office.
At one point I ducked into an entryway and switched my jacket back to the other fabric, donned the glasses, and let my hair down again. I didn't want the mark to realize I was following him, and I didn't care if my follower learned my tricks.
The mark walked on until he'd passed through the downtown and out the other side, into an area populated mostly by apartment buildings and small hotels. He turned in at one of these and I ducked into a deli across the street and ordered a ham and cheese sandwich on whole wheat. I was puzzled. Had he tagged me? I didn't think so. Was he meeting someone here to pass off whatever he might have stolen from work? That also seemed unlikely, but just in case, I set up my minicam on the table beside a tall glass of WizWater® and my sandwich, and took pics of everyone entering and leaving the hotel for the next little while. I'm certain the deli owner, a tall, thin man with saturnine features and dark, world-weary eyes, knew what I was doing, but he didn't say a thing. I expect if you own any sort of eating establishment across the road from a hotel you get used to seeing things like this. On the upside, the sandwich was excellent.
I had no idea where my own follower might be now, assuming I hadn't imagined him into existence. For all I knew, he was across the street in the hotel lobby, surreptitiously taking pictures of anyone wh
o entered the deli in case they were coming to meet me.
After about an hour and half, my mark came out of the hotel and started back the way he'd come. I slipped out of the deli, leaving a nice tip behind me on the table, and fell in behind him. He didn't look back, so he either had no notion that I was there, or didn't care. This time he did take the cross-street that led to his apartment building, a functional but uninspired crackerbox, walked to it, and went inside. I stopped in the shadows of an awning-covered doorway and waited a while to see if he was coming back out, but it didn't look like it. He was probably in for the night.
With that thought I realized that full dark had descended on the city. The street was far from deserted, though, so I started back the way I'd come. Vague annoyance settled over me, as I wondered if this little escapade had accomplished anything for the client. I'd jumped at the chance to get out of the office and have something to do, but in retrospect it seemed like a pretty silly assignment. Ah, well, I had a bunch of pictures and I'd eaten a great sandwich at the deli. Sometimes you just have to make the best of things.
The hairs on the back of my neck twitched in response to some subliminal trigger. My follower had stuck with the program, and was behind me again.
I wasn't utterly vulnerable with other pedestrians around, but the creepy feeling prickling my neck was hateful. I wondered suddenly if marks felt this way when I was tailing them. They never seemed to show it, if they did.
At the bus stop I waited with a small clutch of folks heading home late from work. While we stood, united in the discomfort of trying not to make small talk, I glanced casually down the street a couple of times. No one. Maybe I'd been wrong? Maybe whoever it was had given up and gone home?
At any rate I felt ridiculously relieved when the bus pulled up and we all boarded. No one had arrived at the stop after me, so my supposed stalker couldn't be among my fellow passengers. I took a window seat and tried to peer outside past the reflections as we drove through the brightly-lit streets. This unsettled feeling every time I went somewhere alone was really starting to bug me. I'd thought, once Trip confessed, that it was all over, but apparently I was wrong.
No one else got off at my stop. The three blocks to my house stretched out long and lonely ahead of me as I left the fluorescent warmth of the bus and set out alone. I didn't sense anyone behind me, but my legs throbbed with the urge to run. I fought it down. I couldn't give in every time I felt nervous. I couldn't let this change me.
My apartment block loomed within sight as I rounded the corner onto my quiet street. A figure, shadowy and indistinct, hovered near the entrance to my building. Just a resident, I told myself, waiting for a drive, or perhaps someone waiting for a resident to come down. My stride slowed as I assessed the situation, and I was so focused on the figure that I stupidly didn't hear the guy come up behind me.
He wasn't a professional, or not a very good one, because instead of just taking me out with a sap to the back of the head, he grabbed me, one hand sliding over my mouth and one going around my waist. That left him open for an elbow to the solar plexus, which I delivered with pleasure and a great rush of adrenaline.
He grunted, but he was tough and didn't let go. His hand over my mouth smelled of cheap aftershave and the chili dog he'd had for lunch. I almost gagged. Instead I tried to bite him, while I grabbed for his lower arm. If I could get a good grip I might be able to throw him.
His hand brushed my breast and for an absurd second I thought he was trying to grope me, until I realized he was looking for the gun in my shoulder holster. That meant he knew exactly who I was. Still struggling, I briefly considered transmuting him. The taboo against that was pretty strongly ingrained, though, and the unpleasantness of the last time I'd done it, especially sans Maginox®, fresh in my mind. I didn't feel like puking my guts up again just now. That would be a last resort.
I got both hands on his arm and threw my weight to the side to flip him, when I heard a sickening, fleshy impact and he fell away from me, suddenly limp. I stumbled, off-balance, and another hand grabbed my arm, steadying me and spinning me around to face my rescuer. The man panted as if he'd just been running, and although I'd never seen them in real life, the green eyes staring into mine from a mere six inches away seemed awfully familiar.
"Kit! Are you all right?" LemurCandy gasped.
I nodded, dumbstruck. The only thought in my head was, He looks just like his avatar.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Conversation and Mocha Insanity
So there we are, me and LemurCandy, in the flesh, face to face, on a dark street where he's just come to my rescue, and he looks gorgeous and I'm thinking in real life he's 'way more good-looking than that Aleshu Coro avatar ever was, and what do I say to him?
"I could have taken him myself." I heard the words emerge from my mouth with a sense of disbelief. Not thank you, or kiss me, you fool, but I could have taken him myself.
Lemur dropped my arms and took a step backward. "Of course you could have," he said off-handedly. "I just thought I might as well lend a hand...since...since I was here."
I snapped back to my sense and started babbling. "Oh, absolutely! And thank you, thanks...I'm grateful, really! I wonder who he is and why he was following me? And...and...so this is really you! Just like your avatar, only— "
I'd been going to say "cuter" but I bit the word off just in time. I realized that what was coming out of my mouth should not have anything to do with what was going on in my head. "—only, in real life," I finished lamely.
Fortunately LemurCandy didn't seem to notice as he knelt down beside the unconscious thug. He looked up at me. "What do we do with this?"
I took a deep breath and tried to cudgel my brain into some sort of composure. "I don't want to leave him here without knowing why he was following me."
"Should we just call the police?"
The police! "That's probably the best idea," I said, pulling out my mobile. Surprisingly, they were on the spot before the guy woke up, more businesslike and efficient than I would have thought possible. They frisked him, took our statements, put him in their blue-and-black wagon and left, asking us to come down to the station in the morning and sort out anything else. I figured one of them had a talent similar to mine, so he knew our story was true. I guess that's one place that magic has definitely made people's lives easier. Unless your talent is undetectable lying, you'd better not decide to live a life of crime.
However, with the police gone from the scene, it left me and LemurCandy standing uncomfortably on the darkened sidewalk near my apartment, neither one of us apparently knowing what to say to the other. Streetlights splotched patches of brightness here and there in either direction, but few pedestrians moved through them. The night air tickled my face, crisp and cool.
"So," I said finally. "What are you doing here, anyway?"
He glanced up at the nearest streetlight. "I thought...I'd just pop by and see...when you wanted to get together and go over that data."
It didn't take magic to know he was lying. Why even try that with me? Unless he'd forgotten about my talent. Or maybe he didn't understand how it worked.
"Really?" I asked, looking him straight in the eyes. I hadn't taken any Maginox®, but maybe I could bluff him. Might as well give him a chance to come clean.
"Well...not really," he admitted with a rueful smile. "Look, I was worried about you, so I thought I'd just make sure you got home okay. Kiku told me you'd gone on a stakeout alone and—"
"Do you want to go for a coffee?" I interrupted. "There's a good place not far from here." I didn't want another lecture on how to avoid getting into trouble. It never seemed to do me any good to hear it, anyway. And I really didn't want to get ticked off and snap at him.
He seemed to relax, shoving his hands into his pockets. "That would be great," he said, and we headed down the street. He didn't attempt to hold my hand, as his avatar had the night we went off the grid. I found that unreasonably disappointing. However, the night s
eemed much less menacing with him walking beside me.
"Anything come out of that Coro business deal you were looking into?" I asked, to break the silence and stop myself from drifting off into an unrealistic daydream. He was chatty enough online, but so far, in real life, he was pretty quiet. I guess I couldn't blame him. He might not even have been planning to show himself to me, and now here he was, on the front lines, you might say.
"I'm not sure yet. Still waiting for some details."
The coffee shop showed welcoming lights at all the windows, and LemurCandy held the door for me as we slipped out of the chilly spring air into the warm scents of coffee and pastries. One of the baristas who works there lives in my building, and we're—not friends exactly, but friend-ish. Diamanta evaluated Lemur with one practised glance, and threw me a wink and a nod when he had his back turned pulling out a chair. I winked back and was grinning when Lemur turned and sat down.
"What?"
"Oh, nothing," I said. "That's a friend of mine at the counter, that's all."
I ordered a large coffee with cream and sugar, and Lemur had a Mocha Insanity. I shuddered when it came. "You like that stuff?" I asked. An inch of thick froth, studded with bits of chocolate, obscured any sight of the coffee that lay underneath.
He shrugged and smiled. "I like my sugar with a shot of caffeine," he said.
Finally, now that we were sitting down like two civilized people in a half-empty coffee shop, not dealing with thugs and policemen on a dark street, I could actually look at him. He had definitely modelled that avatar on himself, probably left the faceskin input pretty much untouched, the way I did. The brown hair, the green eyes, the same lean but muscular build—it was him exactly. I felt a twinge of self-consciousness about the...adjustments I'd made to my own avatar. How noticeable were they?
"I was thinking I should do some more background work on the folks at MageData," he said, looking up from his drink. "I feel like it's got to be someone close to Coro."
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