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Given the choice of using the two narrow and more than a little beat-up chairs in the kitchen for this meeting, or sitting on the floor, Wren had finally broken down and, after confirming the appointment, bought a small wooden table and two reasonably comfortable wooden chairs to go with it from a secondhand junk/antique dealer a few blocks away. Those, and the over-stuffed upholstered chair that had seen better decades, were still the only pieces of furniture in the main room, other than the stereo system set against the far wall, and two extremely expensive speakers in either corner.
Maybe the client would think that she rented the place. That would work, yeah.
“Nice system. Acoustics must rock.”
Rosen looked to be in her midtwenties, but she spoke younger. Twenty-three, according to the dossier Wren had put together after the initial contact. Not as complete as what Sergei could have done, but she’d done all right, if she did say so herself.
“Anna Rosen. Born in Glendale, raised in Madison, went to school in Boston, came home to work at the law firm of which Daddy was a partner two years ago, just before his death of a heart attack.” There. Taking control of the meeting. Establishing herself as the person with the knowledge.
“Alleged heart attack.” Rosen took the left-hand chair and sat down without being asked, placing her oxblood briefcase by her expensive shoes and resting her well-manicured hands on the table surface. “He was murdered.”
Wren stood in the doorway and looked at the client. “I don’t do murders.”
Not intentionally, anyway. Not by name, as such. Only the dead never seemed to stay properly, quietly dead, around her.
“Not asking you to.” Rosen looked at Wren directly, then; the humor in her eyes was muted by pain that hadn’t had the chance to scab yet. The death hadn’t been that recent; she was carrying around some significant emotional issues, then. “I’m Null, not stupid.”
Wren opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. There wasn’t anything she could say at this point that wouldn’t come out all wrong, anyway, even if the girl had been looking for soothing platitudes.
Null meant a human without any Talent, without the ability to channel current, or magic. Almost half of her jobs came from the Null world. They hired her as a thief, not a Retriever, but that was a distinction without a difference to most people. In fact, it probably only meant something significant to another Retriever, and there were only a dozen or so in the world, as far as Wren knew.
The fact that this Miss Rosen used the word Null with such casualness meant that she was aware of Talents, by reputation if not personally. Interesting. Possibly totally irrelevant, but interesting. Wren filed that fact away for later contemplation.
The fact that the client had contacted her directly in the first place might be a little more telling—people who heard about her via the Talent gossip networks usually knew to approach Sergei, first.
She was starting to get too well-known. She’d been too high profile, lately. A good Retriever wasn’t in the spotlight. A good Retriever—a successful Retriever—needed to be invisible, known only for her actions, not herself. Wren wasn’t much for game-playing; she left that to Sergei. Except here she was, playing games, inviting clients into her home, buying furniture that didn’t suit her…
“Let me get directly to the point,” Miss Rosen said, crossing her legs in a ladylike fashion, the sheen of her shoes expensively muted.
Thank God, Wren thought, forcing herself to gather her scattered thoughts and pay attention to what was going on in the here and now. Focus! Don’t screw the pooch so early in the game, Valere! Damn it, she wasn’t a negotiator. She didn’t even like to debate. Her thoughts scattered again like butterflies in the wind. Why had she agreed to meet with this chick anyway, instead of handing it over to Sergei the moment the nibble came in? This was his job, his part of the partnership, to deal with the prejob details.
But the call had come directly to her, and she had taken it on directly. So there wasn’t any Sergei here to fall back on. Her choice, so hers to deal with. Grow up, she heard P.B. say again.
“My father was killed last year. His will entered probate.” Rosen spoke without emotion in that lovely voice, as though all that had happened to someone else. “Now his widow is claiming that a particular piece of jewelry is hers, not mine. It belonged to my mother, and she has no claim to it.”
There was more emotion in the last sentence than the girl had shown, total, up until then. Whatever the piece was, it meant a lot to her. And she really, really didn’t like her stepmother. Did she suspect the woman in her father’s murder? Not your problem, Valere.
Not Wren’s business, who felt what about who, except as it impacted what she was hired to do. Her business was the job, and only the job. “She has it in her possession?”
Rosen nodded. Apparently, the widow did.
A straight-ahead break-and-grab. Nice, Wren thought to herself. Just what the doctor might have ordered, to keep her mind busy while she waited for the Talent-storm forming overhead to either break or disperse.
“I want to keep this low-key,” the girl went on. “She’s going to know it’s me—there’s no way she can’t know. But without proof, without a way to trace it back to me, she won’t be able to do anything about it. That’s why I came to you.”
“Because I’m a Retriever?”
“Because you’re the best.”
All right, that was a fact Wren wasn’t going to argue; although she could name half a dozen non-Cosa thieves who were at least as good at lifting things, they weren’t always as careful about giving the merchandise back over to the client. It was a highest-bidder market out there, for items without clear ownership and no binding contract.
That was the difference between a Retriever and a thief. Not just current, but good work ethics. A Retriever, once bought, stayed bought.
“I need the best. I also need someone with a connection to magic. Can you, I don’t know, do something so that she knows magic is used? To throw her off my trail?”
Covering her ass. Wren could approve. But she hated having anyone tell her how to do a job. Not even Sergei ever did that. If it called for current, she used it. If it called for the more pragmatic, practical skills she had picked up over the years—lock picking and door-jimmying—then she used those. That was what made her the best, not just an accident of Talent.
Wren didn’t say any of that, however. She avoided sitting in the other chair, feeling more comfortable on her feet. At just over five feet tall and otherwise unmemorable, one of the best ways to keep someone focused on you was to present a moving target. Make them just nervous enough to pay attention.
“I am the best, yeah. I’m also not inexpensive.” Okay, so that wasn’t patented Sergei Didier smooth. She wasn’t Sergei, and she did things her way, damn it. “I’m not going to insult you by suggesting that you can’t afford me, but are you sure that this is going to be worth it?”
“You’re suggesting that I shouldn’t hire you?” Rosen seemed less surprised than amused, like her pet dog had done something cutely annoying.
Wren shrugged. She found it hard to care, one way or another, what this girl did. Fake that sincerity, Wrenlet, she could hear Sergei say in the back of her mind. Clients love to believe you’re giving two hundred percent.
“I hate buyer regrets. Especially when I’m the one getting regretted.”
Whatever Rosen was going to say in response was drowned in the blast that reached the building just as she opened her mouth.
What the hell?
Wren grabbed the girl by the shoulders and had them both flat on the hardwood floor by the time the shock wave hit them completely.
“What the hell?” Rosen echoed Wren’s first thought.
“Shut up.” Every sinew in Wren’s body was trembling, far in excess of what the noise should have caused. She willed herself to stop shaking, but couldn’t do anything about the cold sweat on the back of her neck. Current sizzled inside her, and she wanted, very badly, to throw up from the pain expanding inside her head.
“Something…” The girl was clearly puzzled by the strength of Wren’s reaction, proving that she was, in fact, completely Null. “Something hit us. The building. Was that an earthquake?”
“Not an earthquake,” Wren said, not sure how she knew but knowing, without hesitation. “Not even close.”
That was current. A lot of it. And all of it sent with nasty intent.
2
Nothing in the apartment seemed to be broken, although a stool in the kitchen had fallen over, and Wren didn’t want to think about what her research library, a bedroom in the back of the apartment, toward the front of the building, might look like. Some of those books were old, and expensive, and damned rare, and a lot of them were only on loan from people who would kill her if anything happened to them.
“Stay here.”
“But…” The client looked around, clearly remembering the shock of the explosion, and decided that obedience was the smarter move right now, no matter how unfamiliar the sensation might be. Walking cautiously down the hallway, as though an additional attack might come at any second, Wren did a once-over of the rest of the apartment.
Amazingly not only were all the books still on the shelves in the first bedroom, but nothing had even slid off the desk in the second room, which served as her office—and when she booted up her computer, holding her breath and mentally reciting prayers to whatever saints she could recall, it came up without a hitch.
“Oh thank you, God.” If that blast hadn’t been current-shaped, she’d hand in her lonejack ID. Somehow, though, it hadn’t done what current typically did, which was fry every bit of electronics in the vicinity.
Wren didn’t know why she had been spared; she was just thankful.
There was no dial tone on the phone when she first picked it up, but as she held it, thinking that maybe she had given thanks too soon, the tone came back.
“Well, that’s a switch,” she said in mild surprise. Typically things broke when she held them, not the other way around and getting fixed. Putting the receiver down before it changed its mechanical mind, Wren reached over to shut down the computer. Other people might have the luxury of leaving their system up and running all the time, but not Talents. Not even in this seemingly super-insulated building, bless its pre-War, plaster-coated walls.
Giving the room another quick once-over to make sure that nothing had moved since she came in, Wren went into the third and smallest room, the one she used as a bedroom. Her wind-up alarm clock had stopped ten minutes ago, and the water glass on her nightstand had cracked, but thankfully she had downed the last of the water in it that morning.
This room seemed to be less protected. And yet, there was nothing different about it from the first two rooms in terms of construction. In fact, there was nothing at all that should have attracted current—no electronics, no magical implements, no tools of the trade. Not where she slept, where unconsciousness might allow current to slip in or out unguarded.
“Um, excuse me? Hello?”
The client, her voice wavering down the hallway. Damn it. Wren needed to get the girl out of there. She needed to think, to find out what had happened, and there was no way she could do that with Miss Old Money pacing the main room. A Null who knew she was a Null was still a Null. Sergei was the only non-Talent she trusted with lonejack business, and even then it was with regret, because he just wouldn’t stay out of it.
“Hello?”
“Yeah, it’s okay. You can get up now.”
If it hadn’t been okay, they’d both be dead by now, anyway.
When she went back into the main room, Rosen had picked herself up and was dusting nonexistent debris off her slightly mussed outfit with an expression of distaste on her face. Guess the client didn’t like being tossed to the ground, no matter what the cause. Some people were just so picky.
“Is your building often bombed?”
“Yeah. All the time.” She was channeling pure P.B. now, and Wren made a conscious effort to choke that back. One was not snarky to the client, no matter how much their tone pissed you off. About them, yes. But not to their faces.
Thankfully Rosen’s livery driver had been waiting around the block reading a newspaper when the shock wave hit her building. Wren waited while the client paged him, then helped her down the stairs, carefully not answering the girl’s questions beyond a vague “This sort of thing, Manhattan, you know. It happens.”
No New Yorker worth her Metrocard—even ones with hired cars—could deny it. Things happened in Manhattan.
Wren waited while the livery car—a clichéd black Town car with smoked windows, so ordinary and commonplace it always raised curious eyebrows—slid down the narrow street and stopped in front of them. Packing the girl into the back seat, Wren started to close the door, but Rosen pushed a hand against the frame to stop her.
“You’re taking the job, then?”
Wren stared at the girl’s pretty green eyes, and thought about it for a second or three. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll take it.” She wasn’t so far out of the financial hole the bastards on the Council had dug for her this summer to turn down work, especially something as basic as this sounded.
“I can write you a check—” Rosen started to say, but Wren waved her off. She didn’t want to be bothered by actually dealing with the nitpicky business details now. Not when she was this jumpy, and the client had already verbally agreed to whatever price Wren set. Bad business, but right now she had other things on her mind. Like getting this Null child the hell out of range of…whatever it was that had just happened.
“Make a deposit to this account, in this amount.” And she jotted down the numbers for the blind account she and Sergei used to accept funds, plus her usual retainer fee to get things started. “I’ll be in touch with the rest of the details as soon as I have a better feel for the job.”
Not satisfied, but realizing that she wasn’t going to get any more out of her new hire right now, Rosen tucked herself all the way into the car and allowed Wren to close the door.
Wren stared down the street, watching but not really seeing the brake lights of the Town car, itching to find out what the hell had happened upstairs. She was beginning to run through places to start asking questions, when someone came up behind her on the street. She heard the footsteps, aware that there was no threat-aura to them, and dismissed them from her awareness with a skill that was more classic New Yorker than Talent. The tap on her shoulder, therefore, startled her so violently that she almost let loose with a spray of current: full fight or flight reflexes kicking in.
“Christ. Jumpy much, Valere?”
Her almost-assailant backed up and leaned against the building behind him, arms crossed against his oh-so-pretty-if-you-liked-beefcake chest. If she didn’t have a pounding reaction-headache, she’d have appreciated the visual more.
“Danny.” Cowboy boots and dress shirts worked better in Houston than they did in Manhattan, but Danny still managed to make them look good. And the boots had the advantage of hiding his hooves.
“Danny,” she said again, this time in a different voice. Shaking off the quiver of nerves, she looked around for the first time at the mild disaster the blast had left: car windows blown out, tires flattened, trees wilted. Whatever hadn’t hit her apartment had done some significant work just outside it. Interesting. “What the hell happened?”
“I was going to ask you that.”
Glass crunched under his heels as they walked together, both of them checking out the damage. Wren was thankful she’d thought to pull on work boots before coming downstairs. Her usual soft-soled loafers wouldn’t have offered as much protection from the sharp-edged shards.
“No sign of explosives,” Danny went on as they walked down the street, past her building and down to the end, then started back again. Of course he’d already done a preliminary sortie. She didn’t ask how he’d gotten there so quickly. That was what Danny did. “No car bombs, no blown manhole covers, no dead guy bits with wires and whatnot strapped to him. Nobody heard a thing.
“And yet, every single Talent in the area felt the blast, and hey, look at that, half a dozen car windows got blown out. Right in front…” He paused for dramatic effect as they reached her stoop. “Of your building. That sort of narrows it down, don’tcha think?”
Danny had been a damn good beat cop, before tabloid-driven pressures made it tough for fatae to advance in the ranks. He made an even better insurance investigator. His network of Talents in the NYPD was the match of any small-town gossip chain. In fact, in a lot of ways it was a small-town gossip chain. When something weird happened, they let him know. And he got to be piggie-on-the-spot, asking all the nasty questions.
“So who in the Cosa you piss off this time?”
Like that one. The Cosa Nostradamus: the magical community, the human Talents and the supernatural fatae, with or without usable magics. The “family” part was closer to Manson than Brady, unfortunately.
“You been tuned into some other universe the past couple of months?” The only people in the Cosa she hadn’t pissed off lately were the ones from out of town. And maybe she’d annoyed a few there, too.
“If I knew how to get out of this one, I’d buy you a ticket,” he said, proving that he had too been paying attention lately. “One-way. You’re becoming a target for way too much shit.”
Ow. “Not my fault this city’s going to hell,” she said defensively. It wasn’t. In fact, she was part of the reason it hadn’t gotten a hell of a lot worse. The vigilantes? Guilt aside, she had been one of the first to figure out the connection between the “exterminators” advertising with their cryptic flyers, and the attacks on the nonhuman members of the Cosa. The surge in general crankiness that couldn’t be blamed on the heat wave? She was the one who had gotten rid of the semisentient manuscript that incited and fed off increased levels of negative emotions. The Mage Council going after the lonejacks to prove who was top dog in the city? No way that she was taking the shit for whatever was chewing at their brains.
“And yet…” He looked around and gestured tellingly at the dark blue mailbox directly in front of her door, crushed like it was made of tinfoil instead of riveted steel. “Someone was sending you a message of some sort. Sounds like ‘back off’ to me.”
She didn’t even try to deny the fact that she had been the target. “Damn it, Danny. I didn’t ask for any special attention from anyone. It just…happened.”
He snorted like the centaurs of his paternal line. “Nothing just happens, Valere. Nothing ever just happens.”
“City filled with Yoda wannabes, and I gotta look like a swamp. Go catch a criminal, Danny. Leave me alone.”
“Valere.” He touched her arm. Danny didn’t touch anyone, much. “You got a headache?”
“Yeah.”
“So does every Talent within five blocks, I bet. And this was a bitty baby psych-bomb. A warning shot.
“Twelve months ago, the biggest talk in the Cosa was who was sleeping with what. Six months ago, we were talking about those damn vigilantes, targeting us.”
By us, he meant the fatae, the nonhumans of the Cosa. No Talents had been attacked by that particular group of bigots, as far as Wren knew.
That fact had been the beginning of the split in the Cosa, along racial lines: us versus them. Well, that and the fact that most Talents were selfish and lazy, and couldn’t be bothered to deal with something that didn’t affect them directly. Wren wasn’t particularly special, in that regard.
“Four months ago, it was the flameouts.” The wizzarts, or crazed Talents, who had been killed by someone or someones still unknown. Wren had tried to find the killers, but had only been able to force them out of town. But Danny didn’t know that part of the story. She thought.
“Today?” he went on. “Today we’re talking about Talents gone missing. Fatae gone dead. You—and a bunch of others—getting blacklisted by the Council. The fact that there’s been a Talent Moot, and you knocked heads together.”
Wren winced at that. The Moot, or gathering, had been a bad idea, and her telling them all it was a bad idea had been an even worse idea, for all that it made sense at the time. All it did was bring her notoriety she didn’t want and couldn’t use. And, if Danny was right, which she suspected he was, had led to this.
“What it all comes together as, girl, is you in the middle of shit, like it or not, want it or not. You is standing there with a great big red target painted on your nice peachy-skinned forehead.”
“So what do you think I should do, oh wise one?” She was trying for sarcasm, but it came out too sincere a question for comfort.
Danny didn’t hesitate. “Run, babe. Run like hell.”
By the time she got back to her apartment and tossed her boots back into her bedroom closet, the news trucks had already shown up. They were cruising up and down, narrowly missing the cars parked on either side, looking for some hapless passing pedestrian to interview for the news. The timing sucked for witnesses, though; the lunchers were back in their cubicles, and the afternoon dog walkers hadn’t started hitting the streets yet. They were probably going to be stuck interviewing the same firefighter or cop on every channel.
Run, babe.
She had never run in her entire life. Not when she discovered what she was, not when her mentor disappeared on her, rather than risk exposing her to his madness, not when the Council had first targeted her, not even when the relatively low-risk life of a Retriever started getting downright dangerous.
If it was just herself, she’d be rabbiting like a, well, like a rabbit. But it wasn’t just her, was it?
She made a bet with herself—a water main break, something serious but impossible to blame anyone for—and sat down on the bed and waited for the phone to ring.
It took seven minutes after the first camera set up and started broadcasting live. She picked up the phone and held it a cautious distance from her ear.
“Damn it, woman, what have you been doing?”
That was her partner, always willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“Water main break, or electrical fires?”
There was a pause, then the muted sound of the television in the background. “Manhole cover explosion, no suspicious activity suspected.”
Wren wondered sometimes what might happen if a Talent decided to go terrorist. So far—and by that she meant the entire history of Council and lonejacks—it hadn’t happened. Not even the IRA or PLO had ever claimed a Talented member. Something about channeling current, it seemed to burn out any kind of political or nationalistic fervor. Thank God.
“So what’s going on?” Sergei asked again, this time with an edge to his voice. Bless the man, he did worry.
“Buy me dinner, and I’ll tell you all about it.” What little she knew, anyway. Hopefully, by then, she’d know more. Or at least, what to tell him.
His immediate reaction was a long, drama-queen sigh. “Why is it that I always seem to end up buying you dinner?”
She had actually opened her mouth to respond when he added, “Don’t answer that. Make it early. I was too busy talking at my lunch meeting today to actually eat anything.”
Wren hung up the phone without saying goodbye, and stared at the wall in front of her. She really needed to hang some artwork. She really needed to buy some artwork. The place really did look like she rented it. Her partner ran a damned art gallery, and her walls were bare. What was she waiting for? Some windfall of millions? To move to some larger, better-lit space? To suddenly develop artistic taste? None of that was going to happen, not in this lifetime.