Hard Magic

Twelve

“Ah.” The man sitting in my room lowered the newspaper he’d been reading and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “You’re home earlier than expected.”

And my hotel room was cleaner than I’d left it. Somehow, I doubted the housekeepers had done a pre-midnight raid.

“Lovely to see you, too, J.” No reason to ask how he got in—he was still footing the bill; the staff would be more than happy to open the door for him. Damn it, I knew I should have called him earlier. This is what happens when you procrastinate.

I walked past my mentor and unhooked my shoes, tossing them into the closet. I was tempted to strip down to panties and bra, but it wouldn’t slow him down, much less shock him.

“You were planning to stay all night and surprise me with breakfast when I dragged myself in at the crack of dawn?” I asked, trying for nonchalant and pretty much failing. J still had the ability to turn me into a nervous nine-year-old, afraid if I did something wrong he’d send me back to my father. He wouldn’t, not ever, and even at nine I knew that, but…

“If that was what it took,” he replied calmly. Too calmly. Oh shit. I turned around and took inventory.

My mentor was sitting in the only armchair in the room, paper now folded, his legs crossed at the ankle, his hands resting quietly in his lap. He was angry, I could sense that in his stillness, and the faint crackle of current snapping just under his skin, even if his expression was calm, his eyes lidded like he was about to take a nap. I couldn’t figure out why the hell he was angry, and that made me cautious. But I was tired, too, and frustrated, and more than a little stressed, and while my current always settled under stress, my temper didn’t.

“Right. What’s the deal, Joseph? You hie yourself down from Boston in the middle of the night, sit in my room like a disapproving parent, which, much as I love you, you’re not, and even if you were, I am legally, technically and morally an adult, and glower at me as though I was just caught making out with the girl next door you fancied.” I ran out of breath after that, and paused. “So what’s up?”

J had raised me to be a straight shooter, even though he could be a politic bastard when needed, so he responded in kind and got right to the point.

“You’re quitting.”

“What?” I thought that I’d heard him, but it wasn’t registering in my brain.

“That job. No more.” The anger showed in his face, finally. “Did you really think I wouldn’t hear what’s been going on?”

I swear, for a moment I honestly couldn’t figure out what thing going on he was referring to; it had been that long and crazy a day. Two days. Whatever.

“The entire local Council knows that someone tried to take your bosses out this afternoon!” He had obviously taken my hesitation for trying to make some sort of denial.

Oh. That thing.

“No,” I said, “I’m not. Quitting, I mean.” There was no point in denying we’d been thwanged, although thankfully right now J was focusing on the Guys being the target, which, maybe yes and maybe no, because that blast had shattered the window of the room we were in.

And also the room the evidence was in. Hmm.

A part of my brain sliced that observation out of the conversation and carried it off somewhere else to examine, while the rest of me tried not to argue with my mentor.

“Bonita. You are not… I will not allow…” J’s face contorted as he tried to get his anger under control. Current escaped and flared in sparks around his ears, a sure sign that he was not only angry, but upset. Upset enough that his usual ability to find exactly the right words had apparently gone pffft.

“You won’t allow? Allow?” As usual, and contrary to most Talent, the more pissed off I got, the quieter my current got. When I was a teenager someone told me that meant that I’d never be really high-res, never be able to source-up and do madly impressive things. To me, even then it also meant that I didn’t have to worry about losing control. Seemed a fair trade.

Right now, my current wasn’t the cold core of stillness that worried me, just quiet, as if it was waiting for me to decide what to do. But we were still in the danger zone, between his heat and my cool. When two fronts meet, you got thunderstorms. Every Talent knew that, and god knows we’d had a few nasty storms when I was a teenager. I didn’t want to be that kid anymore, I wasn’t a kid anymore, and it was time J dealt with that.

“I’m not quitting,” I repeated. I wasn’t shouting, exactly, but I wanted to make sure he heard me. “I’m certainly not going to quit because someone who didn’t have the guts to identify himself tried to psi-bomb our building.” I might have quit over actually being shot at, maybe. Not that I was going to. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell J about that, if he didn’t already know!

I couldn’t remember the last time I kept something even remotely important from my mentor. It felt weird, like wearing someone else’s shoes.

“Yes, you are!”

Oh shit. J was standing up now. And shouting. The little vein in the side of his forehead was pulsing, too. I should back down, placate him, get him into the chair and mellowed out, at least for now. No matter how good a shape you were in, that kind of vein-twitch couldn’t be a good sign.

Those were my thoughts. What came out of my mouth was a little different.

“You may have bought me but you don’t own me.”

Thirteen years ago, Joseph had given my dad a huge cash loan that was never repaid. J hadn’t expected it to be repaid. I wasn’t supposed to know about it, except Zaki mentioned it once, drunk off his ass and feeling love for all mankind. I guess I’d been saving it, all these years.

I guess there was a part of me that still was that stormy kid. Damn.

“Bonita! How dare you think—” He gathered himself with visible effort, sensing the thunderclouds forming, too. “That’s neither here nor there, and I won’t let you sidetrack me with a childish taunt. You will tender your resignation in the morning.”

I’d cut him, but he was still angry. My current knotted itself in my gut, still not cold but cooling rapidly. Why wouldn’t he listen to me? “I’m twenty-one, legally an adult, and by most standards a pretty smart one. I can make my own decisions. Even if you think that they’re stupid.” I tried to gentle my voice a little, because I did know where all this was coming from, even if I thought it was a little pointless, and I’d already said hurtful stuff. “You can’t keep me wrapped up and safe in a bell jar for my entire life!”

He was still current-sparking mad, but the vein-tick was slowing down. Good, I’d gotten through to him. Eventually, hopefully, his common sense would kick back in. “There’s a difference between being safe and throwing yourself into the line of fire!”

We could stand here and argue all night. I really didn’t want to, and I wasn’t going to. “This is important to me, Joseph. I can’t tell you why, or what I think it’s going to do, but this—this job—is what I need to do, and it’s where I need to be. And if you can’t deal with that…I’m sorry, but then that’s going to have to be your problem. Not mine.”

Oh god, it hurt to say that.

I went to the closet and pulled out a pair of flat shoes, and slipped them on.

“Feel free to crash here if you’re too pissed to Transloc. I’ll sleep on the sofa when I get back.”

And tomorrow, I’d do something about getting an apartment, finally. Somewhere only I had access to the keys.

Before J could react, I’d—gently—closed the hotel-room door behind me, and headed to the elevator. I needed to walk, maybe burn off some of the crap racing in my system.

The streets of Manhattan late at night in early fall are one of the most wonderful things in the world. The air is cool and charged with more than just current, and the lights seem to shine in a way they don’t in other cities. People were out and about, even at eleven-thirty, walking and laughing and standing outside of bars and restaurants, smoking or talking on their cell phones or just hanging out. I felt almost invulnerable, walking among them, as though it was all one big party. Even the cops cruising the streets in their squad cars added to the feeling of festivity rather than concern. A roommate of mine in college, Debbie, had once said that the safest place to be was where the hookers were, because that’s also where the johns were, and the drug dealers, and therefore all the cops, too.

Manhattan was like that: all the bad stuff and the good stuff mixed up under neon lights and rushing traffic.

Boston, even on its best days, couldn’t match it. And J wanted me to give this up?

No, he didn’t. The sound of my shoes on the pavement was a nice counterpoint to the trudge-trudge-trudge of my thoughts. He wasn’t asking me to leave New York. Just my job.

The job I’d only had a few months, and wasn’t sure was going to last a few months more. The job we’d only just kicked into gear, that was giving us the chance to prove ourselves. Quitting would be…

It would be quitting. I’d never quit anything in my entire life. Not even the piano lessons J had signed me up for when I was ten. I was never going to be a musician, but I could play well enough not to embarrass myself, or let anyone in on the fact that I had no interest in music I couldn’t dance to. A PUPI was stubborn? They got that right.

A subway entrance loomed up in front of me and I descended the steps without thinking, pulling my MetroCard out and sliding it, and me, through the gate.

In the past thirty-six hours I’d been shot at, psi-bombed, I’d dumped an otherwise very hot date, and been yelled at by my mentor. It wasn’t what you’d call a successful day, unless your idea of success was seriously different from mine. The fact that I was humming under my breath and feeling the urge to smile at the couple across the subway car from me made no sense at all.

Neither did the fact that I got out at the stop down the street from the office.

It was almost midnight. What the hell was I doing here? It wasn’t as if I had a key to get in or anything, and once I was there what was I going to do?

Smart would have been to grab a beer at some corner bar, stew for a while, and then either find a cute companion or, more likely, go back to the hotel and have breakfast with J, who would’ve calmed down by now and be willing to listen, if not agree.

Instead, I walked into the office lobby and, almost without surprise, heard the door buzz me in.

This time I caught a faint whiff of current, like the smell of burned cinnamon. Venec. He’d been in my head, I could “feel” him now. There was a current-lock on the door, triggered by some sense of us that Venec had placed on the normal door mechanism. And hadn’t bothered to tell us.

“Because we’re supposed to figure it out. Duh.” This wasn’t college. We didn’t get a syllabus on the first day telling us what was going to be on the final exam.

The lobby was eerily quiet, and I had a moment of unease…. Was something lurking there, just waiting to take a potshot at me? Okay, stop thinking like that, now, or you’re going to be a gibbering wreck. Shoved off that track, my brain then wondered how many offices there actually were here, and how many were expanded like our own. Okay, much safer, saner tack to take, good brain. If we did well, would the Guys take another lease, and then another, until the entire floor was a warren of workrooms and meeting spaces?

I discovered that I liked that idea, the thought of an ever-expanding space entered into by one simple door. And never mind the rats in a maze thought that followed—sometimes a maze could be protection as well as annoyance.

What might be coming in the front door that we’d have to escape through the back wasn’t something I wanted to consider, though. Not right now, not tonight. Instead, I dropped my jacket on the rack, and headed to the first of our workrooms. Entering the white-walled space, I closed the door behind me, and drew up a single thread of current, directing it to expand until it covered the walls, floor, and ceiling with an almost impossibly thin layer of protection.

There was no way in hell I was going to do cleanup, if something went wrong.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I kept on doing what I was doing, which in this case was adding liquid to a vial. I was pleased to see that my hands didn’t even shake, not a little. “Do you ever sleep?”

Venec glowered. “I could ask the same of you. What are you doing?”

I didn’t even bother asking how he got through my protections—he owned the place, or co-owned, which was the same thing anyway, and I’d have to do some serious mojo to keep him out.

His question made me look up, and I sort of understood why he was glowering. There were splotches of black all over the walls and ceiling, and my hands were covered in a slightly more red stain.

“Shit. I forgot to protect my clothing. Does blood come out of silk?”

Victory for me—I made Venec blink. He recovered fast, though.

“You’re working blood splatter?”

“Yeah, sort of. I had a thought….”

It wasn’t really even a thought, and I hadn’t realized I’d had it until I was already in the workroom, but once I started working it seemed to make sense.

“Sympathetic magic. I know, it’s old-school and not reliable and all that. But the basis is sound, the idea that like effects like. So I was thinking maybe we could use blood to pull blood-trace up, even if we didn’t see it.”

“Interesting.” His voice had dropped an octave, I swear, almost like a growl. Grrr, Big Dog. “You’re starting to think like a proper forensic magician. Good.”

I focused on the three puddles of blood in front of me, trying to distract myself. “Is that what we are?”

“As good a term as any, and better than most. Forensics is the science of examination—the collection, identification, and analysis of physical evidence relating to a crime. A forensic photographer uses a camera, a forensic scientist uses, well, science—a forensic magician…”

“Uses magic. It’s just retro-hip enough to take off.” I approved. I’m sure that totally made Venec’s night.

He ignored my approval. “You’ve already heard Ian’s speech about the need for an impartial investigation, probably enough times by now to recite it in your sleep.”

“Close, yeah. An investigative force without bias, without an agenda. Results that are based only on the evidence, and not conjecture, desire, or malice.” I didn’t try for Stosser’s tone, but the word-for-word was damn near perfect.

Venec laughed, that deep sound that made every nerve ending in my body shiver, and he put his hand on my shoulder, and I would be damned if I could hear a word he was saying, because all I could think was “oh my god, am I drooling?”

Probably.

“Show me what you’ve got so far,” he ordered.

Work. Right. “Two of those puddles of blood are mine,” I said. “The third one’s from a rat—and please don’t ask how I got it, because I really don’t want to think about it. If you dip a glass rod into one—” and I demonstrated with one of the thin straws I found in the supply closet “—and charge it with current…like this,” and I gently touched a spark to the tip, letting it flare dark blue enough so that Venec could see it. J taught me that making current visible was showing off, and a waste of power, but sometimes it was faster than trying to explain. Venec nodded as though he understood, and I went on.

“The current fills the blood, like we were doing with the blood splatter. But there, we were trying to do a rewind, draw it back to a previous position. This time, I want it to find something similar. So I tell it, not to go back, but to go…” I tried to think about exactly what I was telling it. “To go sideways, sorta. I visualize a magnet, clicking to its match, and…”

And as I said it I willed it, and the glass rod dipped and swooped until it hovered over the left-most puddle.

“That’s my blood.”

“Dowsing. Interesting.”

Those two words totally drooped me. “Oh. Right. I guess nothing new or brilliant in it, then.”

“Torres, every application builds on methods used before. That’s how it works. So no, maybe not groundbreaking, Nobel-prize-winning brilliant. But if it works, then it’s a damn good step.”

Venec was a lousy negotiator, and a piss-poor front man. But his approval made me glow.

And then I yawned, a huge, jaw-cracking yawn, and the moment was broken.

“Torres. Go home. Go to bed. I don’t want to see you here until nine. And for god’s sake, do me a favor and look like crap when you show up, will you? Because I really hate people who can function on less than six hours of sleep.”

The subway back to the hotel wasn’t quite so entertaining at 2:00 a.m. as it was at 11:00 p.m. The people smelled worse, for one. Then again, I probably wasn’t anyone’s idea of a treat, either. I sniffed at my sleeve, and picked up the scent of sweat, blood, and…hmm. That would be Venec’s scent, whatever it was. “Nice,” I said, and glared at the old guy who looked over at me like I was too young and too female to be out alone. He dropped his gaze first, and I was glad when he got off the train at the next stop. He wasn’t twigging my creep-o-meter, but I really wasn’t in the mood for disapproving glares. I’d get enough of that waiting for me when I got home. I really hated disappointing J, but I wasn’t going to back down.

My resolve was unbroken by the time I got back to my hotel, and it was also unneeded. The bed was still made, the room empty except for a note written on hotel stationery, in J’s usual perfect handwriting.

Bonita,

I am an overprotective ass, and have retreated to my antediluvian cave to ponder the many ways of my overprotective ass-ness. Allow me a father’s worry, and forgive me my excess, and I will try to remember that you are indeed an adult—if not always an adult with the best judgment.

I snorted at that.

Call me when you are ready. I promise that I will not yell. Much.

All my etc,

J

I put the sheet back onto the table, shucked my clothing and draped it over the chair, and crawled into bed, the weight of the day finally catching up to me and turning my bones to lead. I didn’t think Venec had to worry about me showing up too early this morning. I wasn’t even going to lay odds on getting there by noon.