Hard Magic

Seventeen

After rearranging my life, I finally fell into bed at oh-god-late and then got knocked out of bed at just after five in the morning by the phone ringing and an urgent *ping* in my head, all at once.

“Wha?” The phone got dealt with first, because my muscles worked better than my brain, when I first woke up.

“Office. Now.”

Venec’s voice. The ping tasted like Stosser, flavored with urgency and a bit of anxiety. Since I suspected he’d tell me the same thing, I batted it down with a sense of being awake and on my way, and it faded, satisfied.

Based on that wake-up call, I didn’t bother to shower, but threw myself into jeans and a black mesh shirt, pulled on my stompy boots, and was out the door, remembering only halfway to work that I’d forgotten to brush my teeth. Gah. A pause at the bodega to pick up a pack of gum and an extra large, extra strong coffee—in case they hadn’t gotten the coffee machine up and running after yesterday’s fuse-out—and I felt almost ready to deal with whatever crisis was going down. Thankfully Bobo was nowhere in sight—I guess his shift ended with sunrise, or something. Explaining him to the pack would have been embarrassing— “Hi, my mentor thinks I’m still fourteen.” Way to go establishing competence, yeah.

I ran into Sharon when I got on the subway, proving, I’m sure, something deep and profound about Fate, Karma, and the NYC mass transit system. She looked about as wrecked as I felt.

“If this doesn’t involve blood, steel, or fire, I’m going to kill them and sleep on their pelts,” Sharon said, taking a hard pull out of an expensive-looking chrome thermos. She took a good look at me, and offered a sip.

Expecting coffee, or maybe tea, I almost choked as the sharp scent of whiskey hit me, but I downed it anyway. Tea, yes, and honey, and the golden warmth of Kentucky’s finest slid down my throat and made my eyes open a little wider. I assumed it was the finest, anyway. What I knew about whiskey could be fit in a shot glass, but Sharon didn’t seem the sort to own rotgut, much less drink it, and nothing that hot-smooth could possibly be cheap or crap.

I returned the flask to her and had a chaser of coffee to settle my stomach. At our stop I pulled out the pack of gum and offered Sharon a piece. We ascended to the street, chewing spearmint in perfect, grumpy accord. The homeboys were sound asleep, the bodegas were just opening their doors, and the traffic was humming along at a pace you only ever saw before 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday.

“I am a god, and you will all bow down before me,” Nick announced as we walked into the office. If he was a god I’d hate to see what his creations looked like, because he was a mess. He was still wearing the clothing he’d been in last night, and his hair, never exactly well-groomed, was tangled and matted, as if he’d fallen asleep leaning against a wall in a wind tunnel. But his nose was twitching. Something was up.

“I bow before no one who looks like you do,” Sharon said, following my thoughts. “I assume from your ’tude that you know what’s going on?”

“He’s the cause.” Venec came in from the inner office and went directly to the coffee counter, pouring more into the mug already in his hand. “And he may actually be half as good as he thinks he is.”

“Praise from Caesar,” Nick said. “I won’t ask him to bow, though.”

Ferret-boy definitely hadn’t slept, because he was punchy as hell.

“Are you going to tell us, or just taunt us until we snap and dump your body off the GWB?” Sharon asked.

It took me a minute to remember she meant the George Washington Bridge. There was a slang locals used I hadn’t quite gotten down yet, much as I had always loved the city. “Patience, rose of the north, patience,” Nick said. “Not until we’re all here.”

He crooked his finger at us, backing out into the main hallway as though luring us into his lair—or as though he was afraid to turn his back on anyone. Playing a hunch, I slipped into current-sight, and looked at him. Sure enough, his aura was static-filled and jagged, like he was running on fumes. However he’d been spending the night, it had required hard current, and a lot of it.

“You might want to give him a hit off that flask,” I said to Sharon. “I think he needs it, just to sit.”

Sharon looked doubtful, but offered him the thermos anyway. I was pretty sure the first hit made his hair uncurl, and the second, more cautious sip evened out the lines around his mouth.

“I love you both, and I mean that in a purely nonplatonic fashion. Come, children. Come and grab a seat so that you won’t be blown away by the sheer scope of my mad skills and Talent.”

“You cracked the case?” That was the only reason he would be so manic, and the Guys so determined that we be here at oh-fuck-early.

“Like a crowbar, my dear dandelion, like a goddamned crowbar.”

“Only problem is, inside we’ve got a tighter nut,” Venec said, bringing up the rear in our sleep-deprived parade. Ah. And that would explain the level of frustration in the manic, yeah. Also why there was the urgency. If they were almost-there but still locked out, all brains were going to be needed, even half-asleep.

There were doughnuts on the conference room table; hot, glazed, disgusting-looking pastries that had clearly come right off the conveyer belt and been Translocated directly to us. Domino’s delivery had nothing on a Talented friend in the right—or wrong—place. Nick fell on them like a ravening hound, and I waited until he’d filled a paper plate and retreated to his chair before risking my own hand to reach in.

“Those things are fried death,” Stosser said. He had been sitting in the chair at the far end of the table, his hair pulled back and his eyes closed, and I’d almost thought he was asleep until he spoke.

“No Talent has ever died of coronary infarction,” Venec said. “Relax and let the children gorge.”

Sharon passed on the doughnuts. There was a reason why she was lean and elegant, and even with current-burn I needed to spend more time in the gym—as soon as I found a gym to join, anyway. By the time Pietr and Nifty showed up, the box held a few crumbs and a scattering of greasy sugar.

“Took you long enough,” Stosser said, annoyed.

“I was in Pittsburgh,” Pietr said. “It took some explaining why I had to leave.”

“She still speaking to you?” Nifty asked, probably thinking that he was being funny.

“They promised to consider it, if I groveled prettily enough.”

Nifty choked on his bagel, and Sharon rolled her eyes. Nick and Stosser seemed oblivious. Me, I just wondered what gender “they” were, and if they knew people in this town. I’d never done a threesome, interestingly enough. I wasn’t sure it was something that actually appealed to me…but I wasn’t going to rule it out, either, until the question came up.

Nick took the floor, as soon as everyone settled in. “So. Working my ass off, and flexing some extremely delicate and, dare I say it, elegant spellwork, I came up with the goods on the mystery woman Bonnie scoped, out in Chicago.”

Whoa. “What kind of spell? Did you do a trace? How did you find something to lock onto?” My brain suddenly woke up in a way that even the sugar hadn’t been able to effect, and I leaned forward, my fingers twitching even as my pad and pen appeared in my hands. What had I missed? How had he gotten that information?

“Trade secret.” Coy did not look good on Nick.

“Calling bullshit! Tell!”

“Torres, heel. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but now is not the time.”

Venec was right, damn him. I shot Nick a look that warned this wasn’t over, and leaned back.

“Thank you. Yes, this woman is, as Bonnie suspected, a business partner—a silent business partner. She feeds Arcazy cash he doesn’t have, and he uses his contacts she can’t access, and everyone’s happy, far as I could tell. Certainly their bank accounts were benefiting.”

“What contacts couldn’t she get?” Sharon for the practical questions. “Was there some reason the Reybeorns wouldn’t or couldn’t know about her?”

“They wouldn’t do a deal with a Null,” I said, as sure of that fact as I was of the sugar crash I was going to have by mid-morning. “They were high-end Council, and she was a Null from another territory. They might have mingled in the same social circles, and they wouldn’t have blinked about working for or with her indirectly, but they weren’t going to cut her in on a business deal. Not one that they cared about the way they did these real estate things.”

“You’re sure of that?” Venec asked, even as Stosser was nodding agreement. It was one of those things, I guess, that you knew or didn’t, just growing up around it. A lonejack wouldn’t understand, not really. From what I remembered about my dad, admittedly not the best judge of things, lonejacks could be particular about who they were friends with, but business was business. You held your nose and you did the deal. “Yeah, I’m sure.” It made sense, and all the things I’d overheard at the café fell into place with a satisfying click. Damn. But…

“Then she’s not a suspect,” Pietr said, matching my own thoughts. “A Null couldn’t have killed them that way, not without leaving a physical trace. And if she was going to kill anyone, wouldn’t she kill her partner? I mean, he’s the one who backed out and won’t play with the Reybeorns any longer, costing her money. Same problem we started with—means and motive.”

Nifty drummed his fingers on the table, thinking out loud. Unlike the rest of us, he wasn’t sucking down caffeine, and looked disgustingly alert. “Could she have killed them in order to set him up? I mean, we looked at him right away, and so did the cops. She had to know their public spat would make him a nice-looking suspect.”

“But, again, how?” Venec got up to pace the length of the room. As usual, watching him made me dizzy, so I looked at the table instead. “The cops couldn’t find any trace of physical evidence. We found evidence of current being used by a third person who was in the car before, and during the murders. We also have evidence that suggests that person was female. If this woman was a Talent, we’d have her. If the evidence pointed toward a male, we’d have him. Is there any way they worked together, intentionally clouding the issue?”

“There’s always a possibility,” Stosser said. “How do we rule it in or out?”

“I could… Someone could go back and ask him.” He was still a suspect. I was still in the doghouse for letting my interview with him become more. Someone else would be better at talking to him…but he would answer my questions without suspicion, if I phrased them right.

But if I had been wrong about him to begin with, how could I trust my evaluation now?

“Sharon,” Venec started to say, “could you…?”

“Already on it,” she replied. “Bonnie, there’s a way, maybe, to determine if our guy was full of shit or not. But it’s going to require that you trust me.”

“All right.”

“No. I mean…trust me. Really trust me.”

There were only three things that required that kind of trust, and I was pretty sure she didn’t have anything kinky in mind, so that ruled out two of them.

An hour later, I was thinking that maybe I was going to have to redefine my idea of kinky. Tying someone up and covering them with butterscotch and strawberries was totally normal. This? This was a little weird. And uncomfortable. And I really wasn’t sure I did trust Sharon enough to let it happen.

Not that she would hurt me; I trusted all my coworkers with my back. I even trusted them with my front. It was the insides I was still sorta protective about.

“Are you comfortable?”

“No.”

We were in the smallest of the meeting rooms, the one where Venec had held his current-conference. The table was pushed to one side, and someone had scrounged a folding massage table thing, like the kind they used for blood drives, and set it up against the far wall. That was for me. Sharon got a club chair, a padded leather one I don’t know where they found, but I was so damn stealing it when this was done. Maybe Nifty would lug it to the apartment for me. Translocation would be too traceable.

Putting aside my thoughts of larceny, I hopped onto the indicated surface, letting my feet dangle a few inches off the floor. I’d taken off my boots, and my socks suddenly looked dingy.

“Lie back. You need to be relaxed for this to work.” Sharon seemed to think that just telling me that was going to do the trick. Not exactly.

“Tell me again what you’re going to be doing.” This was twice now people had worked current on me, with my permission. The others didn’t seem to have any trouble with what we were learning to do; just me. My entire life, current had been a thing I used, not the definition of who I was—not because I didn’t have much, or because I didn’t appreciate it, but just because it didn’t really connect with who I was or what I was doing. J trained me to think like a person, not specifically a Talent. I guess that’s why I’d never really felt part of either world, Null or Cosa. I didn’t, as the psych books say, Identify. Now, suddenly, everything I did revolved around what I was, what I could do, around being a Talent, and it was scaring me. But it was also fascinating, and like everything else that ever caught my fancy, I wanted to know everything possible about how it worked.

“It’s like the trace-dump Ian worked out, a little,” Sharon said, but she was clearly hedging, meaning that it wasn’t like that at all. “Except that I’ll be looking at your memories of the event.”

“In my head.”

“In your memory of the event. It’s not like I’ll be able to read your thoughts or anything. Just focus on that event, and so will I, and I’ll be in and out before you know it.”

Sharon was a damn good tactician, and was probably great out in the field, but she had a lousy bedside manner. I could feel my anxiety actually spike, rather than decrease.

“I don’t like doing this, either,” she said, I guess picking up from my expression that her reassurances hadn’t helped. “I don’t want to know what people are thinking. It’s not comfortable for me, either—everyone’s got just enough room in their head for themselves, and anyone more makes for crazy. So believe me, I’ve got no interest in poking anywhere else but what we’re after.”

“And you’re just going to look? No touching?” I didn’t mean it in the physical sense. She understood.

“No touching, no taking. Imagine it…like having a painting you think is an undiscovered Master’s work. You can hang it on your wall, and tell everyone it’s real, but the insurance company wants to be certain. So you bring in an expert, who can tell just by studying the brushstrokes if the work is real, or if it was done by the Master’s apprentice, or some hack ten years ago. The painting stays on the wall, in your possession, and the expert walks away with a memory of having seen something that, like all memories, will fade over time, or be pushed out by new memories.”

All right. That…made sense. I could visualize what she was talking about, make it work for me.

Lying back, my head and shoulders elevated slightly, I took a deep breath, held it in, and then let it out, counting the way she’d told me to:

“Ten. Nine. Eight.”

At seven, Sharon’s voice joined mine in the count-back. At four, I stopped counting out loud and just did it in my head, Sharon’s voice still accompanying. At two, I realized that Sharon’s voice was in my head, too.

That easily, I was back in Will’s office, looking at him across the desk, listening to him answer my questions, but it wasn’t exactly the same as the moment, and it wasn’t exactly the same as a memory. It was like…watching through a one-way mirror, the kind they use in cop shops when questioning a witness. You can see them but they can’t see you. Although anyone who has ever seen one of those shows knows there are people staring at them behind that huge-ass mirror, don’t they?

Focus on the memory, Sharon chided me, inside my head. You’re blurring it, sending me elsewhere.

Ooops.

I concentrated on the memory, on the words Will said, the way he said them, the way his body moved…okay maybe not so much on that.

All of it.

All right, then.

Some other stuff leaked through; the way he’d looked at the bar that evening, his gaze intent on mine, the way he’d taken my hand, thumb sliding under my palm, the tilt of his head when he listened to what I was saying rather than thinking about what he was going to say next…the touch of his lips on my skin and okay, not going there.

Thank you for that. Sharon’s mental voice was distracted, dry…but not totally disapproving. I guess I’d been more worried about that than I thought.

Worrying about what someone not-J thought about me was a new thing. I wasn’t sure I liked it.

All right. Going to back out now. Will leave you here, all you have to do to come back is let go of the memory, and count forward to ten.

There was something in her voice that made me think it wasn’t as easy as all that, but worrying wasn’t going to make it happen any easier. She’d have to explain to Venec if she left me trapped in my own brain, after all, and I didn’t think she’d want to do that.

I waited what seemed like only a few seconds after I “felt” Sharon leave. The sense of that mirrored wall disappeared, and I was back in the room with Will again. He was still handsome. Still charming. Still intense. I still wouldn’t mind getting horizontal with him, yeah. And yet there was a distance there that hadn’t been before, not at the time, and not in my memories. I wanted to blame Sharon for it, but knew, even then, it wasn’t her fault.

I was looking at him as a possible suspect, now. Things could never go back. Forward, maybe. But not back.

One. Two. Three. Four.

“Five. Six. Seven. Ow. Eight. Nine.” My back was killing me, but I finished the count-back the way Sharon had told me, just in case breaking it off had dire consequences. “Ten.”

“Sit up slowly. If you feel dizzy, let me know right away.”

I’d been expecting Sharon, or maybe Stosser. Not Venec, and certainly not with that gentle touch on my arm, and soft voice in my ear.

“We get what we needed?” I asked, even before I could open my eyes. They felt gummed shut, and might take some working open to avoid tearing the lashes.

“We did.” Sharon’s voice, a little farther away. Someone—Venec?—held a damp pad to my eyes, and the gunk softened enough that I could open them.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” His voice was cooler now, or maybe I’d hallucinated that softer, warmer tone.

There was a glass of water in his other hand, held up in offering, and I took it thankfully. My throat was dry, but not sore, and nothing else hurt, so I guess I came through the experience okay. Wasn’t sure I ever wanted to do it again, though. Being a stranger in your own memories is weird shit.

“So what’s the judgment call?” Venec asked, leaving the glass in my hand and moving away.

“He wasn’t lying to her.”

Before I could even think about being relieved, she added, “But he wasn’t telling the truth, either.”

“Well, we already knew that,” I said. “I mean, that he had a silent partner he wasn’t telling us about.”

“No, it was more than that, like there was something else entirely on his mind, something he was trying to keep from you but couldn’t stop thinking about, and it was distracting him. Something that had nothing to do with what you were asking him.”

Sharon sounded so puzzled and annoyed about not being able to figure it out, that I tried really hard not to laugh. Venec had no such hesitation.

“He was on the make,” he said bluntly.

Sharon’s expression was worth getting up at oh-fuck-early for—a combination of dawning comprehension, horror, and an embarrassment I didn’t quite get until I realized that she was embarrassed for me.

Then, I admit it, I did laugh. “Well, that made two of us then. Oh, stop glaring at me, Venec. I admit I was an idiot, and it won’t happen again. But scoping someone out doesn’t make you a criminal. Especially if it’s mutual.”

“Hmm.” He sounded so noncommittally disapproving, it just made me laugh harder. Inappropriate stress-responses 101.

Sharon took refuge in clinical pissiness. “I don’t think that was all he was avoiding,” she said. “There was something on his mind that he didn’t want you to know about, something he didn’t want anyone to know about, but it kept coming into his mind anyway.”

Venec paid attention, then. “The kind of thing he didn’t want anyone else to know about? Or the kind of thing he didn’t want to know about, either? Something he was trying to not-know?

Wow. I would never have thought of that. Venec was a tricky bastard.

“Maybe…” Sharon sounded as if she was trying the idea on for size, too. “It fits, yes. How he was sliding around, telling the truth but not, as he was aware of the truth, letting himself not-know, yes.”

“Would you recognize it again, if you encountered that?”

“I…I’d like to say yes. I don’t know. But I’d be looking for it, as a possibility, now.”

“Good enough.” Venec nodded once to me, then to Sharon, and left the room, leaving the two of us staring at each other.

Oh hell. Might as well deal with the elephant in the room, before it crapped all over everything. “The initial interview. They should have sent you to talk to him, not me. He would have opened up to any female, and you would have known right away something wasn’t on the up-and-up.”

“Damn straight,” Sharon muttered. Then she shook her head, sighing, and sat back down in the club chair and looked at me, as direct a gaze as I’d gotten from her since day one. “Do you get any of this? I mean, not what we’re doing, but how we’re being handled? The big dogs knew about my truth-sensing, the same way they knew about Pietr’s invisibility thing, and your ability to see and remember details—and by the way? You are absolutely awesome. I’ve never dipped into anyone with that much recall. I couldn’t have gotten such a good reading if you hadn’t seen and stored it all.”

I’m pretty good at accepting compliments, but Sharon’s sort of floored me. “Um, thanks.”

“Earn praise, get praise. Earn ass-kicking, get ass-kicking. I just resent like hell that my one seriously useful skill is being overlooked, especially since it cost us time. It’s stupid, and I don’t like working for people who are stupid.”

“How about forethoughtful?”

We both jumped. Damn it, Stosser had just ghosted in like he was taking lessons from Pietr, and I was going to bell everyone in this damn office before I had a heart attack.

“Do you expect to speak to every suspect, every time?” he asked Sharon.

“No. Of course not. But—”

“Do you think that you will be the only one out in the field?”

“No. Of course not. But—”

“Then you allow that your coworkers, not blessed with your natural skill set, will need to learn how to ask the right questions and listen for responses? To determine on their own, through experience and training, if someone is lying or not? Even though they might not be as immediately accurate as you?”

Sharon clenched her jaw, but I could see that what he was saying was clicking inside.

“And what happens if you run into someone who can block you? If we all come to depend on your skills, and don’t develop any of our own in that range?”

“All right.” She didn’t sound angry, just tired. “All right. I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it. Point made.”

“But where does that leave us now?” I had to ask. “Having used Sharon’s skill in conjunction with mine—and I think we deserve an attagirl for that, by the way—we’re now left with the fact that Wi—that the suspect was not—truthful about something beyond being a hound and that he had a silent partner, something that he didn’t even want to let himself think about. So what is it, and how do we find it? And is it even relevant or just another goose chase? That’s our uncracked nut, right there.”

I guess maybe I should have been more upset about Will, about getting my brain searched, about, I don’t know, all the stuff I was being stuck with. But all I could see was the puzzle, shiny and bright in front of me. The prize was inside, but the puzzle was what fascinated me.

It’s what makes you good at this.

“Get out of there,” I said out loud, without thinking, and had the other two stare at me with confused expressions.

“Sorry. Thinking out loud.” Damn it, did Venec do that to everyone, or just me? And if just me, how come I was so blessed?

The little voice in my head had disappeared. Of course.

Meanwhile, Stosser took the nut—and us—to our resident nutcracker.

“Can you do it?”

Nick looked up at the ceiling, as though he was calculating his chances in the tiles. Sharon and I, not knowing what it was Stosser wanted him to do or why he needed to calculate it, held our breath, waiting for a response.

“It’ll be tricky. And maybe ugly. But…yeah. I think I can do it. You going to foot the bill?”

“So long as you’re on the clock, we’re covering the costs. You know that.”

“Yah.”

Whatever it was that he was going to do, Nick didn’t seem too happy about it.

“All right, later—”

“Now.”

Nick looked like he was going to balk. Funny, he was still the skinny geek I’d met that first day, but something was different. Something I couldn’t quite see, but knew was there. We were all changing, I guess. I wondered what they saw in me now.

“Come on, Shune. You’re going to have to trust them with it sooner or later. Might as well be now.”

Nick swallowed, then nodded. “They might be useful at that, anyway. Bonny Bonnie, you’ve got some solid grounding in you. Would you be willing to loan me some of that?”

“Sure.” I didn’t even have to think about it. “But what for?”

“I’m going to go surfing.”

“You weren’t shitting me. Wow.” The computer system wasn’t brand-new or, as far as I could tell, particularly powerful. But it was a computer, and that meant it was to be treated with caution. A computer, kept in an office filled with Talent under significant stress? I was amazed it hadn’t been reduced to a plastic shell of smoking and melted metals by now, especially considering the bad case of gremlins we’d had.

“It’s grounded and warded. There are ways to make it reasonably safe to use.”

The pile of cables behind the desk were thicker than normal, and plugged into a surge protector strip that looked as though it came straight from NASA. “Reasonably safe can still cost you significantly in repairs. That’s something Old Ben and the Founders never foresaw.”

“Old Ben was a genius diplomat and inventor, not a genius prognosticator.” Nick got down on his hands and knees and fiddled with the cables, making sure everything was set to his satisfaction. He was muttering something under his breath; I assume to reinforce whatever protections he’d put on them in the first place. Stosser had deposited us in this room and muttered something about getting everyone out of the office for lunch. Part of me wanted to be with them. The other part was totally fascinated about what I thought we were about to do.

He paused in his fiddling, and I took the opportunity. “You’re a hacker, aren’t you?”

He nodded, not looking up at me.

Rare. Oh my god rare, like flawless-diamond rare. No wonder he was quiet about it. No wonder why the Guys wanted him. Most Talent could, carefully, use technology. Some could even use spell-tech, a specific cantrip designed to interact with tech, not conflict. A Talent-hacker? That was someone who could slip inside that most delicate of technology, the computer, and use free-form current to make it…do things. A Talent-hacker could ferret his or her way into the virtual world and make it dance to their tune, not crash….

The most famous Talent in the Cosa Nostradamus was McCunney, who had used current to siphon seven million dollars from a military contractor’s account, and then disappear so well that even ten years later nobody knew where he was. He was alive, though, because every year on the date of the heist, that company got a postcard, mailed from a different location, addressed to the current CEO. Sort of our version of D. B. Cooper, I guess, except that we knew McCunney was alive and well and having a blast.

Ferret-boy hadn’t been kidding, back in Chicago, about having his choice of job offers.

“What do you need me to do?”

“How are you set for current?”

I reached inside to check my core. It was cool and settled, surprisingly—I guess whatever Sharon had done hadn’t touched it. Good to know. The threads coiled neatly, shading from dark to light and then back again, pulsing gently, like the purring of a sleeping cat. “I don’t actually run full-up….”

“You should start. We all should. The building’s still screwed from the hit we took, but—”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.” No, but I could fake it. J taught me never to be unprepared, no matter what the situation. I always had cash, condoms, and a backup source of current, if needed. My core might not be overflowing, but I had enough to get by. Reaching out, I felt the shimmery charge of the subway, rumbling under the street, ready and waiting like a patient dog, if I called it.

“Yeah. I’m set. You?”

Nick nodded. “Never unprepared. Talent Scouts motto.”

“No such thing.” There should be, though. Maybe it was us. The thought—and the resulting image of Nick in a Scout’s outfit, knobby knees and all—made me laugh.

“Just sit there, and sink yourself down as much as you can. If I need you, I’ll need you fast and probably won’t have time to ask nice first. Okay?”

“Gotcha. Lightning Rod Torres, that’s me.”

Current ran with electricity, in most things. It also grounded like electricity. One of the first things you learn in mentorship is how to ground so that current can pass right through you. Useful if you get caught up in shit you can’t handle, psi-bombed, or just pull too much down. Or someone near you overrushes, and grabs at you in their panic.

Grounding’s easy, for the most part. You just let your awareness sink down, through your core and past it, down through your soles, making yourself heavy and solid until you come to something that’s even more heavy and solid. On the East Coast it doesn’t take too long—the geologic history that gave us the Appalachian Mountains also left a solid rock mass with lots of toeholds for twitchy Talent. I connected with the bedrock, settled myself to match its gravitas, and went from anticipatory to stone-calm in the breadth of a breath. Wired and ready, but calm.

Nick sat in front of the computer, and started typing. It looked as though he was hitting the keys randomly, and the screen remained blank, so I looked down—and the surge protector was unplugged.

Um. Okay.

Even as I thought that, a bolt of dark red current jumped from the plug to the socket, and the screen lit up with a pale green glow.

I think my eyebrows actually hit my hairline. Wow. Demon in the box, for sure.

I’m not a total e-loser. I have a computer, stored in J’s apartment, and an e-mail address, and when I was in school I even had an instant-message account, to keep in touch with everyone. I just never got into tech, because what was the point? A cell phone, carried next to a Talent’s body, would crackle and die within three months, just by sheer proximity to the core. I once managed to keep a really simple portable CD player working an entire year, using it every day, but I killed a professor’s PDA dead just by sitting in the front row during a stressful semester.

I still felt bad about that.

Nick probably didn’t have any more luck with casual electronics than any of us. But when he focused…

“Come on, let me in, let me in, let me in.”

As spells go, it was pretty stripped down. Seemed to work, though, because the screen went from a dizzying shade of swirly pale green to darker blue, and then suddenly it resolved into a vortex that made me want to throw up.

I looked away, focusing on the reassuring solidity of the earth beneath my physical and metaphorical feet. Okay. Right.

Normally, you could tell when someone was working current nearby. Even if you weren’t paying attention there was a thickness to the air, like a storm front was moving in. As open and waiting as I was, the sense of whatever Nick was doing should have been practically visible. Instead, it was as if I was in the room all by my lonesome. I couldn’t even get a vibe off the computer, unless I looked at it, and I really didn’t want to do that again. He was totally locked down, tight like a tick.

Then a sudden spike hit the room, a jolt of clear current that hit me dead center in the chest. Normally, it would have raced down into my core, sparking my own current into action and causing some potentially nasty chaos. Because I was grounded and prepared, instead it slid through my bones, leaving me a quivering, sweaty mess but otherwise untouched when it exited out and dispersed along the tendrils of my grounding.

“Whoa.”

Nick cackled like a mad scientist. “Sorry about that. Did warn ya.”

“Yeah. Right.” I checked my grounding, reformed my calm, and only then went into my core to make sure everything was working okay. I felt a little scorched around the edges, but intact.

Nick was already moving on. I could hear the computer whir and hum, and then he was clicking keys again. “Gotcha. Hello, Unca. What do you have for me today?”

Unca? Oh, he hadn’t. Had he?

I risked looking long enough to confirm that Nick had, yeah, current-hacked his way into the IRS database, and was pulling up our suspect’s files.

“That’s like, how many years in prison?”

“Only if they catch us.”

“Us? What us, ferret-boy? I’m throwing you totally to the wolves, anyone comes knocking.”

“Shhh. I’m trying to figure this stuff out.” He waved his left hand—the right busy moving over the keyboard—and a printer I hadn’t noticed before hummed to life and started printing out pages.

Curious, I got up and, carefully, approached the printer. When it didn’t implode or otherwise melt down, I swiped the top sheets and started to read. The forms were unfamiliar, but I had worked with J on his investments enough to be able to pick up the basics.

“He was still doing business with them, when they died.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“He said he—” I stopped and thought. “He said he wasn’t going into any more deals, that he wanted them to buy him out. He never said they had. He never said he didn’t still have money with them when they died.” A distinction and a difference, that. Question was, had he meant to obscure the answer, or was it just an accident, him not thinking his words all the way through?

Nick finished whatever he was doing, and started backing out of the system. Now that I’d been tagged by his current, I could feel something happening, but it was so tightly focused, it felt farther away and less impressive than I knew it was.

“So if the suspect and his silent partner were still in business with the Reybeorns when they died, and were on good terms, despite their argument… Why didn’t they just sell his real estate, and give him his money?”

There was a click and a thump and the sense of something flattening in the air pressure, and Nick pushed away from the computer with the air of a man who’d just tightrope walked, successfully, between mountaintops.

“Because it was still unrenovated,” he said. “The location was in a prime area for urban renewal, though—the estimated value had gone up more than forty percent even before they started anything. Looks like they had a buyer ready to take it off their hands immediately. But from what your report said, the Reybeorns wanted to finish the job, and the way the deal was structured, nobody could pull out without losing their initial investment. Smart, to keep everyone honest.”

I shook my head. “Not so smart, to give them a motive for murder.”