Pack of Lies

seven

Pietr must have sniffed something in the current, because he hustled me out of the office like he was afraid the place was about to explode. I was so taken aback by what had happened that I let him, barely even noticing his presence as he handed me my coat and we went down the stairs and out through the lobby.

I pride myself, with some justification, on being more analytical than impulsive, on staying focused and calm. Even when I was diving into some new hedonistic impulse, I never lost control. And yet right now I felt like every single inch of me was fizzing and spazzing like a ten-year-old on her first current-rush. What the hell had just happened? Yeah, okay, Venec and I had sparks. We had chemistry. We had ha-cha-cha, like Zaki used to say. None of that explained the weirdness when we looked at each other in fugue-state, or my thoughts landing in his head without intent or effort. That last…it just wasn’t possible. There wasn’t any such thing as telepathy, just fine-tuned pings, and pings didn’t happen without intent. Not once you got past the wild years of prepuberty, at least, and the two of us were damn-well past that sort of idiocy.

And that…oh, my god that current-shock between us, just then? My legs went wobbly just thinking about it, and not just because it had been too long since I’d had a play-partner who was also Talent. That had been…wow. It made my earlier jumpiness feel like nothing, like an unpleasant hiccup knocked away by an orgasm. And okay, maybe not the best choice of analogies, even if it was probably pretty accurate.

Even once I recovered myself a little, my skin and synapses settling down, there were so many unanswered, probably unaskable questions filling my head and wondering what the hell? that I let Pietr, for once, do all the heavy lifting in the conversation.

It was a very quiet subway ride down.

We stopped on the way over to the scene, and picked up coffee and a bagel with cream cheese from one of the corner carts. The harsh caffeine did the job, burning my throat and making me focus on the here and now. Pietr kept sliding looks at me, the way guys do when they think they’re being subtle. I ignored him, eating the bagel as we walked even though I wasn’t really hungry. We burned calories fast, when we were working, and even with J’s scolding I hadn’t had a chance to recharge properly.

Finally I reached out and slapped my partner on the shoulder, letting him know I knew he was hovering.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t know if it was true, but we were going to make like it was.

We crossed the street at the crossing, ducking around the cabs waiting for the traffic light to change, and turned left, surveying the site. The difference a few days made in an otherwise unremarkable site was…scary. Where, in the early morning of the attack, the ground had been bare and cold, reflecting nothing but blood and mud, it was now…

“Sick.”

“Huh?” I looked at Pietr, almost surprised that he was still next to me.

“All that. It’s…sick,” he repeated.

“All that” was the piles of offerings: flowers and stuffed animals, saints’ candles in their tall glass pillars, and countless notes, folded and already yellowing. One pile had built near the site of the actual attack, and the other located on the other side of the walkway. Literally opposed; one facing off against the other, vying to be the more impressive, more important statement.

“You’ve never seen memorials before?” They sprouted anywhere there had been a violent crime—hit-and-run, a deadly mugging, a drive-by shooting…some grew, some didn’t. It all depended on how much publicity they got, how much word of mouth.

Pietr put his kit on the ground, and bent to pick up one of the notes from the second memorial. He opened it, and then dropped it almost immediately in disgust. “Never ones dedicated to a dead would-be rapist.”

That’s what the second group of notes and candles were: an homage to the dead man. I picked up the note Pietr had dropped, and smoothed the paper out so I could read it.

We know the truth. That animal will get what’s coming to it.

It was handwritten, in black ink, in a scratchy script that looked like a woman’s, or a man with a penmanship class somewhere in his past, dripping with hatred for the ki-rin.

“Are they all like that?” Pietr reached to pick up another one, but I grabbed his elbow roughly, stopping him midreach. “Don’t touch anything else. Wait.”

Pietr stood, and watched me, his gaze cool and patient. In the hierarchy of our pack, I wasn’t alpha, but Pietr was omega. If I said wait, he waited.

“How many notes, would you guess?”

He looked the collection over carefully, walking around but careful not to step inside an invisible but obvious boundary. “Twenty? Maybe twenty-five? A bunch are weighted with stones, but not all of them. It hasn’t rained or been particularly windy overnight, but some of them might have been blown away.”

“Seven candles. None of them have burned all the way down—one was never lit. Do you know what saints they’re to?”

Pietr gave me a Look. “You think I’m a good Catholic boy? You’re the one with the Latina last name.”

“Believe me, I’m not a good Catholic boy, either.” My dad might have been, but by the time I’d come along and my mom had walked out, he’d given up on the Church of Anything except his work. He’d been a carpenter, a damned good one. J said the only way I took after him was my attention to detail and a certain fondness for things that weren’t good for me. J went to church but never made a deal about me joining him or not, and anyway he went Protestant.

And none of that had any bearing to the case, so I shut that line of thought down, and brought my attention back to the notes.

Pietr got down on his knees and pulled a small notebook and ballpoint pen out of his coat pocket, squinting at the labels on the sides of the candles and writing something down for each one. Was there a patron saint for accused rapists? I was betting there was. Probably the same one pedophiles and abusers prayed to.

“Count the visible notes, too,” I told Pietr. “But don’t touch any of them, not even to get a better count. Not yet, anyway.”

“And the stuffed animals?”

There were only three in this pile. One teddy bear with a broken heart sewn to its front, and two snowy-white and sparkly unicorns with their horns cut off. Despite my attempt to be cool and calm, a shudder went through me at the casual promise of violence implied by that.

“Just make note of ’em. Unless you brought a camera?”

Pietr gave me a Look.

“We really need to start. Even if it goes on the fritz half the time. One of those cheap disposable ones that use actual film, maybe.” I made a note to myself to buy a few and throw them into my kit. It couldn’t hurt. Especially if it meant I didn’t have to glean every damn detail at every damn crime scene, going forward. Relying on magic for everything was just stupid. And I’d tell Stosser that, too, if he bitched.

My partner shrugged and opened his kit, pulling out a vial of metal shavings and a natural-bristle paintbrush. The current-charged shavings, brushed around an object, would help us determine if anything had been magically booby-trapped, without us actually triggering it. Nifty and I had run that up, after one of Venec’s nastier tricks during training. “You think someone left an unpleasant surprise?” I asked.

“Maybe. I’m not going to take any chances with people who leave offerings to an accused rapist.”

Accused, attempted rapist, technically. But since I shared the sentiments, I left Pietr to his job, and stepped across the paved jogging path to look at the other pile of offerings.

More stuffed animals here—a lot of unicorns with their horns intact and blue ribbons tied around their necks. Blue, for…right. The Virgin Mary. Purity and loyalty. Between that and the candles…had any of the victims been religious? I hadn’t even thought to ask, or wonder if it might be important. Something deep inside said it wasn’t a factor, but Stosser would give me hell if I thought of something and dismissed it on a gut feeling, especially if it turned out to be relevant, later. I pulled my own notebook out of my coat pocket, and jotted the thought down for later.

So. There were fewer notes on this side, but more candles, almost all of which had guttered out. Interesting. Had they been left here earlier, and the others placed later, or were they better protected from the wind on this side, and so didn’t blow out?

I pulled a strand of current from my core and played with it absently, passing the energy from gold to green and then back again as I thought. It wasn’t as good as holding one of my scrying crystals, but it helped. “Is there a spell to determine when something was placed in a location, and if not, can we fake it?”

“What?” Pietr called from where he was crouched, his head turned to look over at me.

“Nothing. Thinking out loud. Damn bat-ears on your head, boy.”

My partner made a rude gesture, and went back to his own job.

About ten stuffed animals, a bunch of roses, now dead and brown, so they’d probably been put there right after the attack, and a hand-tied bouquet of early wildflowers, wilted but still pretty. Did florists sell wildflowers, or had someone actually gone out and picked them? A scattering of notes, mostly on note cards rather than the sheets of paper in the other shrine. I wasn’t going to touch them until Pietr had tested this pile, too, but one of them was faceup and still legible:

You did not deserve this. We will hold you in our prayers.

Nice thought. Useless, in my opinion, but nice. Nobody deserved any of this—even the dead guy hadn’t deserved to be gored like that, not without a trial and conviction. I paused, and considered. Yeah, even though I hadn’t felt anything watching him die, I really did believe that.

Good. Okay. A little of my balance came back, and with it, my focus. Let the anonymous mourners pray. I’d take a more proactive route.

I took out my notepad again, and did a quick sketch of the display from a couple of sides. I should have gleaned it, but the thought of having to regurgitate it all up again… This way everyone could see it, and leave me out of it after the fact. Distance. The Big Dogs were always on us about keeping distance, and I’d proven already I needed more of that. Besides, J had spent good money giving me art lessons. I should use it every now and again.

The scratch of the pencil on rough-coated paper was soothing, and the lines quickly resolved into something recognizable. I was no great shakes as an artist even after those lessons, but I’d become a reasonably competent draftsperson.

When I had everything sorted to my satisfaction, I put the notepad away and chewed on the end of the pencil, looking at the display without really seeing it. No preconceptions, Stosser said. Facts only. Find clues. Clues to what?

In my hyperaware state, I actually heard and felt Pietr come up behind me.

“Everything’s clean on that side. No signature flares, no nasty surprises…just paper and plastic and baby-safe fabric.”

“Great. Check these?”

He knelt to do so, while I kept staring out across the site, my eyes half-focused. “What are we looking for?” I asked, as much for my own benefit as hoping he’d be able to tell me.

“Something that shouldn’t be here.”

“Very helpful.”

Thankfully, expectedly, he didn’t take offense at my sarcasm, but finished the testing.

“All clear here, too. When you did the gleaning…what were you picking up? I mean, I know what I saw, but…was that everything? If this was a crime of passion, do you think if we went in together…”

“Yeah. Oh. No. No no no.” I saw what he was leading to, and I wanted no part of it. “That ended really badly last time, remember?”

Last time we had gone in to get a full gleaning, and gotten trapped in the backlash of the emotions of a Talent as he died. We’d all been linked together, pooling current, and still the overrush had been so powerful we almost died, too. Stosser and Venec had laid down the law after that: physical gleanings only.

But Pietr had a point, damn him. The physical detail told us who was there, and what the end result was, but an emotional reading of the attack would tell us more about the why. I hadn’t done it before, in my first gleaning, because it was dangerous—and unneeded. But now, with doubt about the attack itself, if I could glean the girl’s emotions, maybe get a better idea of what she had been feeling…

Did not want to go there. Did not even think about going there. Losing objectivity was a really bad idea, and I wasn’t sure it would count as a “fact” in Stosser’s eyes. But if it let us nail down the case, then it was good, right? But I wasn’t going to do it linked. I was better than Pietr at gleaning and—

And if it had been rape—even attempted rape—then I owed it to the girl to keep her feelings on this side of the gender fence. That went back to my feelings about the first gleaning: there was no need for her to be violated like that twice.

“I go in alone. And if this doesn’t work,” I warned him, “we never ever mention it to anyone, and the Big Dogs never know.”

“Naturally.”

Hah. Good to be on the same page with that.

“You—”

“I’ve got your back,” he said calmly, and I could hear him settling down on the grass behind me. I could visualize him without even looking: slender and dark, his face still but his gray eyes watchful, probably making a face at how cold the ground was even through his long wool coat, but not saying a word of complaint; resolved and ready. If anyone came along while I was otherwise occupied, or if anything happened, he’d be there to take care of it. That was why we worked in pairs, whenever possible.

I could let go of the physical now.

It took me a few minutes longer than usual to slide into a working fugue-state. I was too aware of where I was, of what had happened here, to let myself relax, even with Pietr watching out for me. He was my partner, my friend…but he was also male, and right now that awareness was influencing everything else. No way to avoid it. This was a place where violence had been done; violence and sex wrapped up in each other and fueled by male aggression. Being female, in this place, had been dangerous.

Face your fear. That had always been J’s mantra. Face it, own it, and then get on with it. I took a deep breath and accepted my unease, and then tried to let it go. Some of it clung, like ice on a window, but enough slid away that I was able to center myself and move down into my core.

Seen with mage-sight, Pietr was only slightly more visible than he was normally: a calm soothing flow of current, like one of the deep and still lochs J and I saw when we went to Scotland. Nessie might well be under there, and you’d never know until she took half your boat for a snack.

Pietr and I worked so well together because we were so much alike: the others on the team had jangly, sparky, high-movement cores, especially Nifty, who never seemed to settle enough to be properly grounded. Pietr and I, we were the calm ones.

That was why Stosser had sent us. He knew that we were going to try this. Damn him. I still wasn’t quick enough to pick up on his reasons until they were shoved in my face.

When you’re in full fugue-state, though, it’s tough to really worry about anything outside, anything nonmagical. You’re too grounded, too totally focused. That’s the point of grounding; nothing can knock you over, magically or physically, if you’re doing it right.

I opened my eyes, and looked out at the shrine for the girl.

Almost every offering carried the faint, barely visible echo of current that inanimate objects acquired when they were held for a long time, or with great emotion, by a Talent. Not unexpected. She had been—was—one of us, and news was spreading fast. Most of the current-traces I saw were the normal blues, greens and golds, pale and dark, coating the objects like refracted light. An occasional burst of red and purple, agitated even after all this time away from the person who had handled them. A faint hint of… I leaned forward, trying to trace the shadow I saw. Something neon and not-neon all at once, sliding away when I tried to connect with it. If I’d been on my own time I might have followed, made contact, but interfering with the evidence was very much not standard operating procedure as hammered into us by one Benjamin Venec, and I really didn’t want him reading me a lecture this week.

Besides, I’d never even heard of black current before, and I wasn’t going to go poking my fingers into something I didn’t know. I gleaned the memory of what it had looked and felt like into a safe place in my brain, and moved on, diving deeper into the ether, moving beyond the current and into the emotional undertow.

The offerings all came up muted and mingled; the only thing I could pick up for certain was anger and sadness and a tinge of something I couldn’t quite identify, but thought might have been applied to the black current. Figuring I’d taken as much off that as I could, I moved my awareness back up and beyond…toward the site of the actual assault.

I don’t know if someone had directed people to put their offerings here, or if it just happened, but neither pile was at the exact spot. It took me a few seconds, in mage-sight, to identify the bushes I’d seen in my gleaning, but the moment I touched it, there was no doubt. I’m not an empath—I’ve never met an actual, functional empath, although there are some who claim they can read strong emotions, even in Nulls. But there are some emotions so strong that they take on an actual solid presence in the current, without having to go into the undertow. Fear. Pain. Anger.

Really strong emotions, almost strong enough to create an echo of who had been projecting them.

Almost, but not quite. It was enough, though, to confirm that the strongest of those weren’t the emotions of the participants, but rather the offering-makers. I wasn’t getting fear or lust or even anger, but a sense of greed, worry, anticipation—and a tricky, twisty thread of something I couldn’t quite recognize.

This was useless. The people who left their offerings might have had the wrong place…but they’d walked all over the actual site, knowingly or not. And they’d been projecting just enough to contaminate anything that had been there, to draw tendrils off, and plant feelers of their own in, until untangling it was well beyond my abilities.

But what about the girl? Where was she, in all of this? I tried again to find her, searching for older, stronger emotions underneath, but came up empty.

Normally that would be, well, normal. We’re taught control as our very first lesson in mentorship. Control is what allows us to use current, and not get brain-fried by overrush, when current overpowers the meat. Still, she had to have tried to defend herself, to call for help, and emotion-driven signatures etch themselves deeper. Panic or fear or any kind of heightened excitement—good or bad—should still have resonated in the ether. Instead, I got the magical equivalent of dead air.

I was good, but not good enough.

“We need to get Stosser out here,” I said. My voice sounded odd to my ears, as though I was listening from underwater, and Pietr’s acknowledgement was even more distant and watery, but I didn’t pause to consider it. Standing up, I walked across the pathway, absently slowing down to avoid a middle-aged Rollerblader who seemed equally oblivious to me, and went back to the other pile of offerings, the ones Pietr had cleared first. Pietr followed me, keeping a few careful paces between us, to make sure his signature didn’t interfere with whatever I was reading.

“Holy shit.”

I can, when the need calls for it, swear like a seasick sailor. But this…it blew everything more explicit out of my mind.

“Bonnie?”

*torres?* A sudden ping in my head: concern and alarm wrapped in a silver bullet.

“Hang on,” I said to my partner, patting the air to indicate the need for quiet, and dealt with the surprise visitor.

*what are you doing?* My ping in response was formed of definite annoyance, like that silver bullet sent back to the source. If he was going to take up lurking in my head again, shadowing me like some damned untrained amateur, we were going to have words, me and Mister Venec were, oh, hell yes.

*heard yelp* The pingback was still alarmed, although it was muted now that I’d responded. Normally pings just carried the sense of words, but maybe because I’d been so attuned to emotions, or working in deep fugue, I could practically taste his concern, like the bittersweet of fresh blackberries on my tongue.

Oh, for… *am okay*

*sure?*

*go away, venec!*

He took the brush-off, and any sense of him slipped from my awareness. Left alone, I was able to concentrate on what had shocked me. The tinges of black in the current I’d seen across the way were nothing compared to what was roiling over the other shrine-offerings. Not everywhere—there was a lot of clean blues and an interesting shimmering brown, plus a lot of red, faded around the edges: all colors I’d learned to expect off an emotionally charged item, although nobody really knew why, yet. The black, though…

My first instinct had been right, I decided. There was no way that black gunk was safe to touch. I didn’t even want to look at it.

“Pietr. C’mere.” I waggled my fingers, hoping he would understand what I meant. Sure enough, a few seconds later I felt his fugue-state slide up next to mine, like two soap bubbles floating next to each other. A gentle brush and the bubbles touched just enough to connect; still two distinct bubbles but with a shared wall between them. Another new trick we’d been working up; it took a lot of teamwork—and a lot of trust. I was pleased to feel it working without a hitch.

*see that?*

The shared spot made our pings turn into actual words, more than merely emotions or impressions, but it took a lot of energy to hold steady, and I could already feel my reserves starting to ebb.

*what is that?*

*don’t know. there was some on the other side but not as much. none at the actual attack site*

Pietr muttered under his breath. *it looks…almost familiar. like I’ve seen it somewhere before*

I got a sense of him stretching out, trying to touch it, and mentally slapped that idea.

*don’t*

*why not?*

*you’re kidding me*

A sense of unknown danger, and Venec busting my ass if Pietr got himself killed.

A sense of amused reluctance flowed into me, then agreement, a suggestion that we were done, and the soap bubble popped.

I followed suit, rising out of fugue-state and getting back my awareness of the outside world, wobbling a little as I did so. The pile of offerings looked exactly as they had before. I turned and looked back at the site of the actual attack. It looked the same, too. But it felt different now.

“So?”

We’d barely gotten into the office and shucked our coats before Stosser pounced, dragging us into the main conference room to make our report. Everyone else was already there, looking pretty beat-down. I was guessing the morning had gone about as well for them as it had for us. At least there was food—I’d been using too damn much current again, and I was starving like that bagel had been two days ago. Nick leaned over and shoved a white cardboard carton in my direction.

“So, nothing.” I pulled out a chair and grabbed the carton, opening it as I spoke. If I focused on the food, I could ignore Venec sitting across the table from me. I was still freaked over the incident earlier that morning, and pissed that he was bopping into my head like he owned it, and a hundred other things that I didn’t have time or energy to deal with right now. “I couldn’t get a fix on anything dating back to the actual incident. Too damn many Talent tromping all over the site, making it into a damned shrine, contaminating it. Like someone walking through blood splatter with muddy shoes.”

Mmm, grilled tofu and mushrooms in some dark brown sauce that smelled wonderful. They’d hit the Thai place, yay. I reached for a fork, and caught Sharon giving me a speculative look. I felt the immediate urge to see if my long-sleeved T-shirt had a stain on it, or if I had mud on my face, or something, but refused to give in.

“I was afraid of that,” Stosser said. “Damn.”

It took me a minute to realize he was responding to what I’d said.

“Shrine?” Venec tilted his head in query. “Was that what you were reacting so strongly to?”

Nifty leaned forward, clearly expecting some new revelation to chew on. I declined to enlighten him. Whatever was happening between me and Venec was going to stay between me and Venec. Or, hopefully, just between me and me. I so did not need or want complications in my life right now, and shit like that was totally a complication.

Even though I really wanted to know why and how it happened. And my id was screaming for more, please, of that sexy stuff.

Outwardly, I shook it off. “Sort of. Sorry about that, boss, didn’t know I was projecting.” I meant it to come across as snarky, but Venec refused to take the bait.

“Don’t take it personally, Torres. I keep tabs on all of you, in case…”

In case we needed an immediate bailout, was what he wasn’t saying. Did I believe him? No reason not to…I’d known he was keeping tabs, if not how closely, but it felt like he was throwing up smoke, somehow. That was job-related. The connection between us… I was suddenly aware of Nifty still watching me, and I moved the conversation on.

“Anyway, yeah. Two piles of offerings, one for the girl, one for the dead guy. You were right, people are choosing up he-said/she-said sides. And…” I hadn’t answered Venec directly, but the cause of my yelp needed to be shared, if not the aftermath. “There was something there, on the site,” I said slowly. “I don’t know if it’s connected or not, or if it’s important.”

I had the boss’s attention now, and everyone else’s, too. Even Nick put down his fork.

“Everything, Torres,” Stosser ordered.

Right. “There was… When I looked at the items, there was an undercurrent around some of them, like if you were looking at a stream, nice and clear, and then suddenly you saw an oil slick running along the bottom.”

“Oil slicks float,” Sharon pointed out.

“Fine. God, you’re annoying sometimes. Sludge. Sewage. Something thick and nasty.”

“Could it have been from the ki-rin?” Stosser asked. “We don’t know much about the fatae, if they have their own significant signature…”

I shook my head. “No. Emphatically no. Not unless every damned thing ever said about ki-rin was totally wrong.”

“But you’re sure it was current?” Nick asked.

“I… Yes.” I wasn’t sure why I was suddenly so certain, but I was. It hadn’t looked or felt like any current I’d ever encountered; I’d never hesitated touching current before, in any form, tame or wild, but… “Yes, it was current.”

Pietr picked up the report. “Bonnie’s right. It was nasty. I only caught a glimpse of it, working backup, but you did not want that anywhere near your core.”

Hah. That from the man who had wanted to stick his fingers in it, magically speaking.

“But you don’t think it’s related to the crime itself?”

I looked at Pietr, who was, as usual, holding up the wall with his backside. He shrugged. I looked back at Stosser. “It might be. The fact that it’s all over the site can’t be overlooked. I’d suggest either you or Ben go take a sample. It’s out of our league.”

“Hey!”

Nifty was the one who protested, but Sharon looked ruffled, too. Nick just picked up his fork again and went back to eating,

“No, she’s right,” Venec said. “I heard her reaction when she saw it. Anything that makes Bonnie jump like that—”

“Hey,” I protested, which he ignored.

“—is not something that we want you guys poking around in. I’ll go down tonight and investigate.” There was something in his voice that made me look sharply at him, but he was unreadable. I had the feeling that if I dug a little I could pick up whatever he was hiding but…no. If I wanted him out of my head, I had to stay out of his, too. Fair was fair.

“So the scene is basically a wash?” Sharon asked, clearly disappointed.

“Pretty much, yeah,” I told her. “Except the amount of attention it’s getting. That was unnerving. Is that sort of thing normal?”

“You’re asking about normal in this city?” Venec was amused, I could tell that much without even trying, although his voice was dry, as usual. The Big Dog had a dark sense of humor.

“You know what I mean—Talent-specific attention. My mentor says that there’s tension growing everywhere—are we looking at a potential flash point?” I was really proud of myself for using that term. I just hoped I’d used it right.

“I don’t think so,” Stosser said, but he didn’t sound as confident as I expected from him. From the looks on the faces of my coworkers, though, they were all reassured. “There’s something building,” the boss went on, “but the players have pretty much gone to ground on this particular instance, and not letting themselves get co-opted, so… But that doesn’t mean we can slack off. We close the case this week, before anyone gets any bright ideas.”

Pietr moved the spotlight over to Sharon. “Any luck with the truth spell?”

Sharon looked uncomfortable, which was damned unusual for her: she had a fabulous poker face. “Not…exactly. Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Stosser didn’t sound too happy. I guess they hadn’t had a chance to give their report before we came back?

“It doesn’t exactly go truth-lie…more like…shades of gray,” Sharon explained. Her hands stayed steady on the table, not moving at all. She may not have been confident, but she wasn’t going to apologize or temporize, either.

“What, a white lie versus a Really Bad Lie?”

Sharon visibly bit back an instinctive riposte—even she didn’t snark back to Stosser during business hours.

Nifty started to say something, but someone must have kiboshed him, because Sharon went on uninterrupted. “More like it tells us how strongly the person being tested believes what they’re saying, or if they have doubts.”

“Less truth and more veracity? Conveying truth, rather than absolute truth?” Venec leaned forward, like he’d just scented something particularly juicy. That was what we’d been discussing, in the break room: believed truths. What was he seeing that I wasn’t?

Sharon nodded. “Yeah. Exactly. And before you ask, yes, I’m pretty sure I can fine-tune it so we can tell the difference between fact and faith, but first I need to figure out exactly how accurate that fine-tuning can get.”

“What, you didn’t test it?” I asked, surprised. Sharon was methodical and Nifty was thorough. For them to let it go without a test…

“We did, but…well, in order to really test it we need an accurate benchmark, and…”

Suddenly the looks I’d been getting from my coworkers since I got back made sense. “And you needed somebody who is besettingly open, not to say distressingly honest, to get that benchmark, huh?”

Sharon looked at Nifty, who looked at Nick, who looked up at the ceiling as though disavowing any and all knowledge of any such conversation. “Well. Yeah.”

I sighed. “All right,” and I offered up my hands as though expecting to be cuffed. “Do your worst.”

We set up in the second-smallest conference room, since the main “experimental” one was still housing my gleaning, and nobody wanted to try to run two different spells at the same time, especially when one was still experimental. Like the movie said, “Don’t cross the streams.” Just because you don’t think anything bad will happen doesn’t mean nothing will.

We shoved the table off to the side of the room, and I got to sit in the armchair, with Sharon sitting across from me, about a foot away. The rest of the crew hung back, lining the wall on the other side of the room: they weren’t needed, but nobody wanted to miss the show.

Having a spell cast on you is an interesting experience. Despite the popular media-driven opinion of magic-users—thanks so much, J. K. Rowling—most of the time we don’t actually use formal spellwork; hell, most Talent didn’t use current knowingly, day-to-day. Maybe a flick of it to reheat coffee, or make the homeless person go to the other end of the subway car, or keep from getting wet if it rains and you don’t have an umbrella. Small things; mostly directed at inanimate objects, or other people—Nulls, who wouldn’t know magic if it hit them in the face.

Having someone knowingly cast a spell on you, sitting there and letting it happen, was a lot like getting a shot. The technician might tell you it wouldn’t hurt, and you might know it wouldn’t hurt, but you braced yourself anyway.

Sharon smiled at me, amused. “Relax, Bonnie.”

“This is relaxed as you’re going to get from me. Do it already.”

She nodded, and I could almost see her ground herself, slipping into fugue-state. Her face went still, almost slack, and her personality went Elsewhere, deep inside her core. Weird to watch…

“As I ask, so must you answer, truth inherent, not subjective.”

Wisps of current prickled on my skin, and I shivered.

“Nice touch, that, the ‘not subjective’ part.”

Her eyes opened, and she looked at me, personality back front and center. “Thanks.”

“Of course, it’s bullshit, since all truth is subjective. It’s all your point of view. Like someone’s definition of sexy. I think you’re hot, Nifty doesn’t. Which one of us is wrong?”

I said it so conversationally, so casually, I think it took everyone a minute to realize what I’d actually said, myself included.

I’m not sure who blushed harder, Sharon or Nick. Nifty just laughed; he didn’t give a damn if Sharon knew what he thought of her, one way or the other. Neither did I, really, but I’d prefer to have made the comment under my own steam, not a spell.

Now that I was aware of it, the current shimmered around me, like the haze you see over a campfire, only iridescent. It wrapped around my hands, and up to my chest and throat.

I held my hands up, examining them. “Pretty. Can the rest of you see it?”

“Nope.”

“Nuh-uh.”

Even Ian was shaking his head no, so it wasn’t a question of skill or power. The caster and the castee were the only ones who would be aware of it. “That intentional, to make it visible to the speaker, sort of full disclosure, or did you screw up?”

“It was intentional,” Sharon said stiffly. I’d figured it would be; Sharon might have worked with lawyers, and held her cards close to her lovely chest, but when it came to current she was about as unsneaky as they came. If she was going to spellcast you, she’d let you know.

“So. Test me. Or have we already established that it works?”

“Can you tell a lie?” the boss asked.

“I can lie like a professional when I need to,” I told Stosser. “Otherwise you’d have fired me already.” Oops.

“Can you lie now, Bonnie?” Sharon asked, redirecting my attention to her. “We need to test if someone can shade the truth while the spell is on them.”

“Oh, right.” I tried to think about something I could say that would be a half-truth. I blinked, and then blinked again, unable to come up with a single thing. All right, so I was a blunt, honest sort as a rule, but I had been telling Stosser the truth—I could lie, when needed.

Only not now.

All right, Sharon had wanted to test for half-truths and gray areas, too, right? How about something that wasn’t quite a lie?

“I’ve never slept with anyone I didn’t know their name.”

There was a snicker I barely heard. Damn it, I’d meant to say anyone that I didn’t love—which was a sort-of lie, because I’d never slept with anyone I didn’t like a great deal, but love…that was a little trickier to pin down. I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually been in love, honestly.

“First name, or last?”

I seized on Nifty’s question, meaning to have a little fun with him. “First, of course.”

Except what I said was “First and last, of course.”

“Damn it!” I put my face in my hands, willing myself not to say anything more. I had no problem with being honest, but even I had some things I had no desire to share—and the knowledge that the decision wasn’t mine anymore was making me feel distinctly uncomfortable.

Nobody should have their volition taken from them, not even if they agreed to it beforehand. The right to not incriminate yourself, right? Even if you were not guilty.

Sharon nodded at my outburst. “Not what you meant to say?”

“No. Forget about it, get this thing off me. I don’t want to be your lab rat anymore.” Especially with recent events. I wasn’t even willing to think about what had happened between Venec and myself, not even inside my own head right now: if someone asked me the wrong question, unknowingly…

Sharon hesitated, shooting a glance sideways at Stosser.

“I mean it, Sharon. Break the spell or I’ll do it myself.” I didn’t know if I could, actually, but the panic I could feel start to bubble up inside wasn’t something I wanted to mess with. And if I, without any real things to hide, felt that way…what would an actual suspect feel like? If panic hit, and they tried to throw off the spell…

Sharon needed to recalibrate this thing to be less obvious, and fast, before she tried it on anyone else. Otherwise she could get hurt.

“Shar…”

Stosser nodded, and Sharon released the strands of current, letting the spell disperse.

The result was almost immediate, and my panic faded. I took a deep breath, calming my nerves and letting my core settle back into its usual cool coil. “Well. That was a truly delightful experience. We’ll have to do that again sometime real soon.”

Venec, damn him, laughed.