Tricks of the Trade

eleven

Either intentionally or not, Venec left that faint connection open, so by the time Nifty and I made it to the office, I already knew that Nick was mostly all right, his computer was utterly fried, and while the rest of the team was nervous and edgy, and Stosser was annoyed, Venec was furious.

Not at Nicky, not even at the imp. He was furious at Ian, who had, as Nifty would say, sidelined him from the game, telling him that his injuries were serious enough to keep him on office-duty, same as Nifty had been. I walked into an office that was practically simmering with frustration and resentment.

Part of me wanted to avoid the entire thing, make like the others in obliviousness, just go directly to Nick, make sure he was okay, and then get my orders with the rest of the team.

I’d been raised to deal with my responsibilities, though, even when I was the only one who knew what they were. And the first responsibility, like it or not, want it or not, was getting Ian and Ben back on track.

I just wasn’t quite sure, even as I walked into the Big Dogs’ lair, how I was going to do that.

The two of them were sitting in chairs at opposite ends of the small office, glaring at each other. “Shune’s fine,” Ian said as I walked in, not even bothering to look at me. “The Roblin singed his fingers and fried his hair a bit, that’s all.”

Being a Talent means, by definition, that you can handle a load of current – and electricity – running through your body. Something that singed Nick’s fingers might have killed a Null. Stosser wouldn’t have thought of that, probably.

I knew that Venec had.

“I think our original guess was right. If The Roblin’s here to make mischief, its biggest challenge would be the ones who investigate mischief. So long as it’s targeting us, it’s not harassing others,” I said, addressing Ben’s worry first. “If we can keep it focused on us, nobody else will get hurt.”

Except maybe us. Still. Did a mischief imp, even the grandmother of imps, intend to kill? Then I thought about what some fatae considered harmless pranks, historically, and reconsidered.

“We can’t have it interfering with the ongoing investigation,” Stosser said. “You’ve probably wrapped up the body dump, and that was good work, but this break-in has already caused too much trouble. The client lied to us, hid details of the story, and nearly got Ben killed. I want to know exactly what is going on.”

“It goes for the unique,” I said, following my earlier thought. “I think that’s the trigger. That’s why me, and Nick.” I’d had time to think it through, on the subway ride back, lay it out into a semblance of a formal report. “We’re not the strongest of the pack, but our skills are unusual – I run cool so I bet that it was trying to make me angry, breaking all my stuff and getting me kicked out of my building, to see what I could do, what trouble it could cause. But Nick’s – ” I paused; even among ourselves we didn’t often vocalize Nick’s skill “ – Nick’s a challenge it wasn’t going to get many other places. So he’s going to be the real target... . But it might get bored, anyway. We need to find something... ”

A thought struck me, and the way Ben’s head lifted, his dark eyes looking even more shadowed with exhaustion and pain, I could see the thought reached him in that exact instant.

I said it first. “If it wants something unique, something different to play with... ”

“No.” Venec-voice. Boss-voice.

I didn’t let that stop me. “It makes sense. And if it’s already here, there’s no way to avoid it. We need to make it work for us, not against us.”

“Bonnie, no.” And then, suddenly, it wasn’t boss-voice anymore. “It’s too dangerous, especially without knowing how far it will go to get its jollies.”

Stosser was looking between us, his expression caught between knowing we had a juicy bone, and frustration that he didn’t have a chunk of it himself, and knowing that if he was patient, we’d work it out and then present it to him.

“If we’re ready for it, we’ll be okay.” Probably.

Venec was still shaking his head, even as I could tell he was running through how it might work. “We would have to... ”

“I know.” It would require that we open the very doors we’d shut, take down the walls we’d built. Make a target of ourselves, and use the Merge as a trap.

And neither of us knew if it was a trap that we would be able to escape, if we’d be able to rebuild those walls, once The Roblin was dealt with.

The idea terrified me.

“This thing we have,” I said to Stosser, before Venec could say, absolutely, that he wouldn’t do it. “The Merge. It’s unique enough to attract The Roblin’s attention, distract it from anything or anyone else. Even more than Nick.” And Venec was higher-res than Nick and me both; he’d be better able to handle anything The Roblin might try. I’d be the weak link here, but I was willing to take the risk. Okay, not willing, but I didn’t see any other choice.

“Trick the Trickster?”

“Exactly. And when we have it caught, then we can figure out how to make it go away,” I finished, keeping one eye on Stosser to see how he would react, and the other on Venec, to see if he was going to try to stop me from pitching the plan. There was always a way to banish imps, either through magic or bribery. We just had to get the upper hand, somehow.

I expected Ben to be angry that Ian knew, since he’d been as much about keeping it quiet, for his own reasons, as I had, but he just looked resigned, which was how I felt about it – resigned, and glad it was out in the open, sort of.

“You think it would be enough?” Stosser asked, considering what I’d suggested.

“I think it’s a crap idea.” Ben’s voice was flat, low, not at all growly. I hated the sound of it, hated being the one who took the growl out of his voice, but I honestly didn’t know what else to do. The Roblin was focused on us right now, but what happened if it got distracted? How ADD were mischief imps? What happened if someone less-grounded, unaware of what was happening, was its next target? Madame was wary of The Roblin. The other Ancient had come to the office to warn us, specifically. And the unease from my scrying was still riding between my shoulders like an imp itself, telling me trouble was in the neighborhood. Not good, not good, and not good. We couldn’t look away. Not us, not now.

“You have anything less crappy?” I asked Venec, letting him see where my thoughts were leading.

He glared at me, then deflated, shaking his head. “No.”

Stosser intervened, then. “She’s right. It’s the best plan we’ve got, and allows the others freedom to continue the investigation of the ongoing cases.” I got the feeling that Stosser really didn’t give a damn about the imp – it was an annoyance to him, not a problem. Keeping our solve rate up, that was the problem.

“Yeah. Oh. And here.” I pulled the recorder out of my pocket, popped the tape and handed it to Stosser. “You might want to go play this for whoever it is needs to hear it. Incriminates the company, and our minotaur friend.”

He took the tape, his long fingers cool against mine. I swear, the guy really did have ice water in his veins. “I have no idea how this one will play out,” he admitted. “The NYPD has no authority over the fatae, and the Council will deem it a matter between the business and their employees, and no concern of theirs.”

The Council was kind of bloodless that way, no matter what region you went to, yeah.

“Don’t take it to the Council,” Venec said, and there was a faint growl back in his voice. “Take it to the local unions. Dockworkers, garbage haulers, anyone you can find.”

“Null unions?” I was surprised; Stosser looked utterly shocked.

Venec reached up to touch the bandage around his throat, and almost smiled, but it was the smile of a dog that knew it had you cornered. “My dad used to tell me that the unions were all that stood between the working schlub and indentured servitude, not out of the goodness of their heart, but because they wanted the power of those working schlubs organized to their direction, not someone else’s. Let’s see if their desire to swell the membership rolls trumps fataephobia.”

Oh. That was twisty, so very twisty. Appeal not to someone’s desire to see justice done, but to prevent anyone else from taking advantage of someone they could make mutual advantage from. I forgot, most of the time, that straight-shooter no bullshit Benjamin Venec had a brain as devious as my mentor’s, and utterly lacked most of J’s ingrained social graces.

“It might not work,” Stosser said, tapping a finger against the back of his other hand, like a metronome for his thoughts. “But it’s definitely worth a try. If nothing else, it will bring Elliot Packing to the attention of others – and once they start looking for violations of objectionable practices, change might come.”

And that, really was why we did this gig, holding the actions of the Cosa up to the light. People – whatever their species – did shitty things to each other, for a whole range of reasons and justifications. We weren’t going to change human – or fatae – nature, but if there were consequences to those actions, then maybe it would stop them from happening again. Maybe.

Stosser stood up, my tape in his hand, and walked out of the office without another word, leaving Ben and me trying hard not to look at each other, but not able to look away.

Wow. Talk about an elephant in the room.

“You know I’m right. If this is as rare as you say it is, and we already know how much trouble it can cause, it will be like waving a red flag in front of a bull. The Roblin won’t be able to resist.”

“Bulls are color-blind, you know.”

I didn’t even bother to glare, instead reaching inside to slowly, carefully, dismantle the wall I’d built, one brick of control at a time. I wasn’t going to take it down all the way; I wasn’t quite willing to do that, not even to stop The Roblin, but enough. I could feel the pressure brushing against me, shifting against the exterior of my core, like... I couldn’t describe it; there were no words in my experience. Like waves rolling over each other, separate to the eye but not really, not in composition, water drops from one merging into the other, and then reforming... .

That wasn’t right, either, but it was the visual that stuck with me, even as I could feel Ben unbuilding his own wall, coming down less like bricks than a melting sheet of ice.

The image of two lovers undressing for the first time? Really not far off the mark. That thought didn’t help my nerves any.

I couldn’t say when it happened. I’m not sure it actually did happen, that there was a moment of Before and then After, or if things that always had been were suddenly surfacing. I didn’t feel any different, didn’t think any different; all the things I’d quietly, subconsciously worried about not happening, at least as far as I could tell.

I was me, still. Ben was Ben. I wasn’t overwhelmed, or undercut. Just...

Aware.

Really, really Aware.

*weird*

His voice, my thoughts, or the other way around. A sense of wonder and oddness and agreement and not a little awe.

And a sense, from both of us, of “this far, no further.” The Merge pushed; like a living thing: it wanted more. We resisted, and it subsided again, taking what it could get.

A moment passed, then another, and the sense of oddness faded.

Still aware, though. Like breathing for two, or... I had no frame of reference, and from the look on Ben’s face, neither did he.

“Now what?” Ben asked. “Here, Roblin, Roblin, Roblin?”

I had no idea.

“Well, while you figure it out, we still have an investigation to handle.” He walked past me to get to the door, and I reached out, almost instinctively, and touched his hip. The cloth of his slacks felt rough, abrasive under suddenly oversensitive fingertips, and he paused, as though I’d grabbed at him.

I could hear him swallow, without even looking, and felt guilty for the pain that must have caused his throat.

“I’m all right,” he said immediately. “It’s like having a bad sore throat, mostly, only on the outside. You can’t tell?”

“I didn’t try.”

That seemed to reassure him, and he nodded, heading out the door.

I let him go; he was the boss, he got to give the orders. But I mentally followed him down the hallway, anyway, the echo of his movements in my head, almost but not quite like hearing, or seeing, or smelling something familiar.

There weren’t any words to describe it. I wondered if, over time, I’d figure it out. I wondered if we’d get the chance to figure it out.

I didn’t wonder, any longer, if I wanted that chance.

“Here Roblin, Roblin, Roblin,” I said. “You want something that’s going to mess up my life, make me pissed off? Come try and rearrange the furniture here.”

I waited, but there was no indication that I’d been heard, no evil chuckle or high-pitched giggle or even a passing whiff of sulfur, or whatever presaged the appearance of an imp.

I waited another few minutes, then got up and went to join the rest of the team.

“We already know that the trace isn’t anything any of us have seen before,” Sharon was saying when I came in. It took me a minute to catch up with what she was talking about, my brain so filled with The Roblin, and Venec, and how much more trouble I’d just gotten myself into.

Right. The trace I’d picked up in the house. The thing locked in a warded jar, hopefully inert.

“We’ve been trying to come up with some way to test it, if we can figure out where it comes from, but there’s barely enough to poke at, and... ” She hesitated. “And it makes me feel queasy just being in the room with it. That’s not normal.”

Yeah. It had made all of us feel uneasy, hadn’t it, the moment we were aware of it. Why? Something stirred in my awareness; not me, but Venec. I glanced sideways at him, but nothing showed on his expression or body language, and the stirring faded, as though he hadn’t been able to get a grip on it, either.

Sharon hadn’t been comfortable with the guy from the start, certain he was lying but unable to prove it. Venec had investigated a missing kid, and now both kid and wife were gone, the wife dead, the kid missing-presumed-dead... and now this.

Could all be coincidence, the end run of some really bad luck on the part of Mr. Wells.

Or maybe not.

“So without knowing who broke in, or why they wanted those objects, or why they were so pissed off at the client, we’ve got nothing. No clues, no witnesses... ”

“We do have witnesses,” Pietr said, suddenly. “The house itself. The things that were broken, you said they were still there?”

“Yeah,” I said, sliding into a chair and waiting to see where he was going with that. “But how do you ask – oh.”

The Merge had nothing on a well-run pack when it came to sharing thoughts. No sooner had Pietr raised the idea than the rest of us were running with it.

“What about the simple scoop?”

Pietr was talking about a spell we’d been working on earlier, the one that was supposed to simplify the recreation process. The one that had blown up in Nifty’s face.

“What about it?” Sharon asked, not following his logic. Neither was I, to be honest.

“The scoop. It pulls everything from a scene, like a photograph, right? I mean, ideally. But what if we turn it into a mirror? To reflect what happened?”

“It wasn’t designed to do that,” Nifty said, his expression doubtful. Like Sharon, Nift was a damn good field op, and definitely tops in the decision-making, judgment-calling area, but they were crap at developmental magic. I was already feeling out the possible threads, and so was Lou, from the expression on her face.

“We designed it... we can redesign it,” Lou said, pulling out her notebook and flipping to a spot midway through. She studied that page, and nodded. “Yeah. Okay, maybe. Bonnie, we have the impetus of the spell aimed at retaining information – that’s why it kept imploding on us, because it couldn’t hold it the way a human brain can. What if we switched that to reflect, not retain?”

“Make it shiny instead of sticky?” My brain had already kicked into high gear. I’m a decent field op and crap at management, but when it comes to developmental magic... well, Pietr had the chops, and Lou might someday be as good, but honestly and with all due modesty, I doubted it.

“What exactly do we want it to do?” I asked the rest of the team. “Clarity is important, if we want the cleanest result. I mean, do we want a reflection, or a re-creation, or... ”

“We need the evidence to talk,” Nick said. “Literally, we have to be able to pose questions to it – ‘what happened here?’ and have it answer.”

I glared at the notebook, biting the inside of my lip while I thought. “No.” I hated to say it but, “No. You can’t make things act against their nature, Nick. Reflecting what happened around them is one thing, that’s basic science.” For Talent iterations of science, anyway. “Asking an inanimate object to react and respond? This isn’t Disney. We don’t do talking teacups.”

There was grumbling and an overall letdown in the mood of the room, as we tried to reshuffle our thoughts, and pick up another lead. I took out my own notebook and started jotting notes down, starting with a box in the middle labeled “evidence” and then drawing lines out in radiating spokes, trying to draw my brain out the same way, to give me an answer.

As though it were being poked, as well, my core shifted slightly, swirling warmth alerting me to something... .

Ben?

No, it wasn’t the Merge, but he was alert, too; I could feel him come to a higher awareness, even though his physical attention was on the conversation he was having with Nifty and Lou.

Something had just poked at us.

*ignore it* The thought was deeper than a ping, fuzzy and muted like a morning whisper.

The Roblin? Maybe. I took Ben’s advice and went back to my notes, intensely aware of the connection shimmering between us, silent but real, luring the imp out to play.

“There was no magic trace in that house,” I said out loud, thinking my way through. “Nothing except the one bit we found, that we can’t identify.” Sludge, I decided. Icky sludge. “We haven’t been able to identify the source of the claw marks.”

“We haven’t even been able to confirm they were claw marks,” Nick said. “There wasn’t any residue in any of the grooves, to test. I don’t know if they were calcium based, or metal, or... ”

“They had to be of a specific hardness to dig into that wood,” Lou said. “I’ve been able to eliminate some breeds based on that, but... it still leaves too many to be useful.”

“So without a known enemy, or trace to work from, all we have are the objects that were taken... a glass dagger, and a pocket watch.” Nifty got up and paced. “Why them? Was it for their sentimental value, or something else?”

“You think the dagger is more than a memory-glass?” Sharon frowned, then shook her head. Her blond chignon was starting to come loose, and she had stuck a pencil in it at some point, and forgotten about it. It was unlike her, but cute. I decided against mentioning that to her. Right now, anyway. “But there was no trace of anything more powerful. I mean, not even a hint of a smidge, anywhere in the house.”

“Not all magical items are obvious,” Nifty said. “Some of them don’t even register as magical, because they don’t actually do anything. They just are. Like the fatae.”

I nodded, underscoring the center box in my drawing. “Exactly. By their very nature they won’t call attention to themselves, unless you know what you’re looking for.” Like trying to pick a fatae out of a crowded subway car. Unless it had a particularly unusual physical appearance – a rack of antlers, or flames instead of a face – mostly they blended, your eye slipping right over them. It took knowing that they were there, and actively looking for them, to pick one out.

“My mentor called it inert magic, present but not accounted for.” Nifty was nodding, and Lou’s eyes were bright with thought, but Sharon, Nick, and Pietr either hadn’t had the same style of training we did, or just weren’t seeing it yet.

Right, Sharon’s mentor had been of the “have but don’t use” school, whatever it was called, so theoretical magic probably wasn’t on the agenda.

“Look, all current has a... a presence, call it. Right? We can channel and manipulate it. So it leaves an impression in the world, no matter how slight, even if our human senses can’t quite see it.” It sounded like I was talking out of my ass but there was something there, if I could just keep talking long enough to grab it.

“So we can’t see it, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. And if it was there and now it isn’t, can we see its absence?”

“Negative space,” Nifty said. “You’re talking about negative space. That’s insane, and possibly brilliant.”

“So you think that the objects themselves can tell why they were taken, even though the objects aren’t actually there now?” Nick looked like his brain hurt.

“Well... yeah.” It sounded more stupid than brilliant, put that way. But I had the feeling that it would work, and I’d gotten a lot done over the years, listening to my instincts. Only one way to find out... . I was nodding even as my pencil flew over the page, everyone’s comments blending into an idea being constructed under my fingers. Lou leaned over to watch, and Pietr ghosted to my side, but I barely noticed.

“Empty space impressions,” he said. “The current-weight of what isn’t there.” Pietr was almost classically handsome, with a jawline and nose that would make a Roman sculpture cry in envy, but right then he reminded me of nothing so much as a jowly, rheumy-eyed bloodhound, lifting his head and preparing to bay to the world that he’d caught the scent.

“Yeah.” Lou sounded pleased and satisfied. “I think we can do that, push energy into the blanks, let it sift around... . We just need someone with a really light touch.”

That would emphatically not be her. Or Nifty, for that matter.

“Bonnie, you’re the one who came up with it, you should do it,” Sharon said, like she was gifting me with something.

“I can’t.”

“What?”

I paused, and looked up at Venec, trying to figure out what to tell them.

“Bonnie and I are bait for The Roblin.”

Oh, okay. Blunt was how we were going to tell them, then.

“Bait? How bait?”

“If it is targeting us, taking the mischief to the investigators, the way we’d thought, then it’s going to look for ways in which to cause the most mischief. The situation we have, Bonnie and I, the ability to communicate directly the way we do, is... ripe for mischief.”

That was a mouthful. It also managed to skirt the fact that we knew damn well what was causing the connection, not to mention the physical and emotional affects and effects, and how much more than just communication it was enhancing. It also avoided any possible hurt feeling that could come up from our theory on why Nick and I had been targeted earlier, so long as Nifty kept his mouth shut, for now. And he would; nobody wants to be told that, even high-res, they’re still commonplace. Of course, I’d rather not be told I was odd, either. But there it was.

“So, either Sharon or Pietr... or Stosser?”

“Not Stosser,” I said without thinking, and everyone looked at me. I threw up my hands in a gesture of disgust and helplessness. “I saw him on-site, guys. The boss is brilliant, yeah, and way high-res, and he doesn’t have clue one what to do with evidence.”

Nifty snickered, and swallowed it almost immediately, but even Venec looked amused – and not surprised. “Ian doesn’t like situations where he can’t manipulate the results.”

Being born with plus-ten charisma and a mind that made both Venec and J look about as subtle as a rock... yeah, I could see where Stosser got used to being able to finagle scenes. But you couldn’t do that to evidence, not and keep it usable, and the boss knew it, and he must have found it howl-inducingly frustrating.

I almost felt bad for him. Almost.

“Sharon,” Pietr said. “She’s got the truth-sensing mojo working, so it makes sense for her to try, first.”

“I think Pietr should do it,” I said. Pietr faded from sight when stressed, the same protective invisibility that Retrievers specialized in. In fact, I probably could never have come up with this idea, if I didn’t know Pietr so well, how he felt when he faded, and how to find him again once he did. Huh. That was interesting, and worth mulling over – later.

“Both of you go,” Venec said. “Two attempts will give us a better chance of success.”

Fair enough; Lou, Nick, and Nifty would keep following up on our other leads, like the guy who had been with the missus, before he died, and our yet unidentified memory-glass maker.

“All right,” I said, pushing my paperwork toward them, so they could see better. “This is what I think you need to do. Instead of directing the current at the surfaces of what’s there? I want you to go into what’s not there.”

“What?” Sharon was our logical thinker, and I had a feeling the b-ass-ackward way this spell had to work was going to confuse her. Pietr got it, though. The spell was probably going to be almost intuitive for him, since we were looking for something that wasn’t there anymore.

There wasn’t any time to do a test run, not with The Roblin lurking around waiting for the chance to screw things up for its own entertainment. Also, odds were that the client had realized by now that we had figured out that there was something hinky about his missing objects, maybe even realized that Venec had worked for his dead wife and knew dirt on his past. Rich people very much did not like people investigating outside the lines, and they liked even less when we had dirt on them to fuel the investigation. Even when they were, nominally, our client.

Unlike Danny, who would do whatever it took to satisfy the client’s needs, we worked for the evidence, not the individual. They knew that when they hired us, but most of them didn’t really understand what that meant. Once Wells figured it out, he would kick us off the case, shut down our access to protect whatever he was hiding, whatever had drawn the housebreakers to him.

We would still investigate – once you set the pups on something, we decided when the case was closed – but it would be harder to run tests, or get anything resembling a straight answer.

Venec tapped on the table, getting everyone’s attention. “Pietr, Sharon, are you confident that you can handle this?”

My pack mates nodded, because what else could they say? They had a good hold of the original identification spell I’d riffed on, and this wasn’t really all that different, but nothing remained the same once it was implemented; your own personal current adapted to it, so everyone ended up with a slightly different result – ideally within a set range, but not always.

“Yeah. We got it,” Sharon said.

“So, go,” Venec told them, waving a hand in dismissal.

Pietr held up my notebook, asking permission, and I nodded. I’m not sure that I would have let anyone else take my notebook – we put down all our working thoughts there, almost like a traditional grimoire, now that I thought of it – but this was Pietr. I’d had sex with the guy – more, I’d slept with him. I trusted him at my back – or inside my notebook.

I felt a twitch of unease; what happened if the spell backfired? What if...

No. Not me. That prickly, poking swirl was back, a little harder than before, and it was difficult to ignore it. Acting on impulse, I leaned toward Ben – not physically, not even with current, exactly, but with an awareness that was something else, as though seeking reassurance or comfort.

The swirl caught at that movement, swarmed it, and I swore I could feel a hundred tiny little teeth latch on, like being nibbled on by itty-bitty alligators. It took effort not to flinch, not to let it know we’d felt it, were luring it further in.

I saw the edge of Ben’s mouth turn up, barely a movement, but a definite smirk.

Our imp had taken the bait. Now, to wait and see what the little bastard did with it.

“Nick, give me your notes, too,” Sharon said. “If we’re going to be doing this negative space thing, maybe I can tell if anything’s changed since the first visit.”

“You want me to come?” he asked, even as he removed a section of pages and handed them to her. “If nothing else, to watch your backs?”

“Thanks, but I think we’ll be okay.”

Although nobody had said anything, it was inevitable that we were all a little leery of that house, now. The hellhound had been dealt with, one presumed, and the client wasn’t going to be idiot enough to hire another – we hoped – but who knew what else a scared Null with a penchant for magical security devices would get up to?

“Where is he getting this stuff, anyway?” I wondered, after Pietr and Sharon left. “The dagger – okay, that’s easy enough for someone to craft, it could be anyone in the damn Cosa, but the rest of it? Is there a storefront somewhere, hawking magical protections, or are they working out of someone’s kitchen? Shouldn’t that shit be licensed?”

“Selling protections is a time-honored profession,” Venec said idly, sounding more like J than I really felt comfortable with. “A hedgewitch or village wizard specialized in that sort of thing, especially against the wee folk as went boojum in the night.”

“Yeah, three hundred years ago,” Nifty said.

“Not hardly,” Lou corrected him, a little more snappishly than usual. Venec looked sideways at her, and she bit her lip, but he didn’t say anything and she didn’t apologize. The Roblin, even without doing something, was already doing its thing: everyone was on edge, waiting for something, anything to happen.

Having a theoretical discussion was one of the better ways to keep occupied, without actually doing anything important. Also, Venec always said that we came up with our better ideas when we argued things off-topic. So...

“There are still hedgewitches,” I said, trying to keep the peace. “They might not call themselves that, but everything but the name’s the same. Off the grid, low-res and small workings, but savvy enough to know the deal and how to deal with it.” I’d run into more than a few when I was traveling with J, and not always in the places you’d expect. “There was a Talent who had a little storefront in Florence. She sold religious relics and love spells over the same counter.”

“Were her love spells any good?” Nick asked, his face a mix of real curiosity and mischief.

“Probably better than the relics. My point is, she did a good business there, and not just from the tourists, but it was small, handmade stuff, like the memory-glass. What Wells is getting his hands on... current-run security system? Hellhound rentals? That takes more skill, more res. A lot more money involved. And probably not so much a one-person gig.”

“Spell Rentals R Us,” Nifty said. “Nice sideline. You think Stosser would go for it?”

“No.”

The opinion on that was pretty much universal.

We batted around a few more ideas, most of them just arguing for argument’s sake. I tuned out a little, and went down inside, dropping into my core the way you might a hot tub, slowly, with muscle easing as you sank. I’d been eating regularly, and making sure to recharge my core – mostly – but that didn’t explain the incredible feeling of well-being. I let a tendril wander off, not directing it anywhere in particular, and wasn’t at all surprised to feel it make its way, like it was following a ley line, to where Venec sat, sliding into his aura and disappearing... but not disconnecting.

A sense like a sigh, and a faint touch, and a reassurance, then he pushed me away, not dismissively, but almost playfully.

And the sense of being watched, of being pricked at with a hair-thin needle, came back.

My good mood faded a little: we were putting on a show for the imp; that was all.

*we’re here*

The ping came from Pietr; I recognized the mental flavor immediately, and also that the ping was directed to me, not broadcast to anyone else in the room. The impression I got was that they’d run into slight but non-violent resistance, but persevered.

“I don’t think the housekeeper is too fond of any of us right now,” I said into the room. “But they’re in the house.”

“How come they reported to you, and not Venec?” Nifty looked like he’d been the one insulted. I guess, after fighting so hard for lead pup spot, he would be offended by someone not following the organizational flow chart. Still, it annoyed me that he was annoyed.

“Pietr and I partner a lot – it’s probably easier for him to reach me.” I didn’t say a damn thing about sleeping with Pietr – if Nifty hadn’t realized that by now, it was none of his damn business, and he’d probably get a bug up his nose because he assumed I was sleeping with Venec, too. They all did, even Stosser; you could tell from the things they weren’t saying, the way they weren’t talking about it even to joke about it anymore, like we were doing something wrong.

The fact that we’d not done anything more suggestive than hold hands – and that, almost by accident – wasn’t going to fly with anyone. They just assumed... .

*careful* The thought came low and soft along the connection, and I touched it, took reassurance from it. Reassurance, and clarity: the anger I was feeling wasn’t mine, or Venec’s. It was the imp coming back, trying to push us, manipulate us. Cause mischief among the pack.

“So that’s how we’re playing it, are we?” I said softly.

Nifty heard me, and misunderstood. Of course.

“Playing it? Only one here playing is you, seems... ” He stood up, and then stopped, as though surprised to find himself standing. I looked up, remembering again, suddenly, how damn big Nifty was; not only way taller than my five foot six but twice as wide in the shoulders, with bulk to match. Anyone else, I might have been worried.

Anyone else, anyone other than a pack mate, and I wouldn’t have seen surprise, and then a slow dawn of understanding cross his face. Nifty was a big guy; he used to hit people as part of his sport. He perfected control even better than most of us, out of necessity, and he knew that the anger, the frustration he suddenly felt wasn’t real, wasn’t his.

The Roblin was used to manipulating Nulls, and civilian Talent. It had never taken on pups before.

Before Nifty could retract his words, though, Venec stood up, facing him down. Bulk for bulk it wasn’t a contest, but this wasn’t about bulk but alpha dominance.

Nifty might want to be top dog, but Venec was a Big Dog. Nifty automatically began to back down, physically, then Venec grabbed him by the shoulder, shaking his head in warning even as the words came out of his mouth.

“You have something to say, mister? You want to get it off your overinflated chest?”

Nick gaped, and looked at me. I spared him the briefest smile before looking back to the pseudo-confrontation. Lou looked concerned but not really worried; I wasn’t sure if she understood what was going on. I could only hope that Nifty did.

*?*

Pietr’s query came through the swirl, and I hesitated, not sure if I could risk taking my attention away from what was going on.

“Yeah, I got something to say, all right.” Nifty’s voice was loud, but his expression was almost panicked, like he was trying to remember lines he didn’t know he was supposed to have memorized. “You playing favorites now, boss?”

“I always liked some of you more than others,” Venec said. His tone was cold, but his body language relaxed just a hint, the hand holding Nifty’s arm not gripping so tightly. You had to look for the signs, though. Like finding a fatae, you had to know what you were looking for – and what it looked like. If you didn’t know the incredible control Venec had, the discipline Nifty embraced as a matter of a lifetime’s training; if you hadn’t seen them training together, before, you might think those two were about to go head-to-head, possibly with violence.

*?*

*imp* I tossed back to Pietr, hoping it would be enough to explain.

Apparently it was, because there were no more pings.

“Yeah, well, for a guy who was dumb enough to walk onto a live site without any backup, you’re maybe talking a little too loudly... ”

“He pays our salary,” Lou said. She didn’t get up, and, in fact, she looked almost bored, but her tone was pitched just right to be someone sucking up to the boss. Nick was staring at the three of them, barely daring to breathe, then looked at me for some kind of reality check. I shook my head, just a little. Neither of us were worth a hard shit at dissembling; he’d overplay it, and I’d be an utter flop; when I get angry I get angry, but when I’m not... well, I don’t fake anything well, that’s all.

“Careful what you say, boy.”

My eyes went round at that. Just the wrong inflection, and Nifty’s shoulders shook as though he was forcibly restraining himself from attacking Venec. I tensed in reaction, my instinctive reaction to scoop current and shape it into readiness. The sharp poking swirl came back, pricking the skin against my back and up my scalp, like it was trying to find a way in, and I held on to the fear and worry, even as I realized that Nifty’s body language wasn’t rage at the implied insult, but the result of hard-held laughter, trying to escape.

“Hold it... ” I murmured, a double meaning in the words, and they stood there, tensed and fierce, until the prickling sensation ebbed, the imp maybe realizing it was being too obvious, and sliding away again.

“All right.”

The letdown in tension was immediate, and I could feel the change in Venec’s core, sliding from a tight, hard knot into a softer coiling. My own, almost frozen, thawed a little. But not entirely. I could still feel that pricking awareness on my skin, and I knew that the imp had only retreated, not gone away for good.

“Well. That was fun,” Nick said, leaning back and breathing again. “Next time warn me before we go all reality show showdown, okay?”

Lou hit him, hard, before I could.

*pietr?* I risked pinging him, just to let him know that the situation was on hold for the moment, and got back a flash of excitement and concern and... something else, I wasn’t quite understanding. It flooded over me, and then was gone, the way pings did. Damn it. Already I was getting spoiled by how much deeper the communication between me and Venec was; the annoyance and fear of being always-connected that I’d been fretting over seemed a long way away, right then.

I blinked, coming back to the moment, and looked around the room. The others had settled back down after that bit of excitement: Nifty and Venec in a tight little tête- -tête that looked to be some serious dog-to-pup reassurances, while Lou was scribbling something in her notebook, and Nick busied himself pouring coffee out of the carafe in the middle of the table, trying very hard not to eavesdrop on the other two guys.

I studied Nifty and Venec for a moment, trying to be less obvious than Nick. Funny; Nifty was always so confident, so assured, that you forgot that he spent most of his life following a coach’s direction, one way or another. But Venec never forgot.

Even now, his attention on one pup, I’d swear I could feel this roving lighthouse spotlight sense coming from him, swooping around the room to touch on each of us in a constant, passive loop. It should have felt awkward, or annoying, but... it wasn’t anything I hadn’t already suspected he did, only now I knew he did it. More, because he was letting me see it.

No walls. No barriers. The only secrets we were keeping were the ones we let the other keep; a gentleman’s agreement not to look. It was a level of trust I’d never really imagined, even in my most open relationship, and I don’t think Venec ever believed it existed. I was pretty sure he didn’t think it was healthy.

He might be right. I remembered the feeling of not being able to lie from the ki-rin case, when Sharon had used me as a test case for her truth-spell. It had driven me into a near panic. I don’t think people are meant to share that much, that openly, without the option to say no. It goes against all our self-protective instincts, that loss of choice, and having to trust someone else to keep those private places safe.

And yet, even with all that, those thoughts going through my head, I couldn’t find any upset at the sense of Ben so close, so... intimate.

I tried to remind myself not to get used to it, that it wasn’t real any more than The Roblin’s manipulated emotions, just the Merge, and the moment The Roblin was caught – or got bored – we’d be back to walls and distances.

Assuming we could. The thought caught at me like a fishhook into flesh, and the more I tried to ignore it, the deeper it settled into my brain. Would we be able to rebuild those walls? Just sitting here, not even trying, I could feel his presence like flesh to flesh, sense the gentle patience at war with his frustration – not directed at Nifty, but the world in general, and his bandage specifically. It was chafing him.

A lot of the world chafed him.

I didn’t want to know that about him, but I did. Without looking, without trying to look, I also knew that his sweater had an emotional memory attached to it, which was why he wore it so often, and that he was worried about Sharon and Pietr, and that he knew where Stosser was and what he was doing, and was deliberately not thinking about it.

And that he was as hyperaware of me as I was of him.

That realization got me up and out of the room, muttering an excuse I forgot the moment it left my mouth, feeling the need to hyperventilate charging against my breastbone.

And Venec knew that, too. And I felt him letting me go, not because he wasn’t worried but because he knew I needed to deal with whatever was bothering me elsewhere, and he had other things to do, and at that point I had no choice but to put up the frailest, flimsiest wall, just so I could breathe.

In the hallway, I found myself heading for the smallest conference room, my decision both unconscious and unhesitating. Wrapped up in not thinking about the thing between me and Venec, it took me the length of the hallway to remember that the small conference room was where the scraping we’d taken from the house was locked away.

I really, really didn’t want to go in there, especially not alone, but what were my options? No matter my feelings, there was work to be done and it wasn’t as though fleeing the office would help. It was either make myself useful here, or hang out in the break room and feel useless and spend, inevitably, too much time thinking about the things I didn’t want to think about. At least if I was doing something proactive, I’d maybe feel less exposed, waiting for The Roblin to come back and take another shot at us? It was as good a theory as any.

I let myself into the room and reset the warding behind me, then sat at the table. The box – a purely current-based construct – rested in front of me, glinting balefully, dark reds and a particularly ugly neon-yellow, like a filthy fast-food restaurant’s decor.

I studied the box, not reaching for my own current, not slipping into a working fugue-state, doing nothing that might alert the trace within that it was being watched because, all common sense be damned, I was pretty sure it would know.

Use more than magic, Venec instructed us, over and over. We’re more than the sum of our skills, and the physical world is just as useful as the magic one – and covers a lot more territory. So: what did my basic senses tell me?

Once upon a time, that time being a year ago, I went through most of my day without drawing on current. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy using it, I just... didn’t. Most Talent are like that; magic is the something extra, not so much used in the day to day. Now? Now it was an effort to not default to current, not to reach for it instinctively, even if only to make sure I was prepared.

I wasn’t sure I liked that. Now, though, wasn’t the time to stress about it: whoever I’d become, she was needed.

I’d already covered sight. My nose didn’t smell anything different. Sometimes even a Null could pick up a whiff of a spell, like burnt ozone after a storm, but not here. My ears... was there a hum, low in the background? No; I was putting it there because I thought there should be. No noise at all, other than the usual old-building, multi-tenant grumbles and thumps that you ignored after the first couple of days.

Taste... I made a scrunched-up face. There was no way I was so much as licking that thing without a direct order from the boss.

Touch I already knew: it was slick and smooth and vibrated slightly under my fingertips, what was inside reaching directly to my core of current, making it curl in on itself in unease. No need to touch it again.

That thought struck me harder than it should have, and I turned my head slightly, instinctively, looking at it again. That last thought hadn’t been mine. I know the feel of my own head, and that wasn’t me. The feeling wasn’t the now-identifiable static swirl of the imp, but heavier, slower.

Don’t look, it whispered. Go away.

I so very much dislike being manipulated. It wanted me to stay away? I’d touch it.

And yeah, I knew that was dumb. I wasn’t going to mock horror-movie heroines anymore.

There was a faint, familiar touch against my awareness, coming up against the gossamer-thin wall I’d put up and stopping there, asking if everything was all right. Irrationally, that touch made me even more determined to poke the box, as though dealing with the trace inside the lockbox was preferable to dealing with Venec.

“You’re classic, totally textbook avoidance,” I muttered to myself, even as my hand lifted, and touched the top of the box.

It was... a box of current. Not motionless – current itself was never motionless by its very nature – but not doing anything, either. Normally you could feel a tracebox working, the steady, staticky not-quite-noise of current set in an ongoing spell. That’s all a tracebox was: current shaped by the controlling influence of more current – a spell – into a solid form. Okay, a mostly solid form.

Now, I not only didn’t feel the box working, I didn’t feel the trace inside it, although the glow told me that it was still there. I had a sudden panicked thought that, while we were distracted, it had escaped, somehow – that The Roblin had let it out, leaving a decoy behind, and it was roaming the hallways even now, the two of them, plotting some terrible, dire trick.

“You’re getting paranoid,” I said in disgust. “Half an hour’s exposure to Venec, and you’re totally paranoid.”

The box sat there on the table, glimmering and glowering with current-light, and I could swear it was taunting me, like there wasn’t anything I could do or think up that would crack the mystery of what was in there, and why I couldn’t feel it, now.

The only thing I hate more than being manipulated was being told I wasn’t capable of doing something. The combination? Oh, that just pissed me off. Knowing it was dumb, knowing I was being played, I slipped down into fugue-state, and “lifted” the lid of the box.

It was still there, settled at the bottom of the box like a handful of ashes, lacy and harmless-looking.

“Who are you?” I asked it. Not what – who. The part of my brain that wasn’t busy being incredibly stupid noted that for later.

It answered me. A hiss of current slithered back at me, heavy and dark, and filled with echoes a thousand miles deeper than anything I could reach, licked from below by the flames of something that might have been the devil’s laugh.

That laugh froze me in place while those flames crawled all over the skin of my hands, tried to reach deeper inside, gunning for my core, wanting to eat me, down to the last glittering drop of Me. I panicked, slammed the lid down and threw an extra layer of current into the lock, praying that would do the job, even as I was screaming along the Merge-connection for help.

*VENEC!*

The spell wasn’t a complicated one; Pietr had the suspicion that was probably why the others had trouble with it. They applied too much force, and when you forced current, it lashed back at you. The trick was to be gentle, almost not asking anything of it even as you invoked the words. Negative space needed negative force. He thought about trying to explain that to the intent-looking blonde to his left, and almost laughed. Sharon was more of a blunt force object. No, this was a spell only Bonnie, with her ability to see multiple layers of gray in every shadow, could have thought of... and he was probably the only one who could do it properly, existing as he did so often in those shadows.

“Anything?”

“Not yett.”

The two areas that had been the most trashed in the client’s office were the desk and the bookcase behind the desk. So they had focused there; anything that might have been on the surface would have been found when Sharon and Nick cased the place originally, and by the time Stosser and Bonnie arrived, anything but the most obvious or persistent trace would have been obliterated.

Except, of course, for what wasn’t there.

He had the notebook in his jacket pocket, but the words were easy to remember.

“Shadow of air and weight of light, make clear what now is not.”

Even as he spoke the words, he reached into his core and, with gentle spectral fingers, lifted a handful of spar kling threads of current, letting them run through their range of colors before shading toward a peaceful, calm blue that let itself be drawn up by the words of the spell, spinning out into a thick, darkly neon-blue vapor that settled into one... two... three different spots where the bookcase had rested.

“Three?” His gaze flicked from one to the other and then to the third, his face still with concentration. “What did we miss?”

Sharon, standing off to the side and not able to see the results of his spell, said nothing, understanding that he wasn’t actually asking her.

“Talk to me,” Pietr said. It wasn’t a command, wasn’t even a spell, just a request. “Please,” he added, to be polite. When something was unknown, his mentor had told him a hundred and ten times, be polite. It cost nothing, and could save your unworthy life.

Something shimmered, and Pietr slid deeper into fugue-state, letting the shimmer form more clearly in his awareness.

And that was the last thing he remembered, before blacking out.

Ever hear someone describe an anthill that’s been overturned? That was what the office reminded me of, thirty seconds after I realized what we’d got trapped in that box. I got yanked – there’s no other word for it – yanked out of the conference room by the scruff of my shirt, not by Venec but Nifty, who had a manic gleam in his eye that would have scared me if I didn’t think there was a similar wild-eyed look in my own. The door slammed shut behind us, and I slammed my hand on it, engaging the wards and adding another layer of my own, wishing I’d had time to study that elemental thing the client had – I might be able to make it work.

“Come on,” Nifty said, dragging me away beffore I’d barely had time to finish the lock.

“Hey, there’s – ”

Nifty barely slowed. “Is it gonna blow up or bite someone in the next five minutes?”

I had to think about that. “No.”

“Then it can wait. We got bigger problems.”

I doubted that. A lot. But I let him drag me back to the break room, where the furniture had been shoved to the side in obvious haste, and Sharon and Venec were both on their knees beside –

“Pietr!” I broke from Nifty’s hold and pushed through, almost but not quite displacing Sharon, who was doing CPR.

Or rather, she was doing Cosa-style CPR, which involved less thumping, and more gentle current-shocks direct to the heart while Venec did the breathing thing.

I counted off in my head, helpless to do anything, knowing any distraction could be fatal, my chest clenched tight in agony until Venec sat back and Pietr’s chest fell and rose on its own. He turned his head to the side and hiccuped painfully, and I turned on Sharon so I didn’t have to deal with how I felt right then.

“What the hell happened?”

She sat back on her heels, her hair totally fallen out of its chignon, her makeup still perfect. “I don’t know. I was trying to keep the housekeeper off our backs while he went into working fugue, and the next thing I know we’ve got current ricocheting all over the place, everyone’s ducking, and he’s out on the floor, not breathing.” Sharon wasn’t hysterical – it wasn’t in her nature any more than it was any pups, but her voice was tight and high and she looked like she wanted to hit something. I could relate. A lot.

“People.”

“What?”

We all turned to look at Pietr, who was, with Venec’s help, slowly sitting up. His pale skin looked parchment-thin, and I’d swear he’d aged since I saw him last, only a few hours ago. I wanted to cuddle him, and I wanted to shake him to get an answer, all in one really complicated, crazy moment.

“They’re people.” He shook his head, a violent shuddering, and grabbed at Venec’s hand where it was holding his other arm, directing his words to the boss. “The dagger, and yeah, the watch, too. The client lied to us. They’re not magic, they were magicked.”