Tricks of the Trade

six

As per the Big Dogs’ rules, we were supposed to take off at least one day every six, and if it wasn’t a matter of life or death, two days in a row were preferred. It’s not a suggestion, either: they know that we’re all a little... compulsive, mainly because they trained us to be that way. So when Friday night rolled around, we were kicked out of the office and told not to show our faces again until Monday morning.

Or, as Stosser put it “go pretend to have a life.”

Obediently, I spent the weekend doing things that had nothing to do with the job. Or tried to, anyway. There were just too many questions about too many things unanswered for me to really relax. But I stayed away from the office, didn’t pick up my crystals, and if I did some quiet digging into the name “Roblin” and spent most of my Sunday night dinner with my mentor asking him about potential inter-fatae politics involving Bippis, well... what did the Big Dogs expect, really?

“I’m sorry, Bonita,” J said. He had made veal piccata, deceptively simple and mouthwateringly delicious. “What little I know matches what you have already discovered. I could ask around, see if my contacts know anything, but... ”

But his network was at a considerably higher pay grade than the vic’s, so they weren’t going to be much help with the specifics. Now, if we had some kind of high-end political collision going on... .

I made a quick “avert” sign with my fingers, discreetly hidden by a linen napkin. J frowned on my more old-world superstitions, although he’d just sigh and look away, if he caught me doing it.

“I wish I could be of more help. I worry about you – which you know.”

He did. But he also had stood by our agreement, never to poke his nose in unless specifically requested. For a moment – not even a moment – I was tempted to tell him about The Roblin, to see if he could elaborate on Madame’s comments. But odds were he wouldn’t be able to add anything, and then he would really worry.

My mentor wasn’t a young man anymore. I couldn’t stop doing my job, but I didn’t need to tell him every whisper of trouble that floated in.

So I went home – J giving me a Translocation-lift from Boston back to New York – without any useful answers, and first thing Monday morning showed up in the office, filled with well-fed energy, ready for something to break wide open.

Unfortunately, nothing did. In fact, Monday was filled with nothing but a lot of frustration, despite working until nearly ten in the evening trying to tear everything known apart, and put it back together usefully. Nearly a week after the cases landed on our desk, there wasn’t a single peep on the street about who might have ransacked our client’s house, or why, and I had utterly failed to reconstruct my diorama, even with Pietr’s help. And we were no closer to knowing what The Roblin was or why we were involved. Morale, in a word, sucked.

We gave up on the diorama for the moment, since frustration did not lead to fine-tuned current, and instead spent most of Tuesday morning loading the whiteboard with every detail we had been able to dredge up on the floater, going through the last-time-seen and the river tides to put together a timeline, and not coming up with any plausible leads. The break-in investigation didn’t seem to be going anywhere – the client was stalling us on a list of things that were taken, for some reason having to do with his insurance company – and none of the fatae wanted to talk about the dead Bippis, not one bit. Since the only thing the fatae as a rule liked more than themselves was gossip about other beings, we weren’t sure if they were scared of something, or nobody had an honest, or dishonest, clue. I’d even tapped Bobo, the Mesheadam my mentor had hired as an off-again on-again bodyguard for me, more for J’s peace of mind than my actual safety. Bobo was always willing to help, but he hadn’t come up with anything yet, either.

Around noon my stomach rumbled, so I left Pietr staring at the board like it was the Rosetta stone, and booked out to grab some fresh air, and lunch.

Heading down the street, mindfully breathing in the air and letting it clear both my lungs and my brain, I spotted one of “my” missing boys sitting on the stoop. Weirdly, that made me feel better. I ended up in a little corner deli down the street from the office, getting an extra-loaded ham-and-Swiss grinder to go and contemplating adding a couple of cookies to that, when Nifty walked in, clearly in the same “feed me or die” mood. Chasing leads and current-use both burned calories at an impressive rate, and it wasn’t like he was any kind of a delicate flower.

In fact, Nifty’s dark-skinned bulk seemed to almost spark in the air as he walked, his core getting past him in ways that would have made any mentor worth their salt send him back to schooling. I didn’t say anything. An entire office filled with frustrated Talent? It’s a wonder things weren’t sparking and failing throughout the entire building: I guess the money the guys had put in for shielding and grounding was paying off. And knowing that The Roblin was out there somewhere was making the fact that nothing had actually hit us even worse: we all knew that the quiet was not going to last. Venec had told us he would look for signs of unrest elsewhere, and we were supposed to focus on the cases, but... well, that was a lot easier to say than do.

My coworker leaned over the counter and gave his order. “Two tuna subs and a large Coke.”

Nifty was a big guy, I was surprised he hadn’t just gone down another block and gotten a whole pizza.

“How’s the rash?” I asked him, when I saw he had noticed me.

“Rashy.” He watched as I pushed money across the counter, and pocketed my change while the guy behind the counter wrapped up my order. “I’m more itchy to get the hell out in the field again, cause I can’t still be contagious after this long. Hell, I’ll wear full-length opera gloves, set a new fashion. You think you can put in a good word with Venec for me?”

I thought about playing dumb, decided it wasn’t worth it. Even as my irritation boiled over, everything I’d been worrying about, everything I’d been repressing, escaped in a single unguarded, overtired moment.

“I’m not sleeping with him, and even if I were, what makes you think he’d listen to a damn thing I said if he thought otherwise?” I didn’t wait for Nifty to answer, but took my lunch and stalked out of the deli.

I knew it. I knew it. Never mind that Nifty hadn’t actually implied that he disapproved of whatever he thought was going on, or given me real grief, it changed the dynamic. The fact that they suspected something was going on inevitably made me less one of the pack and more... what? Venec’s chew-toy, someone he kept around merely for his own amusement?

No. I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. I was pissed, but not so pissed off I lost track of reality. Nobody who’d ever met Venec would think he took chew-toys. Me, yeah, maybe. But not Venec.

Did they think that Venec was my chew-toy? The thought was so delightfully absurd I actually stopped dead on the sidewalk, and then had to apologize when a very irritated older woman nearly bumped into me. She glared at me from under perfectly dyed purple bangs, and moved on past.

Huh.

I grinned, my unusual spurt of temper fading, and decided that I would not mention that chew-toy thought to Venec. Not that the topic would ever come up, but if it did I suspected he wouldn’t find it as amusing as I did.

For the first time in weeks, I was able to think about the Merge with something other than annoyance. Yeah, okay. Maybe, as long as I was rolling with it, I’d see if I couldn’t get myself cut into the betting action in the office, after all.

“You work for Stosser.”

I stopped, a chill hitting my veins. The growling voice came from behind me, slightly to the right, which meant the speaker was on the curb or in the street, and lower down than my shoulder, which meant that they weren’t human-adult height. And the question wasn’t asked like they were looking for someone to hire.

“I do,” I said. No point in denying it. I reached into my core with a mental hand and gathered a pool of current, letting it slow around imaginary fingers, passive, but ready.

“Tell him to lay off. Nobody wants his nose in this.”

This? This what? The break-in? The dead body? Something else Stosser was looking at without bothering to tell any of us? Some case we hadn’t even taken on yet? I hated imprecise threats.

“If you want me to carry a message,” I said, proud of how calm my voice sounded, “you’re going to have to give me more detail than that. Stosser puts his pointy nose into a lot of things.”

The voice didn’t think that was funny. It growled, and then something hard and sharp hit me just behind the knees, and I went down onto the pavement, hands flat to keep me from going nose-to-gravel, exactly the way we weren’t supposed to fall.

“Humans have no place in fatae business,” it said. “Keep to your own kind.”

I lay there as the sound of heavy footsteps – bare skin, flat feet, I noted mentally – stopped, and the sound of a car door being slammed and a car taking off replaced it.

The floater, then, most likely. All righty.

I waved off the offer of help from a passerby who had carefully not seen anything odd happening, and got back to my feet, checking to make sure my sandwich was unmushed. It was. I wish I could say the same for my pants; there was a tear in the left knee that not even a skilled tailor was going to fix. Damn it, I’d liked these pants, too. They were a dark gray wool that moved like silk, and had cost me a small fortune.

The front door to our office building had been magicked way back when by Venec to recognize our signatures, so I didn’t have to worry about trying to get my keys out of my jacket pocket, but merely pushed the handle with my elbow, and slipped inside. Someone came up behind me, and I held the door open with my foot, just out of common courtesy, without looking. If it was my fatae unfriend come back for another round, it was welcome to come up to the office and make its case to Stosser directly.

“That’s particularly stupid,” a gravelly male-human-voice said. “What if I’d been a mugger or rapist?”

“Then I’d kick you in the balls and fry your nerve endings with current,” I said, letting Danny move past me. The P.I. was looking his usual hot self in jeans, leather jacket over a button-down, and scuffed-up cowboy boots, an NYPD cap jammed over his brown curls. The cap was less for weather protection than it was to hide the small nubby horns that peeked out through those curls. Danny was half fatae, half human, and all guy. He’d be a fabulous chew-toy if it weren’t for the fact that I’d sussed right away that he was waiting, if unconsciously, for True Love. Poor bastard.

“You’re out and about early,” I said. Fauns weren’t night owls as a rule, but Danny had told me once that he got most of his real work done between four in the after noon and four in the morning. It was barely 1:00 p.m., which meant that for him to get here, dressed and awake, he had to have gotten up at least an hour ago.

“I had a morning meeting with a client,” he said. “Figured as long as I was in your neighborhood, I’d stop by and steal some coffee.”

“Bullshit. You have something. What do you have?” I started for the stairs, expecting Danny to follow, rather than wait for the elevator. The clomp of his boots on the metal stairs told me he had. Normally, a cutie on my tail like that, I’d put an extra wiggle in my backside just for the heck of it, but this was a business visit. And, anyway, I wasn’t feeling it, today.

Danny, being Danny, was checking out my ass, any way. I don’t think he could help it. Genetics are a bitch, especially faunish ones.

“Is it about a pending case, or a future one?” I asked on the second landing, when he didn’t respond to my earlier question. He usually didn’t hold back, not with me, but this might be more than gossip.

“In the office,” he said when we hit the third landing, his voice not at all winded. I’d expect no less from him, either the discretion or the physical conditioning. When it came to business, Danny was 100% human.

There was someone coming out of the office across the hallway from our door, which surprised the hell out of me – twice in one week, seeing those doors open, was unusual. We’d taken over two of the office suites on the east side of the building; the other two on the west side housed a tiny literary agency and a one-person photography office, both of which got a lot of mail delivered, but very little actual foot traffic. I let the woman – a pretty blonde, but too hard-edged to be my type – pass, and then ushered Danny into our office.

He went straight for the coffee machine, not even bothering to take off his coat or say hello to Nick, who was sitting on the sofa weaving current between his fingers. Some people doodled when they thought; he played with current.

“I don’t know how you people do it, but your coffee’s the best in the city.”

“Because it’s free?” I suggested.

“Well, there’s that. Also, the surroundings are pretty.”

Danny and I flirted like other people took in oxygen, but neither of us were really in the mood today. I knew what my reasons were... what was up with him? He lounged against the kitchenette counter and looked at Nick, his gaze flickering back and forth between fingers, watching the threads of blue and green and orange and red weave in and out like some kind of electric cat’s cradle.

Actually, I realized, that’s exactly what it was.

“Anyone else here?” Danny asked, while I shucked my coat and put it in the closet, then sat down on the sofa – a careful distance away from Nick and his thought-process – to eat my lunch before I collapsed from hunger. The vague warning-and-shove from my mysterious fatae could wait until after I ate. It wasn’t as though Stosser was going to listen to it, anyway. The first rule of the office, even before “don’t work at night alone” was “don’t let yourself forget to eat.” Most Talent didn’t have to worry about being called on for a sudden burst of current, without warning. We weren’t most Talent. Also, I had a bad tendency, still, not to top off my core on a regular basis – holdover from being raised, as J said, like a civilian. Being hungry just made the problem worse.

“Sharon’s in the workroom,” Nick said. “I don’t know where Nifty and Pietr disappeared to.”

“Nift was getting lunch right behind me,” I said around a mouthful of grinder. “He should be back soon, if he doesn’t eat there.” Mostly we came back to the office, but I could understand him needing a little away-time. I wouldn’t snitch him out to Venec. “Pietr was down the hall half an hour ago – hell, he could be anywhere.”

As though on cue, we all peered around the room, trying not to look obvious. But no Pietr materialized out of invisibility. He must have gone somewhere else for food.

“How about your fearless leaders?”

“They’ve been in the back office powwowing all morning,” Nick said, finally getting tired of his cat’s cradle and letting the current-threads slide back under his skin. “You want we should call them out, or you want to go back in?”

If Danny went private with what he knew, expecting the Big Dogs to dole out what we needed to know, I’d kill him. He knew it, too.

“Call ’em,” he said. “Politely – it’s interesting but not urgent.”

I let Nick do the honors. I might be getting the hang of dealing with the Merge pushing at me all the time, but ever since Venec walked me to my door last week, and that little spark-show in the office, we’d been keeping a very careful distance from each other; walls up, if not so thick we couldn’t sense each other at all. And now, with Nifty’s comment still warm in my ear... yeah. Let Nick ping him.

Thinking about that, I decided to hold off telling Stosser about the warning a little longer, until Venec wasn’t around. It had been a message for Stosser, anyway, right? No need to stress Venec about it.

The sigh I heard in the back of my head was definitely a memory-remnant from my mentor, disappointed in my decision-making, or my avoidance skills. Or both. I ignored it.

“We’re supposed to go back to the main room,” Nick said.

While the three available pups filed in, joining Sharon, who was already there, Benjamin Venec took the seat at the table farthest away from the P.I., and leaned back, trying to give every appearance of casualness while studying the other man intently. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Hendrickson; the guy was smart, and professional, and had only been helpful, not to mention carefully polite. In any other setting they’d probably be friends, if not drinking buddies.

The only complaint he could bring against the guy was that he was a terminal flirt – and that Bonnie responded. Considering their respective personalities and inclinations, the flirting was hardly surprising. Ben swallowed the annoyance. He didn’t have any right to complain – hell, he didn’t have the right to say anything if they were all over each other outside the office. Same way he had no right to frown over the fact that Bonnie and Pietr occasionally warmed sheets together. So long as it didn’t have any impact on their work – and it hadn’t.

The Merge didn’t see it that way at all. It wanted him to drop-kick the faun out of the office, and Pietr likewise. Ben squelched the urgency the same way he would hunger pains, or the need to pee while he was on stake-out, and listened to what Hendrickson had to say without showing any emotion whatsoever. Hendrickson had been a cop, and he was fatae. That crossed a lot of boundaries, and made him useful. That was all that mattered.

The P.I. didn’t consult notes, his palms flat down on the table while he spoke. “Your floater’s name was Aodink. He was well-known among a certain portion of the community as a hardback with a loud mouth.”

“Hardback?” Nick asked. He was seated next to the faun, which was interesting, considering how the pup seesawed on how he felt about the fatae. Ben hoped that Shune was finally figuring out they were just like humans: some good, some bad, most mostly neither good nor bad because they didn’t have that much ambition beyond the next meal and the next screw.

“Physical labor,” Hendrickson clarified. “Not as dumb as he looked, but better at taking orders than giving them. Never going to be middle management, that one. Did a lot of contract work for construction companies, off the books, naturally.” Most fatae were, unless they could pass for human. Too many questions, otherwise.

“Off the books... and nonunion? Do the fatae even have unions?”

Venec noted that Bonnie looked startled, and then thoughtful, at Pietr’s question. She knew something, or had thought of something.

“Not a union as such, no.” Danny looked equally thoughtful. “You know the fatae – we’re all clannish but not so much with the playing well together. Like lonejacks. Anyway, our boy Aodink disappeared about a week ago, but he wasn’t working, so nobody thought anything about it. His friends aren’t, shall we say, the sort to raise any kind of official alarm.”

Venec nodded. That would explain why the pups hadn’t been able to find anything. In anything that might bring official – meaning either Null or Council – attention on them, fatae were more likely to go to ground, sometimes literally, than talk about it. That meant the gossip would be limited, and unlikely to be shared with humans.

“Any idea who might have wanted him thoroughly dead?” Bonnie was leaning forward across the table now, her entire body engaged in the question, like a cat that had suddenly identified a mouse in the room, whiskers to tail on alert.

“Sorry, no.” Hendrickson shook his head. “Nobody admitted to a beef with the guy. He had the usual ratio of drinking buddies and people who’d like to hit him with a two-by-four, but none of it sounded murder-weight.”

Bonnie and Sharon were disappointed, like they’d expected more, and Nick was positively crushed, but Ben was grimly pleased. “Thank you. That’s helpful.”

“It is?” Nick, now looking perplexed. “I mean, yeah, we have a name now, but... ”

“Names have power.”

That was Bonnie, twigging as fast as he’d expected. “With a name, we can go to the Bippis community and ask specific questions, and they’ll answer. Or, at least, not not-answer, the way they were stonewalling us before. Honestly, Nick, I’ve told you to read your fairy tales! Hello, Rumplestiltskin?”

“Oh. Right. You mean, even without a spell, a name can compel someone to tell us the truth? I mean, even though it’s not their name?”

“Some,” Hendrickson said. “Not so much as it used to be, when names were private things. But once you know a fatae’s true name, it’s like you’ve got a key to the lock, and everyone assumes you’ve got a right to what’s behind the door. That’s why a lot of the fatae have use-names, and unless you’re immediate blood-kin, you never know ’em by anything else. Demon do that. And some of them create their own names, invest all they are into those – like nicknames, only more so – and that’s where the default power goes.”

Ben listened to the explanation, wondering idly if Hendrickson was aware that he referred to the fatae as “they,” as though he wasn’t half-fatae himself. Not that Ben could say anything about someone else being in denial, or at least trying to distance himself from something. “We’re sure that’s his true name?”

The faun just nodded, and Ben nodded in return. No need to ask specifics, between the two of them. If Hendrickson said it was so, that was enough.

“Sharon, you and... ” He started to say Pietr, but he’d just pulled the pup to work with Lou on the police records for the break-in. “You and Nick take the name, interview the community again, see if anyone will cough up some more information, thinking that we already know enough to be dangerous.” He looked at the P.I. then. “Would you be willing to help us? I can authorize a small retainer for your time.”

Hendrickson hesitated, but to give him credit, his gaze didn’t flicker away. “How small?”

“A hundred dollars, and we don’t charge you for the coffee you’ve already gotten off us.”

The P.I. grinned, boyishly cute, dimples and all, and reached out a hard, calloused hand. “You weren’t kidding about small, but yeah. Deal.”

He could see that Bonnie was annoyed – this was her case, after all, if Pietr wasn’t there, and he’d just kicked her off it – but she kept her mouth mulishly shut, and waited while the others gathered up their stuff and left.

Then, before he could say anything to explain, apologize, or defend, she opened her mouth.

“There may not be a union as such,” she said, “but the fatae don’t want us poking into Aodink’s death. It didn’t make much sense before, but... I got a visitor on my way back with lunch who had a message for Stosser specifically, to stay the hell out of their business. He didn’t give details, but unless Ian’s into something we’re not being told about... ”

If he was, Ben didn’t know about it, either. The way Ian had been acting, though, it was possible. “That message come with enough force to tear clothing?”

She looked down at her knee, and her mouth pursed in unhappiness. “Just a love tap,” she said. “I get worse in fight practice.”

“I’ll let Stosser know about the message.” He would do no such thing. Ian shrugged things like that off, except when he got annoyed enough to snap people in two, and neither reaction would be useful right now. “Forget about it, otherwise. We keep investigating.” She nodded, clearly expecting nothing else. A shove and a buzz-off weren’t going to make Torres blink. His girl was tougher than that. “I know you wanted to keep on the case, but I have a side job for you. Stosser’s request, before he disappeared again this morning,” he added, when she opened her mouth to protest. “Not a job – a favor.”

The address Venec Translocated me to – we were in a rush, apparently – was a nice little brick-faced building in the West Village. Nothing spectacular, but clean and well maintained... and a walk-up. The universe was mocking me for not using the elevator in our building, clearly. My knee was starting to ache, and I put a hand on the cap, sending a pulse of current lightly into the abraded skin. You weren’t supposed to use current to heal yourself – there was way too much that could go wrong – but making like Bactine and a bandage was fair use, especially if I was going to have to kneel down at some point soon.

The stairwell wasn’t much to write home about, but it was clean and recently painted, and unlike too many of the buildings I’d looked at when I was apartment-hunting, it had a weirdly welcoming vibe. Hell of a lot nicer than my pplace, for certain.

I knocked at the top floor apartment, shifting my kit to my right hand to do so, and I’d barely let my hand drop before a voice came through the door.

“Yes?”

The voice was female, and dubious. “You called for a pup?”

The door opened, and I tried for my best “friendly pro” attitude. “I’m Bonnie.”

I could see the woman giving me a once-over, and I wished I’d worn all black today, instead of my favorite bright red blouse, like a miniature fire engine. Not exactly professional. Oh, well. Too late now.

“Come in,” the woman said, stepping back enough to let me by.

I went in. Nice apartment, if a little barren – all bland colors and stripped-down decor, like nobody actually lived there. Venec said she’d had a break-in, of the Talented sort. Unlike Sharon’s gig, the client was Talent, and certain of the source, so I was there to see if we could recognize any signatures. That meant he – or this woman, anyway – thought it was someone we’d already encountered, because it wasn’t like there was a huge data base we could cross-reference against. Not yet, anyway. Something about this was a little weird, but mine was not to question why. “So, where’s the stink?”

“Kitchen.” She waved off to the right. “Think you’ll be able to pick anything up?”

Okay, doubt was something I did not like to hear, even if this woman technically wasn’t a client. I patted my kit. “If it’s there, we can sniff it out. Just give me a little time and space... Oh, man.” I stopped and stared into the space. It was less a kitchen than a kitchenette, barely enough room for two people and a fridge, but it had a window at the far end, and was filled with natural light. “Totally retro kitchen. I love it. This entire place is just so totally – are there any other apartments available in this building?”

The woman blinked in surprise. “One, actually. Downstairs.”

“Most excellent.” I hadn’t known how badly I wanted to move out until I walked into this building. “The vibes in this place are... ”

“Yeah, I know.” The woman finally looked amused, and I took a longer look at her – or tried to, anyway. It was tough to focus on anything beyond average height, average weight, brownish hair, pale-ish skin. It was like trying to find Pietr, only worse, like...

Comprehension hit me like a slap. Oh, sweet fuck. She was a Retriever. And there was only one Retriever in the region who was female, and that age, and...

Wren Valere.

I tried really hard not to let my sudden penny-drop show on my face. It’s one thing to meet a legend, another to act like a dork about it. Damn Venec anyway for not warning me!

Although it was kind of funny: for a legend, The Wren was awfully... unimpressive.

“Right.” I put my kit down on the floor and got down on my hands and knees to look around. Stay cool, stay cool, focus on the job... . I sat back and pulled some of my tools out. The undeveloped film was a trick Nick wanted us to try, to see if I could process any images onto the negatives. So far it was an utter loss in the field, but I was willing to give it another try or three. The vials of powdered metal were going to be more useful. I snapped on a pair of latex gloves before I opened those; they were like invisible splinters if they got on your skin, all sticky and sharp.

“Do you mind... ” I gestured, indicating that she should get the hell out of my way. I didn’t like anyone looming over me while I worked, not even a legend.

“Right.” I guess she felt the same about being observed, because she got it right away. “I’ll be down the hall.”

Left to my own devices, I placed the film on the floor, touching it with just enough current so that – according to Nick’s theory, anyway – anything I visualized would impart itself in electromagnetic images on the film.

It was a good theory, anyway. I hadn’t even made it work in controlled runs. Even Lou was better at this than I was, which was sort of embarrassing.

The powders came out, and I brushed them over every available surface like fingerprint powder, swirling the brush to get an even distribution.

Despite Venec’s insistence on us “not putting on a damned show,” as he said, this worked better if you gave the magic a frame to wrap around. It was a stupid cantrip, but it worked, and that was what mattered, right?

“Anything to show me? Anything to know? If found, twirl and glow.”

I worked my way through the kitchen space, repeating the cantrip at regular intervals, and then doubled back, waiting. After a few minutes, there was a whisper of current, and then the air began to whirl and shimmer, as the metal splinters reacted to my spell.

“Oh, baby. Bin-go.”

I didn’t get a Transloc back, of course. The urgency was getting there, to show The Wren that we respected her timee, etc, etc. I could have done it myself but there wasn’t any need. The subway slog took me straight uptown, and I made it back to the office just in time to clock out for the night. My luck, I ran into Ian, first off. The office sounded like everyone else had already cleared out, and there was an unpleasant tension in the air that had to be coming from the Big Dog himself. Our fearless leader looked like he could bite the head off a basilisk right then. Thank god Venec said he’d tell Stosser about the warning, because I did not want to be giving him bad news right now.

“Torres.”

“Sir?” I hated when I did that, reverted back to eleven years old and formal-around-adults when I was nervous. Thankfully I was pretty sure nobody in the office knew why I did it, and assumed I was either being cautious, or subtly snarky. Stosser appreciated subtle snark. Usually.

“So you’ve met The Wren.”

“Yes, sir.” He was standing there, waiting, wearing his demonic candle guise – all black, with his long orange-red hair pulled back in a ponytail – and I just blurted it out. “She doesn’t seem very impressive. I mean, even for a Retriever.”

His eyes narrowed, just a little. “Don’t ever underestimate her, Torres. She holds back, but when pushed... ” He seemed thoughtful, suddenly, in a way that prickled the skin on my arms. “When pushed, I suspect that she can be very impressive.”

Then the weirdness was gone, and so was the odd tension and simmering anger, and he was just Stosser again – Big Dog and all-around scary-brained genius. “And I think the two of you would get along, actually. Cultivate that. It would not hurt for one of us to have an in with her – in case we ever were called in to investigate one of her jobs.”

I almost laughed, because the thought was funny: whatever our client up in the Bronx thought, if you got hit by The Wren, you didn’t bother having it looked into.

Then I thought again about that apartment, with its incredible vibes of comfort and hominess, and thought maybe I’d follow up on the results, rather than just handing them over to Venec. Not that I would ever befriend someone just to get an inside line on an apartment, but hey, if Stosser thought she and I should become buddies...

“And, Bonnie... ”

Oh. Uh-oh. I tensed, expecting finally the other shoe to drop. Either I’d screwed something up, or he was pissed at me for not telling him myself immediately about the warning or... Venec would ream me out for things, but Stosser was the one who would actually do something permanent.

“Is... everything all right? With, I mean... ”

I stared at him, trying to parse Stosser actually inquiring into my well-being, either physical or emotional. The Big Dog hired us, used us, occasionally praised us when we met his exacting standards, and I know he bragged on us to outsiders, but Ian Stosser didn’t take much interest in us, specifically and personally like this. The skin on my arms prickled again.

Venec, I thought. He knows about this thing between me and Venec.

I don’t know why that freaked me out – all right, I knew exactly why it freaked me out. Of all the people you didn’t want in your admittedly already unusual personal life, it was Ian damned Stosser. Especially if you worked for him. Especially if the other end of that personal life was his business partner and best friend, and oh, hell.

But Ian just stood there, and looked... uncomfortable? Then he shook his head like shooing away a bee, and made a gesture that clearly said “never mind, go away.”

I went away. Not just away from him, but out of the office entirely. I’d given the job enough of me, today.

Paranoia lingered even after I left the building: I looked around carefully, just to make sure there wasn’t another fatae waiting to pass another message along, or anything that was rubbing its hands and twirling a moustache, or whatever it was mischief imps did. There were a few fatae, yeah, but they were minding their own business, walking like they had places to go, same as everyone else, same as any other day.

The streets were filled with people, actually, enjoying the soft evening air, and normally I would have gotten a mood-lift just being out and hearing other people talking and laughing. But the push this morning had put me on edge more than I’d thought, adding to the uncertainty with The Roblin-threat, and that exchange with Stosser made my nerves jangle worse. I wanted to chew on the case some more – either case, just to have something to show for my nerves, but my avenue of investigation was at a dead end; that was clear from the fact that I’d been sent off to do the pro bono work, and I didn’t have anything worth chewing on, with the break-in.

And I knew that if I went home, alone, I’d reach out to Venec. Not meaning to, not wanting to... but the itch was under my skin, the need to pick up the tingle of reassurance that the Merge would give me, that he was there, that I wasn’t alone. And the fact that it wasn’t real – that it was all the push of some current-based whateveritwas – made me even more confused and distracted and in need of reassurance.

I hated all three of those things.

What I needed, desperately, was to be able to talk it out with someone who could help me untangle what was real and what was fear, without being judgmental or too biased. The only problem was, since I graduated college and started working with the team, all my closest friends were coworkers, too. And while I would trust my pack with my life, I wasn’t ready to spill the details of this damned Merge I hadn’t asked for and didn’t want. Nifty’s comment at lunch had confirmed my unease about that.

There was only one person who would understand, and that was the one person I really couldn’t talk to – Venec himself. Not right now, the way we’d had to avoid each other to keep things functional. The time we’d walked, close enough our fingers touched, and talked openly about what was between us... that seemed years ago now, not months. Years and miles.

I could, I supposed, yelp to J. Once, I would have. We used to talk about any-and everything, even after I ended my traditional mentorship – there had been very little about us that had ever been traditional, anyway, the retired Council member and the daughter of a ne’er-do-well lonejack carpenter. But since I came to New York, took this job... . Dinner Sunday night had proved, once again, that there were fewer things I could tell him, not without screening what I said.

It was natural, J had assured me more than once. But I could hear the sadness in his voice when he said it, and it made me feel like crap. I wasn’t his only mentoree, but I’d been the only one who had lived with him. That changed the dynamic. A lot.

But he wasn’t my dad, and he really was not the person I’d want to talk to about this. The thought sent a shuddering laugh through me, drawing a startled glance from a couple walking past me, who sped up, as though to avoid the crazy. Oh, hell, no, I did not want to talk to J about Benjamin Venec, the Merge, or any of it. He’d know a lot, probably, or know who could find things out, things even Venec’s mentor, a scholar, didn’t know about this ancient and apparently rare current-connection, but the minute he started digging into it, he’d get even more protective, worry even more, and...

I skirted around an impromptu sidewalk café spilling out from a pizza place, and realized I’d walked past my subway station. Apparently I was walking home. Well, it was a nice night, and still light, so fine.

It wasn’t a squeamishness about my personal life. J had watched me hit puberty, had taken my curious teenage exploring in stride, had never said a word when I dated a boy, and then a girl, or any combination thereof. So long as I was happy, so long as I didn’t get hurt, he was content.

The real problem was that I was pretty sure J would think the Merge was a good thing. He’d be pleased for me, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that. I didn’t think it was good, or pleasing. And I didn’t want to have to justify myself to him, just in order to get useful advice.

Halfway to my apartment, I stopped and changed direction. Hell with getting a good night’s sleep; I wasn’t going to be able to sleep, anyway, this wound up. There was only one way to deal with this: I was going to go have a drink, flirt with whoever was behind the bar even if I didn’t want to take them home, and be a carefree, single twentysomething in the Big Apple, for one. Damn. Night.

The office, the cases, The Roblin, and Venec could all wait until tomorrow.

“Here. Here? Yes, here.”

The sense of unease that shivered across the skin of Talent throughout New York City would have worried people if they’d known how far it spread, as though the source was poking its fingers into every office, every apartment, every subway car, looking for something. Across the city, sirens rose and fell in a higher-than-usual number. All day, the incidents of petty mischief and chaos had seemed to increase geometrically, making people irritable and far more likely to use violence. The most high-res of Talent were restless, while current-sensitive Nulls double-checked the locks on their doors and second-guessed their decisions, certain that something wasn’t right, and astrologers and New Age folk double-checked to make sure that Mercury hadn’t suddenly, unexpectedly, gone retrograde. Even the dullest of Nulls looked over their shoulders, and double-counted their change.

The Roblin was hunting.

“Here.” A whisper of satisfaction as it found the source of the potential, the whisper of mischief that had summoned it. The scent of a worthy target.

In the locked and quiet offices of the Private, Unaffiliated Paranormal Investigations team, a single light flicked on, casting gray shadows around the otherwise dark and still space of the break room, although the front door had not opened to let anyone in. There was the quiet sound of soft-soled shoes on carpet, down to the first small office, and then the scrape of wooden file cabinet drawers being opened, the shuffle of papers being riffled, sheets pulled out and then quickly, carelessly reinserted. Information. It needed information, in order to wreak the highest chaos. It had the scent of their magic, but now it needed names... .

Occasional muttering filled the air, as though rising from not one throat but several, all at once. The desk was unlocked and more drawers were opened, then that room abandoned and another investigated, the shadows working down the long hallway, checking each room as they passed, heading to the last room in the suite.

A gnarled, crooked hand rose to the door as though to push it open, and let out a deep squeak of shock as current lashed out at the unfamiliar touch, lighting the gray darkness with bursts of hot-orange and neon-green.

“Who are you?” whispered out of the air, a hot voice to match the current-sparks, and the shadow stopped, cocking its head as though considering the question. It had not expected an alarm, but clearly was not bothered by it, either.

“Who are you?” The whisper-voice was louder the second time, less of a question and more of a demand. The sparks intensified in color, as though preparing to attack. A hum, like angry bees, filled the hallway.

The shadow paused, as though judging the whisper and deciding that it was, at the moment, outgunned.

“Gone,” The Roblin said. And then it was.