Kitabı oku: «Hard Magic»

Praise for laura anne gilman

Staying Dead “An entertaining, fast-paced thriller set in a world where cell phones and computers exist uneasily with magic and a couple of engaging and highly talented rogues solve crimes while trying not to commit too many of their own” —Locus

Curse the Dark “With an atmosphere reminiscent of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose by way of Sam Spade, Gilman’s second Wren Valere adventure … features fast-paced action, wisecracking dialogue, and a pair of strong, appealing heroes.” —Library Journal

Bring It On “Ripping good urban fantasy, fast-paced and filled with an exciting blend of mystery and magic … this is a paranormal romance for those who normally avoid romance, and the entire series is worth checking out.” —SF Site

Burning Bridges “This fourth book in Gilman’s engaging series delivers … Wren and Sergei’s relationship, as usual, is wonderfully written. As their relationship moves in an unexpected direction, it makes perfect sense—and leaves the reader on the edge of her seat for the next book.” —RT Book Reviews, 4 stars

Free Fall “An intelligent and utterly gripping fantasy thriller, by far the best of the Retrievers series to date” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Blood from Stone “Extreme fun, nicely balanced with dark stuff … and a scene in a museum that had me whimpering with joy” —Green Man Review

About the Author

LAURA ANNE GILMAN took the plunge into murky writing waters in 1994 when she sold her first short story. Four media tie-in novels and a respectable number of short story sales later, she made the move to full-time writer in 2003. She is the author of the Cosa Nostradamus books for LUNA Books (the “Retrievers” and “Paranormal Scene Investigations” urban fantasy series), a young adult fantasy series for Pocket, and more than thirty shorter works of science fiction, fantasy and horror. She also writes paranormal romance as Anne Leonard. Laura Anne lives in New York City. You can contact her at LAG@lauraanne gilman.net, or find her online at suricattus.livejournal.com and www.lauraannegilman.net.

Hard Magic

Laura Anne

Gilman

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Dear Reader,

Sometimes the most colourful characters are the ones you don’t plan for. When Bonnie Torres first appeared in the Retrievers series, she was a walk-on character, a bit player.

Bonnie, though, wasn’t having any of it. She insisted on playing a larger part, becoming part of the ongoing story. And then, when I paused for breath, she insisted on getting her own story, “Illumination” in the anthology Unusual Suspects. And then she demanded the chance to tell her own adventure—and that of her fellow PUPIs, the Private, Unaffliated Paranormal Investigators of the Cosa Nostradamus.

New York City’s a tough place for a twentysomething Talent to make her mark. But I suspect Bonnie’s up to it….

Laura Anne Gilman

For Sioux. Who else?

You might say that it all started with a phone call, that morning in my hotel room. Only it didn’t, not really. The wheels of my life were in motion long before then. Before the first murders, before the first job. Before I had ever heard of PUPI: before there was a PUPI for anyone to hear of. Before all hell broke loose, and the Cosa Nostradamus was almost destroyed …

For me it started years earlier, when I was still in college, and my dad had gone missing for the last time, with just a cryptic letter left behind, and with a stranger listening in on my thoughts. That was when my life changed, when everything that was to come, began.

But I didn’t make the connection, not then, and not for a while later.

I’m better at putting the pieces together, now. I have to be.

It’s what I’m trained to do.

The world changes.

If you’re lucky, you know it’s happening.

If you’re really lucky, you know you’re part of it.

This is my part.

prologue

The second body wasn’t quite dead yet. The eyes stared up; not asking questions, just staring. The killer was tempted to finish the job, but instead focused on adding the final touches to the scene. It was almost perfect … and yet, something remained undone. Something felt off.

Outside, a car passed down the street, its engine clearly needing a tune-up. The noise made the killer scowl; why didn’t people take better care of their tools? That idiot was going to find himself by the side of the road, his car overheated at best, at worst….

Contrary to what they show on television and movies, cars don’t catch fire easily. They’re designed better than that, even the older vehicles. It takes serious effort to blow one up: pouring on accelerant, or explosives …

Or magic.

The killer paused, fingers curled around the car’s door-latch, and thought about that, humming over the possibilities. The idea of the car going up in flames was pleasing. It would burn hot, blue and white. The flames would rise up from the upholstery, lick at the roof, fill the entire garage and, if the fire-fighters didn’t arrive soon enough, take the entire house with it. Easy enough to accomplish: just a controlled match of current, and a single directed thought.

Pleasing, and satisfying, that thought. Artistic, even. A fitting end to the entire matter.

But it would also draw too much attention. This wasn’t about headlines, or media coverage. The fewer people who noticed, in fact, the better. And fire might spread, injure others. That wasn’t the plan, either.

So, regretfully, the car was left intact and unscorched, the two bodies arranged in the front seat as though they’d just come home from an evening away, and simply forgotten to get out of the car.

The killer did not wear a watch, but there was a sense of valuable time passing, seconds ticking away and the window of opportunity closing. Setting everything up had taken exactly the time allotted in the plan, but the woman had fought harder than expected, losing a shoe in the process, and disposal had made more of a mess than expected. That was unacceptable.

Using a plastic garbage bag taken from the workbench, the debris was quickly packed away, and the last traces of struggle tidied up. Pack it in, pack it out, the killer thought without any sense of irony. Sorting through what was normal trash and what might carry identifiable trace was too difficult to judge: everything visible had to be considered potentially incriminating, even if nobody ever investigated. That was the hallmark of success.

Within minutes the garage was clean and peaceful again, a proper abode for the gleaming chrome beast stalled within. The attached mini mansion had never been disturbed; there would be no evidence found there.

There were no last looks, no photographs taken for posterity. It was done. Lights were turned out, the door closed, and silence claimed the space.

Inside the garage, the second body stirred, death held at bay a few seconds more. Vision gone, the fingers spread as though searching for something beside it on the car seat, stilling inches away from its goal—the already cooling hand of the other figure slumped in the passenger seat.

one

The dream was back. It always came back when I was stressed.

The site was deserted; I sneaked through the fence and into the house. Lucky for me the alarms hadn’t been turned on yet.

As usual, my brain was telling me that it was only a memory; that I already knew what I would find, that it was okay for my heart to stop pounding so fast, but the dream was in control.

The door called to me. I could feel it, practically singing in the rain-filled dusk. My flashlight skittered across the floor, allowing me to pick my way around piles of trash and debris. No tools left out; the carpenter’s daughter approved.

“Hello, beauty,” I said to the door. Or maybe to the woman in the door: in the darkness, in the beam of light, she was nakedly apparent now, a sweet-eyed woman who gazed out into the bare bones of the room with approval and fondness.

Even now, the beauty of Zaki’s work astounded me, and I mourned again for that loss.

“Who are you, then? That’s the key to all this. Who are you?”

The door, not too surprisingly, didn’t answer. But I knew how to make it talk.

Or I thought I did, anyway.

It was all instinct, but J had always told me that instinct was the way most new things were discovered—instinct and panic.

I held my hand over the door the way I had with the tools, carefully not making physical contact with it, and touched just the lightest levels of current, like alto bells sounding in the distance.

The woman’s hair stirred in a breeze, and her face seemed softer, rounder, then she disappeared behind the leaves again.

I hated her, this woman I’d never known, never met. Hated her for being the reason my father was dead.

Zaki really had been an artist, the bastard. I could feel him in the work. But I didn’t know, yet, what he had been feeling.

*evidence doesn’t lie*

Shut up, I told the voice. I’m working.

I touched a deeper level of current, bringing it out with a firm hand and splaying it gently across the door so that it landed easily, smoothly.

Oh, how I love her, such a bad woman, such a wrong woman, and I cannot have her, but I will show her my love….

Zaki, melancholy and impassioned, his hand steady on the chisel, his eyes on the wood, sensing even through his distraction how to chip here, cut there, to make the most of the grain. He was concentrating, thinking of his object of affection, the muse who inspired him.So focused, the way all Talent learned to be, that he never saw the man coming up behind him, the man who had already seen the work in progress, and recognized, the way a man might, the face growing out of the wood.

I knew what was about to happen, in my dream-mind, and tensed against the memory.

The blow was sudden and sharp, and the vision faded.

No, I told my current. More.

It surged, searched, and found…nothing. No emotions from the killer. No residue of his actions. It had been too long, or he had been too good, too quick. Or I needed to be better, sharper.

You were a kid, I wanted to tell my then-self. You did what you could, and you did as well as you could. But you can’t talk back to memories, only relive them.

“Damn it.” My flashlight’s beam dropped off the door; I was unwilling to look at the face of the woman who had cost my father his life.

*there is always evidence*

The voice was back. And probably right. I let the beam play on the floor, unsure what I was looking for. Scan, step, scan. I repeated the process all the way up to the door, then turned around and looked the way I had come.

“There.”

On the floor, about two feet away. A spot where the hardwood floor shone differently That meant that it had been refinished more recently than the rest of the floor, or been treated somehow…. Zaki would have known. All I knew was that it was a clue.

I touched it with current, as lightly as I could. Something warned me that a gentle touch would reveal more than demanding ever would.

“The killer’s actions, I beg you wood, reveal.”

J’s influence: treat current the way you would a horse; control it through its natural instincts. Current, like electricity, illuminated.

A dent in the floor, sanded down and covered up. The point of a chisel stained with blood? No. The harder end, sticking out of a body as it landed, falling backward …

Oh, Zaki, you idiot was all I could find inside myself, following the arc of the body. For a woman? For another man’s woman when you had Claire at home?

And then I saw it, the shadow figure of the killer, indistinct even in his own mind—shading himself. That meant the killer was a Talent, if of even less skill than Zaki. Had that been a factor? The man—the foreman, I knew now—jealous not only of the carpenter’s attraction to his wife, but of his skill to display it, driven to murder?

The chisel was removed, wiped down, and …

I still flinched, even years and dreams later.

The blood alone flared bright in the pictorial, a shine of wet rubies in the shadows as the foreman dipped the chisel into a cloth still damp with the blood, laying the trace for me to find, a week later.

Find, and be unable to do anything about, save live with the knowledge that my father had been murdered, and the murderer still walked, unpunished ….

I woke up, and the still-powerful sadness of dream faded, although it never really went away. Zaki had been dead for three years, though, and I’d learned to live with it. My depressing reality was more immediate: three months out of college, and I still didn’t have a job.

I thought about putting the feather pillow over my face until I turned a proper shade of blue and suffocated. Even knowing that it was the overblown act of a spoiled five-year-old didn’t stop me from contemplating it, running through scenarios of who would find me and what they might say or think or do. Eventually, though, I shoved the pillow to the side and stared glumly up at the ceiling.

No, I wasn’t quite that desperate. But it was close.

Nobody wanted to hire me. It wasn’t that I didn’t have brains. Or enthusiasm. Or dedication, for that matter. I just … didn’t know what to do with any of what I had. I guess that was showing up in my interviews, because nobody was saying “welcome aboard.”

Something had to break soon, or I was looking at a short-term career goal of flipping burgers or, if I was lucky, pulling beers at a semidecent pickup bar.

“Oh, the hell with that.” I got out of bed and stripped down my sweat-soaked T-shirt and panties, replacing them with my sweat-dried gym clothes, fresh socks, and my sneakers, and headed down to the hotel’s gym. The only way to interrupt a self-pity party was with a good hard run.

I got back to my room, feeling only a little bit better, just in time to take possession of my breakfast order. I let the room-service guy in and tipped him, the door barely closing behind his back when the phone rang. I dropped the receipt on the table and picked up the phone, telling myself not to make any assumptions or unfounded leaps of hope. This early, though, it might be good news. Did people really call at 9:00 a.m. with bad news? Didn’t they put that off as long as possible? “Bonita Torres.”

“Ms. Torres? This is Sally Marin, at Homefront Services.”

I could tell by the sound of her voice that the news wasn’t going to be good. Damn. Deep breathing is supposed to be good for panic, wasn’t it? I took a breath, held it, and then let it out. Nope, didn’t help.

I shifted the phone to the other ear, and tried to relax my shoulders, kicking off my sneakers and peeling off my socks. There was no reason to panic. My checkbook was still decently in the black, I wasn’t in debt, if you could ignore a credit card or three coming due at the end of the month, and I had a degree from a top school packed with all my belongings in storage while I lounged around in a swank little suite on the Upper East side of Manhattan on a lovely, not-too-hot summer day.

Life could be worse, right?

Life could be a hell of a lot worse. I knew that firsthand. I took another deep breath and stared at my feet—I’d painted the toenails dark blue, to keep myself from thinking about the demure pale pink that was on my fingernails—and wiggled them. Yeah, things could be worse. But they could be shitloads better, too.

The brutal truth of the matter was that I needed a job, and not a minimum-wage one, either. Joseph kept telling me to relax, that I’d find something, but much as I love J, and he loves me, I couldn’t mooch off him for the rest of my life, letting him pay for this hotel, my food, and my clothing. Sure, he had money but that wasn’t the point. Comes a time, you’ve got to do for yourself, or self-esteem, what’s that?

The problem was, J’s been doing for me for so long, I think we’ve both forgotten how for him not to. Not that he spoiled me or anything, just … He’s always taken care of me. Ever since I was eight years old, and an instinctive cry for help had literally pulled him off the street and into my life.

The dream came back to me, and I shoved it away. My dad, rest his soul, always meant well, and I’d never had a moment’s doubt that he loved me, but Zaki Torres had been a crap parental figure, and his decisions weren’t always the best even for himself, much less me. J had taken one look that day, and arranged to become mentor to that mouthy, opinionated eight-year-old. He taught me everything I needed to know and a bunch of stuff he figured I’d want to know, and then, ten years later, had the grace and wisdom to let me go.

Not that I went far—just off to college for four years. But even then, J was there, the comforting shadow and sounding board at my elbow, not to mention the tuition check in the mail. Now that phase was over, and it was time to be an adult.

Somehow.

And that was why I was starting to panic.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Torres,” the woman on the other end of the phone line was saying. “Your résumé was quite good, of course, but … “

I kinda tuned her out at that point. It was the same thing everyone had been saying for the past three months. I’m smart, I’m well educated—the aforementioned four years at Amherst will do that—and I’m a hard worker. All my references were heavy on that point. I’ve never shied away from a challenge.

Only these days, nobody wanted to hire someone with a liberal-arts degree and minimal tech skills, no matter how dedicated they might be.

It wasn’t my fault, not really. I know how to use computers and all that. It’s just that I can’t. Or, I can, but it doesn’t always end well.

I’m a Talent, which is the politically correct way of saying magic user. Magician. Witch. Whatever. Using current—the magical energy that floats around the world—is as natural to me as hailing a cab is to New Yorkers. Only problem is, current runs in the same time-space whatever as electricity, and like two cats in the same household, they don’t always get along. They’re pretty evenly balanced in terms of power and availability, but current’s got the added kick of people dipping in and out, which makes it less predictable, more volatile. Which means a Talent … well, let’s just say that most of us don’t carry cell phones or PDAs on our person, or work with any delicate or highly calibrated technology.

I’m actually better than most—for some reason my current tends to run cool, not hot, meaning I don’t have as many spikes in my—hypothetical—graph. Nobody’s been able to explain it, except to say I’m just naturally laid-back. I guess it’s because of that I’ve never killed a landline, or any of the basic household appliances just by proximity the way most Talent do, but there’s always the risk.

Especially when we’re under stress. You learn to work around it, and I wouldn’t give up what I am, not for anything, but sometimes current is less a gift and more a righteous pain in the patoot. Especially when you’re trying to find a job in the Null world.

Ms. Marin had finished making apologies, finally.

“Yes, thank you. I do appreciate your taking the time to speak with me.” J taught me manners, too. I hung up the phone, and stared at my toes again. The sweat of my treadmill workout seemed far away, and the dream-sweat closer to my skin, somehow.

Damn it. I had really hoped something would come out of that interview. Something good, I meant.

Lacking any other idea or direction, I wandered over to the desk, where a pile of résumés, a notepad, and my breakfast—a three-egg omelet with hash browns and ketchup—waited for me to get my act together. There were still half a dozen places I needed to call, to follow up on applications and first interviews. I sat in the chair and stared at the notepad, with its neatly printed list—the result of ten weeks of intensive job-hunting—and felt a headache starting to creep up on me. At this rate, I really was going to be begging for temp jobs or—god help me—going back to retail. My life’s ambition, not really. I might not know what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn’t want.

I forked up a bit of the omelet and took a bite, less because I was hungry and more because it was there. Other Talent found their niche, why couldn’t I? All right, so a lot of them became artists, or lawyers, or ran their own companies, where their weirdness wasn’t noticed, or was overlooked. None of that really interested me, even if I’d had an inch of artistic or entrepreneurial talent, which I didn’t. Academia maybe, but the truth was that while I loved learning, school mostly bored me.

Me bored was a bad idea. When I was bored I did things like create a spell that would burn out selected letters in neon signs all over town, until it looked as though there was a conspiracy against the letters Y and N. Listening to people’s crackpot theories about what had really happened for the rest of the week had been fun, but …

But I needed something to do.

They say you should follow your interests, go for what you’re passionate about. To do something that mattered would be nice. I needed to be able to get my teeth into something, to feel that it was worthwhile. Other than that … I didn’t know. I guess that works if you’ve got some kind of artistic talent, or want to make the world a better place, or have an isotope named for you. Me, not so much.

There had been a while, after Zaki’s murder, when I’d thought about going into law enforcement, but it was tougher these days for Talent to make it—less shoe leather and more high-tech toys. I might make it through the Academy, but spending the rest of my life pounding the pavement, unable to advance, didn’t thrill me. And J was even less happy with the idea. He wanted me in a nice, safe office. Preferably a corner office, with an assistant to handle the heavy lifting and typing.

I scowled at the list again. Three advertising agencies, two trade magazines, and a legal aid firm. That was all I had left.

“Screw it. Shower first.” Whatever the cause, I was sticky and sweaty, and my hair was kind of gross. Maybe washing it would get my brain going.

The bathroom was reasonably luxe, with scented shampoos and conditioners and soaps, and I took my time. I thought I heard the phone ring, but since I was soaking wet and had just lathered up, I ignored it. This place wasn’t quite pretentious enough to rate a telephone in the bathroom. I’m not sure J would have let me stay here if there had been one—he’s sort of old-fashioned and genteel, and things like taking a phone call while you’re on the crapper would give him frothing fits.

The thought, I admit, made me giggle, even in my depression. J is such a gentleman in a lot of ways, old school, and yet he kept up with me pretty well. I wonder sometimes what crimes he committed as a young’un, that he was the one to be landed with me.

Far as I could tell, his only mistake had involved being in the wrong place at the right time. Zaki had enough sense to know he wasn’t a strong enough Talent, and didn’t have enough patience to mentor me, but his first choice was a disaster waiting to happen, and even as a kid I knew that the moment he introduced us. The guy was … well, he wouldn’t have sold me to pay off his gambling debts, but I wouldn’t have learned a whole lot, either.

The moment was still crystal-sharp in my memory: Zaki’s worried presence, hovering; Billy’s pleasure at being asked to mentor someone for the first time in his life; the smell of a freshly washed carpet that didn’t hide the years of wear and tear …

With an amazing lack of tact that still dogs me, I’d used my untrained, just-developing current to yelp for help. That had attracted the attention of a passerby on the street below, who—despite having already done his time as a mentor, and being way out of our league—came up the stairs, took one look, and took on the job.

Zaki had been lonejack, part of the officially unofficial, intentionally unorganized population of Talent. J was Council—the epitome of structural organization. Despite that, they both got along pretty well, I guess because of me. I wasn’t the only lonejack kid mentored by a Council member, but I was the only one we knew of who stayed at least nominally a lonejack.

“Maybe if you’d crossed the river, you’d have had a job offer waiting for you when you graduated,” I grumbled. “Why do you insist on thinking that nepotism’s a dirty word?”

Truth was, I didn’t think of myself as either one group or the other, and maybe that was part of the problem. Born to one magical community, raised in another, Latina by birth and European by training, female imprinted on a—oh god, use the word—metrosexual male … Issues? I probably should have subscriptions at this point.

My hair’s short enough that it doesn’t take long to wash, and by the time I got out of the bathroom, toweled off, and wrapped in one of the complimentary bathrobes, the strands were almost dry. I’m a natural honey-blonde, thanks to my unknown and long-gone mother, but it hasn’t been that shade since I was fourteen—I was currently sporting a dark red dye job that I had thought would look more office-appropriate. So much for that thought doing me any good. Maybe I’d go back to purple, and the hell with it.

Contemplating an interviewer’s reaction to that, I walked to the bedroom, and saw that the light on the phone was blinking. Right, the call I’d missed. Whoever called, they’d left me a message.

My heart did a little scatter-jump, and my inner current flared in anticipation, making me instinctively take a step away from the phone, rather than toward it. Normally, like I said, my current’s cold and calm, especially compared to most of my peers, but I’d been out of sorts recently, and wasn’t quite sure what might happen. Bad form to short out your only means of communicating with potential employers. Plus, the hotel would be pissed, and complain to J.

Once I felt my current settle back down, I let myself look at the blinking light again. You could call first thing in the morning with bad news. Okay. You didn’t call and leave a message with bad news, did you? I didn’t know. Maybe. Just because everyone seemed eager to tell me no to my face didn’t mean that was the only way to do it.

All right, this was me, keeping calm. Hitting the replay button. Stepping back, out of—hopefully—accidental current-splash range …

“This message is for Bonita Torres. Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.” The speaker gave an address that I didn’t recognize, not that I knew damn-all about New York City, once you get past the basic tourist spots. “Take the 1 train to 125. Be on time.”

No name, no indication of where they got my name or number, just that message, in a deep male voice.

An interesting voice, that. Not radio-announcer smooth, but … interesting.

Someone smart would have deleted the message. Someone with actual prospects would have laughed and said no way.

I’ve always been a sucker for interesting.

two

One of the first things J taught me was, before I decided on anything with repercussions, to step back and consider that decision from every possible angle. It only took a few minutes of thought, and sanity reasserted itself. The voice-mail message was weird, but intriguing. Or maybe it was intriguing because it was weird. Did that make it a good idea? No. In fact, it probably made it a very bad idea.

J said I should consider, and think sanely. He didn’t say anything about listening to that sane voice, and very bad ideas were often a lot of fun.

The guy hadn’t left a phone number for me to call back and say I’d be there, though. Oh god, and if this was from one of the résumés I’d sent out, I’d look a proper idiot calling now to follow up, if I’d already gotten an interview.

I picked up the phone and was about to dial the callback code when I realized that, idiot, the call had to have come through the hotel switchboard. So I dialed 0 for the front desk, instead.

“Hi. This is room 328? I just had a call come in, and they didn’t leave a name or number to reach them at, I don’t suppose …?”

No, the woman at the front desk told me regretfully, they couldn’t. I didn’t know if it was a technological thing or a legal thing, and I didn’t bother to ask. The reason didn’t make a difference. I hung up the phone, still clueless, and stared at the paper with the details written on it, on top of the list of names and places I was supposed to call back. Handwriting was supposed to tell you about a person, right? My handwriting’s like J’s—squared and solid, and easy to read. I’d have made a crappy doctor.

Maybe it was one of these places I’d already submitted my résumé to. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was through a contact of J’s who had thought my mentor would tell me to expect the call. That didn’t sound right—-J would never forget to tell me something like that—but it was a possibility. Maybe it was a joke, a prank, or a weird cold-call solicitation. I had no idea, and no way of finding out—except for showing up.

Tomorrow afternoon. All right. That gave me the rest of the day to follow up on my other résumés, and still get out and wander around the city before dinner with J. And then tomorrow … would bring whatever tomorrow would bring. Maybe J would have some idea what all this was about. I was pretty sure he’d have an opinion, at least.

The carrot of playtime in Manhattan dangling in front of me, I made short work of the remaining names on my list. Not that it took much; two résumés were still “under consideration”; two were thanks-no-thanks; at one place the HR person was out and would get back to me at some point before the next millennium, maybe; and one place, hurrah, they wanted to see me again on Friday!

The fact that this was Monday didn’t fill me with huge levels of optimism, since if I was a hot prospect they’d get me in quick, right? But it was the best offer I’d gotten so far, so I thanked the nice guy on the phone, confirmed the time and place, and hung up the phone not quite as terminally depressed as I’d been earlier. Also, I’d determined that the mysterious phone call hadn’t come from any of these places, so that option was dealt with.

Was I going to show up tomorrow? I honestly didn’t know.

But for now, I had the afternoon to myself. I threw on a pair of black pants and a hot-pink T-shirt and my boots, left my stress at the door, and made my escape.

Johnny, the twenty-seven-year-old engineering student from Tehran, was doorman today. He wished me a nice day and held the large glass door open, and I hit the sidewalk like a greyhound sighting a rabbit.

I grew up in Boston, went to school outside the city, had been to Rome and Paris and London and Dubai and Tokyo and a dozen other major cities with J dragging me around. All that travel gave me a reasonable sense of sophistication, but drop me in the middle of New York City and I felt like a little kid again. There’s not more current running through the wiring of Manhattan than anywhere else; it’s not any more vibrant or powerful … but somehow it always feels that way to me.

Not just me, either. J says there’re more Talent in New York, Chicago, and Houston than anywhere else, and more of the fatae, the nonhumans of the Cosa Nostradamus—those with and of magic—too. I wasn’t so blasé that I wouldn’t be excited about the chance to see more fatae. Sure, there were some up in Amherst; my freshman composition teacher had been a dryad, and a couple of centaurs used to hang around the stables I rode at, taunting the ponies and stealing grain and treats. But the exotics, the rare breeds, they were in New York, where nobody even looked once, much less twice.

The hotel was only a ten-minute walk from my destination: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Specifically, the Temple of Dendur, the reconstructed ruins of a building once dedicated to Isis. Anytime the museum’s open, you’ll find people standing there under the glass walls, staring at the installation, soaking up the ancient ambience. Some of us are soaking up more than that. The Temple by itself may or may not have been anything especially mystical or magical in its original location, beyond whatever the faith of its followers gave it, but when it was relocated to the museum, they managed to place the sandstone structure directly over a major ley line convergence, one of the sweetest in the city.

Ley lines are like a funnel for natural current, the energy of the earth itself, the basic stuff magic is formed around. I wasn’t going to suck any of it up today, just say hello, make my curtsy, as J always said. It’s only polite.

Someone came up next to me. I assumed another tourist, someone who didn’t know not to stand so close, gawking at the Temple, same as me. Half-right, anyway.

“You’re new.”

Oh lord. Not that I didn’t appreciate attention, when I was in the mood, but … “You’re using a very old line.”

“Old and tested and true. I’m none of those things.”

I laughed, and turned to consider the owner of the voice. Tall, well above my own five-six, and nicely built, with deep blue eyes and raven-black hair setting off evenly tanned skin. Might be too old for me, by a smidge, but if he didn’t mind I wasn’t going to say anything.

Oh, the outlook for the afternoon had definitely improved.

“I’m Gerry,” he said, offering one nicely formed hand, the fingertips bitten but not torn up. There were just enough calluses to make his skin firm, rather than soft, and he shook like a guy who had nothing to prove, a single solid pump. “I’m harmless in public, entertaining in private, and up-to-date on all my shots and papers. May my old lines and I buy you a cup of coffee?”

This hadn’t exactly been the distraction I’d been thinking of, but when you’re made such a very nicely packaged offer … I cast a look over the Temple, and be damned if I didn’t feel a very distinct smirk coming off the energy rising out of it. Or maybe that was just me, projecting.

“You may, indeed.”

Three hours and more than one cup of coffee later, I knew enough about Gerry to know that he would be a disaster long-term, even if I had been thinking that way. I also knew that he had a very confident appeal and a sweetly coffee-scented kiss, and if I hadn’t been otherwise promised for the evening, we might have gotten better acquainted. Not that well acquainted, no; I’m an unabashed flirt, not a skank. But he was sweet, and he gave me his phone number and e-mail, with strict instructions to get in touch.

Maybe I would. Maybe not. Gerry was sweet, but he didn’t have even a twitch of Talent, didn’t seem to know anything about the Cosa Nostradamus—I’d been subtle but thorough on that—and I’ve always been shy about getting involved with Nulls. It gets … complicated. Better to stick to your own kind, who already know the deal.

I made it back to the hotel just in time to change for dinner. J’s not a fuddy-duddy, even if he is Council, but there are standards for our dinners together, and I appreciate them as much as he does.

Promptly on the dot of 6:00 p.m. I was dressed in my favorite red dress, a Monroe-style haltertop, pearl drops in my ears and rings on my fingers, feet cased in strappy gold sandals and my hair combed into a semblance of tidy curls. A spritz of perfume, and I was ready to go.

At the dot of 6:02 p.m., the touch of current that felt like J wrapped around me, and a second later the Translocation took effect, moving me from my hotel room in Manhattan a hundred-plus miles north to J’s place in Boston.

Translocation’s a basic current-skill. I’m decent at it. J’s prime. I landed in his living room like I’d stepped in from the hallway, not a hair out of place.

“Good evening, my dear.” He was pouring wine, a deep red liquid that made my mouth water. I was more of a vodka martini girl, but my mentor had a fantabulous wine cellar, too.

He was looking good, and I told him so.

“Well, I had a hot date tonight, had to brush off the good suit.”

Joseph Cetala had just pushed over seventy, and looked it, but every year had been kind. His hair was still thick, if bone-white, and his patrician cheekbones were hidden under still-firm skin. I have no objections to my looks—they do the job and pale skin and a pointy-pixie chin suit me—but man did I used to wish I were his biological daughter, just for those cheekbones.

I took a glass from him, and sat on the sofa. The shaggy white-and-brown throw rug got to its feet and shuffled over. “Hey there, good boy. How’s my good boy?”

“He’s getting old, same as me.”

“Nah. You guys are never gonna get old. Are you, boy?”

Rupert woofed, and shoved his wet nose into my hand. I wasn’t much for pets, but Rupe was less a pet than a member of the household. J said all Old English sheepdogs were smart, but I personally thought Rupe got a double helping of brains. I always got the feeling he wasn’t so optimistic about me.

J took his own glass over to the leather chair and sat, crossing one leg against his knee, and looking, I swear to god, like an ad for something upscale and classy aimed at the Retirement Generation. Even in my nice dress and pearls, I still felt outclassed.

Funny, really. I leaned into the sofa and looked around. The only way to describe J’s place was “warm.” Rosewood furniture against cream-colored walls, and touches of dark blue and flannel gray everywhere, broken by the occasional bit of foam green from his Chinese pottery collection. You’d think I’d have grown up to be Über Society Girl, not pixie-Goth, in these surroundings. Even my bedroom—now turned back into its original use as a library—had the same feel of calm wealth to it, no matter how many pop-culture posters I put up or how dark I painted the walls. And yet, J was just as likely to wear jeans and kick back with a beer when he was in the mood, so I guess I should know by now that you can’t judge a body by the decor.

J used to tell me, when I was, oh, thirteen and felt particularly floundering-ish, that I would grow up into who I always was. It sounds nice, I guess, but I’m still not quite sure who that is. She uses a lot of hair dye and has an interestingly eclectic wardrobe, and might have a lead on a job, though. So that was all right.

“What’s for dinner?” I asked.

“I’m trying something new.”

From some people, that news would make me nervous. J, I swear to god, was born in the kitchen. I don’t think he owned a single cookbook or has any of his recipes written down, but he’s never fed me anything that was less than really good, and it frequently goes into orgasmic culinary experience range. I learned how to cook by the time I was ten, just by osmosis, and had my first set of proper knives when I was fourteen. Haven’t done much cooking lately, though. Nobody around to feed since graduation, I guess.

“You are looking particularly glowy tonight, dearest. Either the job hunt has resulted in a hit, or you have met a new admirer.”

I think J gets a kick out of my social life, although he tsk-tsks periodically over my inability—lack of desire, really—to settle into one steady relationship. So long as I’m happy, he’s happy. I mean, he didn’t blink the first time I showed up with a new girlfriend, and never asked when she went away and a new boyfriend showed up.

I’m not particularly into labels. I just like people, is all. Doesn’t matter what body parts they’ve got, so long as there’s a brain and a sense of humor and a healthy idea of companionship.

“Both, maybe,” I told him. “But it’s the job thing that’s interesting. I was in the shower when the call came in ….”

J listened the way he always did, with his entire body leaning forward, his hands cupped around his glass, his gaze not unblinking but steady on my face. When I finished, he leaned back, took a sip from his glass, and didn’t say anything.

“What?”

“You intend to follow through on these instructions?”

“I’d planned to, yeah. You think it’s a bad idea? Are you getting a vibe?” I had what J called the kenning, not quite precog but a sort of magical sense about things. But he’d been honing his current for a lifetime before I came along, and that meant he picked up more than I did on a regular basis.

“Nothing so strong as a premonition, no. I will admit, however, to a sense that something is slightly … What is that horrible word you used to use? Hinky Something feels hinky about it.”

That made me laugh. “Well, yes. That probably goes without saying. Anyone calls out of the blue, doesn’t give basic details, all mysterious and like?” I didn’t roll my eyes, but my voice conveyed the “well, duh” more than J deserved. “That’s half the fun!”

My mentor shook his head and mock-sighed. I love J more than life, but he and I diverge pretty seriously on our ideas of fun.

“If you wanted me to, I could get you a job …” He let the offer trail off, the same way he did every time he made it. J had, once upon a time, worked for the State, and then did some work for a high-powered law firm that still listed him on the masthead, even though he hadn’t, as far as I knew, taken on a case in over a decade. If I couldn’t be a cop, I guess his reasoning went, why not be a lawyer?

Just the idea made me want to tear my fingernails off and use them to dig an escape route. I never, ever told him that, though I suspected he knew.

“There’s just something about that message,” I said, doing my usual not-a-response to his offer. “Something that makes my ears prick up, and no, I don’t know why. I figured I might do a scrying, see what comes forward.”

“You and your crystals.” The disgust in his voice this time was real.

“Just because we’ve gone all modern and scientific with current doesn’t mean some of the old ways aren’t valid.” It was an old argument, older even than the split between Council and the scruffy freelancer lonejacks. When Founder Ben—Benjamin Franklin to Nulls—nailed the connection between electricity and current with his kite-and-key trick, most Talent changed, too, working the scientific angle to figure out more and more efficient ways to do things—and how to work this increasingly electric world to our benefit. A lot of the theories and practices of Old Magic got tossed, and good riddance, but I’d discovered that I could scry better with a focus object than with current alone, and the smoother and rounder the shape, the better.

So yeah, I have a crystal ball. Deal.

“I just …” It was difficult to vocalize what I wasn’t really sure of. J was patient, waiting. I might have mentioned the dream, but I didn’t. Talking about Zaki always made J feel guilty, as if there was some way he could have prevented it, or stopped me from finding the killer, or done something.

“There’s something familiar about the voice. No, it’s not someone I’ve ever met. I’m not even sure I’ve ever heard the voice before, either, so it’s not a radio announcer or anything. But it’s still familiar, like I’ve got memories associated with it, except I can’t access those memories, either.” I’m usually pretty good at that, too, so J didn’t press further.

“Hinky,” my mentor instead diagnosed with confidence, putting his glass down and heading into the kitchen as something chimed a warning. Rupert abandoned my petting and trudged after his master. I could have followed, but we’d survived this long by not crowding each other in the kitchen. Tonight he was showing off.

J was probably right. Whatever that mysterious call was about, it was not going to be for an entry-level office management job with decent pay and benefits. But it wasn’t as though I had anything else urgent or particularly interesting to do, except maybe give Gerry a call.

This mysterious meeting sounded like it might have more potential.

“Dinner’s ready,” J came back to announce. “Bring your wine. And you’ve made up your mind already, haven’t you?”

J long ago taught me not to shrug—he said that it was an indelicate movement that indicated helplessness—so instead I lifted my free hand palm up in supplication for his understanding. “It’s not like anything else is panning out. And if it is hinky … I may not be as high-res as some, but I can take care of myself. You taught me well, Obi-Wan. Worst case scenario and it’s for a sleazy, low-paying call-girl job, I Translocate out and have a good story about it later.” I wasn’t quite as breezy as that sounded, but I did a pretty good job of selling it, because J’s shoulders relaxed just a bit.

I knew what he was worried about, even if he didn’t say so. J was twice-over retired now, but once upon a time he’d been a serious dealmaker in the Eastern Council, maybe even a seated member although if so he never admitted it, and even now if he said jump a lot of people made like frogs, both here and in the Midwest. There were also a lot of people he’d pissed off along the way, some of whom might want to take a late hit, if not directly on him, then through his family. And to the Cosa Nostradamus, the mentor-mentee relationship was as tight as it got, even more than blood.

He’d had another mentee, years ago, but Bobby was not going to be the target for anyone, anyhow. Not now. Full Council honors out in San Francisco, and you’d better have a topped-up core to take a whack at him or he’d eat you alive. So it was just me J got to worry about.

“And you’ll ping me as soon as you’re out?”

He had to be worried to ask me to ping. It was a good way to send a quick message, but not much on the formal manners, and most of the older Talent seemed to think the way we used it now was a sign of the coming Apocalypse or something.

“Yes, Joseph.” The use of his full name was my sign that the discussion was over, and since he knew better than anyone how like unto a pit bull I could be in the stubbornness category, he let it go and fed me, instead.

* * *

Later that night, back in my hotel room, I got out my crystals. The plain wooden box, about the size of a shoe box, was lined in thick, nubby linen—silk was so clichéd—and held three scrying pieces: a rose quartz ball about the size of my palm, a clear quartz shard the size of a pencil, and my traditional, kerchief-and-skirts scrying globe, also clear quartz. The third piece wasn’t entirely clear all the way through, with an imperfection about midway, but that really didn’t matter for my purposes.

The rose quartz stayed in the box; I wasn’t going to need that one tonight. Sitting cross-legged on the hotel-room bed, the lights out and the television off, I put the ball down in front of me and kept the shard in my hand.

It was warm, as if it had been waiting for me to pick it up. J taught me that everything had current, even inanimate objects, but I wasn’t sensitive enough—what the old-timers called Pure—to pick it up.

Pure or low-res, all Talent use current, and we all use it about the same way, but I’ve never heard anyone describe it exactly the same way. It’s like sex, or religion, I guess; you gravitate toward whatever works for you. Me, I like things tangible. As in life, so in my head; as in my head, so created in current.

The smaller crystal helped me ground and center. I had an even smaller black quartz one that I wore on a chain when I thought I’d need a boost on the go, but J thought that was sloppy, and reflected badly on his training, so I didn’t use it too often.

“Breathe in, breathe out. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6 … “

By five, as usual, I was deep in my own core, the current I carried with me all the time. You could source current from outside, either tame—man-made wiring, power plants, stuff like that—or wild. Wild was ley lines, electrical storms, that sort of thing. Nature’s own energy. There were pluses and minuses to both, which was why you always wanted to maintain your own power, filtered, tamed, and tuned to your own quirks. Core-current was safer to use, faster to call up, and no surprises lurking in the power stream.

I put the fragment down, and placed my hand on the globe, palm curved over the top. The stone was cool at first, and then my fingers began to prickle. I opened my eyes and looked down. Sparks were flicking inside the globe, running from my fingertip down to the imperfection, where they fractured and bounced back to the surface. They were mostly red, which wasn’t what I wanted. I focused, turning one strand this way, another that, and the hues faded to a more useful blue. Like cooking, you could do a lot with basic ingredients and a few pots, but it was easier when you had everything properly prepped.

“All right, baby, show me what you got. What’s waiting at tomorrow’s interview for me?”

That was about the level of specifics I hung at. There might be a way to get actual details out of the future, but I’d never known anyone who could do it consistently—and then there was the problem of interpreting those details. What seems perfectly obvious in a precog has a tendency to go another way entirely when it’s all happening.

But vague? Vague I could do.

The crystal was filled with blue sparks now, and I lifted my hand slowly, not wanting to startle anything. “Whatcha got for me? What’s waiting for me?”

The sparks began to settle, and I opened myself up to whatever visual might come.

Letters. Black against pale blue, hard and spiky letters, like someone writing fast and angry.

No Cheating.

And then the crystal—my damned expensive quartz globe—cracked like overheated safety glass, shards and chunks scattering all over the bed.

I stared down at the mess, feeling the sting on my skin where tiny fragments must have nicked me.

“Sheeesh.” I pulled a shard out of my hair, and dropped it into the largest pile of debris. “All right, fine. I can take a damned hint.”

At least I knew one thing for certain. Whoever had called, whoever was setting this up? Way stronger Talent than me. And there was something else to seriously consider: that blast could have hurt me. Any of those shards might easily have done damage—but didn’t.

I got up, yanked the cover off the bed and wrapped up the useless corpse of my crystal in it, and dropped it to the side of the room, where Housekeeping could deal with it later, then put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door.

Big day tomorrow. I needed my sleep.