Powers of Detection

Palimpsest by LAURA ANNE GILMAN

“That had better be coffee.”

“Hazelnut. Double.”

“You’ll live.” Wren’s arm reached out from under the blanket and snagged the cup out of her partner’s hand. Without spilling a drop, she raised herself on her elbows and took a sip.

“God. I may be human after all.” She peered out from under a tangle of mouse-brown hair at the man standing in the dim light of her bedroom. He looked broad-shouldered and solid and reassuringly familiar. “What time is it?”

“Nine. A.M.,” he clarified. “Rough night?” Sergei sat down on the edge of her bed, forcing her to scoot over to make room.

“No more so than usual. The Council came down hard on the piskies who were dragging people under the lake, so there’ve been some minor temper tantrums in protest, but other than that everything’s quiet. Well, quiet for them, anyway.”

There had been the equivalent of a gang war in Central Park earlier that year between water and earth sprites. Fed up, the city’s independent Talents-lonejacks-and the Mages’ Council had declared truce long enough to make sure things didn’t get out of hand again. Wren, like all lonejacks, distrusted the Council on principle, and the Council and their affiliates thought lonejacks all were troublemaking fools, so it was an uneasy truce to say the least.

Wren took another sip of the coffee and decided that there was enough caffeine in her bloodstream to move without breaking apart. She got out of bed, cup still in hand, and staggered to the dresser to pull out a clean T-shirt.

“You know if the Cosa ever did get itself organized…”

“Bite your tongue.” She ran one hand through her hair and peered at herself in the mirror. “Oh, I look like hell. Thank God I don’t have another stint of babysitting for a couple of days. I could sleep for a week…”

Suddenly his presence there clicked, and she turned to glare at him, the effect in no way diminished by the fact that she was naked save for a pair of pink panties.

“Sorry, Zhenechka. We’ve got a job.”

Wren closed her eyes tightly, seeking balance, then kicked back the rest of the coffee with a grimace and handed the cup to him. “Shower first. Then details.”

She stopped halfway to the door. “Is it at least going to be fun?”

“Would I sign you up for anything boring?”

“The last time you said something like that, we spent two nights in a Saskatchewan jail. And if you say ‘it wasn’t boring,’ so help me I’ll fry your innards.”

The sound of the shower started up, and Sergei allowed himself a faint smile. “Wasn’t boring.”

–

Under the pounding of steaming hot water, Wren swore she could feel the particles of her body coming back into focus. She ducked her head under the stream of water, then reached for the shampoo, massaging it into her scalp with a sigh of pleasure as the deep herbal scent wafted through the air. She could rough it with the best of them, but after a night wrassling with earth spirits peevy at everything that moved, a little luxury was nice. And if the coffee’s any indication, this may be the last luxury I get for a while. He only buys the Dog’s coffee when he wants to soften me up.

Rinsed, dried, and dressed, she walked out of the bathroom drawing a comb through her hair, wincing at the tangles. Her partner leaned against the counter in her tiny kitchen, drinking a mug of tea and reading the newspaper. “All right, you know you’re dying to tell me. So spill.”

“Seven grand down.” He gestured to the counter where the coffee machine was just starting to send out scented steam. “Another ten when you retrieve their package.”

“We’re working cut-rate this week, I see.” They had three price scales. High-end was the stuff that was snore-worthy: divorce settlements, insurance reclamations. Situations that required thinking and ingenuity were slightly cheaper. Sergei knew, by now, what would pique her interest, and was willing to dicker a little less sharp for them. And third…

Don’t think about the third. If you think it, they’ll call.

Third was working on retainer for the organization known as the Silence. Wren had been with them for a little more than a year now, Sergei for far longer than that. Human, nonmagical, and utterly without mercy or compassion, the Silence were nonetheless one of the Good Guys. She thought. She hoped.

“So, what’s the deal?”

“Stow-and-show. Special interest group, wants nine-tenths of a particular display.” Translation: Several someones, acting in concert, wanted her to steal something-possession being nine-tenths of the law-from a museum, the “stow-and-show.”

“You have got to stop watching those god-awful heist movies. Life’s not a caper, Serg.” The coffee machine finished perking, and she grabbed a mug from the sink and filled it. “Paperwork?”

He jerked his chin at her kitchen table, and she noticed the sheaf of papers awaiting her perusal.

“They’re organized, I’ll give them that.”

“Organized, and chatty. Guy wanted to tell me every detail of his life, his job, and the weather in Timbuktu.”

Coffee in hand, Wren sat down at the table and drew the blueprints toward her. “And how is the weather there, anyway? Oh Christ on a crutch, the Meadows.” She had hit them twice in four years-by now she and the alarm system were old friends. “And still people loan them exhibits. I just don’t get the world, I really don’t. What’s the grab?”

“Painting. Smallish, should be easy enough to stow in the tube. In and out, seventeen minutes, tops.”

“I can do it in eleven, if it’s in the main gallery.” It wasn’t ego if you really were that good. And she was. Possibly-probably-the best Retriever of her generation.

He waited a beat, then dropped the other shoe. “And we got a Call.”

She heard the capital letter in his voice, and her head lowered to rest on her crossed arms on the table. “Of course we did. Because my life just wasn’t full to the brim with joy already.”

“Beats unemployment.”

“Easy for you to say, Mister Stay at Home and Cash the Check.”

Which wasn’t fair, she knew. Sergei had warned her about working for the Silence. They wanted first call on her time, always and ever. But it had seemed a worthwhile trade-off at the time.

And their checks always, but always, cleared.

–

“You going to need to charge up?”

“Now you ask?” They were sitting in the car-a yellow sedan, mocked up like a cab, the quintessentially invisible car in Manhattan -outside the Meadows. Although she knew the answer, Wren reached deep inside, touching the roil of current that always rested within her, the sign of a Talent. A gentle stroke, and it uncoiled, sparkling like glitter in her veins. “No, I’m fine. Soaked up a bit when the last batch of storms rolled through, in case things got ugly in the Park.”

She had loved storms since she was old enough to lurch against the windowsill. “You’re a current-user, kid. You’re always going to crave the storm.” Her mentor’s voice, years and lifetimes gone. You could recharge current off man-made sources, and there were lonejacks who preferred that. Safer, more readily accessible, and no hangover if you pulled down too much. But Wren went to the wild source every chance she got.

She didn’t have much chance to rebel, these days.

“If you draw down too much, remember that there’s a secondary generator over here.” And his index finger stabbed the blueprint on the seat between them.

“Yeah, saw that.” They’d been over the plans half a dozen times already. But it made Sergei feel better if they rehashed everything just before she went in. Normally he wouldn’t be anywhere near the scene on a simple grab like this, but the transit workers had gone on strike, and she couldn’t risk hailing a real cab to get home. So he would drop her off, go drive around for a while, and come back for her.

“Try not to pick up any long-distance fares while I’m gone.”

“Not even if they offer to tip like a madman,” he promised.

She laughed, touched his cheek for luck, and slipped out into the darkness.

In some ways, the strike was a nice bit of luck. In her dark grey tracksuit and black sneakers, if stopped by anyone she could claim to be heading home from a late night at the office. A knapsack slung over her shoulder held a lightweight dress and strappy heels to back up the story, plus a thin, strong nylon rope coiled in an inside pocket, her lockpick set, and a wallet with realistic-looking identification and enough cash to get home for real should something go wrong.

Pausing just beyond the reach of the closed-circuit cameras, Wren took a deep breath, let it out. Ground. That was the key. Focus. Center. Ground.

As though she had grown from the earth, Wren felt the weight of its comfort rise up through her, from bedrock into flesh and bone. Soothing the serpent of energy and coaxing it up her spine, into her arms, down her legs. It was like an orgasm, a muted one, pleasure sparking every nerve ending until she was completely aware of everything around her, but not so much that she was overwhelmed by it. Balance. Balance… There was a thin line you had to ride, when you directed current. It wasn’t enough to be able to sense it, or to be able to direct it. You had to convince it to do what you wanted, when you wanted.

Taking the faintest hint of current, she lifted her hand, drawing the camera’s attention. It was like weaving without a loom. Flickers left her fingertips as she concentrated on the circuits and wires of the camera system. Too much, and you burned it out, setting off alarms. Too little, and a sharp-eyed watchman might spot her. Just a hint of static, something that could be brushed off, so long as it didn’t go on for too long. Just long enough for her to move, crouched low and flowing across the grounds like the low-flying bird she was named for, until she reached the relative safety of the decorative overhang. God bless old buildings. The Meadows had started life as a mansion, and still boasted any number of odd architectural details that created enough shadows for Wren to wrap herself in.

Letting her heart rate slow down to normal, Wren pictured the assignment in her mind. It was a small thing, barely twelve-by-twelve, set in a severe silver frame. Part of a traveling exhibit of paintings that were as of yet unattributed but considered by a number of experts to be “rediscovered” works by various Impressionist masters. The art world was wild over the find; Sergei had been to see the exhibit twice even before they got this gig. If she knew her partner, he’d want to hold on to the painting for a few days until they handed it back, just to have one of the so-called Fabulous Finds in his possession.

Actually, if she’d been prone to liking artwork, she thought she might want to own something like this too. The colors were almost alive, creating a wash of light on the landscape that reminded her of the photograph Sergei had in his own office, the black-and-white nature photographer, the guy who took all those pictures of national parks.

Art critique later she told herself. Clock’s tick tick ticking…

The thing about museums is, they weren’t stupid. They knew that technology was fallible, and that humans were fallible. But most of them also had serious budget restrictions. The Meadows had a top-of-the-line electrical alarm system. It would probably have stopped any casual intruder, or at least alerted the police to the incursion. But the Board of the Meadows had one serious disadvantage. They had never heard of current, the magical kind, or the Cosa.

Magic wasn’t the fairy dust and wild imaginations science liked to claim. It was real, and tangible… if you were part of the small percentage of the human population able to sense it. An even smaller percentage of those humans, like Wren, were able to direct the current into anything useful.

And Talents like Wren, who honed her skills for the specific purpose of larceny, were called Retrievers.

A light touch to the door, and she felt the tingle that meant elementals were around, drawn to the current that was bound into electricity, no matter what form. A quick push of current bridged the gap in the alarm system long enough for her to open the door and slip inside. She started to move in the slow-slide fashion she had perfected for not creating footfalls, when she stopped and returned to the lock. Placing her hand on the alarm pad, she waited. Elementals had the reasoning ability of inbred hamsters, but you could use them, if you knew how. She did.

Come on, you know you’re bored with that stale, man-made electricity… come taste some of mine…

They came to her tentatively at first, then swarming in their eagerness. Natural current “tasted” better to them. She let them feed for a few seconds, nibbling around the edges of the current curling up from her belly, twining around her spine. All right. Earn your keep. She visualized clearly what she wanted them to do. A faint hesitation, and the swarm was off, splitting into a dozen different directions as they moved along the museum’s state-of-the-art wiring.

A pity they couldn’t call back to warn her if someone else was in the hallways; but if a person didn’t have current, elementals didn’t know he or she existed.

The painting was in a little alcove off gallery #11, in a space that had probably once been a servant’s room. Or a closet. What did she know, Wren thought, listening with part of her Talent to the sounds of the elementals causing chaos in other parts of the building. She grew up in a double-wide trailer, for Pete’s sake. They didn’t even have any mansions in Redwater.

Palms held over the frame, and the current surged, creating the illusion again that the alarm hadn’t been breached. Moving quickly, she fit a small ceramic knife into the frame and slit the painting carefully along four sides, sliding it out and rolling it up. Tucked into an aluminum tube, the tube stowed in her backpack. And then it was time to go. She checked the digital readout on her knapsack, far enough away from her body that the current didn’t futz it too badly. Fourteen minutes. Damn. Getting old, Valere. You’re getting old.

–

By the time she made it out to the edge of the museum’s property, it was almost twelve-thirty. She perched in the vee of a large oak and contemplated the street. The empty street.

“Dammit, Didier…” She’d had to duck and wait while a guard went by her; too close, that one. They were getting smarter. She’d have to put a no-go on any jobs here for at least two years. Maybe three.

Not for the first time she wished for a cell phone. But even if they hadn’t been too risky-too easy for someone to check the last few numbers dialed-she still couldn’t carry one. No cell phone, no PDA… even the odd watch was prone to strange fluctuations under current, and when she pulled down a surge, all bets were off.

Another fifteen minutes, and she had to accept the fact that Sergei had probably been forced to call it a night. The glitches she had the elementals set off might have caused a patrol car to take a swing by, even though none of it had been enough to trigger an actual alarm.

“Good thing you wore the comfy sneakers,” she told herself, swinging herself down from the tree and landing with lazy grace on the grass. It was going to be a long walk back.

–

It might have been the night air. Or the current still running high in her system. Or, as Sergei claimed, just a natural-born stupidity. But at the time, the idea to kill two jobs with one evening seemed just a matter of common sense and practicality. She had to walk by the site anyway, so why not?

“Why not,” Sergei said over his tenth mug of high-test tea, the first five of which had cooled while he was waiting for her, “is because a) you were carrying a retrieved object. And b) because you hadn’t done anything more than a cursory glance at the job write-up.”

She knew he was mad, then, when he called it a job instead of a situation.

“And c) because you got caught!”

Wren winced, fighting the urge to duck under the diner’s table. “Not so much caught,” she protested meekly. “More like…”

–

“Who’s there?”

Wren swore, wrapping herself in current and fading into the shadows. The store was a hodgepodge of clichés, down to the motheaten thing stuffed and mounted on the counter, its crystal eyes reflecting light back at her. At least, she hoped it was just crystal reflecting light…

“I said, who’s there?” An old man to match the shop stomped downstairs, a megapowered X-Files-quality flashlight in one hand. Wren closed her eyes so she wouldn’t reflect the light. The beam flashed across her face, passed on… then came back.

“I know what you’re here for,” the old man cackled. “But you can’t have it. Can’t, can’t can’t!”

Nobody said anything about the guy being a Talent she thought with irritation, then common sense reasserted itself. He wasn’t a Talent, or a seer, or anything that would have allowed him to sense what she was or what she intended. He was just old-fashioned bugfuck. Crazy had a way of messing with the brain in ways even current couldn’t work around.

“Yeah, old man?” Her voice was low, dangerous. She’d copied it from Blue Angel, practicing until she had it down just right. If anyone reported her to the cops, they’d get laughed out of the station for claiming they’d been robbed by Marlene Dietrich.

“Yeah. It’s mine. Mine I tell you. I bought it, I got it, and I’m going to keep it.”

Any moment Wren expected him to break into a round of “mine, my precioussss.” If he did, she was out of there, and the Silence could keep their damn retainer that month.

“My staff, mine. Going to make me a wizard. Going to teach me how to talk to the birds.”

“I think you’re halfway there, old man,” Wren said, relieved that he was nattering about something other than her goal. And if the staff that he was talking about actually was an Artifact-an item used like a battery to store current-the Silence would just have to hire her to come back and get it. Sergei’s cat would have better luck working a manual can opener than the man in front of her actually accessing current.

“What’s that? You, stop there. Who are you? How did you get in here?” The hand not holding the flashlight came up, the dark shape unmistakable even to someone as gun-shy as Wren. A sawed-off shotgun.

Think quick, Valere!

“I’m a djinn, come to gift you with a treasure,” she said, punting madly. Maybe, in her dark clothing, the shimmer of current still wrapped around her, visible or no, she’d be able to pull this off. “A painting, through which magic you might transport yourself instantly.”

A combination of Bugs Bunny cartoons and Star Trek reruns, but he leaned closer, the gun not focused quite so threateningly as a minute ago.

Moving carefully, she withdrew the tube from her knapsack, having to tug it free when it snagged on the dress’s folds.

“All shall be yours… for one simple gift in return.”

The old man checked himself, glaring at her suspiciously. The shotgun began to rise towards her face. “What’s that?”

“A trifle, a trinket. One of no use to mortals but great significance to djinn.” She was dancing as fast as she could, the sweat crawling under her scalp and running down the side of her face and back of her neck. “A bell, a silver bell with a golden clapper, a bell that does not ring. You have such a thing, I am told. Give it to me, and the magic painting shall be yours.”

–

“You traded one job for the other.” Sergei was trying, really trying, to be his usual hard-assed self.

Wren reached across the diner table and snagged the pseudocream in its little tin pitcher; poured it into her coffee until it went from mud to diluted mud. “Hey, no problem. I’ll just go steal it back.”

She drank her coffee, pretending not to hear the muffled, pained noises coming from her partner.

–

“Oh… hell.” Disgust dripped from every word as she stared down at the body of the pawnshop owner. Someone had staved in the back of his head with his own staff. There was a moral in there somewhere, but the smell of stale blood and feces was rising off the body, and she didn’t want to waste time thinking when she could be working. Wren wrinkled her nose, wiping her palms on her jeans as though there was something sticking to them. “If I’d wanted to see dead bodies, I’d have gone to work for the morgue, dammit.”

Ten minutes since she’d walked in the door. Daylight retrievals usually weren’t her thing, but it wasn’t as though the guy was in any shape to report her.

She risked another look down. Even less shape, now.

Normally working current just required an internal adjustment and some finely focused concentration. But there were times that shortcuts were useful, and words were the surest way to focus current fast, if a little dirty.

“Picture gone missing hands not meant, not deserving

Retriever reclaims.”

It wasn’t great verse, but it didn’t have to be. It just had to be meaningful, in form and function. Her mother loved haiku, and so using that form made her think of her mother, which made the form meaningful. And she needed to get that picture back. Which made the content meaningful. And… there it was. Her hands itched as the current she had generated reached like a magnet to lodestone, forcing her forward, stepping over the old man’s body, to where the painting was tacked up with thumb pins-Sergei’s going to shit-on the wall behind the counter.

“Looks like the old boy was trying to make a getaway… pity he didn’t make it.” She took the painting down, the tingling fading once she made contact with the spelled item. She looked around for the tube, but didn’t see it. Refusing to muck around any longer, she pulled the scrunchie out from her hair, letting the ponytail fall loose, and wrapped it around the rerolled painting. She was ready to get the hell out of there, but something made her look back over her shoulder to the body lying on the floor.

“Ah… hell.” She sighed, tucking the roll under one arm and retracing her steps. Stooping low, she put her hand out, palm down and flat. A hesitation, a centering, and then she touched the corpse. Spirits fled in the moment of death, unless there was a damn good reason-or a very strong spell-holding them in place. But while the animus might be gone, the body still had current caught in the biofield every living being generated, the natural electricity that made Kirlian photography possible.

“What? No! No, mine, mine, mustn’t take, mustn’t…” a fast-moving figure in front of him, angry, full of rage. “Where is it? She didn’t have it on her when she left, which means you have it, now where? Where. Is. It?”

Whimpering, then another heavy blow. The old man spins under the force, falls to the ground. “Useless old fool…”

The sound of something whistling down a shock of red-flaring pain, and…

Nothing

–

Wren came out of the connection like a dog shaking off water, breathing heavy. “Damn damn damn damn!” He’d been killed for the painting. Killed… and she might have been… No time to think about it, she’d already stayed too long. Not that she was worried about cops showing up to investigate: Poor bastard had been dead a day at least.

Her eyes narrowed at the thought. “Ah… hell.” Nobody deserved to rot like that. Slipping out the front door, she wiped the handle clean, then uncoiled a narrow rope of current from her inner pool and reached out with it, brushing the surface of the burglar alarm.

The loud wail of the alarm covered the sound of her bootheels on pavement, moving in the general direction of away.

–

The painting remained untouched on the coffee table where Wren had tossed it when she came in the door to Sergei’s apartment. Wren was curled up on the sofa, while Sergei paced back and forth in front of her.

“Who the hell are we working for, Sergei? Because I get the feeling there’s something they didn’t tell us. Something that almost got me killed. And did get that poor bastard-”

“Bob Goveiss.”

“Bob, killed. So give.”

“Yes. That’s what doesn’t make sense.”

“What?”

“The violence.” He shook his head. “Those paintings were on loan from the French government. The same government that’s about to splinter apart from the inside, which could have awkward repercussions on the current political scene.”

“So sayeth CNN, amen,” Wren said, but she was listening. “And…?”

“And, the organization that hired us was planning on holding that painting hostage, to force the various factions to come back to the table.”

Wren stared at her partner. “Okay, huh?”

He paced back and forth, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. “It’s rare, but there have been a number of cases where an item is taken to force two sides to cooperate or risk being shown in public as the destroyer of a priceless work of art. Most recently in the theft of a Chagall painting: A ransom note was sent demanding peace in the Middle East before the painting would be returned. A useless demand, really, but it made a splash in the news.”

Wren considered that, a small smile appearing on her face. “I like that,” she said finally.

“Yeah. It does have appeal. But it doesn’t always work. Anyway, it still doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone who knew about the heist want to-”

“Play a round of Kill the Retriever?”

“Yes.”

“Dunno. That’s your job to find out. I’m going home before I forget what it looks like, catch some sleep before my next turn playing peacemaker. Call me when you find out anything.” She got up, stretched, looked at her partner. “But do me a favor? Lock the doors when I leave. And don’t be careless.”

Sergei shook his head, his squared-off face softening as he smiled. “I’m always careful, Zhenechka.”

Wren thought briefly of the nasty little gun he carried on some jobs, and shuddered. “Right. Better them than us and all that jazz.” She kissed him good bye, rubbing her cheek against his five o’clock stubble, and let herself out.

–

The next evening he caught up with her on Park duty. A piskie had decided to pick on her, spluttering insults on her paternity, her maternity, and the general state of her underwear. Since piskies were, on average, twenty inches high and five pounds soaking wet, Wren’s reaction was closer to embarrassed annoyance than anything else. She kept trying to kick it, but it would dance out of the way and come back a few moments later, still talking.

“Goid, you’re annoying,” she said to it.

“And you could use a drag into the lake. Wanna try?”

“Remember what happened last time you tried dunking a lone-jack?”

Clearly it did, dancing back again until it was just out of reach. “Annoying human. Spoil all our fun.”

“Be glad that’s all I’m spoiling, you bothersome little wart.”

“Want me to shoot him?” Sergei asked, falling into step beside her.

“You got a bullet small enough?”

“I hear tell that’s all he’s got,” Goid crowed, then bit its tongue with an audible yelp when Sergei turned to glare at it. It was no secret in the Cosa that the Wren’s partner had little love for the fatae, the purely supernatural creatures of the Cosa Nostradamus.

“Scoot,” he said to it. Goid scooted.

“Damn. Next time the Cosa calls, you can answer, okay? What’s up?”

“Nothing.” His voice was sharp, and she could practically feel the irritation rising off him, now that the distraction of the fatae was gone. “As in, not a god-damned thing. As in, my contact seems to have disappeared.”

“The rest of the payment got deposited?”

One or two of the lines in Sergei’s forehead eased out. “The rest was deposited this afternoon, soon as they got their hands on the painting.”

“Well then.” Wren let out a little sigh. “What’s a possible attempt on my life, so long as we’re paid.”

He cast a sideways look at her. “You mean that?”

They walked a few more paces along a tree-shrouded path, ignoring the faint giggles and rustling branches following them. “No,” she said finally, on a sigh. “No, I don’t. Not after… I felt him. And I felt him die. I can’t walk away from that.”

“Right. Lowell did a rundown on this organization for me. They check out clean, he says-but he was very surprised that they had the money to pay us. Not a dime in their collective kitty, and no fund-raisers going on in their name.”

“Breaks my heart, it does.” She didn’t like Sergei’s assistant, but the twit did know how to do his research. “So they hocked the furniture to pay us?” The giggles got louder as they reached a particularly large tree, and Wren put a hand on Sergei’s arm to stop him. “Hang on.”

She slipped out of her sneakers and planted her bare feet in the grass by the side of the road. Safely grounded, she opened herself to the current of the world around her. Colors swirled, electrons danced, and she sorted through the information tugging at her senses until she was able to discern the slightly off pattern twined around the tree. A tendril snaked out, stroking the ends of the pattern, then retracting in a flash as the pattern snapped out, attempting to snare her within its own tendrils.

She came back to herself with a blink, after confirming that the trap had been sprung. A chorus of disappointed “awwwws…” trailed after them as she slipped her shoes back on, and they walked on.

“Okay. So: no money. And yet they manage to scrape together seventeen thou to pay us. So what’s the deal? They borrow the money from someone to pay for the retrieval, then that someone decides they’d rather have the painting than the promise of money?”

He shot her a sideways glance. “Maybe. Or it was never actually the organization who wanted it, at all. We might have been set up.”

“But then why make the final payment? I mean, we’re tough, but we’re not that tough. Are we?”

“More to the point, do they think we are? If so, not a bad thing.”

“Also besides the point, your ego aside.” And she squeezed his hand to soften the words. “Ignore who hired us for a minute. Who went after me? Did that same person kill poor old Bob? What do we have? An organization, poor as proverbial church mice, that still manages to retain us to retrieve an object that they claim they’re going to use to force political unity.

“Okay, here’s a question for you.”

Sergei nodded, indicating he was listening.

“Why did they bother to tell you what they’d be using it for?”

He let out a huff of breath. They walked in silence through the park, past human joggers running in pairs, and the occasional biker in bright spandex zipping through at high speeds. If any of the fatae were still watching them, they were being quieter about it.

“I’ve been wondering about that too. At first I thought the guy was just a talker. But then I started to think maybe his verbal diarrhea had a purpose. The assignment was the kind of thing you can’t help talk about, because it’s so different from the usual. But we don’t talk about clients outside the office…”

“You would have if I’d turned up dead. Especially if they’d done it in such a way to suggest that, rather than waiting to be handed the painting, they’d stolen it from us.”

Sergei stopped like he’d walked into a wall. “Chyort! Stolen it back, then used it to make peace. With your blood. Damn straight I would have talked. I would have blackened their reputation until they couldn’t stand under the weight of it.”

“And the talks would be undermined by doubt, maybe just enough to break them.”

Sergei started swearing again, alternating between Russian and English, until Wren was certain that she could see blue current sparking and shimmering in front of his mouth.

“We’re going to have to do something about them using us like that,” she said thoughtfully, almost to herself. “Bad for business, otherwise…”

–

Sergei had called the dinner date, his voice on the answering machine filled with such glee she could only imagine the retainer he’d managed to con out of someone. She wasn’t in the mood to party, her brain still filled with the annoyance of having been tricked into getting involved in politics, not to mention the attempt on her life, but dinner was dinner was dinner, especially if Sergei was buying. She threw herself into the shower, grabbed the first summer-weight dress she could find that wasn’t wrinkled, and threw it on. Things had changed enough in their relationship over the past year that she slicked on lipstick and mascara, and tied her hair up in a looked-more-complicated-than-it-was knot before heading out the door. Not that any of that was going to turn her into a raving beauty, but Sergei appreciated the effort. And she appreciated his appreciation.

They were regulars at Marianna’s, to the point where Callie, the waitress, didn’t even bother getting up to show her to their table. Of course, it wasn’t that large a place, either. She could see Sergei sitting in the back the moment she walked in. And he was grinning like he was about to choke on wee yellow feathers.

“You’re scaring me. What?”

“I had a little chat with an old friend of mine who was shocked, shocked to hear that criminals had their hands on any part of the ‘Fabulous Finds.’ A few hours later, this job came in. Since we are, after all, the only team who could pull something like this off…”

He slid a piece of paper across the table to her. She picked it up, noting first the weight of the paper, then the fact that it was letterhead stationery; and then her mind took in the words, and she started to laugh as Sergei called Callie over to open the wine.

“The Meadows Museum board would like to make use of your services to retrieve a painting that went missing from our premises on the night of July 14…”

Getting paid to take back what they took in the first place, and undercut any attempt the organization might make to go ahead with their plan anyway.

“I love this job,” Wren said, raising her glass.

“To karma,” Sergei agreed. “To karma, and the joy of being the boot that gives it a kick in the ass. Zdorov’ye!”