“Right.” Stosser gave me a look of approval, professor to bright student. “But what if … a large what-if, but work with me here, what if there was someone who could and would do the work, tracking down the evidence and building a case based only on the evidence … totally unbiased by any other allegiance than a dedication to the facts … to an insatiable desire to know What Happened?”
I could hear the capitalization in his voice, even before he made quote signs with his hands around those last two words.
“What if there was a place that people could turn to, for crimes committed outside the abilities of the Null police force and court system—crimes by Talent against Talent?”
His comment cut so close to my own pain that I was literally breathless for an endless second.
“There isn’t,” Sharon said, her I-know-everything voice back. That tone was already starting to irk me, even though I knew she was right. “Council won’t trust anything not Council, and lonejacks … “
“Lonejacks won’t trust anyone,” Nifty said.
“That has been true, traditionally,” DB said, and I really needed to stop thinking of him like that, since he wasn’t actually dead anymore. “But traditionally, Talent did not attack Talent, either. The Madeline case was high profile, but even that didn’t get much chatter. So what you don’t know is that there have been others … and the numbers are growing.”
I felt a chill in my spine. Zaki had been one of those numbers, killed by another Talent. I hadn’t realized … I had always thought he was an aberration, a tragic fluke. Talent killing Talent … there weren’t that many of us to begin with; the lines of community had always kept us safe from each other. What had changed?
“The world is changing. We’re changing …” Stosser did that dramatic pause thing again, while I reminded myself that there was no way he could have been reading my mind, that not even the purest Talent could do that without permission. “And we need to change other things in order to keep up. Including how we react to those changes.”
“And you want to be part of that change,” Pietr said, sounding intrigued despite himself. “How?”
“Puppy.”
“What?” I couldn’t have been the only one hearing that wrong.
“P-U-P-I.” DB—Venec—spelled it out. “Private, Unaffiliated, Paranormal Investigations. The name was Ian’s idea—” he shot his partner a rueful glance “—but it has the benefit of being easily remembered. A team of trained forensic Talents, shorn of their normal affiliations of lonejack or Council, answerable only to the evidence, the truth. A handpicked group of investigators who don’t care why, only how, and who. A group who can deliver evidence to be used to prosecute and punish Talent who think they can escape detection by ordinary methods.”
“And you want to hire … us.” Pietr’s voice was carefully noncommittal.
“Any of you can get up and walk out at any time,” Stosser said, coming to rest by his partner’s side, hands clasped behind his back as though to keep them from waving about while he talked. “There’s nothing keeping you here against your will. We chose your names not by random chance, but because each and every one of you met our criteria for intelligence, independence, determination, curiosity, and a certain … dogged stubbornness.”
Nifty coughed deep in his throat, like a strangled laugh, and I had to grin in self-recognition. All the traits J occasionally despaired of, suddenly touted as employable virtues. That was funny.
“You’re free to walk,” Venec said. “But none of you will. The fact that you made it this far, through all of our tests, means that you are perfect for this challenge … and the job is perfect for you.”
He smiled then, an arrogant, challenging smile, and a shiver ran through me that had nothing whatsoever to do with the ghoulishness of what we’d been discussing. He was yummy, yeah, and intense … and offering me what just might be the job of a lifetime.
This was either going to be a clusterfuck of monumental proportions … or a whole lot of fun.
five
My mentor took the news about as well as I’d expected.
“Absolutely not! Impossible! You need a real job, not this … irresponsible pipe dream! Stosser—bah, Ian Stosser has always been a troublemaker, and this partner of his, this Ben Venec … I’ve never heard of him. Who is he? What are his credentials? Where is their funding coming from?”
J had been ranting for almost an hour now, ever since I Translocated into his Beacon Hill apartment and told him the results of the afternoon’s meeting. Periodically I used a strand of current to check his blood pressure, an intimacy he allowed me only because he was too distracted to slap the tendril away, and then went back to my own thoughts. Eventually he would run down, and we could have a reasonable discussion.
Not that it mattered. I had already made up my mind.
It took another ten minutes, but finally my mentor dropped into his chair and stared gloomily across the room at me. I lifted my head up from the paperwork I’d been flipping through, and met his gaze evenly.
“And you didn’t hear a word I said, did you?” he asked.
“I heard every syllable,” I said in the same measured, reasonable tone he was using now. “I even agreed with some of them.”
“But you disagree with the overall conclusion.”
I scratched the tip of my nose and tossed the folder of papers onto the end table. The salary they were offering was passing-decent, the benefits not worth mentioning, and none of it mattered, really. None of it had since The Guys, as I’d started thinking of them, had given us the pitch.
“Joseph. You know they’re right. About the need for this—for unbiased investigators for the Cosa—and about how very good I’d be at it.”
J knew what I was talking about, and I knew that he really didn’t want to think about that. His expression didn’t change, but he shifted in his chair, just enough to let me know he was uncomfortable.
“That was different,” he said, not meeting my gaze.
“Of course it was,” I agreed. “I was just a kid looking to see what had happened to her dad, after he left me a mysterious letter and then disappeared. All I did was poke around into a few dark holes—” including one that belonged to a loan-sharking cave dragon “—and ask a few questions, and use current to trace down the clue that led to the guy who killed my father … “
I played dirty then. “And then I couldn’t do anything.” I paused, letting that statement drill down a little. “There was no one to go to with what I knew, then. Not even you could do anything. I had no evidence, nothing that could be used in an ordinary court of law, and no way to give Zaki justice. He wasn’t Council, so Council wouldn’t get involved. There was no way to get closure, unless I was willing to do the deed myself.”
Zaki hadn’t been much of a dad, but he’d been a good person. He didn’t deserve to get killed over a woman he hadn’t even touched. And he would have hated me having blood on my hands, especially in his name. That, not legalities, not any sense of civilized behavior, had been all that had stayed me. But J never needed to know that, if he hadn’t twigged already.
“Child, you are a dirty pool player.”
“Equal parts nature and nurture,” I said in reply, and it was true. I might be the child of drifters and grifters, but J hadn’t gotten to where he had