“I’m never going to get it. Not out there, during an open case, with all that pressure. It’s just…like saying Pietr’s suddenly going to stop ghosting.”
She was probably right. Pietr hated the fact that he couldn’t control the way he faded from sight under stress, even though it was probably going to save his life some day.
“I just… I keep wondering why I can’t do it, what’s wrong with me…and then I wonder what else is wrong with me, what am I missing, and what happens if we discover that thing during a case? What happens if we screw up because I can’t handle something in the field, or one of you gets hurt, or…” She stopped, and took a bite out of the apple, teeth crunching into the flesh with maybe a little too much violence.
I was flailing, trying to figure out what she needed to hear. “That’s why we work together. So if one of us misses something, the other’s there as backup. We all make mistakes. Venec will be happy to remind you of that fact, if you’d like.”
Another snort. “You never doubt yourself, do you, Bonnie? Never once wonder if you’re not good enough, worry that you’ll do something so wrong there’s no recovering from it?”
“Of course I do. But everything short of death can be recovered from, and death kinda takes the worry out of the situation.” I hoped.
“Nice. I don’t think I was ever that cocky. Maybe that’s the problem.”
She didn’t mean to be cruel, but the words stung. I had a flash of J, years ago, sitting in his favorite chair in the library. The reading lamp was on, and Rupert, who had just been a brown-and-white mop of a puppy then, was sleeping at his feet. He had been gone for a few days, and I’d been happy to have him home, but he didn’t talk much and I’d come in to see what was up, if he maybe wanted dinner, or a drink. And in the light of the lamp, a pale umber glow against his skin, I’d seen the damp track of tears on his cheek.
Whatever he’d been doing, it hadn’t gone well.
“J?” I could have closed the door and left; he’d known I was there but he hadn’t acknowledged me, and so we could both pretend I hadn’t seen anything. But that wasn’t how our household worked.
“Not now, Bonnie,” my mentor had said, his voice a flat, gentle tone. “Right now I am not able to deal with anything beyond my own inabilities.”
I’d been fourteen then, and filled with a sense—nurtured by J—that hard work and skill could get me through anything. The idea that there was something J couldn’t do, that he might doubt his own abilities, was as foreign to me as the thought that he might sprout wings and fly.
I was older now, and had seen more of what life could and would throw at you on a daily basis, things that overwhelmed and dispirited as much as they lifted us and showed us joy. But…
“I’m sorry.” I was. “I didn’t mean to make light of what it is you’re saying…”
“But you have no idea what I’m saying, do you?”
I shook my head, then nodded. “No. I mean, I know what you’re saying, I just…”
Lou laughed, and it was tired but amused, not mocking. “But you’re twenty-four and have never failed at anything, have you?”
I had failed to bring my dad’s killer to justice. The bitterness of that still made my throat ache. But I’d dealt with it, accepted the failure as inevitable—and PUPI was my guarantee that never happened again. The failure had not been my inability, but the lack of a mechanism.
So I said the only thing that I knew was true. “We’re a stronger team, because you’re part of it.”
There was silence, and I risked looking back at Lou. She was staring out the window, and the look on her face was one I recognized: deep, fast-moving thoughts under the surface. I saw that look a lot, around here.
“Yeah,” she said, finally. “Okay.”
She tossed the half-eaten apple into the waste can in the corner, and left. I didn’t get the feeling I’d helped her solve anything.
Hopefully, I’d have better luck with the floater.
two
Pietr had been waiting, semipatiently, in the break room. He took one look at my face and bit back whatever he was going to say, just handing me my case and holding the door to the hallway. One of the great things about our office was that we were only a block away from the subway. The downside was that it was the 1 line, which meant leaving the west side required a crosstown bus, or a lot of walking. Fortunately, it wasn’t a bad day, weather wise.
We made it to the subway without speaking to each other, heading downtown toward the floater, and all the related joy therein, our kits—the assorted and alchemical tools of our trade—stashed at our feet, where nobody could walk by and grab them. And with every rattle and spark along the track, I felt more and more guilty about his being sent along with me. Normally, we take the assignments as they come and try not to whine too much. It’s not like we ever get handed a bouquet of spring flowers to investigate, after all, and if we did it would be infested by hornets and nose-rot. But I felt like I had to say something to Pietr, anyway.
“Sorry.”
Pietr turned his head slightly to look at me, surprised. “Why?”
“Venec’s punishing me for the hair disaster, and you’re stuck with it by association.”
“Oh.” His face went all closed and quiet, the way it does when he processes, and I watched him curiously. For all that he liked to cause mischief, Pietr tended to take his time to consider things. He was one of our thinkers—not that he couldn’t improvise, and quickly, but not in the instinctive, nearly impulsive way Nick did. Or me for that matter, although I used to pride myself on how well I thought shit through. Not enough, apparently.
Pietr didn’t have to think long, though. “You sure it’s the hair that’s chafing his…mood? Or that you’re the real target?”
Ow. I groaned, and looked away. “Don’t you start.”
The fact that Venec and I had sparks going on—okay, sparks like Macy’s fireworks—wasn’t something you could hide from a blind fish, much less an office of trained investigators. The guys liked to tease me about that occasionally. Not meaning any harm, just…the usual shit you get, when the job is tense and the laughs few. Pietr, though, had a different take on the situation. He and I were—on a very specifically, intentionally casual basis—sexual partners. So naturally, he figured that was also why he got stuck with the floater—because there was no way an investigator like Benjamin Venec, with more experience than the rest of us slammed together, didn’t also know about our off-hours agreement, no matter how much we kept it on the q.t.
He might have been right, in ordinary conditions. But Pietr, and the others, were missing a really important part of the puzzle. The pack knew there were sparks. They also knew I wasn’t exactly shy, normally, about going after what or who I wanted. So they had to figure I didn’t want to get involved with the boss, or that the boss had shot me down, for work-reasons. Which was all sorta true.
They didn’t know about the damned Merge, though. Venec and I both agreed to keep it that way. The fact that our current had somehow recognized each other and decided we’d make pretty babies, or some weird and seriously annoying thing like that, didn’t impress me at all, and Venec, well, he really did not like being told what to do by some biomagical force.
All right, it was more complicated than that, and according to Venec’s research the Merge is Serious Doings, but I kept control over my sex life my own self, thanks, anyway, Fate, and be damned if I was going to risk not being taken seriously in my career because my current wanted me to make babies.
I have nothing against babies.