I tended toward the blunt—tactless, Venec said, often—but my mentor had been a politician to match Stosser, once upon a time, and I knew when a game was on. “You want me to solve it quietly, have them owe us without anyone knowing they owe us, and have them know that we kept them out of it, but without ever being tacky enough to say so.” Shit. “We’re doing this pro bono?”
Stosser’s expression didn’t change, which meant absolutely nothing. “For a fee to be determined later.”
“Uh-huh. They’re really worried, if they’re agreeing to that.” The Fey were the ones who gave the fatae some of the worst reps—even more than redcaps or angeli. Not because they were violent, but because they were sneaky to a level that would make a corporate lawyer jealous. Agreeing to a deal without having all the terms nailed down hard-and-fast and in their favor? That was the kind of mistake they anticipated mortals doing, not one they made themselves. I was immediately, worryingly suspicious.
“Um, boss?”
“Let me worry about that, Torres. You just do your job.” There was a sudden sparkle in his eyes that I distrusted. “Manage this without getting anyone killed, and we’ll make a Council schmoozer out of you yet.”
On that threat, I turned and ran. Slowly, decorously even, but I ran.
The doors off the hallway at this end were all closed, but I could still feel the steady hum of activity throughout the office as I made my way back, pausing in the half-open doorway of the main conference room at the other end. There was a single pup in residence, working at the long, polished wood table.
“Kill me now, please.”
Pietr made a gunlike shape with his right hand and mimed shooting me, even as he kept writing with his left.
My fellow investigator and sometimes lover had just finished a three-week-long investigation into a missing sculpture, an alleged magical Artifact that turned out to have been a spell-cast but otherwise ordinary figurine pawned by the owner’s stepdaughter. I wasn’t sure why the boring jobs generated the most paperwork, but it always seemed to be the case.
I stood in the doorway and watched him awhile longer. Pietr was the quiet one, among all of us. He thought first, and then thought again, and then when he did something he did it well and thoroughly. And yes, that included sex. He also had the interesting and occasionally useful, more often annoying, tendency to fade from sight, literally, when under stress. That little quirk made it problematic, at times, to work in the field with him. He was sharp and clear today, though.
He looked up at me, just then, as though suddenly realizing I was watching him. “New assignment? Need help? I’m just about done here.”
Pietr would have been useful as backup, but Stosser’s orders were, well, orders. I shook my head. “No. I’m good. Just some Q&A among the fatae the Big Dog wants done. One-person gig.”
“Lucky you.” He knew that was against standing procedure but didn’t push.
“Yeah. Lucky me. We still on for dinner next week?”
“Assuming no last-minute disasters, yeah. Wear your dancing shoes.”
I nodded and went the rest of the way to the break room, where there was no sign of Nicky. I eyed the coffeemaker on the kitchenette counter to my right, then decided that more caffeine wasn’t what I needed. Sleep, now, that would have been nice. And I needed to re-source my current; I’d been too busy to dig deep recently, and I could feel a hollowness inside that had nothing to do with hunger.
Calories weren’t the only thing we had to replenish after working. A Talent’s core stored their current, and the longer it stayed there the more it conformed to that individual’s signature, making it easier to use.
It also made it easier for us to track down the Talent who had used it, like matching fingerprints to fingers. So far, we’d kept that bit of info to ourselves. Trade secrets—no reason to give up what slight advantage we had over our criminally minded peers.
I thought about making a second try at lunch, but my appetite had fled. The Fey suspected someone was interfering with the Treaty and had given us the chance to stop it. If we couldn’t…
Yeah. Suddenly, a sandwich wasn’t so appetizing.
If I wasn’t going to eat, and I wasn’t going to tell Stosser where he could stick this job, it was time to get my ass out of the office. I’d always hated the “soonest begun, soonest ended” crap, but it had the nasty flavor of truth.
I went over to the small board that hung on the wall next to the main door and marked myself “out, on job.” Lou had set the system up after one too many confusions about who was where, when, and god help the pup who forgot to check in or out. I left my work-kit in the closet; I wouldn’t need the external tools of my trade for this—just my brain.
I hoped.
The external hallway was empty, as usual. There were two other offices on our floor, but it was rare that we saw anyone go in or out save the UPS guy. I paused a moment at the elevator and then told myself taking the stairs was exercise, nothing whatsoever to do with the lingering memory of the boy who had died there when the power failed, now almost two years ago. Nothing at all, nope.
The six flights down were easy, but the moment I hit the outside air, I felt sweat break out on my skin. It wasn’t that hot outside yet, but the air still had the feel of an oven. I plucked at the fabric of my T-shirt and scowled. It was barely June. This was going to be a bitch of a summer, you could tell already. Great. Still, maybe a lot of people would take the summer off, go cool down somewhere else, which would mean fewer people rubbing raw nerves against each other, making life easier for the rest of us in the city.
Yeah, and cave dragons were suddenly going to start giving interest-free loans.
So. Scouting the fatae. Where, and how to begin? It’s not like this gig came with a bunch of guidelines or clues…
Try acting like a trained professional, an acerbic voice in my head suggested. My own voice, this time.
Right. First things first. I dipped a mental hand into my core, the pool of current all Talent carry within us as a matter of course, and tested my levels. Blue-and-green threads brushed against me like slender little snakes, sparking and snapping as they moved, crackling when they touched each other. Low, definitely low. Discretion would probably be the better part of valor, then. There was a power generator on the West Side I could dip into without inconveniencing anyone, while I made my plans.
Current—magic—liked to run alongside electricity. In the wild state, that meant ley lines, electrical storms, that sort of thing. For the modern Talent, though, the best, most reliable source of power was, well, a power plant. The trick was learning how to take enough to satisfy your needs, without draining so much you blew the source.
I grabbed the 1 train downtown, got off at 66th, and checked into the nearest ’bux for my latte. The place was doing the usual midafternoon traffic, so I grabbed the first empty chair I saw and sat back like I was just another poser killing time before a date.
Once I was sure nobody was going to approach me, I let myself relax a little, the outer awareness alert and upright while my core opened up and went in search of all the tasty current it could sense shimmering outside.
Compared to the faint hum of the wiring and overhead lights, the generator a few blocks away was like a sauna, warm and inviting. The temptation was there to slide into it and soak up all that was on offer, but that would have been bad manners, not only to any other Talent looking to use it, but for the folk whose rents paid for the power. “Take only what you need, and not all from one source, Bonita,” I could hear J saying, like I was a wide-eyed eight-year-old again.
The current swirling inside the generator was a dark, clean blue, its lines sharp and delineated. Ask any five Talent what the colors meant, and you’d get six different answers, but a sharp-edge meant it was