Retrievers - Burning Bridges Part 12

Once she had ingested enough to feel human, she pried open both eyes enough to see her partner lounging in the doorway, backlit by the hall light. He was already showered and dressed, even though it was still dark outside.

"Go?" Her mind was slow moving and foggy.

"Yeah. I told you about this, last week. I have to go to a meeting in St. Louis. New artist, the one who works in pewter and leather? I want to get him in before the trend-makers discover him. Could get me splashed in a couple of magazines..." He trailed off, aware that she really wasn't interested, and wouldn't have been even if she'd been awake.

"Oh." She didn't remember. She figured she had been a little busy when he was telling her about it. There was a lot going on. Understatement, she could almost hear him say, as though she had voiced her comment. Still, this was his job, his other job, and the least she could do was try to pay better attention. Bad Wren.

She stretched, toes digging into the sheets, wis.h.i.+ng they were both still asleep and neither of them had any jobs to worry about. "You'll dazzle 'em. You always do." He did. He had that way about him; artists responded to it. Lee had said it was because he understood art, the way artists did. Wren thought it was just the way he got enthusiastic about it all, made 'em feel like they were the only artist he'd ever gotten the hots for.

"I'll be back tomorrow." He sounded as though he were considering canceling the trip, then and there.

Wren shook her head, trying to clear more of the fog. Not good. Oh, she wanted him here, yeah, but he needed to do this. She used to joke that the gallery was his real lover; truth was that he needed it, the same way she needed current: it was what made him whole. That was why he was so good at it.

And she wanted him gone, too. Not forever, just a little while. Last night's s.e.x had been amazing, and comforting, and all that, but she'd felt it, the moment when he'd wanted to ask her to ground in him, and had held off...but only just.

Current-intensified s.e.x; there was a reason why the old-time s.e.x magic was so popular, even now when there were smarter, more effective ways to renew current. But it wasn't smart. It wasn't safe. And she couldn't fix the damage it was doing to him, and she wasn't strong enough, right now, to tell him no.

A little time apart would be good for them both. She hoped.

"You'll go and do the job, take as long as it takes. And then you come home, yes."

He hesitated. "You'll be careful?"

"Didier, you're going away for what, twenty-four hours? I'll be fine."

He waited, staring at her. "I'm always careful." He knew that. "And I got Bonnie downstairs." Bonnie, the other Talent in the building. A paranormal forensic investigator, one of the new young hot-s.h.i.+t careers for eager and curious Talent, Bonnie was a good kid-more, she came with a covey of coworkers who were all also good, hot-s.h.i.+t kids, and seemed fascinated by her upstairs neighbor Wren, but drew the line at poking too closely at the details of what Wren actually did for a living. If there was sudden, urgent need for help, Wren need only yelp. Which there wouldn't be, so she needn't, but Sergei did worry.

"P.B. should be coming by today, anyway, " she told her partner. "I sent him off to pick me up something in Albany. A friend of a friend had some materials I needed for the job."

Like most demon-breed, P.B. was a courier, trusted with all sorts of private or dangerous information. Partially that was because demon had no loyalties other than to their employers-they did not form social groups with their own kind, or even seem to like their own kind very much. Mainly P.B. was a courier because very few people, Cosa or otherwise, wanted to tangle with a four-foot-tall fireplug of fur and muscle and claw. He was also a fierce friend, and for all that Sergei had some lingering knee-jerk human centric reactions to the fatae, she knew that he trusted P.B., maybe more than he trusted anyone else in the world, at least when it came to keeping her safe and steady.

Not that she needed the help. But she always felt better when the demon was around, too.

"All right." But he stood there, not moving.

"You called a cab?"

"Yeah. He's outside."

"You're letting the meter run?"

"I didn't want to wake you until I had to."

She got out of bed, then, stark naked and s.h.i.+vering in the cool morning air, to go wrap herself around him. "Go safe, do well, come home soon."

His arms came around her as though he wasn't ever going to let go. "You're going to freeze to death. Go back to bed."

"Oh sure, wake me up, give me coffee, then tell me to go back to bed." She was awake now, and no help for it. "s.a.d.i.s.t."

"Which would make you a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t."

She smiled, the way he knew she would. "Go already, if you're going, before your fare hits triple digits."

By the time she had wrapped herself in her robe and reclaimed the coffee, he was already down on the street, folding himself into the waiting cab. He didn't look up to see if she was watching, but she knew that he knew she was.

As though on cue, the moment the cab pulled away, the clouds overhead darkened, and small snowflakes began to fall.

"Great, " Wren said in disgust. "More snow." At least the last batch had-mostly-melted and been cleared away. But she had been looking forward to un.o.bstructed street corners for a few days longer.

"Lord, please. If you love me? No more acc.u.mulation, okay?"

There was no response, and Wren shrugged, let the curtain drop back to cover the window, and went to take her shower. Snow or not, there was more job-planning to be done. If the materials P.B. was bringing were going to be useful, she had to have everything else lined up first.

"Yo. You order a buncha doc.u.ments, lady?"

Wren looked up from the sink full of dishes to see a white-furred, snow-dusted face grinning at her from the small kitchen window. "That was the worst Cagney impersonation I've ever heard, " she told the demon, reaching over with a sudsy hand to open the window enough to allow him in, wincing as that let a blast of snow-flecked cold air in, as well.

"Oh good Lord." She looked out the window for the first time since that morning, and sighed. "So much for G.o.d listening to prayers. Or the hope of cleared streets." She gave a pa.s.sing thought to Sergei's flight, but then mentally shrugged it away. If flights were being cancelled, he'd be in full rearrangement mode, and would call her later. If he was already in the air, then hopefully he was out of the worst of it already.

"Oh, it's snowing like a small mother out there, " P.B. agreed cheerfully, dropping the courier bag-thickly stuffed-onto the counter and brus.h.i.+ng snow off his fur. Since that fur was thick and white to begin with, the overall visual was that of the Abominable Snowman, miniaturized, coming in out of the cold. Only the dark slouch-brim fedora on his head ruined the image.

"Where's the scarf I gave you?" she asked. "It doesn't do you much good if you don't wear it."

The demon gave her a Look. "Valere, my neck does not get cold. Yours gets cold, you wear a scarf. Anyway, orange isn't my color."

"What, it clashes?"

He ignored her, moving sideways to get at the fridge. "Ooo, someone hasn't been shopping again. What are we going to have for dinner? Why don't you just give in and order online like everyone else?"

"Because I get frustrated with the interface being slow and wonky, and I'm tired of trying to explain why I'm plagued with brownouts to the Dell service guys, who barely speak English enough to go off-script, anyway."

"You need to get some therapy for those frustration issues, babe."

"You need to get out of my fridge, boy."

The demon shut the fridge. "Let's order Chinese." He took a look at her face, and backtracked. "Pizza? Ribs? Let's get ribs!"

She was exhausted, but amused. "Do you ever eat anywhere other than my apartment?"

"No. Dial. I'm starved."

Some things were as predictable as sunrise. "You dial. I'm busy. Get me an order of chicken, burned, and extra salty fries."

If she was lucky, he'd eat and leave, and she'd be able to get some work done, because while P.B. was an entertaining companion, a good friend, and a solid presence in a fight, he was king of the short attention span when it came to sitting around watching someone else work. Although she did feel more relaxed-less wound up-when he was there. Somehow, she was able to focus, rather than jumping from thoughts of one crisis to another.

"Money's in the usual spot. Take out enough for dinner, too." She opened the courier case and pulled out the manila folder that had the sigil he used for her orders on it, then left him still staring into the fridge as she took it back to the office.

By the time the ribs came, the snow was six inches deep on the cars outside, and she tipped the delivery guy an extra fiver because he'd actually got the food there still warm.

When she came back into the apartment, the phone started ringing. She handed the bag off to P.B., who opened it and started unloading white cartons onto the counter, and picked up the receiver.

"h.e.l.lo?"

It was Sergei.

"Hey. What's up? How's St. Louis? Oh." She listened a few minutes more, her hand curling in the telephone cord. "d.a.m.n."

P.B. looked up, and she waved him down.

"Okay. No, nothing you can do. Might as well make the most of it. Yeah, P.B.'s here." The demon paused mid-munch on a baby back rib bone to wave one greasy paw h.e.l.lo. "He says h.e.l.lo. Yeah. Okay. No, we're good. Yes, I have candles, you know I have candles." She grinned, and a flush started at the base of her neck, turning her pale skin a gentle red as he said something low and rude.

"Don't even start, not while you're there and I'm here. Yeah, you, too. Sleep well. I'll talk to you tomorrow." She hung up the phone, untangling the cord with exaggerated care, and stared at it as though there was some answer just waiting to leap out at her.

"He's in St. Louis?" P.B. asked, not even pretending not to have eavesdropped.

"Yeah. Business trip. He was supposed to come home tomorrow morning, only he doesn't think he'll make it. Storm's slamming everyone. They were one of the last flights out of JFK, and one of the last to land in St. Louis. They're shutting down there, too, he says. Snow's supposed to last all night, most of tomorrow, maybe even through the night again, here. If the weather guys aren't s.h.i.+tting us."

The demon shook his head, waving the rib bone like a pointer. "We p.i.s.sed off momma nature but good, this year, seems like."

"Yeah." She turned to look at P.B., a long, considering kind of look.

"What?" He got nervous suddenly.

She didn't want to do it, wanted to have her apartment all to herself, tonight, but..."You should stay here tonight. If it's that bad out, I don't want you trying to walk through it, maybe get hit by a bridge-and-tunnel driver who can't tell you from a mobile snow bank."

"Sweet, but-"

"Wasn't a request. You eat my food, you have to indulge my whims. You're cras.h.i.+ng here tonight." She played her trump card early, not wanting to argue. "I've got fixings for French toast for breakfast."

He showed her white fangs, showcased by black-rimmed lips smeared with barbecue sauce. "Sold." A pause, purely for effect. "Can I have the feather pillows?"

There was concern, and then there was no way. "Not a chance in h.e.l.l. Hey! How did you know I have down pillows? If you've been snooping in my bedroom, you half-sized excuse of a..."

"Jesus, Valere, mellow. I was on sick-Wren watch, remember? You on sleep-cure, me fetching and carrying soup and coffee?"

After the Frants case, when she'd drained her core almost to empty, trying to save her worthless client from a revenge-crazed ghost. G.o.d, it felt like years ago, lifetimes ago.

"Everything was different then, wasn't it?" P.B. sounded wistful.

"Yeah." The Council had been a gnat-shaped annoyance, she had never even heard of the Silence, and the vigilante attacks were just a dark rumor even among the fatae. On the plus side, she and Sergei had been dancing around their feelings for each other like the protagonists in a bad Lifetime movie, leaving them both wordlessly frustrated without knowing why. They still had a ways to go on the relations.h.i.+p stuff, but frustration? Not a problem anymore. Well, s.e.xually, anyway. In the sense of itches getting scritched. There were still problems in the bedroom, but she wasn't going to worry about that tonight, not while she had a houseguest.

"I'll give you one pillow, " she said. "And the air mattress, if you promise to keep those claws of yours under control."

"And the green quilt. I like that quilt."

"Quilt. Right. So you can shed all over it again? Why don't you go make up your own d.a.m.n bed. I'm going back to work."

If she was lucky, the snow would stop by morning, the forecasters would apologize for jumping the gun, and she could get on with everything that needed doing.

It didn't quite work out that way, though.

Eleven.

"It's started again."

Wren couldn't get warm. Her skin was flushed, like she had a fever, but her fingers and toes felt snow-bitten; painfully numb and strangely thick. She had put on a heavy sweater, one that Sergei had left behind one evening, over her turtleneck and jeans. It still smelled of him, but even that wasn't working its usual magic.

Her blood was ice. Her core was molten. It wasn't a good combination.

She wrapped her hand around the phone cord, and focused. Control. She had to stay in control.

"You there?"

"Yes, Wrenlet, I'm here. What happened?"

Sergei's voice was crackly and staticky over the phone, and Wren didn't think it was just from the distance between them. The entire Cosa was twitching, and it was a wonder the phone lines were even working, right now. Three subway lines were down for the count; two counties in Jersey were in brownout due to a generator blowing rather spectacularly. Things were...tense.

"Someone strung up an angel. Left him to bleed out and die."

"I got that part. How did the vigilantes get close enough? I thought everyone was on guard?"

His voice was thin, even over the phone line. "It wasn't them." His tension was affecting her, stretching her already worn nerves. She turned the control up a notch, until her ribs ached from the effort, just to stay calm.

Her words took an instant to sink into his awareness, then that flat voice rounded and deepened in shock. "What? How-and who? How do you know?"

She took a deep breath, feeling her fingers cramp on the phone. Control ..."The PUPs. They said...there were traces of current all over his body."

" Cosa ?"Sergei's tone was clearly disbelieving, even through the static. "Who? And why break the Truce? Do you think it's the-"

She cut him off before he could speak specifics. "I don't know, I don't know, and I don't know. It might be anyone. Anything." Her voice cracked, and she felt the slithers of current reach up her spine, trying to break free and do damage. She needed to ground, badly, but there wasn't any room: everyone was so locked down that all of Manhattan's bedrock had toe-marks in it. "Look, I gotta go. Board's meeting." She didn't refer to it as the Truce Board anymore. Both of them noted it. Neither of them commented on it.

"Valere." Michaela came to the door. Her face was marked by a lack of sleep and suns.h.i.+ne, tension holding her eyes tight and making her mouth a narrow line. "Everyone's here."

She nodded once roughly. "I'll call you later, " she told Sergei.

"You do that." The line went dead, and Wren followed Michaela inside, to a conference room filled with enough nervous tension to run all ma.s.s transit in the city for a month, a.s.suming it didn't short the system out first. Fatae stayed down the bottom half of the room, humans at the upper end. n.o.body was actually sitting at the table. Not good. Not good at all.

Twelve hours since she and P.B. had found the angel. Twelve hours, and she couldn't remember much of it; a blur of movement, wrapped in snow that didn't seem as white as it should, anymore. Shadows and snow, and flames flickering in between, threatening to take the entire city down with it.

"Back to the beginning, " she said, almost under her breath. The first fatae death she observed had been one of the angeli, too. That one had been taken down and beaten with bats, or metal bars; a less dramatic but equally fatal end.

Who would do this? Current ruled out the vigilantes, the exterminators; no one with an ounce of current would be involved with them, not even the most radically Human-first extremist. Not after they started going after Talents, too. But for a Talent to go after an angel...