Tricks of the Trade Read online

  Ben, as Ian expected, had taken to the new venture perfectly. It had given the other man a focus, a mission, a purpose he had been lacking before, wasted on jobs that were beneath his skills. The fact that the mission served his, Ian’s own vision…well, they all benefited.

  But the past few months, his partner had been…off his game. Distracted, and even more short-tempered than usual. Ben never took it out on anyone, but Ian, a trained reader of what people didn’t want known or seen, saw the pressure building under his friend’s skin.

  Whatever it was, whatever the cause, it had to be lanced and drained, before it got infected. Ian had his suspicions about what was going on, but he didn’t act on suspicions alone.

  Stepping off the curb to hail a cab, Ian reached up and undid the clip that had held his flame-red hair in a respectable fashion, letting the strands fall down his back, spreading with current-static against the fabric of his suit. The tension in his scalp lessened only slightly. When a cab pulled to the curb to deposit its passenger, he strode forward and claimed it ahead of some schlub half a step behind.

  “Uptown,” he said to the driver, then gave the office address. The car jerked forward into traffic, and he tried to relax against the plastic upholstery. His attempts to figure out what was wrong had, so far, met with “leave it alone, Ian,” and then a crankier, more laden “back off, boss,” when he approached Torres. Ian would be the first to admit that he wasn’t any sort of relationship guru, but when even he could see something simmering….

  Were it anyone else, once the direct approach was blocked, Ian Stosser would have gone the circuitous route, finding a weak spot in someone else’s armor, cajoling and coaxing and out-and-out pulling as needed, wiggling the information he wanted that way. He was a trained politician, a born schmoozer. If he wanted to know something, he could and would discover it.

  Except…this was Ben. His best friend. Possibly, if he was going to be blunt, his only friend. And for the first time in his life, Ian Stosser didn’t feel comfortable about getting what he wanted, not if it meant digging into Ben’s personal life after he’d been warned off.

  Ben wanted to deal with it, whatever “it” was, himself. And so, Ian was going to have to accept that.

  For now.

  But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to keep an eye on the situation. And, if needed, step in. Ben’s life was his own; except where it had an impact on PUPI. Then, he belonged to Ian.

  “You gonna eat that?”

  “Yes.” I glared at Pietr, clutching at my pastry defensively. “Paws off.”

  After we’d come back and filed our report of the scene, complete with a dump of our gleanings, Pietr and I ended up in the front break room with Nifty, pouring pitch-black coffee into ourselves and hoovering up the crumbs from a box of really disgustingly stale doughnuts, trying to figure out what sort of fatae could have taken down our floater.

  We’d all agreed that it couldn’t have been human, not short of five strong men, anyway. Bippis were not only strong, apparently, they were dense; their bones weighing twice what a human’s would. Hard to break, even harder to shove around. Pretty easy to drown, though; Pietr had been right about that. So that meant looking through our roster of the fatae breeds to see if any of them matched the required muscle, and of those, if we knew of any that had a bad relationship with Bippis, or cause to do one harm. Bippis didn’t harm each other—it was some kind of built-in safe lock in the breed.

  “The problem with looking at possible conflicts,” Nifty said now, “is that the odds were this was a totally personal thing, one-on-one rather than breed-specific. So it could be some fatae breed who’s coexisted peacefully with everyone for generations, just suddenly having a freak-out. Statistically—”

  Pietr groaned. Nifty did love his stats.

  “Statistically,” Nifty went on, undeterred, “most killings are unplanned, spur-of-the-moment, rage-or-jealousy driven kind of things, and the fact that the vic wasn’t human doesn’t change any of that.”

  “They’d tied its hands and legs with rope it couldn’t break, and thrown it into the river, still alive. That feels like something more than spur-of-the-moment anger.” I looked at the others, and got nods, Nifty’s more grudging than Pietr’s. “So we start big, determining which breeds could actually manage to do the deed, and then work our way down to the smaller scale of motive.”

  Somewhere, I was pretty sure, someone had collected data on every single fatae breed ever. It was the kind of thing mages used to do, assigning their students twenty pages a night to copy, or something. Not even Venec’s mentor, who was a pretty notable scholar in this age, had access to records like that now, though; they’d probably been lost in one of the Church purges, or during the Burning Time here in America.

  What we had was a wooden, four-drawer filing cabinet, très old-fashioned, that was starting to fill up with folders on each breed as we encountered it, all the notes and specifics, and whatever photos or drawings we could lay paws on. I was looking through the Ds, glancing and discarding, when I saw the file for “demon.” The label wasn’t in my handwriting; it was Venec’s. I had the urge to open it, see what he had put in there, and if he’d mentioned the one we’d seen in the diner downtown, last winter. And if he had mentioned it, if he’d mentioned anything about why we were down there.

  Stupid. Stupid, and pointless, and the kind of poking around a lovesick twelve-year-old did, damn it. If he did mention being there, the citation would be entirely about seeing the demon, maybe something about the case we were working on then.

  He wouldn’t have mentioned the fact that I’d tracked him down to a goth club, off-hours, or that we’d ended up in that diner to talk, for the first time, about the damned connection we had that was supposed to make us lifetime soul mates or something.

  Neither of us wanted that, particularly, or intended to follow up on it, and sure as hell were not about to put it down anywhere even semiofficial, in writing.

  No. He wouldn’t have mentioned any of that, no more than I mentioned it to anyone, not even J, my mentor.

  My secret. My headache.

  Even now, if I let my wall down a little, I could feel Venec’s current-presence. I could tell you where he was, more or less, and if I concentrated I could tell you what he was feeling.

  And if he let down his walls at the same time, I could tell you what he was thinking. By all research and rules, that was supposed to be impossible. I really wished that were true.

  As extra-special treats went, the Merge wasn’t. I had no interest in being told by some magical mojo who I was supposed to be knocking boots with, or cuddling up thoughtwise, and I sure as hell didn’t want some mystical force determining who I extraspeshul magically bonded with. Oh, hell, no.

  Thankfully, Venec had the same opinion of the entire thing. Unlike the downtime thing Pietr and I had going, there was no way to cordon off what was between us, safely; even I, queen of let’s-try-anything, knew that. It would change everything, disrupt everything, and neither of us had any desire to screw up the most important thing in our lives—this job—for…

  For whatever the Merge actually was. Venec might still be digging at it, trying to find answers, or at least explanations. If he’d found anything, he hadn’t told me, and I hadn’t asked. For once in my life, I was perfectly content to not know about something.

  Yeah, I admitted it. I was afraid that if I started poking at it, explored the possibilities even in my thoughts, it would get stronger just by being exposed to air or something. For once in my life, I wasn’t going to take the risk.

  I’d just moved my hand away from the demon file and pulled the next one on my list when Sharon came out of the back rooms, Nick half a step behind her. She was as immaculate as ever, Nick was rumpled and scrawny as ever, and yet they shared the exact same look of annoyance. Whatever they’d gotten on their assignment, it wasn’t open and shut.

  “Bad scene?” I asked, putting the file down.

  “U
seless scene,” Sharon said, dropping herself onto the sofa next to Pietr. “The place was trashed, no sign of entry or exit, no way any of the three people in the house could have done it, even if they had cause, and while the place was wrecked, there were only a handful of things actually taken, according to the owner. He’s dead set on it being a Retriever, mainly I think because that makes him feel important, that someone hired a pro. My bet is some Talent with a grudge, and most we’d be able to get them for would be breaking and entering.”

  “What she’s really pissed about,” Nicky said, “is that the client must lie for a living. Even I could tell he was full of shit, but she couldn’t pinpoint anything specific to call him on.”

  “What does he do?” I asked, prepared to hear banker, or lawyer, or CEO of a pharmaceutical company.

  “Owns a national rental car franchise,” she said. “I wouldn’t rent from them even if I knew how to drive.”

  Huh. “What did Venec say?” I asked. I knew he was lurking in the back office; even with my walls up I could feel him, the way you feel a storm coming, the static in the air almost a solid, living thing. He must have just finished debriefing them.

  “He told us that lack of trace was a roadblock not a disaster, the client was probably an ass but he was still the client. And to get the hell out of the office, clear our brains, and let the investigation wait until the morning.” Sharon had an odd look on her face, and the more I looked the less it seemed like annoyance, and more like she’d bitten into what she thought was a lemon and gotten a peach, instead. “I don’t think he’s taking this case seriously.”

  Nifty pointed out the logic-fail in that. “Venec takes everything seriously.”

  Sharon rubbed at her face, and nodded. “Yeah, I know. I just… The client’s an idiot, the house is trashed but nothing of serious value was taken…. I’m not sure I’m taking it seriously, either.”

  Sharon, like Venec, took everything seriously. I was starting to wonder about this case. It was almost enough to be thankful for a floater. Almost.

  “Screw it.”

  I looked over at Pietr, who had spoken far louder than his norm. “It’s not like we’re getting anywhere with this, either.” He scowled at our piles of so-far-useless paperwork. “Any trace there might have been was washed by the river. You know it, I know it, even the cop knew it. We could stare at files all night and get nowhere, and it’s not like the NYPD will appreciate our exhaustion.”

  We dealt with the weird shit in an exchange of favors, keeping the unspoken lines of communication open, but nobody ever took formal notice of anything; he was right.

  “And it’s not like the stiff’s in any rush. So I say screw it. We have birthdays to celebrate, anyway.”

  “We do?” That was news to me; we’d just celebrated Sharon’s, and I couldn’t think of anyone else….

  Pietr closed his own file, and stood up. “Someone, somewhere, is being born. That calls for a drink.”

  It was tough to argue with that logic. So we didn’t.

  The after-work crowds at Printer’s Devil, down by Port Authority terminal, was the usual mix of depressed-looking newspaper geeks and overly cheerful tourists who’d gotten lost off Times Square. I couldn’t remember why we kept coming here, except for the fact that it wasn’t convenient to anyone’s place, and therefore was neutral ground. Also, they made the best damn spicy empanadas north of Miami.

  We’d gotten one of the high narrow tables in the back and crowded around it. With six of us, there was barely enough room for our drinks and elbows, but it beat the hell out of trying to stand in that crowd. Nick, on his second mojito, was waving his arms, retelling a story that we’d all heard three times already. “I swear, I thought the conductor was going to blow something out his ear. And Lou’s sitting there, looking at him…”

  Lou rolled her eyes, not saying anything. She was still figuring out how to fit in with us, but when you get razzed by Nick you can’t really get annoyed, because he takes it so cheerfully when the tables are turned.

  But it was maybe time to step in. “Oh, come on, that one wasn’t her fault,” I said.

  “Yeah, but she thought it was!”

  Nick cracked up as he delivered the line, and even Lou smiled a little. He was right; that had been what made it so funny.

  We were all still wound up, but it wasn’t quite so bad. Venec and Stosser had meant to make us efficient when they molded the pack, but it had also created a sort of safety zone. We knew the kind of shit we’d seen; we didn’t have to talk about it, to explain why we needed distraction.

  “Don’t turn around, you’ve got an admirer,” Pietr said, leaning across the narrow table to shout in…my ear? Nifty’s? I couldn’t tell. So, of course, we both looked.

  Speaking of distraction. Contrary to some people’s wet dream of bisexuality, I didn’t drool over everything that breathed. Pietr, yes. Venec, yes, even without the Merge. Sharon had piqued my interest briefly, but Nick, Nifty, and Stosser weren’t my type either physically or emotionally. This woman, on the other hand….

  She looked right back at me, and smiled, the kind of smile I recognized: Hi, it said. Will you smile back at me?

  So I did. She was a redhead, the kind of shaggy strawberry that only comes naturally or with a lot of money, and her eyes were wide-set and light-colored, and she had a body that probably wouldn’t raise the pulse of any red-blooded American male, unless he recognized the lean and agile muscles flexing as she walked. Toward me. There was a god, and she was gracious.

  “Once again, Bonnie scores, and the rest of us strike out,” I heard Nifty mutter, and I spared him a consoling pat on the hand. “You do all right for yourself, guy. But this one seems to be more about the girl parts.”

  “I’m allll about the girl parts,” Nick said in a singsong falsetto, picking up the tail end of our conversation. I wasn’t looking at him, but from the solid whap-noise, I was guessing that someone—probably Sharon—had just slapped him upside the head to shut him up before my visitor made it to our table.

  “Hi.” She had an ordinary but pleasant voice, blandly Northeast, and her smile was even nicer up close.

  “Hi. I’m Bonnie.” I slid off my chair to move away from my usually-but-not-always-discreet coworkers, and tilted my head to better look at my new friend. She was taller than me, and her eyes were definitely hazel-green and very pretty.

  “Joan.” She gave me her hand, and it was smooth and soft and strong, and…

  I didn’t feel anything. Not even the shiver of anticipation that usually came when someone gave me that kind of once-over.

  Oh, damn it. Just, damn it.

  It wasn’t that I was in a guy-phase, either. I’d gotten hit on last week by a very nice example of my type, slightly scruffy and broad-shouldered, and enough smarts to balance out the bad-boy looks…and I’d smiled and felt nothing other than a passing admiration for the package.

  Even my recent off-work time with Pietr had been about release and comfort, not the sort of enjoyable, mutual passion I was used to feeling. I was…not dead inside, but rather unnervingly calm. Like a very still lake, when you’re used to an ocean.

  I’d liked to have blamed it on some kind of off-season flu, or overwork, or maybe some horrible current-disease that was eating my libido but that wasn’t it, not exactly. If I let my guard down, or lingered too long, late at night, in my deepest thoughts, my entire body came alive like someone had dunked me in liquid current, every nerve tingling and wanting.

  Just not for any of these would-be playmates.

  The Merge. The stupid, unwanted, unasked for Merge, and Benjamin Venec’s own innate, dark-eyed appeal. Damn it, thrice.

  I knew it was probably a lost cause, but Joan was cute as hell, and I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. Maybe getting to know her over a few drinks….

  “You want to join us?” I asked, turning to indicate my for-now demure coworkers. A look of disappointment touched Joan’s face: no, she really didn’t. She wa
nted me to go with her, somewhere else, right now.

  Some of the shiny rubbed off at that. Even if I’d been at loose ends and hot to trot, a quick hit wasn’t my thing. I’m a bit of a hedonist, yeah, but I liked to know the person I was with, more than just a name and a favorite drink. So with a regretful smile, and not really any regrets, I let that fish slip back into the sea and went back to my team.

  “You feeling all right, dandelion?” Nick almost, almost managed to sound like he was seriously concerned for my well-being.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” I twisted on a grin. “She was…too young for me.”

  “Young.” Nifty sounded like he wanted to challenge me on that—and rightfully so, because she clearly had been well above the age of consent, but he didn’t. That, in a way, was worse than if he had ragged on me. It was either pity or worry, neither of which I could deal with right now, even if I had anything to tell them.

  If I let them, the team would ply me with drinks and do their best to console me on whatever they thought was wrong, distract me with bad jokes or horrible stories, maybe try to fix me up with someone they knew who would be perfect…and normally I’d let them, accepting their own odd ways of showing they cared. But suddenly, my skin was too raw, my nerves too exposed, and I just needed to be by myself.

  “Okay, I’m out,” I said, finishing my drink. “This little puppy is going home. Alone. I’ll see y’all tomorrow.” I grabbed my bag, paid out enough to cover my drinks, and waved goodbye before anyone could get a wiseass crack in about me being the first to leave. Okay, it was unusual but it wasn’t totally unheard-of.

  Not recently, anyway.

  I worked with trained investigators, each and everyone of them hired because they were obsessively curious, and incapable of walking away from a puzzle. I would lay odds they were playing paper-rock-scissors even now, to determine who got to ask me what was going on, tomorrow. And once they started digging, they weren’t going to let up. Not them.