Dragon Justice (24 page)

The door opened: they’d obviously been watching for us. A young
man stood there, wearing what had to be the Junior Edition of Stosser’s suit. My
black pants and dark green blouse, so nice when I packed them, were starting to
get an inferiority complex.

“You could have Translocated,” Junior said, ignoring me
completely.

“Why?” Stosser said, with an air of such utter unconcern I
wanted to stop and applaud. It could have been taken as the desire to not garner
attention, to not use current frivolously—things the Council generally approved
of. Or it could be read as simply not caring enough to spend the current—a slap
that the Council would not approve of but would not be able to prove he
intended.

Stosser was a pain in the ass in many ways, but I was proud to
study with him.

Junior escorted us into the house, which was just as small as
it looked: a narrow living space with a kitchen beyond, and narrow stairs
leading to the second floor. A safe house of some sort probably, from the decor,
where they held meetings that should not be on official ground but were too
sensitive to hold in public. J had told me about them; I’d never actually seen
one myself. Had never thought I’d be in one.

“Ian.”

The man who greeted the boss was old, older than J, even, with
a bare scalp covered with age spots and a definite hitch in his step. The hair
lifted on my arms when he came toward us, though, and I wasn’t anywhere near
foolish enough to dismiss him because of his age or infirmity.

“Uncle William. This is Bonita Torres, mentee of Joseph
Cetala.”

The mentor relationship was more binding than blood to Talent;
who trained you set who you were, what you thought, and how you handled current.
It didn’t say anything about how skilled you were, officially, but certain lines
tended to run more high-res than others.

J was a powerhouse, but that wasn’t why Uncle William’s silver
eyebrow raised at the introduction. J had his fingers in a lot of Council pies,
and I had a strong suspicion he’d helped bury a number of bodies, not all of
them metaphorical. Stosser had just informed him that I was not only a PUP, but
possibly a political player and to be trusted—at least as much as J was
trusted.

I had a flashback to Andy approaching me in the Starbucks, and
wondered if she’d hear about this, and what she’d think, and why I cared.

“Bonita was the investigator who determined the link between
the killings.”

“You think she will be persuasive enough to convince us to
issue a Statement?”

No delicate games from Uncle William, apparently. If you didn’t
know Stosser, you wouldn’t see the small start of surprise. Both Uncle William
and I did know him, though.

“You thought we’d dicker while our people are being
slaughtered?”

“Yes.”

Me, too.

“Normally, you’d be right,” William admitted, waving us to the
waiting sofa. “But not this time.”

“You will issue a Statement, then?”

“No.”

All right, maybe he was playing games, after all.

“You must—”

“We must do nothing we do not believe to be in the best
interests of the larger community,” William said. Standard Council line.

Stosser, no surprise, wasn’t buying that. “The ignorance of the
many versus the safety of one?”

“A panic helps no one. Issuing a Statement without any more
detail—without even an idea of who this man is or how to protect against
him—would be foolish. We are all in agreement on this, Ian.”

“We” meant all the national Councils, not merely our regional.
I knew that simply from his inflection.

“So why did you even agree to this meeting, if you had already
decided?” Stosser managed not to sound bitter, merely curious.

“In this discussion, some details were shared that it was
determined that you should hear. Elements that may allow you to narrow your
search—and if you are able to narrow it, to give us more detail. Then we will be
able to reconsider the Statement.”

Oh. Interesting.

“Information that you could not share before?” Stosser did not
sound happy.

“Information that we did not have before. We have learned it
and determined that it would be to the mutual benefit to share it.”

A warning: behave, or we don’t have to tell you anything. It
didn’t matter to this man that people might die, if Ian was going to sass
him.

God, I really hated the Council some days.

“Fine.” Stosser was sulky but polite, sitting down and folding
his long legs under him with the grace of a gazelle come for tea. “Please.
Inform us.”

I had the passing thought that I was supposed to stand behind
him and look menacing, like some kind of hench-thing, but I was able to identify
that thought as a passing echo of Venec and not a serious consideration.

Ben could loom. From me, it would be laughable. So I sat on the
sofa a careful distance from the boss, kept my spine straight, and listened.

“In Montreal, during the period you think this killer was
operating there, a man fell under suspicion for murder. The victim—not one of
your ten—was cut open, the muscle ignored and the bones of his body scraped dry
in the same manner. But he was found not in an alley, but the house he and the
suspected killer shared.”

“He was Talent.”

“Yes. Both the killer and the victim.”

“And this was not entered into the public record, why?” Stosser
was still polite, still calm, as though the Council covering up a murder wasn’t
exactly the sort of thing we were supposed to be fighting against. That wasn’t
justice; that was CYA.

“Because the victim was the suspect’s mentor.”

Oh.

And that was that. The Council lackey out front kindly—in other
words, with obvious condescension that proved he was an idiot—offered to
Translocate us back to our hotel, rather than having to slum it in a taxi.

“And you would deposit us, where? In a hotel room you’ve never
seen? In front of a busy hotel, with no line of sight to ensure the space is
cleared? Maybe a bathroom stall somewhere, that might or might not be occupied?”
Stosser’s scorn was magnificent. “Don’t show off your ignorance quite so
proudly.”

“Way to win friends and influence enemies, boss,” I said, as
the flunky, flushed, flagged down the cab someone inside had—at our
request—called for us. The rest of the ride back to the hotel was in silence,
Stosser thinking his own thoughts, and me—well, mostly trying to nap. I was
tired.

We got back to the hotel, and Venec was waiting out front,
leaning up against the wall, talking to the doorman. A cigarette, unlit, was in
one hand, like he’d taken it out of the pack and gotten distracted. I hadn’t
seen him smoke in months.

Venec stared into the air a moment and then tilted his head to
look at Stosser. That subtle hum of current that told me they were communicating
simmered in the air. As usual nobody else seemed to notice it. “Mouse and
rat?”

Stosser’s lean jaw clenched. Whatever “mouse and rat” was, he
didn’t like it. But he nodded once, a curt jerk of his chin. “Use your
discretion. I assume you’re not going to let me take part.”

“You assume correctly. Go back to the office, Ian. Help Nifty
keep the leash on the rest of our pups, before he quits in exhaustion.”

Getting Stosser back into the office was an excellent idea.
Even if Ellen hadn’t seen him dead, just having him in the field made me uneasy.
I had the misfortune to babysit him on a job once, and he almost ruined it, just
by standing there. Ian Stosser was incredibly high-res and incredibly focused,
and could—when he wanted to—be incredibly persuasive, but the boss had no
ability whatsoever to dampen his core down. That’s great when you want to
overpower an enemy, but not so much when trying to glean a scattered scene—or
whatever it was Venec had in mind.

The Big Dogs stared at each other, doing that quiet
communication thing, and then Stosser nodded again.

“Torres…”

“I’ll fill in the blanks for everyone, boss.” Not everything
that happened; Council politics didn’t matter to the job. But everything else,
yeah. “Moment we know anything, we’ll report it.”

* * *

Wren paced along the sidewalk, only half of her
attention focused on walking a straight line and not bumping into people. She
could feel the building, half a block away, as though it was literally glowing
with heat, rather than simply exuding a faint trace of current, barely enough to
register. Having tangled with the building twice already, though, it came
through bright as a thunderstorm.

More, it came through with a recognizable signature.

She had known this would happen, eventually; although she had
assumed it would be after she had retrieved something, not before. Still, now
that she had identified it, there was no mistaking that dry, slightly smoky
tang. She had felt it often enough, tangled in Bonnie’s current.

Benjamin Venec was involved in the museum’s security.

She felt a grin stretch across her face and suspected that it
was an evil one. Easy jobs were, well, easy. The tough ones were
interesting.

Still, she shouldn’t rush into anything, especially where PUPI
might be concerned. Especially after she’d been blocked on her first two
approaches. She’d spent the time since then breaking down the defenses she’d
encountered, using what she knew about Venec and his thought process—not enough,
an oversight she would fix—and refining her attack, her entire focus on the
job.

Wren thought she had the key now. But only an amateur rushed in
the moment they finished prep. She needed to clear her head. It was also
time—past time, really—to check in with Sergei, if for no other reason than she
was curious as to how things were going with Ellen.

Turning left instead of right, she found a pay phone that,
wonder of wonders, still worked.

“Hey.”

Sergei didn’t even bother to ask how she was doing or why she
hadn’t finished the job yet. “I’m at the Sofitel, in town. Get over here.”

That was only a few blocks away. She hung up the phone, not
bothering to ask why he was in town, and started walking. Fast.

Chapter 16

The others hadn’t gotten anywhere further, since I’d
left. It was odd to realize we’d only been gone a little over an hour—my sense
of time was starting to slip, which wasn’t good. And the clock was still
ticking: somewhere, our killer was stalking another victim—or maybe had already
killed him.

I filled the others in, as I’d promised. None of them seemed
much fussed about the Council; typical lonejacks, they didn’t expect any help
from that quarter, only interference. So far, they hadn’t been wrong.

“So it started in Montreal?” Sharon added that to the
notes.

“Sounds like it, yeah. A mentor-mentee slaying. Ugh.” Pietr
looked a little green. We all did, actually, even Venec.

“We need to get those files,” Venec said. “And not wait for the
Council to maybe-yes, maybe-no share them.”

“Uh-huh. And how do you expect to do that?” Sharon did the
eyebrow-raising thing, and Venec raised his hands in defeat. “Hell if I
know.”

Venec admitting he didn’t have a plan. It would have been
entertaining if it hadn’t been so depressing. They started tossing ideas around,
all of them utterly implausible. I slipped out, heading down the hallway for the
little inner courtyard.

An eleventh victim. Despite what Uncle William had said, this
might not be our killer at all—the dump was utterly different, and everything
we’d learned said that was unlikely to change. It was entirely possible that
this was a copycat, or the details had been scrambled and it wasn’t the same at
all, just coincidence.

Possible, but not damn likely. If it did start there, if this
was the first killing… The mentor-mentee relationship wasn’t supposed to end
that way. What had gone wrong? If he was looking to add to his power…what had
triggered it?

Not that it mattered to us. Our job was to find him and stop
him, not to psychoanalyze him.

Just a minute in the fresh air, and I’d go back inside, I
promised myself, sinking down onto the bench and leaning my head back. Just a
few minutes.

“Hi.”

I looked up, not surprised to see Wren standing there. I got
the feeling that more than a few minutes had passed.

“Ellen saw you dead.”

“Yeah, I know. Sergei just gave me the rundown.”

She sat down next to me. I didn’t know how she’d gotten into
our basement retreat; she was The Wren—even crap at Translocation, she could
still get in anywhere she wanted to.

“You being careful?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

I wanted to ask her if she was going to abandon her attempts on
the museum, but I knew she wouldn’t. And she wouldn’t apologize for it,
either.

Out of the corner of my eye, Wren Valere practically shimmered
with magic, the way a heat mirage shimmered, making you wonder if you actually
saw anything at all. The longer I knew her, the more I realized that her
no-see-me was vastly different from Pietr’s, although I couldn’t have told you
how or why, exactly.

“I was going to stop by the office later tonight to…explain,”
she said. “But then Sergei told me you were already down here.”

“Explain?” Maybe I’d been wrong about that apology.

She sighed, tilting her head back to look up at the night sky.
“The painting. It’s part of a new exhibit they’re about to open. But the
painting itself, if it’s shown…it could expose something the estate doesn’t want
known. And the Board wants to keep the estate happy. So they want the
painting—and just that painting—to…go away.”

“You’re going to destroy it?” I couldn’t imagine Sergei ever
agreeing to that. A businessman, yeah, but he ran an art gallery in the Null
world and was known for being kind of obsessive about it.

“Destroy it? Ha, no. Sergei has a buyer lined up. A Collector.
Nobody will ever see it again.”

I laughed; I couldn’t help myself. “Paid to steal it, and then
paid again to sell it? Nice way to double-dip a paycheck.”

“Yeah. I thought so, too.”

Wren Valere was a thief, but so was half the world, one way or
the other. It wasn’t going to be PSI’s concern. Venec, on the other hand… Well,
they could haggle that out themselves. I’d make popcorn.

Which meant one less problem to worry about, but two massive
ones left on the table.

“Wren…have you pissed off any dragons, recently?”

“What?” She looked startled. “No. I don’t even know any.”

“Okay.” My first dream had three dragons, circling. The
winglets harassing Stosser, endangering PUPI? I’d thought there was some
importance to the number three, but it was a risk interpreting too much in a
kenning. Sometimes the message was straightforward: beware dragons. Or, if I
wanted to dig a bit more, beware bargains made with dragons.

The second dream…a singular dragon, definitely a Greater
Dragon, carrying me, showing me something important. I had forgotten, the
details slipping out of reach, not even remembering that I had forgotten until
now. Once remembered, the sensations slipped back in. Dragon-borne, surrounded
by current skimming through the waves, snaking through bedrock, shimmering in
the air. Less a threat or warning than a lesson, but of what?

Dragons. Cave dragons loan-sharked, sending their offshoots to
call in debts. Greater Worms…hoarded. Madame, on her nest of gold, surrounded by
things of beauty, gathering gossip and rumor. It’s not about the value, but
what
we value.

What did we hoard? What did we covet? What did we fetch and
claim?

My brain was moving almost too fast to keep up, sorting and
sifting possibilities, clues, relevant and irrelevant thoughts. Why dragons
specifically as an image? What did dragons want?

Power. You had it, you wanted it, you wanted more of it.
Everyone always looking for an advantage, looking for an angle, looking for a
way to add to their own hoard. Even people who said they didn’t want power did,
only under a different name. Looks. Friends. Skill. Money. It all came down to
the same thing.

I couldn’t think like a killer. It wasn’t in me, I didn’t want
it in me. But I craved, I coveted. I was even learning to be possessive, like a
dragon, to protect what was mine.

Click. Click. Click. The pieces didn’t quite fit, not yet, but
I could feel them shifting, in my head. If the eleventh murder was related… We
already knew that we were looking for two killers. Mentor and mentee, chasing
after their unholy grail? When one grew weak, did he sacrifice himself to the
search? Or had it been as unwilling as all the other deaths? Mentor to mentee,
the dragon’s tail caught in its mouth, greed eating itself. The image stuck in
my head, painfully clear.

Talent killing Talent, exactly what we’d been created to track
down. A crime no Null cop would ever hear about, much less be able to solve.

“I need you to do something for me,” I said.

“All right.” That simple: she knew I wouldn’t ask unless it was
something only she could do.

“The Canadian Council has records we need. A killing that
happened two decades ago. They won’t give it to us.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Nope. But it was… A mentor was killed, cut open. By his
mentee.”

“Jesus wept.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

I was asking her to put herself into the line of fire, after
she had been warned of her own death, to steal something that might not even be
useful.

There was a long silence. I closed my eyes, breathing in the
quiet.

“Bonnie?”

I looked up; Ben stood in front of me, outlined against the
night air. I turned to my left: Wren had disappeared.

“It’s late,” he said. “Everyone’s given up for the night. Come
on. Time for bed.”

I let him pull me up, and we stood there a long minute. There
were things I could say.... Explanations of where I’d been when Stosser spirited
me away, why I’d left the discussion, about what Wren had said and what I’d
asked of her, ask what had been determined or decided while I hid out here…

But I didn’t. I just let him lead me out of the garden and back
into the hotel.

* * *

“Boss, go home.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Lou stood in the doorway and stared at Stosser until he looked
up from the paperwork, spread out on the desk in front of him, and sighed. “I
promise, Lou. As soon as I get all of this in order, I will.”

“Uh-huh. And I will come in tomorrow morning, which by the way
is only five hours from now, and find you still here, yes. And the paperwork
still not done. Boss, go home.”

Ian looked at the paperwork in front of him, well aware that he
could have been done with all this hours ago. But fussing at it, letting the
reminders poke at his conscience, made him aware of how close he had come
to—what was the phrase Ben used? Screwing the pooch. His arrogance had saved him
on more than one occasion, his refusal to give in and accept defeat or failure.
But this time…

This could have cost him everything. More, it could have cost
the PUPs everything, too. And that…that they would not allow. Not even to salve
his ego.

Torres had been right.

The hint of a smile touched his narrow lips. “All right, Little
Mother. All right. It will all be here in the morning, anyway.”

As though hearing his words, the gentle, insistent sound of the
carbon monoxide alarm went off again, and they both sighed.

“At least the fire alarm isn’t going off, too,” he said,
tempting fate. But the louder siren stayed off.

“Someday there will be real trouble, and nobody’s going to
believe it,” she muttered. “And then we’re going to have to rescue an entire
damn building of people.”

“I’ll deal with it,” Ian said, standing up. “You go home. Yes,
I promise, I’ll leave as soon as I get it shut off.” He meant it, too: if only
because Lou would not hesitate to rat him out to Ben. Sometimes, he wondered who
was actually running this agency.

“All right.” She winced as the alarm started its cycle again,
and headed down the hallway. “Give ’em hell this time!”

Ian, wincing at the noise, picked up the phone and dialed the
building’s main number. “Hi. This is Ian Stosser in 7C. You know the alarm’s
gone off again, right?”

There was a mumbled affirmative.

“And you’re going to shut it off before I develop a migraine
and have to get seriously cranky on your ass, yes?”

Getting another affirmative in response, he hung up the phone.
As he did so, the alarm slowed and then cut off.

“Thank you, universe,” he muttered. “We pay too much in rent
for this crap to keep going on.”

The thought of money made him look back at the paperwork.
Having to rely on the others… He should have told Ben earlier. If Pietr had
tried to interfere or if the winglets had tried to collect while they were on a
case, distracting someone, it would have been his own fault.

“Time for an old Dog to learn new tricks,” he said. His
responsibilities had shifted in the past three years; it was time he accepted
that. He would let others help keep the agency alive.

And Aden…Aden had chosen her path, foolish though it was. He
shook his head, then rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to fend off the
sudden onslaught of the predicted headache. “Aden, you idiot. You don’t bargain
with sorcerers—they’re worse than dragons.” It was time to let her deal with her
own karma and not interfere—not ride to her rescue or defense yet again. He
would…probably fail miserably at both. But he would try.

If nothing else, the change in strategy would confuse his
enemies, which would be entertaining. Ben would approve of that.

Ben. Ben and Bonnie, and her newfound aeromancer, and her
visions of dragons. A tangle of associations he was too tired to deal with,
right now. All that would have to be a different headache, for another day.

Turning off the overhead light, Ian closed the office door,
took a single step down the darkened hallway, and fell forward, his knees
buckling, even as he tried to pull enough current to Translocate.

Instead, he only had time for one urgent ping.