Sleight of Hand (30 page)

Or she’s completely screwed me and just left me feeling that she hasn’t. No—that way madness lies.

“Thank you, and my apologies,” she murmured, when my legs felt steadier under me.

“Can I lie, like that?”

She shook her head and let me go. “There’s lots more you need to know, but until after the ball, it’s best we leave you as you are.”

She went to her bag and brought out some documents and handed them to me. They transferred the ownership of the car outside to me.

“Just like that?” I asked.

“You rescued Mykayla. That was our responsibility. You’ve agreed to be our spy. I think this is appropriate payment.”

I thanked her sincerely. My old car had been failing and I didn’t know how I would have afforded a new one or how I could run my business without a car.

“Can I ask you about werewolves?” I said. I had told Jen that I would settle the werewolf problem, but I didn’t think just showing up and waiting for them at Silver Hills at the next full moon would be the best way to approach them.

“You can, but you missed the expert. Bian’s our liaison with the Weres.”

“How many packs in Denver?”

“Just the one.”

“How would I contact them?”

Diana turned to look at me. “Why would—” she waved her hand, dismissing it. “No time for that. I’ll ask Bian to talk to you.”

“Why is Bian the liaison?” I said.

“She’s our Diakon, our ambassador to the outside. And she’s good with them.”

No doubt I would have an enjoyable time, trying to get Bian to tell me more.

But in the meantime, Diana had finished her briefing, but she was still here, pacing like a caged lioness. If she had been the type to chew a fingernail, she would have been chewing now.

“What else, Diana? There’s been something else the whole morning that you’ve been working up to.”

She stopped and leaned over me again, resting her weight on the arms of the chair. Her eyes seemed huge. My neck went all warm and wobbly again.

“I told Skylur, you’re very perceptive.” She took a deep breath and stood back. “I want you to open a channel through your military contacts for me to talk in absolute secrecy to the government,” she said. “Without telling anyone else, Skylur included.”

Chapter 37

Café Vienne was busy with the late lunch crowd, gathered in little knots around the small tables. The huge windows lit the whole place up. It was a noisy, cheerful, airy café that I liked to visit whenever I could afford it. I saw Mary and Tullah in the corner and hurried across the harlequin-tiled floor to them.

They’d nearly finished their lunches. “Sorry, my meeting ran late,” I said as I sat down.

That sounded better than ‘I was agreeing on the terms for a preliminary meeting between an Athanate and an army colonel.’

Tullah said hello, but sat subdued. Mary’s face, dark and lined from too much sun, was politely welcoming, no more. I knew she could laugh like a horse when the mood took her, but she seemed serious today.

“It doesn’t matter, Amber, it’s been nice to have my daughter’s undivided attention for once,” said Mary. “And I know the Athanate are the devil’s own when it comes to detail.” She brushed her long black hair away from her face and her deep eyes looked innocently across at me.

I pushed down a spark of irritation.

“Well, it seems you know much more about me and my business that I do about you,” I said. “Even the things I thought I knew, I’m starting to doubt.”

Mary looked at me without changing her expression. “I will apologize only once,” she said. “I find repeating the word a pain in the butt, so this one ‘sorry’ will have to be enough for this afternoon.”

The waitress came and took my order of a light pasta and sparkling water. Mary looked out the window, as if there was something to see on the top of the shopping center across the way. When we were alone again, she began to speak quietly.

“Amber, I asked Tullah to accept your offer of part-time work because I wanted to keep an eye on you. I regret that I put her in this position. She hasn’t read your emails or bugged your office. She likes you. She’s enjoyed working for you and wants it to go on.”

Mary sipped her espresso and watched me. I wasn’t going to react.

“Even if we hadn’t had the business yesterday with that girl, Tullah has been demanding that we have a talk with you and explain ourselves. She wants to do that especially because she would like to work with you after college.”

Mary had my attention, but I spared a smile for Tullah. I’d never known her to be so quiet. She gave me a small smile back.

If Mary had told me Tullah was keeping an eye on me a few months ago, I would have blown a fuse. Several fuses. At both of them. But that was before I’d had to admit to spying on my friend David, before I learned, from Jen, that I can tolerate friends needing to find out things about me. And given what I’d been through over the last week, not much was going to surprise me anymore. As it was, I just kept smiling and waited for the explanation.

Mary’s face was seldom expressive, but maybe the skin tightened at the corners of her eyes. Her hand reached out and touched my bracelet. I was surprised to see the clasp must have been open and she caught it as it fell. She held the bracelet up and rolled the beads through her fingers thoughtfully. I remembered joking to Tullah about not knowing if the wolf’s eye was watching me or watching out for me. Maybe that was closer to the truth than I’d thought.

“This is well tuned to you now,” said Mary. She handed it back to me. “If you continue to wear it, you’ll notice the tingle less and less consciously. It’ll become like a sixth sense for you. It can’t warn you if you’re about to have an accident, but it will help where someone close by is intending to harm you.”

I put it back on. “You do real magic then. What do I call you—witches,
brujas
?” I asked.

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” said Mary, and this time she did smile. “We don’t use those words, but they’ll do.”

The waitress brought my pasta and I started to eat. Explanations didn’t seem to be forthcoming on their own. “Why do you think I need watching?” I prompted.

Mary frowned.

“I’ll start from the beginning.” Her hands fiddled and I realized she was a smoker, missing her cigarette.

“What you’ve just called magic starts with an energy, something that can be used any way at all. Everyone accesses it at some level. Some people can tap into it and turn that energy into power that can make things happen. The use of that skill leaves a mark on a person that another user can see.” She paused. “You have that mark.”

I opened my mouth to tell her I had no idea what she was talking about, but she went right on.

“There are three types of user: learned, guided and instinctive.
Learned
covers the folk who use mumbo-jumbo incantations, but also the Athanate skills that they could teach you.
Guided
means you have a spirit guide who will enable your skill. That’s what we use.
Instinctive
is a limited use that just comes naturally. That’s what the Weres use.”

I had so many questions they jammed in my throat.

“You,” said Mary, waving a finger at me, “have a spirit guide.”

“It’s a wolf,” said Tullah, then subsided again at a look from Mary.

“Oh,” I said, at my conversational best.

“If that were all, I’d have spoken to you long ago,” said Mary. “But users can also see workings, things that are in progress that were started by others. Becoming a Were or an Athanate is a working, and I can see that in you too. The spirit guide and the Athanate are in conflict inside you. Again, if that were all…” she waved a hand dismissively. I didn’t want it dismissed. If my wolf was capable of controlling my Athanate side, I wanted to help him. Her. Whatever. But Mary didn’t stop.

“Other workings include things that may lie dormant, or even skip generations before they actually do something. They may be for good or evil, blessing or curse. They require a tremendous effort to set up. They are important, so important they feed on life itself. I’ve seen very few of them.”

Mary finally turned to look at me directly. “I can see one in you. You came here wondering what we are. My question is just the same. Amber, what the hell are you?”

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

An hour later, the waitress took my cold pasta away and brought me coffee. I was tempted to ask for a double shot of rum in it. We hadn’t gotten any closer to what the hell Mary thought I was, if not plain old me with a sprinkle of Athanate and spirit guide.

Mary said that she thought the Athanate part of me was winning the struggle against the spirit guide, and she didn’t know of a way to help. She’d never seen this situation before. She didn’t think Athanate were inherently evil, but that the power they wielded and the span they lived meant that most ended up being evil in her eyes. An Adept, as she called herself, lived a normal human lifespan, by choice. Adepts were valued by the Athanate, and Athanate could extend the Adept’s life, as they did with kin. The result of that was that most true Adepts avoided contact with Athanate. This was going to be a problem if I became Athanate, because she wanted to keep watching me.

Mary’s spirit guide was a bear, and I was treated to a disorienting, private vision of a phantom grizzly looming behind her at the table. I tried looking at Tullah, but only got a dim sense of something moving in darkness.

“Tullah’s unusual, in that her guide has not made itself known yet,” said Mary. “She has some skill, but I’ve prevented her from using it so far.”

I got a sense that wasn’t the full story at all. While Mary was talking, I was watching Tullah’s expression, and I was sure that she knew exactly what her spirit guide was. Interesting.

“I’ve raised that ban,” said Mary, “in light of what’s happening and her desire to work with you. Maybe that’s what’s needed to make the guide reveal itself.”

“Hold on a second,” I said. “You’re not talking about the job she’s been doing.”

“Amber, I want to help,” said Tullah. “Not just looking after the office. I want to help with investigations.”

“You’re nineteen, Tullah. No offense, you’re great at what you do, but you’re a college kid.”

Mary leaned across and put a hand over mine. “Yes, she’s nineteen. What were you doing when you were nineteen, Amber?”

A little shock of recall went through me. My nineteenth birthday, April 16, slipping out of the village. What was it called? Lung La. I never thought I would be cold in Vietnam, but I was shivering in the misty pre-dawn as we walked into the gloomy jungle, a dozen of us from Ops 4-10, another dozen from the Vietnamese special forces, a joint operation out of sight of the world, headed for the border—

“Stop!”

I blinked. Mary was gripping my hand and Tullah was looking at me with concern. I realized I must have been talking aloud.

“That was my fault,” said Mary. “I intended that just as a question, not as an instruction. I leaked a bit of persuasion when I touched you. It’s as if the energy is easier to reach here.”

She looked around at the bustling little café and took a deep breath. “I’m just going to walk around the block,” she said and got up. She lit up outside the window and moved off.

I sat shaken by the experience. It seemed this was my day for shocks. It told me a lot that the people who were supposed to be on my side were scaring me more than any enemies.

“Did that operation in Vietnam succeed?” asked Tullah.

It had succeeded, as you judge these things. Not for Joe. Handsome Joe from Nevada, with the pretty eyes and the quiet smile. I remembered the weight of his body across my shoulders, his blood mixing with my sweat as we headed back. No 4-10 bodies were left behind, ever. I carried my share. Later, as we waited for our extraction near Lung La, our Vietnamese colleagues put rice and a coin in Joe’s mouth to show their respect for our dead and lined up solemnly to shake everyone’s hand. A first, hidden step in rebuilding.

“Yeah,” I said aloud. “That one worked.” I tried to shake off the memories.

“I am my parents’ daughter—I can take care of myself and I do have skills,” Tullah was saying. “You’re still the boss, and I promise I’ll do what you say. And my courses in criminal law will be useful.”

I stopped staring into the past and looked at her again. She was smart and bright and all sorts of things. She wasn’t me. But maybe comparing her to me wasn’t the way to look at it. And that legal knowledge would be an asset.

“We’ll take things a step at a time,” I said. “We’re temporarily relocating to a study in Jennifer Kingslund’s house down near the Country Club. That way, we get some measure of protection from the guards she’s got at the moment. It would be too easy to hit us at the office, and there are too many people trying. Victor’s guards have your ID and they’ll let you in.”

I drained my coffee while Tullah did a little jig of celebration on her chair.

“So tell me before she gets back, Tullah, what your spirit guide is, and why you don’t want to tell your mother.”

Tullah’s eyes went wide and she looked across guiltily at the door. That was lucky enough, as Mary was coming back in.

“Can’t tell you now,” she whispered. “Not on the ‘approved’ list.” She made quote signs with her fingers.

“These spirit guides, Mary,” I said to distract her as she sat down again, “are they real or just something in our heads?”

“I don’t know. Ask me another.”

“What else is out there? Elves and demons?”

Mary shook her head. “You could create an image of anything you could imagine from the energy, but something that complex just falls apart when you stop working at it. I’ve never heard of real elves or demons, or any place they could come from.”

She looked sideways at Tullah, and smiled. “I can see my daughter has had good news. I’m a mother, and I would say it of course, but I believe you’ve made the right decision. You say you’re fighting against becoming Athanate, and we’ll help if we can. But I warn you, if you become fully Athanate, Tullah will have to leave.”