Staying Dead (14 page)

“You want to go back?” he asked, already swinging her around to face the way they came, but she swatted him on the arm.

“Screw that. He or she or it wants a rematch, I want my ice cream first.” She shrugged, walking forward again. “Besides, it was probably just someone testing the waters. I shook 'em off. That's probably all they wanted to know.”

Sergei sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose as though he were the one with a killer headache forming. “There are days I really wish there was a rulebook for all this.”

“Council frowns on that. Heavy. But what the hell, write it.” She took his hand again, the casual appearance betrayed by the sweat on her skin. “We could make a fortune selling it out of the trunk of your car before they took us down.”

He smiled at her flippant tone, but his eyes were shadowed. “Seriously. I don't like this. Not when we're on assignment.”

“You think this is connected to the case?” She let out a short sharp laugh. “No offense, Sergei, but that seems damned unlikely. Who would care?”

“The person who took the stone,” was his answer, as reasonable as he could make it, considering the way his instincts were still screaming to get her off the street, as though her apartment was proven to be any safer. He also noted, almost as though watching someone else, that he had gone into what Wren called watchful predator mode, like the hawk alert for someone who might try and take his kill. From the expression on her face, she had noticed it too, and wasn't sure if she should feel protected or insulted.

“It's unnerving me, Wren. This whole situation is starting to unnerve me, and I don't know why, which unnerves me even more.”

“Yeah.” She paused, her hand holding his a little more tightly. “It's probably just coincidence. Some newbie wanting to see what's in the neighborhood.”

“I don't buy into coincidences. You know that.”

“And you know damn well that current plays merry hob with the usual laws of probability. So lighten up. Come on, I want a double scoop of mint-chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream, and I want it now.”

The brittle tone in her voice, more than her words, convinced Sergei to lay off the topic. For the moment.

Marco's was still open, as Wren had predicted. It was a narrow storefront, barely wide enough for the glassed-in display. Farther in the back the store widened enough for two small tables and eight chrome-back chairs, like something stolen from a cheap diner. A teenager with long shiny black hair down her back was behind the counter sullenly serving out cones to a group of kids even younger than she was. When she looked up and saw Wren, though, her expression brightened. “Jenny, hi!”

“Heya Sandy. Didn't know you were still on night shift.” She didn't bother, as usual, to correct the nickname. It stopped bothering her around seventh grade.

“Yeah, got my classes switched to the afternoon. Sleep in the morning. Sucks to be me.”

Wren laughed. “Give me a—”

“Double mint-chocolate-chip-cookie-dough. And you?” She turned her gaze onto Sergei like he was a cone of something she'd like to eat, and Wren instinctively stepped closer to her partner's side. She realized what she was doing, and felt herself flush, but couldn't help herself. It was one thing what he did on his own time, on his own turf. But he wasn't to hunt on her home ground. Ignoring the little voice in her head that pointed out a) it wasn't Sergei giving the come-hither looks andb) what say did she have in who he hithered to?

“Vanilla, please.”

Sandy's gaze flicked from Sergei's face to Wren's, and something in there made her step back. “Right. Two cones. With tax, that's six twenty-five.”

“That's side street robbery,” Sergei muttered, reaching for his wallet.

“Isn't it though? But worth it.” Wren accepted both cones, turning to hand the vanilla one to him, when a terrible shriek filled the air.

“What the hell was that?” one of the kids seated at the back tables demanded. Sandy had paled, and Wren's eyes went wide. Sergei had enough presence of mind to grab her cone before she was heading out the door. “Stay there!” she shouted back. Sergei assumed she was talking to him, since Sandy had jumped the counter and was following already. In passing, he noted that although shapely, her legs ended in hooves.
Cosa,
although no fatae he was familiar with. Not that that meant much. Wren had forced him to confront his own xenophobic tendencies—and that had been an ugly scene—but there it was and he had to deal with it. Mainly by letting his partner deal with the fatae as much as possible. Although occasionally, as now, he found himself wondering how many times he had encountered fatae without knowing it. Not a comfortable fact, which led him back to another uncomfortable fact, which was that his partner had just gone out into possible if not probable danger…

Stay put. She said to stay put.
His resolution to heed her order lasted all of three minutes. It might just be a random mugging. Or it might be whoever had taken the magical potshot at her earlier. In which case he'd be of no possible godly use to her, but…“Stay where you are. Don't move, if anyone except us comes in the door, get down.” The seven kids nodded, clearly unnerved but confident in their ability as New Yorkers—and teenagers—to handle whatever happened. Sergei looked for a place to put the cones down. Seeing none, he pushed open the door with one shoulder and went outside anyway.

He found them in the alleyway halfway down the block. Wren was crouched next to something large and faintly…Sergei looked more closely. No, the figure was definitely glowing, in a sort of hazy, pulsing light. Closer, and he saw that Sandy was sitting cross-legged on the pavement, the glowing thing cradled in her lap. As he watched, the glow pulsed one last time, then went out.

“Damn. Damn and…damn.”

She's furious,
part of his mind noted with detached curiosity.
When she's just angry, she gets creative.
He couldn't recall ever, in ten years, seeing his partner so upset she couldn't curse, mostly with words he had inadvertently taught her.

Sandy bowed her head over the figure, her long dark hair falling to cover both of them. Wren reached out her hand as though to stroke her hair, then rose to her feet and stumbled away, bumping into Sergei almost blindly.

“An angel?” It was the only thing it could be, with that glow.

“Yeah. Someone…bastards must have jumped him. Threw something in his face, it was all…all melted.” She swallowed hard, then set her own face into determined stoicism. “Lye maybe. Cleaning fluid. That would…it would fit. Then, when he couldn't see to protect himself, they stabbed him. Bunch of times. Even an angel can't survive that much cold steel.”

Sergei whispered a brief prayer for whatever soul angels contained. They might not be the godly messengers he had been taught in catechism, but nothing deserved to die like that. Not even a fatae.

“Okay, this has got to stop. It was one thing when they were just preaching, or making life awkward, but how am I supposed to get any info if half the
Cosa's
afraid to stop by? I picked this neighborhood because it was weird-friendly, damn it!”

Sergei, not knowing what else to do, handed her the now-dripping cone. She took one look, and started to hiccup, the laughter fighting it out with the tears. Her hand shook, but she took the cone.

“They? The…pest-control group you mentioned?” He didn't know what to do, to make it better, so he fell back on the old standby—work. Keep her thinking, keep her moving.

“Yeah. Have to be. Who else—” Her voice caught. It wasn't death, he realized suddenly—she had seen dead bodies before, had seen people die in front of her. But this…
Never a fatae.
She had never seen one of the fatae die before. Knowing they were mortal was different from having it proven to you. And there was just enough daydreaming little girl left in Wren that the proving was painful.

Behind them, Sandy stood, leaving the rapidly-cooling body of the angel in the trash.

“His brothers will come and find him soon enough,” she said. Her eyes were red, but her voice was steady. “I'd rather we not be here when they do.”

“Right.” Angels weren't all that fond of humans. Or…whatever Sandy was.

“You going to be okay?” Wren asked, obviously thankful to have someone else to focus on, rather than her own—perceived—weakness. They were both on emotional bungee cords, it seemed, being pulled way too tight and dropped from way too high.

“Yeah. Or, no, but whatchagonna do?” And with that, the sullen teenager mask fell down again, and she shrugged. “I got to shut down the store. Marco will be by at closing. I'll have him walk me home. You, go.”

They went.

T
here were thirty-eight floors in the Frants Building. It was by no means the tallest building in the city, even post-9/11. Nor was it the most attractive, or the most striking, or the best situated in terms of prestige or ease of commute. But for many years, it had the reputation for being the best maintained, the safest. No false alarms dragged the local fire engine company out to investigate, no cops had to come and investigate any robberies, any B&E. It was, all told, considered an excellent place to work, in any of the thirty-six floors that held the offices of nine different companies and two multipartner law firms.

Oliver Frants would be quite proud of it. If he ever gave the matter any thought.

“Why are you wasting my time with this?” He strode into the private elevator, dressed in a gray sweatshirt and jogging shorts, both damp with sweat, speaking into the cell phone microphone clipped to his collar. His bodyguards moved with him; one before, one after. They weren't necessary within his own building. Rather, they
shouldn't
have been necessary. But recent events had changed all that.

The elevator doors closed, the cage sliding smoothly up. Frants continued to talk; the elevator shaft had been wired to ensure there was no interruption of service. “Do I not pay you good money? No, better than good money! All I expect is that you do what needs to be done. Is that such an impossible burden?”

The person on the other end of the line mumbled a response that did not mollify his boss.

The top two floors of the building were used for a distinctly different purpose than the levels below. Completely renovated a decade before, soundproofed and insulated from the office space, on a separate electrical system, they were both apartment suites, but there the similarity ended. The uppermost floor was filled with clutter, almost homey in the scattering of glossy porn magazines and dog-eared paperback books, the battered black leather sofas placed around a widescreen television, the occasional slightly wilted plant near the windows, and the debris of food and dishes in the large, open-plan kitchen. Seven rooms led off the main space, each one with a closed door. In the floor of the main room, at each corner, there was a trap door. Opening one would reveal a curving chute or a sturdy ladder, both made of thick plastic. No metal, no electronics, nothing that could possibly be magicked by current, or jammed by high tech.

Those trap doors gave instant access to the living area directly below, a mansion reconfigured onto one floor filled with the very best, most luxurious mahogany and leather furniture, glass-fronted cabinets, Persian carpets and high-end electronics.

Seven bodyguards above, on rotation to protect one man below.

“Call me when you actually know something, then!” Frants terminated the call and exited the elevator. One bodyguard moved ahead, opening the door to his boss's living quarters. He stepped inside, did a quick visual scan while his partner ran a check with a handheld scanner.

“All clear,” the second one announced, his readout returning nothing that shouldn't have been there. The first guard nodded, his physical check confirming the electronics.

“Fine. Go.”

The two guards looked at each other, then Number 1 shrugged and stepped back. If the boss wanted to be alone, he'd be alone. One of them would stay outside, in case he changed his mind. The other would go upstairs, and the third of their team had remained below, in the basement gym area. Nothing could get into the private portions of this building without them knowing it.

“Honey, I'm home.” Frants laughed, kicking off his trainers and leaving them by the entrance. His valet would come by in the morning to have them sanitized. The cell phone was unclipped, juggled in one hand. A tug on his sweatshirt with his free hand, and it was tossed into the hamper, followed by his socks. His valet would attend to them, as well.

He walked on the silky-soft rug, barely feeling the texture from familiarity but aware of it nonetheless—the awareness of ownership. Naked but for his shorts, he went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of the high-protein drink that was waiting in the blender, freshly-made for him. It tasted disgusting, but it did the job.

Oliver Frants took pride in the fact that he rarely slept. A combination of drugs, herbal extracts, and iron self-control kept him going, his mind sharp. Time, he believed, was too precious to waste: there were only so many hours allotted to a man, and he had things to do in every one of them.

His father had owned a home in the suburbs, beyond the noise and congestion of the city. His grandfather lived in a townhouse off Astor Place, and used to walk to and from the office every evening.
I lair where I hunt,
their son and grandson was often quoted as saying.
You can't be out of touch when there's business to be done. And there's always business to be done.

“Peter?” His drink in one hand, the cell phone in the other, he wandered over to the widescreen video display and watched the overseas markets scroll past. “Where do we stand on the McConnell deal?”

He could practically sense the bodyguard outside, the rage of having to depend on someone else for protection a smoldering ember in his awareness. His insurers insisted on their presence, but it annoyed him. It was like an itch that you can't quite reach, knowing that ignoring it won't make it any more bearable. Even worse, since that damn spell had been breached, they'd upped the guards to two at all times rather than simply when he left the building.

Oliver Frants had not left this building, save for closely-guarded public appearances and PR tours, in almost a decade. Less agoraphobia and more obsession: this building was all he needed, the control panel from which he manipulated the world to his liking.

But that self-determined universe had been shaken, badly, by the bastard who dared put sticky fingers on his belongings. His security. No matter what his people said about the likelihood that it was probably only a joyrider, a thrill-thief taking something that was supposedly impossible to take, Frants knew it for what it was—a slap at him. At everything he was, everything he had built.

The fact that the lonejack he had hired to retrieve it had yet to succeed left him with even less desire for sleep now. Things to do. Thieves to crush. Universes to be put back to rights.

“Now you tell me this?” he said to the man on the other end of the line, his tone exasperated, irritated. “Now, a week after the drop-deadline?”

He wasn't risk-adverse. Far from it: he'd built the company his grandfather had started into a multinational empire. All by taking risks. Calculated, considered risks. Having a madman running about with his protections—bought and paid for, thrice over! It was not acceptable. He would not rest until it was returned.

Because now, when he closed his eyes, nightmares crept in.
No,
he thought, banishing the idea of exhaustion.
Better to stay awake. Stay on top. Stay in control.

“Stop making excuses. There's no way they can make any profit with a bid that low. What are they really getting out of this? Well, find out! What the hell do I pay you for, if you don't know shit?”

He flipped the cell shut, then reconsidered, opening it again and jabbing a button. “Wilkinson. Keep an eye on him. If he screws up, by so much as an inch, remove him. Rawkey. Yeah, Rawkey's due a promotion. See to it.”

Satisfied, he placed the phone down on a hand-in-laid mosaic table, and strode over to the glassed-in walls. The city was spread out below him, like candies on a plate. If he wanted it, it was his. But he didn't want it. Let lesser men claim land, buildings,
things.
He wanted…more.

Behind him there was a noise, a faint, almost kittenlike sound. Frants turned to consider the body sprawled in the off-white sheets. An observer might think she slept peacefully, but Frants noted the sweat on her skin, the faint twitch of her limbs, and smiled in satisfaction.

He wasn't a cruel man. He didn't mistreat his toys. He simply preferred them…compliant.

And he had plans for Denise, as soon as the time was right. When he had everything in place. Plans far beyond the minor amusement she gave him in bed. A good corporate soldier, Denise would fulfill the vow she took when she accepted the terms of employment, and truly give her all for the company. For him.

Smiling at the thought, he turned back to watch the city slowly come back to life.

 

It was a dream, only a dream. More, a memory she was dreaming. Old, dead, harmless. Knowing that didn't make it any easier….

The lab room was empty, the only light the afternoon sun slanting in through the second-floor windows. Behind her, down the hallway, Wren could hear the sound of the girls' soccer team running wind sprints in the nearest stairwell, the heavy fire door propped open. The noise of their sneakers, the heavy breathing and occasional yell or catcall or burst of laughter could have come from another planet.

She took another step forward, could feel the change in air pressure, still standing in the hallway. Like walking into a sauna, the heaviness of it repelled her, made her want to back away and never come back. Like a horror movie, only it was all around her, not flat, on a screen. Nervously she chewed on the nail of her middle finger, tugging at the cuticle. Danger, it whispered. Every prickle on her skin urged her to back away. Leave the building; hide, stay low, stay unseen. She had survived for so long, being unseen. Fading into the woodwork. Letting predators—of which there were too many, in high school—look for more obvious prey.

“Mr. Ebenezer?” The voice that came out of her throat was faint, hesitant, squeaky.

She knew he was there. She could feel him, even through that heavy air, the gentle hum in the currents that identified John Ebenezer to her as vividly as sight or sound. Magic, like everything else, left its mark in the environment.

Sometimes, she thought, the mark went too deep. It caught you unawares, tugged you from the shadows, made you think there was something better…and then slapped you for assuming too much.

Closing her eyes, Wren braced herself, counting backward from ten to settle her emotions. Never go into anything half-cocked, she could hear her mentor say. Think before you charge.

When her pulse beat with the same tempo as the currents in the air around her, she opened her eyes. Her slender, pale face was set in determined lines new to her, a decade too early.

Resolved, she walked steadily into the heaviness, into the classroom and straight on into the back of the room; raised her hand and pushed open the lab office door.

That room was in darkness, too, save one small desk lamp. It illuminated the intent, dreamy-eyed face of a man in his early forties. Black hair, hazel eyes, pale skin. On a good day, those features snapped with intelligence and vigor, a lively sense of humor that swept his students along with his enthusiasms. His hands were held over the lamp, palms facing each other, straining as though forcing something obdurate between them. His fingers shook from the effort, and his body language—hunched shoulders, bent legs—screamed tension of another sort. The pressure in the air came from him, shoved against him; a storm front waiting to happen.

“Oh, Neezer…”

Her mentor, still dressed from class in his khakis and lab coat, stared into the space between his palms, not acknowledging her entrance or her words. Not aware of either, she knew.

“There's a line we dance on. On one side, control. On the other, chaos. Both are terribly, terribly appealing. But neither is safe, and neither's very smart, either. Either one of them will suck you in, and never let you go.”

Neezer's voice, three years past. She was fourteen again, sitting in the diner, drinking a bottomless glass of diet Pepsi, listening, but not really hearing. When you're fourteen, the idea of losing yourself like that seems impossible. Unthinkable. It hadn't seemed much more real at seventeen, either. Not until it happened to Neezer.

“There's a price to be paid for magic. That much of every story is true.” Too much control and the joy dies. You can't create, can't improvise. Current becomes a tool, not a gift. That was the road the Council walked. Wren knew Neezer would have slit his own throat rather than go that road. But chaos…

Chaos meant wizzing, turning yourself over to the currents of magic. Letting it overwhelm you until there was no “you” left, not really. Until you were a current junkie, unable to separate from the magic at all. Not wanting to, at all. Endlessly creating, dissolving, creating…

Her breathing was harsh, strained. Pale brown eyes filled with tears, itching as if she had a sudden attack of allergies, hay fever in the middle of winter. She blinked the tears away, reaching for that balanced edge of control.

Ground. Focus, find the center within her, where her own current lay coiled, waiting. Know it, manipulate it. Reach out to the currents humming within the building, laced into the walls, twined into the electrical wiring of the high school. Power to power. She touched it, felt it gentle under her touch, calming her own nerves in return. Wren wiped one sweaty palm against her jeans, then covered his fingers with her own. They were cold, tingling.