Tricks of the Trade (23 page)

Either intentionally or not, Venec left that faint connection open, so by the time Nifty and I made it to the office, I already knew that Nick was mostly all right, his computer was utterly fried, and while the rest of the team was nervous and edgy, and Stosser was annoyed, Venec was
furious.

Not at Nicky, not even at the imp. He was furious at Ian, who had, as Nifty would say, sidelined him from the game, telling him that his injuries were serious enough to keep him on office-duty, same as Nifty had been. I walked into an office that was practically simmering with frustration and resentment.

Part of me wanted to avoid the entire thing, make like the others in obliviousness, just go directly to Nick, make sure he was okay, and then get my orders with the rest of the team.

I'd been raised to deal with my responsibilities, though, even when I was the only one who knew what they were.
And the first responsibility, like it or not, want it or not, was getting Ian and Ben back on track.

I just wasn't quite sure, even as I walked into the Big Dogs' lair, how I was going to do that.

The two of them were sitting in chairs at opposite ends of the small office, glaring at each other. “Shune's fine,” Ian said as I walked in, not even bothering to look at me. “The Roblin singed his fingers and fried his hair a bit, that's all.”

Being a Talent means, by definition, that you can handle a load of current—and electricity—running through your body. Something that singed Nick's fingers might have killed a Null. Stosser wouldn't have thought of that, probably.

I knew that Venec had.

“I think our original guess was right. If The Roblin's here to make mischief, its biggest challenge would be the ones who investigate mischief. So long as it's targeting us, it's not harassing others,” I said, addressing Ben's worry first. “If we can keep it focused on us, nobody else will get hurt.”

Except maybe us. Still. Did a mischief imp, even the grandmother of imps, intend to kill? Then I thought about what some fatae considered harmless pranks, historically, and reconsidered.

“We can't have it interfering with the ongoing investigation,” Stosser said. “You've probably wrapped up the body dump, and that was good work, but this break-in has already caused too much trouble. The client lied to us, hid details of the story, and nearly got Ben killed. I want to know exactly what is going on.”

“It goes for the unique,” I said, following my earlier thought. “I think that's the trigger. That's why me, and Nick.” I'd had time to think it through, on the subway ride back, lay it out into a semblance of a formal report. “We're not the strongest of the pack, but our skills are unusual—I run cool so I bet that it was trying to make me angry, breaking all my stuff and getting me kicked out of my building, to see what I could do, what trouble it could cause. But Nick's—” I paused; even among ourselves we didn't often vocalize Nick's skill “—Nick's a challenge it wasn't going to get many other places. So he's going to be the real target…. But it might get bored, anyway. We need to find something…”

A thought struck me, and the way Ben's head lifted, his dark eyes looking even more shadowed with exhaustion and pain, I could see the thought reached him in that exact instant.

I said it first. “If it wants something unique, something different to play with…”

“No.” Venec-voice. Boss-voice.

I didn't let that stop me. “It makes sense. And if it's already here, there's no way to avoid it. We need to make it work for us, not against us.”

“Bonnie, no.” And then, suddenly, it wasn't boss-voice anymore. “It's too dangerous, especially without knowing how far it will go to get its jollies.”

Stosser was looking between us, his expression caught between knowing we had a juicy bone, and frustration that he didn't have a chunk of it himself, and knowing that if he was patient, we'd work it out and then present it to him.

“If we're ready for it, we'll be okay.” Probably.

Venec was still shaking his head, even as I could tell he was running through how it might work. “We would have to…”

“I know.” It would require that we open the very doors we'd shut, take down the walls we'd built. Make a target of ourselves, and use the Merge as a trap.

And neither of us knew if it was a trap that we would be able to escape, if we'd be able to rebuild those walls, once The Roblin was dealt with.

The idea terrified me.

“This thing we have,” I said to Stosser, before Venec could say, absolutely, that he wouldn't do it. “The Merge. It's unique enough to attract The Roblin's attention, distract it from anything or anyone else. Even more than Nick.” And Venec was higher-res than Nick and me both; he'd be better able to handle anything The Roblin might try. I'd be the weak link here, but I was willing to take the risk. Okay, not willing, but I didn't see any other choice.

“Trick the Trickster?”

“Exactly. And when we have it caught, then we can figure out how to make it go away,” I finished, keeping one eye on Stosser to see how he would react, and the other on Venec, to see if he was going to try to stop me from pitching the plan. There was always a way to banish imps, either through magic or bribery. We just had to get the upper hand, somehow.

I expected Ben to be angry that Ian knew, since he'd been as much about keeping it quiet, for his own reasons, as I had, but he just looked resigned, which was how I
felt about it—resigned, and glad it was out in the open, sort of.

“You think it would be enough?” Stosser asked, considering what I'd suggested.

“I think it's a crap idea.” Ben's voice was flat, low, not at all growly. I hated the sound of it, hated being the one who took the growl out of his voice, but I honestly didn't know what else to do. The Roblin was focused on us right now, but what happened if it got distracted? How ADD were mischief imps? What happened if someone less-grounded, unaware of what was happening, was its next target? Madame was wary of The Roblin. The other Ancient had come to the office to warn us, specifically. And the unease from my scrying was still riding between my shoulders like an imp itself, telling me trouble was in the neighborhood. Not good, not good, and not good. We couldn't look away. Not us, not now.

“You have anything less crappy?” I asked Venec, letting him
see
where my thoughts were leading.

He glared at me, then deflated, shaking his head. “No.”

Stosser intervened, then. “She's right. It's the best plan we've got, and allows the others freedom to continue the investigation of the ongoing cases.” I got the feeling that Stosser really didn't give a damn about the imp—it was an annoyance to him, not a problem. Keeping our solve rate up, that was the problem.

“Yeah. Oh. And here.” I pulled the recorder out of my pocket, popped the tape and handed it to Stosser. “You might want to go play this for whoever it is needs to hear it. Incriminates the company, and our minotaur friend.”

He took the tape, his long fingers cool against mine. I swear, the guy really did have ice water in his veins. “I have no idea how this one will play out,” he admitted. “The NYPD has no authority over the fatae, and the Council will deem it a matter between the business and their employees, and no concern of theirs.”

The Council was kind of bloodless that way, no matter what region you went to, yeah.

“Don't take it to the Council,” Venec said, and there was a faint growl back in his voice. “Take it to the local unions. Dockworkers, garbage haulers, anyone you can find.”

“Null unions?” I was surprised; Stosser looked utterly shocked.

Venec reached up to touch the bandage around his throat, and almost smiled, but it was the smile of a dog that knew it had you cornered. “My dad used to tell me that the unions were all that stood between the working schlub and indentured servitude, not out of the goodness of their heart, but because they wanted the power of those working schlubs organized to
their
direction, not someone else's. Let's see if their desire to swell the membership rolls trumps fataephobia.”

Oh. That was twisty, so very twisty. Appeal not to someone's desire to see justice done, but to prevent anyone else from taking advantage of someone they could make mutual advantage from. I forgot, most of the time, that straight-shooter no bullshit Benjamin Venec had a brain as devious as my mentor's, and utterly lacked most of J's ingrained social graces.

“It might not work,” Stosser said, tapping a finger
against the back of his other hand, like a metronome for his thoughts. “But it's definitely worth a try. If nothing else, it will bring Elliot Packing to the attention of others—and once they start looking for violations of objectionable practices, change might come.”

And that, really was why we did this gig, holding the actions of the
Cosa
up to the light. People—whatever their species—did shitty things to each other, for a whole range of reasons and justifications. We weren't going to change human—or fatae—nature, but if there were consequences to those actions, then maybe it would stop them from happening again. Maybe.

Stosser stood up, my tape in his hand, and walked out of the office without another word, leaving Ben and me trying hard not to look at each other, but not able to look away.

Wow. Talk about an elephant in the room.

“You know I'm right. If this is as rare as you say it is, and we already know how much trouble it can cause, it will be like waving a red flag in front of a bull. The Roblin won't be able to resist.”

“Bulls are color-blind, you know.”

I didn't even bother to glare, instead reaching inside to slowly, carefully, dismantle the wall I'd built, one brick of control at a time. I wasn't going to take it down all the way; I wasn't quite willing to do that, not even to stop The Roblin, but enough. I could feel the pressure brushing against me, shifting against the exterior of my core, like…I couldn't describe it; there were no words in my experience. Like waves rolling over each other, separate
to the eye but not really, not in composition, water drops from one merging into the other, and then reforming….

That wasn't right, either, but it was the visual that stuck with me, even as I could feel Ben unbuilding his own wall, coming down less like bricks than a melting sheet of ice.

The image of two lovers undressing for the first time? Really not far off the mark. That thought didn't help my nerves any.

I couldn't say when it happened. I'm not sure it actually did happen, that there was a moment of Before and then After, or if things that always had been were suddenly surfacing. I didn't feel any different, didn't think any different; all the things I'd quietly, subconsciously worried about not happening, at least as far as I could tell.

I was me, still. Ben was Ben. I wasn't overwhelmed, or undercut. Just…

Aware.

Really, really Aware.

*weird*

His voice, my thoughts, or the other way around. A sense of wonder and oddness and agreement and not a little awe.

And a sense, from both of us, of “this far, no further.” The Merge pushed; like a living thing: it wanted more. We resisted, and it subsided again, taking what it could get.

A moment passed, then another, and the sense of oddness faded.

Still aware, though. Like breathing for two, or… I had
no frame of reference, and from the look on Ben's face, neither did he.

“Now what?” Ben asked. “Here, Roblin, Roblin, Roblin?”

I had no idea.

“Well, while you figure it out, we still have an investigation to handle.” He walked past me to get to the door, and I reached out, almost instinctively, and touched his hip. The cloth of his slacks felt rough, abrasive under suddenly oversensitive fingertips, and he paused, as though I'd grabbed at him.

I could hear him swallow, without even looking, and felt guilty for the pain that must have caused his throat.

“I'm all right,” he said immediately. “It's like having a bad sore throat, mostly, only on the outside. You can't tell?”

“I didn't try.”

That seemed to reassure him, and he nodded, heading out the door.

I let him go; he was the boss, he got to give the orders. But I mentally followed him down the hallway, anyway, the echo of his movements in my head, almost but not quite like hearing, or seeing, or smelling something familiar.

There weren't any words to describe it. I wondered if, over time, I'd figure it out. I wondered if we'd get the chance to figure it out.

I didn't wonder, any longer, if I
wanted
that chance.

“Here Roblin, Roblin, Roblin,” I said. “You want something that's going to mess up my life, make me pissed off? Come try and rearrange the furniture
here.
”

I waited, but there was no indication that I'd been
heard, no evil chuckle or high-pitched giggle or even a passing whiff of sulfur, or whatever presaged the appearance of an imp.

I waited another few minutes, then got up and went to join the rest of the team.

“We already know that the trace isn't anything any of us have seen before,” Sharon was saying when I came in. It took me a minute to catch up with what she was talking about, my brain so filled with The Roblin, and Venec, and how much more trouble I'd just gotten myself into.

Right. The trace I'd picked up in the house. The thing locked in a warded jar, hopefully inert.

“We've been trying to come up with some way to test it, if we can figure out where it comes from, but there's barely enough to poke at, and…” She hesitated. “And it makes me feel queasy just being in the room with it. That's not normal.”

Yeah. It had made all of us feel uneasy, hadn't it, the moment we were aware of it. Why? Something stirred in my awareness; not me, but Venec. I glanced sideways at him, but nothing showed on his expression or body language, and the stirring faded, as though he hadn't been able to get a grip on it, either.