Dragon Justice (4 page)

I looked back. If I’d ever been uneasy under that weirdly red
gaze, it had faded a long time ago. Angeli were bastards, but demon, far as my
experience went, were loyal and honest, if occasionally short-tempered. Trust
the
Cosa
to screw up their naming conventions.

“It’s a fatae thing,” I said, to head off any concerns Valere
might have had about my showing up unannounced.

“Of course it is,” PB muttered. Wren handed me a plain white
mug filled with caffeinated nirvana, and I took a deep sip. She might not be
able to cook, but Valere could magic up a serious pot of coffee.

“And it’s delicate,” I added.

“Of course it is,” the Retriever said.

I thought about how much to tell them, zipped through the best-
and worst-case scenarios, and shrugged mentally. Delicate, and no-footprint, but
Stosser had set me to this scent, and I’d follow it best I could, and that meant
using my sources as best I could. And for these two, that meant telling them the
truth.

Just not all the truth.

“A girl’s gone missing. Baby girl. Seven years old.”

They went the same place I did, hearing her age: just the right
age for a Fey-snatch, if someone were willing to break the Treaty.

“The Fey say they don’t have her.” Let them think I already
checked that avenue, rather than taking it on faith from a client. I thought
again of the Lord’s expression, and restrained a shudder. No, clients lied, and
the Fey lied even more, but not in this specific instance. They wanted to know
who had her, enough to give Stosser a blank IOU in return.

PB humphed. “No chance she went willingly?”

That was the other way a breed could acquire humans: glamour
them into coming of their own accord. We called it fairy-dusting, and it wasn’t
covered under any treaties.

“She’s seven, PB. Doesn’t matter what she wanted. She’s still a
baby. Babies can’t go willingly.” Wren sat on the hassock opposite me, looking
thoughtful. “You’ve checked into the usual gossip spots, I assume, otherwise you
wouldn’t be going to me.”

“Not yet.”

That took them both aback, PB’s ears going flat in
surprise.

“The usual spots take time, and greasing. I need to know, hot
and fast, if there’s any gossip in the fatae community, about newcomers, maybe
someone out to prove a point, or score a grudge.” I hesitated, then unreeled a
little more truth to hook them with. “It feels like a setup. Someone’s trying to
make it look like the Treaty’s been broken.”

These two knew better than anyone how bad a broken treaty could
get—especially one between humans and fatae. If that was what was going on, it
had to be stopped and fixed, before word got out.

Wren thought about it for a minute, and I watched. Looking at
Wren was difficult; even when you stared right at her, she seemed to slip away
from your eye. But Pietr and I had been lovers on and off for months, and I’d
almost gotten the trick of looking-not-looking. Average height, average looks,
average coloring—brown hair, brown eyes, a face that could have come from almost
any genetic stew. Even without magic, Wren Valere didn’t appear on your mental
radar.

That—and a natural talent for larceny—was what made her a
Retriever.

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s been quiet since… It’s been
quiet.”

Since she’d taken out the organization that had been fucking
with the
Cosa
and Nulls alike, she meant. Another
thing nobody talked about but everyone knew.

“PB?” She turned to the demon, her head tilted. “You hang in
lower sewers than I do. You hear anything?”

Every demon, Venec had told me once, looked different. Rumor
had it they were artificial, created like Frankenstein’s monster, their only
shared characteristic those red eyes and a snarly disposition. PB looked like a
pint-size polar bear, all thick white fur and powerful limbs, and a snout that
was supremely made for frowning, which is what he was doing right now.

“Danny had some trouble a couple-three months ago, but that was
a teenager. Nothing about a wee one. That screams of trooping fairies.”

Despite myself, I cracked a grin. Only a demon would call them
that, especially out loud.
Fey folk
was the
preferred polite term, if you didn’t want a Lady’s gaze turned on you, which I
desperately didn’t. Demon, though—demon didn’t care. There wasn’t a Fey glamour
in the universe that could hold a demon against his will. Some said it was
because they had no soul. Me, I think they were just too stubborn.

“The Fey Lord says they did not. Swears it, in fact.” Breaking
a sworn statement had penalties I didn’t think the Lord wanted to pay, not
unless he was playing some deeper game than even Stosser could guess. And
this…didn’t feel like a game.

“And the Fey Lady?” Having PB’s direct red gaze on you was
disconcerting as hell, even when you considered him a friend, like I did. It was
a fair guess on his part: they came in pairs, like mittens.

“Noncommittal, but seemed very certain it was from outside her
Troop.”

We’d lost Wren from the conversation; she had gotten up and
left the room without me even noticing. Retrievers were like that. PB shifted on
the footstool, his toe-claws tapping quietly on the hardwood floor.

“So you want to know if there’s news of a schism within the
city’s Troop, or if anyone outside’s trying to poke holes into it. No. And trust
me,
that
I would have heard about. Troop wars aren’t
as ugly as some things we’ve faced, but they’re bad enough.”

I wasn’t surprised. “That was about what I’d figured, yeah.” If
it were that simple, the Fey would have figured it out for themselves and dealt
with it already. We only got the tricky things.

“What does it feel like?”

Normally I didn’t talk about this—job details—outside the pack.
But PB was unarguably loyal to Wren, and Wren…

Was, technically, on the other side. Not all Retrievers were
criminals—they worked for legitimate owners as often as not—but it was better
not to think about how they did their job. That said, Wren could be trusted.
Within reason.

“It feels like a mess,” I admitted. “And maybe a wild-goose
chase, with the Fey holding the feathers. But that’s me, lead goose-chaser.”

The phone rang in the kitchen, once, and Wren picked it up. I
tried not to listen in, but even with her voice lowered, I could still pick up
most of the words. From the way PB had gone all distracted, he could hear even
more: demon senses were a hell of a lot better than puny human ones.

“Sergei,” he said, neither of us pretending we weren’t
eavesdropping. “He has a new job for her. And not a minute too soon—she was
about to start stealing things out of boredom.”

I shushed him, and her voice, slightly raised, carried into the
living room.

“On a scale of one to ten?”

“Private or corporate?”

A groan: she hadn’t liked the answer. “A shove-and-grab?”

A long pause: he was explaining something. PB’s ears twitched:
he was picking up more than me, but not sharing now. Just as well: I really
didn’t want to know the details.

“I should scoot,” I said, getting up. “Tell Wren I said thanks,
and I’ll try to bring by a housewarming lasagna or something this weekend,
okay?” I hadn’t had much time to cook lately, which might have been half my
problem: I de-stressed by feeding people. Taking an hour or two to myself would
be a very good idea and keep the wheels here properly greased.

“You’re not going to hang around and help me bully Valere into
ordering curtains?” He held up one of the shelter magazines, with Post-it notes
stuck all over the pages.

“Oh, hell, no. You’re on your own for that one. If you hear
anything…”

“Yeah, you got it. Go, before I start asking your opinion on
carpets.”

I laughed and left.

Chapter 3

I’d walked out of Wren’s apartment with no useful
information but, thanks to PB’s comments, with the beginnings of a plan: hit up
Danny for details on what the smaller
Cosa
-fry were
doing. It made sense that PB and Wren had come up dry, in retrospect: PB’s main
gig was as a courier who asked no questions and spilled no secrets. When he
looked, he looked big picture, citywide. But a little girl might fall between
the cracks, especially if there wasn’t something Dire involved. A private eye
who worked for whatever cases came along would be able to see the smaller
details.

And I already knew that Danny, a former NYPD patrolman, had a
weakness for kids in distress. He’d drop anything not-urgent, and maybe even a
few things that were, to help me out.

I didn’t feel good about using his soft spot that way, but I
was going to do it, anyway. It helped to know that he’d do exactly the same
thing if the situation were reversed.

The afternoon sun hit me a few steps down the street, like it
was trying to coax me into taking the rest of the day off to sprawl on the Great
Lawn and read the newspaper front to back. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d
actually had time to do something like that.

And today wasn’t going to be that day, either. I ignored the
siren call, intent on my destination, weaving around the slower-moving clumps
with the agility of practice. Not that I was looking forward to going back down
into the subway: three seasons of the year they were fine, but once we got into
summer… Ugh. Manhattan was a relatively small city; why the hell couldn’t
everyone I needed to talk to be within a ten-block radius?

The 6 subway downtown to Danny’s office wasn’t bad, though;
relatively uncrowded, and the air was flowing properly. And it took less time
than a cab.

I leaned back against the plastic subway seat and tried to even
out my breathing—and my thinking. Sometimes, kids get lost. The fact that I
didn’t want to think about it, that it made my gut hurt, didn’t change that. If
someone hadn’t implied fatae involvement, this little girl would just be a
poster on a cop-shop board somewhere, another Amber Alert on the wires. And if
there wasn’t anything to do with the
Cosa
Nostradamus…

PUPI’s mission statement did not encompass the Null world, to
quote directly from one of Stosser’s usual “we are here to help you” speeches.
Didn’t matter. Even once the Fey were cleared, I knew already I wasn’t going to
let this case go. A dozen years ago I could have gotten lost, too. My dad had
been loving but kinda loose about parenting, and if I hadn’t found J, if he
hadn’t found me, been willing to mentor me…

Being Talent didn’t mean you got a pass on the rest of the crap
life could hand out. Mentorship was supposed to be a safety net and a lifeline,
but it didn’t always work out that way. And Null kids… They didn’t even have
that.

I got off at my stop, giving a hairy eyeball to the guy who
tried to use the in/out crush at the door as an excuse to grab my ass, and made
my way to Sylvan Investigations.

I didn’t bother knocking, and the door, as usual, wasn’t
locked. Danny’s office still looked like it was straight out of Dashiell
Hammett, with a front room staged with a secretary’s desk, padded guest chairs,
and some anemic-looking potted plants, waiting for some bright but world-wise
dame to answer the phone, while the detective slept off a bender in the back
room.

Danny didn’t have a receptionist, and he usually slept off his
hangovers at home.

A weary voice called out, “What do you want?”

Or, maybe not.

I took myself all the way into the back room and shut the door
behind me. “You look like hell.” Danny was a good-looking guy, the product of an
attractive woman—I’d seen pictures of his mom, stern but lovely in Navy
blues—and an unknown, unlamented faun who, like all of his breed, had the
strong, stocky body that Danny had inherited, along with the short, curved horns
that were only barely hidden by his thick brown hair. Right now, though, Danny
was slumped in the chair behind his desk, cowboy boots up on the aforementioned
desk. His eyes were closed, and his face was lined and gray, like he hadn’t
slept in a week.

He might not have, for all I knew. We hadn’t had a chance to
schmooze lately, with the workload Stosser kept handing the pack. I felt a flare
of bad-friend guilt.

“Are you okay?” I had no idea what a fever would feel like on a
mixed-breed, but moved forward to touch his forehead, anyway. He batted my hand
away and opened one eye enough to glare.

“I’m fine, Torres. It’s just been a crappy week. What do you
want?”

I didn’t want to lay anything more on him, but there wasn’t any
point in walking away without at least asking.

“I have a case I was hoping you could help with. It’s about a
missing kid.”

Danny’s boots hit the floor so fast and hard I didn’t even see
him move. “What kid? When? How old?”

Whoa, hadn’t been expecting that. A bit of an overreaction,
even for Danny’s known soft spot. I stumbled my reply, then recovered. “Seven
years old. Missing a week now.”

“Oh.” He settled back a bit then, his shoulders not exactly
relaxing, but no longer looking like he was about to leap out the door at a full
run. “Not mine, then.”

Oh, fuck. The pain in my stomach got worse. “You have another
missing kid?”

“Two, actually. Probably dusted.”

That was slang for being lured by one of the more seductive
fatae breeds—like Danny’s.

“One almost fifteen, the other a legal adult, just turned
twenty-one, but parents still worried.”

The difference—and that they were older—made me feel slightly
better, and I relaxed, too, pulling one of the client chairs around the desk so
I could sit next to Danny, not be separated by the expanse of wooden desk.
“Nope, mine’s seven, like I said.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Girl. Yours?”

“Girls, too.”

That still didn’t mean any connection. “Do boy-children or
girl-children go missing more often?” I’d never wondered that before.

“NISMART numbers say slightly more males than females, out of
about a million-plus reported every year. Most are runaways, teenagers, or
known-adult abductions. Only a small but ugly percentage are nonfamily
kidnappings.” Of course Danny would know. “Most are white. Yours?”

“No. Mom’s Asian, dad’s Caucasian.”

Danny frowned. “Mine are mixed, too. Statistically that’s odd,
although within range for New York.”

I thought about that and let it go. “Even if we had a
full-scale kid-snatch going on, which I doubt, I can’t think of any fatae breed
who would be looking for the full range of age and—”

Something ticked in my brain, and I pulled out the file again,
flipping through. “Seven. Fourteen. Twenty-one…”

“What?” Danny was watching me intently now, his skin still
tired-looking but his eyes alert and focused, his usual energy back.

“Magic.” I said it like a curse word. It fit, damn it. It all
fit....

“What?”

I forgot sometimes that Danny was fatae, not Talent. They
looked at—and reacted to—things differently than we did. Also, they got told
different stories as kids. “Old magic, pre-current.” Before the modern age,
before Founder Ben: when things were messy and magic was as much hope and prayer
as science. “Seven was a magic number, really strong, potent. Even today, some
people like to run things in sets of seven, hedge their bets. And here we’ve got
my girl, seven. Yours, if fourteen, twice seven, and twenty-one, thrice seven.
Three’s a strong number, too. All gone missing in the same city, the same time,
and you think there was
Cosa
involvement in your
cases, too, otherwise you wouldn’t have mentioned the fatae.” Danny handled Null
cases, too, but he wouldn’t immediately have associated something I was working
on with one of those.

By the time I’d finished, the words spilling out of my mouth,
he was already reaching across his desk, pulling a pile of folders toward him.
Being fatae, Danny could use computers, but he tended to do that stuff away from
where Talent might drop by. He ran a shoestring operation, and we were hard on
electronics, especially when we got emotional.

“Melinda, fourteen. Went missing two weeks ago. I’ve been on
the case for three days, after the NYPD dumped her in with the runaways. Haven’t
turned up a whisper of anything. Started with the street kids, got nothing. Was
starting to wonder if she’d skipped town or hooked with a dead-end john when
Gail’s parents called me. She’s been missing almost a month, and all the stats
are the same—smart, pretty, but not overwhelmingly brilliant or beautiful,
everything to stay home for, suddenly up and gone between midnight and
dawn.”

He put his hand palm-down on the file, like he was trying to
hold them safe, and turned his head to look sideways at me.

I stared at his hand. They were blunt-tipped, his fingers,
strong and scattered with coarse brown hairs. Venec’s hands were strong, too,
but more tapered and smooth. I shook my head, dismissing the thought. “My girl’s
too young to be really slotted—but she’s definitely cute. Smart… Unless they’re
genius level, how do you tell at that age?”

Danny snorted. “Don’t ask me.” He was an only child, and
despite his breed’s proclivities—or maybe because of them—he wasn’t the type to
sleep around. I’d sussed early on that Danny was looking for One True Love, god
help him. “Talent family?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“So how did they come to you?”

I hesitated, then went for broke. “They didn’t.”

That got me a closer look, squinty-eyed, like they must teach
in the academy, the kind of look that makes you talk too much when a cop asks to
see your ID. “Spill, Torres.”

Stosser was going to kill me. But, damn it, Danny might have
the info that broke the case. And he took discreet into artistic levels. And the
Big Dogs had taught us to trust our gut instincts. “The Fey Folk asked us to
look into it. Rumor is that they were responsible for my girl’s disappearance.
They say no. They don’t want people claiming they’ve broken Treaty.”

“An’ if PSI says they’re clean, most folk will stand by that.”
Danny nodded. “Sounds like Stosser’s long-term plan to own the
Cosa
is working.” He shook his head then, dismissing
the boss’s plans as unimportant, which, to him, they were. “Damn it, Bonnie, I
think we’re onto something. My girls are Null. Yours?”

One of the first things I’d checked. Talent kids tend to wander
down slightly different rabbit holes, when they go missing. “Yeah.”

It might not mean anything, all these facts. Sometimes, even
the most suspicious of circumstances turned out to be flutterby, unrelated and
unconnected. But there was a thick, heavy feeling in my core and a tingling of
my kenning, the sense that sometimes, often unpredictably, hinted at the future,
that told me otherwise. A full eighty percent of this job was listening to the
facts and sorting the evidence, and then fitting them together. Sometimes it
took logic; sometimes it took a wild leap. More often, it took both.

“If it’s not the usual suspects, but the gossip points there…”
I didn’t want to say the word, but I had to. “You think it’s the Silence, come
back?”

For years, an organization called, ironically, the Silence had
been spreading enough lies and rumors around the city, enough to nearly destroy
the
Cosa Nostradamus.
We’d taken to the streets to
fight them, one snowy night last year, and they’d finally disappeared from the
scene a few months ago, their office building still sitting vacant. Wren Valere
had been elbows-deep in what was going on, then. If they’d come back, Wren would
have known. She would have told me, us. Right?

“If they were back, the Dynamic Duo would have let us know,”
Danny said, echoing my thoughts. “Right?”

“Right.”

I sounded convinced, but there was a low note of doubt in my
stomach to go with everything else. Wren Valere was my friend. A genuine hero,
although she’d scoff at the thought. She was also a Retriever, and like Danny,
she took discretion to an art form when needed. Discretion that, to me, could
translate as withholding evidence. How far could we trust her to share
information? Yeah, hero, friend, etc., but…

I couldn’t afford to be distracted by a maybewhatif. Useless
dithering, Torres. Focus on the facts. “I’ll have Venec put a few feelers out,
just in case.” Ben had friends in seriously low places, even for the
Cosa,
and if the Silence were back, those friends
would be scurrying for their lives. “But for now, we focus on the girls and work
our way out to their captors, not the other way around.”

“Right. Here.” He pulled a handful of sheets from the folders
and shuffled them together. “Copies of all the known facts on my girls. Okay to
copy yours?”

“Yeah, go ahead.” We’d hired Danny for side work before;
Stosser and Venec trusted him. Besides, I’d already spilled the part I wasn’t
supposed to say; wasn’t like his having hardcopy would change anything.

The copier machine was a tiny little thing, off in the corner
of the room. Danny fed the sheets in, one at a time, while I grabbed one of the
client chairs and draped myself into it.

Better to fess up now than get caught out later. But
indirectly…

*boss?*

There was a slight lag in his response. Nothing that would have
been noticeable with anyone else, but I’d become accustomed to Venec being just
next to my thoughts at all times. Distance was a factor in pings; maybe it
mattered here, too? If so, he wasn’t in the city anymore. Huh.

*what?*

*twist in the job Stosser gave me. taking Danny on. he has a
case that might match it*

A sense of acknowledgment, acceptance, and being busy somewhere
else. Ben was leaving the city. Yeah, moving… I concentrated a little.
Southward.