Dragon Justice (9 page)

“Genevieve Valere, this is Ellen…” I realized suddenly I didn’t
know her last name.

“Just Ellen.”

All right, then.

If Wren was taken aback at being introduced by her real name,
she didn’t show it, offering her hand to Ellen and shaking it—and then giving me
a startled, quizzical look as she felt what I had, the fizzing, ungrounded core
of a Talent who had no idea what she was or what to do with herself.

“Bonnie…” There was a faint, panicked tinge to her tone.

“It’s time, Wren,” I said firmly. “And Ellen needs you.”

Chapter 6

Handoff accomplished, I ran. I’m not afraid to admit
it. Wren knew damn well why I’d brought the girl to her, and Ellen…

I had no idea what Ellen thought or wanted or wished for.
Honestly, it didn’t matter. She needed training, for her own sake and the safety
of people around her. Right now she was beat down and depressed, not angry. If
she did get angry, or frustrated, she could do damage. If she grabbed too much
current, without knowing how to ground herself properly…

Overrush. Current ran through our systems, trained or not, and
the fact that she hadn’t used it yet was surprising—maybe she had, and it scared
her so much she’d shut it down. That only made it more urgent that she learn
what she was and how to manage it. Until then, she could short herself out, fry
not only her body but her brains, maybe kill people around her, too. That’s why
we’re taught control before anything else, early enough that we don’t have much
current in our core yet.

I’d never seen anyone overrush, but I’d heard stories. We all
heard the stories.

I made it to the bus stop without Wren pinging me to get my ass
back there, and decided, cautiously, that it was safe to relax. Wren could
handle Ellen. She was used to working with Nulls, through her partner, and knew
all about control, and…

And she knew about being overlooked and misunderstood, too.
Valere never talked about her childhood, but she didn’t have to. She was a
Retriever. Like Pietr, people didn’t notice her, even when she wanted them to.
Being a Retriever was as much self-defense as it was a career choice.

The bus came, and I got on, sliding my card and holding my
breath, as usual, that the magnetic strip still worked. It did. Credit cards
lasted about a day near me now, but Metrocards survived. Thank you,
universe.

So, what was the life-lesson in all that—we are what our Talent
makes us? Magic is destiny? Before, I would have scoffed at the idea: J had
taught me that we make our own destiny from the materials we’re given or
acquire. But the Merge was making me rethink that. Not that I believed I was
predestined to a single lifetime forsaking-all-others soul-mate crap with Venec,
because I wasn’t going to go there. Nor was I going to turn into an obedient
little breeding machine, if that’s what it wanted.

But the Merge had changed me. There was no getting around that
fact. Or we’d changed ourselves, because of it. When we attracted the attention
of the Roblin earlier this year, Venec and I had let down our walls to draw the
mischief imp in, giving it a situation where it could potentially cause the most
damage, focusing its attention on us so it didn’t bother anyone else. I’d
worried then that those walls wouldn’t ever go back up again, not entirely.

I’d been right.

The thought was enough to lift a whisper of awareness deep in
my core, the scent of his signature wafting through my bones. If I pushed, I
would know exactly where he was—within a reasonable distance—and what he was
feeling. His thoughts were still a mystery, unless he let down his walls
intentionally, for which I was deeply thankful. I had enough in my brain without
his, too. Also, I got the feeling that Ben had some seriously scary
thoughts.

*okay?*

*yeah*

The exchange was so brief, so instinctive, it was over before I
realized it was happening. Somewhere wherever Ben was, he’d felt my roil of
emotions and roused himself long enough to make sure everything was all
right.

I didn’t like the rush of warm satisfaction that went through
me at that, but I didn’t dislike it, either. And that was the weirdest thing of
all about the Merge. There was no sense of anticipation or anxiety, no emotional
highs or lows. I had no doubt at all what Ben was thinking, what he was feeling,
at least in regard to me.

The bus turned the corner, jolting me slightly in my seat, and
I realized that we were almost at my stop. I hit the tape to alert the driver
and got to my feet. Hopefully Nick had collected Mollywog from her erstwhile
would-be sisters and deposited her with Stosser, who would have passed her along
to the parents, and the Fey Lord and Lady would then be off our back and owe us
a favor.

No, owe Stosser a favor. I didn’t want to have anything to do
with that.

I took the stairs up to our office two at a time, hearing my
boots make a satisfying echo with each stomp, and hit the seventh floor not even
breathing hard. Yay, me.

“Hey.” Nicky was in the break room, pulling a soda out of the
fridge, when I came in.

I scanned the room quickly for anyone pint-size. “Everything
okay?”

“Yeah, although I had to do some quick talking and fancy
footwork to get those wannabe Amazons to hand over the kid to me, when you
weren’t there. Thanks a lot, by the way. I owe you.”

I took the sarcasm in stride—Nicky really wasn’t all that good
at it. “And the kid?”

“Molly—who is, by the way, the most talkative little kid I have
ever met, and I’ve met a lot—is fine and happy and thinks she’s been on an
adventure and is now off to see her folks again. Not a bruise on her, no obvious
trauma in her sparkly little self.”

I hadn’t even known I’d been worried about that until a weight
slid off my neck.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, well, you may not thank me after Stosser gets through
with you. He was not happy you handed the job over to me, for some reason.”

Oh, swell. “The, um, clients weren’t there?”

“Don’t know. Stosser met me at the door.” He frowned. “We
weren’t hired by Molly’s parents?”

Stosser had said to keep it quiet, but I’d already told Danny,
and hell, Nicky had been the one to tell me that there were fatae in with
Stosser....

“Nope. Rumor had been that the Fey were kidsnatching again.
They wanted the rumors put down.”

“We were hired by the Fey?” Nick’s pale brown eyes went wide,
and not much surprised him anymore. That was who was in the office?

“Mmm.” Say neither yes nor no, and you have plausible if not
moral deniability.

“So who was the snatcher?” The Fey, identified and placed, were
immediately of less interest. The PUPI mindset kicking in.

“That…may be something we should keep an eye on. A woman,
identity unknown, is luring girls, taking seven-year-olds, anyway, and luring
older girls to join her. She’s a charismatic, possibly Talent, using current as
bait.”

Nicky narrowed his eyes. “Molly isn’t Talent, I don’t think.”
You couldn’t really be sure until puberty, but he was probably right.

“None of the girls are.” Except Ellen, who they’d rejected.
“Sensitive Nulls, but not Talent. That’s what makes it so weird. I promised I
wouldn’t squeal on them, if they handed Molly over, but…”

“But.” Nicky shared my own apprehension, which made me feel
both better and worse.

“Rorani is concerned.” I decided not to say anything about the
spirit of Central Park that might or might not have helped me out. A dryad was a
real, solid thing. Ghosts…not so much. And I wasn’t really sure, anyway. I could
have done it myself and stress-imagined the feeling of “otherness.”

“You saw Rorani?” Thick envy in his voice, there. Nicky had
gone from fanboy to blasé about the fatae overall, but Rorani was…special.

“She’s the one who showed me where they were living. I would
have found them eventually, but…”

“Uh-huh.” He let the sop to my ego go. “Normally I’d say none
of our business, until we’re called in—” we were supposed to be the tools of
investigation, not the instigator of same— “but this isn’t good. If this woman’s
Talent… Bonnie, you gotta tell Stosser, get him to do something, or tell someone
who can do something.”

“Yeah, I know.” I looked, involuntarily, down the hallway. It
was quiet, all the doors shut. “But not until I know for a fact our clients are
out of the office. I’d just as soon not run into them again. Ever.”

Nick looked at me like I’d grown another head, the soda bottle
paused halfway to his mouth.

“Bonnie, I’ve seen you mouth off to a dragon.”

“A dragon can only eat you.” The Fey could do far, far worse,
if they wanted.

He didn’t look convinced, but didn’t argue the point. I kept
getting the feeling that, despite constant urgings, Nicky still hadn’t boned up
on his fairy tales. I have no idea what his mentor had been thinking.

“Nick?” I jumped: Lou could be as quiet as Pietr sometimes, and
I’d swear she hadn’t been in the hallway when I’d just looked, nor had I heard
any doors open.

“There you are.” Our office manager grabbed him by the nearest
elbow and pulled him toward the hallway. “Sharon needs your particular skill set
on something.”

Something electronic, that meant. Nick, for all his scrawny
exterior, was one of the more unusual of Talents, born with the ability to
actually use current on electronics. Even rarer than a Retriever, and three
times as dangerous—and for us, invaluable.

“What’s up?” I asked, starting to follow, and Lou let go of him
and grabbed me by the shoulder, swinging me around. “Not so fast, wonder
girl.”

“What?”

“Bonnie,
chica,
I know that we all
think we’re superheroes, but seriously? When was the last time you took more
than a day off?”

I started to protest, and she shook her head at me, all
MamaLou. “Without being ordered to.”

“Okay, that’s not fair. We’ve been busy as hell.” Never mind
that I’d been begging for time off. I’d wanted off babysitting, not work.

“Yeah, we have.” Lou kept track of who was scheduled to what
case, so she knew exactly how busy we were. “And we will be again. But right
now? We’ve got it under control. And you’re not assigned to anything pending.
So, please? Go away.”

Lou’s tone was light, but the look in her eyes was serious.
And, worse, she was right. We all took one day off every six, no matter what we
were working on, but all that meant was that we weren’t actively working a case.
The last time I let go of the job and just relaxed was…

I couldn’t remember.

Lou must have seen something change in my expression, because
her stance softened a little. “Go play, Bonita. Before you forget how.”

In things like this, Lou outranked even Stosser, so I wasn’t
going to fight her. Only… “One last thing I gotta do, first.”

* * *

Once Lou assured me the coast was clear, I marched down
to Stosser’s office and reported in.

The Big Dog heard me out without comment. His hair was sleeked
back in its usual ponytail, but he was wearing a crunchy-granola outfit now,
rather than the earlier suit. I didn’t know if it had been for the Fey’s
benefit, or something else was going on, and I didn’t ask.

“You never saw this woman?”

“Didn’t get a name, either. I thought it more important to
bring the girl back than to risk antagonizing them.”

“No, you were right.” He looked at me then, his gaze way too
direct and thinky for my comfort. “And you took this…Ellen to Wren Valere.”

It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer it.

“You’ve got a good eye for diplomacy, despite yourself,” he
said, and my entire body tensed.

“No.” The word fell from my lips before I knew I was going to
say anything.

“What?”

“No. Look, boss… Yeah, I can think on my feet, and I can plan
ahead, and I’m good at making sure things go where they’re supposed to, but
don’t even go there. You have Lou to run the office, and Venec to run us, and
please, will someone just let me get back to doing what I do best? I would be
horribly unhappy as your third in command.”

I had ego, yeah, but I could see in his face I’d been right
about what he was thinking, where he wanted to lead me. It wasn’t the first time
something like this had come up.

I could also see that he hadn’t let go of the idea, even as he
nodded.

“You working a live case?”

“No.” I waited. That really hadn’t been a question, either.

I don’t know if he’d overheard Lou, or they were just thinking
along the same tracks, but he nodded again and then looked away, dismissing me,
his mind obviously already ranging onto the next problem. “Go home, take some
downtime. Don’t come back for—” and he hesitated “—three days. Four. Hell, I
don’t want to see you again until next Monday, all right?”

That definitely wasn’t a question.

* * *

Home for me was a brownstone apartment building in the
West Village. Wren might have moved out, but I was staying put. Besides the fact
that it was all I could afford, I’d fallen in love with the apartment, despite
its rundown and somewhat creaky bones. There were no ley lines anywhere near the
building, but something inside the bricks it was made from, or the bedrock it
was built on, carried its own magic, and like knew like.

Now, though…I still loved it, but it wasn’t the same. Wren had
moved out, gone uptown to her shiny new condo and taken PB with her, and with
them went the stream of fatae who used to tromp to her apartment, eating the
lasagna or stew I’d shoved into her freezer so she didn’t starve, a steady
source of gossip and companionship on the nights when I didn’t want to be alone,
a comforting, distant hum of energy overhead when I did.

A Null couple now lived on the top floor. Nice people, but not
my
people. And the irony of that made me smile,
because they were in many ways exactly my kind of people—free-living club kids
who’d gotten out of the house and were making careers for themselves. But…

Not
Cosa.

I hated it, that I thought that way. But the few times recently
I’d gone to hang out with old friends from college or tried to meet someone who
wasn’t a Talent, I ran out of things to say. I couldn’t talk about my job, not
really, and…

And Lou was right. I didn’t have anything else going on in my
life. Or, I had a lot of things going on, but none of it was going anywhere.