Staying Dead (5 page)

“Bunch of folk with the mojo to do the job themselves, almost all carrying a mad-on of one kind or another for our client. Strictly low-budget grievances, though.” She pulled out a legal-size piece of paper from the file and handed it to him in exchange. It was a copy of the original list P.B. had given her, with her own notes added under each name. “Doubt they'd be in any of your databases.”

“Don't ever underestimate my resources,” he told her severely. “Many people who think they're invisible often—”

“Leave a fluorescent trail. Yeah, yeah, I know.” One of the few “resources” of his that Wren had ever met in person was a former forensic investigator named Edgehill, who was paying off some unnamed but very large favor done in the distant past. He was a slight, frantic-eyed man with wildly-gesturing hands. Listening to him talk was sort of like watching an episode of
CSI
on fast forward while taking speed. But his shit was almost always on the money.

“Would the police have anything on file?”

Wren snorted. “Nobody on this list. Strictly no-see-um talents.”

“Noseeyum?”

“Too good to get caught.”

“Ah.” He grinned at her, the expression softening his face and putting an appealing glint in his dark brown eyes. Behind that hard-assed, hard-pressed agent façade, she thought not for the first time, Mr. Sergei Didier had a real wicked sense of humor that didn't get nearly enough air time. “Kin of yours?”

“Hardly.” Without false modesty, Wren knew her worth, and so did Sergei, to the penny. These guys were good, but she was better. Which was why
she
didn't appear on other people's little lists. Even Sergei, with all his surprisingly good contacts and connections, hadn't known about her way back when until sheer coincidence—and a nasty accident caused by someone trying to kill him—brought them into contact.

Wren's mentor, a man named John Ebenezer, had taught her from the very beginning to keep a low personal profile for a great many reasons, all of them having to do with staying alive and under her own governance. There were three kinds of current-mages in the world: Council-mandated, lonejackers and dead. Just because a Talent had no interest in being under the Council's thumb didn't mean they might not want her there, now or someday later. Better not to take the chance. That was the lonejacker's first law: steer clear of the Mage Council.

Their salads arrived at that moment, and they paused long enough to accept their plates, and wave away Callie's offer of freshly ground pepper.

“I've never understood that.”

“What?” He looked at her, his forehead scrunching together in puzzlement.

“The fresh pepper thing. Who puts pepper on their salad?”

Sergei shrugged. “Someone must, otherwise they wouldn't offer it.”

“I think they do it just to see who's stupid enough—or sheep enough—to say yes.”

“You have a suspicious mind.”

Wren grinned at him. “You do say the sweetest things.”

“Eat your salad,” he told her, lifting his own fork with a decided appetite. Her list lay just to the side of his plate, so he could skim it without distracting himself from his food, or running the risk of getting salad dressing on the paper. Wren watched him eat and read for a moment, then picked up her own fork and dug into the pile of greens. She was going to wait until the dishes were cleared away to go through the neatly-clipped-together, ordered, indexed and color-coded material properly.

“Hey, this name was on my list,” he said suddenly.

“What?” That got her attention fast.

“This name.” He stabbed one well-manicured finger at the paper as though it were somehow at fault. “It was on my list.”

Wren took the paper from him. “Which one?”

“Third from the bottom. George Margolin.”

Wren scanned the list, coming to the name he indicated. “Huh. Talent, yeah, but not buckets of it. Not affiliated, not really a lonejack—he's passing.” In other words, he wasn't using current in any way, shape, or form that was obvious to the observer, and probably didn't use it at all. At least, not consciously. But you never knew for certain. And some folk were just naturally sneaky about it.

“Great. Move that guy up to the top of the suspects list. Anyone in a suit that P.B. hears about is going to be dirty, one way or another.”

“P.B.?” Sergei didn't roll his eyes—that would have been beneath him—but his voice indicated his level of unimpressedness.

“Hey, don't dis
my
sources,” she said, pointing her fork at him. “That furry little bastard always comes through, which is more than I can say for some of your people. I seem to recall a little screw-up with IDs that almost got me shot by the cops in Tucson.”

“All right, all right. Point taken.”

She had to give Sergei that. He was a xenophobic bastard when it came to things like demons and fatae, but he didn't cut humans any slack when they screwed up, either. Especially when it was their own lives on the line.

She flattered herself that he might have been just as annoyed at that snitch if he hadn't ended up in that Tucson jail along with her.

“So how come this guy's on your list?”

“You have the file, you look.”

“Why? You've memorized the important stuff already.” Wren never understood why people wasted brain-space on anything they didn't need right at hand. That was the magic of writing stuff down, so you didn't have to cram it all in your head. But Sergei was incapable of letting go of anything to do with a job, at least while the file was hot. For all she knew, he did an info dump at the end of every case, mentally shredding all that info in order to make room for the new stuff.

She had a mental image of Sergei running his brain through a shredder, and had to stifle a snort of laughter.

“What's so funny?”

“Nothing.” She bit the inside of her lips, made a “go on” gesture. “Tell me about Margolin.”

He frowned at her, dark eyes narrowed in suspicion, but complied. “Mid-forties. Computer genius of sorts, chief technical officer for Frants Incorporated. Odd, for a Talent.”

“But not unheard of, especially if he's passing. That low-level a Talent, probably enhances the tech stuff rather than shorting it out. Lucky bastard.” Wren didn't carry high-tech toys because it was an exercise in frustration, not because she didn't like them.

“According to this, he's smart, savvy, and very very disgruntled. RUMINIT says he felt that he was passed over for promotion because of his religious beliefs.”

“What, he's a Scientologist?”

It was Sergei's turn to laugh. “No, agnostic. Rather militantly so. As in ‘I don't know, and you don't either.'”

Wren tried to raise only one eyebrow and failed, pretty sure that the resulting expression made her look like an inquisitive owl. “I can see where that could get up someone's nose, yeah. But if he's passing…Yeah.” She checked her notes. “Nope, no real training, far as anyone knows. No mentor ever claimed him.” That was how Talents worked, mostly; one-on-one apprenticeships. Went all the way back to when it wasn't safe to work together—or tell anyone what you were, so you tied the knowledge up in secrecy and oaths. “He doesn't have the firepower to do it himself, and I can't see him having enough information without a mentor to track down and hire a mage to do something like this, either.” She narrowed her eyes as a sudden thought hit her. “Unless he's from a Talented family that's stayed low-profile, flying under the radar? Neezer said sometimes it ran in the bloodline like that. But not often, not so's you could track it, anyway. So maybe he's not private enemy number one after all.” She paused. “I wonder how he got on P.B.'s list.”

Sergei squinted at the list, trying to make out the handwriting. “Ursine?”

“Usury. Somebody's got a light wallet, if he's paying out the loan sharks, hey? Odd, you'd think he'd be making plenty of money. Kids' tuition go up? He a gambler? The
Cosa's
not pretty on people who welsh on debts.”

“No information on either. And they run some pretty heavy scans on people for exactly that. I'll take it back and see what some determined digging can produce.”

Sometimes, Wren wondered about Sergei's snitches. Not their ability—their origins. Mostly they were the usual: artists who heard every bit of gossip that rumbled through the collectibles world, high-rent agents who knew where the money was buried and the bodies bankrolled—that sort of thing. But every now and then she needed information you couldn't get from a cocktail party, or through a discreet inquiry, and then his clear brown eyes would go dark and shadowed, and he'd refuse to say yea or nay…but the information always came through. And unlike his other sources, and her own, the information they gave was always straight-up. Always.

So she wondered, but never pried. For all that they pretty much lived in each other's pockets during cases, weeks could go by otherwise when they only talked briefly on the phone. There was an awful lot about Sergei's life she didn't have clue one about.

Oh, Wren had known back when they first hooked up that her new partner was a man with secrets, not the least of which was how he'd even known about Talents and the
Cosa
in the first place. It wasn't as though they took out ads in the local trades or anything. But he did know, and he never said how, and that had actually made her trust him more, not less. If she was going to let him in on her secrets, after all, she had to respect that he held others as securely, right? But oh, the desire sometimes to crack him open and see what secrets came rolling out…

In a purely mental, informational way. Of course. She'd seen the women he socialized with, had even met a few of them over the years when their social paths overlapped. Lovely women, Nulls each and every one; elegant and articulate and educated, usually artistic as hell. And visible. Always highly visible. Memorable, even. Unlike her own eminently forgettable self.

And so it goes, Valere. You are what you are. And so is he, and so are the both of you together. Concentrate on the job.

“Anyone on your list you think is likely?” Sergei asked.

Pulled from personal to professional musings without warning, Wren shook her head, replaying his words as she chewed on a particularly leafy green.
Likely as a thunderstorm in summer.
There was someone on her list who had the talent to pull something like this, and the probable grudge and twisted sense of humor to make it seem like a good idea. All she had to do was name him, and Sergei would be able to run a complete dossier. But the words didn't come out of her mouth.

She tried not to lie to Sergei. It was just bad business, and stupid besides. But she wasn't ready to say anything to him just yet. Not before she knew more.

Some things, when you got down to it, were more important than business. Some loyalties you couldn't just walk away from. And anyway, with any luck Sergei wouldn't figure out who she was protecting until she had her answers and it wasn't an issue anymore one way or the other.

Callie came by to take their salad plates away and bring the main course, saving her from having to reply. By unspoken consent they moved away from shop talk while digging into their meals, catching up on the small details that made up each day. Sergei had a new show beginning that week, and he was full of the near-disasters and minor crises that came with every installation.

“So Lowell gestures like he's some off-off-off Broadway magician, only his arm gets tangled in the hangings, which in turn get tangled in the wires. And the wires come down like the wrath of God, sending the piece soaring through the air like it thought it was Peter Pan.”

Wren snickered, imagining the scene. “Anyone get hurt?”

“Only the artist, who chose that moment to walk in the door, demanding an update. I thought he was going to have a heart attack.”

“You hoped he would have a heart attack,” she corrected him. “You could have doubled the prices on everything.”

His brief grin made her laugh around a forkful of sole. “Trebled. But there would have been paperwork, and the show would have had to have been delayed, so it's probably best he didn't.”

“Spoken like a true patron of the arts. You're a marvel and a wonder, you know that, Didier?”

“I do my humble best, Valere. I truly do. Some day I might even make an honest man out of me.”

With perfect timing, they both said “yeah, right” in matching tones of disgust, and his sudden bark of laughter made Wren laugh again as well from the sheer joy of the noise.

He went on to detail the results of the show while Wren finished her meal. Shamelessly scraping the last of the sauce up with her finger and licking it off with relish, she checked to make sure Callie had finally reseated herself at the bar and was engrossed in a magazine before giving in to temptation and retrieving the file from the floor beside her chair. Sergei continued with his meal, now silently watching her as she skimmed through his data.