Dana Stabenow - Powers of Detection

Taking the faintest hint of current, she lifted her hand, drawing the camera’s attention. It was like weaving without a loom. Flickers left her fingertips as she concentrated on the circuits and wires of the camera system. Too much, and you burned it out, setting off alarms. Too little, and a sharp-eyed watchman might spot her. Just a hint of static, something that could be brushed off, so long as it didn’t go on for too long. Just long enough for her to move, crouched low and flowing across the grounds like the low-flying bird she was named for, until she reached the relative safety of the decorative overhang. God bless old buildings . The Meadows had started life as a mansion, and still boasted any number of odd architectural details that created enough shadows for Wren to wrap herself in.

Letting her heart rate slow down to normal, Wren pictured the assignment in her mind. It was a small thing, barely twelve-by-twelve, set in a severe silver frame. Part of a traveling exhibit of paintings that were as of yet unattributed but considered by a number of experts to be “rediscovered” works by various Impressionist masters. The art world was wild over the find; Sergei had been to see the exhibit twice even before they got this gig. If she knew her partner, he’d want to hold on to the painting for a few days until they handed it back, just to have one of the so-called Fabulous Finds in his possession.

Actually, if she’d been prone to liking artwork, she thought she might want to own something like this too. The colors were almost alive, creating a wash of light on the landscape that reminded her of the photograph Sergei had in his own office, the black-and-white nature photographer, the guy who took all those pictures of national parks.

Art critique later she told herself. Clock’s tick tick ticking…

The thing about museums is, they weren’t stupid. They knew that technology was fallible, and that humans were fallible. But most of them also had serious budget restrictions. The Meadows had a top-of-the-line electrical alarm system. It would probably have stopped any casual intruder, or at least alerted the police to the incursion. But the Board of the Meadows had one serious disadvantage. They had never heard of current, the magical kind, or the Cosa.

Magic wasn’t the fairy dust and wild imaginations science liked to claim. It was real, and tangible… if you were part of the small percentage of the human population able to sense it. An even smaller percentage of those humans, like Wren, were able to direct the current into anything useful.

And Talents like Wren, who honed her skills for the specific purpose of larceny, were called Retrievers.

A light touch to the door, and she felt the tingle that meant elementals were around, drawn to the current that was bound into electricity, no matter what form. A quick push of current bridged the gap in the alarm system long enough for her to open the door and slip inside. She started to move in the slow-slide fashion she had perfected for not creating footfalls, when she stopped and returned to the lock. Placing her hand on the alarm pad, she waited. Elementals had the reasoning ability of inbred hamsters, but you could use them, if you knew how. She did.

Come on, you know you’re bored with that stale, man-made electricity… come taste some of mine…

They came to her tentatively at first, then swarming in their eagerness. Natural current “tasted” better to them. She let them feed for a few seconds, nibbling around the edges of the current curling up from her belly, twining around her spine. All right. Earn your keep. She visualized clearly what she wanted them to do. A faint hesitation, and the swarm was off, splitting into a dozen different directions as they moved along the museum’s state-of-the-art wiring.

A pity they couldn’t call back to warn her if someone else was in the hallways; but if a person didn’t have current, elementals didn’t know he or she existed.

The painting was in a little alcove off gallery #11, in a space that had probably once been a servant’s room. Or a closet. What did she know, Wren thought, listening with part of her Talent to the sounds of the elementals causing chaos in other parts of the building. She grew up in a double-wide trailer, for Pete’s sake. They didn’t even have any mansions in Redwater.

Palms held over the frame, and the current surged, creating the illusion again that the alarm hadn’t been breached. Moving quickly, she fit a small ceramic knife into the frame and slit the painting carefully along four sides, sliding it out and rolling it up. Tucked into an aluminum tube, the tube stowed in her backpack. And then it was time to go. She checked the digital readout on her knapsack, far enough away from her body that the current didn’t futz it too badly. Fourteen minutes. Damn. Getting old, Valere. You’re getting old.

–

By the time she made it out to the edge of the museum’s property, it was almost twelve-thirty. She perched in the vee of a large oak and contemplated the street. The empty street.

“Dammit, Didier…” She’d had to duck and wait while a guard went by her; too close, that one. They were getting smarter. She’d have to put a no-go on any jobs here for at least two years. Maybe three.

Not for the first time she wished for a cell phone. But even if they hadn’t been too risky-too easy for someone to check the last few numbers dialed-she still couldn’t carry one. No cell phone, no PDA… even the odd watch was prone to strange fluctuations under current, and when she pulled down a surge, all bets were off.

Another fifteen minutes, and she had to accept the fact that Sergei had probably been forced to call it a night. The glitches she had the elementals set off might have caused a patrol car to take a swing by, even though none of it had been enough to trigger an actual alarm.

“Good thing you wore the comfy sneakers,” she told herself, swinging herself down from the tree and landing with lazy grace on the grass. It was going to be a long walk back.

–

It might have been the night air. Or the current still running high in her system. Or, as Sergei claimed, just a natural-born stupidity. But at the time, the idea to kill two jobs with one evening seemed just a matter of common sense and practicality. She had to walk by the site anyway, so why not?

“Why not,” Sergei said over his tenth mug of high-test tea, the first five of which had cooled while he was waiting for her, “is because a) you were carrying a retrieved object. And b) because you hadn’t done anything more than a cursory glance at the job write-up.”

She knew he was mad, then, when he called it a job instead of a situation.

“And c) because you got caught! ”

Wren winced, fighting the urge to duck under the diner’s table. “Not so much caught,” she protested meekly. “More like…”

–

“Who’s there?”

Wren swore, wrapping herself in current and fading into the shadows. The store was a hodgepodge of clichés, down to the motheaten thing stuffed and mounted on the counter, its crystal eyes reflecting light back at her. At least, she hoped it was just crystal reflecting light…

“I said, who’s there?” An old man to match the shop stomped downstairs, a megapowered X-Files -quality flashlight in one hand. Wren closed her eyes so she wouldn’t reflect the light. The beam flashed across her face, passed on… then came back.

“I know what you’re here for,” the old man cackled. “But you can’t have it. Can’t, can’t can’t!”

Nobody said anything about the guy being a Talent she thought with irritation, then common sense reasserted itself. He wasn’t a Talent, or a seer, or anything that would have allowed him to sense what she was or what she intended. He was just old-fashioned bugfuck. Crazy had a way of messing with the brain in ways even current couldn’t work around.