Laura Gilman - Staying Dead

The decidedly unfrail P.B. snorted, but didn’t hesitate in devouring his first slice and reaching for a second one. “I get first prize for speed?” he asked in between slices, referring to the material in her hand.

“As always,” she said, licking one finger and using it to sort through the pages, scanning the delicate copperplate that seemed so incongruous coming from P.B.’s clawed hands.

P.B.’s real name was all but unpronounceable. The nickname came from an inauspicious moment back in the early days of their acquaintance, when an innocent bystander had been heard to shriek, “Oh my God, it’s a monster!” To which Wren, somewhat short-tempered at the time, had snapped back, “No, it’s an effing polar bear!” The description had been apt, and the nickname had stuck.

P.B. wasn’t her only source, but he was one of the best. Certainly the most reliable. Demons mostly made their living as information conduits, there not being much of a job market for them outside of bodyguarding and freak-show gigs. There wasn’t anything that one of them didn’t know, or couldn’t find out, and what one of them knew, another would hear, sooner or later.

Sooner, if the money was right. And they didn’t play politics: you got what you paid for, no matter who—or what—you were. It was refreshing, in a disgustingly capitalistic pig kind of way. She wished more of the Cosa worked that way. But no, the ineptly-named angels had their endless feuds, and the various fatae-clans their more-special-than-thou attitudes, and humans—sometimes she thought humans were the worst of all, with the mages and their rules and regulations and Shalt Nots worse than Sunday School for fear of someone breaking rank and having a little fun. “Someone” in the mages’ case mostly being the lonejacks, the Talents who refused affiliation. Unions and scabs, Sergei had described it, but it wasn’t that simple, really. Everyone had a different reason for going lonejack.

And, tossed into that mix, always the snarling between the races, like they weren’t all in it together, more or less. But some people—humans and fatae—just couldn’t handle the idea of something shaped or colored a little differently walking, talking and working alongside their precious selves. Wren didn’t have much patience with that. You do your job, stay out of her way, she didn’t much care if you lived in brimstone or used your hind paws at the dinner table.

Sometimes, she thought it would have been a lot easier being Null. Then she watched the Suits scuttle to work every morning, hustling for a window office, and decided she was happy where and what she was.

P.B. burped, the sound like baritone chimes rising from his rotund stomach. “So what’s the job?”

She just looked at him, a wealth of disbelief in her expression. He stared back, his flat, fur-covered face blandly innocent. Anything she shared with him without a for-hire agreement would be sold to his next client before she’d had a chance to act on it herself. Not in this lifetime or the next three, pal.

“Right. Don’t tell me anything, just send me out to fetch like a dog….”

She considered responding, then decided that it really wasn’t worth the effort. It was enough that she wasn’t pitching him out the window already.

Wren had only met three demons in the flesh in her lifetime—that she knew about, anyway. Looks varied wildly, and she was told that some of them could pass for human, if you weren’t looking carefully. The three she had encountered weren’t those kind. And of those three, P.B. was the only one she could deal with for more than a few minutes at a time. It wasn’t that she was prejudiced; she simply couldn’t handle the relatively high voltage most of the full-sized demons emitted, like some kind of ungrounded magical wire that set her teeth on edge. Fatae—the elves and piskies and whatnot—were, by contrast, easy on the nerves. And angels never hung around long enough to do more than freak you out.

For a few moments, the only sound in the kitchen was P.B.’s jaws chewing crust, and the scritching-soft noise of paper against paper as she read what he had brought her. Finally she reached the last page, and shook them back into order and replaced them in the envelope, folding the metal closure back down again. Names, jobs, capabilities…P.B. had done his usual bang-up job of getting exactly what she needed. Some of the names on the list were familiar, in the heard-about-them kind of way.

And one was all too familiar, in a gut-clenching way. She forced herself not to focus on it. All the names were equal possibilities right now. Don’t jump to conclusions. Conclusions without facts get people killed, possibly even her own very important self. File it, Valere. File it and deal with it later. When you’re alone.

“Thirteen names?” She raised an eyebrow at the fur-coated being now lounging in her other kitchen chair.

He belched, then shrugged. “Lotsa folk interested in your boy,” he said unapologetically. “He’s made himself some enemies. And those’re just the ones who have a profile with us.” Us being the entire magic-using community, the Cosa Nostradamus. Human and nonhuman alike. We might squabble amongst ourselves, often to the point of a passing wave of bloodshed, but in the end it was always us against them—“them” being what her long-gone mentor used to call Kellers; the Nulls, who were mostly blind and deaf to what was around them. Not much love lost there. To some of the Cosa, her working with Sergei on an equal footing was betrayal. He wasn’t too fond of them, either.

P.B. went on. “Probably lots of otherwise upstanding humans who hate his guts too.”

“What, he kicks old ladies and molests farmyard animals?” She’d gotten info on the client, but it was all public relations bullshit, not anything actually helpful. Sergei usually did a full write-up highlighting anything she needed to know, but this looked like a time-of-urgency kind of deal. Besides, he was the client, not the mark. They didn’t ask too much about the clients.

“Nah.” The demon cleared a piece of cheese from between his serrated teeth and flicked it into the garbage can. “Sounds like he gets his jollies the old fashioned way—with money. Preferably other people’s money, which he then turns into more money for himself. Real power-hungry, in the nasty-with-it way.”

Wren shrugged one shoulder, the tilt of her head conveying supreme indifference. “Most people with power are, that’s why they get to stay on the top of the predator heap. Anything I don’t already know?”

“Yeah. He’s apparently in real bad odor with the local wizzart’s gathering.”

“Wow.” Crossing wizzarts took serious guts. Or a total lack of brains. Possibly both. Unless of course he didn’t know what he was doing. If he only knew about the public face the Council sold…. Wizzarts weren’t exactly talked about outside the Cosa. Not too much inside it, either, truthfully. Mention not, see not, become not.

In fact, “gathering” was an ironic term to refer to wizzarts overall. The only time you got more than two wizzarts gathered anywhere was if they were all using the bathroom. And even then most of them would rather burst a bladder than share space with their own kind. And they weren’t much sweeter on other humans. Most wizzarts didn’t want to live within a hundred miles of another person. They were all crazy, chaos-ridden by taking too much current into their brain. From what little she’d been able to learn, the entire human race made them feel like she did around P.B., and twice that for another of their kind. It almost gave her some sympathy for them.

Not much, though. Last time she dealt with a wizzart, he’d tried to throw her over a cliff.

“Nice. And the Council?”