Laura Gilman - Dragon Justice

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…