Laura Gilman - Burning Bridges

“Because I’m the best.” Best Retriever, yeah. This wasn’t a Retrieval. It was…

“It’s the same.” Like he was reading her mind. Which he couldn’t. Except somehow he did. “It’s about seeing the details and creating a plan. About adapting to situations as they change. Playing the scenario as it evolves, bringing back—Retrieving—the information the Troika needs. You can do it. Just finish the job.”

His ever-repeated advice, in every situation. The magic mantra. Finish the job. The act of finishing the job proves it’s possible. So long as you’re focused on the job, the practical details of the job, you don’t have time to panic over the magnitude. The potential pitfalls. The ramifications.

She knew the logic behind the magic. Somehow, it wasn’t as reassuring as it used to be.

And he left something out of the equation. Payment. Everything costs. That was his mantra, as well, what he had taught her better than any community college business course. Value for value, preferably in their favor. And Wren couldn’t help wondering, as she snugged closer into his embrace, what the cost of all this would be, when the blood and dust all settled.

When Wren got to the landing of her fifth-floor walk-up apartment, the phone was ringing. Odds were it wasn’t Sergei, who had stopped at the bank on the corner to hit his ATM, sending her on ahead. Teller machines normally ignored all but the most overt current displays, but she was, as he indelicately pointed out, a bit tight-wound from the meeting, and likely to be twitchy with current. Better safe than sorry when her partner was down to a handful of singles in his wallet.

Wren never used ATMs, herself. It wasn’t about the risk, however minimal, of frying the machine; she just liked to have a face to go with the figures who had their fingers all over her money. Sergei, on the other hand, never used anything but, despite constantly griping to anyone who would listen about not being able to get anything smaller than a twenty-dollar bill. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t get to the bank during their normal hours—what was going to happen, the boss would yell at him for being late? But no, he was never willing to take the extra few minutes it took to go into the lobby and deal with a teller in person, during actual work hours.

Some days, she really didn’t understand her partner at all.

Locks undone and door opened, no rush, and the phone was still ringing. It was either someone who was very determined, or someone who knew a. that she didn’t have an answering machine and b. that she was home.

Or…

“Hello?”

Or it was her mother, a woman of determination, certitude, and the stubborn conviction that her daughter wouldn’t dare not pick up the phone if she was on the other line.

Her mother was, of course, completely right in that assumption.

Wren dropped her keys into the dish on the counter, and shoved her gloves into her coat pocket. “Hey Mom. How’s Seattle?”

Her mother had, at her request, gone on an extended vacation back in September, when things first got significantly ugly. Wren hadn’t been sure when things were going to break open, but she knew she wanted her totally magic-Null mother as far away from it as possible. It would have been unthinkable, previously, to consider someone going after a Null relative in order to injure a Talent…but there were so many other unthinkables suddenly being thought that Wren had figured better safe than sorry.

Some days Wren thought it would be better—certainly easier—if her mother moved out of the area entirely, to somewhere that the name “Valere” wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in any circles. Hell, some days she thought she should move….

Fortunately, her mother had found that trip so enjoyable that it had turned into a series of cross-country relative visitations, a new one every few weeks as Margot could get away from her job. The fact that it also made Margot into a moving—and therefore less appealing—target was something Wren wisely kept to herself.

In payment for that peace of mind, Wren was now getting the color commentary blow-by-blow by phone. Currently, it was cousin Jeanne’s turn for a Royal Visit, out in not-so-sunny Seattle.

“Uh-huh. Yeah?”

Wren shrugged out of her coat one arm at a time, transferring the phone from ear to ear as she did so. Measuring the distance to the closet against the length of the phone cord, she draped the coat on the counter, and dropped her bag and keys on top of it. Sergei would put everything away when he came upstairs.

“And the kitten?” she asked her mother, having reached the end of a recital on Jeanne’s present condition, which was fine, loving her new job, still not dating anyone new after dumping her most recent significant other.

The kitten was Jeanne’s son, Kit. He would be…Wren searched her memory, coming up blank. Ten? Eleven? There wasn’t all that much family on her mother’s side, and none that she knew of on her male genetic donor’s side, that she should have such a blank spot on that information.

Not that it mattered. Her mother, hopeless when it came to seeing or remembering anything odd or unpleasant in her daughter’s life, had excellent recall for things familial, and a willingness to share it at the drop of a hint. All Wren had to do was make interested noises until the older woman ran down.

Wren perched herself on one of the stools, and settled in, reaching across the counter for a pen and scratch paper to write down her thoughts about the morning’s meeting, while she listened.

Nothing like a little multitasking to keep your mind off how impossible her to-do list was. But hey, look on the bright side, she thought. At least you know the depth of the kimchi you’ve been thrown into, right?

“Isn’t that a little young?” she interrupted her mother. “No, I don’t remember what I was like at that age, sorry.”

1 get feedback from Beyl on meeting for Quad

2 talk up the idea of Patrols on the street, see who jumps. Esp. fatae.

3 …

Sergei came in through the door before she could think of a third thing. He heard her talking on the phone, obviously made an instant—and correct—evaluation of who was on the other end of the line, and waggled his fingers in greeting to her mother, with whom he had a rather strained, you’re-sleeping-with-my-daughter relationship.

When Wren nodded, not pausing in either her monosyllabic responses to her mother or her pencil-twirling, he put her bag and keys on the counter and hung her coat up alongside his in the closet, then disappeared down the hallway.

Either the bathroom, or her office, she guessed. Sergei had been away from the office all day, and while he was getting better at letting his assistant, that kiss-ass weasel Lowell, handle things, he still liked to have a hand on the spoon if things were actively cooking. Which was a terrible metaphor, but she was distracted, damn it.

“Wait a minute, he did what?” Wren put her pen down, to-do list half-made, and listened more carefully to her mother’s story. Family politics were as intricate as Cosa politics, but far more entertaining….

Down the hall, Sergei sat down at Wren’s computer and booted it up. Her voice carried down the hallway, and the sound of laughter lightened his own dark mood considerably.

There had been very little laughter in this apartment, lately. Too much tragedy, tension, trauma, and all sorts of words beginning with T. Very little laughter in their lives, overall, actually. Since…Since Lee died, probably. Before then, even when things were making them crazy, even when Wren was injured and he was losing his mind over keeping her safe, and they didn’t know when—or if—the next job would come in, there had still been laughter. Strained, sometimes; but laughter. When had it gone wrong?