Laura Gilman - Pack of Lies

“We go to Bonnie’s,” Nick said in response. “But she’s not home. I called and got her answering service, and she’s not responding to a ping.”

“Oh, god, she’s not still dating what’s-his-name, is she?” Nifty asked, distracted. “The doink with the goofy smile?”

Nick threw up his hands in a dramatic gesture of disgust. “What, you think she tells me everything?”

“Yeah.” Sharon, Pietr and Nifty all responded in the same instant. Venec just closed the door quietly behind him while they were all preoccupied. He had no interest in their personal lives beyond how it affected their professional behavior, not even their sharp young technician, had no interest in her at all beyond her skills in the office.

“Right. No, she’s not,” Nick said. “I think we scared him off.”

“We did no such thing.”

“Of course we did,” Sharon said. “He took one look at us and ran for the hills. No great loss, he wasn’t right for her anyway. Too …”

“Stable? Sturdy? Much a productive member of society?” Nifty asked.

“Boring. Bonnie should not be with someone boring.”

“Right.” Nick rolled his eyes, still being dramatic. “And we’re all having such good luck on the dating front, we can give her advice.”

It seemed that nobody wanted to touch that comment, from the brief silence that fell.

“So if she’s not home where are we going to go?” Nifty asked.

“We might try our own homes?” Sharon suggested caustically. “Since Big Bad Dad here won’t let us work any longer, ‘cause he’s got a hot date or something….”

There was a flyer stuck to the nameplate on the door. Annoyed, Venec plucked it off, telling himself that his annoyance had to do with the solicitation, and not the way Bonnie’s love life was being batted around. Too young, too much an employee. Too much trouble, damn it.

“We’ve done everything we can right now,” he said to them. “Ian will be back in the morning with the girl’s testimony and the ki-rin’s deposition—” he hoped; his partner hadn’t pinged to say he’d be late, but Ian was not what you’d call a steady-goer “—and then we’ll be able to start putting the pieces together for our report. Right now, you’re just chewing on your tails, and that’s starting to chafe mine. So. Go. Home.”

He shooed them down the hall, noting with concern that they didn’t even stop at the elevator, but headed for the stairs at the end of the hallway. He understood their aversion—none of them were going to forget the boy who had died anytime soon—but it wasn’t good that they were now so conditioned to avoid it. He was going to have to do something about that, as well as the situation with Pietr.

He stopped to push the button for the elevator, meaning to set an example, and realized that he still had the flyer in his hand. Curious, he unfolded the salmon-colored paper and scanned the text, and then stopped and read it again, more carefully. On the surface it was an advertisement for a fumigation service. On the surface …

He had seen the wording before, on a different flyer, on his own door.

Do you have problems with unwanted creatures in your space? Looking for a way to evict them forever without chemicals or fuss? Call us.

He hadn’t thought anything about it then, piled with the other flyers and junk mail that seemed to accumulate every week; current use was one of the best natural cockroach repellents, and his building didn’t have a rat problem that he was aware of. Now, on its own, the wording seemed somehow more … something. He didn’t know what, but it made him uncomfortable.

He was a cautious, suspicious sort by training as well as natural inclination, and he didn’t believe in ignoring his instincts when they said something was wrong.

It was probably nothing; he might simply be overreacting. Or it could be important. That was his job, too; to scout things that might be important, and keep Ian informed. More, he didn’t like something about the wording of these flyers—or the fact that there was no company name on it, no website or email, only a phone number. That sort of thing raised a definite red flag—it meant someone was trying not to leave a trace. Pay-as-you-go cell phones were easier to dump than websites these days.

It wasn’t all current, this gig. Sometimes you had to use Null methods, too.

“Sharon,” he called, stopping her before she went into the stairwell. “Hang on a minute. You still in contact with the legal types you used to work with?”

She had come to them via a Talent-heavy law firm, specializing in discrimination cases and medical malpractice.

The blonde stepped back into the hallway, letting the others go on down the stairs without her, and looked at him inquiringly, switching easily from off-duty grousing to professional competence. “Yeah, why?”

He uncrumpled the paper, and handed it to her. “I need you to do some digging for me. Quietly.”

It had been a long day filled with not much of anything, and Aden was tired. She heard the door open, the sound of Carl’s steps in the hallway, but felt no urge to get up and meet him. The divan she was sitting on was comfortable, and he would come to her if there was anything to say. There was a skitter of claws as the dog was released from its leash and went into the kitchen to see if there was anything in its bowl.

His footsteps moved along the tiled hallway, down into the sunken living room, then stopped. She could feel the change in the air, but kept her back to him, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the length of the wall. The beach was empty save for a single jogger coming down the sand toward then. The high season was still months away, and she would be gone by then, the lease on this house expired. She didn’t know where she would go, then. Maybe Miami. Maybe Canada. Not home, not yet. She was not yet ready to deal with them. Not while they still slunk about like whipped dogs, too hesitant to do what was needed.

Carl cleared his throat. “They’ve hired your brother.”

The bile swirling in her throat at his words was an old, not-unwelcome friend. There was only one “they” in this house. The Mage Council. Specifically to her, the Midwest Council, her home and kin, but she knew he meant the Eastern Council, the region her brother lived in now. They were all the same in the end, even if they claimed autonomy and embraced geographic limitations. The elite of the elite; the decision-makers, the voice of reason and control against the human tendency to excess. She had spent her entire life living up to their standards, hoping to one day be strong enough, respected enough to be asked to join the seated members, to be a decision-maker herself.

Her childhood idols had feet of clay.

She sighed, hugging her knees more tightly to her, still watching the blue-gray waves rolling up onto the shore. “And what should I do about that, rush in to protest? Try to save them from their folly? Because that ended so well, last time.”

“The boy’s death was not your fault.” His reaction was automatic, but heartfelt.

“Of course it wasn’t.” She had not attacked with lethal force, only attempted to warn her brother, to force him to acknowledge the wrongness of his path. It was pure sad chance that the killer they had been chasing attempted to take them out at the same time, and that the elevator had failed in the resulting current cross fire and fallen, with the boy inside. Regrettable of course, but responsibility had to go to the owners of the building, who had not maintained their power grid properly. It merely reinforced her belief that Ian’s foolhardy quest would bring only grief and disaster to their people, no matter his good intentions. “But the Council needed someone to blame, and my brother was once again golden. He challenges their decisions, denies their authority, abandons everything that we were raised to believe … and they not only do not slap him down, they hire him. It would make me laugh, if it wasn’t so horrifying.”