Laura Gilman - Curse the Dark

“Bad doesn’t even begin to cover it,” Wren admitted, squelching her self-disgust into a tight box and locking the lid. Her mother would have a fit if she knew how badly her only daughter was messing with some poor guy’s mind. But when needs must, as her own mother forever said—if about other, way more ordinary things—you did what you had to do….

Sergei Didier watched his partner wind the security guard around her little finger, and stifled a smile of relief. With luck, having something to focus on other than her fear of flying would keep anything…dramatic from happening. He’d been intentionally not thinking of all the ways a panicked Talent could create chaos in an airport, especially one as tightly wound as Newark, as though that blankness in his mind would prevent anything from happening. Talismanic magic, the ancient kind Wren scoffed at.

His feeling was, don’t knock anything that might work.

He glanced at the decadently expensive and self-indulgent wind-up gold watch on his wrist and made a bet with himself that it would take her less than three minutes to “push” the guard into hand-walking them through security. There was much less risk in her being wanded off to the side than walking through one of their damned machines, in the state she was in. If she managed that, it would be the first thing that had gone right since they’d taken this damned job.

No, scratch that. The first thing to go right since May. Since that damned Frants case, since that damned Council—since everything had changed.

He rested his gaze on his Wren, currently being ushered out of the line by the solicitous guard, and smiled again. Not that everything that had happened in May was so bad.

She looked back, making sure that he was okay with her being taken out, alone, and he made a small go-ahead gesture. It wasn’t as though they were joined at the hip. She’d catch up with him on the other side of the security gate. Once she was out of the way, things were bound to go more smoothly.

Picking up his bag, Sergei shuffled forward with the rest of the line to fill the space Wren had left. Yes, things would go more smoothly without her there. But he missed her presence already.

Since May…although he wondered again how much had actually changed, and how much was just finally being dragged out into the light of day.

Two days earlier…

“Why the hell don’t you get an air conditioner?”

Wren looked at her partner as though that was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. He flushed slightly, the color rising over his damnably fine cheekbones, although that might have been the heat. It was seven o’clock in the evening, and the temperature was still hovering in the low nineties. Summer in Manhattan. God, how Wren hated it.

They were sitting on the hardwood floor of the largest room in her apartment, not that large meant much in the city. The space was empty save for the stereo system against one wall and an overstuffed armchair at the perfect midway point between speakers. All the windows in the apartment were open, on the off-chance of catching a breeze to supplement the low-tech floor fans that were pretty much just redistributing the warm air. But at least they were low-risk, compared to running an air conditioner. She wasn’t going to be the Talent who shorted out the entire city because she couldn’t stand a little heat.

She could, she supposed, have drawn the oppressive heat off her body magically. But even thinking about it made her exhausted. Actually doing something was beyond her ability right now.

Sergei, who didn’t have that option, looked as exhausted as she felt. Still dressed in the grey summer-weight wool slacks and long-sleeved cotton shirt he had worn during the day, he was sprawled on his back, a clear plastic cup on the floor near his hand, the dregs of a squeezed lemon and the last drops of iced tea at the bottom of the cup. His collar was undone, and his sleeves had been unbuttoned and then left, as though it were too much effort to roll up the cuffs. He wouldn’t be caught dead in anything more casual, not when he needed to be “Sergei Didier, owner and proprietor of Didier Gallery, home of overpriced artwork,” anyway. Sergei, her partner in we-don’t-call-it-crime, it’s-Retrieval-thank-you-muchly, could dress down as needed. Although she could probably count on two hands the number of times she’d seen him in jeans. Pity, that. For thirty-nine-ish, her partner’s ass was worthy of well-fitting jeans. Not that slacks weren’t a good look on him, too….

She shook her mind away from those thoughts with an effort, aware he was waiting for a response.

“You could have gone back to your own place, you know,” she said. He had central air. And tile flooring, which was much nicer to lie on when it was really hot outside. Not that she’d done that…more than once or twice. Two weeks of ninety-degree-plus temperatures. It wasn’t fair.

“God.” He shuddered like a tired horse as though he’d been following along with her thoughts. “The idea of getting on the subway tonight…” His voice was a low growl, unlike his usual precise newscaster enunciation. “Too many sweaty people, all unhappy. If we all weren’t so tired the murder rate would be skyrocketing. Besides, we need to talk, and you’ve been avoiding me.”

“Have not.” She had been, of course. And lying to her partner was supposed to be reserved for times of real need, not just because she was a candy-coated wuss.

She’d been avoiding everything, lately. Not good. Trust him to call her on it.

“Genevieve…” Another growl. God, as much as she hated her given name, she loved the sound of him saying it. It made her feel like her spine was melting. Even when he was scolding her, the way he was now.

“No calls, huh?” Stupid question. If there had been, he would have told her.

“None,” he confirmed anyway. “And it’s starting to show.”

She knew that. It just all added to the avoidance factor. Bad enough to be in this miserable heat wave. Adding a dry spell to it was the proverbial insult to injury. She hadn’t gotten a single job since June. Three months, and Sergei hadn’t fielded a single solitary badly-paying inquiry.

She might be the best Retriever in the business, but being the best didn’t mean anything if you weren’t getting the jobs.

“Everyone scrams from the city in August,” she offered, fanning herself halfheartedly with a paper fan made out of a folded take-out menu. Someone told her once that the action used more energy than it cooled her down, but Wren didn’t care. It felt good.

“Wren.” He sighed, rolling over on his side to look at her. “Face it. You know what’s going on.”

Unable to meet his steady brown gaze any longer, Wren stared instead at the can of Diet Sprite waiting by her feet. The polish on her big toe was starting to flake off, and she rubbed at it idly with her free hand, thinking that she was long overdue for a pedicure. Knowing didn’t mean wanting to admit. Because admitting would mean also admitting that maybe she’d really messed things up.

And worse, that she’d messed up by doing the right thing. A simple job—Retrieve a stolen chunk of concrete, spell intact, and return it to the rightful owner—that turned out to have politics and underhanded dealings and paybacks written all over it. And a ghost with trouble staying dead. And murder. Never forget the murder part of it.

A fifty-year-old murder she had tried to avenge. She might even have succeeded, although it probably would be a few more decades before she’d know for sure.

Along the way, she had also managed to piss off the Mage Council, the self-proclaimed hall monitors of the Talent world, by letting it be known the part they had played in that murder. Not that they had anything against snuffing out a life or two, especially if the victim was a Null, a nonmagic user. But they hadn’t exactly played by their own rules, and that was supposed to be a no-no.