Читать книгу Curse the Dark - Laura Anne Gilman - Страница 11

Wren wasn’t sure how long she had been leaning against the door staring blankly down her apartment’s short hallway like the answer to her problems was going to appear in front of her. Might have been five minutes, might have been fifteen. So when she heard the heavy footsteps coming up the stairwell outside, she thought that maybe Sergei had changed his mind, turned around outside and come back. But that mixed hope/fear died quickly. That wasn’t her partner’s tread. And the usual weird but familiar desire to brew a mug of tea that always preceded his arrival was missing, although it might have gotten confused, since he had just been there.

The footsteps stopped on her tiny landing, which made sense since the next-floor apartment was currently vacant, the nudist with the craving for curry having moved out last month. Whoever this was hadn’t had to ring to be let in, which could mean it was a fellow tenant from the lower floors—unlikely, as most of them would have leaned out the window and yelled up in their usual way of communicating—or someone had once again left the front door ajar for a delivery person.

“So glad we paid all that money to have the new security intercom put in,” Wren muttered to herself just as the rarely used door buzzer sounded.

“Oh, now you’ll ring, huh?” Still, it was hotter than hell out there, and someone had climbed five stories to ring her doorbell. If it was a burglar or wannabe rapist, the heat alone would take care of him.

“Ms. Valere? Are you there?”

Wren closed her eyes and leaned more heavily against the hollow metal security door; excellent for keeping fires out, not so good with the soundproofing. She would rather have dealt with a burglar.

The bell rang again.

Avoidance. Not a good thing. Even when it seemed like a really good thing. Besides, if she knew anything about her visitor, it was that he wasn’t going to just go away. He’d stand out there all night if he had to. Politely. Apologetically. But he’d be there.

“Right.” She swung around and started undoing the locks she had just done up in Sergei’s wake.

“Andre. So not a pleasure to see you again.”

Andre Felhim. Serpent in an Armani suit. Handler—middle management spymaster, according to Sergei—for the Silence, an organization that was prime offender in her partner’s Deep Dark Secrets Closet. Fanatic dogooders with boatloads of money and very specific ideas of who defined what was good and who got helped. The organization that had grudgingly offered salvation when the Council tried to take her down in various lethal ways—but only after Sergei negotiated out some of the nastier bits of their contract.

The organization whose monthly retainer fee was all that presently stood between her and total unemployment. Right. Damn. The fiscally responsible part of her brain kicked in and opened her mouth for a second take.

“Andre. Such a pleasure. Why don’t you come in?”

His grin at the second greeting, said in the same tone as the first, was appreciatively sardonic, and for a moment Wren could believe that this dapper, oh-so-controlled figure was the man who had allegedly trained her partner in all ways sneaky and manipulative.

Not that Sergei ever tried to manipulate her. Much. Consciously. Anymore.

Andre walked across the doorway, and Wren, channeling her mother for a terrifying moment, panicked. The thing about her apartment was that there was nowhere to invite someone in to sit for polite conversation. She just didn’t have that kind of a life.

Kitchen, she decided, escorting her guest into the small room. There were seats here, and a table she could lean on, to put between them. At least he hadn’t brought his junior associate, whatsisname, Jorgunsomethingorother, along this time. So they could skip the physical threats portion of the discussion. Probably.

“You just missed Sergei.” She barely paused before going on, “I’m thinking that’s intentional?”

Andre settled himself into one of her battered kitchen chairs, not reacting at all to her comment, as far as she could tell. Instead, he put his best avuncular expression on and said “It’s time for you to earn that retainer we pay you.”

He might have preferred subtle and sneaky and all those other serpent words, but he’d learned that polite chitchat wasn’t her thing when they had met during her last job. Which also happened to be when everything in her life started to go to hell. Coincidence? She thought probably not.

“We have an assignment that suits your skills,” he went on, “and—”

Or maybe he hadn’t quite learned. Once a serpent…“And nothing.” Wren really didn’t feel up to playing games. It was too damn hot, and she was too frustrated. Professionally and sexually, thank you very much.

“You know the deal. Sergei handles the arrangements, I do the job. Talk to him about the details. You’re no different than any other client.”

“We’re rather different,” Andre corrected her. “And at the moment, you have no other clients, if I’m not mistaken.”

Smarmy bastard. But he was right, no matter how he’d gotten the information; they couldn’t afford to piss the Silence off. Not yet, anyway. Sergei could loan her cash, sure, but it wasn’t like his art gallery did more than pay for the lifestyle he had to maintain in order to keep the gallery making money. And be damned if she was going to dip into her retirement fund. That was for then. She had to worry about the now, now.

Damn it, she hated not having options. A good lonejack always had options. Always had an escape route. Never had to take a job that smelled of brimstone, either literally or figuratively, if they didn’t want to.

Damn it, Sergei, where are you?

“All right. Talk. But whatever you say is going directly to Sergei and he’ll get back in touch with you with our terms. You got both of us in this deal, remember?”

That was a directed dig. They had really only wanted her; whatever relationship they’d had with him ten years ago, now Sergei was merely the means to an end, the former troublesome employee who led them to the new employee. Yeah, well. Not even the Silence got exactly what they wanted all the time.

Whatever else the Didier-Valere relationship might or might not be morphing into, they were partners, first, last and always.

“We have a situation that needs…a particular touch.”

God, she so hated dealing with negotiations. Sergei, damn it, why’d you have to go and run off just ’cause I told you to? “Something’s gone missing, you need it retrieved. I get that. What’s the deal?”

Andre looked nonplused for about a millisecond, then buried it down under the veneer of smooth he always wore. “A manuscript. Circa tenth century. Italian. Handwritten, one sheet of vellum, quite valuable. It has disappeared, and we require it returned. A simple enough job.”

Wren snorted. Old manuscripts. Riiiight. Give me a fricking break. Anything that old, handwritten, and gone missing equated Big Trouble. Especially if they had to hire a Talent to retrieve it. What, they thought she was stupid? Probably.

She turned her back on Andre, filling the teakettle and putting it on the stovetop, then reaching into the cabinet for a pair of mugs, the nice matched set her mother had bought her at Crate & Barrel last summer, in despair at the mismatched assortment of mugs that Wren normally used.

“And?” she asked, turning back to him, arms crossed in front of her.

“And?” Andre parroted, one eyebrow raised politely.

“Stop yanking my chain, it’s getting old. And what’s the story? Who stole it, why, what’s the time frame…. Come on, pal. I may be Talented but I’m not godlike. I need information to work on. Who, where, why, and how fast, to start.” She smiled at him, making sure to show all her small, even, very white, teeth.

Sergei Didier prided himself on his business acumen. His negotiation skills. An ability to read the client. And the physical conditioning that allowed his six-foot-plus frame to jog up five flights in a dimly lit stairwell in truly disgusting heat without passing out.

He had intended to go home. To his nice, cool, air-conditioned-without-fear-of-magically-shorting-out-because-Wren-got-careless apartment. Where he fully intended to make himself a brutal martini and take a cold shower. Probably, although not necessarily, in that order.

That was before the hairs on the back of his neck prickled in a way that had nothing to do with the sweat running under his collar and everything to do with intuition and a finely honed sense of danger nearby, two skills he’d tried his best for ten years to ignore, to bury under the facade of a desk-bound businessman of mostly legal endeavors.

It wasn’t anything magical—he wasn’t a Talent—just animal instinct. But he trusted it as much as he did his partner’s ability to channel current, the magic that was her genetic inheritance. And it led him unerringly back to Wren’s door.

Which was closed, but unlocked.

Don’t assume. She was upset, probably—definitely—and maybe she just forgot to lock the door after you left.

That thought was discarded as soon as it formed. He clearly remembered hearing the bolt slide home as he stood on the other side, trying to get a grip on himself. The overriding desire to wrap her around him, skin and sweat and the sweet-salty mint chocolate of her mouth, was driving him moderately insane. And he didn’t trust that in himself, not at all, and especially not with Wren.

Not if exploring those tantalizing lures she kept casting and then pulling back risked damaging the relationship they already had. The partnership—the friendship—that was all that kept him afloat, some days. He knew his weaknesses, too well. He hadn’t wanted her to become another one. But you can’t always get what you want, as Jagger once said.

If everything was okay, she’d yell at him for fussing. And he’d take it, gratefully. Only let everything be okay….

He pushed open the door gently, wishing feverishly that he had his gun with him. It had once been as much a part of his wardrobe as his shoes or tie, back when he worked full-time for the Silence. Wren hated it; she had just enough psychometry to be able to tell there was blood on it, and just having it around disturbed her. So for the past ten years he had carried it only when he knew—or strongly suspected—there would be trouble. But recent events were making him think that there was always going to be trouble.

Trouble that historically came in the pocket of the man whose voice was currently coming from Wren’s kitchen.

Sergei ran a hand through his hair, shoving the thick strands back off his face. He settled his breathing, then walked the four steps into the apartment, down the hallway, and into the long alcove his partner insisted was an eat-in kitchen.

Wren turned away from the counter and looked at him, then looked down at the mug of tea in her hand as though surprised to see it there. Her eyes narrowed, finely curved eyebrows communicating dismay, amusement, and a little bit of disgust before she shook her head, and those lips he spent far too much time thinking about curved in a smile. She handed him his tea, and turned back to the counter to pick up the other mug still steeping.

“Andre was just telling me all about our new assignment.”

Was Andre, indeed? Sergei didn’t like the tone in her voice. It was light, cheerful, almost perky, and boded not well for anyone who pushed her even one inch farther.

The temptation to let Andre hang himself was great, but odds were he’d regret it. Not right away, but eventually.

“A situation?” he asked, turning to face his former boss. Andre was seated on one of the chairs at the narrow kitchen table, his suit as impeccably tailored as always. Andre Felhim. A dapper black man somewhere in his well-kept sixties, clearly out of place in the homey disaster of Wren’s apartment, but seemingly unaware of the fact. And if he was dismayed to see Sergei appear when Andre had obviously hoped to avoid him, none of that showed on the older man’s face.

Then Sergei looked closer, and took a sip of his tea, suddenly thoughtful. No, Andre wasn’t unaware. There was a look in those hawk’s eyes that wasn’t as in control as he wanted to portray. Interesting. Worrisome. When Andre got worried, it was time for his agents to get very worried.

All his instincts were telling him to shove Andre out the door, possibly without bothering to open it first. But he couldn’t, for the same reason that had probably led Wren to let him into the apartment in the first place. The retainer he, Sergei, had negotiated for her. The retainer that allowed the Silence to call on them for occasional jobs. Jobs, he knew from experience, that the Silence could and would pay handsomely for. And Wren needed that money. Damn it.

Andre had them by the short hairs, and everyone in the room knew it. All Sergei could control now, even a little bit, was how they played it.

“The deal was you’d work through me,” he said, just to make sure all the protocols were followed, then leaned against the counter next to Wren, their elbows almost but not quite touching. “So talk to me.”

Wren wasn’t sure if she was annoyed that Sergei had come barging in when she’d finally gotten control of the situation, pleased to see him, or disgusted at the wave of relief she’d felt when she heard him come through the door. And there was absolute disgust at the fact that she’d made two mugs of tea without clicking onto what it meant. She was slipping, totally slipping.

“It’s a simple enough Retrieval,” Andre was telling her partner. “A monastery outside of Siena, in Italy, has requested our help in reclaiming a parchment that was taken from them last month.”

“Taken, as in…?” Sergei really had the most wonderful poker face, Wren thought, watching him watching Andre. The lightly sun-reddened skin stretched nicely over cheekbones that were just enough to envy but not enough to make him look male model-ish, and his chin could get so damnably stubborn…like right there, the way he shoved it forward just a hint. Uh-oh.

“Walked off on its own, from what Andre’s been able to not tell me,” she said, heading off a potential testosterone fit.

“We—and the monks—are unsure of what happened to it,” Andre admitted. “It is possible that someone stole it. Or…” He shrugged, a subtle gesture meant to imply that anything under God’s hand was possible.

“Or?”

“Or there may have been an unknown magical element involved, considering the nature of the manuscript.”

Oh-ho. Wren really wished she could do the one-eyebrow-raised thing. That was new in the telling. She knew, damn it, she knew old manuscripts always meant trouble. And if it was that old, and maybe magic, she’d lay heavy odds with any bookie in town that it was old-style magic, too. The kind that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore but everyone except the most obsessive, tech-happy Mage knew did. Same power, different channels. Unpredictable channels. If you did A with current, you got B. Consistent, quantifiable. Mostly. Wish up folk-style magics—hedgewitchery, voudon, faith-healing—and you never knew what might come out.

Bad stuff, sometimes. The older the magics, the less human-friendly they were. She’d never dealt with any of that herself. There were stories, though. Even the Cosa had bogeymen.

“So, what’s this unknown, maybe-magical bit of paper do?” she asked, focusing herself on the problem at hand. Don’t worry about the long-term stuff, Valere. You’re not in this to save the world. You’re not even in this to save the innocents and uninformed, the way the Silence claimed to be. You’re in it for the paycheck, and the smug satisfaction of a job decently done.

“It’s a parchment. And we don’t know,” Andre said, finally looking back at her. Guy didn’t look like he wanted to give them that particular bit of information, either, but she wasn’t sure if it was because he was worried about Silence secrecy, or he just didn’t want to tell them anything on principle. Probably both. Sergei had warned her, and warned her, and then warned her again that the Silence liked to play things close.

“It’s a difficult situation, as all we know is that a number of people have disappeared after coming in contact with it. With no other available information, save that the monks were most insistent that it be returned to them, we have to assume there’s danger.”

“So you’re acting as agent for them, not taking this on your own?” Sergei, wheelin’ the deal.

“In this instance, yes. Although we would have taken steps of our own, had they not contacted us.”

“If you’d heard about it,” Wren said, her tone intentionally doubting.

“We would have.”

Andre was solid, confident. Wren had her doubts, but it wasn’t really important here and now.

Sergei exhaled, a sharp, loud breath of air that recaptured Andre’s attention, his head turning as though he were watching a slow-motion tennis game. “You said that people disappeared after coming in contact with the manuscript? As in, they put it down and walked away, or…?”

The older man hedged uncomfortably, and Wren took malicious and unashamed pleasure in it, after that little omission of information, earlier.

“We’re not sure,” he said, finally.

“Where did it go?” Sergei asked with marked patience.

“We don’t know.”

“Okay, so what’s written on this parchment?”

“We don’t know. Everyone who has read it has disappeared.”

Sergei exchanged a glance with Wren, who made a “what do you want from me?” gesture back at him. He was the guy who got the details, she was the one who acted on them.

Sergei’s mouth set in a really tight line. “So, basically, you’re sending us in after an unknown factor in an unknown location with an unknown threat vector.”

“Yes.”

She couldn’t help it; she’d swear it on a stack of bibles, the words just came out. “And you people wonder why you can’t keep help….”

She might as well not have said anything, the way the two of them were still staring at each other, cobra to mongoose.

“We have arranged for you to take a flight out from Newark airport tomorrow evening. When you arrive in Milan—”

“Monday.”

That stopped Andre, who was clearly not expecting to be interrupted at this point, and certainly not by her. “Beg pardon?”

“Monday,” Wren repeated firmly. “No way I can just up and leave the country in twenty-four hours. Nuh-uh. Forget about it. I need two days, at least.” Leave the country? That meant flying. She didn’t want to fly. Anywhere. “A week would be better. I don’t even know where my passport is—hell, I don’t even know if it’s still valid!”

“We can and will take care of that,” Andre said, trying to be reassuring.

Wren was already running off a checklist in her mind. “Yeah, today’s what, Wednesday? Saturday, earliest. I have to let my mom know, and—how long do you think I’ll be gone? I need…luggage. Sergei, can I steal a suitcase? Borrow. I meant borrow. You must have something I can use. And I’ll need to stop my mail. And pay bills. And—”

“Wren. Be still.” Sergei didn’t use that tone of voice very often. Not in years, she thought. But the ice-sharp tones worked. She stopped cold, the panic that was threatening to take over her brain subsiding to somewhat more manageable levels. Negotiations. Let him handle it. Right.

“Two tickets. For Friday,” Sergei said to Andre in that same tone of voice. It didn’t work quite so well on his former boss.

“Ah. Actually.” Andre tapped his fingers on the kitchen table, and the sound immediately pulled Wren out of her own internal nosedive and put her on alert. That was the tap-tap-tap of doom. She shot a sideways glance at Sergei, and was not reassured by what she saw. His shoulders were broad to begin with, but now the way his head had lifted, and he was looking at Andre, she swore he’d gained another couple of inches across, all of it annoyed.

Andre didn’t seem to notice the storm brewing. “We had hoped that, while Ms. Valere was otherwise occupied with this situation, you would be available to work on another project back—”

“Two tickets.” The faint rose flush over his cheekbones was subsiding, but the jaw and neck muscles were still corded. “Two, or none.”

There was a brief testosterone-fueled staring match that broke when Andre looked away. Wren suddenly remembered to breathe again. Score one for the home team. But the thought was a little shaky.

“Wren doesn’t speak Italian,” Sergei said. It was almost as though, Wren thought, he were apologizing for winning.

Maybe he was. She still so didn’t get their relationship, her partner and Andre. Yes, she knew they’d been coworkers, back in Sergei’s We Don’t Discuss It days with the Silence. And that Andre had been the one to train him. But other than that, a big blank nothingness of information. A mistake, letting that go on. She counted on her partner to get her the necessary details so she could do her job, damn it. And if the two of them were going to have Dramatic and Meaningful pauses in the conversation, she needed to know why.

She hated being out of the loop in her own life. And she already hated this job.

“I do hope you’re not going to insist on business class,” Andre said, finally, dryly.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sergei said in return. She was relieved to see that he’d dropped the menacing body language, not that he wasn’t a tall bastard to begin with, at least by her standards. Kitchen wasn’t large enough for all the egos in here.

“Fine, fine, details settled. One last really important question Sergei seems to have forgotten to ask.” When the two men looked at her she put on her very best, guaranteed-annoying chipper and chirpy inquisitive face, this time smiling without showing teeth. “How much—in addition to the stipend—are we getting paid for this?”