Laura Anne Gilman - PUPI 03 - Tricks of the Trade Read online

  “Where the hell is Fieldston?” Sharon asked, scanning the paperwork. “I swear, if we have to lug out to Long Island again... ”

  “End of the 1 line, up in the Bronx,” Nifty told her, capping the one-upmanship for the moment.

  “Oh. Okay.” She wasn’t happy about heading all the way out there, but apparently so long as it didn’t involve having to leave the city, she could deal with it. Shar was our only born-and-bred New Yorker – I didn’t count, having spent most of my teens in Boston – and sometimes that just shone through.

  “Client’s a Null, he owns a house up there, it got tossed last night and he thinks it was a Retriever. No idea why he thinks that, but if it is... ”

  I couldn’t stop myself from interrupting. “Venec, when was the last time someone actually pinned anything on an active Retriever?”

  Retrievers were the cat burglars of the Cosa Nostradamus, Talent who naturally went invisible, like Pietr, only they controlled it, used it to get away with everything short of murder. If this guy’d been burgled by a Retriever, odds were that even if we could prove it, nobody would ever get the stuff back.

  Those dark, irritated eyes glared at me, but I didn’t feel any actual irritation coming off him, just annoyance. “If the client thinks it was a Retriever, then that’s his call. You will determine the facts and find out who is responsible. And, if possible, get back the stolen items. Yeah,” he said when Sharon would have protested, “I know, you’re not the lost-and-found. If this guy did get hit by a Retriever, think about the egoboo, to hit back.”

  There was that.

  “Bonnie, you and Pietr get a floater on the East Side, off 14th.”

  “Oh, maaaaaaan,” Pietr said, in an uncanny imitation of Nick, while I took the file with a grimace. Yeah, Venec was still pissed about the blue hair-dye job.

  Lou and Nifty, for a change, looked relieved to be stuck in the office. Nobody wanted a floater. Ever.

  Everyone else filtered out, but I stayed in my chair, looking at the folder.

  “You guys make it look so easy.”

  I twisted in my chair and looked at Lou, who had left, and then come back, standing in the doorway. “What?”

  “Easy.” She made a gesture with one hand at some vague thing in front of her. “I know it’s not – god, how I know – but you never seem to hesitate. Stosser gives you an assignment, you absorb it, and head out. You call on your current, and you just assume that the current will do what you want. And it does.”

  “If you’re still worrying about the incident with the piskies, they do that to everyone, first case... ” I started to say, but she waved me off. That wasn’t it.

  I waited. That was the first thing Venec had taught us: if you wait quietly long enough, people will tell you what you need to know.

  “You’re what, twenty-four?” She made it sound like a disease.

  “Yeah.” Twenty-three and a half, actually, but I didn’t think correcting her was going to make things better.

  Lou stared at the apple in her other hand like she couldn’t remember picking it up, then shook her head and looked back at me. She had a serious face to start, and the look in her eyes now, a sort of despairing resignation, just deepened that impression. “I’m a decade older than you. I had solid training, good training. I’m high-res enough to hold my own. And I’m smart enough to understand how everything works, break it down, and make it better.”

  All of that was true, and she knew it and she knew I knew it, so I just kept my mouth shut and waited for her to get to her point. But she didn’t. She just stood there, that apple in her hand, one bite taken out of it like Snow White’s last dinner.

  I twisted back and stared at the paperwork in front of me, wanting nothing more than to pack up and head out to the floater, get it over with, if Lou wasn’t going to say anything more. But she stood there, and the silence drew out and got uncomfortable until the weight of social responsibility as hammered into me by J was like a third person in the room.

  “You wouldn’t be on the team if you weren’t good,” I said, hoping that would be enough.

  “I know that.”

  “And you’ll learn the control needed to – ”

  Her snort interrupted me, and I was thankful. I could lie reasonably well, but I hated doing it. Honestly, though, I had no idea what she wanted me to say, or why she hadn’t gone to Sharon, instead. They were closer in age, had more in common... Why me?

  “I’m never going to get it. Not out there, during an open case, with all that pressure. It’s just... like saying Pietr’s suddenly going to stop ghosting.”

  She was probably right. Pietr hated the fact that he couldn’t control the way he faded from sight under stress, even though it was probably going to save his life some day.

  “I just... I keep wondering why I can’t do it, what’s wrong with me... and then I wonder what else is wrong with me, what am I missing, and what happens if we discover that thing during a case? What happens if we screw up because I can’t handle something in the field, or one of you gets hurt, or... ” She stopped, and took a bite out of the apple, teeth crunching into the flesh with maybe a little too much violence.

  I was flailing, trying to figure out what she needed to hear. “That’s why we work together. So if one of us misses something, the other’s there as backup. We all make mistakes. Venec will be happy to remind you of that fact, if you’d like.”

  Another snort. “You never doubt yourself, do you, Bonnie? Never once wonder if you’re not good enough, worry that you’ll do something so wrong there’s no recovering from it?”

  “Of course I do. But everything short of death can be recovered from, and death kinda takes the worry out of the situation.” I hoped.

  “Nice. I don’t think I was ever that cocky. Maybe that’s the problem.”

  She didn’t mean to be cruel, but the words stung. I had a flash of J, years ago, sitting in his favorite chair in the library. The reading lamp was on, and Rupert, who had just been a brown-and-white mop of a puppy then, was sleeping at his feet. He had been gone for a few days, and I’d been happy to have him home, but he didn’t talk much and I’d come in to see what was up, if he maybe wanted dinner, or a drink. And in the light of the lamp, a pale umber glow against his skin, I’d seen the damp track of tears on his cheek.

  Whatever he’d been doing, it hadn’t gone well.

  “J?” I could have closed the door and left; he’d known I was there but he hadn’t acknowledged me, and so we could both pretend I hadn’t seen anything. But that wasn’t how our household worked.

  “Not now, Bonnie,” my mentor had said, his voice a flat, gentle tone. “Right now I am not able to deal with anything beyond my own inabilities.”

  I’d been fourteen then, and filled with a sense – nurtured by J – that hard work and skill could get me through anything. The idea that there was something J couldn’t do, that he might doubt his own abilities, was as foreign to me as the thought that he might sprout wings and fly.

  I was older now, and had seen more of what life could and would throw at you on a daily basis, things that overwhelmed and dispirited as much as they lifted us and showed us joy. But...

  “I’m sorry.” I was. “I didn’t mean to make light of what it is you’re saying... ”

  “But you have no idea what I’m saying, do you?”

  I shook my head, then nodded. “No. I mean, I know what you’re saying, I just... ”

  Lou laughed, and it was tired but amused, not mocking. “But you’re twenty-four and have never failed at anything, have you?”

  I had failed to bring my dad’s killer to justice. The bitterness of that still made my throat ache. But I’d dealt with it, accepted the failure as inevitable – and PUPI was my guarantee that never happened again. The failure had not been my inability, but the lack of a mechanism.

  So I said the only thing that I knew was true. “We’re a stronger team, because you’re part of it.”

  There was sile
nce, and I risked looking back at Lou. She was staring out the window, and the look on her face was one I recognized: deep, fast-moving thoughts under the surface. I saw that look a lot, around here.

  “Yeah,” she said, finally. “Okay.”

  She tossed the half-eaten apple into the waste can in the corner, and left. I didn’t get the feeling I’d helped her solve anything.

  Hopefully, I’d have better luck with the floater.

  * * *

  two

  Pietr had been waiting, semipatiently, in the break room. He took one look at my face and bit back whatever he was going to say, just handing me my case and holding the door to the hallway. One of the great things about our office was that we were only a block away from the subway. The downside was that it was the 1 line, which meant leaving the west side required a crosstown bus, or a lot of walking. Fortunately, it wasn’t a bad day, weather wise.

  We made it to the subway without speaking to each other, heading downtown toward the floater, and all the related joy therein, our kits – the assorted and alchemical tools of our trade – stashed at our feet, where nobody could walk by and grab them. And with every rattle and spark along the track, I felt more and more guilty about his being sent along with me. Normally, we take the assignments as they come and try not to whine too much. It’s not like we ever get handed a bouquet of spring flowers to investigate, after all, and if we did it would be infested by hornets and nose-rot. But I felt like I had to say something to Pietr, anyway.

  “Sorry.”

  Pietr turned his head slightly to look at me, surprised. “Why?”

  “Venec’s punishing me for the hair disaster, and you’re stuck with it by association.”

  “Oh.” His face went all closed and quiet, the way it does when he processes, and I watched him curiously. For all that he liked to cause mischief, Pietr tended to take his time to consider things. He was one of our thinkers – not that he couldn’t improvise, and quickly, but not in the instinctive, nearly impulsive way Nick did. Or me for that matter, although I used to pride myself on how well I thought shit through. Not enough, apparently.

  Pietr didn’t have to think long, though. “You sure it’s the hair that’s chafing his... mood? Or that you’re the real target?”

  Ow. I groaned, and looked away. “Don’t you start.”

  The fact that Venec and I had sparks going on – okay, sparks like Macy’s fireworks – wasn’t something you could hide from a blind fish, much less an office of trained investigators. The guys liked to tease me about that occasionally. Not meaning any harm, just... the usual shit you get, when the job is tense and the laughs few. Pietr, though, had a different take on the situation. He and I were – on a very specifically, intentionally casual basis – sexual partners. So naturally, he figured that was also why he got stuck with the floater – because there was no way an investigator like Benjamin Venec, with more experience than the rest of us slammed together, didn’t also know about our off-hours agreement, no matter how much we kept it on the q.t.

  He might have been right, in ordinary conditions. But Pietr, and the others, were missing a really important part of the puzzle. The pack knew there were sparks. They also knew I wasn’t exactly shy, normally, about going after what or who I wanted. So they had to figure I didn’t want to get involved with the boss, or that the boss had shot me down, for work-reasons. Which was all sorta true.

  They didn’t know about the damned Merge, though. Venec and I both agreed to keep it that way. The fact that our current had somehow recognized each other and decided we’d make pretty babies, or some weird and seriously annoying thing like that, didn’t impress me at all, and Venec, well, he really did not like being told what to do by some biomagical force.

  All right, it was more complicated than that, and according to Venec’s research the Merge is Serious Doings, but I kept control over my sex life my own self, thanks, anyway, Fate, and be damned if I was going to risk not being taken seriously in my career because my current wanted me to make babies.

  I have nothing against babies. Eventually. When and if I decided to have them.

  But every day we worked together, the pull got stronger. If I let down my mental walls even a little bit, I knew his mood, and if I reached just an inch, I’d get my fingers into his thoughts.

  Same for him, with me.

  It was making us... cranky. Venec was a fair guy, for all that he was a bastard, and wouldn’t play favorites or punish someone for a screwup once the lesson was learned. My hair color was only an excuse for him to blow off some of that crank into an actual reason. Knowing that rationally didn’t make the scolding hurt any less, though.

  And Lou thought I never doubted myself? That was almost funny. The Merge had made me doubt my entire personal philosophy, change the way I interacted with people, second-guess every flicker and twinge of my emotions... . I needed to get a handle on myself. A distracted investigator could not do her job, and leaving this job was... not an option.

  Pietr touched his hand on mine, lightly. “Bonnie... ”

  I shook my head, staring at the advertisement across the subway car instead of looking at him, listening to the chunk-chunk-whirr of the car’s movement, focusing on the subtle but real hum of current running along the third rail, instead of listening to him. “No. Stop. Work hours.”

  I wasn’t talking about the touch, but what he was going to say. How the two of us blew off steam and gave comfort off-hours was off-hours. Neither of us wanted it to spill into the workday, especially if there was half a chance that it would screw up our professional relationship. Pietr and I worked well together. He backed me up, I pushed him on... we got things done.

  That was why Venec had paired him with me, today. Probably. Anything else would be petty, and Benjamin Venec wasn’t petty.

  Except, of course, when he was.

  We rode the rest of the way in a more comfortable, companionable silence, switching from the train downtown for a crosstown bus that dropped us off at the Manhattan Bridge, and we walked the rest of the way, stopped by the usual tangle of the FDR Drive. Finding a safe place to cross would require some backtracking. Mass transit sucked when you were working a crime scene, but without a siren, cars could be even slower, and Translocation, using current to move someone from point A to point B, was a serious drain on the core of the person doing the sending, with the additional inherent risk of finding a safe place to land. You couldn’t actually land “on” someone – magic follows the same rules as physics, mostly, and two objects can’t occupy the same space – but you could get knocked over or hit by a moving object or person. As usual with magic, the odds of actually being seen doing anything was small. Nulls didn’t see what they didn’t want to see.

  Oh, hell, Talent didn’t, either.

  We stood there, and watched the traffic moving along the FDR, a steady stream of cars going too fast, and I heard a thoughtful hrmm rise from my companion.

  “I don’t know about you, but I have absolutely no desire to become a greasy splat on the highway.”

  The hrmm turned into a heavy exhale that wasn’t quite a sigh. “Me, neither.”

  Especially since there was no guarantee that, in racing across the street, Pietr wouldn’t ghost out of sight, and get hit by an otherwise-paying-attention driver. After you worked with him for a while, you started thinking about things like that.

  I looked around to make sure nobody was watching us, and pointed to a spot across the wide highway. He followed my finger with his gaze, and nodded.

  Three seconds later, we were both on the other side, intact and unrun-over, the traffic now at our back. The sharp smell of the East River hit my nostrils, overwhelming even the smell of diesel behind us, and for a brief moment I was homesick for Boston, and J’s apartment overlooking the bay, where the smell of salt air was a daily greeting.

  The moment passed, the weight of the kit in my hand reminding me what we were here for. I checked my core, making sure that it was settled, beca
use the last thing you wanted to do was walk onto a scene with your core-current ruffled. I glanced over at Pietr, who looked to be doing the same.

  “Ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  A short walk farther, the smell of the river getting stronger, and we were on a concrete dock that housed a parking lot, a warehouse of undetermined ownership, and, I presumed, a dead body.

  We were met on the scene by a cop who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else but there. She was little, by cop standards, with thick black hair cut short, and a tea-stained complexion I’d have killed for. Talent – I thought I recognized her, but wouldn’t swear to it. New York’s a big city, and Talent don’t really clump together outside of Council functions and cocktail parties – or the occasional impromptu gossip session – but only a Talent, a magic-user like us, would have been left to guard this particular body. The NYPD had at least half a clue, even on bad days.

  “You the pups?”

  As questions went, it was pretty stupid, but there was a protocol that needed to be followed: I didn’t know her, and she didn’t know us. “Bonita Torres, Pietr Cholis,” I said. I waited for her to ask for official identification, but I guess she really didn’t care that much. We were here, which meant it wasn’t her responsibility anymore.

  Pietr bypassed the cop and crouched to look under the orange tarp, and then backed up a step, almost involuntarily.

  “What is it?” I asked her.

  “You’re the investigator,” she said, looking bored. “You tell me.”

  I gave her a sideways stare, and she took it without flinching. Great, now I was trying to tough-out the NYPD? Right.

  I thought about pointing out that covering the body was not SOP, and that she might have ruined evidence, then decided that she already knew that and had her reasons.

  “Bippis,” Pietr said. I was the nominal specialist on fatae politics, but Pietr knew a lot more about the various breeds than I did