Retrievers - Burning Bridges Part 11

She should have known he would have sensed her. No matter how good she was, he always knew.

"How...?"

"You smell of that G.o.d awful gum you're always chewing. You sound like a cow chewing its cud."

Wren took the gum out of her mouth and looked at it, then put it back in her mouth.

"You're very Talented. You could probably have slipped past me if you'd thought about covering all the senses, not just sight. But it's rude, " Neezer said again, then closed the essay book he was grading and looked up in her general direction. "So don't do it just because you can. That's rude, too."

Wren stopped just outside the door of the bakery, looking down at the slice of almond cake she had lifted out of the display counter. Habit. Habit to take what appealed. Habit to slip into no-see-em when she didn't want to be bothered anymore.

"That's rude, Jenny-Wren."

She was losing the memory. Sharp at the center, but fading and fraying at the edges, his voice fading in and out. Every year, Neezer faded more and more. Even touching the locket, his picture, his sense inside, couldn't hold back the inevitable.

It ached, that loss; if she let them come, the tears would be bitter in her stomach. She didn't let them come anymore.

She tossed the pastry into a nearby trash bin and wiped her hands on her coat, then pulled her gloves on, wrapped the scarf around her lower face, and headed home, determined to drop all political sh.e.l.l games the same way she'd dropped that cake.

She didn't like being rude. But sometimes, you did what it took in order to survive. To escape.

Being polite hadn't gotten Neezer anywhere. He had still wizzed. Still left her.

That thought gnawed at her brain until she forcibly locked it down and put it away. Only that allowed all the other thoughts to rush her, fighting for s.p.a.ce and attention. Sergei. Job. Weather. Her mother. Money. The Truce-Board. Lee. The fatae, who were, for some reason, counting on her.

Easy to say you're going to let go of the entire business. Tougher to actually do. The thoughts followed her from Truce Central, for the length of the 6 train and the cross-town bus, jolting forward and back with the movement of street traffic. She scored a seat by the window, with n.o.body squished in beside her, but not even that victory distracted her. Not even the unaccustomed sight of a clear blue sky and distant winter suns.h.i.+ne could shake it from her brain, like a terrier fixated on one particular doggy bone. She picked at a scab on the back of her hand, a scar still healing from that scuffle with the h.e.l.lhound, and let her mind run over the things she had seen and heard. Nothing settled into place; it was a mosaic of broken bits. Broken truces. Broken promises. Broken bridges falling down. She frowned. No, that wasn't the way the old kid's song went. Not broken, London. "London Bridge Is Falling Down."

The bus came around the corner, and she signaled for a stop. Getting off the bus, she pulled her gloves back on-it might be bright, but it was still cold-and started walking to her apartment, still chewing over what she had seen and heard.

There were enough clues, she knew it. But she wasn't a detective. She was a thief. What did she know about solving things like this? What right did she have to stick her finger in and stir it up?

What are we becoming? What have we done? Did I advise them to do something really, really stupid?

"Of course, you're a.s.suming we're going to survive the winter...."

"Jesus, Danny!" Wren didn't, as far as she knew, have a history of heart attacks in her family, but she almost started a new chapter, then and there. "How the h.e.l.l-"

"You were practically broadcasting, darlin'." Danny looked human, from ankles to ears. Only the ever-present cowboy boots hid his maternal inheritance, distinctly fatae hooves, which had moved him from the NYPD to private practice when the force started cracking down on yearly physicals.

Bulls.h.i.+t. Wren was too tightly closed down, naturally and by personal inclination, to send anything without intent. Even a.s.suming someone could "find" her current-signature to eavesdrop on, which was almost as masked as her physical presence, even when she wasn't working. You had to ping with intent to find her, not just open your psychic ears. Unlike some, who never seemed to hush.

The Mouthpiece had picked up on her conversation with Bart, too. Maybe she was leaking, just a little. That was a disturbing thought, and she didn't want to be thinking it.

"You were stalking with intent, " she accused him, trying to distract herself.

"Technically, 'stalking' implies intent. So that's redundant."

Wren bit the inside of her cheek to keep from making a response. Only thing worse than a cop was a former cop.

"So. Want to tell an old friend how things're going?" he asked.

"No."

Danny had the most efficient information highway in the city: his former fellow cops, snitches, respectable citizens, and some not-quite-legit characters all went through the Danny-toll at one point or another. If he had to come to her to get Intel, that meant the Truce-Board was, miracle-of-miracles, leak-free.

Be d.a.m.ned if she was going to become the weakest link, loose lip, leaky pipe, whatever cliche rocked your world. She might not lead, but she sure as h.e.l.l didn't squeal.

"C'mon, Valere..." Danny didn't wheedle. But he walked a fine line next to it. "I've always shared with you...."

He had, too. When it suited him to. Although he had been first-on-the-spot when someone set off a psi-bomb next to her office, he hadn't actually told her anything useful, and certainly nothing she couldn't have discovered on her own. On the other hand, he had saved her a little work, then. More, he had cared enough to use the excuse of investigating the blast to check in on her. There weren't so many people in her life who would do that, that she couldn't just diss them.

"The Truce is holding, " she said, not looking at him as they walked. She could just have been talking out loud to herself, something she was known to do. "Council is sharing their resources, whatever they know about the attacks on the fatae. Which, by the way, isn't much."

"So they really weren't behind the attacks on us?"

Wren would have shrugged, if she weren't suddenly so dog tired it was more effort than the effect was worth. Too many days sitting in rooms, waiting for the infrequent moments she could say something useful, listening to everyone and their sister play verbal games with each other, sifting and evaluating, processing everything she saw and heard the way she would on a Retrieval, and none of the adrenaline rush or payoff she actually got during a real Retrieval.

She was brain dead, physically bored, and craving a bowl of sweet-and-sour and a month-long nap, neither of which was going to happen, for various reasons.

"It may be the vigilante movement was nothing more than badly timed bigotry, " she said. "Not exactly unheard of. Sometimes, Occam's Conspiracy of Razors is just paranoia. You know?"

"You believe that?" It was clear from his voice that Danny didn't. "Valere, these bigots aren't long-term thinkers. Someone had to be directing them. Or using them."

"h.e.l.l, Danny, I don't know. I'm not being paid to believe anything. I'm being paid to watch and advise." And she wasn't being paid anything even close to enough. "And you're not the one doing the paying, so you don't get the advice."

"Sheesh. Who taught you to play almost-hardball?"

Sergei, actually. And her partner thought she didn't listen to him...

"How 'bout I buy you lunch, bribe you with a bowl of Jimmy's best?"

The mention of her favorite addiction sent a cold chill down Wren's spine, and she increased her pace as though to escape the words. "Thanks, but no thanks." She hadn't ordered from Noodles in over a month, long enough for P.B. to notice, and probably Sergei, too, although he hadn't said anything. She was in Chinese food withdrawal, bad. But she wasn't going back there. Not while all this-and by "this" she meant her entire life, right now-was still such a disaster.

It was simple, if not logical: going to Noodles meant getting fortune cookies. Getting fortune cookies from Noodles mean getting a fortune written by his Seer. His Seer was one of the most terrifyingly accurate in the city, maybe in the state. Wren didn't want to know. She really, really didn't want to know. And once you got the fortune, you Knew. That was way worse than suspecting.

She wasn't sure if that made any sense. She was way too tired to be philosophical right now, and if she was leaking, anyone with any sense would be backing away from her right now.

"Dan. Buddy. Pal. I really don't want company right now. Job calling, you know? Real job, as pays the rent, feeds the tummy, shoes the feet? So go pester someone higher on the food chain, okay?"

They weren't friends, her and Danny, but close enough that he took the blow-off with decent grace. Someday he'd dig his hooves in and get stubborn-but today wasn't it.

"Keep your light under that bushel of yours, Valere, " was all he said in parting. "And eat something. Sergei's a Russki, he likes some meat on his women."

He's from Chicago, she thought reflexively, silently, not giving the fatae the pleasure of eavesdropping on her response.

They parted ways at a huge snow pile on the corner, Wren having to step carefully to get around it, while her companion simply clomped through it. Physical memory, and Danny's offer almost made her turn north instead of continuing east, and she checked the inclination ruthlessly. If she wanted soup that badly, she could go somewhere else. Noodles wasn't the only Chinese restaurant in town. It wasn't the cheapest, it wasn't even the closest, anymore. Never mind that eating anyone's Chinese but Jimmy's felt like ethnic adultery, or something.

"Change out the brain, Valere, " she warned herself. Pick up one of the other thoughts still shoving for front s.p.a.ce. Sergei had dropped off the client's dossier last night, but she hadn't taken the time to even flip through it, knowing she had to be at Truce-table at oh-f.u.c.k-early. Bad of her. Worse, it was lazy. Normally she didn't much care one way or the other when she had to work-dawn, dusk, noon and midnight all had their useful points. What she hated, beyond all else, was having to get out of bed. Didn't matter what time the wake-up call came, even if it came with a soft-voiced partner bearing a mug of coffee.

What all that meant was that she didn't have anything more than Sergei's preliminary briefing on the client in her head, which meant that she was in dead s.p.a.ce, mentally. Wren worked best on her feet, pacing as she thought. Wasting the blocks until her apartment because she didn't have anything new to work on was...annoying.

"All right, what do you know? Get it rolling. Null, the client, yeah." So was her last-nothing unusual in that. If she relied on the Cosa for her jobs, she'd be living in a studio in Queens, not her relatively s.p.a.cious Village walk-up. "Not a crook, or a creep, or a lost cause, according to Sergei's quickie evaluation." Which was usually pretty accurate.

"Retrieval's papers. Nothing currentical about them."Currentical was her new favorite non-word: it meant anything touched by, dealing with, or likely to contain current. She'd coined it during an argument with Bart, and he hated it so much she just had to keep using it, even when he wasn't around to be annoyed.

A guy sc.r.a.ping ice off the walkway stopped to stare at her, then went back to work. The only difference between a crazy street person and a CEO these days seemed to be the level of tech carried around. Most street people didn't have earpieces, for one: they really were talking to themselves.

Besides, she had taken a shower that morning, and homeless people didn't usually smell of sage and lavender soap. Usually. She hoped. She'd paid too much for that soap to be eau de vagabond.

"Problem's going to be finding the guy as took him. Client's political, even if unsc.u.mmy, he's going to have p.i.s.sed people off. Need to get Sergei running down recent public and private scuffles, if he's not already, and generate a list of possible suspects. Once I have that, I can scry for cause."

Wren was so preoccupied with her muttered thoughts, she didn't notice the figure behind her, out of the other pedestrians pa.s.sing her by on the street, until the gnarled fingers closed around her upper arm.

Then she yelped, like a pooch whose tail got trod on. Current boiled up, reflexively, and she swung around to blast whoever it was that was attacking her.

"For you. I look for you, find you. You take."

Total confusion reigned, as Wren struggled between the instinct to defend herself, awareness that the being, rather than a threat, was so hunched over and wizened that Wren couldn't tell the species, much less the gender, and the fact that he-she, it?-seemed less intent on causing harm than inducing her to take whatever it was it was trying to hand her.

Normally, she was invisible to panhandlers, pushers, and religious glad-handers, same as she was to regular citizens. From the look in the tiny, but very bright black eyes almost lost in the wrinkled face staring at her, this being had zoomed in on her like it was fitted with a Wren-scope. What had it said, that it had been looking for her? Great.

"Take! You take!"

She took, almost a reflex. The moment her fingers closed around the small object, feeling the too-familiar folds and ridges even through her glove, she groaned and tried to shove it back.

"No, no! Yours, for you! You take. No more delay."

Wren looked down at the fortune cookie starting to crumble in her hand, then looked up again. The figure had disappeared faster than it had appeared.

"Sweet Jesus...." Figured. Seers. They just didn't know-or care-when they were being avoided.

Hounded into a figurative corner, Wren gave in gracelessly, and pulled her fortune out of the cookie, then popped the remains into her mouth and crunched, loudly.

Jimmy's Seer was the best around. Maybe even the best, period. But his cookies weren't bad, either. She didn't look at the fortune, though, shoving the crumpled sc.r.a.p of paper into her coat pocket. You couldn't put it off forever, not once the d.a.m.n fortune found you, but she was going to need nourishment first. And a chance to put her feet up, and maybe take another shower, and...

One bright glimmer broke through her sulk. And now she had no excuse not to go get sweet-and-sour soup.

When she walked in the door of her apartment, Sergei was already there, lounging in the one comfy chair in the main room, drinking a mug of tea and listening to some weird-a.s.s tech-sounding music.

"You like?" he asked.

"I hate, " she said. She was surprised to see him there, then realized that the overcast day had fooled her; it was already after five, and the gallery wasn't open on Tuesday nights.

He turned off the stereo with a snap of the remote, and looked at the bag in her hand. "Noodles?"

"Nope. Wan Moon's." A distant second place in the Chinese food sweepstakes, but she was still p.i.s.sed at Jimmy and his back-room Seer. Besides, it was easy in, easy out, on her way home. And as far as she knew, they bought their fortune cookies in bulk from the local fortune cookie factory. No personalization. Or none that had bitten her on the a.s.s-yet.

"What ended the embargo?" He had gotten up and followed her into the kitchen, all of four steps away.

"I got delivery service." She put the soup down on the kitchen counter, and dug the fortune out of her pocket, handing it to him while she got down to the important business of feeding her addiction.

"A hungry man might as well cook his soup off a burning bridge as a campfire."

Sergei placed the slip of paper down on the table and shook his head. "Nice to see that Jimmy's Seer hasn't lost his touch." They were always obscure, that was what was so frustrating about them. They were all true, and really important to what you were about to do, but you never knew what they were talking about until you were already in it. Useless.

"Her touch. I'm pretty sure she was female. Although when you get that old, does it make a difference anymore?"

"How old do you think she was?"

Wren shrugged. "Cricket-old, probably." Her partner was always curious about those things. She wasn't, except as it impacted her life. And the damage was already done.

"b.i.t.c.h came after me." She wasn't letting go of that any time soon. This was the second time a Seer had sought her out, specifically. That wasn't good. That wasn't good at all. It meant she was being all piviot-ish and important to the ordering and occurring of things, and Wren wanted to be very much not pivoting, thanks all the same.

"Weren't you the one who told me that you can run but not hide from a Seer once they have you in their Sight?" her partner asked, watching her carefully, with a sort of wary sympathy.

"Yeah, but if you dodge long enough..." She sighed and gave up. "Damage done, and since I can't understand it, I'm going to go the time-honored route of ignoring it." Had the Seer actually been useful-"Avoid gatherings on a full moon" or "stay out of the councils of crazy people, " then she could do something about it. Cooking? Not her thing, over a stove or a campfire, or any kind of open flame.

She finished the container of soup, sc.r.a.ping her spoon around the bottom for the last drop, then got up to toss it into the garbage. No more reason to procrastinate. To it, Valere.

"So. List?"

He indicated the manila folder on the counter by her change-and-keys bowl. "Our client's been a busy boy."

"So haven't we all, " she grumbled, taking the file and wandering down the hallway to her office, flipping it open and scanning the typed list as she went. Oh yeah, lots of folk the client might have ticked off. Bless her partner, it was annotated and color coded, cross-referenced, and all those things he did so well.

"Right then, I'll leave you to it" she heard her partner say, before he-and everything else-faded from her awareness. She had a job in-hand. She could already feel her mood starting to improve.

Ten.

"Wren."

She could smell coffee, as she surfaced. That was nice. But the pillow was nicer.

"Wren, come on, I know you're awake." The voice was cajoling, deep, and just on the edge of laughter.

"N'mnot, " she mumbled into the pillow.

The laughter won out, thick and rich and familiar. Nicer than the pillow, if only just. "I made you coffee. It's here, on the dresser." A pause. "I have to go."

"Mrrrmmph."

Slowly, the sense of what the voice was saying got though, and she opened one eye enough to locate the mug of coffee steaming just within reach.