Blood from Stone (13 page)

He put the notes down and looked up at her, speaking from memory now.

“Anyway, he and much of his household was spirited away in the night, ending up in Transvaal, in South Africa. Interesting place, back then. A few years later he was reportedly killed in a particularly pointless and otherwise unnotable battle during the Second Boer War. His body was never recovered, but the house he was renting was burned to the ground.”

Wren didn’t think it smart to interrupt his recitation to ask what a Boer was and why they had two wars. She’d look it up later.

“The sole remaining member of his family, a nephew who had remained in Holland, sold everything that
survived to a small museum there, without ever investigating what his inheritance might be. A few decades later, the museum closed and the contents were sold off.”

“Dead end?” She didn’t think so. Not the way Sergei was holding back, as though he had something he wanted to tell her, but only after a proper setup. He’d dug deep into his contacts for this one, playing all the strings he had out there, and she had time, so she let him grandstand the delivery. It was good to see him play again.

“A lesser man might conclude that,” he said, practically smirking. “I, however, do not conclude so easily. Karl gave me the name of someone who gave me the name of someone who turned out to be Council and maybe had heard of me.”

He paused, and she smirked. Her name might be one that made Council double-check their valuables, but Sergei’d gotten in their faces a few times, too.

“Fortunately he saw no harm and some possible good in sharing seemingly useless information with me. The contents of that museum were sold off to individual collectors. After that, Herr Doktor’s legacy disappeared for a number of years, probably into some good citizen’s attic. The trail went cold for at least fifty years.”

She waited.

He lowered his head and looked at her over the tops of his glasses, the gleam in his eye suggesting that he was about to drop the proverbial whammy on the table. “Further investigation, with the aid of Karl’s antiquities database and an intern—did you know he had an intern? I think we need an intern—revealed that in the 1960s, several papers and various scientific objects of undetermined provenance or usage bearing our man’s name on
them appeared in auction. Since he wasn’t anyone of note, they didn’t go for much—another small museum bought the entire packet, exhibiting it as part of a crackpot science display, before they too went belly-up.”

He paused, clearly expecting her to say something. So she did.

“And the contents of that museum were bought by…?”

“Nobody. They were put into storage for another fifty years or so, the fate of things too interesting to simply toss but too unimportant to preserve.”

She decided that she had given him enough playtime. “Sergei. Where. Are. The. Papers?”

Mischief peeked out again from behind the businessman with another glance over the rims of his eyeglasses, and she braced herself. He was going to rock her world….

“In 2000, a researcher in Cape Town came across the storage facility while working on a novel about the Boer Wars. The museum having long ago abandoned them, the contents, including Herr Doktor’s papers and some, and again I quote, ‘disturbing artifacts’ were sold off…”

He paused dramatically then took pity on her. “To the Museum of Historical Science and Nature.”

Wren felt her heart lurch like a drunken sailor, up into her throat and then down into her gut. She sat up, feet flat on the carpeted floor.

“
Our
Museum of Historical Science and Nature?” she asked cautiously, not willing to make any assumptions. It couldn’t be that easy. It just couldn’t.

Sergei grinned, the refined businessman’s veneer cracking entirely to show the predator underneath. Apparently, it was that easy.

For impossible values of easy, anyway.

The HSN-NY. The museum she had spent half of her lifetime wandering in and out of, fascinated by the old-fashioned displays of early technology and dioramas of exotic and extinct—and occasionally thoroughly debunked—creatures. The museum she knew practically blindfolded, top to bottom and side to side. One of the best-funded, most esoteric small private museums in a city filled with them, at the edge of the so-called “Museum Row” along the eastern edge of Central Park, living forever in the figurative shadow of the grand dame Museum of Natural History, but no less fascinating for it. A museum that took its security seriously. A challenge.

“Oh, dear and kind God. Tell me it’s not on display.” She thought she might have noticed that, but there had been so many special exhibits over the years they all sort of ran together, and she’d been a little busy lately. A challenge was one thing, but temporary exhibits tended to be extremely well-guarded even inside those parameters, with lots of people paying attention to them, in the novelty of it all. A smash-and-grab from a temporary exhibit was a showboat gig, something you did for maximum splash to advertise how good you were. Wren didn’t want any splash at all; she wanted to get in and out without anyone even noticing anything had been taken. If they were part of a permanent exhibit it might be easier, although she had never actually cased their security system; she tended to have more work around fine art collections, not dinosaur bones and six-foot-tall stuffed penguins. And there wasn’t enough money in the world to entice her to try for the exotic minerals exhibits. She had it on good authority that the
last time that was tried was in the 1940s, and the Retriever who took the job was never heard from again. Not the museum’s responsibility—there was a meteor in their collection that was less than obliging about being stolen.

“Well now. That’s where it gets…interesting,” her partner said slowly, leaning back in his chair and letting his long legs stretch out under the wooden desk. He looked every inch the smug corporate boss, and she resisted—barely—the urge to move his chair out from under him with a swipe of current.

“You know I hate that word.” She really did. It never made her happy, not in that context. “Spill.”

“Nobody knows what was done with the acquisition.”

Yeah, she knew it. She wasn’t happy. “They…lost the papers.”

He kept leaning back, and she had a passing thought that if he fell over backward and cracked his head, she was going to laugh, no matter how inappropriate or cruel it might be.

“Not only the papers, and not so much lost as…misplaced,” he corrected her. “Nobody’s really sure, since most of their mothballed collections are stored due to their space restrictions, where the boxes were actually placed after they were purchased. The person who bought them died soon after—nothing suspicious, he was in his eighties by then—and nobody else had any real interest in that sideline of research, to put it kindly.”

“They didn’t throw it out?” She had a horrid vision of having to go through decades-old landfills, cursing all demons, Talent and Null partners as she did so.

“Museums never throw anything out, Wren. That’s
what makes them museums. But according to the information I was able to dig up, the file cabinet with those records seems to have gone missing in a recent office move.”

“Great. Remember what I say about coincidences?” Suddenly she had a throbbing headache. And Sergei’s expression of almost unholy glee wasn’t helping. “I’m good, but I’m not that good, Didier. Unlike some people, I don’t believe my own press.”

“Oh, it gets better.”

She squinted at him. “And by better you mean worse, don’t you?”

“The clock is ticking. We’re not the only ones to have queried about Herr Doktor and his estate in the past six months. Which, by the way, is about when those files went missing—six months ago.”

The headache had officially become a full-blown crawl-back-into-bed-and-die throb. Despite herself, and the pain, Wren felt flickers of interest, exactly the way Sergei had anticipated she would, damn him.

“Somebody knows what’s in there? But how? Who? Why now?” Even as she asked, Wren thought she knew the answer. Because of her. It had to be. It all went back to their bond, the one P.B. instigated in order to save her life last year. Someone had found out about it, had realized how it connected to P.B.’s origins, and started hunting. Someone who knew what demons had been created for. That was the only thing that made any sense, and would explain the letter P.B. had gotten.

He had been right, that letter was real, and it was probably written under duress that was almost certainly fatal.

Her fault. Not that there were people out there with evil intent, she wasn’t that much of a guilt-ridden ego-maniac. But that they knew there was a reason to go after demons, that P.B., specifically, might be a target…that was her responsibility.

In the moment of truth months ago, torn up and worn down by events around her, Wren had gone beyond her limits, not caring what it did to her system so long as she could strike out against those who had harmed her and those around her. She had done it to end, once and for all, the fear and distrust that was shattering the
Cosa,
to end the efforts of the Silence, who had decided that the modern world had no place for magic, to rid the city of that “abomination.”

She could not have done it alone, not even as Talented as she was. But the sudden infusion of current from the Fatae, through a tricky bit of electrical manipulation that she prayed would never be repeated, had allowed her access to the power.

And, already three-quarters of the way into wizzing, that jolt sent her over the edge.

In the darkness that tried to eat her, in that instant, she had been lost…until she heard not her own voice calling out, but two others. Sergei…and P.B.

She had never told a soul, not even those two, exactly what had happened inside her that night. But rumors spread, expanded, and became, somehow, more believable than the truth. Spread…and were heard by the wrong people.

She didn’t know for sure that was what had happened, but the guilt weighed just as heavy, proven or not.

“Everyone wants their own damn personal demon.”
Exactly what she had promised P.B. would never happen.

“Not everyone.” Sergei came around to sit next to her, his much larger hands capturing her own, stilling their restless fidgeting. “Even among those who might suspect, mostly they either don’t care, or they’re not strong enough for it to matter.” You had to be at a certain level in order to channel enough current for wizzing to be a danger. Most Talent were blocked, could only use fifty or sixty percent of what was available. Wren had a few blocks—she couldn’t Translocate herself without being ill, even now—but she figured she was maybe eighty percent unblocked.

Maybe more, now.

“It won’t matter,” she said. “He’ll become a status symbol, a way to show you’re Pure enough…even if you’re not.” And not just P.B. Her demon protected himself even before the events of the past year made things dicier. But other demons, ones who didn’t have his experience, or weren’t as savvy—even the strongest of bodies could be captured. Given enough muscle, even P.B. could be taken down, despite his precautions.

Her hands were like ice, and all she could think about was the promise that she had made to P.B., before she even knew what he was, what he could do.

I will never take anything you do not willingly offer.

And yet, to stop anyone from ever wizzing again…to keep people from the madness that had claimed Max, Neezer, so many others who could have given so much good to the world if they hadn’t…. Again the thought came to her: to save Neezer, would she…No. Not ever. She felt sick inside, as if sudden vertigo mixed with a
gut full of too much sugar was making her feel light-headed and sweaty. To choose between her father and her brother…

“Wren. Wren!”

*Wren.*

Sergei was Null. That ping hadn’t come from him.

*Wren. Are you all right?*

P.B. didn’t use magic. None of the Fatae did; they
were
magic. That was how they had been able to gift her with the power to destroy the Silence, like giving blood at the scene of an accident. No, not blood: marrow. Prime and potent and nearly overwhelming with power.

Demons were not like the rest of the Fatae, nor were they like humans. Somewhere in between, created to be a living bridge. The strength P.B. gave her blended into her own, rather than overpowering. Someday they were going to have to figure out exactly what that meant, and how far it could be pushed. Today wasn’t that day.

*I’m okay. Bad day,* she sent back, and cut the connection. He would have to know the deal, know her guilt, but not right now. Not until she was sure what the deal was, and how much trouble they might be in.

Her attention returned to her partner, all business now. “I need you to get me the blueprints to the museum and every single damn storeroom they have—everything and anything available, and the stuff that’s not available, too. Plus the name of anyone working there who might be even slightly bribeable, influenceable or on vacation at any point in the next month.” And then she had to convince P.B. to get in touch with his fellow demons, no matter how he did it. They needed to know if anyone else had been approached,
if anyone else had gone missing. If she had competition in this Retrieval, and it sounded as if she might, she wanted to know who, and when, as well as why.

She reached over and picked up one of the slips of paper off Sergei’s blotter. “Meanwhile, it looks like I have a favor to pay back. Joy.”

“Dear universe. Why does paying back favors never seem to involve lying on a towel somewhere on a beach with sweet-tempered cabana boys rubbing tanning oil all over hard-to-reach spots?”

She wasn’t really expecting an answer. She didn’t get one.

Instead of warm tropical breezes scented with coconut oil, the air was cold, and filled with the less-than-delightful smells of a working sea-wharf and the wind coming off Newark Bay. Moreover, there were absolutely no cabana boys of any temperament, anywhere to be seen. Port Newark wasn’t exactly a hopping social spot on a Sunday night—correction, early Monday morning—for a reason.

Despite that, there was a steady if slow rumble of activity behind her, from the Container Terminal. The city might occasionally sleep, but the ocean never did,
and dawn would arrive to find the 930 square acres of the Port already hard at work.

Wren leaned against a damp wooden post, shivering in her jacket, and tried not to think about how damned tired she was. Soonest started, soonest home, soonest back in a comfy, warm,
occupied
bed.

With that pleasant thought, she pursed her lips and whistled lightly, the sound carrying a filament of current with it. It was a trick she had learned purely by accident, trying to whistle along with Billy Joel’s “The Stranger.” Sound conveyed current, of course; that was the point of cantrips; that the words helped focus and direct the magic. But a whistle, the pure sound without words, was even better for that. It just wasn’t always practical, and not everyone could whistle well enough to hold the focus. She could.

And since when did you start thinking in terms of “magic”?
That was Old Time, old ways, abandoned since the nineteenth century.

Probably since you started using old ways, too,
her brain thought back at her with a touch of snide superiority.
Or are you going to pretend none of that ever happened?

No, she wasn’t. Not when touching on the old ways had—might have, she amended—saved her life. Fatae-magics. Sex-magics, blood-magics, sympathetic magics…She didn’t have to like it, though. Old ways were unpredictable, unreliable, lurking underneath the psyche, within reach of anyone who had enough willpower to touch them but controllable by very few. You never knew what results you might get, with old magic. That’s why Founder Ben started experimenting with his
keys and kites in the first place, to find a better way. A more reliable, repeatable way.

Magic was a science, after all.

That thought led her back around to her discussion with P.B. about genetics, and inheritance, and goo, and father-creators, and the thoughts almost derailed her whistle.

Stop that. Don’t you dare get distracted!

She came to the end of the passage without further stumbling, and started again, patiently. Some things were less about flair or finesse than patience. Most of the job—like standing in the darkness whistling—was boring, and that was good. Boring meant according to plan. Excitement meant excrement. Lots of excitement meant excrement in the air-conditioning.

After the third rendition of the whistle-touch, something broke the dark waters just off the pier, rising about a foot above the surface. In the pre-dawn blackness, it was difficult to make out any details, but she thought she saw the gleam of eyes looking her way.

She whistled again, a slightly different tone, letting it rise and decline before it faded away. She wasn’t much of a singer, but she could whistle up a storm.

She almost laughed at the phrase. She probably could, at that.

The shadowy shape sank back below the surface, but the ripples indicated that it was still there, and heading toward her. Wren left the security of the shadows, and walked out along the dock to meet it, kneeling down at the edge even as the surface of the water broke and a figure rose three feet straight out of the water.

“Hello,
Cosa
-cousin,” she said, thinking hard about
her request. The serpent merely blinked at her, the large, pale eyes definitely glimmering in the lamplight coming down from overhead. From the size of the triangular head, and the thickly muscled neck flowing back down into the water, she estimated it to be about thirty feet long, and maybe five feet across. Not quite full grown, which made sense; very few of them hung around the shoreline once they got their full size. Not enough to eat, and too many chances of being spotted by someone with a decent camera.

*Hunger.*

Serpents, unlike their airborne cousins the dragons, weren’t much for conversation, but they knew how to make their needs known. The wave of fish-scented hunger that hit her brain made Wren glad that she’d skipped breakfast that morning. Thankfully, forewarned was foregifted.

“Will this do?” She lifted the shopping bag she had been lugging and let the serpent scent the aromas, or whatever it was serpents did.

*Pleasure,* came back to her, and she tipped the bag open and dumped the contents onto the dock. That great triangular head dipped almost faster than she could follow, and she took an involuntary step back. Thankfully, the beast had no interest whatsoever in her. The loop of pastrami, however, disappeared almost before it hit the planks. Her informant had been right, bless his pointy little nose. New Yorkers, apparently, were New Yorkers, no matter where they lived. Wren supposed she should be thankful he hadn’t been craving an egg cream or something a little more difficult to carry on the subway.

“All right. You know what to do?” she asked it as soon as the offering had been consumed.

A sated sense of satisfaction and agreement answered her, and the serpent slid beneath the waters again, leaving an oily ripple on the water’s surface, and the scent of pastrami-burp in the air.

They weren’t the smartest of the
Cosa,
serpents, but they were trustworthy. Most snake breeds were, she’d found. So much for that stereotype…

Right. She had about ten minutes, she estimated, before minor hell broke loose. Best not to waste any of it.

The empty bag stirred at her feet, and she looked down at it, half-surprised the serpent hadn’t eaten that, too. She was tempted to leave it there, but a combination of good citizen training and common sense made her stoop to pick it up.
Leave nothing behind.

“Recycle,” she told it, barely even reaching for current, and the paper bag shimmered and dissolved into powdery wood dust. Close enough. She dusted off her hands and walked back off the pier, toward the more active part of the docks.

Her goal was the batch of most recent ships, the ones still in quarantine. There was a container in one of the ships docked there, she had been told, specifically the
Becca Sims.
Customs hadn’t had a chance to go through the invoices yet, but they’d gotten wind of something hinky stored in the hold.

How hinky was still subject to debate. What wasn’t, apparently, was the fact that it would embarrass a number of people, including the United States government, if there had to be any kind of formal investigation or, God forbid, arrest in the matter.

Wren had no problem with the government taking one or two on the chin, but she’d learned enough about politics in the past few years to know that sometimes you had to cover even for people you didn’t like, to keep things from getting too ugly. And since she didn’t happen to have a horse in this particular race, she’d shut up and do the job, discharging a favor-debt in the process and leaving the slate nice and clean.

Besides, quiet and sneaky was her stock-in-trade.

The moment she heard yelling coming from somewhere, drawing the attention of everyone who might otherwise be paying attention, Wren slipped up the gangway of the
Becca Sims
and, no-see-me firmly in place, ghosted up into the ship, through the bare metal hallways, and down into the cargo hold.

“Don’t come out, come out, whatever you are,” she called in a quiet singsong voice, ignoring the thudding against the hull that was her bribed buddy making like Nessie on a bad day. She was lucky he—she? How did you tell?—was young and still thought this would be a good prank. An older, wiser serpent would have told her where to get off, probably. Or would have taken this as an excuse to eat a sailor or two.

Hoorah for intra-
Cosa
relations. And she didn’t have to play on that “hidden Cousin” thing, either. Notoriety was fine when you wanted it, but inconvenient as hell the rest of the time.

The container she was looking for was in the very back, of course. Most of the boxes were taller than she was, and several times as broad, but this one was barely up to her shoulder and wide as her arm span. Plastic; she had somehow expected everything to be wooden,
but she seemed to be surrounded by a Tupperware farm. Made it tougher on the rats, she supposed.

“All right. Let’s see what we got here.” She didn’t touch the container; she didn’t need to, not yet. Instead, she let her eyes unfocus, and then looked with her current, instead.

Nothing. Not even an erg of a come-hither.

Another heavy thump almost managed to knock her off her feet, and she glared at the steel wall as though the serpent could see her through it. “I said distract, not sink, you stupid eel.”

She turned her attention back to the container, still not touching it. Because she had never done this before, she took refuge in a familiar cantrip to focus her thoughts.

It didn’t have to be good poetry; it didn’t even have to be poetry. She just happened to like the simplicity of the haiku structure. Plus, poetry was easier to remember. Sometimes, in dicey situations, that mattered.

The words merged with the current in her core, rising and swirling in a faint blue glow. She could see it, faintly, rising from her core, up her spine, out along her arms and out through her fingertips, sparking gently as it reached toward the container in question.

“Holy fu—” The word was stolen from her throat as she felt what was in there. Not animal, mineral or pharmaceutical; not even chemical, the way the unimaginative assumed.

She pulled her current back into herself, wincing as it snapped unpleasantly into place, like a thick, neon, rubber band. What was in there was
alchemical;
elements primed and ready for the final touch that would turn them into…whatever it was that it was supposed to be. She didn’t feel any sense of malice or anger to it; not that it couldn’t still be dangerous, but generally speaking things that had the touch of current to them also carried the emotions—the
signature
—of their user.

This just felt…greedy. Anonymous greed, but no less disturbing for that. In fact, it was even more disturbing for being faceless, unconnected.

She felt a shudder run down her spine that had nothing to do with current. Greed wasn’t good. In her experience, greed caused more trouble than anything else, depending on what you were greedy for. Candy, minor. Blood, or souls, or life…

But nothing had been triggered yet. Everything here was just potential, the parts not yet assembled. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she did, gut-level.

Problem was, she had no idea what the trigger was, or who was supposed to assemble it. Someone, anyone might come by and, intentionally or not…

The not knowing was what killed you. Sometimes literally.

There was shouting, and the sound of a lot of boots running overhead. Her serpent had shifted his point of assault to the other side of the boat. That boy was having far too much fun.

Something skittered with her in the hold, against the far wall, and she wondered if modern cargo ships had
rats, despite the Tupperware. Probably. Some things never changed.

Her job assignment had been vague.
“Do…whatever it is you do. I don’t want to know. Just, if there’s anything there, get rid of it.”

Get rid of it. Right. From Retriever to garbage detail. Still, she supposed she was within the realm of her job description—removing something from the premises without the possessor of the item knowing….

She started to slip into fugue state, and caught herself. No need to give herself cramps for this. Instead, Wren kept her physical eyes on the container, and touched the core of current within her. As always, it felt like a pit of vipers, scales dry-slithering and sparking against each other in neon brights. There was a hint of darker colors, too; a purple-black that alternated between shimmering and matte. The sludge of old magic, waiting for another chance at her. She ignored it, an act of purely human stubbornness and denial, and focused instead on the glimmers of scarlet winding through the mass.

Her core, her own personal current-store. Modern theory—and stories of old magic—suggested that everyone had it, but most humans lacked the ability to touch and mold it. It wasn’t just the will and the word, apparently.
Goo,
she thought again.
I am filled with goo.

All right. Back to the box. The bits individually were…not innocent, but not dangerous, not right now. So the trick was to make sure that they couldn’t be joined.

Destroying something when you weren’t quite sure what it was—stupid. Especially when on a boat, on
water, with no easy access away from any major explosion, implosion, or other kind of boom.

A scarlet snake separated itself from the rest of the pit, rising to her command. It flowed out into the container as distinct threads, splitting off and then splitting off again. Not that Wren could see it, not using her physical eyes, but she knew it was there, doing her will.

Five threads, each one wrapping itself around a piece of the puzzle. Light, gentle layers, barely noticeable. Her arms rose as though conducting the movement, laying the threads by hand. Focused on the task, she barely felt the thuds that meant her
Cosa
-cousin was still at the job…or when the thuds stopped.

Bind, there, thus. A lesson in the back of her mind: John Ebeneezer sitting in the back of his classroom, still wearing the white lab coat he used during class over his jeans and Oxford shirt, teaching her how to thread a needle with current, each eye progressively smaller and smaller as her skills grew. Eye of the needle. Eye of the storm. Bind and close off, enclose, insulate.