Staying Dead (28 page)

He touched one long red scrape on the side of her arm, leading to the wound, and she hissed in pain. He'd seen marks like that once before. A sniper's weapon. Neat, precise: not deadly unless used by a marksman. So was this meant to be deadly…or a warning?

“P.B.?” His voice was flat, cold. Being fair, the demon had done as good a job as possible, considering—the site looked clean, and any germs he might have been carrying on his claws wouldn't take in a human; that much even he knew. But that didn't mean Sergei had to like the thought of the ugly little fur-face using those claws on Wren, even in a good cause. She nodded, and he moved on to the next logical question. “Shooter?”

“Gone. P.B. spotted a shadow, I made like a moron and went to look. Less shadow, more assassin. Who'd want to kill me?” She was pissed, you could hear it in her voice. Pissed, but curious. And more than a little angry. “If it was our so-called client, I swear, I'm going to find that ghost and ram it down his murdering little throat, and client privilege be damned.”

Despite the cold anger that was growing in his own gut, Sergei chuckled. That was his Wren; business was business, but make it personal and she wouldn't ever let it go. Unfortunately, he was going to have to put the kibosh on that. Unfortunately, because the more he learned about the entire situation, and their client specifically, the more he was inclined to agree with her intention. Even if it was shockingly bad business.

“I don't think it was the client,” he told her, cutting fresh gauze from the roll and expertly winding it over the injury site, putting just the right amount of pressure to keep it from bleeding again, while still allowing it access to fresh air. “Not if it had anything to do with the stone or the ghost. Our client wants the ghost returned to the stone, right? Can't do that if you're—” He hesitated, unable to say the word.

“Dead?”

He swallowed hard. “Right. Anyway, no point offing his best hope of that.” His voice was shaking, and he could feel her eyes on his face as he focused on making sure the bandage fit perfectly.

“Yeah, my thought, too. Frants may be many things but I'm thinking he's not dumb. Or at least his people aren't. They might hire someone to off me, if they really were pissed at my screwing up the retrieval, but they couldn't risk alienating every other lonejack around. And word
would
get out; it always does.” Wren took pity on her partner, looking away while she tested the bandage by moving her arm carefully. She was the one who got shot, and he was the one who was freaking out. Love was strange. “And the Silence wants me alive, if leashed. No, it feels right, this being related to the job. What if there's someone else—a competitor, maybe, like we thought originally might have done the grab—who doesn't want that restoration to take place?”

“That was my next thought too, yeah. Someone who has an ax to grind against Frants, who might have pointed our original thief to the cornerstone in the first place?” He cut a piece of tape off, and secured the bandage. “Do you still have that sling around here?”

“I hate wearing that,” she complained. “I feel like a cripple.”

“You're not going to be doing any work until that heals,” he told her. “So deal with it.”

She grumbled, but indicated the storage area under the sink. He opened the door and rummaged past boxes of tampons and unopened bottles of mouthwash and shampoo until he found the triangle of mesh and cloth, and had her arm adjusted to his satisfaction within it. Then he escorted her to the kitchen, and set about boiling water for tea.

“I don't want any,” she told him petulantly.

“Tough. You're not Bogey, you're not going to drown the pain with booze.”

“Spoilsport,” she said in accusation.

“Guilty as charged. There's more, which is why I think something hinky is going on with the situation. Prevost's dead.”

That stopped her mid-complaint. “How?”

“A rather pretty slash across the throat, followed by arson to take care of the house itself. Since several items were noted to be missing from displays in the rubble, based on the display stands still intact, the local police are assuming that the thief killed him, then set the fire to cover his tracks.”

Wren muttered something unpleasant under her breath that he pretended not to hear. “Theft and arson…you think the client—I'm being set up for murder?” Fire would destroy magical traces better than anything except being dropped to the bottom of an ocean for a hundred years or so. Current came from nature, and so nature took it back into herself.

Sergei shook his head. “If so, he still wouldn't have a reason to kill you—he'd want you alive to take the fall.”

“Yeah, unless it's still two different players? Damn! No, then they'd kill me, so I
couldn't
go to trial. The ghost remains at large, Frants is left to swing in the breeze, unprotected, and nobody ever gets called to account for anything. Y'know, between this, your Silence…teaching school's starting to sound like a better career choice all the time.”

He started to pace, two steps into the kitchen, turn, another three to take him into the hallway, then back again. She watched him move, fascinated enough that the pain in her arm began to recede. They really
had
taken on each other's habits. That was scary. “It's too messy,” he said as he paused in front of her. “Too many strings and unknown players. Murder's usually much simpler than all this. Passion, greed…”

“I had been thinking…could it be that Frants has just decided that the sooner everyone who knows about the murder which caused the ghost is silenced, the safer he will be?”

“The client wasn't even born when the ghost died,” he reminded her. “He can't be held responsible, can he?”

Wren tried to shrug, then winced as the pain came back with a sharp blast to her shoulder. “Legally? None of this holds up legally. But I don't think the ghost, for one, much cares,” she said, jumping a little when the kettle began to whistle. Another wince.

Sergei got two oversized mugs down out of the cabinet, two herbal teabags from the jar on the counter, and poured the water with the concentration of a sommelier at a four-star restaurant. He'd rather have had caffeine, but that was the last thing either of them needed right now. His brain already felt as if it was vibrating at too high a speed.

“And you know damn well the cops won't care,” she continued. “But there was murder committed, in his grandfather's name, if not his. It's not exactly habeas corpus, but the rumors are more dangerous to a businessman than an NYPD investigation. Especially a businessman who has traffic with the
Cosa.
”

Since he was the one who had taught her that, back in the early days of their working arrangement, he couldn't argue the point. Handing her one mug, he got the sugar out and carefully measured three teaspoons into his cup, stirring until it was mixed to his satisfaction.

Her mug was white, with small red paw prints along the side. A Cheshire grin stared back at you when the cup was empty. His mug was blue, with the Chinese symbols for warmth and comfort stamped in white on the surface. An entire cupboard filled with mugs, and not one of them matched. And, he suspected, not one of them actually legally purchased. He wondered what she had thought of the black jasper Wedgwood china in his kitchen.
Probably thought you were gay,
he thought glumly.

“Wait a minute.”

Sergei looked up, and could almost hear the pieces falling together in her brain, like locks clicking. “Yeah?”

“You said only some pieces were taken?”

Sergei nodded.

Wren blinked. Then blinked again, her normally pink-flushed skin taking on a ruddier tint with anger. “Figures. Betcha I know which ones, too.
Bastards!
”

Wren slammed her mug down on the table, causing the tea to slosh over the sides unheeded. She stood, pushing the chair back with too much force, her entire body an expressive declaration of disgust. “We've been played.”

“What?” Sergei was pretty sure he had heard her correctly, but he wanted to be sure.

“It wasn't the client,” she repeated, enunciating clearly. “All of this—the theft, my being hired—it was the
Council.
They want me to think it was Frants, setting him up to take the fall for everything. Bastards are cleaning up their own mess—and I'm the damned mop.”

She went on to tell him the gossip, everything from the rumors on the street, the Council's increasing paranoia, to P.B.'s comments about the fatae maybe finally having had enough.

“Even their meeting with you—they were setting the stage. Giving us enough rope to hang us
and
Frants.

“They did the original spell—or one of their own did, which makes it Council business even if they didn't authorize it beforehand. They might have balked at ritual murder, at least officially. But what's done was done, until Prevost started sniffing around. I'll lay good money they pushed him toward the cornerstone. Maybe they just meant to leave Frants vulnerable; sort of a payback for putting them in that position in the first place. Council's big on eye for an eye. Everything else—him hiring us, the ghost actually escaping—could have been taking advantage of the situation. But if the retrieval failed, Frants was left open to attack, my reputation is damaged so I'm less of a perceived threat to them, and hey, maybe the ghost and I will take each other out in the meanwhile. And the Council sits there and washes their hands clean.”

Sergei considered that as he took a sip of his own tea, almost but not quite too hot to drink still. She had a good theory. A damned disturbing good theory. “So what do you want to do about it?” he asked her, taking a seat on one of the chairs and looking up at her, one brow raised in the manner he knew drove her crazy, because she couldn't do it. At this point, you took whatever release valve you could.

“What do I want to do? I want to find that damn ghost, and squeeze it back into its box so we can get paid.” He could almost hear the “duh” in her voice, though she refrained from actually saying it. “And I want the Council to know it's been done and that I know what they were trying to do, even if I have to take out a damn ad in the trades to do it. Let them chew on that, for a little bit. Make 'em wonder if maybe lonejacks aren't the second-class Talents they've always claimed. And then let them stew about maybe I'm going to go after them next. Money is money, but when you shoot at me, it gets personal.”

“Nice plan. How realistic is it?”

“Not very,” she admitted, deflating a little. “But it's good to have goals.”

She took a sip of her own tea, then put it down and reached for the sugar canister, dumping in a heaping teaspoonful of the sweetener. He was pleased to see that she managed the maneuver without the slightest hint of awkwardness. She had been training herself to be ambidextrous ever since she fractured her right thumb during a Frisbee game in the park last summer, but he'd had his doubts as to its effectiveness. She still wouldn't be up to picking locks any time soon, though. Or climbing over walls.

“But we do have to take care of that damned ghost, one way or another,” she said, breaking in to his thoughts. “So where the hell is it? I put a catch-spell on it, but I have no idea if it will work. And I think it would require the ghost to manifest, the way it did when I first saw it, to trigger the spell. Which, who knows if it will do?” She put the mug down, adjusting the sling to rest a little more comfortably. “Any luck turning up potential spook gathering places?”

“Actually, yes. Considering the fact that ghosts seem to be the second most widely ignored topic next to the whereabouts of Jim Morrison among the so-called magical intelligentsia—”

Wren snorted. “I keep telling you, he got himself sucked into a tornado being too wizzed to come out of the wind.”

“—regardless,” he went on, “a contact of mine came through with some interesting information. Ghosts are tied to this plane by one of three things. Unfinished business, ties of strong personal emotion—a loved one or thing—and a nasty little curse that doesn't seem to be the case here, as it was able to actually leave the stone once it was cracked open.”

“Great. A lot of help if we knew who it was when it was at home. Failing that, let's go with unfinished business.” Putting the mug down, she chewed on the thumbnail of her left hand. “Almost everything we've learned about ghosts is alleged and hypothetical. Fine. Allegedly, a hypothetical ghost would appear at the place where he was killed, not where he was buried. But our ghost was tied to the cornerstone by his death, yes?”

Sergei nodded slowly, thinking along with her.

“I'd been assuming they did a ritual interment, maybe some bones, some blood. But what are the odds that our boy was killed on-site, as it were, rather than being brought there for disposal?”

“Before the foundation was laid, allowing his killer easy access to a place to dump the body? You'd know more about the specifics of spell-casting than I would, but I'd say it was probably pretty likely.”