Masks (Out of the Box Book 9) (27 page)

“The Clarys.” I thought about them, with their meta abilities to turn their skin into seemingly whatever substance they wanted—I’d seen rubber and steel, but there were probably other possibilities. “But they can’t change the state of unconnected matter.” I paused. “I don’t think. Because that would have made kicking their asses a lot harder.”

“Yeah, their steel skin melts like that butter you just applied to me under plasma’s heat,” she said, then paused. “That … wow, I went to the awkward place this time, didn’t I?”

“It’s okay, I kinda live there.”

“So, anyway, same ballpark, different … uh, game? Sport, maybe? Whatever,” she said, “I’m not into athletics and stuff.”

“I figured, seeing how you weren’t too torn up about us destroying Soldier Field.”

“Well, that’s the Bears, so …” Her wry amusement died. “This power, though. I knew of a meta who used those powers for profit.”

“Illicit gain, you mean?” I teased her.

“I forgot that you use your powers for charity these days,” she shot right back.

“Ouch. Counterpoint taken.”

“You’re entirely too fun,” she said. “We should totally have another team-up sometime. I bet I’d be a better wingwoman than any of your other lackeys. This meta, though, the one who changes matter for profit—”

“The alchemist?” I asked.

“I’ve heard him called ‘the Glass Blower,’” Veronika said. “He bounces around a lot, but he’ll basically put his talents to work for anyone. The first thing I ever heard about him was a job he took on a few years ago for a really rich creep who wanted an ex transmuted into pure gold.”

“Gross,” I said. “That poor woman.”

“It was actually a guy that got turned into a statue,” Veronika said, and I could hear her smirk bleed through the line. “You know what happens when you assume, right?”

“You make an ass out of you,” I said, “but not me.” I paused for comic effect. “Because I’m way too busy being an ass on my own merits.”

“And you win a counterpoint of your own. Anyway, the Glass Blower takes contract jobs like that, I assume. Only other work I’ve heard of his is whispers, like creating gold for some small country somewhere to buoy their economy—”

“Any idea which small country?” I asked.

“No clue. It was all rumors anyway, because I’d imagine if someone actually was able to do that, they’d really crash the precious metals market.”

“What do you even pay a guy like that?” I asked, frowning as I flew over small houses in Brooklyn, tree-lined streets that looked like they were from a bygone age.

“Lots of non-monetary exchanges in my business,” Veronika said. “Favors and rare objects and things like that. Most of our kind can get money pretty easily. Power trades for power, generally speaking, because let’s face it, money always follows power’s lead.”

“As true with metas as with the rest of the world, I guess.” I could see Long Island stretching ahead, and I pulled my phone away from my ear for a second to check my course. It was all good. “So no idea where this ‘Glass Blower’ originates? Hangs his hat?”

“Sorry,” she said, sounding almost apologetic, “but I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew—which I don’t. Professional courtesy. Besides, this guy isn’t your problem. Whoever hired him is. He’s the instrument, so the most you could hope for from him was a line to your real villain. Odds are good, though, that he’s long gone.”

“Well, damn. I don’t imagine it’d be much of a joy to try and contain this Glass Blower even if I could catch him. Thanks for the info,” I said. “If you think of anything else—”

“I’ll send it along in a mash note, written on pink paper, with big flowery writing and—”

“Bye, Felicia.”

“You did not just ‘bye, Felicia’ me!”

“I did. Figured you might think I’d forgotten your name, but I was totally meme-ing you. Since you didn’t ‘Hey, Girl’ me when you answered.”

She sighed in disappointment. “So pedestrian. Go trade wits with others who are unworthy of you. And when you get bored of that, call me back. I’ll be here, unless Kat calls me first to bail her out of something infinitely stupid.” She hung up.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared down at the map display again. I was very close to my destination now, flying over neighborhoods with much more space between the homes than anything I’d seen in Brooklyn. I flew lower and lower, looking at the tree-covered grounds of the palatial estates. It was a far cry from the high towers of Manhattan, but not such a far distance, really.

I set down in Nadine Griffin’s brick-paved driveway. Her house looked older, but with touches on the outside that suggested to me that this august estate had seen some reconstruction projects in the years since it was first built. The lawn looked like hell, like the gardener had resigned in protest or something. I’d gotten the lay of the land on the way in, and Ms. Griffin had some serious property, with Long Island Sound at the edge of her giant backyard. I walked toward the door slowly, easing my way up, and rang the bell. I could hear it chime inside, loud and lovely, echoing like a church bell in a European village. I pressed it again. And again. For fun.

“I can hear you!” an irritable female voice shouted from inside. “Just a second!” I heard swearing, a little lower than the frustrated commentary, so I pushed the bell again for kicks.

Nadine Griffin swung the door open without even checking who was outside first, which was a mark of either how pissed off she was at me for the repeated ringing or the utter contempt in which she held even the most basic smart security precautions. If I’d been in her shoes, I wouldn’t have answered the door, not a chance.

Then again, I thought as I looked down to see her clad in four-inch heels that looked uber-expensive, if I were in her heels, even my meta powers of increased dexterity couldn’t save me from the turned ankle that would result.

“Nadine,” I said, greeting her with a growling sort of contempt that I reserved for people I knew well and disdained.

Give the woman credit: she was a cool customer. When she saw it was me at the door, her eyes didn’t even widen, though her pupils dilated a little bit. She froze, but just for a second, and the expression on her face went from that momentary surprise into a swift return of the contempt I’d leveled at her only a moment earlier. “Oh,” she said, disappointed, “it’s you.” Like I always just showed up on random peoples’ doorsteps.

“It’s me,” I said, smiling brightly. “Let’s have a chat.”

Sienna Nealon was at her door, but Nadine refused to show even the slightest hint of worry at the sight of her. That was a key to her success, to eliminate any sign of surprise, of fear, of worry from her expression. A lot of men wore their emotions right on their sleeve, giving away everything to a practiced observer. One of the first things Nadine had done, before she even started on Wall Street, was to temper her emotions in private, staring in the mirror and practicing all the requisite ones, developing rigorous control over every motion of her face, every muscle, every twitch, and making sure that they all worked in harmony to project whatever image she chose.

“I don’t think I have anything to say to you,” Nadine said, sprinkling a little sugar into her words.

“Then let me do the talking,” Sienna said, pushing past her. Nadine stepped aside; there was no winning a physical confrontation with this woman, not without resorting to shooting her in the back of the head unobserved, and Nadine was under no illusions about how that would play out in court. “Nice place.”

“Won’t you come in?” Nadine asked, letting the sarcasm drip as she shut the door behind her. In truth, once she got past the initial surprise, she didn’t mind having Sienna Nealon in to talk. The very fact that the woman had turned up on her doorstep suggested nothing good, but a mysterious sort of nothing good. Nadine needed an answer to how she’d gotten here, why she was here, and slamming the door in her face wasn’t going to leave anything but a hanging question mark that she would obsess over for the next few hours. Letting her in, however, especially when it seemed against her will … that gave her the opportunity to find out what the little bitch was up to. All Nadine had to do in return was make sure that she kept her emotions tightly in check, unable to escape and betray her, and Nealon would walk out of this encounter all the poorer while Nadine would have all or almost all of the woman’s secrets—if she played things right.

“I like your decorating scheme,” Sienna said, looking at an antique grandfather clock that hadn’t been wound since she’d had to fire the servants. It looked nice in the hallway, but winding it took valuable seconds out of her life that Nadine didn’t care to part with. Also, the ticking noise was enough to drive her batty. “It screams, ‘I’ve got too much money, help me part with it.’”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” Nadine said dryly, “since you’re not with the government anymore, but … they seized all my assets except the house. So, like a fool, I pretty well
am
parted from my money.” She watched Nealon stroll into the front room, looking around. “Not that I expect you’d care. Nobody else does.” She tried to put a little hurt self-pity into it; she didn’t consider it likely that the famed Sienna Nealon would pick up the victim card from her with any kind of sympathy, but it was a decent opening gambit.

“Boo hoo,” Sienna said, grabbing the card and tossing it back at her with a mock-baby face. She brought up a finger and pretended to wipe a tear from beneath her eye.

“Like I said,” Nadine threw out, more bitterly than she actually felt, “nobody cares.” She looked away as she delivered this.

“Do you know why I’m here?” Sienna asked.

“I’m a convenient local target for your bullying?” Nadine said, shrugging her shoulders in soft resignation. “I really don’t know.”

“FBI headquarters in Manhattan got blown up today,” Sienna said, her eyes latched on Nadine like a squealing, hungry infant when a bare breast was in sight. Nadine felt a shudder of revulsion at the image of babies and shunted the thought away. “Did you know that?” Nealon went on.

“I saw it on the news while I was at the office, yes,” Nadine said, shrugging. “It’s why I came home early.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“Because rush hour tonight is going to be a miserable hell,” Nadine said flatly. “And it’s not like I have anything to do at work, anyway,” she added with unfeigned resentment. Work was boring now that she was shut off from the game.

“You’re a pragmatist,” Sienna said, assessing her, as though she could ever hope to penetrate the mask Nadine was wearing right now. The very thought gave Nadine a sense of warm amusement. Sienna Nealon was a petty thug, who—from what Nadine had seen and read—had to resort to violence because she couldn’t manage to get her way through any other means. Nadine operated under no such restrictions; she’d never had to use violence until today, because brains, money, seduction, or outright theft all worked more effectively than violence, and left fewer unpleasant traces behind. “A realist.”

“Sweetheart,” Nadine said, with weariness and condescension in equal measure, to patronize and piss her off so she could get this unthinking brute to honesty as swiftly as possible, “you don’t get to be the Queen of Wall Street by living with your head up your snatch.”

There was a flicker of irritation in Nealon’s eyes, and Nadine could feel the annoyance bubbling beneath the surface, though her reply came back coolly sarcastic, at least at first. “And here I thought it just took lying, cheating, and stealing.”

“That’s always the image you people off the Street have of those of us working on it,” Nadine said, smiling faintly and uncrossing her arms, as if she’d truly open her heart to this vulgar psychopath. “Did you ever consider that maybe we just work smarter? That we provide an actual service to people, that they’re willing to pay for? That we add value, that we can move money to help build successful companies, that we—”

“I believe that others on Wall Street do that,” Sienna said, cutting her right off, “but I think that you are probably just in it to turn other peoples’ lives to shit while making yourself a buck and also looking awesome because you’re a woman and a winner making it in a man’s world.” She shrugged. “But I might know a thing or two about that.”

“You don’t look like much of a winner lately,” Nadine said.

“Neither does Wall Street,” Sienna said. “Maybe it’s a branding issue. That’s how you guys talk about it, isn’t it?”

“Maybe it’s envy,” Nadine said. “People tend to get jealous of those with more than them, after all.”

“They also get mad at charlatans and liars who steal their money,” Sienna said. “Maybe it’s a little of column A, a little of column B?”

“See, I knew you were here because you were looking for someone to bully,” Nadine said, crossing her arms again. This was easier than she’d thought; Nealon was a little flushed, plainly riled, and probably not that far from unloading on her.

“I’m looking for the person who helped mastermind an attack on FBI headquarters,” Nealon said, looking at her with cold eyes, blue as ice, “the US Attorney’s office, and a bank. This person is wealthy, and would have a personal stake in seeing those first two targets brought down. Say, someone with a lot of money to spread around, and an ongoing case against them wherein the evidence and the people arrayed against them might be found in those two buildings.” She took a step closer to Nadine. “This is what we call, ‘means, motive and opportunity,’” she said condescendingly.

“I’ve heard of that,” Nadine said, offering a choice smirk designed to antagonize her opponent further. “So let me help you with your investigation—the government seized pretty much every dollar I have.” She ticked off a finger. “My means are no longer my own. Trust me, I’m noticing—”

“Yeah, I can see this place has really suffered from your loss of a gardener,” Nealon sniped, and then ran a finger over an exquisite table that some decorator had brought in from Europe or Asia or somewhere; Nadine couldn’t remember. “And lack of a maid.”

“I don’t do dusting,” Nadine said. “I also don’t do—heists or murder or whatever it is you’re accusing me of—”