Pack of Lies (12 page)

The kitsune fluffed its three tails slightly in what might have been amusement. I got the feeling it wasn't so much defending us as settling an old score—or just causing trouble. “If the shoe fits, as our human cousins say…”

“They're no
Cosa
-cousins of mine,” bat-wing screeched, and my headache went up a notch. Next to me, I could feel Pietr wince. “No cousin at all!”

Oh, shit. I tensed, not sure what was going to happen next.

“Am I a cousin, Ardo?” Danny asked the schiera abruptly, and the kitsune's tails went still, his eyes brightening with
interest as his gaze flicked between the two. Uh-oh… What was about to go down?

The schiera glared at the faun from its upside-down perch. “You are fatae.”

Wow, that was grudging.

“Am I?” Danny demanded again, stepping forward into the schiera's personal space, and making a big deal about exposing himself, arms spread, to a 360-degree view. “Am I a cousin?”

There was a short silence after that, and my new friend's appearance suddenly made sense to me. Cross-breed. Wow. That was…unusual didn't begin to cover it.

“Am I a cousin, Ardo?” he demanded again, waiting.

“You are
Cosa
-cousin,” Ardo said, finally, its liquid-black eyes rimming a little with red. It wasn't happy, no, but it wasn't going to deny the faun. Interesting. My new friend might be more important than he was letting on.

“Then these humans are my cousins,” Danny said, maintaining eye contact. “And therefore they are your cousins, as well. You will treat them with at least a smidge of your usual gracious and delightful courtesy—” there was a smothered laugh from someone at a safe distance “—or I will be deeply annoyed with you.”

The two locked stares, one upside down and one right side up, like cats measuring up who was boss-tom. It reminded me a lot of Stosser and Nifty's dance earlier, except that there wasn't the accompanying buildup of current, since fatae didn't use it that way. And this one felt nastier.

“Do you understand me, Ardo?”

Hitting his breaking point, the schiera launched itself off
the perch, claws out, a shrill noise that nearly shattered my eardrums coming from its throat like a miniaturized war cry. Danny managed to jump aside and push me out of the way, all one almost-smooth gesture. Pietr, of course, had already disappeared, although he could have been right beside me for all I knew.

Bobo was standing over me before I could do more than blink, growling deep in his furry chest, a seriously scary noise. His thick fur was ruffled, making an impressive barrier against claw or fang, and while his own teeth were canines, not fangs, they were capable of biting through the schiera's wing with one hard munch.

The schiera, being mean and bigoted but not stupid, got the hell out of Dodge, straight up and away.

“You all right?” Bobo didn't look down at me, but scanned the crowd, waiting to see if anyone else was going to be stupid. The kitsune snickered, but everyone else suddenly needed to Be Elsewhere in the crowd.

“Yeah.” I did a quick self-check. Bruised and out of breath, but okay. “Danny?”

The faun was already back on his feet, and I noticed, from my vantage point on the ground, that he was wearing seriously scuffed but gorgeously tooled brown cowboy boots.

“You little fucker!” he yelled, slamming his hat down on the ground and yelling into the now-empty sky. “You come back here and try that again! I'll turn you into schiera jerky with your own damn venom, you little ass-wipe excuse for a flying rat!”

All of a sudden, it was all too much. The stress of repeatedly viewings the attack, the chasing after news, the sudden
reversals and the sniping…and now a half-faun cowboy wannabe having a hissy fit in the middle of Central Park.

I lay back on the cold, pine-needle-coated ground, and howled with laughter until my eyes started to water and my ribs hurt, and Pietr reappeared next to me, looking worried, like I'd finally gone around the bend.

“Bonnie?”

I was laughing too hard to answer, and finally he just left me alone until I calmed down and could hoist myself up to a sitting position, still giggling a little. It wasn't funny, but I felt a lot better. Most of the remaining fatae had moved off to another area of the Pintum, and the party went on, although it looked and sounded a lot more subdued.

“Better?” Danny was sitting on a nearby bench, watching me.

“Yeah. Thanks.” I didn't hold a lot of emotion pent-up inside me, normally; this blowout had been unnerving, but useful. “You?”

“I'm used to it.”

Ouch. Yeah, I could imagine being a half-breed wasn't fun at the best of times.

Danny stared at a nearby pine tree with that thousand-yard stare that meant he wasn't really looking at anything in the park, and then turned back to us, his good-looking features composed, like he was about to recite a speech someone else wrote for him.

“Look—” he seemed hesitant, which I already knew was
not
normal for the man “—shit's going to go down, there's no avoiding it. We need to share information, so nobody
gets caught with their britches down and no paper on the roll.”

“Elegantly put,” Pietr said, and Danny's facade almost cracked.

“But not here,” I said, asking a question—not about the location, but about the wisdom of talking in the middle of so many already-overcautious fatae.

“No. Not here.” The facade melted, and his face softened into more relaxed lines, once he knew that we understood what he was offering. “There's a place in midtown where the steaks are fine and the martinis beyond compare.”

And there was proof, if I needed it, that his human half was dominant, since the fatae rarely drink, and even more rarely with that kind of connoisseurship. Also, that he was quite possibly as interested in me as I was in him. He wasn't playing coy, but we were both on company manners, so it was tough to determine his ulterior motivation.

Not that it mattered. I wasn't going to Mata Hari, but I was totally not adverse to flirting to get what I needed. I had a feeling Danny would respect that.

Bobo begged off—steaks and silverware weren't his thing, and I wasn't sure even the most accepting of restaurants was ready for him. Pietr and I accepted with pleasure; a half-fatae favorably inclined to our doings could be a damned useful ally to have, especially if he was making the offer unsolicited. Venec would kick our asses if we didn't pump him for all he was worth. Lunch was going to be all business. Totally all business. Really. I nodded firmly to myself even as Danny led us out of the park, and we caught the B/D train down
to the restaurant. Business, yeah. I think Pietr might actually have believed that.

The Tavern had heavy red drapes and cute young waitstaff and Danny was right, they made killer steaks and devilish martinis. I sipped one, and put it down on the table firmly. I'd be back here, some time when I wasn't on the job.

“You don't like it?”

“My body mass, one of these might kill me.”

Danny laughed, and passed me the basket of breadsticks. He'd taken off his cowboy hat, and fluffed up his curls enough that the nubs of his horns were mostly covered, but the staff didn't even look twice. At least one of them had casually identified as Talent when we came in—we made up a lot of the professional waitstaff in the city, because it was a steady, relatively low-tech job—and that meant this place was probably fatae-friendly.

Or so I would have said, before today. Now—I wasn't sure how much being a
Cosa
-cousin meant. But if Danny came here, it was probably going to be okay.

“So how much do you know about what we do at PUPI?” Pietr asked. “You looking for a job?”

“Hah. You are looking at former Patrolman Daniel Hendricks. Before the physical exams got so, erm, invasive. Went into the private sector, after that. Investigations for hire. So it's my job to know when there are new players in town.”

Oh, that was interesting. Danny's value as an informant just skyrocketed—which, sadly, also meant that his potential as a playmate went down. Drat. “I thought we were the only ones doing what we do” was all I said.

Danny downed half his drink in one smooth swallow.
“You are. I've got an unapologetic bias—I'm working for my client's interests, whatever they may be, and will do what's required to get them forwarded, within legal limits. You're…you're more like cops.”

“Now you're getting nasty,” Pietr said, only half joking.

“Hah. You don't know half of it.” Danny got serious. “What I do, there's a call for it, but it is what it is, and sometimes it doesn't come out clean. Like I said, I have a bias. The city needs you guys, hell of a lot more than they need me.” He finished off his drink, and lifted it so the bartender would know he needed a refill. “Used to be maybe a fifth of the force was
Cosa,
or knew their partner was
Cosa,
and we could actually do something about a current-based or fatae-specific incident, even if not officially. Now? Not so much. And forget about a Talent moving up in the ranks, especially if he's lonejack. So stuff that we used to be able to slap hands over gets out of control, because the lonejacks can't get their shit together and Council doesn't see anything that's not served upon china platters.”

Harsh, but I couldn't say it was untrue. Council—and therefore us—were involved here only because of the ki-rin, and the potential for political fallout.

“I'm not going to ask you anything about the case 'cause I don't want to know. I'm only snoopy when I've got a paycheck on it. But I will tell you what you need to know, if you don't already, no charge for the telling. City's on edge. Your reception this afternoon? I'm seeing it, more and more. And you guys're Talent. Nulls?” Danny shook his head, and forked a bunch of green beans into his mouth.

“I wouldn't want to be a Null in a dark alley if that schiera
was in a pissy mood. I'm not saying he'd attack unprovoked…but I'm not confident he wouldn't, either. Not anymore. And nobody's paying any attention. It's just…simmering.”

“This is recent,” I said. “I mean, really recent. When I came to New York this past summer it…it was off, a little, but not this bad.” There had been that fatae in Central Park, the one I'd pointed out to Nick our first month here, but he hadn't menaced us, just…not been friendly, not even in the
Cosa
-passing-on-the-street way I'd been used to, in Boston. There hadn't been active dislike—or fear.

“Yeah.” Danny thought about it. “Yeah, it started around then. Whispers and rumors, mostly.”

Beside me, Pietr was taking notes in the little spiral books we all carried for exactly that, while I kept Danny talking. For all the cantrips and current-tricks we were learning, in the end it all came down to information.

“When something simmers,” I said, keeping Danny focused on me so that he wouldn't get self-conscious about Pietr writing down his words, not that I didn't think he didn't know exactly what we were doing, “it means that the heat's being kept on it, at a steady pace. Coincidence—or is someone monitoring the heat?”

Danny didn't have an answer for me, not that I'd really been expecting one. “I've been hearing about a friend of a friend, a guy he knew, or her cousin's lover…but the stories were all the same. Fatae, roughed up by a human.”

“Talent?” It wasn't impossible—piskies were pranksters just asking for a beating, and other fatae like redcaps and the angeli didn't always play nice, and some grudges were species-wide and went back generations. A Talent looking
for payback wouldn't be unusual, although mostly they knew better. A Null, on the other hand, could be unpredictable as hell, if they suddenly found themselves confronted with something out of a fairy tale—or a bad acid trip.

Danny actually laughed at that, a dry, husky chuckle. “You think most fatae can tell the difference? You've got two legs, no wings, no horns, no fur. Hrana was right about that much. You all look the same.”

Ow. The feeling of depression and self-doubt that had fled earlier returned, settling against the back of my neck like the push of a ten-pound weight.

“Fatae don't trust Council,” he went on, “and everyone knows lonejacks won't do shit about other lonejacks unless there's profit in it for them. That leaves you guys. Maybe.”

There really wasn't much you could do with the topic, after that. The rest of the meal we tried to talk about other things: Danny was a fabulous storyteller, in addition to being good-looking, and more than once I got the feeling he, at least, would be interested in something off-the-clock. He might be more subtle than his full-blood kin, but not by a hell of a lot.

But I wasn't going there. Partially because I'd learned my lesson the hard way about playing with anyone who might be relevant to the case, even remotely, and partially because I had the feeling that, unlike his fatae kin, Danny was looking for a One True Love. Me? Not so much. So when the meal was over, and we'd argued over who was picking up the tab—we won, since it was a business expense—I shook his hand, got his card, and went home. Alone.

I had just come up out of the subway when someone knocked politely at my awareness.

*busy?*

My visitor was pretty much the last person I expected to have ping me after hours: Sharon.

*wassup?*

The ping came back not in words, but an image—of the local art-house theater halfway between her place and mine—and a time. She was inviting me to the movies.

I totally had not been expecting that. Sharon and I worked well together, and the entire team socialized off-hours, but she and I weren't buddy-friends, not the way Nick and I were.

Thinking about what waited for me back at my apartment; an empty space, a cold bed, I made my decision.