Pack of Lies (31 page)

We had walked all the way to the edge of the city. New York may never sleep, but it does occasionally doze, and other than the siren of an emergency vehicle racing uptown, the night was quiet. There weren't even any cars on the street in front of us, making the flashing traffic light and walk signs seem somehow surreal.

We crossed the street against the light, our heels echoing oddly.

“They would have come this way. She was ahead of the ki-rin. It was all choreographed. She had to look like she was alone….”

“The hug she gave the ki-rin, before the attack.” The knowledge came to me, as I retraced her steps one final time. “It wasn't a sudden burst of affection. She was saying goodbye.”

Venec nodded. He had let go of my hand as we crossed the street, and I moved ahead, finding myself bouncing a little as I did so, exactly the way Mercy had, in my gleaning.

I stopped before I reached the site of the attack, though. Venec caught up with me, standing at my shoulder, looking at the path.

“There are fewer offerings,” he noted. “On both sides.”

I nodded. “People are starting to reconsider their initial flush of outrage?”

“Or maybe they've just found new things to be outraged over. All it will take is one burst of news and they'll be back here, so don't relax. Where was the dark current you felt?”

Okay, time to see if this merge was good for anything useful. I thought about how to direct him to what I “saw,” and a thin thread of current dipped into the awareness of the waterfall, coming out with droplets of water clinging to it, like a sheathing of liquid ice, if that made any sense at all. I turned and looked at the offerings, and Venec's current followed mine.

Unlike sharing the view with Pietr, I couldn't tell what Venec was thinking, or if he was even seeing the same thing—we weren't seeing it together, just side-by-side. Some
of my worries about this thing we had faded. I wasn't the most private of people, okay, yeah, but Venec was. I didn't want him to feel imposed on or anything. At least, not when I didn't intend to impose.

*thank you* But the thought, although dry, was gentle, almost affectionate, not cutting.

On the verbal surface, we were all business. “I see it. It's not fresh, though. Whoever left it, they haven't been back.”

“Is that good, or bad?”

“They're still out there,” he said, responding to what I hadn't asked. “But right now, it's not our problem. Nothing we can do tonight. Come on. There's a diner around the corner that's still twenty-four-hour. I need coffee.”

How he knew about this diner I don't know—it was about the size of a phone booth, covered in shiny aluminum siding, and had room for six tables along its length, and a cracked Formica countertop that had probably been there since they installed it in 1951.

The waitress had probably been there that long, too.

We slid into the table farthest at the back, and ordered coffee.

“This thing…I called my mentor earlier, asked her about the merge, in a purely hypothetical formation,” Ben said. “Most of my books came from her, anyway—she's an archivist at Founder Ben's.”

Okay, I was impressed. Back in the 1800s some smart rabbit got the idea to collect every bit of historical data he could on verified magic—the stuff we know for true, not the legends or myths—and store it somewhere safe, so no
matter if there was another Burning, or we suddenly lost all sense of ourselves, there would be a place our history was safe. Naming it for Franklin—the founder of modern Talent in America—had been a no-brainer. Venec having an archivist as a mentor…it didn't really match the picture I had of him, but it didn't
not
match, either.

He seemed oblivious to me switching around my mental picture of him, playing with the spoon in his coffee. “She's used to me asking about odd bits of spells, especially once I started back with Ian. All she could turn up was that it was something that was celebrated, and yes, it usually had a sexual component to it, too.”

Not that I had asked, or anything.

“That's a problem. Sex would be a very bad idea.” He stopped stirring his coffee, and stared at the murky brown liquid. “I mean…” He sighed, and I knew—the link—that the sigh was as much at himself as me or the situation. “I mean because of the situation. Not…” He stopped and raised his head to glare at me, like I'd been the one to trap him in that sentence.

I thought about letting him dangle a little longer, but the glare had as much confusion as annoyance in it. “Ben. It's okay. I get it. I agree. Sex between boss and employee, not good for office politics.” His shoulders lowered a little in relief, and he lifted the coffee to his lips.

“Although Nick totally thinks we should get it on.”

I timed that just right, and coffee sprayed everywhere. The waitress glared at us, like a snarf was declaration of war, or something.

“He does, does he?” There was that lamb nom-nomming
look in Venec's eyes again, the one that made me feel a little nervous and a lot intrigued, before it was shuttered behind the usual distanced amusement.

“For the good of the rest of the office, yeah.” This conversation felt a little surreal, even for me, but he was rolling with it….

“And how does Pietr fit into this?”

Big Dog had a bone, and didn't want to let go of it. This had to be settled now, while we were still being civil to each other.

“Does the merge give you any say over what I do with my life?”

“No. It doesn't. I apologize.” He looked annoyed again, but same as before I could tell it wasn't me he was annoyed with, but himself for being annoyed. That could come in handy, yeah, when he was reaming us out in the office. Or maybe not. I didn't want to know
everything
he was feeling, and I sure as hell didn't want him to know what I was feeling. Unless I wanted him to, that was. Damn it, this was all getting way too complicated. Complicated made me cranky.

“You feel it, too. Sparks. Serious sparks. And you're the kind of guy who wants to—” I almost said “control” and switched it out at the last instant to “—know what's happening every step of the way. I get that. But if we're going to be smart and civilized about this, you've got to accept the fact that I haven't been celibate since I was fourteen, and I'm not going to start now.”

“Fourteen?” Those dark eyes mock-widened, even as he accepted my slap-down.

“Don't start on me, I was a smart girl, I knew my sex ed,
and I have a pretty good radar for partners. There's only one I'm embarrassed about, and that's…not a story I really want to tell you.”

Two people walked into the diner behind me, and Venec stopped laughing. I craned my neck as discreetly as I could in order to see what had changed his mood.

“Oh. Wow.”

The guy on the left looked totally normal. Human, or close to it. His companion… Not so much. I'd never even seen a picture of anything like that. About half my height, wearing a leather trench coat and slouch hat that didn't do a thing to hide the fact that its body was covered with thick, coarse white fur. It was gesturing with one arm, showing a padded paw with thick black claws that looked deadly.

“Don't stare,” Venec murmured. “It's bad manners, and you don't want to piss him off.”

I dropped my gaze down into the dregs of my coffee, and picked up the spoon to stir it, to give myself something to do. I was pretty sure I was blushing, which I never did. “What is it?”

“Demon.”

I swear I strained something, resisting the urge to swivel in my seat and gawk openly. Demon were rare. Not ki-rin rare, but unusual enough to merit gawking. “Do they all look like that?”

“No. Each one looks different.”

“Then how do you know…?”

“Red eyes. Dark red eyes, the only fatae who have 'em. Also, bad-tempered. Although not as nasty as the angeli.
You can talk to a demon, even work with one. Angeli? Not so much.”

That I knew—the fatae breed known as angels took their name way too seriously, looking down at any species that wasn't them, especially humans.

“How'd you know it was a demon, then?”

“You live in New York long enough, you know P.B. He's a courier, carries messages that are too important to be trusted to the post office or a standard messenger. Rumor has it the last person who tried to steal something he was carrying ended up looking like dog food.”

“I'm telling you, Jock, it's bad news. The entire city's twitching over it.” The demon's—P.B.'s—voice carried in the sudden stillness. “And the last thing we need right now, people wondering if any of us can be trusted, after all, feeding into those damned…” He suddenly seemed to realize his voice was too loud for secrecy, and dropped to a lower murmur as they took a table as far away from us as they could get.

“The gossip's spreading,” I said. “You think this is going to work?”

“It has to. I can't think of any other way to get the ki-rin to talk to us, and if it doesn't… Right now the scales are balanced—the fatae don't trust humans and humans aren't trusting the fatae. The assault pushed everything to breaking point. We have to be able to take the tension back down again. Everyone has to have equal liability in the events for there to be equal trust.”

“And if we can't bring it back down? If we can't prove the ki-rin and Talent were equally involved?” I knew the
answer, but I was hoping he'd be able to tell me something different.

“You said it already. Then we could have a very nasty intra-
Cosa
showdown. And nobody will win.”

Yeah. But there was more in his words, or the tone, or something, that caught my attention. “There's something you aren't telling me.”

He was surprised, then tried to pull but…but I was already on the scent. “It's Aden, isn't it? She was…doing something. Feeding someone information? Causing trouble?”

“What do you…” His expression changed, his jaw hardening and then relaxing as he realized I hadn't intentionally gone digging, and he gave up trying to hide anything. “It's taken care of.”

“You tie her up and toss her overboard?”

That got a quick rueful smile that made my toes curl a little inside my shoes. “I wish. No. But it's dealt with.”

“That was where Ian was, the oil he had to pour. To calm the trouble she was stirring up, as usual.”

I wanted to be angry, but what good would it do? Ben knew Aden was trouble. Hell, Ian knew Aden was trouble. But we'd figured out already that he would never act against little sister, so we just had to deal with it. And it sounded like they had, at least for now.

“Is it going to come back and bite us on the ass?”

“Probably. Aden… She's doing what she believes is right. She just…lacks the ability to get perspective.”

I had no idea what he meant by that, but it didn't feel like the right time or place to dig. So we sat there drinking our coffee and talking about nothing—first pets and school
memories—until the old-fashioned white-faced clock on the wall informed us that it was 3:00 a.m., and the waitress came around to close out our tab, since she was going off-shift.

“We're going to feel like hell in the morning,” Venec observed.

“So why are we still sitting here?” Not that I minded, exactly, but he was the one who'd told me, months ago, that he expected us all to get a full night's sleep.

He shrugged. On him it didn't look quite so annoying, more like a complete sentence than an incoherent exasperation. “I haven't been sleeping much, lately.”

My hand found his across the table, and I curled my fingers around his palm. His skin was weirdly chilled, despite the coffee. “Ben… We didn't start this, the violence or the prejudice. It's always been there, in one form or another. We didn't cause it, and we can't solve it, not all of it.” I was beginning to see why Stosser was so exasperated with his partner, sometimes.

“We're just people, boss. We can only do a little bit, here and there. Even all of us together can only do a little bit.”

“I want everything,” he admitted, ruefully, like he was admitting something shameful.

“Yeah, I'm getting that.” Who knew the Big Dog had the heart of a Knight Errant? “But sometimes, all you get is some of it.”

We weren't talking about the case, not entirely. Not anymore. But I'd already given him my speech on that; it was up to him to decide if he could handle it. Better to keep us focused right now.

“You were the one who told me…what did you tell me, Venec?”

He knew what I was talking about. “Carry it on the skin, not the spine.”

“Right. So now I'm going back home to get a few hours of sleep, and I suggest that you do the same. Normal people need sleep before they try to save the world…or even one big-ass city.”

I left him sitting there with the check—he was the boss, he could damn well afford to pick up the cost of two cups of coffee—and went home. Pietr was passed out on the sofa, facedown and snoring. I threw a blanket over him, shucked out of my gear, and crawled up into my loft bed, pretty sure I was going to be asleep before I hit the pillow.

 

I woke up groggy and my head filled with dreams of other people's voices. Venec hadn't gone to bed, after all; he'd been arguing with Stosser—and been annoyed enough that he hadn't kept his walls up. Gah. Thankfully, it was just voices, and not words. As much as having an inside track might be useful, it would probably get me into more trouble than it was worth.

“Hey.”

Unlike me, Pietr stuck around in the morning. I glared at him, well-aware that I'd forgotten to take my eye makeup off last night, and my eyes were a gummy mess.

He didn't flinch, but just waved in the direction of my kitchenette. “I got some coffee.”