Retrievers - Burning Bridges Part 18

"Even with that-" Beyl tried to pick up where the argument had been interrupted "-we still need to establish some sort of public face...."

They didn't say anything to each other the rest of the meeting, sitting side by side with the distance growing between them with every word they didn't say. Finally, as the afternoon wore into evening, she felt a touch on the back of her hand, under the table. She didn't look at him, didn't react, but slowly turned her hand over, so that his fingers rested across her palm. And there it rested, until Bart finally decided that further discussions were just going to send them shrieking into corners, at this point. "Get some sleep, we'll come back tomorrow."

Wren wasn't going back tomorrow. At this point, they didn't need her, they needed Henry Kissinger. On steroids.

They picked up their coats from the sofa where they had been piled, and left the building together, still not speaking to each other directly. Colleen had offered to Translocate them home, but they both had declined, not particularly gracefully. Wren threw up no matter who was doing the Transloc, never a pleasant experience, and once a day was once more than she really wanted to subject herself to. She'd rather brave the weather, the ma.s.s transit, and the inevitable damage both were going to do to her shoes.

Finally, after a few minutes of walking through the slushy streets, Sergei broke the silence. "For those of us who came in late, how go the desperate measures, really?" His words were flippant, but his tone wasn't. "Because I got the feeling that the conversation was way too polite, once I got there."

"Badly, " she said, not denying his observation. "The Council's still at the table, you saw that, they're taking part in the Truce, technically...but they're not listening. It's totally for show, although I can't convince Rick or Susan of that."

"Bart, on the other hand, is convinced everyone's lying to him, " Sergei said wryly.

"You know our boy. And Beyl and Michaela are both trying to hold on to hope, outwardly, but it's uphill both ways in the snow. Literally. Is it ever going to stop snowing?"

Sergei had his arm around her, less for support, although the streets were difficult to walk on, and more as though to rea.s.sure himself that she was there, that she wasn't about to slip away into the soft curtain of white around them. If she was smart, she'd do just that.

She didn't.

The subway was a block away, but a bus was coming up to the corner as they approached, and Sergei tugged her into line, coming up with a metro card before she had a chance to reach into her pockets. And he said that she was the magician?

The bus was crowded, so he found a handhold to grab on to, and she stayed next to him, this time actually needing the support.

"So what did Andre really have to say?" The question had to be broached, even though she was leery of going anywhere near anything even remotely personal, and this took a whopping big step there.

"When we get home." And that was all he said. She took her cue, leaning against his side as they rode the bus, halting and jerking into motion again with each stop, the snow coating the windows outside and the moisture from people's breath gathering on the windows inside, until it seemed as though they were riding through blackness with no landmarks to tell them when or where.

But the gift of a regular bus rider-something Wren was, if not her partner-was an inner knowledge of when your stop was coming up. So two streets before, she came alert, and began easing their way through the crowd of evening rush hour commuters to get to the rear exit in time.

They were still two blocks from her apartment, but the snow was light enough now to see through, and the streetlights had come on. For a moment Wren could forget how thoroughly tired she was of winter, and look at the white-and-black shadows without seeing, like an afterimage, the ghastly splash of angel's blood dripping onto it.

The apartment was quiet, except for the hum of the heat rising through the ancient radiators. There was no traffic on the street below, and the sounds from the avenue a block over were m.u.f.fled. Wren walked in the door and, for the first time in months, felt the once-familiar soothing presence of her home drape itself over her.

"It worked, " she said in tired satisfaction.

"Huh?" Sergei stopped midway through unwinding the dark blue scarf from his neck, and looked at her.

"Last night, I remembered a cantrip Neezer used to do, before exams. He'd cast it over the cla.s.sroom, so everyone would come in and stop stressing so much and just remember the stuff they'd been studying."

"Isn't that cheating?" He had never met her mentor, but the man's innate honesty was one of the few things that had stood between a perfect student-mentor relationship, according to Wren.

"Nah. If they had cast it, or if it had actually done anything to their memory, or heightened their smarts...all it did was relax them, like incense only without the smell or smoke."

"And you did that here."

"A version of it, yeah. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier."

Pointing out that she'd been under a considerable amount of stress lately, which was inevitably s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with her logical thought processes, was probably not the wisest thing he could say, so Sergei didn't say anything. Love didn't have to make you stupid, although you apparently couldn't prove it by either of them.

"Wren."

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

She blinked at him, and exhaled. "I know." It might have been the cantrip she cast, that made the muscles between his shoulder blades suddenly relax, but he didn't think so. She took her coat off, and held out a hand for his. "You hungry?"

"Sure." She put both coats away in the closet, and he leaned against the hallway wall, watching her. "You back on the Noodles kick now?"

She gave him a grin that suddenly made him nervous. "I got food in the fridge."

He mimed falling over dead from the shock, and she laughed. "Yeah, I know. P.B. got fed up and did an online grocery store order thing for me. So now I have no excuse-and he gets to pick out what he thinks I should eat."

"G.o.d save us all."

"Yeah. But there's chicken in there, and fresh vegetables, and Christ knows what else..."

That was all the excuse he needed. Shoving her gently into the chair, Sergei opened the fridge in her tiny kitchen and set to work.

"So. Andre, " she promoted.

"Called me."

"I got that part."

Sergei rinsed the chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s and patted them dry with paper towels, aware that he was using delaying tactics. He was also aware that he had no reason to be annoyed: Wren had, in his absence, gone directly to a potentially useful source. She hadn't bypa.s.sed him, merely not waited. Except she had gone to a source that she had made-delete that. That he had chosen to give up, to show his allegiance and support for her, for her side of things, her safety and well-being.

And to maintain that well-being, of her and her side of things, she used Andre. Isn't that what you've always done? All to support and protect and maintain her, and the partnership? So why are you so bent out of shape?

Because he had been the one to walk away from her. And she let him come back...because he came with information. If he hadn't...would that door have been opened as easily?

He had always a.s.sumed that he would be the senior partner, the one with the contacts, the information, the upper hand, even with her skill set. Even once their partnership evened out, he felt, somehow, that she would always look to him, always need him.

Instead, she was growing away from him. Refusing him. And that stung. Ego, and emotions, and everything in between.

He set the chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s on the cutting board, still not answering her. He wasn't delaying, he was processing. Logic, for him, was the great mellower. He couldn't stay angry, even at himself, once the flaws in his logic had been driven home and dealt with.

"Andre says, as I reported, that he has no information about the attack. And that he will put Darcy on the job." He paused, taking down a knife from the board and testing the sharpness against the chicken flesh. Satisfied, he started to slice the breast into pan-ready fillets. "Darcy's his researcher, which is sort of like saying you're a decent housebreaker. If there's any information anywhere in the Silence about the angel's death, and who might have had a hand in it, she'll find out."

He could see Wren processing that, and could almost see the connection being made between the existence of Darcy and his seemingly inexhaustible storehouse of knowledge. He regretted, in a small, petty way, giving up that secret, but only for an instant. She still didn't know all his magic tricks.

"Do you think..."

"That the Silence had anything to do with it? That they were the ones who broke the Truce?" He didn't stop with the knife work. "It's possible. You followed the same logic trail: who knew about the Cosa ? Thanks to me-" and his bitterness seeped through the words, despite his best effort "-they do. Would they profit from the Cosa being fractured?" He shook his head. "I can't see how, or why. It would make no sense. Even with the infighting that's going on now, they're the good guys, Zhenchenka. High-handed, yeah, and arrogant and know-it-all beyond belief, but the entire reason for their existence is to protect the innocent, the helpless. To fix wrongs, not create them." He had spent almost as long with them as working with her. He spoke with solid authority on that aspect.

"And you don't think an organization like that can be...what's the word I'm looking for? Subsomething-or-other."

"Subverted?"

"Yeah."

He'd had cause to wonder, in his last days, when the burnout and exhaustion almost killed him. "I think it would be highly unlikely. It's easy to corrupt one man, one individual. It's almost as easy-maybe easier-to corrupt a small governing board, like the Council. A bureaucracy? Not impossible. But d.a.m.ned difficult. And a bureaucracy with as much power in different levels, as many checks and balances as the Silence tends to have, with each department operating on their own?"

"Uh-huh." Wren had that Tone in her voice, the one he suspected her mother had used on her a lot. "The words are good ones. But you're not resounding with the ring of certainty there, partner."

She was right, and he hated it.

"There's only one way it could happen. If Duncan made it happen."

"Duncan?"

He had never mentioned Duncan to her? Of course not. You didn't even mention Duncan to yourself. "The Power that Be, near the top of the food chain. And I mean the very, very top. This is a guy who makes the Council's Madame Howe look like a schoolgirl."

Sergei wasn't kidding. He wasn't even exaggerating in the slightest. Duncan was legend in the Silence, in a community that didn't believe in legends or myths or anything else that couldn't be dealt with by a practical application of know-how, elbow grease, cash, and weaponry as needed.

The steel weight of the knife in his hand felt solid and flimsy at the same time, compared to the rea.s.suring ma.s.s of a pistol, and he could almost hear his palm ask for the blued steel weight against it. A knife would be enough, with his training. But it didn't have the distance, didn't have the range of his pistol, tucked into the safe in his apartment, halfway across town.

I would die to protect you, he told her silently as he sliced the chicken. But I'm no use to you if you won't let me in. If you don't trust me.

Honesty forced him to add: And I'm no use to you after I'm dead, either. And if Duncan is involved...I will be dead. The moment he determines that it's needful.

He couldn't linger on that. Any one of them, all of them, might be dead tomorrow, anyway. All he said out loud was "Did P.B. happen to order any fresh garlic?"

Sixteen.

Having someone make dinner for you didn't quite wipe the slate clean of all the gone-befores. But it did make you more charitably inclined toward them. Wren's stomach let out a distinctly ungraceful noise, and she giggled into her pillow.

"You're such a delicate creature, " Sergei said, heavy on the irony.

She turned her face to the side in order to speak. "I never claimed to be delicate. Or demure. Or any of the words that describe women who don't eat, or at least don't have audible digestive systems. Besides, mister, I seem to remember someone emitting a stench that could send skunks into raptures not so many months ago, after indulging in a huuuge d.a.m.n plate of ziti alfredo I warned you about."

It was silly, but silly was what she needed, right now.

Sergei clearly felt the same way. "Hey. The honeymoon phase is now officially over, if we're making fun of each other's bodily functions."

"You started it! Anyway, I've never been much for pretending they don't exist. Seems silly."

In addition to the forgiveness thing, there was something about having someone else cook a meal that just guaranteed she'd end up in bed. Not that Sergei had to worry on that account, mostly; she was pretty willing to drag him off-or be dragged off-on the slightest pretext, these days. And it was only just s.e.x-good s.e.x, fabulous s.e.x, but no current use-abuse-no anything she had to feel guilty about. Feel-good s.e.x, physically and mentally.

If she could, she would have stayed there, physically and emotionally, the rest of her life; or at least a month. But there was still work to deal with. The plus was that now they could do it naked and post-coital sweaty, too.

The dark green-and-gold quilt was thrown over them, in addition to a blanket she had pulled out of storage when winter started; it had gotten kicked to the bottom of the bed at one point, but she had reached down to pull it back once the sweat started to cool. The room was filled with night-shadows, but they had an odd sheen to them, as though dawn was trying to seep through the walls, and the blackout curtain in the window. "Time's it?" she asked.

Sergei twisted to look at the clock on her nightstand, and she ran one cold finger along the exposed length of torso as he did so, just to see his skin shudder under her touch.

"Three-thirty. d.a.m.n it, woman, you have the fingers of a corpse. Give me those and let me warm them up before you touch me again."

He grabbed her fingers and held them under his chin, folding them in his larger hands. "How can someone with so much current be so cold?"

"Dunno. n.o.body's ever done a study of the effects of current on circulatory systems. I don't think they have, anyway. n.o.body asked me to partic.i.p.ate, if they did."

It was too early to even think about getting up, too late to expect much in the way of sleep. Wren was trying to remember if she had any of that high-test coffee still in the freezer, the stuff that made her hair curl.

"You guys should have your own wing at St. Vincent's, " Sergei said. "And a research facility at..."

"You think we don't?"

That gave him pause for about half a second. "No, because if you did, it would be funded with Council money, and none of you would trust it enough to go there, anyway."

That made her laugh, mainly because it was true.

"I wish you did have doctors, though. You don't, do you?"

"Not many." She let her hands rest under his, enjoying the contact as much as the warmth, lying there in the late-night darkness of her bedroom. They were talking now. That was good. "You can survive the training, maybe, but working in a hospital...too much stress, too many things that can go pfffft, too many people going to get hurt when the wrong thing goes pffft. So Talent with the healing itch tend to go for traditional healer routes and nontraditional certification. Mostly, we self-heal, best we can-" he had seen her do that, with minor external injuries, and she'd tried it a time or three on others with worse damage inside, with mixed results. "-and there are only a couple-five doctors I know of, total, who're familiar with the stuffing of your average lonejack enough not to be freaked by it."

"Is it that dissimilar?"

Wren felt the comfort level shift, tense up. He knew that they could handle levels of electricity that would kill a Null, knew it firsthand, but she'd never given him the details. Never saw the need, before. Enough that he knew he didn't have it. Not that those particular facts seem to stick with him. He was treading dangerous ground, here; she wondered if he knew it.

She hesitated, thinking about moving the conversation onto another topic, then answered him. "According to Bonnie, our internal organs are lined with something that insulates us. It's icky and mucus-y and I really don't like to think about it, thanks. Evolutionary whatchamacallit, keeps us from dying before we can reproduce."

"Nice." He bent forward to kiss the top of her head. "Pity it can't be harvested and sold..." He stopped, clearly considering the actual probable market for such a thing, and they both shuddered at the same moment. "Right. Forget I ever thought of that."

"Totally forgotten."

"Anyway-" and she stretched out along his body intending to make him lose track of what she was saying "-I'm less worried about my medical situation and more worried about yours. Thought about it a lot, while you were out of town."

"Did you now." He was totally focused on her words. d.a.m.n. So much for distracting tactics. But it had to be said, before she lost the nerve.

"Yeah." She rolled onto her side, facing him, but hiding her face under her hair, which was a bad combination of winter-dry and sweat-damp. He brushed it away to see her face. She let him, which would have been a warning sign, if he'd been paying attention to the right things. Wren never let him fuss with her hair like that unless she was either injured, or trying to avoid a fight.

He was going to expect her to bring up the current-s.e.x. Which is why she wasn't going to.

"This...don't take this the wrong way, which you're going to, because I know you, but angels are tough to kill and someone's managed it twice already, and that Kirin, did you hear about the Kirin? They didn't even take the horn, just left it there to decay. Abandoned a thousand-dollar profit because they didn't know, or didn't care, or were making a point...and I want you to get out of town. Take another business trip. Visit your relatives. Something. Just until..." She didn't know until what. The storm was building, and she didn't want him here when it broke.

He was clearly taken aback. "It's all been fatae, Wren. No humans. Not even Talents. Not in singled-out attacks like that."

She went still in his arms. "That's going to change."

"You know that for a fact?" He wasn't doubting her, just questioning the certainty of her tone.

"If you ever trusted my instincts, Sergei. If ever you trusted me, now's the time. Yes, it's going to change. And I don't want you anywhere near their sights. It's not enough that my mom be out of range, I-"