Retrievers - Burning Bridges Part 9

Between the window and metal double doors left over from the building's original purpose, a small bronze plaque announced that this was the home of The Didier Gallery.

It had been his dream, during his last year with the Silence, the thing that kept him going, made him save his pennies and make his contacts, putting a longtime love of art and a pa.s.sion for negotiating into a career that had nothing to do with blood, or pain, or danger....

With a sigh that was equal parts disgust and amus.e.m.e.nt at the complications that comprised his life, Sergei unlocked the metal door, and turned off the security system. Even now, with all the tsuris his life contained, the simple act of walking in the door soothed his ragged nerves.

Twelve years to the day, after major renovations and agita, he had turned the sign in the door over to Open.

"Happy birthday, baby, " he said into the cool dark s.p.a.ce.

The s.p.a.ce was split into three portions: the gallery, which included a galley s.p.a.ce connected to the main floor by a spiraling metal staircase, a back office, including his own private s.p.a.ce, and the storage and delivery s.p.a.ces below, connected by an old freight elevator that Wren refused to get into. There were crates in the storage area he needed to go through and double-check against inventory lists, before anything was brought upstairs. Not that he didn't trust his a.s.sistant, Lowell, to have done it properly, but...

It was his name on the door. His name on the authorizations. Most important, his name on the bill of sale.

This was what he loved: not the paperwork but the handling of artwork, finding the perfect place to display it in order to bring the right piece together with the right buyer. Getting the right price to support the artist and encourage him or her to create more, and starting the process all over again. It was a part of him n.o.body else shared, not his immigrant, politically minded parents or his aesthetically pragmatic partner.

The closest he had ever come to a soul mate in this had been Lee, the lonejack artist whose work he had exhibited twice before the man's unfortunate death during the Nescanni situation. The man's death hadn't hit him as hard as it had his partner-he hadn't known Lee nearly as well, and hadn't felt the misplaced guilt that still rode Wren's shoulders over it-but he did miss their conversations. Even before Lee held his first exhibit at the gallery, the lanky lonejack Wren called "Tree-taller" would stop by, and they would spend an hour or so talking about light, shadow, texture, and viewer interpretation of the artistic intent.

Wren, bless her, would have fallen asleep midsentence, even if she'd wanted to be included.

"You need to mingle more, " he told himself. And it was true; he used to go to all the openings, have drinks with the agents, the scene-makers....

"As soon as everything's settled, " he told the gleaming aluminum sculpture that was showcased in the current installation. "As soon as I know there's going to be an art scene to worry about."

Survival before soul.

Security lights made the rest of the installation into indistinct shadows, blue and red. The front lights would stay off until Lowell showed up at nine. Going through the sliding panel door that led to his private office, Sergei touched the small metal bird perched on a narrow pedestal right inside the door. Lee's work-the lonejack had said it was an emu, but Sergei just knew that the quizzical look on the avian face made him smile, even on very bad days.

The gallery itself was designed to showcase the wildly varied types of artwork he sponsored: clean lines and subdued cream walls. His office, on the other hand, was designed around him; his preferences, his indulgences. The desk was huge, a wide flat surface that held both a flat-screen monitor, and enough room to open a paper file and work without b.u.mping elbows into anything. His chair was a tall leather swivel, and there was a matching leather sofa against the far wall, under a striking black-and-white photograph of Manhattan in the 1940s. Everything else was the work of an artist he had promoted, from Lee's metal bird to a handblown gla.s.s sphere that swirled dozens of colors from the same woman who made his front window, to a tall pearlescent raku vase that arched like the neck of a swan, or a lily petal.

He sat down at the desk, feeling the chair creak familiarly under him, and touched the base of the desk lamp, bringing a faint yellow illumination to the office. He had a folder of invoices that needed signing off on, and the layout of a new installation to approve, and a host of other details that only he could deal with. But the light on the "other" answering machine was blinking, and everything Sergei had planned to do got pushed back a bit. Like the bat signal, messages left at that phone number, which went to no phone at all, were given priority.

An hour later, Sergei put down the phone a final time, pulled a sheet out of the fax machine behind him, and put it into the third of three piles, then pushed back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and stared over them, contemplating air.

Three piles: three possibilities. One of them would be their first job of the year, and he tried to begin as he meant them to go on. So. One would pay obscenely well. Really, really, obscenely well. The other two were at the normal going rates, but might be of more interest to Wren, more of a challenge. And right now, keeping her interested and involved-all right, distracted -might be more useful than cash, even hard untraceable get-out-of-town-fast kind of cash.

Not that Wren would be willing to leave town. Her, and P.B., both of them turning into Cosa activists under his disbelieving eye.

And where Wren stayed, he stayed. No matter how doomed he thought it all was, facing down an enemy they could only see iceberg-glimpses of. Not that he would ever tell her that. Not either one of them; not that he would stay, although they knew that, and not that their entire mad, well-meaning alliance was doomed. Although he suspected that they knew that, as well.

Not that they couldn't win; he rather thought that they could. Bigotry couldn't be erased-that was human nature, to fear what was outside your understanding, and to hate what you feared. But you could stop those who acted on their bigotry, and make others consider the cost too high to act on their hatred. And, if you did that often enough, with enough force, it became habit, and habit often became a stand-in for understanding, which would reduce the fear, which in turn would reduce the hate.

Sometimes.

Sergei had been in enough battles to know that you couldn't fight what they were fighting, couldn't fight that kind of all-out war, and then go back to where and what you were, before.

He shook off those thoughts as useless: life was change. The only stillness was in dying, and none of them were ready to be still.

And if they were going to live, then pragmatism and practicality had to be served. The maintenance fees in Wren's apartment building had just hiked up, probably a result of the blast from this summer, or maybe just the general age of the building. Plus, he'd been thinking about expanding his business, maybe using his contact with Shig, the j.a.panese Retriever-fatae they had met over the summer, to establish the gallery's name in an overseas market....

He sighed, pulled himself back to his desk, and touched pile number one, almost a caress, before pushing the well paying bid away. His hand then hovered over the remaining two sheets, coming down gently on the one to the left, purely out of instinct.

Was this how Wren took that job, the one she took without him, without involving him? They had never actually talked about that, whatever it was that had driven her to meet with a potential client herself rather than pa.s.s it along to him, the way they had been doing for the entire length of their partnership, since the very first job. He was the one who researched, who interviewed, who...decidedly did not pick jobs on whim, or turn down better-paying jobs because they seemed boring or...

Sergei bit back another sigh and drew the chosen slip closer toward him, to read it again, just in case there was something in there that he, maybe, might have missed.

"h.e.l.lo, sailors!"

Sergei's head lifted at the sound of his partner's voice coming over the intercom that connected his office to the main desk. They left it in the on position as a safety measure; if someone were to come in and try to rob the gallery, Sergei would be able to call the police without being seen. Normally he could tune out the quiet conversations of customers, and the occasional phones ringing, but Wren's voice caught his attention every time.

"He's in the office."

Lowell, who in every other way was the ultimate of professionalism, hated Wren the way only one cat could hate another, with delicate hissing and slitting of eyes. Wren returned the dislike, fighting back with a breezy obnoxiousness that was designed to irritate him even more.

Sergei fluctuated between being amused, and feeling like a chew toy. He'd let Lowell know, as carefully as he could, that in an out-and-out battle he would side with his partner, not his employee, no matter how valued, and told Wren flat-out that she was not to force the issue, that if Lowell quit, it would make their lives-and their jobs-more difficult. And he monitored their interactions carefully, especially when he wasn't there to quell them in person.

"What are you doing here?"

"Sergei called, wanted me to meet him here."

"He's in back, " was all Lowell said, but his tone clearly conveyed the message "go away, don't break anything, don't scare any of the well-heeled customers, don't touch anything, leave me alone."

Sergei looked at his watch, and winced. No wonder his back ached; he had been hunched over these invoices for three hours.

He had just put the folder off to the side, and tossed the white take-out container holding the remains of his lunch into the trash, when she breezed in through the sliding door.

"It's snowing again, " she announced, as though the white flakes melting on the wool of her ski cap and the shoulders of her black coat didn't offer enough evidence. Her grin was manic; Sergei could relate. At this point, they'd already gotten twice last year's snowfall, and it was only January: there were two more months of winter yet to go. He'd grown up in the Midwest's s...o...b..lt, son of a Russian parent, and he was beginning to think that the weather was a bit overdone, this year.

"I've got the means to take us somewhere warm, " was all he said.

"A job?" She wasn't as hyped as usual, although her face made all the right expressions of attentive interest.

That was the problem; he had seen her becoming more and more obsessed with the situation with the Cosa , more involved with the plight of the fatae, even as she protested that she wasn't a joiner, that she didn't play well with others. He had been there once, himself, when he worked for the Silence. Even when you realize that you can't change the world, once you get caught up in trying, a part of you had to go that last inch of that last mile, just in case that was the bit that made the difference.

He had gotten burned out: the Silence had taken him in, chewed him up, and would have digested him whole if he hadn't escaped. She knew that, although not the entire story, and reminding her of it wouldn't do anything except start a fight neither of them wanted. Instead, he merely waved the folder of the job he'd decided she should take under her nose, as though wafting perfume.

She took it, flipping through his carefully annotated information with her usual casual eye, trusting him to have done all the detail work. Her foray into soliciting jobs had shown that she could do the prep work as well as he did-she just chose not to.

"So, it's what, s.n.a.t.c.h-and-grab?" she said, closing the file and looking up at him. She'd absorb what he said faster and more completely than she would from reading what he'd written.

"Basically. Private citizen this time. Well, semiprivate. A local councilperson has had materials taken from his home safe that he wants returned."

"Ooo. Blackmail worthy?" He could almost see the wheels in her head turning, as though her forehead was made of gla.s.s, sorting and discarding what it would take to make her actually use such material, rather than Retrieve and return it. Then, as he knew she would, she sighed and let those fantasies go.

"I had been a.s.suming the worst, " Sergei admitted. He had a sudden craving for a cup of tea, but that would require getting up and going to the kitchenette in the back of the gallery s.p.a.ce, and he didn't want the tea that badly, to interrupt the briefing. "But no, the guy seems surprisingly decent, for a politician."

"d.a.m.ning with very faint praise."

"Indeed. He was stupid enough to keep copies of things he shouldn't have had, and now someone knows about it-that someone being not unwilling to use the copies, either on our client or the original owner."

"But it is dirt? We're not stealing back something that's going to be used against us, or anything, are we?" He wasn't taking her queries as her not trusting his research skills, but just natural caution after the Nescanni disaster, and her own recent toe-dip into the client-management side of things. They'd been played too many times, lately.

"Oh, it's dirty, " he a.s.sured her. "This guy may be council, not Council-" and Sergei stopped, bemused by how stupid that sounded "-I mean, he's a borough councilperson, not a Cosa Council member, but that doesn't make him lily-white pure and clean."

And that would be enough for her to play with for a little while; figuring the best way to approach this job being the best possible nonlethal distraction from setting up the patrols, or keeping people reminded that they were under truce, or her fallback obsession, that d.a.m.ned horse she pulled out and worried at whenever things weren't moving on other fronts. G.o.d, how he wished he'd never accepted that job for her. The one thing she hadn't been able to settle, one way or another, in her entire career, and he was beginning to think it was sent to haunt them, not its actual owners, for all eternity...

"You're fussing."

"I am not." It was an automatic retort. "I'm being thorough. I was being thorough. Now it's all yours."

He had done everything he needed to do: taken the queries, sorted, evaluated, brokered the deal, done the client background research. That was as far as he could go. Everything going forward required his partner's specialized skills.

Wren didn't seem convinced, but took the materials from him and, sitting down on the sofa, one leg curled under her in her usual pose, began to sort through the information.

Sergei was pretty sure he wasn't fussing. But he would, deep down and quietly, admit to himself that he was a bit...overanxious. And not all of it had to do with his concern for Wren's state of mind. He really didn't want to leave her alone, not now, but there was a trip on his schedule that had been set up almost six months ago, and...

"Sergei." Wren was looking at him, sensing something.

He forced a smile. "I'm okay. Going to go make some tea. You want any?"

"Ugh." She shook her head, and went back to the papers, rea.s.sured.

He slipped out of the office, a quick once-over of the gallery s.p.a.ce rea.s.suring him that everything was running smoothly: Lowell was speaking with a customer who was clearly just killing time, looking at a watercolor that showed a dove overlaid over the Manhattan skyline. It was exquisitely done, but lacked the sense of soul that would have gotten it off the wall and into someone's collection. The artist showed real potential, though, and someone would buy it to say they had something of his, when he hit his stride and the quality work skyrocketed in price.

The kitchenette barely deserved the name, but there was a sink and a mini-fridge, and enough room for his electric kettle and Lowell's four-cup coffeemaker. Running the water until it was cold enough to go into the teakettle, Sergei stared at the tiled backsplash, willing himself to stop thinking. His willpower, however, wasn't up to the level of even a tyro Talent, and his thoughts kept circling around to his own justifications. If he didn't get his head straight, he was going to be no use to anyone.

Why are you pushing her so much?

Because he was trying to prove to himself that he did have a role to play in Wren's life, still. Between her reluctant move into becoming a major Player in the Cosa , even if she hadn't realized it yet, and the fact that she absorbed-like a sponge-almost everything she needed to know about the basics of running a freelance business like theirs, he was painfully aware that she didn't really need him as the "front" anymore. The original need for obscurity, for cutouts between her and the clients, was ironically being reduced as her reputation increased: people might try to kill her, but n.o.body would turn her in or double-cross her.

So?

So...he had to do more. Be more...something. Because going back to "only" being a businessman, no matter how emotionally engrossing he found the art world? That didn't appeal to him.

It was laughable, really. He'd thought, when he left the Silence, that it was all he wanted: an ordinary, commonplace, not life-or-death world. But obviously not, since he kept getting involved in life-and-death things every single d.a.m.ned day. And night. And...

And that led to the real problem, didn't it?

You're a junkie. You've always been a junkie. If it wasn't the Silence, it was the thrill of the Retrieval secondhand through Wren, and now this d.a.m.ned thing with the Council, and the fatae, and every d.a.m.ned magical creature on the entire d.a.m.ned coast, apparently.

"Nothing wrong with the adrenaline kick, every now and again. It's not like I'm jumping out of planes. Exactly."

Sure, and it's better than getting hooked on drugs, better than alcohol, but it's still a jones, your need to meddle and fix and be in the thick of things. You're not even an adrenaline junkie. No: you're a responsibility junkie.

Fine. Accept it, own it, move on. Why is it becoming a problem now?

That was something he had the answer to, already. It hadn't been a real problem, before, because he could focus all of his attention, his need, on Wren. It had been just the two of them, and she needed him as much as he needed her, so it was...what was the phrase? A closed loop.

She wasn't so deeply tied with the Cosa -h.e.l.l, the Cosa wasn't deeply tied with the Cosa - before this, so they hadn't impacted him. Now, however...it wasn't compet.i.tion or jealousy he was feeling. Then what? He touched at it like a sore tooth; probing, testing.

You're not Cosa , no. But you are connected. Through Wren, through the friendships you've made. Lee, yes. But more than that, the fatae he had encountered: P.B., unbelievably, undeniably loyal. Shig, with his desert-dry sense of humor. Rorani, the dryad Wren so adored. Creatures that used to make him uneasy, and now were a.s.sociated with laughter, and companionship.

It wasn't the bond they had first agreed to, Wren and himself. Everything had changed, even beyond the physical aspects of it. He wasn't the man he used to be.

So, who was? You changed, you rolled with the changes.

This is your world now; you need to find where, exactly, you fit in.

And how you can keep that spot, keep her and keep the world you've gotten to want, without everyone around you getting killed.

"Duncan."

"Andre."

It was almost polite, if you didn't listen for the undercurrents. Once, not so long ago, Duncan had been one of several up-and-comers within the Silence's hierarchy, a part of the machine that served their motto: To Defend and Protect Against the World's Darkness. Once, long ago, he and Andre had been-not friends, but coworkers. Comrades.

Now, Andre walked carefully around the man, while Duncan moved in far more rarified circles, answerable only to the full Board of Directors, so far up in the rarified levels that Andre did not know anyone who claimed higher access. Duncan came down from his offices seldom, preferring to move people like chess pieces around him, setting the board to his own satisfaction. Duncan was cold, methodical; d.a.m.ned good at his job and covertly hungry for more, even as he ama.s.sed more power than anyone was comfortable speculating about. It was purely Andre's imagination that the faintest whiff of sulfur and smoke followed the other man whenever he appeared. Probably.

There was no one above Duncan you could go to for a.s.sistance. You could only work with him...or fall by the wayside.

The hallway bustled with activity, the daily hum of the Silence: at any given moment teams were being sent out to deal with situations, and each team had its own support system to back them up with information and resources.

Ideally, that was. In recent days, the information had been faulty, and the resources scarce. At least, for Andre's teams.

Duncan was the director of Research & Dissemination. Information came from him. Information-the lifeblood of the Silence-being choked off by Duncan's hand on the controls.

Andre needed to know why. But he needed to be careful. The hand on the controls could oh so very easily become a hand around his neck.

The memory of Sergei's face guided him. His former protege, his former right-hand man. The Silence had played him, used him. They would use him again, if the need arose. That was the way the game was played.

But Andre had been a game-runner for too long to let himself be pa.s.sively played in turn, even by such a master as Duncan had proven to be.

"Might you have a moment?"

Duncan turned to one of his underlings, an intense-eyed young woman with exquisite bone structure and the warily coiled presence of a cobra. "Melissa, please take everyone on up to the room and start the meeting. I'll join you later."

"Of course, " Melissa said, not even glancing at Andre and yet managing to project resentment at this outsider who was taking her boss away from this meeting.

Cadre, Andre thought. Duncan had gone beyond team, and created a cadre.

"Now, " Duncan said, his narrow, aesthetic-looking face more at home over a ca.s.sock than a two-thousand-dollar suit. "What can I do for you?"

This would have been better done behind closed doors. He was not being given that courtesy. Fine. Andre was not without skill of his own, and one of the sharpest had always been to know when to go for the jugular.

"I want in. Whatever it takes to get my people what they need to get the job done, I'll do it."

Only the slightest twitch of the corner of one eye gave it away, but Andre felt a deeply hidden flicker of satisfaction at the tell. He had succeeded in the impossible. He had surprised Duncan. Now all he had to do was stay alive long enough to use that fact.