Burning Bridges

She waved her hands as though swatting flies away, then reached up and started undoing the pins holding her hair in a tight knot. She had cut a good six inches off, so it barely reached her shoulders, and her old French braid didn’t do the job anymore. “Yeah, yeah, I’m the best, that’s what he was paying for. Flattery will get you everywhere, but I’m still angry.” She wasn’t, exactly. But she had Right on her side in this argument, and wasn’t about to let it go. “You can start making it up to me by taking me out to dinner.”

He coughed, then shook his head. “Some other time, fine. Right now, you need to go take a shower and get ready.”

“What?” She looked at him, her righteousness overtaken by befuddlement.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, and didn’t look at her. “It’s Tuesday. Tuesday night?”

Wren had to backtrack a bit, then shook her head, coming up blank. Her head was still filled with the specifics of the Retrieval. “What?”

He didn’t even bother sighing, a decade of experience with her having trained him to lower standards. “You ran late on this job. We’re supposed to be uptown at the Cosa meeting in—” he checked his watch “—ninety minutes.”

Wren blinked, then made an explosive gesture with both of her hands. That damned meeting!

“We can always cancel…”

Wren didn’t even bother responding to that as she ran back to the bathroom, shedding the remains of her once-sleek black working slicks in the hallway as she went. There had been a time when she’d had weeks off between gigs. Time to hit the gym, go shopping, hang out, sleep in…

“Get me something to wear!” she shouted back over her shoulder, even as she was turning the shower on. “And more coffee! I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

She didn’t wait for the water to run to her usual heating standards before she was soaping up her hair, muttering to herself. This meeting had been scheduled two weeks ago; circled in red, for God’s sake, on the calendar in her office. And she still managed to forget about it, totally out of her head like it never existed. That wasn’t like her. Not at all.

This job had come on the heels of another one, a museum snatch-and-grab, and if she hadn’t been so twitchy from the dry spell of the summer, she would have had Sergei turn it down. Her preference was to take downtime between jobs, recover and rest. But being blacklisted by the Mage Council last year had made her aware of how fine the line between “comfort” and “concern” was, financially. And in the crush of all that, she’d forgotten—clean-wiped it off her slate—that she had other obligations.

Stupid meeting. Stupid, essential meeting.

She heard the door open and close, the steam in the bathroom cooling slightly. The click of ceramic on tile was Sergei placing the mug of coffee on the counter; the swish of fabric was him taking the towel off the towel bar, and the silence that followed was him standing there, towel in hand, waiting for her to finish up and get out.

She tilted her head back into the hot water one last time, even though the soap was totally rinsed by now, and let her skin soak up a little more warmth before reaching down to turn off the flow.

“Dry first, then coffee,” Sergei said, his hand reaching around the shower curtain to give her the towel.

She took it, not even bothering to growl. So long as the coffee was waiting for her, she’d be okay.

Truth was, she’d wanted to forget about this other obligation. She’d wanted it to not exist. She had wanted the entire scenario—Mage Council, her fellow lonejacks, the fatae, hate groups, political backstabbing, murders and suspected murders—to all disappear into a bad dream, so that she was just Wren Valere, thief-for-hire and girl-about-town. She had wanted time to actually sit down and figure out where her relationship with her partner was going, now that they’d added sex to the list of options. She’d wanted time to sit at a coffee shop, drink way too much café americano, and gossip about nothing more important or dangerous than rent or fare increases or what fatae breed was pissing off what other fatae breed this week.

What she wanted, and what she was getting these days, had a really annoying gap between them. There had to be somewhere to lodge a complaint….

“Valere.” Sergei didn’t quite tap his watch, but the implication was clear in his voice. Ninety minutes included travel time from her apartment in the Village up to the meeting site in midtown, and with their luck, every minute she lingered was another minute the trains would probably be delayed.

“Yeah, yeah.” She wrapped the towel around her and went into the bedroom to get dressed.

The trains behaved, for once, and they actually made it to the designated meeting place before anyone else except Michaela. The lonejack representative had picked the short straw and had to attend this meeting, while the other three were off doing God knew what. Four representatives—three original and a replacement for the late, unlamented turncoat Stephanie—for the four sections of lonejack life in the Metro NY area: city-dwellers, NJ/NY/PA commuters, Connecticut, and the gypsy population, the lonejacks who didn’t have a fixed address. Wren had never realized that there were enough gypsies to warrant their own representative, before all of this, but the general disdain for authority that made a Talent become a lonejack seemed to extend to paying rent and taxes, too. Reportedly, there was a family that lived out of a huge-ass, stripped-down RV, using the rubber wheels as insulation from the kids’ occasionally misdirected current. Wren still wasn’t going to believe that until she saw it, but she didn’t doubt the probability of it, now.

Michaela was the gypsy’s representative, but today she spoke for the entire lonejack community. She was seated in a chair off in one corner, clearly meditating when they came in. Wren and Sergei took their place at the table without disturbing her.

Wren sat down gingerly in her chair, trying to determine if she could sit all the way back and still have her feet touch the floor. She couldn’t. As usual, she had the choice to either be comfortable, or feel like a ten-year-old swinging her legs under the table.

All right, so five-foot-nothing was short, even for women, but it annoyed her nonetheless. She wasn’t about to get on her hands and knees in order to see if the chair’s height could be adjusted, though. With her luck, she’d be halfway under the table the moment the others walked in, and that was no way to create a serious impression.

Instead she continued the discussion they had begun on the ride up from her apartment. “The real problem is there are too many civilians in the City.”

Sergei Didier leaned back in his own chair and raised one extremely well-manicured eyebrow in a move his partner had been trying to achieve for years. “And by civilians you mean…?”

“Humans. Non-Talents. All right, yeah, Nulls. Okay?” Wren tapped her fingers on the table in front of her in irritation. “Something’s going to blow, and it’s going to blow soon, and there are too many…God, what’s the term…?”

“Incidental casualties. Collateral.”

“Right.” Wren tried again to get comfortable, then gave up and pushed away from the table a little so that she could slump. It didn’t look professional, but it hurt her calves a lot less. She looked around the room—gray flannel wallpaper and subdued lighting—and then stared down at her booted toes, wondering if she shouldn’t have worn something dressier than slacks and a sweater. Even if the weather outside was threatening to turn ugly with more snow. No. Nowhere in any of the small print did it say that she had to wear a skirt. Or, God help her, a suit. Sergei had picked this out for her, and he was way more of a stickler for appropriate clothing, so she was okay. Or maybe he just knew they didn’t have time for a fight over pantyhose. Not that she actually owned any.

“Not to mention,” she went on a little bitterly, “several thousand fatae who, for whatever reason of stupidity have no idea what’s going on.”

“I thought the Quad was taking care of that?” he said, clearly taken aback by that intelligence. “Wasn’t that the entire idea, that they would pass word along, whatever was happening, whenever?”

Since her hair was, for once, actually coiled neatly at the back of her head and gelled into submission, she settled for slapping the table one last time, rather than running her fingers through her hair, then looked up at her companion. Sergei looked every inch the well-heeled businessperson: expensive white button-down shirt tucked into dark gray wool slacks, a just-ever-so-slightly-artsy tie knotted under his collar, and his hair trimmed back in a fashionable cut that had obviously been rumpled more than once by an exasperated hand raking through it, but still looked good. Clearly, his hair product was better than hers.

She snorted at Sergei’s comment. Now and again she forgot how little he knew about that side of her life. “What, you think humans have the lock on Don’t Know, Don’t Care? Half of the fatae are convinced it’s a human plot, anyway, and the Quad’s just a tool being used to herd them to their doom, etc. etc. grassy knoll, bleat bleat bleat.”

The Quad were the four fatae—nonhuman—representatives for the area, each with their own constituency to match the four lonejack leaders. Wags within the Cosa quickly started using “the Double-Quad” when referring to both sets of leaders—and it was just as often “that damned Double-Quad.”

Wren still marveled not only that the fatae had managed to elect leaders without too much obvious politicking among the hundreds of breeds, but that in the months since, nobody had—to the best of her knowledge—tried to change horses midstream. They were trusting their chosen leaders.

Trust. What a simple word, Wren thought, not for the first time. What a deceptively simple, shrapnel-laden word it was. And how little of it there was to go around, even on a good day.

There hadn’t been many good days in Manhattan, lately.

In the past year, factions had formed, gotten paranoid, and turned against each other; all fueled, as far as anyone could tell, by the double-edged sword of antifatae thugs killing anything even vaguely nonhuman, and the Mage Council trying to strong-arm lonejacks, unaffiliates, into joining their lockstep union. It had all gotten too bloody to allow. Hence, the Quad, and the Double-Quad. And hence, this meeting, where all sides were going to put cards on table, eggs in basket, pick your cliché.

“Okay, good point,” he allowed. “So what do we do about it?”

Wren slumped even further. “I haven’t a goddamned clue. All depends on what happens here.”

“Here” was a rented conference room, complete with a huge fake mahogany table, a whiteboard, pads of paper and pens, and a sideboard filled with pastries and large urns of coffee. All the teleconferencing materials typical to such rooms had been removed prior to the meeting time. Wren approved whoever had thought of that, and then wondered uneasily if that was supposed to have been her job. Nobody had ever been able to tell her exactly what she was supposed to be doing as the so-called lonejack advisor, other than “observing and advising” the lonejack leaders.

They had wanted her to be one of the leaders, back when this all started. Only the fact that she had become a Retriever, partially because people consistently and completely overlooked her, had saved her from that fate: tough to follow a leader nobody could remember seeing!

She had never been so damn grateful for that particular quirk of Talent and genetics before.

Michaela finished her meditation, and quietly moved her chair back to the table, looking over last-minute notes and pretending not to hear anything Sergei and Wren were saying to each other. The lonejack representative was dressed in her usual posthippie, protogypsy style, only now the skirt and soft, flowing top were made of a thick, nubby, warm-looking material, rather than the silks and gauzes she favored in the summer, and her feet were encased in practical boots. She should have looked ridiculous, sitting in that corporate setting. Instead, she looked cool, confident, and powerful. All of which she was, and then some. Bart, Rick, and Susan, the other three members, were all strong Talent, and with other skills that made them the right choice to speak for their respective areas, but Michaela could outpower them, on sheer current.

She also kept her temper better than any of them, which was the true reason she was in the room today, and they weren’t. There was no such thing as a fair straw-pull among Talent.

“I mean it, Sergei,” Wren went on. “Things are way too tense right now. Everyone’s walking cross-eyed and pigeon-toed from trying to predict the next move.”

Manhattan was a huge city, even if it didn’t technically qualify as more than a borough. It was also a very small island, especially when filled with paranoid paranormals.

Sergei had nothing to say in response to her words, and so they sat in silence while his outrageously expensive gold watch ticked off another minute, then another, and the door to the conference room opened to allow two more humans to walk in.

“Ayexi. Jordan.” Wren rose to meet them. Sergei stayed seated until she kicked him in the shins, at which point he rose, but remained silent.

“Valere.” The dark-haired, middle-aged man named Jordan didn’t seem happy to see her, but the other, a slight, almost frail-looking man in his eighties, came forward with a delighted smile on his face. “My dear, my dear. Ah, you look so well. John would be so proud of you.”

“Neezer would kick my ass for getting conned into this,” Wren retorted, kissing both offered cheeks, European-style, and receiving the same in turn from the elderly Talent. “And you. Gone all Council. The shame!”

Ayexi had been her mentor John Ebeneezer’s mentor more than four decades earlier. Lines of mentoring were the closest thing Talents had to a family tree, and although she had not seen Ayexi since she was a teenager, and then only infrequently, the bonds remained strong.

“What can I say? The body grows old and weak. The health-care benefits begin to appeal.”

“They bought you, you mean.”

“And paid very well for the privilege, I assure you.” His gray eyes twinkled, and Wren shook her head.

It was impossible to be angry at Ayexi. He simply deflected negative energy, and returned only good humor. It was probably the only reason he was still alive, considering the trouble he used to get into. Neezer used to say that the mischief gene had clearly skipped a generation, as he—the middle generation—was so well-behaved.

Neezer was also the only one who had wizzed, who had been overwhelmed by his current and driven mad by it. Someday, when she actually had some downtime, she might do a little research into that fact. Or not.

“Ayexi, my partner, Sergei Didier.”

For all that Sergei had partnered with her for more than a decade now, he still didn’t know most of the major players, not even on their own team. Hell, being honest, Wren didn’t know most of them, either. Just the ones she had used, or had used her at some point.

Introductions made, the two men sized each other up and down, and she could practically see both of them file the other under “ally, for now.” About as much as anyone could hope for, these days.

The two Council members nodded with significantly less enthusiasm at the lonejack representative also seated at the table. Ayexi was there to support Jordan, the same way Wren was there to support Michaela. Sergei was there because nobody had said a Null couldn’t attend, and ever since the Council had accepted him as her proxy for a meeting during that damned Frants job, everyone pretty much took the two of them as one player. She wasn’t complaining: since she had gotten involved in Cosa politics, getting attacked by a slavering hellhound intent on protecting his master’s property seemed like small change, danger-wise. Sergei was a good man to have at her back. Or at her front…

She shoved those thoughts down as being totally inappropriate and distracting, but a faint smile twitched her lips upward, anyway.

“Who are we waiting for?” Jordan had taken a seat on the opposite side of the table, resting his hands palm flat on the table. His fingers matched the rest of him: squared-off and well-manicured. Ayexi, by contrast, was disorganization personified: his hair looked like current had run through it and his clothes as though he had just come from an assignation, with the tails of his shirt not quite tucked into gray wool slacks, and his leather shoes scuffed around the toes.

“The fatae representative. I don’t know who they are sending.” She had hopes, though. If only it weren’t winter, Rorani would be awake and the obvious choice. But in winter she was dormant, and even if they could coax her from her tree, the dryad would be too groggy to handle negotiations.

The door opened again, and a young female human held it open for the newcomer. “Good afternoon, gentlemen, mademoiselle,” the fatae entering said, nodding to them all inclusively.

Wren let out a sigh of relief. “Good afternoon, Beyl.”

There was a God, and he did listen to prayers. Wren took her seat next to Sergei, allowing Beyl’s assistant—a gray-skinned, flat-eared gnome—to clear a space for the griffin to crouch at the table.

Griffins were born negotiators—the breed was herd-based, so they thought in terms of group benefits, but they were also meat-eaters, so they had a predator’s instinct. And Beyl had led her herd for longer than Wren could remember, so she knew how to face down challenges.

Plus, her claws and hooked beak kept opponents wary and a little nervous. Making a Council member nervous was never a bad thing, in Wren’s book. Even if they were all supposed to be on the same side, right now. Or coming to the same side, which was what this meeting was all about.

Wren closed her eyes for a moment as the greetings and seatings went on, feeling a headache threatening. It was the kind her mother used to complain about on really bad days, the kind with the little man with a sledgehammer standing on the bridge of her nose.

Oh yes, she told the little man, this was going to be so very, very ugly. The Council had tried to intimidate lonejacks into Council-approved behavior, the fatae were skittish around all humans, and lonejacks never behaved well under stress, ever.

And you have nobody to blame but yourself for being stuck in the middle of it all. She could have walked away. She could have said no when the lonejacks had asked her—cornered her—to help represent them. She could have said no when the fatae asked her to bring the Talents to discussion. She absolutely should have said no when the Council started to make inclusionary noises.

She seemed incapable, these days, of saying no. Not to jobs, not to personal appeals, not to anything. She was going to have to have a word with herself about that at some point, when she had another one of those near-mythical spare moments.

Michaela went straight to the chase, while Beyl was still getting her tail set in the chair. “Thank you for agreeing to meet here today, gentles. Here’s the deal—we’ve been faced for almost a year now with the reality that there is a strong, scary group out there, going after supernaturals. We’ve been calling them vigilantes, after their own advertisement, but in truth they are nothing but bigots with baseball bats. And while they’re confining the bulk of their bloody activities to the fatae at this moment, the assault on the All-Moot last month is a strong indication that any member of the Cosa Nostradamus will be considered fair game to them.”

There were nods of agreement all around the table. Council members had given the All-Moot—the Cosa’s version of a town hall meeting—a pass, but even they knew what had happened; someone had given word to the vigilantes that there would be a gathering of fatae that night, and they hadn’t bothered to pull their blows when a human lonejack got in the way. Part of the reason the Council had come to the table now was a desire not to be blamed for that disaster by the rest of the Cosa. The other part had to do with more internal politics: the head of the Council was trying to protect her own ass in the wake of some less-than-stellar behavior on her part, and she couldn’t afford to have enemies on the outside of the Council, as well.

“In short,” Michaela went on, “if we don’t stop chewing on each other’s tails, they’re going to have us all by the throat. So it stops. Here. Now. At this table.”

A little blunt, but Wren couldn’t argue with the approach. If you’re going to hit them over the head with an ax, might as well get it over and done with in the first stroke, right?

Bad analogy—the little man with the sledgehammer took another whack, and she tried not to wince too obviously, for fear of being seen and misunderstood by others at the table.

“As the individuals most directly menaced by these humans,” Beyl said, her beak creating an oddly clipped, almost British colonial-sounding accent, “the fatae have come to the table willingly, looking to create an alliance which will—”

“Save your feathered posteriors.”

“Protect us all,” Beyl said, ignoring the Council snark. Ayexi looked as though he was kicking Jordan under the table, were he so ill-bred as to do such a thing.

“Indeed,” Michaela said, as though Jordan hadn’t spoken. “And we thank our cousins within the Cosa, both for their aid in recent days, during the All-Moot and the days since then, and for their assistance in years past.” A reminder to lonejacks and Council alike, that the fatae had been there for humans before in days of war and danger, here and in other continents, other times.

“The Council has officially gone on record as being dismayed and disgusted by the attacks on our fatae cousins,” Jordan said. “And we have agreed to call a cessation in recent developments, in light of this external threat.”

The general mental snort at that particular word-weaseling was audible to everyone, and Jordan went on quickly, as though to drown it out with his words. “However, we have yet to see any reason to believe that this is more than the actions of some confused, if hostile Nulls, acting against individuals they see as being dangerous.”

“The Omaa-nih are dangerous?” Beyl sounded as angry as Wren had ever heard the fatae. “Startling-looking, yes—” the four-legged ’nih had almost-but-not-quite-human faces, which tended to freak Nulls out, if and when they noticed “—but peaceable to a fault. They eat grain, do not use weapons, and yet three of them alone have been killed in the past year!”

“To us, no,” Jordan said, shaking his head in a manner that Wren supposed was meant to convey some kind of deep, paternal sadness and, well, didn’t. “To a Null who sees nothing other than—forgive me, honored representative—a speaking beast? Especially a Null who, for whatever reason, has let their sense of wonder lapse? Indeed, then dangerous an Omaa-nih is.”

Wren never wanted to agree with Jordan on anything, but the bastard was right. The Omaa-nih were the size and shape, mostly, of elk, and most humans didn’t want their reindeer to talk, no matter how popular Rudolph and the rest of Santa’s crew might be this time of year. Jordan was also missing—intentionally, she suspected—the point. She tapped her finger on the table, catching Michaela’s gaze.

“The vigilantes did not discriminate when they attacked the Moot,” Michaela said, picking up the current-whiff of suggestion Wren sent her. “Human Talents were harmed, and killed, as well. If they were not aware that the fatae had human connections before, they do now—and have shown no hesitation to attack.”

“A onetime event, in the confusion of battle…”

“Council member!” Beyl had the best mock-shocked voice Wren had ever heard, like a fourth grade schoolteacher. The Retriever stifled the totally inappropriate urge to giggle. “Are you defending these vigilantes?”

“Of course he is not,” Ayexi said, so smoothly Jordan didn’t even have a chance to get huffy at the accusation. “He is merely playing, dare I say it, devil’s advocate. We must be aware of all possible interpretations, in order to make the best countermoves in our defense.”