Dragon Justice

Huh. Andy was gorgeous, smart, ambitious, and potentially very useful to me, long-term, if I were going to think the way she did. And I was—modesty aside—smart, good-looking, and potentially very useful to her, both short- and long-term, if she had any ambitions in the Council, which I knew damn well she did. We would be, as the pundits like to say, a dream power couple.

And the sex would probably be a lot of fun.

There was just one damn problem. The Merge. Other than Pietr, who knew what the deal was and where he stood, all of my sexual relations for the past year had lasted two weeks, tops. Not that my sex drive had suddenly gone away—far from it. It had just… I need to be emotionally engaged with the person I’m sleeping with. Not love, but like-a-lot. And respect. And…

And every time I touched someone else, I knew that it wasn’t enough. I wanted Venec. I wanted the spark-and-thump I got just touching him. Wanted to know if his eyes were as intense when he hit orgasm as they were when he was decoding an evidence tangle. Wanted…

I wanted him out of my head, out of my groin, and the last lingering scent of him out of my core, because it was just the damn Merge, and I did not like being directed by anything, least of all some obscure, magical hand-of-fate.

But I knew, by now, that he wasn’t going anywhere. And neither was I. It just… I wasn’t ready yet.

Andy touched my hand, her fingers soft and firm and smelling like very expensive sin. “I have to get to a meeting—I’m already running late—but can I ping you later, maybe have dinner?”

I didn’t want to encourage her if there was nothing happening—I’m a flirt, not a tease—but Andy could be useful. And it wasn’t like I wasn’t glad to have someone to exchange friendly innuendo with who knew the rules and wasn’t interested in a lifetime of devotion. And having a Council friend was never a bad thing, despite what my lonejack-raised coworkers believed.

I tested my conscience and came back with a quick response. “Sure. Ping me.”

I watched her leave, enjoying the view her knee-length pencil skirt gave me, then brought myself back to the business at hand. My core hadn’t quite topped off, but it was good enough. Time to get moving. Stosser would expect me to have something to report, come morning.

Not an answer: even the Big Dog wasn’t that unreasonable. But a little girl was missing, and finding out who took her was my job. No fucking pressure, right.

I had a number of contacts among the fatae, both through my mentor and my own social circles. Bobo, the Meshaden who acted as my occasional bodyguard and gossip-bringer. Danny, the half-faun P.I. who did side work for us occasionally and had connections into just about every shadowed corner of the city. Madame, the Ancient dragon who lived in a penthouse cave high above the cityscape and had her talon on the pulse of everything scandalous in the society world, human and otherwise. But even as I ticked off names in my head, I knew that if I wanted the most up-to-date details that other people wouldn’t want known, if time was of the essence and cost not really an object, there was one place to go and two people to talk to.

For various interpretations of “people,” anyway.

* * *

I didn’t have the patience to deal with the stop-and-start motion of a cross-town bus, so I hailed a cab. Stosser would damn well approve the expense, even if we were doing this pro bono.

Once upon a time, meeting up with The Wren had been a thing of awe—after all, she was The Retriever, at least in the States—the most talented (and Talented) of current-thieves. Then we’d become building-mates, and friends, and I almost stopped thinking of her in a professional manner.

Almost. Not quite.

The past year or so, we’d lived in the same building—she’d gotten me my apartment, in fact. But about a month ago, when the planned condo conversion of our building fell through, she’d moved uptown. I didn’t blame her—our building was cozy and had a sense of living energy in the actual construction that made Talent feel comfortable, but it was also kinda cramped and rundown, and her sweetie lived uptown anyway, so…

It wasn’t like we saw each other every day, anyway.

I gave the cabbie Wren’s new address and leaned against the seat as the car jolted forward, moving into traffic. Pulling the file Stosser had given me out of my bag, I opened the folder and studied the report in more detail, putting aside what the Lord said and concentrating only on the established facts. Kids sometimes went missing with no supernatural elements involved, and I’d learned the hard way about not checking every-damn-possibility. Especially if anything contradicted what the client gave us. But the notes didn’t give me anything new, or even problematic. Parents still married, so not a custody battle. No other relatives who might be problems. Family decently middle-class, not the sort to be targeted for ransom. Both parents worked in academia, teachers, so it’s not like there was the high probability of coercion or blackmail, either, unless PTA meetings had gotten a hell of a lot tougher since I was in school.

The cab dumped me out on the corner rather than fight the delivery van double-parked and blocking traffic, and I walked the half block to “The Westerly.” I had laughed when I saw the name on the formal, cream-colored change-of-address card delivered in the mail a few weeks before. Seeing it, though— J’s building was called Branderford. I wanted to live in a building that had a name. And a doorman. And…

And, pointless. I couldn’t afford an apartment in a building with a name and a doorman. Not yet, anyway.

Doormen in New York City are more than guys—or women—who open doors and accept deliveries. They’re the first line of security for the residents. So I was prepared to do the usual who-I’m-here-to-see routine—I was assuming Wren, being Talent, would not have bought into one of those places with the full electronic security systems. To my surprise, though, the doorman riding the simple but splashy marble counter merely looked up, nodded, and pressed a button, summoning the elevator. I let a slender tendril rise, and it was met by a similar one from the doorman.

Huh. Not so much a surprise that the doorman was a Talent—we tended to non-office jobs as a whole: less chance to current-spike the tech—but that Wren had apparently put me on an all-clear list. I guess she was hoping I’d still show up with lasagna every now and then.

The elevator was clean and well maintained, with pretty architectural touches that said the building was a prewar renovation. My estimate of how much she paid for the place went up, considerably. Ouch. But she could afford it: you didn’t hire The Wren for cut-rate work.

The apartment was on the top floor—Wren liked not having anyone thumping above her, considering the odd hours she slept. Twenty-four J was at the end of the hallway, the fifth down, which meant she had a corner apartment. My estimate of the cost went up, again. Damn.

The door opened even before I got there, and the moment I saw two expectant faces, one brown-eyed and human, one red-eyed and ursine, staring at me, I apologized. “No food this time, sorry. Will you take a rain check?”

It wasn’t as though I was such an amazing cook—they were just that bad at it. I wasn’t sure Wren knew how to use her stove to do more than reheat pizza, and the demon…

PB had agile paws, but his short, black-padded fingers ended in sharp white nails that probably didn’t make it too easy to cook. Certainly I’d never gotten any indication that he even had a kitchen, wherever he lived.

The first time I had seen the demon, it had been in an all-night diner, during the ki-rin job. He had been the first demon I’d ever encountered—maybe the only, since I still wasn’t sure if the angular shadow that had passed me late one night had been a demon, despite the glimpse of pale red eyes under its slouch hat. There were a lot of strange and dangerous things in the Cosa Nostradamus, and a lot of them didn’t care to be identified by humans.

My hosts let me in despite the lack of lasagna. I took a minute to case the joint, noting that, as expected, Wren hadn’t done damn-all to decorate and that she needed curtains for that wall of windows, no matter how nice the view.

“Whatever it is, I didn’t do it,” Wren said, then added, “probably.”

It was an old joke, or a year-old, anyway, which was as long as I’d known the thief well enough to have jokes. Wren Valere was not only a Retriever; to a lot of folk she was The Retriever. Like Pietr, she had the ability to disappear from sight, slide through barriers, and sneak into anywhere she wasn’t supposed to be, only unlike Pietr she’d gone for a life of… I couldn’t exactly call it crime, since a lot of the jobs I knew she’d taken involved reclaiming objects for their rightful owners. But she moved in a gray area I tried not to look too deeply in. We were friends, and I wanted to keep it that way.

Also, Wren and her partner, Sergei, and PB, had been responsible for keeping the city from going down in flames earlier this year. Everyone knew, even if nobody talked about it. Whatever forces had set us up to war, she had taken them on and won.

No matter what side of the law you were on, you did not want Wren Valere pissed at you. Thankfully, from the moment I’d met her, sent over by Stosser to check into things when her apartment had been bugged by forces unknown, we’d hit it off. Totally nonsexual—I have a useful sense for who’s off the market, and Valere and her partner, Sergei, were like peanut and butter.

“Come on in,” Wren said, even though I had already gone well past the door frame. She might have been ironic; it was tough to tell sometimes with her. “Sit down. I think there’s furniture somewhere under all the boxes. You want coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

I found a space on the dark green sofa, which was definitely new. Wren’s old place had a sort of bedraggled assortment of furniture, like she’d never quite thought about the fact that guests would need a place to sit. This… I sensed PB’s paw in this.

PB found a footstool under a garbage bag that looked like it was filled with pillows, and perched himself on top, tossing the bag onto the polished hardwood floor. He didn’t say anything, just looked at me, his rounded, white-furred ears twitching ever so slightly, like a radarscope listening for something human ears would miss.

I looked back. If I’d ever been uneasy under that weirdly red gaze, it had faded a long time ago. Angeli were bastards, but demon, far as my experience went, were loyal and honest, if occasionally short-tempered. Trust the Cosa to screw up their naming conventions.

“It’s a fatae thing,” I said, to head off any concerns Valere might have had about my showing up unannounced.

“Of course it is,” PB muttered. Wren handed me a plain white mug filled with caffeinated nirvana, and I took a deep sip. She might not be able to cook, but Valere could magic up a serious pot of coffee.

“And it’s delicate,” I added.

“Of course it is,” the Retriever said.

I thought about how much to tell them, zipped through the best- and worst-case scenarios, and shrugged mentally. Delicate, and no-footprint, but Stosser had set me to this scent, and I’d follow it best I could, and that meant using my sources as best I could. And for these two, that meant telling them the truth.

Just not all the truth.

“A girl’s gone missing. Baby girl. Seven years old.”

They went the same place I did, hearing her age: just the right age for a Fey-snatch, if someone were willing to break the Treaty.

“The Fey say they don’t have her.” Let them think I already checked that avenue, rather than taking it on faith from a client. I thought again of the Lord’s expression, and restrained a shudder. No, clients lied, and the Fey lied even more, but not in this specific instance. They wanted to know who had her, enough to give Stosser a blank IOU in return.

PB humphed. “No chance she went willingly?”

That was the other way a breed could acquire humans: glamour them into coming of their own accord. We called it fairy-dusting, and it wasn’t covered under any treaties.

“She’s seven, PB. Doesn’t matter what she wanted. She’s still a baby. Babies can’t go willingly.” Wren sat on the hassock opposite me, looking thoughtful. “You’ve checked into the usual gossip spots, I assume, otherwise you wouldn’t be going to me.”

“Not yet.”

That took them both aback, PB’s ears going flat in surprise.

“The usual spots take time, and greasing. I need to know, hot and fast, if there’s any gossip in the fatae community, about newcomers, maybe someone out to prove a point, or score a grudge.” I hesitated, then unreeled a little more truth to hook them with. “It feels like a setup. Someone’s trying to make it look like the Treaty’s been broken.”

These two knew better than anyone how bad a broken treaty could get—especially one between humans and fatae. If that was what was going on, it had to be stopped and fixed, before word got out.

Wren thought about it for a minute, and I watched. Looking at Wren was difficult; even when you stared right at her, she seemed to slip away from your eye. But Pietr and I had been lovers on and off for months, and I’d almost gotten the trick of looking-not-looking. Average height, average looks, average coloring—brown hair, brown eyes, a face that could have come from almost any genetic stew. Even without magic, Wren Valere didn’t appear on your mental radar.

That—and a natural talent for larceny—was what made her a Retriever.

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s been quiet since… It’s been quiet.”

Since she’d taken out the organization that had been fucking with the Cosa and Nulls alike, she meant. Another thing nobody talked about but everyone knew.

“PB?” She turned to the demon, her head tilted. “You hang in lower sewers than I do. You hear anything?”

Every demon, Venec had told me once, looked different. Rumor had it they were artificial, created like Frankenstein’s monster, their only shared characteristic those red eyes and a snarly disposition. PB looked like a pint-size polar bear, all thick white fur and powerful limbs, and a snout that was supremely made for frowning, which is what he was doing right now.

“Danny had some trouble a couple-three months ago, but that was a teenager. Nothing about a wee one. That screams of trooping fairies.”

Despite myself, I cracked a grin. Only a demon would call them that, especially out loud. Fey folk was the preferred polite term, if you didn’t want a Lady’s gaze turned on you, which I desperately didn’t. Demon, though—demon didn’t care. There wasn’t a Fey glamour in the universe that could hold a demon against his will. Some said it was because they had no soul. Me, I think they were just too stubborn.

“The Fey Lord says they did not. Swears it, in fact.” Breaking a sworn statement had penalties I didn’t think the Lord wanted to pay, not unless he was playing some deeper game than even Stosser could guess. And this…didn’t feel like a game.

“And the Fey Lady?” Having PB’s direct red gaze on you was disconcerting as hell, even when you considered him a friend, like I did. It was a fair guess on his part: they came in pairs, like mittens.

“Noncommittal, but seemed very certain it was from outside her Troop.”

We’d lost Wren from the conversation; she had gotten up and left the room without me even noticing. Retrievers were like that. PB shifted on the footstool, his toe-claws tapping quietly on the hardwood floor.

“So you want to know if there’s news of a schism within the city’s Troop, or if anyone outside’s trying to poke holes into it. No. And trust me, that I would have heard about. Troop wars aren’t as ugly as some things we’ve faced, but they’re bad enough.”

I wasn’t surprised. “That was about what I’d figured, yeah.” If it were that simple, the Fey would have figured it out for themselves and dealt with it already. We only got the tricky things.

“What does it feel like?”

Normally I didn’t talk about this—job details—outside the pack. But PB was unarguably loyal to Wren, and Wren…

Was, technically, on the other side. Not all Retrievers were criminals—they worked for legitimate owners as often as not—but it was better not to think about how they did their job. That said, Wren could be trusted. Within reason.

“It feels like a mess,” I admitted. “And maybe a wild-goose chase, with the Fey holding the feathers. But that’s me, lead goose-chaser.”

The phone rang in the kitchen, once, and Wren picked it up. I tried not to listen in, but even with her voice lowered, I could still pick up most of the words. From the way PB had gone all distracted, he could hear even more: demon senses were a hell of a lot better than puny human ones.

“Sergei,” he said, neither of us pretending we weren’t eavesdropping. “He has a new job for her. And not a minute too soon—she was about to start stealing things out of boredom.”

I shushed him, and her voice, slightly raised, carried into the living room.

“On a scale of one to ten?”

“Private or corporate?”

A groan: she hadn’t liked the answer. “A shove-and-grab?”

A long pause: he was explaining something. PB’s ears twitched: he was picking up more than me, but not sharing now. Just as well: I really didn’t want to know the details.

“I should scoot,” I said, getting up. “Tell Wren I said thanks, and I’ll try to bring by a housewarming lasagna or something this weekend, okay?” I hadn’t had much time to cook lately, which might have been half my problem: I de-stressed by feeding people. Taking an hour or two to myself would be a very good idea and keep the wheels here properly greased.

“You’re not going to hang around and help me bully Valere into ordering curtains?” He held up one of the shelter magazines, with Post-it notes stuck all over the pages.

“Oh, hell, no. You’re on your own for that one. If you hear anything…”

“Yeah, you got it. Go, before I start asking your opinion on carpets.”

I laughed and left.

Chapter 3

I’d walked out of Wren’s apartment with no useful information but, thanks to PB’s comments, with the beginnings of a plan: hit up Danny for details on what the smaller Cosa-fry were doing. It made sense that PB and Wren had come up dry, in retrospect: PB’s main gig was as a courier who asked no questions and spilled no secrets. When he looked, he looked big picture, citywide. But a little girl might fall between the cracks, especially if there wasn’t something Dire involved. A private eye who worked for whatever cases came along would be able to see the smaller details.

And I already knew that Danny, a former NYPD patrolman, had a weakness for kids in distress. He’d drop anything not-urgent, and maybe even a few things that were, to help me out.

I didn’t feel good about using his soft spot that way, but I was going to do it, anyway. It helped to know that he’d do exactly the same thing if the situation were reversed.

The afternoon sun hit me a few steps down the street, like it was trying to coax me into taking the rest of the day off to sprawl on the Great Lawn and read the newspaper front to back. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually had time to do something like that.

And today wasn’t going to be that day, either. I ignored the siren call, intent on my destination, weaving around the slower-moving clumps with the agility of practice. Not that I was looking forward to going back down into the subway: three seasons of the year they were fine, but once we got into summer… Ugh. Manhattan was a relatively small city; why the hell couldn’t everyone I needed to talk to be within a ten-block radius?

The 6 subway downtown to Danny’s office wasn’t bad, though; relatively uncrowded, and the air was flowing properly. And it took less time than a cab.

I leaned back against the plastic subway seat and tried to even out my breathing—and my thinking. Sometimes, kids get lost. The fact that I didn’t want to think about it, that it made my gut hurt, didn’t change that. If someone hadn’t implied fatae involvement, this little girl would just be a poster on a cop-shop board somewhere, another Amber Alert on the wires. And if there wasn’t anything to do with the Cosa Nostradamus…

PUPI’s mission statement did not encompass the Null world, to quote directly from one of Stosser’s usual “we are here to help you” speeches. Didn’t matter. Even once the Fey were cleared, I knew already I wasn’t going to let this case go. A dozen years ago I could have gotten lost, too. My dad had been loving but kinda loose about parenting, and if I hadn’t found J, if he hadn’t found me, been willing to mentor me…

Being Talent didn’t mean you got a pass on the rest of the crap life could hand out. Mentorship was supposed to be a safety net and a lifeline, but it didn’t always work out that way. And Null kids… They didn’t even have that.

I got off at my stop, giving a hairy eyeball to the guy who tried to use the in/out crush at the door as an excuse to grab my ass, and made my way to Sylvan Investigations.

I didn’t bother knocking, and the door, as usual, wasn’t locked. Danny’s office still looked like it was straight out of Dashiell Hammett, with a front room staged with a secretary’s desk, padded guest chairs, and some anemic-looking potted plants, waiting for some bright but world-wise dame to answer the phone, while the detective slept off a bender in the back room.

Danny didn’t have a receptionist, and he usually slept off his hangovers at home.

A weary voice called out, “What do you want?”

Or, maybe not.

I took myself all the way into the back room and shut the door behind me. “You look like hell.” Danny was a good-looking guy, the product of an attractive woman—I’d seen pictures of his mom, stern but lovely in Navy blues—and an unknown, unlamented faun who, like all of his breed, had the strong, stocky body that Danny had inherited, along with the short, curved horns that were only barely hidden by his thick brown hair. Right now, though, Danny was slumped in the chair behind his desk, cowboy boots up on the aforementioned desk. His eyes were closed, and his face was lined and gray, like he hadn’t slept in a week.

He might not have, for all I knew. We hadn’t had a chance to schmooze lately, with the workload Stosser kept handing the pack. I felt a flare of bad-friend guilt.

“Are you okay?” I had no idea what a fever would feel like on a mixed-breed, but moved forward to touch his forehead, anyway. He batted my hand away and opened one eye enough to glare.

“I’m fine, Torres. It’s just been a crappy week. What do you want?”

I didn’t want to lay anything more on him, but there wasn’t any point in walking away without at least asking.

“I have a case I was hoping you could help with. It’s about a missing kid.”

Danny’s boots hit the floor so fast and hard I didn’t even see him move. “What kid? When? How old?”

Whoa, hadn’t been expecting that. A bit of an overreaction, even for Danny’s known soft spot. I stumbled my reply, then recovered. “Seven years old. Missing a week now.”

“Oh.” He settled back a bit then, his shoulders not exactly relaxing, but no longer looking like he was about to leap out the door at a full run. “Not mine, then.”

Oh, fuck. The pain in my stomach got worse. “You have another missing kid?”

“Two, actually. Probably dusted.”

That was slang for being lured by one of the more seductive fatae breeds—like Danny’s.

“One almost fifteen, the other a legal adult, just turned twenty-one, but parents still worried.”

The difference—and that they were older—made me feel slightly better, and I relaxed, too, pulling one of the client chairs around the desk so I could sit next to Danny, not be separated by the expanse of wooden desk. “Nope, mine’s seven, like I said.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Girl. Yours?”

“Girls, too.”

That still didn’t mean any connection. “Do boy-children or girl-children go missing more often?” I’d never wondered that before.