Hard Magic

I knew about the case because Madeline and her mentor had been Council. J had been part of the investigating team flown out to look into the alibis of a couple of the guys they suspected. Nothing had ever been proven, nothing had ever been done. He’d come home and hugged me really tight, and never said a word about it after that.

“That’s right. A dead end, totally untraceable, unprovable … Then.” Stosser started pacing, forcing us to follow his movements. “But it got us, Ben and me, to thinking. Why was it untraceable? We all know how to detect current—it’s one of the first things we’re taught in mentorship. We gather it, manipulate it, direct it, imprint it … A current-signature is like a fingerprint, and therefore, like a fingerprint, it should lead you back to the owner, if you only know how. They had suspects, and my contacts tell me that the signature connected to one of them. So why couldn’t they do that, why couldn’t they make that connection for Madeline?”

“Because nobody could agree on the validity of the identification, because there were too many personal conflicts … and not everyone agreed on the validity of the identification, leaving enough doubt that they couldn’t do anything about it.” I hadn’t learned about that from J—I’d done some digging myself, after. All this had been just after Zaki had been killed, and murder was a lot on my mind.

“Right.” Stosser gave me a look of approval, professor to bright student. “But what if … a large what-if, but work with me here, what if there was someone who could and would do the work, tracking down the evidence and building a case based only on the evidence … totally unbiased by any other allegiance than a dedication to the facts … to an insatiable desire to know What Happened?”

I could hear the capitalization in his voice, even before he made quote signs with his hands around those last two words.

“What if there was a place that people could turn to, for crimes committed outside the abilities of the Null police force and court system—crimes by Talent against Talent?”

His comment cut so close to my own pain that I was literally breathless for an endless second.

“There isn’t,” Sharon said, her I-know-everything voice back. That tone was already starting to irk me, even though I knew she was right. “Council won’t trust anything not Council, and lonejacks … “

“Lonejacks won’t trust anyone,” Nifty said.

“That has been true, traditionally,” DB said, and I really needed to stop thinking of him like that, since he wasn’t actually dead anymore. “But traditionally, Talent did not attack Talent, either. The Madeline case was high profile, but even that didn’t get much chatter. So what you don’t know is that there have been others … and the numbers are growing.”

I felt a chill in my spine. Zaki had been one of those numbers, killed by another Talent. I hadn’t realized … I had always thought he was an aberration, a tragic fluke. Talent killing Talent … there weren’t that many of us to begin with; the lines of community had always kept us safe from each other. What had changed?

“The world is changing. We’re changing …” Stosser did that dramatic pause thing again, while I reminded myself that there was no way he could have been reading my mind, that not even the purest Talent could do that without permission. “And we need to change other things in order to keep up. Including how we react to those changes.”

“And you want to be part of that change,” Pietr said, sounding intrigued despite himself. “How?”

“Puppy.”

“What?” I couldn’t have been the only one hearing that wrong.

“P-U-P-I.” DB—Venec—spelled it out. “Private, Unaffiliated, Paranormal Investigations. The name was Ian’s idea—” he shot his partner a rueful glance “—but it has the benefit of being easily remembered. A team of trained forensic Talents, shorn of their normal affiliations of lonejack or Council, answerable only to the evidence, the truth. A handpicked group of investigators who don’t care why, only how, and who. A group who can deliver evidence to be used to prosecute and punish Talent who think they can escape detection by ordinary methods.”

“And you want to hire … us.” Pietr’s voice was carefully noncommittal.

“Any of you can get up and walk out at any time,” Stosser said, coming to rest by his partner’s side, hands clasped behind his back as though to keep them from waving about while he talked. “There’s nothing keeping you here against your will. We chose your names not by random chance, but because each and every one of you met our criteria for intelligence, independence, determination, curiosity, and a certain … dogged stubbornness.”

Nifty coughed deep in his throat, like a strangled laugh, and I had to grin in self-recognition. All the traits J occasionally despaired of, suddenly touted as employable virtues. That was funny.

“You’re free to walk,” Venec said. “But none of you will. The fact that you made it this far, through all of our tests, means that you are perfect for this challenge … and the job is perfect for you.”

He smiled then, an arrogant, challenging smile, and a shiver ran through me that had nothing whatsoever to do with the ghoulishness of what we’d been discussing. He was yummy, yeah, and intense … and offering me what just might be the job of a lifetime.

This was either going to be a clusterfuck of monumental proportions … or a whole lot of fun.

five

My mentor took the news about as well as I’d expected.

“Absolutely not! Impossible! You need a real job, not this … irresponsible pipe dream! Stosser—bah, Ian Stosser has always been a troublemaker, and this partner of his, this Ben Venec … I’ve never heard of him. Who is he? What are his credentials? Where is their funding coming from?”

J had been ranting for almost an hour now, ever since I Translocated into his Beacon Hill apartment and told him the results of the afternoon’s meeting. Periodically I used a strand of current to check his blood pressure, an intimacy he allowed me only because he was too distracted to slap the tendril away, and then went back to my own thoughts. Eventually he would run down, and we could have a reasonable discussion.

Not that it mattered. I had already made up my mind.

It took another ten minutes, but finally my mentor dropped into his chair and stared gloomily across the room at me. I lifted my head up from the paperwork I’d been flipping through, and met his gaze evenly.

“And you didn’t hear a word I said, did you?” he asked.

“I heard every syllable,” I said in the same measured, reasonable tone he was using now. “I even agreed with some of them.”

“But you disagree with the overall conclusion.”

I scratched the tip of my nose and tossed the folder of papers onto the end table. The salary they were offering was passing-decent, the benefits not worth mentioning, and none of it mattered, really. None of it had since The Guys, as I’d started thinking of them, had given us the pitch.

“Joseph. You know they’re right. About the need for this—for unbiased investigators for the Cosa—and about how very good I’d be at it.”

J knew what I was talking about, and I knew that he really didn’t want to think about that. His expression didn’t change, but he shifted in his chair, just enough to let me know he was uncomfortable.

“That was different,” he said, not meeting my gaze.

“Of course it was,” I agreed. “I was just a kid looking to see what had happened to her dad, after he left me a mysterious letter and then disappeared. All I did was poke around into a few dark holes—” including one that belonged to a loan-sharking cave dragon “—and ask a few questions, and use current to trace down the clue that led to the guy who killed my father … “

I played dirty then. “And then I couldn’t do anything.” I paused, letting that statement drill down a little. “There was no one to go to with what I knew, then. Not even you could do anything. I had no evidence, nothing that could be used in an ordinary court of law, and no way to give Zaki justice. He wasn’t Council, so Council wouldn’t get involved. There was no way to get closure, unless I was willing to do the deed myself.”

Zaki hadn’t been much of a dad, but he’d been a good person. He didn’t deserve to get killed over a woman he hadn’t even touched. And he would have hated me having blood on my hands, especially in his name. That, not legalities, not any sense of civilized behavior, had been all that had stayed me. But J never needed to know that, if he hadn’t twigged already.

“Child, you are a dirty pool player.”

“Equal parts nature and nurture,” I said in reply, and it was true. I might be the child of drifters and grifters, but J hadn’t gotten to where he had in his career by always playing by the strict interpretation of the rules. Always legit, sure, but maybe not always kosher. There was no way I was going to grow up a delicate, idealistic flower, under those conditions.

J had a crease between his eyebrows, meaning that a headache was creeping down from his scalp. I didn’t want to cause the old man any worry—I never wanted him to worry about me ever—but I couldn’t back down. Not about this.

Meanwhile, I had my own forehead-crease forming. There was something niggling at the back of my brain, about this job. Not a bad thing, just a thing I needed to remember, or a connection I needed to make. If I left it alone, it would come crawling out on its own.

“Dirty pool,” J said again, then leaned back in the chair, letting his legs sprawl in front of him. Rupe appeared from wherever he’d been hiding during the rant and settled his shaggy body on the carpet next to J’s chair. “You really think that this … wannabe investigational unit can accomplish anything? Do you think they will make a difference?”

“We won’t know unless we try.” And then I played even dirtier. “Would you have been able to use us, something like this, out in Seattle?”

I didn’t have to say anything more; part of loving someone is knowing what still bothers them. He sighed, and all the argument went out of him, just like that. He reached down to pet Rupe’s head. “I hate to say it, and when I say hate I do mean hatred, but … yes. We could have, and by god, we would have, if I had anything to say about the matter.”

J was a stickler for honesty, even when it hurt.

“You are correct, Bonita. This may be exactly what the Cosa needs … and, more to my regret, it may be exactly what you need.”

It wasn’t a paternal blessing, exactly, but it would do.

The question of my employment settled for the moment, J gathered all the paperwork from me and spent about an hour explaining it all, in excruciating detail. His grudging approval of their having health insurance and a 401(k) set up would have been funny if it wasn’t all so surreal, and I signed in the places he marked without really paying much attention. The paycheck had suddenly—and probably stupidly—become secondary to me. I was never going to make a good mercenary.

The initial argument, followed by what seemed like endless paperwork, took so much out of us that I vetoed his cooking, and we ended up doing take-away Thai and beer instead. J sometimes forgets he isn’t fifty anymore.

We had a few more rounds of “do you think this is a good idea” over the last of the six-pack, and I went back to New York under his current, a little before midnight. All this Translocating back and forth between Boston and New York was starting to make my neck ache. Next time, I thought as I crawled into bed, I was going to take the Chinatown bus. Or, considering I now had a paying job, maybe I’d go crazy and take Greyhound. Or hey, Amtrak! Or maybe, once I got an apartment, I could drag J down here for dinner, for a change. I hadn’t cooked for anyone in a long time ….

That thought consoled me as I put my head on the pillow and was out almost before my eyes were closed. I slept well, no dreams intruding, so the wake-up call at 6:00 a.m. was a rude shock. I rolled over, snagged the receiver, grunted something into the phone. and then dropped it back into the cradle. “Oh god,” I moaned, and then rolled out of bed for what I supposed would be my first day at work.

Supposed, because at the end of the interview yesterday, they’d just handed us the papers, and told us to think it over, and they’d either see us today, or not.

I got out of the shower and stood in front of the closet, hesitating over what to wear. For some reason, a perfectly office-appropriate slim blue skirt and white blouse didn’t feel right. I dithered for a while, then finally opted for a V-neck sweater the same shade of red as my hair, and black pants with subdued buckles and loops over a pair of heeled black half boots. Not quite my stompy boots, but they’d do for confidence. You couldn’t be wimpy, wearing boots.

The subway was packed with people going off to their jobs, some of them slow-eyed and grumpy, others bopping along to their music, or nose-deep in newspapers or magazines. I didn’t even bother to try to get a seat, just grabbed a handrail and concentrated on not focusing on the hum of current running through the subway, for fear of accidentally damaging someone’s electronics. I was used to ignoring the hum of electronics in the dorm, but that was familiar ground … hopefully in a few weeks, this would be, too.

I got out at my stop, along with a dozen other people, and wasn’t all that surprised to see Nick loitering outside the building when I walked up. I’d figured he’d take the offer, too. He was wearing dark blue jeans and a cotton sweater over it, brown like his eyes, and he looked less scrawny than he had on Tuesday. Weird.

“I did some looky-loo on our bosses,” he said, without even a good morning. “Ian Stosser’s Council, like you. Major hotshot. Sat on the Council itself, out in Chicago.”

I’d known that already, thanks to J’s ranting. See, there’s Council, and then there’s Council. They’re split into regions and each Council Board—also less formally known as Mage Council, from waybackwhen days—handles the stuff that comes up in their region. Each one’s independent, and while a couple of Councils can get together to do something specific, nobody’s got more say than the other, and you don’t get say over anything that happens outside your region. It’s all pretty strict, and goes on the philosophy that if there’s trouble, Talent will find it, fling it, and generally make it worse, if left to their own devices. J hadn’t been very complimentary on Stosser’s attitude or his ideas during his rant last night, but he’d been forced to admit that the man got things done, mainly by a combination of hard-nosed arrogance and sheer slippery charm.

“He got kicked out of Chicago for something nobody’s talking about,” Nick went on. “Which means it was probably seriously embarrassing to someone, else the gossip would be everywhere.”

“Several someones, is what I heard,” I agreed. “My mentor knows people who know people, and even they don’t know what happened. But Stosser wasn’t kicked out. He left under his own power. That means he won, whatever it was.” If he had lost, he’d have been buried. Powerwise, not literally, far as I knew, although there was that risk, too. That was how it worked, at those levels.

“Huh. Means he’s got smarts as well as power, probably. Reason enough to throw in with him,” Nick said. “Even if he is Council.”

“Venec isn’t,” I said, trying to ignore the slam on the Council. Wasn’t anything to me, was it?

“Nope, he’s pure lonejack. Quiet, though. Wherever he’s been, it was behind the scenes. Don’t know how those two hooked up. Every source I checked knew Venec’s name, but nobody had anything to say, good or bad.”

“He’s the dangerous one,” Pietr said, making us both jump.

“How the hell do you do that?” I demanded, more than a little irritable. “Damned Retriever, that’s what you are.”

“Not really,” Pietr said. “Don’t you want to know why he’s dangerous?”

“No.” I did, of course I did. But be damned if I’d give him the satisfaction, after he made me jump like that. His gray gaze lingered on me, solemn as a judge, and I couldn’t read a damn thing that might be going on inside.

Unlike Nick, seeing Nifty come around the corner was a surprise. He’d said he needed a job, yeah, but I just hadn’t gotten a joining-up kind of vibe from the former athlete.

“Are you people going in, or are you waiting for the bagel fairy to come by and drop off a pump and a schmear?”

Nick and Pietr looked blankly at Nifty, like he’d just spoken Swahili or something. I just shook my head, amused.

“You totally stole that line from someone else,” I accused him, following the boys into the foyer, where the same invisible someone buzzed us in the moment we approached the door. I listened, but still couldn’t pick up any hint of current in use, which just made me more determined to track it down as soon as I had a spare moment.

“My coach,” he admitted, holding the door for me. “I don’t even know what a pump is. I just hope it’s not rude.”

“Pumpernickel. A kind of bread. Or bagel, in that case. You haven’t been in New York long, have you?” If he was a native East Coaster, I’d eat J’s favorite hat.

“Nope. I was in Detroit, talking to someone about another job, when I got the message. I guess I’m going to have to find a place to live … you know of anywhere?”

“Soon as I find something, I’ll let you know.” The hotel was nice for a short term, but I needed to find an apartment. Something I paid for, not J, and that was going to be another argument. Or maybe not. We’d see. Part of the directed, non-mercenary vibe I was grooving on right now included less of a need to be totally independent. NYC was expensive.

The office door now had a small, nicely discreet copperplate sign on it: PUPI Inc.

“Woof,” Nick said, half joking.

“Woof-woof,” Nifty echoed, an octave deeper, as though he had to prove he was the bigger dog. Like there was any doubt of that, physically at least. Save me from boys and their egos ….

“That makes me the bitch, and don’t you forget it.” I really hoped Sharon was going to take up the job offer, too. Much as being surrounded by males could be fun, it also got boring after a while, and being the only female in the pack was not going to be a laugh riot on bad days. The vibe I’d gotten off Sharon yesterday was that she might be a control freak know-it-all, but she wasn’t going to be a tight-ass about it. We’d be fine.

I hoped. I really, really hoped. I liked having female friends, but my college buds were scattered to the winds of employment now, and without e-mail or a cell phone, it was going to be tough to keep up with them. Knowing that it was inevitable didn’t make the knowledge any less painful, so I tried not to linger on it, instead looking forward. New job. New friends. New—

“Wow.”

Nifty had gone in through the office door first, and stopped so suddenly I almost broke my nose against his back. “Hello? What? Brick wall, do you mind moving?”

“Oh, sorry.” He went all the way into the office, and I heard Nick behind me say something rude when he ran into my back as I stopped dead, too.

“Sorry,” I muttered in turn, and moved aside. Nick, still pissed, didn’t even look, just walked in … and then stopped dead.

“Ah, glad you’re here.” Stosser was sitting on a new, damned comfy-looking chocolate-brown sofa, looking up at us over a clipboard on his lap. His orange-red hair was tied back in a braid, and he was dressed in black jeans and a black pullover, making him look even more like some kind of satanic candle. “Try to be prompt in the future. We have a lot to hammer into your heads and not a lot of time to do it in.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Nick muttered, sounding offended, and not just because we’d done a three-body pileup in front of the boss.

“Right. Good morning. Sorry.” Stosser’s reportedly famous charm made a brief appearance, and then he turned it off. “You all dressed appropriately, good. Come with me.”

He stood up and walked through the now totally redecorated space that had blown our minds for a moment, clearly expecting us to follow. The half-assed kitchenette of yesterday was now a full beverage station, with a brand-new coffee-maker, a hot-water dispenser, a wet-sink, and an open cabinet filled with plain white mugs and boxes of really nice teas and coffees. There was also a larger refrigerator that, I was guessing, had real cream in it now. The old rental-style waiting room furniture had been replaced with the brown sofa and a matching loveseat over a dark cream carpet where there’d been linoleum before. A bookcase took up the entire length of the wall, next to the door into the inner office, and was filled with what looked like textbooks. The room seemed larger now, somehow, although I knew that it had to be an optical illusion. Right?

Obviously, the office design fairies had been through overnight. J’s concerns about them not having enough money to back up their paycheck promises seemed less likely now. Unless, of course, they were putting all the money into set-dressing …

“Are you four coming, or not?” Stosser asked over his shoulder, and walked through the inner door.

We were.

It was easier to accept the transformation of the inside office, but only because we were all a little numb at this point. Instead of the cheap mock-executive layout, the room was now dominated by a dark wood table, oval shaped, with nine conference chairs placed around it. The walls were covered with more bookcases, filled with more textbooks, and I had a sudden thought that I’d walked right back into college. It wasn’t a good thought. I knew we were going to need training, but I could do without the reading assignments.

There wasn’t anyone else in the room, and Stosser didn’t stop, either, walking across the room and reaching for a sliding door I was embarrassed to realize I hadn’t noticed before.

Or maybe it hadn’t been there before to notice. Current can’t bend time or space, but if you’ve got enough money, enough mojo, or enough people working hard, you can do a lot of internal renovations. Evidence to date was pointing to Stosser and Venec having major mojo and money, both.

A hallway, painted a flat white with a neutral pale green carpet, led to three doors on the left-hand side, and a blank wall on the right. I figured at this point they had put at least two of the offices on this floor under lease, a long enough term lease to allow them to connect doors. No wonder they hadn’t taken space farther downtown; even if the Guys were made of money, this still had to be taking a major crunch out of their funds.

We turned at the first anonymous door and went in.

“About time you got here.”

The room was likewise flat white, with one window, the shade drawn, and more of the green carpet. Sharon was sitting at a small conference table, about large enough to sit five comfortably, and all seven of us if we squeezed. DB—all right, Venec—was there with her, still looking as sleepy-bored as he had yesterday. I guess we were all on board, then. Even dressed down in black slacks and a plain white shirt, Sharon still looked classier than anyone else in the room. Some people had it; some didn’t. She did. At least I could enjoy looking, since I didn’t get any vibes she’d be interested in me, even if I hadn’t gotten the lecture last night from J, over his second beer, about not dating in the workplace.

As if I didn’t know that already. Sometimes he really did forget I wasn’t fourteen anymore.

“I wish we had time to ease you into things, allow for a gradual learning curve. But we don’t. You all have a lot to learn, and fast. We either sink or swim from the word go, and we are determined to swim.” Venec was up and moving this time, while Stosser took one of the empty chairs around the table, and we followed suit. My boots kicked the table with a solid thunk, and I flinched, but nobody else seemed to notice. I made sure my soles were planted firmly on the green carpet, where they couldn’t make any more noise.