Curse the Dark

FocAs was slang for Focused Actives, field agents who were also Talents. There weren’t many, and none of them were overly gifted—until Wren Valere—but still useful enough to warrant their own category.

“Right.” She snapped her fingers, making Andre blink. “He said that there’d been rumblings back home…. They were talking to each other, actually, so I was only half-listening, and yeah, ‘my dad says there’s a schism in the community, something coming big and ugly.’” She broke off, her voice rising back to her normal tones. “Think it’s related?”

“No, it’s not—wait.”

This might not be related to the specific item he had set her on, but from what he knew of the political structure among human Talents—and damn Sergei for the tight-lipped bastard he was—the relationship between the Mage’s Council and the rest of the Talent community was a fault line just waiting to rupture. As he understood the gist of Sergei’s reports, the Council wanted to be the sole arbiter of what all Talents did or didn’t do within their community. Lonejacks, the freelancers to the Council’s union, if you would, were the largest, loudest—if totally disorganized—voice in opposition to those plans.

Wren Valere was a lonejack—and one already in the Council’s crosshairs. Any trouble would certainly impact her. And now, by association, the Silence. That was reason enough to follow up on any gossip, no matter how vague.

“Sir?”

He held up one finger, to indicate that she should allow him a moment longer to process.

Even if this newest information were completely unrelated—unlikely but possible—the information could still be useful, long-term. While all Talents were considered part of what they referred to slightly tongue-in-cheek as the Cosa Nostradamus, not all of the Cosa were lonejacks or Council members. None of the Talents successfully recruited by the Silence Handlers, for example, had affiliations to either group; few of them knew much about the Cosa other than the fact that it existed. Like any large family, Andre thought without amusement, there were always branches that hadn’t spoken in generations.

That was the main reason why the Silence knew a little about the Cosa, but until Sergei had met up with his Wren, nothing at all about the Council. Cosa members were gossips, and the Cosa creed was inclusionary. The Council was neither.

While they might have been able to pry details from their FocAs, Handlers were instructed never to place their active’s personal obligations against the Silence’s interests, to the point where Andre had taken people off situations entirely if it was deemed a conflict of interest.

It had nothing to do with compassion and everything to do with practicality. The Silence needed their people to be one hundred percent on the job, and conflict impaired judgment. And that was even more emphasized with FocAs. They were too few, too valuable to risk.

Not to mention, Andre thought mordantly, that having even a low-level Talent gunning for you could make life in this electronic age…uncomfortable.

“So…?” Darcy was still standing in his doorway, waiting while his thoughts chased each other to a decision.

“Get him in here, without his Handler,” Andre said. It was a risk, but since the boy had already had contact with Darcy, less of one than sending someone else might have been. “Quickly, but quietly. And—no, wait. Send him directly to me.” That was a risk, but knowledge was power. And this might be—or become—something it would be wiser to keep for himself, rather than sharing.

After she left, he picked up the phone once again and dialed an outside number.

“Poul. I have an assignment for you.”

It was going to be a longer afternoon than he had planned.

“You think P.B.’s going to be okay while we’re gone?”

Sergei finished putting their carry-on luggage in the overhead bin and looked down at his partner.

“Yeah. I think the obnoxious little walking blanket will be fine.” He shifted to let another passenger drag his luggage by, and then closed the bin, unlacing and removing his shoes and placing them in their fabric carry bag, then storing them under the seat in front of their row. Wren had already kicked off her own shoes, practical and comfortable leather skimmers, and curled up on her own seat. The only good thing about being short, she thought, was that she got to be sort of comfortable in airplane seats.

“And Andre’s check cleared?”

“Cleared before I let you start packing.”

She knew all this. She just liked hearing Sergei say it again. His voice was deep and raspy, like a lion’s purr. It made her feel better. He could probably be reciting the back ads in the Village Voice and it would still make her feel better. You’re so astonishingly easy, Valere.

“Passport?”

“In my pocket with all our other papers.” He was fighting back a smile behind that stern expression, she could tell. In any other situation it would annoy the hell out of her. But not right now. Now she was out of the airport, with all the worried-looking people and loudspeaker announcements and hurry-hurry-wait-wait and all those windows looking out at all those…planes.

The fact that she was currently sitting in one of those planes hadn’t escaped her attention. But somehow being in one was better than looking at and planning on getting in one.

Wren knew it didn’t make any sense. And thinking about it just emphasized the fact that she was in a plane rather than a weirdly shaped train, or something. And if she thought in that direction too long, bad things would start to happen again.

“Emergency rations?”

“Are in your bag, next to the newspaper. And yes, I packed those disgusting maple nut things.” He sat down next to her, raising the armrest between them to put his arm around her more comfortably. “Wren. Hush. It’s going to be okay.”

Easy for him to say, she thought a little resentfully. He didn’t feel this beast singing beneath him, all filled with electronic devices practically begging to be drained. What happened if they ran into trouble, and she panicked, and tried to reach for current? What if—

“You’re thinking too much,” he said.

Guilty as charged, Officer. But he was right. If she just stopped thinking about it, her instinct for self-preservation—incredibly strong, as she knew from previous close calls—would kick in and keep her from doing anything suicidal in her panic. Probably. So. Change the subject.

“Do you think that Andre wasn’t telling us everything?”

Sergei snorted at that. “Andre never tells anyone everything. But no, I think that he was as up-front as he’s capable of being on Silence business.”

Oh, that was reassuring. She felt totally reassured. Really.

“Did I mention that I’m hating this job already? Even without the being on this thing I’m not thinking about being on?”

“I don’t like it either, woman. If you’ve any better ideas, I would love to hear them.”

“Bet Noodles would hire me.”

“Yes, I can see you spending your life as a Chinese short-order cook. Or a bicycle delivery girl. If you could Translocate better, maybe.”

“All right, that was low.” Her recent attempts at Translocation had been done under only extreme duress, once to save their own lives during a job gone bad, and once to keep a client from getting killed. But she’d gotten the job done, hadn’t she? So what was a little vomiting and current-spillover between friends?

“It will all be fine. Just another job.” Sergei took out the newspaper and checked to make sure that the business section was intact, then put it away and pulled a burgundy folder from his bag and extracted a sheaf of typewritten pages from it.

“See? All the information we need, hand-delivered by Andre’s little messenger boy this morning, including names, dates, places, and driving directions. Why don’t you try to sleep, okay? It’s a long flight, and we’re going to have to hit the ground running when we get there.”

She rested her head against his shoulder, feeling the comforting familiarity of him. None of the awkwardness or uncomfortableness of recent months, just…Sergei. The thought almost made her cry. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone…only it’s not gone. Still here. Still Sergei. He was right. P.B. was a big—well, okay, full-grown demon, he could take care of himself. And if he did run into trouble, Tree-taller was around, had promised to keep an eye out. The other Talent had no beef with the fatae, the nonhuman members of the Cosa Nostradamus, and would listen if P.B. came to him. And anything Andre hadn’t told them in that packet, they’d figure out on their own. Wasn’t like they needed the Silence, the Silence needed them.

“Wren?”

They’d probably only be gone a couple-five days, anyway. A week, tops.

“Yeah. Sleep. Right. Okay. I’ll try.”

Twenty minutes later, the plane pulled away from the gate. Sergei looked up from the papers he was reading as the safety instructions tape began to play, then down at his companion. She was still leaning against his shoulder, strands of chestnut hair falling into her eyes, and he could hear the faintest completely unladylike snore coming from her half-open mouth.

“Rest well, Wrenlet,” he whispered. “Tough job ahead.”

Chapter Four

“Oh God, there’s fur on my teeth.”

Sergei winced. “That’s a lovely image, thank you so much for sharing.”

“You’re oh-so-welcome. Bleah.” Wren twisted her mouth up in disgust. “I need my toothbrush. Or some sandpaper.”

“Wait until we’re through customs, okay?”

“If I breathe on a customs inspector they’re not going to let us into the country.”

“Wren, I’ve smelled your morning breath. It’s not that bad. It’s not good, but it’s not that bad.”

“This is worse. This is overnight-in-an-airplane morning breath.”

They were walking through the Malpensa airport, having just picked up their bags from the luggage carousel. It was seven o’clock Saturday morning local time, but her body was claiming it was one o’clock in the morning, and since she had only managed to sleep the first hour of the flight, every cell in her body was clamoring for a shower, a nap, and a king-size candy bar. In exactly that order.

“Where is everyone, anyway?” A stark contrast to the chaos of Newark airport, there seemed to be only a dozen or so people walking with them toward customs, and only one very bored-looking security guard leaning against the wall farther down near the doors. The wheels on her luggage stuck and she stopped, swearing slightly, to get them straightened out. She really wanted to take her jacket off, but that would be one more thing to somehow carry, and it just wasn’t worth it. Besides, her T-shirt was probably a mess of wrinkles. And not the fashionably acceptable kind, either. Her partner, on the other hand, looked as pressed and proper as he had when he got on the damn plane the night before. It ought to be illegal. It was probably some as-of-yet-unknown skill set of Talent, and he’d been holding out on her all these years.

Sergei shrugged, pausing to let her catch up. “Not a very busy airport, I guess. Mostly businesspeople. Tourists all fly into Rome, probably.”

“Why couldn’t we have flown into Rome?” Not that Wren cared much, one way or the other—all flights were hellish, no matter where you ended up.

“I didn’t make the flight arrangements, Genevieve.”

His voice sounded brittle, suddenly, and Wren backed off. He hadn’t slept much either, and Sergei without sleep was a total bear. She ran her tongue over her teeth again and grimaced. She felt so disgusting, it was barely human. She knew there was a travel bottle of mouth-wash in her kit, if she could just convince him to stop for a minute so she could duck into the bathroom…

Not that there were any bathrooms to be seen. Stifling a sigh, she picked up her carry-on and yanked the handle of her wheeled case, following after her partner. The moment they were through customs, she was rinsing her entire body out.

“Signore? Signorina? Vieni con me, per favore.” They had reached the end of the hallway, and the guard—a middle-aged woman who looked bored behind belief—was pointing them toward a group of people standing patiently in several different queues.

Sergei tugged Wren’s arm gently, and led her into one of the lines. She blinked at him, then grinned, her pique forgotten. “They’re speaking Italian!”

“Welcome to Italy.” He took her passport out of her hand, checked over the documents, and then put them with his. She barely even noticed.

“No, I know, but…it’s so neat!” All right, so yes she had understood they were going to a foreign country. And that they spoke a different language. She grew up just outside of Manhattan, so people speaking foreign languages were no big deal. But an entire country that wasn’t the same….

She had a sudden thought, and reached out gently with the inner sense that made her a Talent to tap at the wiring running through the place. Gently, carefully, just in case.

“Huh.”

Sergei looked at her sharply, and she realized she must have said that out loud. “What?”

“Nothing. I just thought…I guess I thought the current would feel different. But it doesn’t.” She shrugged, suddenly annoyed at herself. “I mean, it does, yeah; different voltages, different flow, like a stream versus a creek versus a…whatever. But I thought…”

“It would have an accent?”

She looked up at him accusingly. Sure enough, he was smiling at her in that annoyingly amused way.

“Yeah. Okay? I thought it would have an accent.”

He did laugh then, and she thought briefly about kicking him. “Too much effort to beat you the way you deserve,” she grumbled.

“I’m sorry. Honestly. I am.” But he kept chuckling.

Wren didn’t mind, really. Smiling Sergei was always better than grumpy Sergei, especially when they were being gestured at by pissed-off looking guys in uniforms.

“Signore?”

“I think we’re being summoned,” she said, poking her partner in the ribs and jerking her chin in the direction of the customs counter.

“Right.” He grabbed his bags and moved forward, Wren close on his heels. “Buon giorno.”

“Buon giorno. I passaporti?”

Sergei handed over their passports and entry paperwork, and the official gave them a cursory once-over. “Vieni in Italia per affari commerciale o come turista?”

“Affari.”

Wren’s attention wandered. Having touched the current in this place, she was now overly aware of it. And of the fact that dipping into it would be almost as good as a shower.

Then she caught a glimpse of an armed guard standing just beyond the security gate, clearly ready and able for trouble, and her exhausted-into-quiet nerves pinged again.

Maybe not. Somewhere not quite so…stressed. This airport didn’t have the same tension as back home, but it was still an airport, and screwing up in airports was still very much not a good idea. Especially since she didn’t know any of the Cosa in town, assuming there even were any. Oh. That was a twist she hadn’t thought of. Not that it mattered so much here, but when they got to where they were going she would have to check things out, see if she could meet up with someone, maybe get the lay of the land. It would be rude to be in town and not even try to say hello, right?

And then Sergei was nudging her, indicating that they were done, moving her through the doors and into the terminal itself. Here was the noise and bustle Wren had been expecting, although it was still relatively empty.

“Coffee!” She started forward, then stopped. “ATM first. Then coffee. Then…wasn’t someone supposed to meet us?”

Sergei looked around. “Yes.” He reached into his carry-on and pulled out the burgundy folder again. “One Marina Fabrizio. She’s supposed to be our contact person here.”

“Fine. You look for her. I’m gonna hit an ATM and then get some coffee. You want anything?”

“A double espresso, please. And bring back a couple of sugar packets.”

“A double?” She gave him a dubious look. Sergei was a tea drinker—he drank coffee reluctantly, and without any real enjoyment.

“It’s a long drive to where we’re going,” he reminded her. “I need to stay awake.”

“Right. One double, extra sugar. Oh boy.”

Sergei watched Wren head off into the terminal, slipping past the few travelers like a ghost. His partner was statistically ordinary with a capital O—five-four, well built but not in any way that would draw undue attention, brown hair and brown eyes and skin the color of…of pure vanilla ice cream. Tasty, yes, but unless you knew that, decidedly ordinary. And when you added in her ability to warp current into a sort of no-see-me force field…

Many years ago, she had told him that when she tapped into current she could dye herself blue, wrap herself in bells, and waltz naked through Grand Central Terminal at rush hour without anyone noticing her. He had believed it then. He knew it for a fact now. Not that she had ever actually done that particular—at least, he didn’t think she had.

Sergei also suspected that, despite knowing perhaps five words in Italian, his partner would have no trouble at all finding an ATM, buying coffee, and possibly finding their missing contact while she was at it. Invisible to the casual eye did not mean incapable. Far from it. He had told Andre that he was along because he was the one with the language skills. The truth was…

Sergei raked one hand through his hair, impatient with himself. The truth was that their…relationship, for lack of a more accurate word, was far too fragile for her to be out of his sight for very long. Or him, hers.

Not that he had any real worries about her being wooed and pursued by the stereotypical dashing Italian loverboy, but he still wasn’t about to let her go haring off on her own. Not until they’d actually gotten past this damned push-me-pull-you thing they’d fallen into. The past few months had been hellish. First her getting shot, and recovering—it had been okay then; taking it slow, discovering the sweetness of her mouth, the pleasure in just being able to hold her while she rested. But the moment she was back on her feet, everything went sour.

His fault. He knew that. He’d spent so many years in stasis, emotionally. Intentionally. Trying to avoid repeating the one impossible mistake that had driven him from the Silence. And still she’d managed to get under his skin. Into his heart in a way that couldn’t be safely packaged up by “friend,” or even “partner.”

Time for denial is over, old man. Over, gone, kaput.

He was hoping that this trip, away from the preexisting patterns their partnership fell into, they would be able to stop overthinking everything and just feel. For good or ill, but the fiddling about was going to kill him. And he didn’t think she was doing much better.

Feeling his shoulders start to tense up he forced them down, extending and flexing his fingers toward the ground, trying to remember the basic grounding exercises Wren had taught him back in the earliest days of their working relationship. Grounding was essential to a Talent, who routinely drew the magical essence from electricity and sent it back out again through their bodies. For him, it was a way to destress, forcing the anxiety out of his pores the way Wren said she handled current.

And thank God she’d been able to handle it on the plane, he thought, not for the first time. In the airport, he’d only been worried that they would be delayed if something blew up spectacularly, or if she sent the airport into a blackout. In a plane…

But he had kept his fears tightly to himself, and she’d managed admirably. Although he suspected that the entertainment system going on the blink two-thirds of the way through the movie had been her fault.

He’d seen the film before, anyway.

“Where are you, Ms. Fabrizio?” he asked the airport at large. “I don’t like it when things go wrong this early in the plan.” A good Handler prepared his agents for all probabilities. The information Andre had given them was far sketchier than he had let on to Wren, and not up to the old man’s standards, as Sergei remembered them. So it was time for him to stop being Sergei the businessman, or even Sergei the Retriever’s partner, and become the Handler. Keep control. Maintain confidence in the active agent.

Checking his watch only informed him that he’d forgotten to change it when they got on the plane. Unfastening the slender gold timepiece from his wrist, he moved the hands forward, all the while looking around to see if there was anyone who looked like they might be looking for them. Or, better yet, holding up a sign that said Silence Operatives, Report Here.

He didn’t think they were going to get that lucky.

By the time Wren returned, balancing two small paper cups and a handful of sugar packets, he knew they weren’t going to be lucky at all.

“Did we get stood up?”

“Looks that way.” He took the smaller cup from her, took off the lid and dumped four packets in without tasting it first. Wren, more cautious, sipped hers delicately, then reached over and snagged two unopened packets out of his hand.

“That’ll put hair on your everything,” she said, stirring the sugar granules until they dissolved and then trying it again. “Oh yeah. Way better. So?”

“So?” Maybe he was more jet-lagged than he thought, but he’d lost track of what she was talking about. Perhaps he should have gotten two coffees.

She gave him a wide-eyed look of impatience. “So how late is our alleged contact?”

Oh. Right. Sergei checked his watch again, needlessly since the hands had only moved five minutes since the last time he’d checked. “Two hours from the time we landed, minus the time it took us to actually make it through customs, including the time I’ve been waiting for you to get back—”

“Yeah, I stopped in the bathroom, okay?” She bared her teeth at him. “No more fur. Anyway. I’m voting this chick isn’t going to show. Ya think?”

He thought so as well, but was hesitant to agree too quickly. It wouldn’t do to blow off their Silence contact on their very first assignment. Wren was cheerfully, aggressively able to ignore anything that wasn’t in the process of attacking her. But he was supposed to be the business guy, and part of business was dealing with the political aspects of it all. Maintain confidence in the active agent. But be cautious. “There might have been a delay….”

“Two hours’ worth? And she couldn’t delegate someone else to meet us, or maybe, y’know, call us about the delay?” He flinched, and reached for the mobile clipped to his belt. No, it was turned on, and still working. Good. Carrying a cell phone in close proximity to Wren was always a risky thing, but staying in touch was more important. And she was pretty good about warning him before a major current pull so he could turn it off in time. Mostly.

“Sergei, is there anything she could tell us that they couldn’t have given us beforehand, or called in? Or, maybe, have waiting for us at our hotel?”

He shook his head. “Unlikely, no. I mean, it’s unlikely that they, or rather she—” He gave it up as a bad job and took another gulp of the coffee, finishing it off. The brew was heavy and bitter, and even the sugar didn’t make it easy to drink, but he could practically feel it slapping his neurons into firing properly.

“Then screw this, and screw her.” Wren said, crumpling her coffee cup and looking around for a convenient trash bin. “Let’s go.”

It galled him to abandon a meet, even if the other person had flaked on them, but she was right; the contact was probably only a courtesy. And they had waited. The important thing now was to get to the monastery where the manuscript had disappeared from, and start their search. Anything the Silence needed to tell them—well, the Milan office had made the damn hotel reservation, too, so they could pick up a phone and call the hotel, or send a fax. Although it would probably be a good idea to find an Internet café somewhere if he could and check e-mail, even before they got to the hotel.