Miles to Go (9 page)
Current hummed inside her, making her feel queasy, like she was going to throw up, but at the same time like she could do anything, explode into violence like the ninja whatevers in the old movies her mother loved. Genevieve had warned her about that, about how dangerous is was to let current take control, that she could do more damage than she meant to.
She wanted to do a lot of damage. But Danny was next to her, and there were people upstairs, and she didn’t know
how
to hurt only the right people.
“Just you?” Danny was saying, and she was confused at first, distracted by the current-hum, unable to focus well on the two armed men in front of her.
“Son, I don’t want to be here,” Perkins said, lifting his weapon until it was pointed directly at Danny’s chest. “All you had to do was walk away, and nobody needed to be here, nobody needed to get hurt,” he continued, like they were having a friendly little chat. “I told you the truth – I didn’t want this anywhere near my show.”
“But not out of any moral bias,” Danny said, and his voice was dry, dry as paper, dry as winter air. “Just because things were getting too hot. Maybe the local inspectors got complaints? Comments that couldn’t be ignored? There’s always a small percentage of suckers who get too disturbed, who start to think, instead of reacting, and maybe some of them knew about the fatae, knew that your ‘side show’ was too real to not be real?”
“All it takes is one weak willy,” Perkins said, “and the bribes cost more than what you’re taking in. But I didn’t like it, not once I knew about,” and the tip of the gun moved slightly, taking in the entire basement, “this. Doesn’t matter, didn’t matter. Once you’re in the game, you don’t get to walk out again.”
Ellen could
see
it all now, not the moment of death but just before, in that basement in the house by the Shore, the moment of realization when the girl cried out, desperate for something, for someone to know what had happened to her, to them, and the current had carried that call, dropping it into her brain, her core. It had all come from that, everything that brought them here.
There was no meaning to it, there was no hidden purpose. It was all chance, all random, who she heard, who she saw, flickers in the current-line, roads taken or not-taken.
Danny had moved in front of her, a subtle but clear protection, for all the good it would do, and was still talking. “So you’re here to kill us, is that it?”
“Of course not,” the man said. “Killing a human? That’s illegal. Oh, wait. You’re not human, are you?”
Fatae had no protection, because they didn’t exist, legally. He thought she was fatae, too. But he had felt her pull current…
Ellen realized, suddenly, that Perskins didn’t know about Talent. He knew about fatae, but not magic. He thought they were all the same, and his business partners had never told him anything else.
They were going to die. Die, and Danny would end up in one of these displays, and -
*genevieve*
She didn’t know if she could ping loud enough, over this far away, but she didn’t know what else to do. *
bonnie!*
The current sizzled and snapped around her, demanding that she do something. Something
now
, not waiting for someone else, hoping someone else will fix everything.
Random chance. But random chance that ended with her,
here
.
“Don’t be a fool,” Danny said, his voice tight and angry, but not scared, he wasn’t scared, and he stepped forward and the gun went off, too loud in the basement room. Ellen dropped instinctively even before Danny’s body hit hers, taking her to the ground, and then there was another gunshot, or maybe the echo of the first, and terror ripped through her, loosing the current in her core without any control whatsoever.
The glass cases shattered, and all she heard was screaming.
Some of it might have been her own.
oOo
I hate getting shot. Never happened while I was on the force, but since then? Three times: twice in the leg, once in the shoulder. This made a third time in the leg, and it never hurt any less. The fact that I was pretty sure he’d been aiming for my chest wasn’t much consolation.
The noise seemed to have died down, so I lifted my head and risked looking around. Underneath me, Ellen made a noise, and tried to get up, too.
“No. Stay down.” I put my hand on her head, and kept her from looking. She didn’t need to see this.
I couldn’t use magic, but I could feel it. I was pretty sure head-blind Nulls a mile away would have felt this.
The glass cases were all shattered, the lights overhead likewise. The room was lit by a handful of emergency lights, the red glow adding to the surreal hellishness.
Perkins lay in front of us, face up. Or what was left of his face, anyway. Something had gouged at him, torn him apart, and left him in a puddle of… watered down blood.
I was pretty sure, without bothering to test it, that it was seawater. Poor bastard. He’d gotten too deep in bad things, but as much as I despised him, he wasn’t the one who’d done this.
He’d been the one they could reach, though. Maybe. They? Maybe my Shadow had done this on her own. I didn’t think so, though.
I’d leave figuring it out to the PUPs. My responsibility was to the living.
“Come on,” I said, sliding my hand down to Ellen’s shoulder. “Close your eyes, and come on. Trust me, and don’t look.”
She got to her feet, still shaking, and slid her hand into my other one, twisting her fingers with mine. I tried to project as much reassurance as I could into my voice and touch, and slowly her skin warmed, her shaking eased.
“Your leg…”
“Hurts like hell, needs to be looked at, yeah. But not here. Let’s go.”
I’m not sure who was supporting whom, but we walked out of the exit and up into the lobby of the building. A few people stared, but nobody stopped us, as we walked out into the sunlight, and the car.
Most of my cases, I get to see the wrap-up. I’m the one who delivers a missing kid home, or tells the client good news about whatever they’d feared… or brings them the news they’re never prepared to hear. Sometimes it’s the best moment in the world, sometimes it’s the worst, but there’s always a sense of closure, that the agreement I’d entered into had been fulfilled.
I didn’t have that, here. We’d gotten back to the city without incident, dropping the car off at the rental place and cabbing it, not back to my office, or the emergency room, but directly to the PUPI offices uptown. Bonnie’d been waiting, as had Valere and her partner, hovering with a mix of fear and anger. Valere had been almost maternal, swooping down on Ellen and wanting to know what had happened, if she was okay. The girl put up with it for a few minutes, stoic as an oak, and then broke down, wrapping her arms around her knees and putting her head down in a clear do-not-ask warning sign.
I didn’t blame her a damn bit. I was tempted to myself. But Bonnie and Venec were waiting, and I needed to give them my report, so they could go do whatever it was they could do, to make sure this mess didn’t get swept under anyone’s’ rug.
That’s what PUPI was there for, to make sure magical crimes didn’t get excused, explained, or otherwise forgotten. And if that meant that I didn’t get to be in on the final moments… I was all right with that, for once. There wasn’t anyone to tell: I knew that the sideshow’d already moved on, and finding them would be damned near impossible. Word would go out, because the
Cosa Nostradamus
would
know, once PUPI was done. People – our people – would be alert, now.
Only what happened before I could say anything was that their office manager/medic took one look at me, and had me flat on my back and pantsless in under three minutes, possibly a world record. Only after she’d pronounced me bullet free and luckier than I deserved, and stitched me up, was Venec was allowed to take over. He was the thorough bastard I’d expected, wringing the last detail out of me until I almost wished the bullet had done more damage.
By the time I was turned loose, Ellen had been swept away by her mentor. I stood in the office lobby, my leg aching like a bitch, and feeling weirdly bereft. She had only shown up, what, 36 hours ago? If that? How had I gotten used to having a shadow, so quickly?
I hoped that Valere was able to help her deal with what she’d seen what she’d done, and headed home to a date with my case notes for the job Ellen’s arrival had interrupted, a stool to put my leg up on, and a bottle of gin.
oOo
I don’t drink often, but when I do, it’s with the intensity and fierceness of my faun kin. And twice in one week added up, even for me. Which meant that when someone slammed on the door of my apartment at WTF early the next morning, I wanted to tell them to fuck off and die. Instead, I made sure I was wearing shorts - I was - and staggered to the front door. I didn’t get hungover as easily as humans did, but there was some definite dehydration-exhaustion happening in my cells.
“Open the door, Danny.”
I opened the door. My shadow stood there, looking about as good as I felt. But she was fully dressed, and carrying a box of what smelled like pain au chocolat.
“Come in,” I said, but she was already in, handing me the box and stalking into the apartment like she owned it. I closed the door behind her, and leaned against it, holding the pastry box. Definitely pain au chocolat. My mouth watered, even as my brain demanded coffee. And my body wanted painkillers.
“Genevieve says twenty-four hours with you did more good for my control than a month of training,” she said without any kind of hello or how are you. Although the latter was probably pretty obvious. “She says you’re Earth to my Air, whatever the hell that means.”
“Current and grounding.” I knew that much about Talent, anyway. Air was current, earth was…well, earth. I looked down at the pastries in my hand, and saw not Valere‘s hand in this, but Sergei’s. I didn’t think well in the morning, but even I knew something was up. “Why are you here?”
Ellen turned and stared at me from across the entry foyer of my apartment. She seemed to suddenly notice that I was considerably underdressed, let her gaze drop to my feet, flushed slightly, and then kept her gaze trained on my face.
“It’s all random,” she said. “What I see, what I hear, it’s not God sending a message, or people picking me because I’m me. There’s no point to it except whatever meaning I can give it.”
If she’d figured that out, she was well ahead of most of the world.
“So, I see the dead. No.” She collected herself, started again. “I see those who’re going to die, violently. I can’t stop that, for whatever reason. And Genevieve…she can’t help me, not with that. It freaks her out a little. It freaks everyone out. Except you.” She swallowed hard. “I don’t know why you’re not scared of me, but you’re not.”
Maybe because I didn’t understand it, all the potential she carried inside her, the way other Talent could. Maybe I was an idiot. But she was right: I wasn’t scared of her, or what she did, or what she could do.
I should have been. If I’d any sense…
No, that wasn’t right. I had plenty of sense. Maybe even too much of it. And Valere – and Didier – knew that. Fuck.
“I’m no mentor,” I said.
“I have a mentor.” She stared at me, not arguing, just waiting for me to figure it out on my own.
This was a really bad idea, on so many levels. I worked alone, she had no training, no license. No idea what she was asking for.
“This job hurts,” I said. “Rip-your-guts-out hurt, sometimes.”
“I know. God, I
know
. I don’t want this. I never wanted this any of this. But I can’t just,” and she waved a hand in the air, unable to articulate whatever it was she couldn’t do. “I can’t not.”
We stared at each other, while I tried to find a comeback to that, and failed.
“
Only one way to screw up this game, rookie.”
My partner’s voice, my first day on the street. “
And that’s thinking whatever you do don’t matter. Because everything we do, matters.”
“Fuck.”
I may have said that out loud, because Ellen almost cracked a smile. I remembered the pastry box in my hand, and handed it to her. “Kitchen’s over there. Go put these on plates and pour me some coffee while I put some damn clothes on.”
Looked like my shadow was going to stick around.
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