скачать книгу бесплатно
“No. I’m not.” It sounded priggish, but it was also the truth. “I don’t wake up and stare at the ceiling, or listen to the clock tick. I go to bed, and I sleep through the night, now.”
And with that small white lie, he walked away, hoping that what he had said had been enough to seed doubt, that even if she would not question her loyalties, she would not turn around and betray him.
He didn’t look back, but he felt her staring at him.
Three hours later, sitting in an office in another part of town, surrounded by exotic woods carved into seductive and somewhat disturbing forms, his cell phone rang.
“I’m sorry, if you’ll excuse me for a moment?” he asked the man he was speaking with. Taking the nod as permission, Sergei walked a few steps away and flipped open the phone. “Didier.”
“Maxwell’s Tea House. 4:00 p.m.”
The connection broke off, and Sergei pocketed his phone with a thoughtful frown. He hadn’t recognized the voice, or the number on the display. Not that those facts alone meant anything, good or ill. His phone number got around, and he had been sowing the ground pretty intensely over the past few months since the fiasco downtown. But he would have been slightly more comfortable if he knew which tug on what rope had produced that invitation.
Maxwell’s was, if he remembered correctly, not particularly in one group’s territory or another, and he had never met anyone there before. In fact, the only reason he knew about it at all was that Shig, the Japanese Fatae friend of P.B.’s, had mentioned it as having a particularly authentic tea ceremony. And that it was a good place to hold delicate discussions.
So it could be an honest meet. Or a setup. Or both.
It could be anything. So why did he feel a nervous chill in his bones?
Because he knew too well what all the players were capable of. And he had no backup.
“I’m sorry.” He went back to the man he had been speaking with, who was waiting patiently. “I’m afraid I am a man in demand, today.” The other man, an art dealer from New Zealand, accepted the comment as it was offered, with a smile, and they continued their negotiations.
Even in wartime, business continued.
five
The building that housed the Silence elite was a discreet brick structure on a street of similarly discreet structures, all dating back to when the island was known as New Amsterdam, not Manhattan. The original Board had met here, at the turn of the previous century, laying the groundwork for what would become the multinational, multimillion-dollar foundation known as the Silence, and some said that their ghosts still lingered in the hallways and boardrooms, watching and judging what their heirs did with their inheritance.
For all that history, the building was completely nondescript the way only the very wealthy and the very confident can afford to be. To walk down this street, under trees almost as old as the buildings, it would be difficult to guess who lived and worked here. The only identifying marks on the rows of buildings appeared on small plaques with the years of their founding engraved on it, and a well-placed buzzer to call for admittance.
The Silence’s building, number 27, did not have even that. You either knew, or you walked on by without a second thought. It wasn’t magic that kept them unnoticed, but practical camouflage. This building is exactly like all the others. This is not the building you thought that you were looking for.
And if it was the building you thought you were looking for? The Silence had security for that, some nonlethal, some very lethal, and all perfectly legal.
But some unwanted visitors were more persistent than others. And they didn’t need to ring the buzzer to gain entry.
“Seven,” Christina was saying. When she had first joined the Silence as an Operative they had called her Tina. By the time she made Handler two years later, she was Christina. To most of the rank and file, she was now ma’am. “Seven times our security has been compromised.” She didn’t mention how many attempts had been made that failed, and nobody asked. A failed attempt was part and parcel of the job, and not worthy of comment.
The man at the head of the table nodded thoughtfully. “Seven attributed to the same source?”
“At least four of the seven, likely closer to six.” It was probably all seven, but she could not confirm that.
“Has there been any actual penetration?”
“No, sir. Each time we were able to reroute our protections and deny entrance.” If it had been otherwise, heads would already have rolled. “But they are learning our patterns, and there is only so far we are able to alter them without compromising ourselves in the effort.”
Andre Felhim listened, not to what Christina was saying—he already knew, having used his still not inconsiderable resources within the organization to get his hands on and read the report before it went to Duncan. He listened now to what was being said by the rest of the people in the room: not voices, but bodies. Too many people were surprised by the fact that there had been any incursions on their security system; that news should have spread within three hours of the first attack. The Silence’s main currency had always been information, both within and without, and the more you held the more power you had.
At this level, in this room, new information should have been blood in the water, and yet there had been no frenzy, no desire to know, to acquire the details, and dig—or, if you had enough status, have someone else dig—for more.
Some might say that was the sign of a well-trained team, focused on their task.
Duncan did not have a team. He had a cadre. Zealots. True Believers, who saw no need to know anything beyond what the Man Himself needed them to know to accomplish their goals.
Andre had seen terrible things in his thirty-plus years with the Silence. He had done terrible things, and allowed terrible things be done to others, all the while believing in their call to arms: to defend the innocent and the unknowing against the things in the world that would prey upon them. He believed, wholeheartedly, in the mission.
The people in this room terrified him.
“How long will it take to implement and install a new system to underlay the original?” Duncan asked as though he expected the answer to be “it was done yesterday.”
Christina hesitated, and looked to her left, where her group members sat. “We should have the underlay in place within four days. It has yet to be tested, however.”
The room went still.
Duncan considered the words, and Andre considered Duncan, carefully, observing their leader no more and no less obviously than anyone else in the room. His lean and angular form, draped in a suit of very expensive, quietly classic cut and fabric, gave nothing away. Duncan was a natural mute when it came to body language. It was part of what made him so dangerous.
“You can test it without disrupting the original security?” he asked Christina after due consideration, just long enough to make her sweat.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then get it in place and run the tests.” He dismissed her almost casually, to imply his greatest faith in her ability to perform perfectly, and she fell back into her seat with the expression of a woman who had been kissed by the gods. That was the other part of what made Duncan a real and present danger: charisma. “What’s next?”
“Sir.” A solidly built Asian man stood, formally waiting to be recognized. “If I may?”
“Please.” Their leader oozed both charisma, and a disarming grace of manners. Duncan had not gained any of his power by being rude, even the politely confrontational manner of the new speaker’s posture did not trigger anything but graciousness in him.
“This intrusion, it is the work of these so-called Talent?”
There was a burst of nervous laughter, quickly stifled, from someone sitting in the row of straight-backed chairs lining the far wall of the conference room. A junior, someone’s assistant, who would catch hell later for that.
Duncan almost reacted, leaning forward to deliver a rebuke. “There is no so-called about it, Reese. They are quite definitely talented, and should not be underestimated. I believe that the events of last January should have brought that home to everyone in this room?”
There were nods around the room. Not that any of them had been there; shock troops had died on the Bridge, not these privileged officers. None of them had been on the front lines…none of them save Andre, and Duncan himself.
And Duncan’s hand-picked lieutenants, including Poul Jorgunmunder, who had once been Andre’s own protégé/right-hand man.
Poul was no longer with them, dead at Andre’s own hand. Dead, after he had first killed one of their own, his former teammate Bren, Andre’s left-hand woman and trusted aide d’office.
It had been a bad day at the bridge, that cold winter morning. Bad all around.
Andre wondered briefly what cold hell Poul was populating now, and then gave his attention back to Reese, who was still speaking.
“Sir, why have we not struck back at them? We know where they are, we know who they are. What is to stop us from simply making them…”
“Disappear?” Duncan asked, his voice dangerously soft and inviting.
“Sir. Yes, sir.” Reese was cautious, but he did not back down.
Duncan looked at him, and then looked across the room at the rest, some thirty bodies all eager to prove themselves, to please their master. “Andre.”
“Sir?” Oh, it grated on him to say that, and Duncan knew it grated, damn him.
“Would you be willing to make a Talent…disappear?”
“Not alone, sir. I know firsthand what they are capable of.” Maybe half of the people sitting in this room had started out in Ops, the active field unit Andre had worked with for twenty of his thirty years with the organization. Maybe ten people in this room had ever been Handlers, had ever directed an Operative. None of them had ever worked with a FocAs, a Talented Operative. The Handlers who were assigned FocAs did not go to Duncan.
Andre knew for a fact, thanks to his researcher, Darcy, that most of the Handlers who worked with Talented Operatives were either dead or in “rehab” now, recovering from reported emotional breakdowns. A comfortable, secluded rehab, on the Silence’s tab, of course.
Andre had worked briefly with The Wren, Genevieve Valere. He had been the one to coax her to the Silence’s side, if only for a short time. Everyone in the room knew that. They assumed that was why he was here, to give Duncan the inside scoop on the lonejacks’ unwilling figurehead.
For all Andre knew, that was what Duncan himself believed. But he doubted it. Duncan understood Andre well enough to know that whatever information Andre were to give up on the young Retriever, it was limited and out-of-date. Ms. Valere had never trusted him, and Sergei—now dead-set against him—would be sending them no further details of the Cosa.
Sergei had been there that day as well, when Poul killed an innocent on Duncan’s orders. Duncan had given the order, and then left before it was carried out. He had not been there when Andre turned his coat back to its original color and killed Poul, striking while the man’s back was turned and his attention was elsewhere. Andre and a touchingly shocked Sergei had arranged the scene afterward, making it look as though, rather than the Fatae killing Bren as originally plotted, that Poul had done the deed, and a Fatae had killed him in retribution. No one could argue with a little street justice, on a day already so bloody.
“Lies built on lies, to protect the truth. This world turns on chaos, and we all fall into the fire.” He had said that to Sergei, before they parted. He had known, as he said it, that they would not meet again.
He missed the boy.
Shutting off those thoughts, Andre returned his attention to the meeting, turning his hands palm-up and considering the mahogany skin of his fingertips as though his script were printed there. “The Cosa knows where we are, physically.” They had left two bodies on the front steps earlier that year, as a message, although Sergei insisted that the Cosa had not done it. “They know where we are cybernetically, that much is clear, and they are showing us that we are vulnerable to them even through our electronics, where they should not dare to go. And yet, the attacks they have made? Are not even half of what they are capable of, if driven to it.
“To this point we have been protected by their own disorganization, and the fact that even the most arrogant of Talents is hesitant to take a life. If we were to push them over that line…”
Duncan definitely leaned forward now, waiting to hear Andre’s concluding thoughts, as though anticipating they would match his own. “Yes? If that hesitation were to be pushed, by action on our part? If these Talent were to lose that inhibition, that veneer of civilization?” Duncan sounded honestly curious. That worried Andre, but he couldn’t hesitate. His answer would not change, anyway.
“Then we would be in trouble. Sir.”
“We” was such a curious word. The others in the room took it to mean all of them, as the alpha lions of the Silence pride. Where “we” went, the Silence followed. Andre meant the Silence itself, the Silence he joined, the one he wished to preserve. And it had no room for Duncan or his cadre of faithful fanatic in it.
Duncan? Who knew what Duncan thought, or believed, or planned? He spoke often and convincingly of a humans-only city, a humans-only civilization, where the reliance on superstition and magic was a thing of embarrassed memory, but for what reason? What end?
Andre didn’t give a damn. Andre was just there to limit the damage Duncan could do to the Silence as a whole, and remove him from his seat of power as soon as possible, however and whatever means it took to do that. Wren and her people—including Sergei, now—would have to fend for themselves. He wished them well, but unless their interests overlapped with his right now, they were no longer his concern.
“Ah. Yes. So you see, Reese, there is a logic behind my plan. Unless you have information we have somehow missed?”
Reese blinked, seeing the sword metaphorically being offered him, and declined to fall upon it. He sat with a little more haste than grace, and if anyone in the room blamed him, or thought it was amusing, you could not tell it from their expressions.
“All right then. We all have other things to do this day, so I ask again, what’s next?”
The next item up for discussion was one of great interest to Andre: the matter of a Silence director who had gone on record as being opposed to the money spent on one of Duncan’s projects. The code name for it—“Brunswick”—was one that Andre did not recognize. Before, Andre would have gone to Darcy—still faithful despite her boss’ sudden and unexplained change of alliances—and she would find it for him. Now, however, it was more important that Darcy remain his ace in the hole, protected from any overt association with him.
What was more important than the project was the attitude taken toward the dissenting director, a man who was not part of the invited cadre, was not in this room to protect himself, or negotiate allies among those who might do it for him. If he were able to warn this man of the danger he faced, would he win an ally? Or open himself to the same fate, should Duncan learn of it?
That was a question to ponder, and carefully. There was too much at stake to act impulsively.
six
Wren stood in the kitchen, and stared at the crumpled bit of yellow paper in her hand as though it would suddenly give her a clue about what was going on.
“I came in here to…” To do what? The thoughts came slowly, not her usual quicksilver stream, and she was having trouble focusing on things, remembering things. Why was she worried about the demon? Her head hurt, like an old hangover. Why had she come back here? She hadn’t finished the job, why was she home? She had been standing there, this scrawled note in her hand, for too long. She knew that much, at least.
Shower. She needed to take a shower. Hot water always made everything better.
Shedding the rest of her clothing in the hallway as she went, Wren headed for the bathroom. By the time she reached for the shower taps, turning the hot water on as high as possible, she was naked and shivering, despite the apartment being seasonably warm; for once, P.B. hadn’t left the windows open.
She stepped under the spray and bent her head under the water until the pounding outside matched the pounding inside. Slowly she remembered. Not everything; she was aware that her brain was withholding information, but she wasn’t too worried about it. She had been set up, and attacked. She had dealt with the attackers; now she was going to deal with the ones who had sent them, who had set them on her for the sole fault of being a Talent.
The Silence. No matter what Sergei once thought of them, no matter what her ex-partner still thought of them, they were the enemy. Elegant Andre, his errand-boy Poul, even the blond woman who had tried to warn Sergei to back off…all of them ranged on the wrong side of this war.
And Sergei? Where was her former partner, her lover, her love, in all this?
Wren let the water hit her face, washing that question away. She couldn’t answer it. She wouldn’t deal with it. Not right now. Let him just stay out of the line of fire, and she wouldn’t have to deal with it.
After the initial tears, after the attack, Wren’s tear ducts had dried up. She had thought she was holding back, but now that she was safe, in the safest place she could think of, the tears didn’t return.
The water might be washing her skin and soaking her hair, but inside, she was dry and still as a summer desert at noon.
Turning off the water without even bothering to soap up or wash her hair, she got out and wrapped herself in the first towel that came to hand. Her hair in wet chunks against her bare shoulders, she started for the bedroom when a knock at her front door stopped her.
“Who is it?” she yelled.
“Bonnie!” the voice yelled back, in a “who the hell do you think it would be” tone. Wren had forgotten she’d invited the other lonejack up. Brownies. Right. Wren didn’t even need to reach for current to unlock the door; it was already in her veins, doing her bidding before she thought the command. “Make yourself at home,” she said, and continued down the short corridor, into the bedroom.
Twenty minutes later, she came back out, dressed in sweatpants and an old cotton sweater, thick wool socks on her feet. Her hair was still wet and slicked back, and her face was pale and pinched around the mouth and eyes.
“Jesus, Wren.” Bonnie practically shoved a still-warm brownie into the Retriever’s mouth. “You still look like hell. What happened?”
Choking on the chewy goodness of Bonnie’s baking, Wren could only laugh, helpless. She chewed, swallowed, and said, “There’s a damn story, all right…”
“Come on.” Bonnie tugged at her hand, leading her like one would a child. “Sit. Eat. Get something into you. We’ll worry about protein later.”
Bonnie was such a little mother, Wren thought, letting herself be led into the main room and settled in the oversized chair that was still her favorite piece in the space.
“I thought you said you were going to make this place look a little more, ya know, lived in?”
“I did.” She had. The room now boasted a sofa, and a coffee table, bought under repeated prodding from P.B. to “start living like a grown-up already.” And she had even bought a café table and chairs to eat dinner on. All right, so they were stored in her office most of the time. She really didn’t need a dedicated dining space, considering most of her meals were eaten standing up at the counter, or sitting on the floor in her office, working.
“Wren…A rug, maybe? Something on the walls? A cabinet for the stereo?”
Wren felt unutterably weary, and more than a little snappish. “Don’t rush me.”
She still wasn’t sure how to decorate, anyway. She had Talent, but no talent for that kind of thing.
The first time she had walked into this apartment, trailing behind the Realtor who had better things to do than show twenty-somethings apartments they couldn’t possibly afford, she had fallen in love with it. The kitchen defined “small,” the plaster was cracked in places, and the traffic outside was pretty much 24/7. But the fifth-story walkup had large windows, hardwood floors, high ceilings, and a sense of comfort and energy that could only come from being situated directly on some source of current, be it traditional magical ley lines or an underground thermal generator or sheer good vibes.
She had dug deep into her savings, and rented it on the spot.
Almost a decade later, sitting in the main room, she didn’t feel quite the same sense of comfort within those walls. Too much had happened there, both good and horrible, for it to be a refuge without flaw. So she resisted making it feel too homey.
