Free Fall

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Andre well enough to know that whatever information Andre were to give up on the young Retriever, it was limited and out-of-date.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.