Tricks of the Trade - By Laura Anne Gilman Page 0,69

something more to the dagger than memories?”

“Guy who allegedly built it doesn’t have the skill set to do anything more,” Lou said, standing in the doorway.

Damn, she was starting to move as quietly as Pietr!

“So he claims,” I retorted, more annoyed at being startled than by the comment, and Sharon nodded, but looked hesitant.

“You’re thinking something. What?” I tried to mimic the tone Stosser used when he was in high-glamour coaxing mode. It must have worked, because the words spilled out of her, like she wasn’t stopping to consider them first; not normal for her.

“The client is moderate-Null. He can charge the dagger – ” That was how memory-glass worked; it charged off its owner, the low-level hum of current all but the most Null of humans has naturally. “That would be why he kept it close at hand, to make sure it stayed charged. But wouldn’t that make the watch stop?”

A windup pocket watch would survive being near cur rent longer than a digital, but it, too, eventually, would be affected.

“Maybe he wound it every day,” Lou said.

“Still.” Sharon frowned. “Why keep them both together?”

“He didn’t know any better? Whatever he knew about the Cosa, it was probably secondhand information, and most of it wrong,” Nick said. “There wasn’t a damn thing else in that house that had even a come-hither of magic, I’d swear to it.”

“Not even his magical deterrent system?” I asked.

Nick and Sharon both snorted at that. “Worth about as much as a wet paper towel,” Nick said. “Seriously, Sharon’s right, if there was anything current-based in that house, we should have felt it, even after it was gone, especially if it had been there for a long time. There wasn’t anything, not even the trace you’d feel if someone was trying to cover it up. Not even the dagger. Like someone high-res wiped the slate clear.”

“So that means... what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. But it bothers me, and anything that bothers me – ”

“Has to be investigated.” We made it a three-way chorus, hitting Venec’s inflection perfectly.

“Well, even if you didn’t get anything from the client, Venec will,” Lou said. I winced. It was true, yeah, but showed a level of tactlessness that made even me flinch. And I still wasn’t happy he’d gone off alone, not that I’d said anything when he signed out. I was neither stupid, nor crazy.

Besides, odds were he’d picked up my mood, anyway, even through tight walls.

“If he doesn’t get himself kicked out, first,” Sharon said, echoing my own thoughts. “He’s going to go in like a bull in a china shop, probably, and piss the client off.”

“Bulls aren’t actually... ” Nick started to say, then saw the look on everyone’s faces, and shut up.

“Let’s do a two-pronged approach, then,” Lou said, coming into the room and sitting down. J would approve of her posture: she sat with her butt all the way back in the chair, shoulders up, legs crossed neatly at the ankle. It made me want to instinctively sit up straight and put both feet flat on the floor.

I stayed exactly the way I was, one leg curled underneath me, my ankle-length skirt hiked up enough that it didn’t catch under the chair’s wheels.

“Two-pronged? Us and Venec?”

“Two possible causations,” Lou said. “One way, this was random violence. Hooligans or someone looking for drug money, or just someone with an urge to screw with rich people for kicks, and sheer bad luck something magical got nicked, bringing us into the equation. Second, that they came in looking for something specific, either the objects taken or something else, and the damage was to cover it up, maybe distract from the owner realizing anything was missing.”

“Except he’d know, immediately,” Sharon said. “Believe me, this is not a guy who lost track of anything. If our perps knew that these objects were important, they’d know enough to know that, too.”

“So... maybe the objects missing were taken because they knew the owner valued them personally, and that was the distraction, even more than the destruction?”

“But it – ” I forgot what I was going to say, as my entire body convulsed, my throat closing up in terror, cutting off air to my lungs. My legs twitched wildly, then my entire body spasmed, knocking me off my chair. I could feel my body thrashing, but all I could focus on was the wave of panic, coming from the fact that I couldn’t breathe, a metal band snapped around my chest, compressing at