Tricks of the Trade - By Laura Anne Gilman Page 0,102
just the knowledge of what he was looking at.
Had he felt their emotions? Heard their voices? I could ask, but I wouldn’t. Not unless Pietr indicated he wanted to talk about it, and I didn’t think he would. Not until we had the objects back safe, and found a way to restore them to their proper, human forms.
Bored by the quiet, Nick and Nifty disappeared down the hall; I could hear voices, the sound of heavy objects being moved, and then some soft thumps that made me think they were practicing defensive moves in the large conference room.
Left to myself, I took over Stosser’s office, closed the door behind me, and picked up the phone.
“Bonita. What’s wrong?”
Trust a mentor to always know. I bit back a laugh that was totally inappropriate, and put my feet up on Stosser’s expensive wooden desk, admiring the dull sheen of my boots. “Nothing. Okay, everything, but nothing urgent and nothing you can do anything about. I just... we haven’t talked in a while, and I wanted to say hi. Did you hear we have a mischief imp in town?”
I managed to skirt over the details, making it sound more amusing than it had felt, and didn’t say a damn thing about the Merge, or The Roblin, and especially not how Venec and I had set ourselves up as bait. Dancing around J always took some doing, since he was smarter than the average smart bear especially where I was concerned, and focused my mind nicely. Exactly what I’d wanted, when I called him.
When my mentor was reassured – and had wrangled a promise from me that I’d head up to Boston and have dinner with him, as soon as our cases were wrapped – I hung up the phone, and then stared at it again, the moment of quiet letting me consider lesser emergencies.
“Oh, what the hell.” Taking a card out of my pocket, I dialed the number, practically holding my breath.
A man’s voice answered. “Didier Gallery, how may we help you?”
“Yes. I would like to leave a message for Wren Valere, please.”
There was a pause, as though the speaker was holding the phone away from his ear, and then I was clicked through to another voice, also male, who took my message and repeated it back to me to ensure he had it right. I thought he sounded amused. He also didn’t promise that she would get back to me.
I hoped she would. If I had to move again, The Wren’s building had felt... comfortable. And the idea of living in the same building as one of my generation’s most notable Retrievers amused me.
I needed amusement, badly.
That done, I contemplated going out to find today’s newspaper, to look through the apartment rental ads, but the disinclination to leave hung over me still, and instead I fetched my notebook back from Pietr’s case and went back to Stosser’s office. I wasn’t sure why I went there – there were more comfortable places to do research – but the chair was comfortable, and nobody would be wandering by unless something urgent happened, so it seemed as good a place as any.
The fact that Ben’s usual chair was directly opposite the desk had nothing whatsoever to do with it. What was I, a moonstruck twelve-year-old?
I was working through my notes, notebook open in my lap, pen clenched in my teeth, and totally lost to the outside world, when the air in my head filled with the heavy weight of one word.
*ass*
It wasn’t a ping; more like a muted thought that came from me, except I didn’t think it. More like an echo, the emotion so thick and layered that it couldn’t be contained. Ben was annoyed, but not angry. I was curious, but not enough to inquire. I flipped my notebook closed, though, and waited to see if anything more came along.
About five minutes later: *incoming*
That was a ping, and it was directed at me, as though he knew I was in the office – he probably did. I had just enough time to get my feet off the desk and my ass out of the chair before the Big Dogs Translocated into the office.
They looked... tired. Stosser’s hair was staticky again, like he was barely holding his core quiet, and Venec –
I didn’t think; I don’t think I could think. I moved around the desk and slipped my arms around him, resting my head against his chest, feeling his heart beating, slow and hard.