Tricks of the Trade - By Laura Anne Gilman Page 0,112

going to rip the city apart if we pissed it off.

Probably.

Stosser shook that off, and went back to his argument, gathering steam as he went. “Your agreement is valid. Yet. The objects are humans. They contain souls. An older law than your agreement says that you may not take a soul without its permission.”

There was a silence, as though the other was searching through pages of parchment, looking for the relevant clause.

This is true. But they were pledged as surety. The balance must be maintained.

First rule: there’s a price for everything. I could feel the pressure build, and knew what Stosser was going to say, even as I reached – far too late, since this was a memory, not reality – to stop him.

“Then take me, instead. Let them go, the unwilling souls, and take me in their place.”

The door closed, the drawer slid shut, and I was back in my own head again, still staring at the veins of current pulsing on my skin. Now, though, I could follow them into the ground, deep into the stone, to where the creature waited. I didn’t know what it was, but I could taste Ian Stosser within it, waiting. Contained. I hadn’t known anything could contain Ian Stosser.

“He agreed to it,” Nick said, following my thoughts, or simply airing his own conclusions along the same path. “He’s held by the agreement.”

The Flame burns me; restless and... annoying.

I stifled a totally inappropriate grin at the almost aggrieved tone in the creature’s voice, and waited. Something had sent the creature here; sounded like we were about to find out what. Hopefully, it involved getting the boss out of hock.

He suggested a new trade, to please us both, and put final paid on the debt. We are to exchange for the one in your holding, who owed the original payment.

I got the feeling, suddenly, that the payment had not been in cash, and shuddered.

You will do this.

It wasn’t a question. Nick and I exchanged a glance, and I could see the same question in his expression as was inevitably setting on mine: How the hell were we supposed to manage that?

“Go get him,” I said to Nick. “Tell him... we’ve got the guy who stole his stuff here. He’ll either come, or he’ll run. If he runs, drag him back. And don’t bother being too careful with him, either.”

You couldn’t send an unwilling being into this sort of agreement, but this guy had made like a pack rat with two human lives, presumably against their will. I was done playing nice-nice with him. The hell with holding the facts up to light: we were the only ones who could fix this, and we had to do it, now. Somehow.

It was only a couple of minutes later that Nick returned, holding Wells firmly by the ear. Literally – he had the guy in a gentle headlock – and magically, as I could sense the loop of current around Wells’s neck. Probably not approved methodology, but we’d gone a bit beyond that.

Wells looked around, like expecting to be confronted with something, and visibly relaxed when it was just us on the porch.

“He tried to run?”

“Like a bunny.”

I tsked sadly.

“This him?” I asked the voice, still waiting in the rocks deep below us. I needed confirmation before I took the next step.

Yes.

The client didn’t flinch; he couldn’t hear our visitor. Interesting. I wondered if that was intentional on our visitor’s part, or not. Not that it mattered; I’d just have to explain it in small words.

First, though... “Why did you do it?” I wasn’t sure it mattered, but I’d always been curious about the why as much as the who and the how. “How could you do that?” When he looked at me blankly, I elaborated. “Your wife, and your son. Yeah, we know. You took away their lives. You turned them into objects, inanimate possessions. Why?”

He stared at me, his eyes going cold, all hints of the genial host fading, and I understood, and felt stupid for not getting it, before. Venec had known; that’s why he’d been hired, the first time. Why he was so angry at himself for not following up on them, after. “That’s all they ever were to you, anyway, weren’t they? Things that made you look better, things you owned.”

“They belonged with me,” he said, and he didn’t sound like a power-mad monster; more like a man who’d been told his team sucked; sulky and belligerent. “They belonged here, not out