work-clothes. The solid sound of my boots on the sidewalk was like a drumbeat moving me forward, and even a delay on the subway and a busker trying to play an out-of-tune ukulele couldn’t ruin my mood.
The boyos who used to always linger on the stoop between the subway and the office, catcalling in a friendly way, weren’t there, and I realized suddenly that I hadn’t seen them in weeks. And I hadn’t even noticed until now, getting to the office so early, and leaving at odd hours. Had they all gotten jobs, or gone back to school? I didn’t know – and had no easy way to find out. I didn’t even know their real names.
I decided that yes, they had gotten their asses back into class, or were gainfully employed. Anything else was... not acceptable, today.
“Hi, honey, I’m home!” I chucked my coat into the closet, and checked the sign-out board in the front room. Lou had put it up when she decided she was tired of trying to remember who had gone where. Everyone’s name was listed, even Stosser’s, and there were columns for “in,” “lunch,” “out,” and a wider space for details of where we were and what we were doing there. Half the time we even remembered to use it.
Nick, the board informed me, had been sent out to do follow-up interviews on the break-in. Everyone else was in. I checked myself as “in,” grabbed a cup of coffee and went in search of the rest of the team.
I found Sharon, Pietr, and Venec in the main conference room, where Sharon was glowering at my report from yesterday like I’d done something to personally offend her.
“What?” I asked, trying to curb my instinctive defensive reaction.
She didn’t even bother to look up. “You didn’t test the body.”
“Test it for what?” My hackles rose, slightly. “There wasn’t any current on it, the bastard had drowned to death from the water in its lungs, which I did test, yes, to verify, and the rope burns were pretty clear indicators of why it didn’t swim to shore. Unless you have some hidden store of knowledge about the breed you’d like to share with the class?”
“What kind of water was it?”
I stopped, mid-rant, and stared at her. “Son of a bitch.”
I’d checked that there was water in the corpse’s lungs. I hadn’t checked to see if it was salt or fresh. The East and Hudson rivers were both tidal – they were salty. If it had been freshwater...
Freshwater would mean that our Bippis had been killed somewhere else, in another body of water, and tossed into the river after the fact.
When I screw up, I own it. Nodding an apology to Sharon, I turned to Venec, who was in his usual hold-up-the-wall pose, his eyes closed and his face not showing much of anything at all, a stone-cold poker player. I couldn’t get even a tremor of sensation out of him: both our walls were up, and holding. “I fucked up. Boss, you want I should – ”
“Send Pietr.” He opened his eyes to look at me, and I tasted that hot candied ginger again, even though neither wall budged. “I want to hear about that scrying you did last night.”
Pietr, who had already hauled himself out of the chair and was heading for the door, checked himself, barely, before moving on. He didn’t have even a hint of foresee in him – most Talent didn’t – and was fascinated by it. While I’d read his tarot cards once or twice as a lark, I’d refused to scry for him. I don’t scry for people as a rule, least of all friends. I didn’t always get something, but when I did it was always accurate, probably due to the additional whammy of the kenning. Nobody needs to know their personal fate, and I didn’t need to be the one to give it to them.
I stopped, struck by that thought. Was that why I was so pissed about this stupid Merge? Not because it was trying to make me do something, but because I thought it was trying to tell me what my capital-F Fate would be? If so, that was pretty stupid. No matter how strong this Merge thing ended up being, or how it would change my life if I let it, that wasn’t fate, or destiny.
I could feel a crease etch between my eyebrows. Was it?
I really wanted to follow that thought, the analytic cast of my mind