Tricks of the Trade - By Laura Anne Gilman Page 0,32

first we practice to deceive. Sir Walter Scott, not Shakespeare. Deception and truth and half truths. It was the reason we did this job; so that nobody could hide behind magic and deny their actions or deeds. And if sometimes we allowed those actions to be buried again, for the greater good...

“It’s not our job.”

I swear, I thought I’d said it out loud until I realized that Venec was walking alongside me.

“Motherofgod.” It came out in a hot breath, and I shuddered at how easily he’d managed to come up next to me, without my even noticing. “Also, goddamn it. I thought you said this thing would make us more aware of each other, not less?”

The one time we’d talked about it. God knows what he’d have discovered by now. I swear, every time I adjusted to this shit, the universe smirked at me.

“I found you,” Venec pointed out, sounding like he was talking about a particularly boring weather report.

Yeah. He had. How? I touched my wall, and was surprised at how thick it was. He found me through that? Hell. I thinned it a little, and the heat of his presence came through, like standing next to a sunlamp. We walked the rest of the block in silence, as I tried to adjust it so that I could tell where he was, but not feel like he was quite so damn close.

Except he was. His arm kept touching the sleeve of my leather jacket, and I would almost swear he was walking close enough that the fabric of my black skirt brushed his thigh more than once, but when I looked down, there was a professional foot-plus between us.

I thought about asking him where the hell he’d disappeared to, this afternoon, but didn’t.

“It’s not our job,” he said again, finally. “To save the world. It’s not even our job to tell the world that they’re in danger.”

I had no idea what the hell he was talking about now. But he wasn’t really talking to me; I knew that even without the Merge. He was working something out in that twisty, very smart brain of his, and I was just the audience. So I just walked, and waited.

“I was followed this afternoon,” he said finally, not so much getting to the point as putting it aside. “Human, but not Talent. He, I’m pretty sure it was a he, or a very butch woman, followed me for almost an hour, always keeping half a block behind. Didn’t do anything, just watched.”

I thought about that for a few steps. “You think it was the Bitch, sending someone?”

I didn’t really think that naming Aden Stosser would summon her... exactly. But I wasn’t going to take the chance. Big Dog’s sister hated us, for reasons only she and Ian and maybe Venec understood, and had tried to shut us down before, first through intimidation and then direct attack.

Ben sighed at my use of the extremely unaffectionate nickname, but he didn’t bother scolding us any longer. She had earned it. “Maybe. Ian swears the Council is watching her too closely, after the last dustup. Won’t stop her – nothing short of a nuclear blast stops her – but he expects she’ll go through the Council now, try to worm her way into influencing votes, keeping us from being recognized, maybe block anyone from aiding us. And that sort of manipulation is Ian’s territory, not ours. Thank god.” He shook his head, and I felt the overwhelming need to run my hand through those messy curls, push the dark hair away from his face so that I could see him better.

My fingers stayed locked by my side.

We were two blocks from my apartment, and I was starting to wonder where this was going. If he asked to come in... what was I going to say?

The old Bonnie wouldn’t have blinked: a hot guy with good manners, smart and built, and definitely interested? Duh! Only I’d already determined that I wasn’t the old Bonnie.

And I couldn’t afford to take a tumble with Benjamin Venec. Not because I thought he’d fire me if things went bad. I knew better, now. That wasn’t his style. I wasn’t even worried that it would make working together uncomfortable, at least, not between the two of us. I knew me, and I knew him. It was the rest of the team. For all that they joked, I had a feeling that they would freak if they knew what was really going on,