Tricks of the Trade - By Laura Anne Gilman Page 0,40
children are misbehaving?”
Ben was in no mood to play. “Where the hell have you been?”
Ian gave a slight shrug, shaking out the nonexistent wrinkles in his dress shirt. “I had things to deal with. You were handling everything here perfectly well without me. Was I wrong?”
Ben stared at his partner. Beyond the unusually flippant speech, Ian’s normally narrow face was even more drawn, and his hair had a dull sheen to it, making it seem more orange than red. He was dressed in an expensive-looking suit, with his hair tied back, and looked not only tired, but dispirited. That was not only unusual, but alarming.
“If I asked you for details, would you give them?”
Translation: is it your idiot sister Aden causing trouble again? Do I get to dump her in the river, this time?
“It’s nothing that involves the team,” Ian said, taking a seat behind his desk and leaning back to stare at the ceiling, and Ben knew that was all he was going to get. But at least it wasn’t his partner’s crazy-ass sibling making more mischief; Ian would have dodged that question differently.
Without looking away from the acoustic tile overhead, Ian deflected the question back at him. “What’s been going on here, to make you look so off-color? Is there a problem with one of the cases?”
Benjamin Venec could do an end run around a question just as well as his partner. Ian was his best friend as well as his partner, but there was no way in hell he was going to tell the other man anything about the unexpected current-surge he’d shown – in front of the entire damn pack – with Torres. That loss of control was something he was going to deal with himself.
Fortunately, there was enough to tell Ian, without going anywhere near that.
“We had a visitor. A klassvaak.”
Just that one word, and Ian abandoned all fascination with the ceiling, leaning forward across the desk, and listening intently.
Normally, focusing on a problem isn’t a problem for me: Nick may call me “Dandelion” but I’m not at all scattered – what I might lack in relative current-power, I made up for in control and concentration. And yet, after an hour or so of trying to manipulate my memory of the scene back into diorama-shape, I gave up. It wasn’t going to happen; my brain was too busy buzzing around all this new information to really focus.
I shut everything off, took down the wards, and checked out at the board, leaving a Post-it to say that I was following up on a long shot lead.
And then I went to see Madame.
The difference when you traveled from our not-quite the-Barrio to Madame’s neighborhood was significant. No teenagers hung out on the stoop, here, only rows of uniformed doormen, and livery cars cruising the street. The same little maid as from my previous visit met me at the door of the penthouse suite and took my coat with a welcoming smile. Unlike last time, though, because it was after 5:00 p.m., there was a small cut-crystal glass of sherry waiting on the sideboard.
“Madame is in a good mood,” Li told me, her wide eyes sparkling with delight. “A someone sent her roses.”
I took the glass of sherry and sipped at it. I wasn’t a huge fan of the stuff, but it was only good manners to accept the house’s hospitality. “Roses, hmm?” I had an instant’s image of Madame holding a bouquet up to her snout, sniffing delicately.
But no, when I entered the solarium where she held court, it was to find the Great Worm not sniffing roses, but eating them.
“Thorns and all, Madame?”
“Bonnnnita.” She delicately spat a peach petal out of her mouth, and I watched as it lazily floated its way down to the parquet floor. “If you would like, take sssssome home with you. They are a treat, but my digestion is nnnnnot what it once wassss.”
“Thank you, Madame. Will your admirer mind?”
“If he doesssss, he will nnnnnot dare sssssay anything,” she said, a delicate whiff of rose-scented air accompanying her words. “He wishessssss a favor of me? Let him earn it through kinnndnessss to my friennnds.”
Being named the friend to a Great Worm is... it takes your breath away. Never mind that I claimed her acquaintance solely because J had once done a rather diplomatic favor for her back when he was my age, and she now found me amusing; I treasured the moment.