Tricks of the Trade - By Laura Anne Gilman Page 0,9
or dry?” I asked down the line of current, imbuing a sense of what I was looking for into the words, and waited. A scant second later, the current sent back its answer.
“Water in the lungs,” I said. “Our boy was tossed in still breathing. Cause of death probably drowning, unless there’s something funky about the Bippis physiology?”
“Not so far’s I know,” Pietr said. That meant absolutely nothing; there were more breeds within the Cosa Nostradamus than any human could ever encounter, or even read about, and most of ’em had at least a small community living here. New York City: melting pot of the world, and not all the ingredients were human.
“So, it was caught, tied up, and tossed in the water... ” Pietr knelt again, opening his kit and taking out a brush and a small vial of something glittering. The brush was just a makeup brush, a very expensive one, and the glittery powder was fine-ground, electrically charged metal shavings. Metal conducted current the same way it did for electricity, allowing us to use the lightest possible touch and lowering the risk that we’d disturb evidence. He added a pinch of shavings to the brush, and swirled it over the top of the bindings, careful this time not to touch anything with his bare hands. His personal current could affect the shavings, even through the latex.
The dust settled, and Pietr cocked his head, studying the results. His current was so light, so subtle, I couldn’t even see a hint of it in the air over the bonds. Impressive, as always. I was good at gleaning, my memory capturing details I didn’t even notice I’d seen, but when it came to this kind of physical collection, Pietr had me beat.
I waited, shivering a little as the wind off the river reached through my jacket, while Pietr focused on the spell’s results. The shavings carried the spell into the dead body’s tissue, showing him the muscles that had last been used, and how much energy they had burned. “Yeah, it struggled. Another ten minutes, maybe, and the ropes would have given way.” They were thick twine, but definitely frayed, I had noticed that. On a human, they would have been enough to immobilize someone indefinitely. “But that kind of struggling would have used oxygen, and sped up the drowning. Whoever tossed it in knew what they were doing.”
I exhaled heavily, feeling the air leave my lungs, thinking about what was being said – and what wasn’t. “Which probably means Cosa, not just some scared humans looking to clean the world of a freak.” We’d been having trouble in the city – actually, we’d been having Troubles: humans – Talent and Null – bashing up against the fatae, and everyone coming out the worse for it. During the ki-rin “he said, she said” disaster, it had looked like the entire city was going to combust, but when we’d been able to prove that both humans and fatae had been involved, the flames died down to coals again.
Died down, but hadn’t gone out. I still had nightmares, sometimes, about the sound of the ki-rin’s voice when it admitted its guilt... regret and remorse that came too late, after four lives were ruined, one fatally.
I’d always been a sunny-side-up girl, but the world was a very gloomy place, some days.
“Maybe. Probably, yeah.”
“Joy.” And trying to get answers out of the fatae community was always such a pleasant experience. Even when they were human-friendly, they didn’t like to tell us anything. Except when they were telling us things we didn’t want to know, or trying to talk us into something to their benefit, of course.
“All in a day’s work,” Pietr said, putting away the dust and brush, and locking his case again. There were still things to be done, but you didn’t leave your kit open, ever.
“You gonna take the body, or not?” the cop asked, coming back from her wander of the perimeter to stand over my shoulder, getting way too close inside my personal space.
“You rush your lab techs this much?” I snapped, annoyed at being interrupted.
The cop showed a wide, toothy, happy-to-annoy-you grin. “Yep.”
“Great. Try to rush me again, and I’ll hotfoot you in ways that won’t wear off for a week.” She could try to match me, but we both knew she’d lose. I might not be a natural powerhouse the way some of my pack mates were, but you didn’t get to be a pup without picking up