–
“Oh… hell.” Disgust dripped from every word as she stared down at the body of the pawnshop owner. Someone had staved in the back of his head with his own staff. There was a moral in there somewhere, but the smell of stale blood and feces was rising off the body, and she didn’t want to waste time thinking when she could be working. Wren wrinkled her nose, wiping her palms on her jeans as though there was something sticking to them. “If I’d wanted to see dead bodies, I’d have gone to work for the morgue, dammit.”
Ten minutes since she’d walked in the door. Daylight retrievals usually weren’t her thing, but it wasn’t as though the guy was in any shape to report her.
She risked another look down. Even less shape, now.
Normally working current just required an internal adjustment and some finely focused concentration. But there were times that shortcuts were useful, and words were the surest way to focus current fast, if a little dirty.
“Picture gone missing hands not meant, not deserving
Retriever reclaims.”
It wasn’t great verse, but it didn’t have to be. It just had to be meaningful, in form and function. Her mother loved haiku, and so using that form made her think of her mother, which made the form meaningful. And she needed to get that picture back. Which made the content meaningful. And… there it was. Her hands itched as the current she had generated reached like a magnet to lodestone, forcing her forward, stepping over the old man’s body, to where the painting was tacked up with thumb pins-Sergei’s going to shit-on the wall behind the counter.
“Looks like the old boy was trying to make a getaway… pity he didn’t make it.” She took the painting down, the tingling fading once she made contact with the spelled item. She looked around for the tube, but didn’t see it. Refusing to muck around any longer, she pulled the scrunchie out from her hair, letting the ponytail fall loose, and wrapped it around the rerolled painting. She was ready to get the hell out of there, but something made her look back over her shoulder to the body lying on the floor.
“Ah… hell.” She sighed, tucking the roll under one arm and retracing her steps. Stooping low, she put her hand out, palm down and flat. A hesitation, a centering, and then she touched the corpse. Spirits fled in the moment of death, unless there was a damn good reason-or a very strong spell-holding them in place. But while the animus might be gone, the body still had current caught in the biofield every living being generated, the natural electricity that made Kirlian photography possible.
“What? No! No, mine, mine, mustn’t take, mustn’t…” a fast-moving figure in front of him, angry, full of rage. “Where is it? She didn’t have it on her when she left, which means you have it, now where? Where. Is. It?”
Whimpering, then another heavy blow. The old man spins under the force, falls to the ground. “Useless old fool…”
The sound of something whistling down a shock of red-flaring pain, and…
Nothing
–
Wren came out of the connection like a dog shaking off water, breathing heavy. “Damn damn damn damn!” He’d been killed for the painting. Killed… and she might have been… No time to think about it, she’d already stayed too long. Not that she was worried about cops showing up to investigate: Poor bastard had been dead a day at least.
Her eyes narrowed at the thought. “Ah… hell.” Nobody deserved to rot like that. Slipping out the front door, she wiped the handle clean, then uncoiled a narrow rope of current from her inner pool and reached out with it, brushing the surface of the burglar alarm.
The loud wail of the alarm covered the sound of her bootheels on pavement, moving in the general direction of away.
–
The painting remained untouched on the coffee table where Wren had tossed it when she came in the door to Sergei’s apartment. Wren was curled up on the sofa, while Sergei paced back and forth in front of her.
“Who the hell are we working for, Sergei? Because I get the feeling there’s something they didn’t tell us. Something that almost got me killed. And did get that poor bastard-”
“Bob Goveiss.”
“Bob, killed. So give.”
“Yes. That’s what doesn’t make sense.”
“What?”
“The violence.” He shook his head. “Those paintings were on loan from the French government. The same government that’s about to splinter apart from the inside, which could have awkward repercussions on the current political scene.”
“So sayeth CNN, amen,” Wren said, but she was listening. “And…?”
“And, the organization that hired us was planning on holding that painting hostage, to force the various factions to come back to the table.”
Wren stared at her partner. “Okay, huh?”
He paced back and forth, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. “It’s rare, but there have been a number of cases where an item is taken to force two sides to cooperate or risk being shown in public as the destroyer of a priceless work of art. Most recently in the theft of a Chagall painting: A ransom note was sent demanding peace in the Middle East before the painting would be returned. A useless demand, really, but it made a splash in the news.”
Wren considered that, a small smile appearing on her face. “I like that,” she said finally.
“Yeah. It does have appeal. But it doesn’t always work. Anyway, it still doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone who knew about the heist want to-”
“Play a round of Kill the Retriever?”
“Yes.”
“Dunno. That’s your job to find out. I’m going home before I forget what it looks like, catch some sleep before my next turn playing peacemaker. Call me when you find out anything.” She got up, stretched, looked at her partner. “But do me a favor? Lock the doors when I leave. And don’t be careless.”
Sergei shook his head, his squared-off face softening as he smiled. “I’m always careful, Zhenechka.”
Wren thought briefly of the nasty little gun he carried on some jobs, and shuddered. “Right. Better them than us and all that jazz.” She kissed him good bye, rubbing her cheek against his five o’clock stubble, and let herself out.
–
The next evening he caught up with her on Park duty. A piskie had decided to pick on her, spluttering insults on her paternity, her maternity, and the general state of her underwear. Since piskies were, on average, twenty inches high and five pounds soaking wet, Wren’s reaction was closer to embarrassed annoyance than anything else. She kept trying to kick it, but it would dance out of the way and come back a few moments later, still talking.
“Goid, you’re annoying,” she said to it.
“And you could use a drag into the lake. Wanna try?”
“Remember what happened last time you tried dunking a lone-jack?”
Clearly it did, dancing back again until it was just out of reach. “Annoying human. Spoil all our fun.”
“Be glad that’s all I’m spoiling, you bothersome little wart.”
“Want me to shoot him?” Sergei asked, falling into step beside her.
“You got a bullet small enough?”
“I hear tell that’s all he’s got,” Goid crowed, then bit its tongue with an audible yelp when Sergei turned to glare at it. It was no secret in the Cosa that the Wren’s partner had little love for the fatae, the purely supernatural creatures of the Cosa Nostradamus.
“Scoot,” he said to it. Goid scooted.
“Damn. Next time the Cosa calls, you can answer, okay? What’s up?”
“Nothing.” His voice was sharp, and she could practically feel the irritation rising off him, now that the distraction of the fatae was gone. “As in, not a god-damned thing. As in, my contact seems to have disappeared.”