Tricks of the Trade

thirteen



“It’s too dangerous.” Nifty crossed his arms and looked... well, like a large dark wall of muscle, which was what he was. “I get what our job is, and I get what our obligations are, but what the hell do you think we’re going to be able to do against an Old One? Seriously. You’re damn good, Ian, ain’t nobody denying that. All of us together, we’ve got a decent level of firepower. We’re a damn good team – at investigating and discovering. That isn’t going to mean crap, here.”

“We don’t even know the level of Old One,” Sharon said, not quite so outwardly defiant, but clearly set against the plan, such as it was. The alphas of the pack, facing off against the Big Dogs. It was fascinating, if not exactly what I wanted to be dealing with, right now. “No idea as to how much power it actually holds, what its intentions are. The last time an Old One was actually involved in human affairs was, what, 1917?”

“It was 1924, actually.”

Sharon accepted my correction with a tip of her chin, indicating – rightfully – that the difference in years didn’t mean squat. “Our information about them is hearsay and hundred-year-old history. If this is an Old One... ”

“After a hundred years, what’s the real chance that it is?” Lou asked, tapping her pen thoughtfully against the table. The noise was soft, but annoying. “I mean, I know what Bonnie and Pietr felt, but all we know is that it’s powerful enough to transmutate... ”

“That’s not a Talent skill set,” Pietr said. “Not s’far as I’ve ever heard or read, anyway. All the alchemists in the world never tipped to the secret.”

“Rumpelstiltskin,” I said quietly. Straw into gold. Borrow a fatae’s ability and you could do things humans only dreamed of. You made your promise and you paid your price. If you kept to the bargain, all ended well. But humans seemed almost incapable of keeping their bargains.

“So it might be a fatae?”

“What do you think Old Ones are, Nick?” I asked, and was proud of the fact that I neither rolled my eyes nor let anything other than matter-of-factness into my voice. Seriously, was I the only one with a mentor who taught them anything?

It was closing in on midnight, we’d been at this all night, and I felt unutterably weary, as though the entire week of stress was catching up with me all at once, and wanted nothing more than to ditch this scene for a nice long soak in a power plant. That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, though. Someday the lectures Venec kept giving about topping off our cores was going to sink in with me, so I didn’t get caught short like this.

“But fatae don’t use magic.”

Fatae didn’t use magic; they were magic. That was why they were able to disappear, to change form, to fly, to create glamour, and live far longer than we frail mortals. But those were all things they did of themselves, not projecting onto others, or even creating something separate. The fatae needed humans – Talent – to actually work magic, to control and shape current. It took something more, to do this. The miller’s beautiful daughter had made a bargain with an Old One, who worked straw into gold... and then she reneged on the deal, refusing to give up her infant when the Old One came to claim it.

Read the story today, and she was clever enough to come out on top. That was where stories were different than real life: you could rewrite the ending, over the years, until it came out happy.

Stosser took up the lecture-voice. “Old Ones are like the fatae we know like... dinosaurs are like chickens.”

“Old ones old ones beware the really really old ones,” the refrain to one of the stories went, and it was true. They were the fatae who had been around since forever, since when humans were learning how to save fire, and most of the other breeds were hiding in trees or lurking in bogs, waiting for something edible to come along. We’d grown up since then, but we were no match for the masters of old, their memories dark and filled with resentment. All we could do was hope that they left us alone, that the worst we ever saw were the Ancients, who mostly held no malice toward us.

There was something there, in that thought, and part of me wanted to follow after it, but the conversation was moving on and I needed to focus there. I tucked the story behind my ear, and brought myself back to the table.

Apparently, they’d all come to terms with the fact that it was an Old One of some sort – no shit, guys – and now the argument was raging over what the hell we were supposed to do about it.

Which was pretty much where we’d been all night.

“Seriously,” Nifty repeated again. “How are we going to make... anything that powerful cough up two objects it probably thinks it reclaimed in fair terms? We just don’t have that kind of juice, and anyone who did... we’d have to convince them to do it out of the, what, goodness of their own hearts?”

“Or the guilt in them,” Stosser said, like Nifty had just given him an idea.

Venec shot him a look that went from curious to annoyed to worried, like the strobe of a flashing light, 1-2-3. “Ian, no.”

“It will work.”

“It’s insane.” Venec was using the tone of voice that normally ended discussions, all dark and jagged, like lava rock that might not be entirely cooled. “Also, incredibly stupid.”

Stosser leaned back, tugged at the end of his long flame-colored ponytail, and lifted his elegant eyebrows at his partner with exaggerated curiosity. His voice, by contrast, was mild, almost disinterested. “You have another idea? Other than charging in there on your own, like a time-delayed White Knight to put right what you think you should have solved before it happened?”

Oh, boy. Usually the Big Dogs took their squabbles private. This one was out in full display. I wanted to kick Stosser for being such an ass – guilt over a failed sense of responsibility had gotten Venec’s throat nearly torn out, for chrissakes... you had to add onto it? But I kept my mouth shut and my fingers curled into the arm of my chair. Not my fight.

“Ah... ” Nifty shut his mouth with a snap – someone had kicked him under the table to tell him to shut up.

“You want this done?” Stosser didn’t even look at Nifty, probably hadn’t even heard him. “Then that’s how it will get done. Lawrence is right... we don’t have enough firepower to compel, and there’s no time for me to build a consensus. Isn’t that the argument you would make? Do it now, not wait, and mumble our way through protocol?”

It felt like a direct quote, and from the way Venec’s eyes stormed up, I knew it was his, used against him.

“Let me go with you, then.”

“No.” Stosser might have considered the idea, but if so it was only for a second, then he shook his head. “You two in the same room makes things worse, not better.”

“Oh, f*ck,” Nick said, not quite under his breath, and I echoed that, more quietly. There was only one person I could think of who was a powerful Talent, whom Stosser could influence that quickly, and whom Venec hated – and hated him in return.

Aden Stosser, Ian’s sister.

The way Ben accepted Ian’s words, I knew I was right. “You still shouldn’t go alone.”

Whatever their plan was, I already knew I didn’t like it. Not if it involved Aden Stosser. From the look on everyone else’s faces, they were of like mind. Nifty, though, unfolded his arms and nodded. “Take Pietr with you. He’s unobtrusive, but sneaky. If you need backup, he’ll do, without setting her off.”

I figured Stosser would brush off the suggestion, but he looked at Venec, who gave a tight little nod. “He’s decent with his protections, and can double-up a Translocation. Any help you need, it’s not going to involve bulk or muscle.”

The slur on Pietr’s build went unanswered; I knew full well Pietr had a deceptive strength, and Stosser – who had worked with us all, closely – knew the same, if for different reasons. I refused to believe that Ben was jealous; we’d agreed he had no cause or right to be jealous, but... it sure felt like jealousy, to me.

It wasn’t funny, nothing about any of this was funny; but when I looked up, Pietr had a warm humor in his eyes that meant he was amused, even if I wasn’t.

I scowled at him, and he laughed. It was totally inappropriate, and stupid, and lightened the mood in the entire room, just a little.

“Don’t feel left out, Torres.” Venec pointed at me, then at Nick, and there was a look in his eye that was all Big Dog. “I have a job for you two, too.”



Aden Stosser’s apartment had a view that would have cost a fortune, if she were actually paying for it. Ian recognized the view immediately, having spent much of his childhood visiting his mother’s sister, a long-term seated member of the Midwest Council. Pietr gawked for a full ten seconds after arrival, then brought himself back to business. In a crisis situation, that might have been enough to get him killed.

Ian declined to rebuke him for it; this was neither the time nor the place, and nobody was going to open fire on them. Probably.

“This is unexpected.”

Aden had just walked out of the kitchen, holding a mug of something in her hands, aand looking completely unsurprised. The two of them had never been able to sneak up on each other, despite countless attempts during their youth. Their parents had encouraged that behavior; had encouraged all their competition. That might be why, Ian thought not for the first time, they had instead become so close.

“We need your help.” He saw her open her mouth to start their usual bickering, and overrode whatever she was going to say. “This isn’t negotiable, and it’s not in exchange for anything else down the road.”

“And I’m going to agree, why?” Aden lifted the mug to her mouth and took a deliberate sip, projecting a mood of utter unconcern.

“Because I’m asking you. And because you won’t be able to resist.”

Beside him, Pietr drew in his breath: if they were going to have to do anything, this was when.

Current surged in the room, filling the air with a dry crackle, and Pietr found himself categorizing it almost automatically: Stosser’s signature, clearly defined and recognizable, plus another, less recognizable but equal in strength and showing definite similarities in patterns.

“Look at that,” Pietr said, almost to himself. “If I could map it, build a proof that would establish familial – or at least lines of mentoring – similarities... ”

Ian almost laughed, but never took his eyes off his sister, a more delicate, darker-flame mirror of his own lanky build. “Research later.”

“Assuming I agree,” Aden said, “what exactly do you need me for, that I will find so... fascinating?”

Ian matched her dry, casual tone. “We’re going to hijack an Old One.”

Pietr really, really did not like the way Aden Stosser’s expression lit up at her brother’s words.

“You have my utmost, and fascinated, attention,” she said.

An hour later, they had cleared the main living room area by dint of shoving the furniture back, and drawn the proper design on the gleaming hardwood floors with liquid detergent.

“Aunt Madeline is going to kill us,” Aden said with satisfaction, looking at the chemicals marring the finish.

“That’s assuming the Old One doesn’t kill us first. In which case, she can deal with getting rid of it when she comes home and finds it in residence instead of you.”

“Oh, that’s a lovely thought.” Aden’s smile was decidedly cold.

Pietr just shook his head, trying to stay low and useful, finishing the design. It looked, at first glance, like a pentagram, but if you switched into mage-sight it glimmered almost like a 3-D projection, displaying a deeper outline of a six-pointed star underneath, and below that, an eight-pointed one. Around it, there was a larger circle, which they hoped would be protection enough to keep The Roblin, if it followed them hoping to cause more trouble, from being able to interfere.

In theory.

“All right. This is either going to work, or it isn’t. Pietr, go stand by the door. In the archway. Just in case.”

“If something goes wrong and we’re sucked into the mythical vortex, that’s not going to save him,” Aden said, clearly enjoying herself.

“Doorways have their own protection. It might give him enough time to Translocate back to the office.” Stosser was so matter of fact, you might have thought they were discussing running out of staples. Pietr shook his head, and went to stand the proscribed distance away.

“Fine. Let’s do this. If we don’t get killed, I have theater plans tonight.”

Most modern magic had little ceremony; the effort went into shaping your current, not impressing the neighbors. Stosser’s plan involved mixing a dash of old stories with a large dose of improvisation, and hoping it would work. The siblings sat in the center of the markings, hands resting on their knees, and slipped into fugue-state.

The room was filled with a deep red glow, as though they were underwater, under strobe lights. Aden’s expression was peaceful, but there was a small smile on the corner of her lips that someone who didn’t know her well might think was innocent excitement.

Stosser gave Pietr one last look, which the pup returned with a single nod of his head – don’t worry about me, boss, I’m good – and settled into the ritual.

“We bring a question you hold the answer to, oh eldest of the cousins.”

Aden picked up the chant, her voice an octave above Ian’s, but the inflection and cadence otherwise identical. “We are respectful of your worth, oh eldest of the cousins, and ask that you favor us with your attention, for this brief instant of time.”

Then, both voices together: “Forgive us our need, oh eldest of cousins, and remember the delicate thread that binds us all.”

The red-tinged air shivered slightly, like a heat mirage, then thickened, becoming more of a fog. They could still see each other, across the distance of the ritual markings, but not well enough to determine expressions or make out details beyond – the room outside of the markings might as well have disappeared.

For all they knew, it had.

“We bring you a question, oh eldest of the cousins,” Ian repeated, softening each word so that it blurred as it left his mouth, inviting visitation, even as he kept a hard control over his core; if the Old One tried anything, he would be ready and able to defend himself, even though it would inevitably be futile.

All they could do was hope that the binding within the markings and the spell itself restrained it, and that Pietr would be able to escape, unscathed.

YES.

The voice filled the space, although none of them would swear that the word had actually been spoken out loud or been whispered inside their heads. It was neither male nor female, high or low, but pervasive, and slightly metallic.

Ian touched his core, bringing up the glamour that made him such a persuasive speaker, at the same time careful to let the Old One know what he was doing, offering no secrets, no attempts to beguile, and in doing so, flattering the Old One – or amusing it – into doing what he wanted.

Ideally.

“We would speak to you of the human named Wells, and the objects that your minions took from his dwelling place... ”



Crickets were loud, in the middle of the night, but surprisingly soothing.

Although I’d been annoyed at what sounded like a crap assignment, it was better than sitting in the office worrying about what was going on wherever Stosser aand Pietr had gone off to, or trying to convince Venec to go away and rest, the way the doctor had told him to. And it wasn’t too bad, actually. We were sitting on the front porch of the little country house Wells was using as a base of business operations while the workers were repairing the damage to the place in the city; it was a large cottage, really, but the amenities, while rustic, were still first-class. And apparently, despite the Big Dog’s interrogation, he had no idea we were on to him yet, because he accepted Venec’s story that we were there as added protection, and didn’t seem to suspect we were actually his jailers.

I suppose that kind of arrogance had to go with the personality that thought nothing of locking away his wife and son like damned keepsakes, and then calling us in to find them when they were stolen.

After a period of polite chitchat to the backdrop of the crickets, he stood up, all boardroom grace and manners. “You’ll excuse me? I have a conference call to Japan that I need to make.”

“Sure, go ahead,” Nick said. The porch was far enough away from the office on the second floor that even if we had to pull up a sudden surge of current, it probably wouldn’t disrupt his call. Probably. And I really doubted we’d have to do anything magical at all: The cottage was set back from the road, with a clear view in either direction thanks to the sloping lawn, and the back of the house was set against a stone hill that went straight up about forty feet. If anyone came our way, we’d grab Wells and run like hell, Translocating only if needful. Wells already knew too damn much about Talent for a guy without any visible moral grounding, and he was the sort to lust after the ability to Translocate in a really unhealthy way.

I listened to the sound of his feet going up the carpeted stair – a not-terribly-expensive Berber weave that was just the right tone of wealthy-casual for a cottage – and then turned back to my partner. “You think we should be listening in on him?”

Nick leaned back in his chair, his feet up on the foot-stool. “Already bugged the place, while you were checking the perimeter.”

I nodded, satisfied. When he said bugged he meant literally – a lovely bit of set-magic that cost a small fortune, but were difficult even for Talent to find, if they weren’t looking specifically for it. If they heard a significant phrase or series of words, they’d let Nick know. I thought they were creepy as hell, myself, but you made do with what you had. Someday I’d come up with a more elegant solution. Someday. I was starting to get a really long “someday” list.

“So.” Nick looked down at his coffee mug and then back at me. When I’d first met him, his short build and placid brown eyes had almost fooled me into not taking him seriously, the same way I’d pegged Nifty for a muscle-bound goon. I knew better, the moment they opened their mouths, and now not even trained dissembling could hide the sharp brain behind those eyes. “You and Venec.”

My instinctive reaction was “what me and Venec?” But it was a little – a lot – too late for that now.

There was the instinctive – and annoying – reach for Venec; the walls were there, but thin, and then they dropped suddenly on his part, and I recoiled a little from the unexpectedness of it, like thinking the shower was warm when the water was actually ice-cold. What the hell?

No time to worry what the Big Dog was up to; Nick was looking at me, waiting for an answer.

“Yeah.” I’d known this was coming since we got sent off together, the first chance Nick’s had to corner me, and he wasn’t the type to waste opportunity.

We’d been friends from the first day, but we’d never been more than friends and coworkers, never would be, even though he’d flirted like crazy at first. He wasn’t a confidant, the way Pietr was, but he might be my best friend in the office, and I’d been treating him like shit the past few months, while Venec and I danced around all this, figuring our deal out... . And now he was going to ask what was up, and I had no idea what to tell him.

Nick had obviously taken lessons from Sharon, because he went in with a scalpel. “You sleeping with him?”

“No.”

“You going to?”

That was the tough question, wasn’t it? Me, who never had to take long to decide one way or the other... “I don’t know. It’s... complicated.”

“Sleeping with the boss is kinda tacky.”

“Yeah. Only it’s not just that. There’s stuff we need to deal with.”

“Cause of that Merge thing.”

“Yeah.” Understatement of the year. We’d told them a little, not everything, but my pack mates would have done their own research, and pooled notes.

Nick scrunched his face at me, and for a minute I saw the terrible ten-year-old he must have been. “You... don’t want it?”

I widened my eyes back at his expression, channeling my own not-so-inner ten-year-old for a moment. “Would you?”

“I... ” Nick played the dumb bunny sometimes, but he wasn’t, not by a long shot. He stopped to think about his answer. “No. Not really. Talk about awkward. Does it work between two guys? I mean, straight guys?”

I laughed, the way he’d probably meant me to. “I don’t know. No reason why it would. Or wouldn’t. It’s about magic... ” My voice trailed off. It was about magic, and passing that magic along, maybe. That was Venec’s theory, from what his mentor told him. Current looking to ground along the bloodlines. Genetics. There was still a big hullaballoo over if Talent was genetic or not; it ran in families, but not always, and could go dormant for generations, or appear out of nowhere, and nobody’d ever found a gene that identified current-use, although there’d been a lot of quietly funded studies done, according to J. Even before they knew what genes were, there were always people who wanted to know the origins of power.

If people found out, beyond the pack... there would be a line of folk wanting to pick us apart. And even more who would want to make me into a broodmare.

I loved kids. I just hadn’t been planning on even thinking about having any for... a long time, yet.

Nick, though, had moved on to another question. “How long have you known about this?”

That question was a hell of a lot easier to answer. “Since the ki-rin case.”

Nick leaned back and whistled between his teeth, softly. That had been more than a few months. I wondered if he was putting pieces together, or wondering why he’d not noticed. “And before that?”

“Before that I thought he was hot but annoying. No, wait, I still think that he’s hot and annoying.”

And this time it was Nick who laughed, the way I’d meant him to.

“So, you want to sleep with him, but you can’t sleep with him ’cause the job thing... awwwkward. And it’s not like you’ve been the poster child for self-control on that front, but I’m guessing this thing also makes you not want to go wandering, no matter how pretty the trail?”

He was damned close to the truth on that. I wasn’t sure I could work up enough interest in anyone else to wander, and the one thing I’d always demanded, even when I’d been juggling two or three lovers, was a real, emotional attraction. And honesty. “Hi, you’re hot, but I have this weird bond thing with someone else that’s always going to come first... ” Probably not going to go over well.

“And he, I presume, thinks you’re hot, too, cause he’s breathing and hetero male, and he practically sizzles when he’s yelling at you, which is Venec’s way of emotional communication,” Nick finished.

“Nicely delineated, Shune. And your conclusions, having evaluated the available evidence?” I kept my tone light, but his words had burned me a little, left me feeling more raw than I was comfortable with. It mattered what he thought; it mattered what he concluded.

It mattered a lot.

There was a silence. It wasn’t a comfortable silence, but I didn’t find myself twitching, either. To fill the time while I waited, I let myself listen to the hum of electricity within the house, letting it touch me gently, following the traces out along the wires, and deep into the ground. Wild current and man-made... I much preferred the refined, clarified man-made that ran alongside electricity, but knowing that it was there in the raw form, too, was comforting. If we needed it... I really, really hoped that we wouldn’t.

When Nick finally did speak, his voice was as serious as I’d ever heard, this man who joked to keep the boogey monsters at bay. “I was worried, at first. We all were. I mean, it took us months to figure out who went where, y’know?”

I remembered. Pack politics had been dicey, during training, and even after. It wasn’t until the organ-leggers job that we really started to feel properly shaken down. And that was when it had really hit me, this Merge thing, and what it was doing to me. I hadn’t thought, at the time, what it might also be doing to the rest of the team.

“We all knew you had the hots for him. Teasing you... didn’t make dealing with this easier, did it? If we’d known how serious it was. Or that he... Christ, he does feel the same way, doesn’t he?”

And in that instant, Nick went from the coolly calculating pup to aggressively protective little brother, ready to beat up on the boy who didn’t appreciate his sister.

“What, annoyed, irritated, frustrated, and really pissed off about the entire thing? Yeah, that sums it up pretty well.” I let go of the tendrils of current, letting them slip away like sunbeams at dusk, and spread my fingers palm-up on my lap, as though I could still see traces of it against my skin. “He’s better at repressing it, though.”

I wasn’t used to repressing anything. At all. I dealt with it, I explored it, I figured it out, and then I moved on.

“I’m sorry.” For mocking you, for not realizing, for what you’re going through, for not being helpful, all in those two words. “It’s tougher on you than it is on us, isn’t it? I mean, you’re juggling all this shit, and worrying about how we’re going to react to it, and we’re only worrying about how it’s going to affect us, if Venec’s going to start playing favorites, or acting weird, or we’re going to walk in on mad monkey-sex in the conference room.” He looked really pained at that. “Could you maybe warn us if you’re going to do that? A sock on the doorknob or something?”

“I really don’t think that’s going to be an issue, Nicky. But yeah, I promise.” I frowned, distracted. “Did you feel that?”

“Feel what?”

I held up a hand, not to silence him, but to show the current-traces still resting against my skin; to a Talent it looked like 3-D veins, pulsing greenly against my skin.

“I was testing the wild current around here,” I said, almost whispering, although there was no need. Probably. “And then I felt it... can you pick it up?”

I felt him slide into fugue-state next to me, and followed. Stalking current was like trying to move through a room thick-hung with wind chimes; if you brushed one too closely, it would set off a musical chain reaction, scaring away whatever was on the other side of the room.

Or, worse thought, not scaring it away.

Years ago, I’d gone snorkeling in Hawaii, and swum into the huge school of gorgeously colored fish. The front of my brain had been going all ooh and aah, but at the back of my brain the thought had come: what if something was diving into the school from the other side? What if that something had teeth – and wouldn’t mind eating something larger than finger-length fishlings?

That was how I felt right then, even before it grabbed me.

The shark image was all wrong. This was like being nailed by an octopus, an eight-armed thing with tentacles that dug into you and held on like a thousand tiny grappling hooks that stung like antiseptic on an open wound. I could feel Nick’s current-signature flowing over me, surging into where the hooks met magic-skin and melting them away as fast as they were placed, but he was barely keeping up.

Hold.

The thought came, cold and dark and deeper than anything human could manage. Nick ignored it, flowing onto the next series of hooks.

Hold it said again, and the hooks started to untangle themselves. I let out a tiny sigh of relief, resisting the urge to rub my physical – and untouched – arms in reaction.

You are the dogs of the Flame?

The what of the who?

An image came, of current strung out long and bright, the orange-red color a dead giveaway, the magical interpretation of Stosser’s unmistakable ponytail. My first image of him, dressed all in black, his hair loose, had been of a satanic candle, too.

Oh. “Yes,” I told the voice, feeling Nick tense beside me, ready in case that turned out to be a bad answer. “We’re pups.”

We are to exchange.

The voice opened – a door? A drawer? – and the scene flowed out and into our memories.

An overhead view of a large room, lit by a red glow that didn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular. I didn’t recognize it, but there was a sense of familiarity, anyway, as though one or more of the figures below knew it well. The mental camera angle swooped in, and the mike went live.

“They are not objects. They are people. You know this, you helped transform them.” If you knew Stosser, you could tell that he was wildly curious about how the Old One had accomplished that, but knew better than to ask. That was a trap alchemists used to fall into regularly, and the truth was that no human could manage it. Not without paying a price our boss was too smart to offer. I hoped.

The human failed his agreement. They are mine.

The voice that had caught me; it was the same entity that was arguing with Stosser. Okay, I’d known that, I guess, but the knowing sent a cold prickle into every inch of my skin.

“You don’t want them.” Stosser’s voice again, an absolute certainty replacing the curiosity.

The doing was mine. The agreement in my holding. The objects were surety against payment. The human failed to pay.

Stosser’s comprehension became ours: the voice we were dealing with was tied to the rules of the agreement, just the same as Wells. We weren’t dealing with an all-powerful Old One here, not directly. Or it was, but not all of it, an offshoot still tangled with the world, while the rest of it slept? Maybe: it was still old, and powerful, and scary as hell, but not going to rip the city apart if we pissed it off.

Probably.

Stosser shook that off, and went back to his argument, gathering steam as he went. “Your agreement is valid. Yet. The objects are humans. They contain souls. An older law than your agreement says that you may not take a soul without its permission.”

There was a silence, as though the other was searching through pages of parchment, looking for the relevant clause.

This is true. But they were pledged as surety. The balance must be maintained.

First rule: there’s a price for everything. I could feel the pressure build, and knew what Stosser was going to say, even as I reached – far too late, since this was a memory, not reality – to stop him.

“Then take me, instead. Let them go, the unwilling souls, and take me in their place.”

The door closed, the drawer slid shut, and I was back in my own head again, still staring at the veins of current pulsing on my skin. Now, though, I could follow them into the ground, deep into the stone, to where the creature waited. I didn’t know what it was, but I could taste Ian Stosser within it, waiting. Contained. I hadn’t known anything could contain Ian Stosser.

“He agreed to it,” Nick said, following my thoughts, or simply airing his own conclusions along the same path. “He’s held by the agreement.”

The Flame burns me; restless and... annoying.

I stifled a totally inappropriate grin at the almost aggrieved tone in the creature’s voice, and waited. Something had sent the creature here; sounded like we were about to find out what. Hopefully, it involved getting the boss out of hock.

He suggested a new trade, to please us both, and put final paid on the debt. We are to exchange for the one in your holding, who owed the original payment.

I got the feeling, suddenly, that the payment had not been in cash, and shuddered.

You will do this.

It wasn’t a question. Nick and I exchanged a glance, and I could see the same question in his expression as was inevitably setting on mine: How the hell were we supposed to manage that?

“Go get him,” I said to Nick. “Tell him... we’ve got the guy who stole his stuff here. He’ll either come, or he’ll run. If he runs, drag him back. And don’t bother being too careful with him, either.”

You couldn’t send an unwilling being into this sort of agreement, but this guy had made like a pack rat with two human lives, presumably against their will. I was done playing nice-nice with him. The hell with holding the facts up to light: we were the only ones who could fix this, and we had to do it, now. Somehow.

It was only a couple of minutes later that Nick returned, holding Wells firmly by the ear. Literally – he had the guy in a gentle headlock – and magically, as I could sense the loop of current around Wells’s neck. Probably not approved methodology, but we’d gone a bit beyond that.

Wells looked around, like expecting to be confronted with something, and visibly relaxed when it was just us on the porch.

“He tried to run?”

“Like a bunny.”

I tsked sadly.

“This him?” I asked the voice, still waiting in the rocks deep below us. I needed confirmation before I took the next step.

Yes.

The client didn’t flinch; he couldn’t hear our visitor. Interesting. I wondered if that was intentional on our visitor’s part, or not. Not that it mattered; I’d just have to explain it in small words.

First, though... “Why did you do it?” I wasn’t sure it mattered, but I’d always been curious about the why as much as the who and the how. “How could you do that?” When he looked at me blankly, I elaborated. “Your wife, and your son. Yeah, we know. You took away their lives. You turned them into objects, inanimate possessions. Why?”

He stared at me, his eyes going cold, all hints of the genial host fading, and I understood, and felt stupid for not getting it, before. Venec had known; that’s why he’d been hired, the first time. Why he was so angry at himself for not following up on them, after. “That’s all they ever were to you, anyway, weren’t they? Things that made you look better, things you owned.”

“They belonged with me,” he said, and he didn’t sound like a power-mad monster; more like a man who’d been told his team sucked; sulky and belligerent. “They belonged here, not out there. I was taking care of them, protecting them.”

“Yeah, well, you should have kept paying for their upkeep then,” Nick said, before I could even really process what that bastard had just said. “’Cause we bought your marker, and they’re ours now.”

Wells’s eye brightened, and he tried to stand up in Nick’s hold. “You have them back? Oh, excellent! You really are as good as your reputation. There might even be a bonus if – ”

“Wow.” I thought I was going to be sick. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

“Oh, he gets it,” Nick said, giving him a gentle shake. “He gets it completely. He just doesn’t know that we get it, too. They’re free, you bastard.”

Actually, we didn’t know if they were free, yet, or still stuck in their object-form. If the latter, hopefully Stosser would be able to do something about that, once he got free, himself. Which was the point of this little confab.

“You defaulted on your payment,” I said, turning to stare into his face, as grim as I could manage, which right now was pretty grim. “And guess who’s here to collect?”

“But... you took them back.”

“No, we bought them back,” I corrected him, Stosser’s plan unfolding in my brain, even without Venec’s prompting. “And as per our contract with you, any and all expenses incurred in the execution of our job are paid in full by the client.” I smiled, not sweetly. “Guess what just came due?”

His eyes flickered back and forth, then tried to roll back in his head, like they were trying to escape. “You can’t do this!”

“You signed the agreement,” Nick said.

“I don’t have them in my possession! You haven’t given them back yet!”

Damn. And also, damn. I wasn’t a lawyer or a Council scholar, but that sounded like it was enough of a loophole to get him off.

*venec?*

With the barriers down, he returned my ping almost immediately.

*bit busy here* Grumbly dog, distracted and worried.

*us too. we have a Situation*