Curse the Dark. Laura Anne Gilman

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СКАЧАТЬ Cosa as well, and was proving they had no hesitation about using that influence. And they knew damn well who she was.

      Wren put down the fan and finished off what was left of her now warm, now flat soda. “At least they’re not trying to kill me anymore,” she said, trying for cheerful.

      Sergei only grunted, shaking the plastic glass as though more iced tea would suddenly appear in it. “I’d almost rather they were.”

      Wren slanted a dirty look at him, but didn’t ask him to elaborate on that comment.

      “No,” he went on, oblivious, “you were right. Any overt move by the Council would only set the lonejacks even more in opposition, and maybe even force a direct revolt against perceived Council interference. They don’t want that.

      “But they don’t want you in any position to be a focal point of unrest, either. Shutting you down reduces your influence, and sends a message to the rest of the lonejack community as well. Time-honored tactics.”

      “Jesus wept. The Council being subtle. Now that’s scary.” She scraped up the few tendrils of coca-brown hair that were plastered against her neck and tried without much hope of success to shove them back into her braid. “They don’t need to shut me down! I don’t want to be a focal point! Why does everyone think I want to be any kind of leader?” The whole point of being unaffiliated, a lonejack, was to not have to worry about anyone but yourself. And your partner, yeah.

      Sergei shifted with another grunt, the back of his shirt plastered to him with sweat. “It’s not what you want that matters to them, Wren. It’s the perception. You’ve told them to take a leap before.”

      Wren winced at the reminder of a more youthful and astonishingly stupid incident in her life. That was the problem with working with someone for so long, especially if they had a good memory.

      Her partner, he of the most excellent memory, was relentless in ticking off more reasons. “You hang out with lonejacks and Nulls and fatae equally, which we already knew made them nervous. Especially the fatae.” Nonhumans, the fantasticals. “And then, adding injury to insult, you—we—faced them down over the Frants deal this spring. And won. People know that. Gossip spreads. And that’s what they’re afraid of.”

      Wren looked at him through narrowed eyes. He could be such a plainspoken bastard sometimes, for all that he made his living making nice in order to close the deal. Although his suit jacket had been dropped on the back of a kitchen chair with no regard for how much it had cost, and the well-polished oxblood loafers had been kicked off the moment he got inside the apartment, he still looked far too trendy-normal to be lying on the floor of an East Village apartment trying to figure the politics of a world most of humanity had no clue existed.

      You could see him easily in the center of his art gallery. Or going nose-to-nose with the Council in a war of words, like he did during the Frants job. Not so easy to recognize the guy who pulled a gun to get her out of a job gone bad, last winter. But they were both in there. Plus the guy who held her when she was too sore and scared to move, while she slept, but refused to do her laundry.

      Wren gave up on trying to catch any sort of breeze sitting up and lay facedown on the floor, spreading her body so as to get the maximum amount of coolness from the hardwood. She turned her face so that she could look at her partner but still feel the wood under her cheek, and whimpered pitifully, her feelings about the heat, the Council, and her current lack of available funds all rolled into one convenient sound.

      He smiled at that, his narrow, expressive lips begging for her hand to reach up and touch them. Even now, she was always astonished that the skin there was so soft.

      “Things’re bad, huh?” she said instead, curling her fingers in against her palm to keep them still.

      He sighed again. “Not so bad, but not good, either. You have cash in the retirement fund, of course—” she actually had an IRA, plus a separate savings account from which to buy the apartment when and if it went coop, being a practical bird “—but in the short term it’s probably going to get a little tight, unless you’ve been saving even more than you’ve told me.”

      “Not much more, no. Rent to pay. Groceries to buy. P.B. to feed.”

      “You should make that little fur-covered mutant get a job.” But despite Sergei’s long-standing xenophobia, it was said without heat. The two of them, demon and human, had come to some sort of…she hesitated to call it an agreement, but a cease-fire, since she was injured by a sniper’s bullet during the Frants situation. Through his own choice or Sergei’s suggestion, the demon had become Wren’s semiconstant companion, not leaving her side until he judged her able to defend herself physically again. Sweet. And totally unexpected. She had spotted him more than once since then, out of the corner of her eye, lurking within running-to-help distance. It was tough to miss a four-foot-tall white-furred, white-fanged, red-eyed demon, after all. Despite the fact that three quarters of the city managed it on a regular basis.

      The fatae, the nonhumans, the magical ones, are always with us, she could hear her mentor saying, years now in the past. But it takes looking with an open mind as well as open eyes. Most people don’t bother.

      “Their loss,” she said quietly. “Their loss.”

      “What?”

      She looked at her partner and gave in to the impulse, running one finger along his lower lip until he nipped at the offending fingertip, then propped himself up on one elbow and heaved himself to his feet, surprisingly agile for a man his size.

      “You hungry?” he asked, his body language pretty clearly moving them on from that moment of physical contact like metal shutters coming down. “I could go for some Thai tonight.”

      Story of our lives, she thought as she reached up one arm and let him help her up off the floor. Give us business, give us danger and mayhem, and we’re good to go. Personal stuff…not so good. Hence, avoidance.

      It had been four months since the combination of a seriously crazy ghost, a Council sniper, and the opening of Sergei’s Deep Dark Secrets Closet had forced them to admit that there was more to their partnership than, well, partnership. And here they were, still at the hand-holding and awkward kissing stages. Not that Wren particularly wanted to go leaping into bed…well, okay, there were days when that was all she wanted. But this geeky awkwardness was so…embarrassing. They could talk about everything and anything else. Why was this so different?

      “Y’know,” she said, suddenly unable to face another night of pretending everything was okay, that they were intentionally taking things slow and casual. “I’m really not hungry. You go on. I think I’m just going to make it an early night.”

      She pretended not to see the disappointed expression on his face, reaching up to give him a quick kiss at the door. But her hands found themselves threading into his hair almost without meaning to, and the quick kiss turned into something a little longer than that. God, his lips were soft. And warm. And the way he nipped at her mouth, just like that…

      But just when she was starting to reconsider the whole “sending him away” thing, Sergei dropped his hands from her shoulder and was out the door before she could react.

      “Damn,” she said, leaning her back against the closed and locked door. “And, well, damn.” And she really didn’t understand why she was crying. Maybe it was the heat finally getting to her.

      “I need to get away,” she said to herself. “Away from the city. Away from Sergei. Away from СКАЧАТЬ