Curse the Dark. Laura Anne Gilman

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      “Andre Felhim. Code 28-J8-199-6.”

      “Good afternoon, sir.” A chime followed the almost-human-sounding voice, and the door of the restricted elevator opened with a soft hum, giving him access to the inner building where the Silence had its unmarked, unremarked world headquarters, on a side street in a side corner of Manhattan.

      Andre put his keycard back into his pocket, touched the display pad on the wall, and rode in silence up to the seventh floor. It was quiet, now; most of the activity on seven occurred in the morning, when new reports were compiled and distributed. Friday afternoon was a time to catch up, to cover all your bases and plot strategy for the next week. Or, for managers like himself, for the weekend. The Silence slept, but not for long. There was a review meeting scheduled for Saturday morning, and he still had to look over the agenda.

      “Ho, the glamorous life,” he said wryly, walking down the hall toward his office, a plain square of space carved out of the floor plan by three walls and a window. He still wasn’t quite sure how he rated one of those rare windows, but the first lesson you learned was take what you can get and never let anyone think it might have been a mistake.

      While he’d been out of the office this morning, meeting with an extremely particular and paranoid new client, someone had dumped a dozen or so files into his in-box, threatening to topple the stack that was already there. A series of salmon-pink “while you were away” slips were taped to the back of his chair, fluttering slightly under the flow of air from the vent overhead. Andre pulled them off the fabric, flicking through them while he checked to see if his message light was on.

      It was.

      “It never stops,” he muttered, more amused than annoyed. Far worse if it were to stop. Information was the lifeblood of the Silence. And the more information you had, the more essential you were. If anyone thought, however rightly or wrongly, that you didn’t have access to new information…

      The only thing equal in sin was not to bring money into the coffers, to pay for the less lucrative situations they had been founded to deal with. Endowments, even impressive ones, only went so far when you had the entire world to save.

      Well. For the moment, anyway, he didn’t have to worry about either of those sins. Bringing The Wren—and Sergei—onto the Silence’s roster had been a coup he could rest on for a while longer yet, information-wise. Especially with this new client, who thought that the island estate she had just inherited might be infested with something unworldly. It was probably nuclear-irradiated cockroaches, considering where she lived, but the Silence would earn a pretty penny checking it out and cleaning it up, whatever the cause.

      He almost hoped it was glow-in-the-dark cockroaches. They were still collecting royalties on the movie that got filmed after the last one of those Man-meets-Nature, Screws-it-up situations.

      But that sort of project was a sideline. The supernatural screwing with the natural was their raison d’être; specifically, the Italian situation was where his focus needed to be, right now. Matthias would be annoyed not to have Sergei’s help on his current project, but Andre was not entirely unhappy that his former protégé had dug in his heels about letting the girl work alone.

      He’d refrained from giving them anything more than the official, filed details of the situation, as per policy, but this felt…wrong. Bad, in his gut. And not only because they had so little information on the missing manuscript itself. Something about this had put his hackles up, and only the knowledge that these two really were the very best he could put on it made him sign off on the assignment.

      That, and the fact that “I have a bad feeling about this” was not an acceptable reason within these hallways.

      “You’re back.”

      “You’re a master of the obvious.” He regretted his tone the moment he saw his assistant’s expression. “I’m sorry. It’s been a hellish twenty-four hours, and I’m a proper bastard for taking it out on you.”

      “Make it two boxes of truffles at Christmas this year and you’re forgiven. As always.” Bren was office manager and dogsbody to three managers, Andre included, and they all ran her ragged. Chocolate once or twice a year seemed to him the least he could do.

      “Anyway, you can see that disaster has once again struck while you were off-premises.”

      She twiddled two red-nailed fingers in the direction of his desk, and Andre sighed dramatically. “Indeed. Any actual corpses?”

      “None you have to dispose of. Coffee?”

      He considered the offer briefly, then shook his head. “Thank you, but no. I’m irritable enough already without adding that swill to the mix this late in the day.”

      “True, too true. Just yell if you change your mind.”

      Andre paused a moment to enjoy the view of Bren’s backside as she strode down the hallway to her desk. He had an acknowledged weakness for tall, leggy blondes. Pity she’d prefer him to be Andrea.

      With a chuckle at his own foolishness—the first even faint laugh he’d had since being handed the Italian project three days ago—he moved to the door and closed it against the external office distractions. And in that time his brief good humor fell away as though it had never existed.

      Magic. This entire situation smelled of magic. Stank of it, actually.

      Andre had been among the first, years ago, to endorse the use of Talents within the Silence. He knew their value, in an organization that dealt with the results of magic in more than three-quarters of their situations. But magic itself—the basic, unpredictable power—still made him uneasy, despite or maybe because of his continued exposure to it. For all their talk of current and channeling, it wasn’t the same as building a generator, and then flipping a switch. It was random, unpredictable—untrustworthy. Uncontrollable. Almost as uncontrollable as this unaffiliated Talent, his best (former) student at the reins or no. It was a pity he was becoming so fond of the girl. That might become a problem, eventually.

      Sitting down at the glass-and-brass table he used for a desk, Andre spread the message slips out in front of him, scanning the names and sorting them into order of importance.

      “Damn, damn, and damn.” It was the strongest expression of displeasure he would allow himself in the office. Andre leaned forward and stared at the blank wall opposite him. Two of the messages were from Alejandro, wanting to know with increasing levels of impatience what was happening with the Italian situation.

      Alejandro wasn’t his superior…technically they were both on the same management level, and Andre in fact had seniority in years. But he was the person with oversight in that area of the world, and so despite having to come to Andre for aid, he still kept the upper hand. Levels and negotiations. The Silence was a masterpiece of levels, and every level you went up there were more appearing above you.

      There were levels of trustworthiness, as well. His—what was the term? His lonejack didn’t trust him at all. Her handler trusted him just so far. How much did he trust them?

      And how much of what they trusted him with could he in turn place in trust with others?

      Last night, Sergei had called him. At home, not ten minutes after walking through the door, which meant the Handler had been waiting for him since Andre kept no set routine. When Andre tried to trace the call back, he discovered that the call had been routed through two different pay phones, ending up with one of those СКАЧАТЬ