Blood from Stone. Laura Anne Gilman

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      Once she had gotten the kid away from the house and down the road a bit, she coaxed him back to his feet, and they had headed back to the main road. Only one car had driven past them, heading toward the house, and Wren made sure the kid was tucked against her side, barely visible against the deflecting properties of her slicks, unless you were looking specifically for a wee one. From there, it was a relatively easy walk to her job-cache, an abandoned tree house in the back of someone’s summer home, where she had stowed her regular clothes, wallet, and other forms of identification and civilization. Her slicks packed away securely, they walked on toward the previously arranged rendezvous site. The kid had kept up reasonably well, staying quiet and only needing to be carried the last mile into town. He didn’t whimper, sniffle, or pick his nose, for which Wren was endlessly thankful.

      As they walked she tried to sort through everything that had happened in some kind of calm and distanced way. It was no use: whatever had happened back there needed more thought and calm than she had right now. Finish the job, then worry about crazy Max.

      To that end, now dressed in a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt under her leather jacket, her hair pulled into a careless ponytail, Wren looked to the casual observer like a young mother out for an afternoon with her offspring, waiting for Daddy. The thought made her cringe, but she had to admit that it was perfect camouflage in this SUV-and-picket-fence town.

      By the time she found a pay phone and checked in with her partner back in Manhattan, her sense of humor about the entire situation had returned, and she could—almost—laugh about it. Her partner wasn’t quite so sanguine.

      “Max? Stewart Maxwell? Our least favorite loon of all the loons we know?” Sergei’s normally calm and crisp voice was less doubting than exasperated.

      Wren kept most of her attention on the kid sitting on the curb eating an ice-cream cone with both hands and his entire face. “Yeah. That one.”

      “You’re sure? Of course you’re sure. Never mind. Damn. I’d hoped he was dead already.”

      There was no love lost between her partner and Max. In fact, they pretty much loathed each other.

      “He was acting pretty weird,” she continued, ignoring Sergei’s last comment.

      There was a telling silence at the other end of the phone line, and Wren leaned against the open booth and grinned despite herself. “Weird even for wizzed,” she clarified.

      “I don’t like this,” Sergei was saying, back in his office in the city. She pictured him, sitting behind his huge wooden desk, the one he wouldn’t let them have sex on, even though he got a glint in his eye every time she brought it up, surrounded by paperwork and expensive artwork, and the lovely hum of the city outside the gallery’s door.

      “You and me both, partner,” she responded. “But I finished the job, and as soon as I drop off the package, I’ll be on my way home, away from whatever it was Max was so wound up about. Which should make him happy, for whatever values of happy he understands. I’m keeping low-profile until then.” She paused, wondering if she should ask, then plunged in. “How are you doing?”

      There was a faint hesitation on the other end of the line. “I’m fine.”

      Like hell he was. They had been partners too long for her not to pick up the signs. There was tension in his voice that had been there even before she dropped her little Max-shaped bombshell, and she could practically feel how tight he was holding the phone from her end of it. Something was up. Something had gotten him seriously wound. She made herself drop it, leave it alone, for now. Anything that made him that tense would probably make her unhappy, and getting a Talent upset while using the phone usually resulted in bad things for the phone. Current and electricity traveled along the same paths, and current trumped electricity every time.

      “All right.” She started to say something else, feeling the urge again to dig a little around the topic, then shut her mouth with a snap. If there was anything seriously wrong, he would tell her. Or not. Wasn’t as though she could do anything about whatever it was from here, anyway. “I’ll see you tonight.”

      She hung up the phone, but despite their mutual reassurances of all-rightitude, Wren still felt uneasy. It had to be Sergei affecting her. Job was almost done. Money was in the bank. She should feel calm and satisfied, not wound like a damned spring. Please let it be Sergei’s mood affecting me…

      “Hey.”

      The kid looked up from his seat on the curb, his entire face covered with chocolate ice cream, those blue eyes still totally wide and innocent. “You’re a mess. Go over to that water fountain and wash your face.”

      “I don’t have a towel,” he protested.

      “Use your sleeve.”

      The thought seemed to astonish him. Or maybe it was the fact that an adult was giving him permission to do it. Wren didn’t know and honestly didn’t care. The hair on the back of her neck was flat, but she still had the sense of something hinky in the air, even now. This was where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be there—early, even. Everything should have been fine, and yet…

      She trusted her instincts. She just didn’t know what to do with them, in this case.

      Obeying her order, the kid walked across the street to the park, where there was a stone structure with three water fountains—one adult-sized, one kid-sized, and one down so low to the ground that Wren stared at it for a moment before realizing that it was for animals, operated by a paw-pedal on the ground.

      Kid went to the kid-sized one, and seemed to be trying to puzzle it out, as though he had never used one before. Wren frowned. Okay, he was a little kid, and maybe not all that bright, but there was something seriously off about him. Almost as though he’d lived his entire life, if not in isolation then damn near close. Trusting a total stranger enough to come with her? Not knowing how to use a water fountain?

      “Drop him off and walk away,” she told herself sternly. “Wondering about shit, getting involved, is never a good idea. You should have learned that, if nothing else, by now.”

      Getting involved led to things like politics, СКАЧАТЬ