Tricks of the Trade. Laura Anne Gilman

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      As always, just being inside my apartment soothed me. The space itself wasn’t much, and the building was drafty, but inside… Someone else might find the vibrant burgundy-and-pale-gold walls too exotic, the mix of antiques and thrift store finds too distracting, but to me, it said “home.”

      I pulled off my boots and dropped them on the parquet floor, wincing at the sound. It was still early, but my downstairs neighbors were always on my case about every pinprick of noise.

      Yeah, the decor was me, but the building…not so much.

      I dropped my bag on the nearest sofa, and walked across the open space into the kitchen alcove. It was a decent-size studio, as things went, and got gorgeous sunlight, the few times I was home during daylight hours. The glasswork mosaic that hung on the wall where most people would put a flat-screen TV glittered when I turned on a lamp, a pale reflection of what it did during the day, and I noticed with dismay that a few of the colored glass pieces had somehow slipped from the frame and shattered on the ground.

      “Well, damn.”

      I was way more upset about the broken glass than it deserved, taking my frustrations out on a random bit of bad luck. What was that saying my dad’s girlfriend Claire used to trot out, about if it weren’t for bad luck she’d have none? I stared at the shards, feeling the cranky surge through me, then let it go. It was just glass, and unlike my personal life it could be fixed easily enough.

      I held my hand out, palm down over where most of the shards were, and pulled the faintest trickle of current from my core. Not too much; I didn’t want the shreds to come flying up and embed themselves in my palm, just lift off the floor and come together in a glittering little lump, and then follow me back to the trash can, where I released the current-strands, and let the tiny shards fall into the bin.

      There were leftovers and some salad in the fridge, but I’d eaten enough at the Devil that I wasn’t tempted. Instead, I stripped down to undies, intending to crawl into my bed with a book and read until I fell asleep.

      Instead, I found myself climbing the loft ladder with, not a book, but the case file in my hand.

      Sketches of drowned corpses and detailed descriptions of said remains were not high up on my bedtime reading. But I wasn’t planning on going over the details again. Pietr was right; it was a dead end, pun intended. Without evidence, that area of investigation didn’t lead anywhere.

      A trained pup, though, had more options than what could be found on the body or around the scene. There was also what was caught in the flow of the universe. More, I could try using the particular skill set that my mentor called the kenning, a foresight that sometimes gave me tiny glimpses of the future, sensing when something was coming down the pike. Sometimes, if I was very focused, I could see the present, too, or at least how it intersected with the future.

      Focus, though, required a little help. Mostly a kenning came without being called, without warning, at the absolute worst time possible. That was just how the universe seemed to work. To bring it to heel, I’d have to start with a scrying.

      Sitting cross-legged on the mattress, careful not to bump my head on the ceiling, I put the file down on the bedspread in front of me and reached to the little shelf, where I kept my crystals.

      Yeah, crystals were ridiculously old-fashioned and quaint according to most modern Talent, including J and half my coworkers. They could go jump; crystals helped me scry, and anything that helped was worth keeping.

      Venec had broken my favorite shard, back when I tried to scry who was calling me in for the interview. He called it cheating, then. I suspected now he’d call it a “useful tool,” so long as I used it for work, and not to see what he was up to. I didn’t plan on asking his permission, or for his approval.

      Something stirred on the fringes of my awareness and I quashed it. I did not need, nor want, the Merge anywhere near me, right then.

      For once, it took the hint, and subsided.

      I reached for the plain wooden box, flipping open the lid. It was about the size of a shoe box, and lined in thick, nubby, cream-colored cloth. Inside rested my two remaining pieces: a rose quartz ball about the size of my palm, and my traditional, kerchief-and-skirts style scrying globe of clear quartz, with a jagged imperfection, like a cloudy lightning bolt, through the center.

      I really needed to replace the clear shard, someday. I’d gotten good workings with it then; who knew what I could do now that I had hard-core training?

      Distracted by the thought, my hand reached for the rose quartz as though by instinct, but I stopped just before my palm touched it.

      Rose quartz was really useful for me; I resonated to it, found details I didn’t always with another color, or clear. But it worked on a more emotional level, instinctive and visceral. I had the gut feeling—pun intended—that if I picked that one up, all the walls in the world weren’t going to protect me from knowing Venec a bit more than I wanted to.

      I didn’t want to know what he was up to, not that way.

      And I really didn’t want him to know that I was checking what he was up to, or think that I cared enough to look.

      It wasn’t logical, I knew it wasn’t logical, and that was probably why I hated what the Merge did to me so much. I was completely in touch with my hedonistic, sensual side, sure, but, I still thought rather than emoted, considered rather than reacted. It was how I was built, to bulldog through everything in as practical a manner as possible, and this…this threatened to overwhelm all that.

      No, better to stick with the clear crystal, until I had a better balance going.

      Coward, a little voice whispered in my ear, a rusking, rattling voice like dry leaves and empty husks, and then was gone. I acknowledged the charge, and ignored it, along with everything else I was ignoring.

      Current required control, and being in control. Especially if you were going to open yourself up to scry.

      The clear globe was heavier than I remembered, filling both my hands and forcing them down to the bed with its weight. I let my arms lower, relaxing my shoulders, letting the breath ease out of me on a slow exhale. The moment the back of my hand touched the files spread out in front of me, I felt the downward-upward spiral of current that meant something was stirring, and I had to scramble, mentally, to get into proper fugue-state before it hit me.

      “Ten…nine…eight…”

      Too much, too fast, before I hit seven I was in it, caught up in a net of current-threads, sparkling deep green and blue around me. I pulled a breath in before I got dizzy, but it wasn’t enough. Sparks flickered like lightning strikes against the inside of my eyelids, leaving a shimmer of sparkles behind that made me want to throw up, the way you do when vertigo hits. It was almost a struggle to stay grounded, something I would die rather than admit to anyone. And then I found my ground like a click and a snap and I could soothe the current swirling in and around my core, taming it back into something useful, something controlled.

      I opened my eyes, mage-sense firmly in place, and looked down at the globe.

      Sparks were already flicking inside the stone, mimicking what I had seen with my eyes closed, running from my fingertips down to the imperfection in the crystal, where they fractured and bounced back to the surface. More blues and greens, but darker, emitting a faint but clear warning of danger.

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