Hard Magic. Laura Anne Gilman

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      “By now, I would expect someone to at least check on us, see who was here, maybe call one of us in,” she said. “Unless they have this room on closed-circuit camera … “

      “They don’t. I checked.” Nick sounded quite certain of that. “And anyway, the bunch of us in one small room, nervous or anticipating, and a seeing-eye camera? Would last about ten minutes.”

      “Speak for yourself,” I told him. “Some of us have actual control.”

      “I don’t,” Nifty admitted. “Local stations stopped interviewing me before a game, after their cameras kept fritzing.”

      Probably another reason why he decided against a career in pro football. He wasn’t going to make it as a sportscaster, either, with that handicap. Corporate America was definitely a better bet.

      “So by now,” I said, “someone should have come out to count noses?”

      Sharon nodded. That’s what I had thought. My nerves were starting to hum again. Was anyone even back there, behind the closed door I’d been assuming was the main office? If not, then who had let us in? “And nobody’s had the slightest urge to get up and walk out, despite the fact that we don’t know crap-all, and this mysterious voice has kept us waiting almost half an hour already without any explanation?”

      “I thought about it,” Sharon admitted. “I’m still thinking about it. But … “

      “Yeah,” I said. “But.” But we were all there, anyway.

      The five of us sat there in silence, uncomfortable now, for another ten minutes. The time ticked by in my head, each tick louder than the last, and finally I’d had enough.

      Stubborn, I am, yes. Also curious enough to kill a dozen cats, and not really good with the patience thing. When I think about something, I have to follow it all the way through to the end.

      “Hell with this.” I put my mug of coffee—still undrunk, because it really was disgusting—on the floor and stood up. “I want to know what the deal is.”

      “What, you’re just going to barge in there?” Nick looked somewhat taken aback, but Pietr had a gleam in those eyes that made me think he’d been about three seconds behind me. He liked trouble, yeah. Being in, or causing, or both, I didn’t know. I had a tiny tremor of precog that I was going to find out, though.

      “Yep,” I said in response to Nick’s question, and I marched my boots over to the door, knocked once soundly, and waited.

      No answer. Not even the sound of someone shuffling around on the other side. That wasn’t good.

      I knocked again, and then tried the door handle, fully expecting it to be locked.

      It wasn’t.

      My current swirled once, deep inside me, then went still. I could Translocate out of here now, if I wanted to. I could yelp for J, ask his opinion. I could …

      I pushed the door open and stepped inside, hearing at least one person get up and move behind me. Nice to know someone had my back. I was betting on it being Pietr.

      The door opened up into a larger room, done up like your basic office—beige carpeting and walls painted to match—and furnished with a large wooden desk with a leather chair behind it, two upholstered visitors’ chairs, a bunch of framed inspirational-looking prints on the walls, and basic white blinds on the windows, two of them, on the far wall. There was one sickly looking plant I immediately wanted to rescue, and a couple of photos on the desk, facing away from us, but not much personality otherwise.

      The body sprawled facedown on the floor next to the desk didn’t contribute much to the room’s decor, either.

      four

      “Holy shit.” The words came from my throat the moment they hit my brain. Maybe not the most articulate of reactions, and I don’t have much of a filter, sometimes, but … hello? Dead body. A little freaked-out. I think I could be forgiven.

      Sharon looked over my shoulder to see what I was reacting to, and then slid past me while I was still standing there, trying to take it all in. She knelt by the guy with careful precision and lifted his wrist, I guess to try for a pulse. I almost snorted. Not much point; even from the doorway I could tell he was dead. You didn’t lie facedown that way if you were just sleeping, not even if you’d passed out. Trust me, I’ve seen a lot of people passed out.

      “Holy shit,” I said again.

      There was a dead body in the office. We’d been sitting there, just talking, drinking coffee, and there had been a dead body in there all that time.

      “I guess the interviews are canceled?” a voice said in my ear, and I dug an elbow into Nick’s side. Not that it wasn’t funny, in a sick way, but it didn’t really seem … respectful. Or something, I don’t know.

      Did I mention the freaked-out part? Dead body. There. My current was very still, deep inside me, and I stirred it just to reassure myself that it hadn’t suddenly disappeared. I didn’t carry a lot of mojo around with me—why would I?—but touching it was like having a blankie or a stuffed bear; the need for comfort was a natural human instinct. I’d place even odds everyone else in the room was doing exactly the same thing. Like checking for your wallet after someone else’s been robbed: maybe stupid, but almost impossible to stop yourself.

      Nifty moved past us, too, nowhere near as smoothly or gently as Sharon, and that made me think maybe we should get out of the way—or at least stop standing in the doorway before someone decided to go through us, one way or the other. I didn’t really want to get closer to the body, but the only other alternative was to go back into the waiting room, and I didn’t think that would look good.

      Why I cared what looked good in front of people I’d just met and wasn’t sure I liked and was probably going to be competing for a job against was left unanswered.

      “There’s no blood,” Pietr said, and I jumped. Despite thinking he was the first one behind me, I hadn’t seen him until he spoke. He’d somehow faded into the blah-colored walls of the office like some kind of two-legged chameleon. How a good-looking guy can disappear from my awareness … I guess it showed how freaked-out I was.

      “Wha?” My voice came back with a croak, and I cleared my throat and tried again. “What?”

      “On the carpet. There’s no blood.”

      I forced myself to ignore the fact that the body was a body, and looked again, starting with the torso—I didn’t want to look at the face, not yet—and moving over the probable track he’d taken to land there. Pietr was right. No blood, no signs of violence, spilled drink or food on the desk—no sign whatsoever of what had happened.

      By now, all of us had moved through the doorway and into the room, although Nick and I were still hanging back. I felt I should be doing something, but I didn’t know what, so I just stood there and watched.

      Sharon and Nifty were turning the body over, gently, like it was going to matter to the guy now. I kept cataloging details, focusing on that so I didn’t have to really see what they were doing, in case blood suddenly spurted or something. Clothing. The guy had on a nice suit, gray pinstripe, that looked more expensive than the office would suggest. He was also СКАЧАТЬ