Hard Magic. Laura Anne Gilman

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СКАЧАТЬ me, even if I’d had an inch of artistic or entrepreneurial talent, which I didn’t. Academia maybe, but the truth was that while I loved learning, school mostly bored me.

      Me bored was a bad idea. When I was bored I did things like create a spell that would burn out selected letters in neon signs all over town, until it looked as though there was a conspiracy against the letters Y and N. Listening to people’s crackpot theories about what had really happened for the rest of the week had been fun, but …

      But I needed something to do.

      They say you should follow your interests, go for what you’re passionate about. To do something that mattered would be nice. I needed to be able to get my teeth into something, to feel that it was worthwhile. Other than that … I didn’t know. I guess that works if you’ve got some kind of artistic talent, or want to make the world a better place, or have an isotope named for you. Me, not so much.

      There had been a while, after Zaki’s murder, when I’d thought about going into law enforcement, but it was tougher these days for Talent to make it—less shoe leather and more high-tech toys. I might make it through the Academy, but spending the rest of my life pounding the pavement, unable to advance, didn’t thrill me. And J was even less happy with the idea. He wanted me in a nice, safe office. Preferably a corner office, with an assistant to handle the heavy lifting and typing.

      I scowled at the list again. Three advertising agencies, two trade magazines, and a legal aid firm. That was all I had left.

      “Screw it. Shower first.” Whatever the cause, I was sticky and sweaty, and my hair was kind of gross. Maybe washing it would get my brain going.

      The bathroom was reasonably luxe, with scented shampoos and conditioners and soaps, and I took my time. I thought I heard the phone ring, but since I was soaking wet and had just lathered up, I ignored it. This place wasn’t quite pretentious enough to rate a telephone in the bathroom. I’m not sure J would have let me stay here if there had been one—he’s sort of old-fashioned and genteel, and things like taking a phone call while you’re on the crapper would give him frothing fits.

      The thought, I admit, made me giggle, even in my depression. J is such a gentleman in a lot of ways, old school, and yet he kept up with me pretty well. I wonder sometimes what crimes he committed as a young’un, that he was the one to be landed with me.

      Far as I could tell, his only mistake had involved being in the wrong place at the right time. Zaki had enough sense to know he wasn’t a strong enough Talent, and didn’t have enough patience to mentor me, but his first choice was a disaster waiting to happen, and even as a kid I knew that the moment he introduced us. The guy was … well, he wouldn’t have sold me to pay off his gambling debts, but I wouldn’t have learned a whole lot, either.

      The moment was still crystal-sharp in my memory: Zaki’s worried presence, hovering; Billy’s pleasure at being asked to mentor someone for the first time in his life; the smell of a freshly washed carpet that didn’t hide the years of wear and tear …

      With an amazing lack of tact that still dogs me, I’d used my untrained, just-developing current to yelp for help. That had attracted the attention of a passerby on the street below, who—despite having already done his time as a mentor, and being way out of our league—came up the stairs, took one look, and took on the job.

      Zaki had been lonejack, part of the officially unofficial, intentionally unorganized population of Talent. J was Council—the epitome of structural organization. Despite that, they both got along pretty well, I guess because of me. I wasn’t the only lonejack kid mentored by a Council member, but I was the only one we knew of who stayed at least nominally a lonejack.

      “Maybe if you’d crossed the river, you’d have had a job offer waiting for you when you graduated,” I grumbled. “Why do you insist on thinking that nepotism’s a dirty word?”

      Truth was, I didn’t think of myself as either one group or the other, and maybe that was part of the problem. Born to one magical community, raised in another, Latina by birth and European by training, female imprinted on a—oh god, use the word—metrosexual male … Issues? I probably should have subscriptions at this point.

      My hair’s short enough that it doesn’t take long to wash, and by the time I got out of the bathroom, toweled off, and wrapped in one of the complimentary bathrobes, the strands were almost dry. I’m a natural honey-blonde, thanks to my unknown and long-gone mother, but it hasn’t been that shade since I was fourteen—I was currently sporting a dark red dye job that I had thought would look more office-appropriate. So much for that thought doing me any good. Maybe I’d go back to purple, and the hell with it.

      Contemplating an interviewer’s reaction to that, I walked to the bedroom, and saw that the light on the phone was blinking. Right, the call I’d missed. Whoever called, they’d left me a message.

      My heart did a little scatter-jump, and my inner current flared in anticipation, making me instinctively take a step away from the phone, rather than toward it. Normally, like I said, my current’s cold and calm, especially compared to most of my peers, but I’d been out of sorts recently, and wasn’t quite sure what might happen. Bad form to short out your only means of communicating with potential employers. Plus, the hotel would be pissed, and complain to J.

      Once I felt my current settle back down, I let myself look at the blinking light again. You could call first thing in the morning with bad news. Okay. You didn’t call and leave a message with bad news, did you? I didn’t know. Maybe. Just because everyone seemed eager to tell me no to my face didn’t mean that was the only way to do it.

      All right, this was me, keeping calm. Hitting the replay button. Stepping back, out of—hopefully—accidental current-splash range …

      “This message is for Bonita Torres. Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.” The speaker gave an address that I didn’t recognize, not that I knew damn-all about New York City, once you get past the basic tourist spots. “Take the 1 train to 125. Be on time.”

      No name, no indication of where they got my name or number, just that message, in a deep male voice.

      An interesting voice, that. Not radio-announcer smooth, but … interesting.

      Someone smart would have deleted the message. Someone with actual prospects would have laughed and said no way.

      I’ve always been a sucker for interesting.

      two

      One of the first things J taught me was, before I decided on anything with repercussions, to step back and consider that decision from every possible angle. It only took a few minutes of thought, and sanity reasserted itself. The voice-mail message was weird, but intriguing. Or maybe it was intriguing because it was weird. Did that make it a good idea? No. In fact, it probably made it a very bad idea.

      J said I should consider, and think sanely. He didn’t say anything about listening to that sane voice, and very bad ideas were often a lot of fun.

      The guy hadn’t left a phone number for me to call back and say I’d be there, though. Oh god, and if this was from one of the résumés I’d sent out, I’d look a proper idiot calling now to follow up, if I’d already gotten an interview.

      I picked up the phone and was about to dial the callback code when I realized that, idiot, the call had to have come through the hotel switchboard. So I dialed 0 for the front desk, instead.

      “Hi. СКАЧАТЬ