Hard Magic. Laura Anne Gilman

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ I had a hot date tonight, had to brush off the good suit.”

      Joseph Cetala had just pushed over seventy, and looked it, but every year had been kind. His hair was still thick, if bone-white, and his patrician cheekbones were hidden under still-firm skin. I have no objections to my looks—they do the job and pale skin and a pointy-pixie chin suit me—but man did I used to wish I were his biological daughter, just for those cheekbones.

      I took a glass from him, and sat on the sofa. The shaggy white-and-brown throw rug got to its feet and shuffled over. “Hey there, good boy. How’s my good boy?”

      “He’s getting old, same as me.”

      “Nah. You guys are never gonna get old. Are you, boy?”

      Rupert woofed, and shoved his wet nose into my hand. I wasn’t much for pets, but Rupe was less a pet than a member of the household. J said all Old English sheepdogs were smart, but I personally thought Rupe got a double helping of brains. I always got the feeling he wasn’t so optimistic about me.

      J took his own glass over to the leather chair and sat, crossing one leg against his knee, and looking, I swear to god, like an ad for something upscale and classy aimed at the Retirement Generation. Even in my nice dress and pearls, I still felt outclassed.

      Funny, really. I leaned into the sofa and looked around. The only way to describe J’s place was “warm.” Rosewood furniture against cream-colored walls, and touches of dark blue and flannel gray everywhere, broken by the occasional bit of foam green from his Chinese pottery collection. You’d think I’d have grown up to be Über Society Girl, not pixie-Goth, in these surroundings. Even my bedroom—now turned back into its original use as a library—had the same feel of calm wealth to it, no matter how many pop-culture posters I put up or how dark I painted the walls. And yet, J was just as likely to wear jeans and kick back with a beer when he was in the mood, so I guess I should know by now that you can’t judge a body by the decor.

      J used to tell me, when I was, oh, thirteen and felt particularly floundering-ish, that I would grow up into who I always was. It sounds nice, I guess, but I’m still not quite sure who that is. She uses a lot of hair dye and has an interestingly eclectic wardrobe, and might have a lead on a job, though. So that was all right.

      “What’s for dinner?” I asked.

      “I’m trying something new.”

      From some people, that news would make me nervous. J, I swear to god, was born in the kitchen. I don’t think he owned a single cookbook or has any of his recipes written down, but he’s never fed me anything that was less than really good, and it frequently goes into orgasmic culinary experience range. I learned how to cook by the time I was ten, just by osmosis, and had my first set of proper knives when I was fourteen. Haven’t done much cooking lately, though. Nobody around to feed since graduation, I guess.

      “You are looking particularly glowy tonight, dearest. Either the job hunt has resulted in a hit, or you have met a new admirer.”

      I think J gets a kick out of my social life, although he tsk-tsks periodically over my inability—lack of desire, really—to settle into one steady relationship. So long as I’m happy, he’s happy. I mean, he didn’t blink the first time I showed up with a new girlfriend, and never asked when she went away and a new boyfriend showed up.

      I’m not particularly into labels. I just like people, is all. Doesn’t matter what body parts they’ve got, so long as there’s a brain and a sense of humor and a healthy idea of companionship.

      “Both, maybe,” I told him. “But it’s the job thing that’s interesting. I was in the shower when the call came in ….”

      J listened the way he always did, with his entire body leaning forward, his hands cupped around his glass, his gaze not unblinking but steady on my face. When I finished, he leaned back, took a sip from his glass, and didn’t say anything.

      “What?”

      “You intend to follow through on these instructions?”

      “I’d planned to, yeah. You think it’s a bad idea? Are you getting a vibe?” I had what J called the kenning, not quite precog but a sort of magical sense about things. But he’d been honing his current for a lifetime before I came along, and that meant he picked up more than I did on a regular basis.

      “Nothing so strong as a premonition, no. I will admit, however, to a sense that something is slightly … What is that horrible word you used to use? Hinky Something feels hinky about it.”

      That made me laugh. “Well, yes. That probably goes without saying. Anyone calls out of the blue, doesn’t give basic details, all mysterious and like?” I didn’t roll my eyes, but my voice conveyed the “well, duh” more than J deserved. “That’s half the fun!”

      My mentor shook his head and mock-sighed. I love J more than life, but he and I diverge pretty seriously on our ideas of fun.

      “If you wanted me to, I could get you a job …” He let the offer trail off, the same way he did every time he made it. J had, once upon a time, worked for the State, and then did some work for a high-powered law firm that still listed him on the masthead, even though he hadn’t, as far as I knew, taken on a case in over a decade. If I couldn’t be a cop, I guess his reasoning went, why not be a lawyer?

      Just the idea made me want to tear my fingernails off and use them to dig an escape route. I never, ever told him that, though I suspected he knew.

      “There’s just something about that message,” I said, doing my usual not-a-response to his offer. “Something that makes my ears prick up, and no, I don’t know why. I figured I might do a scrying, see what comes forward.”

      “You and your crystals.” The disgust in his voice this time was real.

      “Just because we’ve gone all modern and scientific with current doesn’t mean some of the old ways aren’t valid.” It was an old argument, older even than the split between Council and the scruffy freelancer lonejacks. When Founder Ben—Benjamin Franklin to Nulls—nailed the connection between electricity and current with his kite-and-key trick, most Talent changed, too, working the scientific angle to figure out more and more efficient ways to do things—and how to work this increasingly electric world to our benefit. A lot of the theories and practices of Old Magic got tossed, and good riddance, but I’d discovered that I could scry better with a focus object than with current alone, and the smoother and rounder the shape, the better.

      So yeah, I have a crystal ball. Deal.

      “I just …” It was difficult to vocalize what I wasn’t really sure of. J was patient, waiting. I might have mentioned the dream, but I didn’t. Talking about Zaki always made J feel guilty, as if there was some way he could have prevented it, or stopped me from finding the killer, or done something.

      “There’s something familiar about the voice. No, it’s not someone I’ve ever met. I’m not even sure I’ve ever heard the voice before, either, so it’s not a radio announcer or anything. But it’s still familiar, like I’ve got memories associated with it, except I can’t access those memories, either.” I’m usually pretty good at that, too, so J didn’t press further.

      “Hinky,” my mentor instead diagnosed with confidence, putting his glass down and heading into the kitchen as something chimed a warning. Rupert abandoned my petting СКАЧАТЬ