Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [1]
And while Wren Valere was many things, a fool had never been one of them.
“Rafe? Can you go get me a refill of water?” she asked, handing him the plastic sports bottle she had been holding. He wasn’t thrilled at being an errand boy, she could tell, but his orders had been explicit. Give Ms. Valere all the help she needed. Type of help not specified. So he went.
Freed from observation, she sat back on her heels and closed her eyes slowly, holding them shut for a count of ten. She had been doing this long enough that it didn’t take her any longer than that to slip into a state of clear-minded awareness. The sounds of early-morning traffic, the smells of exhaust and fresh-budding greenery all faded, leaving her with a clear, concentrated, settled mind. As she opened her eyes slowly, not rushing anything, her gaze went back to the sleek marble foundation in front of her, as though there might have been some change in those ten-plus seconds of blackout.
Nope. Nothing. It still looked as ordinary and commonplace as before, one of any of a hundred-plus buildings throughout the city built in the same time period. No bloody handprint, no chisel marks or dust left on the pale gray surface, no sign of any kind of disturbance at all. Nothing to suggest there was something different about this northeast corner of the building, as opposed to the southeast, the southwest or the northwest sides. The four corners of this building stretched out over a full city block, and she’d just spent the past hour becoming far too familiar with all four.
God, she hated prep work! But you had to check everything before you started looking for anything. Even the stuff you knew you wouldn’t find. Except, of course, the fact that one corner, or rather one small block inside of this corner, wasn’t really there anymore.
A deliberate letting-go of her concentration, and the fugue state slipped away. Wren stood, arching her back to release some of the tension that had gathered there. Magic—current, in the post-eighteenth century terminology—was easy enough to use, if you had the Talent, but that didn’t make it easy.
Her throat felt like sandpaper. She looked around, but Rafe wasn’t back yet with her water. He must have gone all the way up to the executive lunchroom for San Pellegrino.
She clicked on the miniature recorder in her hand, and spoke into it, remembering to speak slowly enough that she would be able to transcribe correctly later on that day. “No indications of newly-made marks or disturbances on the site, not that that means anything—I bet they have a team of sanitation experts who come in every morning and sluice the building down, just in case a pigeon poops on it accidentally.”
All right, she thought. A slight exaggeration. But not by much. The guy who’d designed this had obviously had some penile issues that needed to be worked out, though.
The building in question was a thirty-eight-floor skyscraper, gleaming steel and glass in the early-morning light. A troop of window washers could spend a full year just wiping and polishing the expanse of windows. An edifice built to proclaim the owner’s ego to a city already overwhelmed with capital-P Personalities.
“From the exterior, the building looks intact. This is supported by the engineer’s report—” And how the hell had they found someone willing and able to do a full review of the building this morning? Money not only talked, it must have bellowed.
But the report she had found in the folder left at her door by one of Sergei’s ever-efficient contacts was clear on that. The missing piece had been removed from within the building, without cracking the concrete and steel surrounds. The building itself had not been harmed in any way by the alleged