Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [102]
It didn’t matter what he didn’t tell her, she realized almost lazily. They’d hurt each other before. They were going to do it again in the future, no matter how much they didn’t want to. You couldn’t get that much under someone’s skin, that much in their blood, and not know exactly how to hurt them, even without trying. But the bliss…the bliss that you could create, in that closeness…She giggled with the thought of it. Maybe not now. Maybe not even soon. But it was there. Waiting. Like current, coiled inside them.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah. Come on, let’s get back to work.”
The second front arrived about an hour later. All around the city people cursed, struggled with umbrellas, dashed into the nearest overhangs or ran, newspapers over their heads, for subway stops and building lobbies. Sergei, at Wren’s request, opened all the windows in the apartment to let in the cool, wet air. She was still riding a high from the power feed, pacing the apartment like a caged tiger, occasionally stopping by a window to sniff the rain-laden air.
“Something’s going on,” she said suddenly, stopping by the kitchen doorway.
Sergei, printouts and notes spread out over the kitchen table, looked up at her over the rims of his reading glasses. “How so?”
“I don’t know.” She continued pacing down the hall. “But I know.”
“Well, let me know when you know what you don’t know how you know,” he said, not expecting an answer. She had sucked in so much power, her blood was probably vibrating. He wouldn’t get anything useful out of her until it had all settled in and been absorbed. And the storm being overhead would make it worse, not better. Anything could be going on in the city right now. And, knowing the city, and the players in it, anything probably was.
But none of it was likely to concern them.
The Frants lobby was still as pristine in its marble and chrome as it had been almost a week before, when Wren had been brought in to investigate. The storm—now directly overhead—muted the light coming in through the high windows, casting a subdued hush that seemed to mute the security guards sitting behind the desk, talking over the previous day’s baseball scores.
“Please. A lucky play. If he’d fooled the runner into thinking he’d caught it—”
“In your dreams. Face it, there ain’t gonna be a post season for those jokers this year.”
“Least we’re still in the running. The Mets couldn’t get a wild-card slot if you gave ’em Willie Mays in his prime back.”
They continued wrangling quietly, eyes trained on the monitors with the casual ease of professionals. One even still sat like a cop, left hand dropping to easy reach of a nonexistent gun in a nonexistent holster. The only other motion was the occasional employee coming back very late from lunch, or leaving early, heels clicking on the marble, or thudding soundlessly on the all-weather runners put down to protect people from slipping on wet marble. A siren wailed, a few streets over, and the voice of the ambulance driver hailed cars in front of him. “It would be nice if you got out of the way.” New York courtesy—the “asshole” unspoken but heard anyway. The quality of light shifted, as though a cloud had passed, allowing a flash of sunlight to escape, then the foyer was shadowed again. The former cop stopped, rubbing his right hand across the back of his neck, as though something had prickled the hairs there.
“Did you…” he started.
“What?” His partner looked at him curiously.
“Never mind. Must have been a draft or something.”
The ghost moved past the humans, dismissing them from its narrow focus of concentration. They were workmen, hirelings. Not the one he was looking for. The surroundings were wrong, different, but he knew the lines of the building, the feel of its structure, the soul within