Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [104]
Her rucksack.
“Damn.” In the exhaustion after the job, she must have put it there, or maybe Sergei had. She retraced the steps in her memory, and determined that Sergei had been the one to take the rucksack from her. Frowning, she put the bathroom supplies down and sat down next to the bag to sort through what was in there.
“Bodysuit, filthy. Into the wash. Underwear and socks, likewise. Whew.” She sweated a lot on that job, apparently. Something felt hard under her fingers as she sorted through the cloth, and she frowned, patting through the fabric to find out what it was. From the arm pocket, she withdrew the ivory talisman, now broken in two unequal pieces.
I don’t remember that. Or saving it. But then, there was a lot after the ghost appeared that she didn’t remember. Just the wand tapping the stone, and then…
The wand had touched the cornerstone. A glimmer of an idea came to life in her mind, and Wren closed her hand around the talisman. “Bingo!”
Scrambling to her feet, she left the other contents of the rucksack scattered in the hallway, going into her office, then looking around, shaking her head, and heading back up to the roof.
She thought maybe this needed fresh air and open space if it was going to work.
The sky was pale blue, with just a few storm clouds scudding along over the river to her west. But Wren wasn’t looking for a storm—she still had enough in her to work this particular spell.
She didn’t have any words ready, and nothing was coming to mind. Neezer had frowned on improvisation, but sometimes you just had to make do.
Holding her palm open and facing the sky, the smaller of the wand pieces—the tip that had touched the cornerstone—resting on her fingertips, Wren reached inside and pulled out just the thinnest strand of current. It wrapped around the ivory almost without command or direction, wrapping it in a faint pulse of blue-green power.
All current took a user’s signature; the longer it was held, the deeper the impression went. The wand had touched the cornerstone, which was deeply imprinted not only with the original mage’s power, but the current she had sensed in the ghost itself. So, with any luck, the wand would have retained a hint of that signature. Maybe enough to “tag” the ghost.
Cosa forensics. She wished now she had been nicer to that cop, Doblosky? Maybe she’d stop by and do some shop talk, some night.
With her frustration distracted by that thought, the words came to her.
“Bone within casing
Bone long removed from its skin
In sympathy, connect!”
The glow zizzed at her, then sank into the ivory piece, disappearing…but not dissolving. She could feel it humming if she concentrated, working its way through the atoms that made up the bone, searching for that signature, that connection. When it found it, with luck…well, she didn’t know what would happen, actually. That was the problem with making spells up as you went along. But once the connection was made, she should be able to use the ivory to track the ghost.
“Should being the operative word.”
She pocketed the ivory, and forced her shoulders to relax. Their client didn’t want to pay them, the Council was maybe—probably—out for her hide, her partner had been hiding deep dark secrets, she was about to have a late lunch with a guy who was doubtless very very bad for her, and she was pretty sure the reason she’d never dated anyone seriously since she moved into Manhattan was because she was in love with aforementioned secret-keeping partner, who might or might not feel the same way about her.
“I really do love my life,” she told the pigeon sunning itself on the ledge without the slightest trace of irony. “I really do.”
Wren had chosen to meet at Marianna’s, thinking that it would be her home territory. But the moment he walked in, it felt more like some weird kind of betrayal. Nobody should be sitting at this