Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [110]
Okay, so that wasn’t anything you could prove in court, not after this long. And she wasn’t about to go to the legal system anyway. But it was enough to make any cautious man nervous. And from what Sergei had said, their client was nothing if not cautious.
And if a mage had done the original spell under specific Council orders… Thinking hard, she was reaching up to shut the window when something burned the side of her neck. She flashed back to the summer she had disturbed a hornet’s nest under the eaves of her grandmother’s house. It had been one of the few visits they had made, her grandmother a stern old woman who disapproved of her daughter’s lifestyle choices, not the least of which were centered on the little girl whose father she refused to name. Wren had been sent outdoors to play while the two women argued. She had climbed up the drainpipe—even then, she had been agile and stupid—and discovered the hard way that stings can hurt.
This didn’t hurt anywhere near as bad. But the second sting, sharp to her upper arm, did.
Then P.B. was on top of her, the damp, bloody smell of his fur gagging her.
“Shut up!” he snarled in the vicinity of her ear when she protested. He was shaking, she realized. And that fact was enough to quiet her down immediately. Unable to move, her brain clicked into fast-forward. Someone shot at me, she realized. Damn it, someone shot me!
Out of habit, Sergei checked the street outside Wren’s apartment building, scanning the sidewalks and stoops casually. Nothing triggered his warning system; the usual number of kids were hanging around, the same shopkeepers leaning in doorways watching foot traffic going by, the usual sounds of traffic and slams of doors. But something was off. A sound, or a lack of sound, a smell, or a feel…whatever it was, it made him want to break into a run. Instead, he forced himself to walk at his usual stride, neither slowing nor hurrying. His left hand slipped into his coat pocket, touching the reassuring weight hooked to his belt through a carefully-sewn slit in the fabric. Damn Wren’s phobias. The Sig-Sauer looked like a toy, and practically disappeared in his palm—but when a situation got ugly, you generally didn’t need a howitzer to do the cleanup. Small and deadly was the trick.
He forced his shoulders to relax. It might be nothing. It could be anything. Wren wasn’t the only person to live on this block, by a long shot. He could name half a dozen residents of that building who could be in trouble at any given time, either with the police, or a less uniformed organization. Taking the three steps of the stoop one at a time, he unlocked the exterior door and headed for the staircase. Even without his daily regimen at the gym, the walk up to his partner’s apartment would keep him in shape, he thought. They were narrow, but surprisingly well-lit, so he didn’t complain. Good footing on the treads, combined with visibility, made for a staircase he could live with.
Two feet from the door to her apartment, he could hear the muffled swearing. His hackles rose, even as the tension reduced further. Whatever was wrong had already happened, the threat either gone or neutralized. The pistol was in his hand when he opened the door anyway.
Blood was splashed all over the kitchen floor, although someone had made a halfhearted attempt to mop it up. A scuffle of footprints, then a disgusting-looking towel and Wren’s sneakers in a pile by the kitchen doorway. He followed the noises to the bathroom. From the sounds, he could pretty well guess what he was going to find inside.
The sight that greeted him confirmed his pessimistic guess: Wren