Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [116]
“That call was one of the cleaning staff. I left a sizable request for information, if anything happened. Cleaning staff’s usually the best source for information, and they work cheap.”
“And?” The talisman was pulsing now, and she could feel it doing…something. Could the two be related? How could they not?
“Loud thuds, screams and a broken window, but nobody can get onto the executive floor to check it out. According to the log-in sheet, the only ones there are Frants and three of his bodyguards, a security guard who was doing rounds, and one of his top-level executives.”
Wren swore. “There’s no way in hell I can get there in time, if it is the ghost—damn, damn damn!” She kicked the talisman in frustration. “Right. Stand back.”
“What are you going to do?” She ignored him, getting a piece of chalk from the office and drawing a small square on the floor in the middle of the hallway. “Genevieve?”
“I’m going to transloc, okay? I don’t have any choice.” She put the chalk aside, wiped her hands, then went around the apartment turning on all of the lamps and overhead lights. Sergei had never really noted before how many light sources she had.
“I’m glad I had a chance to recharge,” she said, almost to herself. “This sucks major stores enough on its own, I don’t want to have to do it running on empty.”
Sergei wanted to argue, but couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t sound both stupid and overprotective. Translocation was not a talent Wren could manage well; transporting oneself was the simplest use of it, and about all she could do, and that only with risks, so there was no point in demanding to go with her—he’d have to take normal routes, and arrive long after he could have been any help.
She came out of the kitchen, having turned on all of the appliances. “Okay. Now or never.” She took the sling off and handed it to him. “Don’t bitch. It was only a scratch, really, and I may need to use both arms for…something.”
He looked at her, then nodded, taking the fabric from her. “Be careful, Zhenechka. This isn’t worth dying over.”
“Not a hell of a lot is,” she said in easy agreement. “Hold the fort.”
He touched the side of her face with two fingers, looking down into her eyes as though searching for some sign, some indication of uncertainty. A brush of his lips—dry, soft—on her forehead, and she almost cried at the promise implicit in that touch. “Mind the arrows,” he replied in turn, and stepped back.
Drawing a deep breath, Wren closed her eyes, found her center, and visualized the Frants building, tying that picture to a sense of where she wanted to go, so she didn’t end up in the elevator shaft, or something equally unpleasant. Then she reached out in a way she had never been able to explain to Sergei’s satisfaction, and yanked all the threads of electricity being funneled into her apartment.
To Sergei’s eyes, Wren appeared to glow for an instant, an electric blue streak sizzling around her like a silhouette, then there was a painful “zzzsssst” sound, and everything in the apartment shorted out at once.
By the time he had found the flashlight she kept by the door and turned it on, Wren was gone.
twenty
She landed in darkness, the static charge still zipping along her skin. For a moment she was disoriented, fighting down the urge to puke that came with translocation, then the crash of something obviously breakable nearby reminded her where she was—and why. The darkness wasn’t just because she had her eyes closed—none of the lights were on. She reached out, crawling forward until she found the wall, then searched until she found a switch and flipped it. Nothing happened.
“Damn,” she whispered to herself. The power must have shorted out here as well. Not surprising, if the ghost was—likely, if not certain—tapping into the current to give itself more form, more power. Not surprising, but inconvenient as hell. For a moment, Wren wondered if they were going to have yet another citywide blackout as fallout from this. If so, she was never going to hear the end of it.
Pulling whatever current