Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [22]
And so it goes, Valere. You are what you are. And so is he, and so are the both of you together. Concentrate on the job.
“Anyone on your list you think is likely?” Sergei asked.
Pulled from personal to professional musings without warning, Wren shook her head, replaying his words as she chewed on a particularly leafy green. Likely as a thunderstorm in summer. There was someone on her list who had the talent to pull something like this, and the probable grudge and twisted sense of humor to make it seem like a good idea. All she had to do was name him, and Sergei would be able to run a complete dossier. But the words didn’t come out of her mouth.
She tried not to lie to Sergei. It was just bad business, and stupid besides. But she wasn’t ready to say anything to him just yet. Not before she knew more.
Some things, when you got down to it, were more important than business. Some loyalties you couldn’t just walk away from. And anyway, with any luck Sergei wouldn’t figure out who she was protecting until she had her answers and it wasn’t an issue anymore one way or the other.
Callie came by to take their salad plates away and bring the main course, saving her from having to reply. By unspoken consent they moved away from shop talk while digging into their meals, catching up on the small details that made up each day. Sergei had a new show beginning that week, and he was full of the near-disasters and minor crises that came with every installation.
“So Lowell gestures like he’s some off-off-off Broadway magician, only his arm gets tangled in the hangings, which in turn get tangled in the wires. And the wires come down like the wrath of God, sending the piece soaring through the air like it thought it was Peter Pan.”
Wren snickered, imagining the scene. “Anyone get hurt?”
“Only the artist, who chose that moment to walk in the door, demanding an update. I thought he was going to have a heart attack.”
“You hoped he would have a heart attack,” she corrected him. “You could have doubled the prices on everything.”
His brief grin made her laugh around a forkful of sole. “Trebled. But there would have been paperwork, and the show would have had to have been delayed, so it’s probably best he didn’t.”
“Spoken like a true patron of the arts. You’re a marvel and a wonder, you know that, Didier?”
“I do my humble best, Valere. I truly do. Some day I might even make an honest man out of me.”
With perfect timing, they both said “yeah, right” in matching tones of disgust, and his sudden bark of laughter made Wren laugh again as well from the sheer joy of the noise.
He went on to detail the results of the show while Wren finished her meal. Shamelessly scraping the last of the sauce up with her finger and licking it off with relish, she checked to make sure Callie had finally reseated herself at the bar and was engrossed in a magazine before giving in to temptation and retrieving the file from the floor beside her chair. Sergei continued with his meal, now silently watching her as she skimmed through his data.
“Truthfully, these all look pretty doubtful as our boy,” she said finally. “I mean, we need someone who has a pretty major grudge against the client, enough know-how about magic to do the job, and—most importantly—they had to know about the spell in the first place. I’d say that’s a triumvirate that lets out all but three or four of these folks. I’d rather concentrate on the ones who would actually have gotten their hands dirty, see if I can’t match the readings I took from the site with their signatures.”
“Which would mean your list?” Sergei placed his knife and fork down precisely on the table. On cue, Callie swooped down and cleared their table, scraping the crumbs off the tablecloth with a small metal tool and handing them each a dessert menu. She might be an