Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [25]
Approach protocol thus satisfied, she waited, shifting her weight from one sneaker to the other, wiping her palms on denim-clad thighs.
“Max, you shit, I just want to talk to you!”
There was no answer. She hadn’t been expecting any, but it would have been nice to get a surprise. Wren was tempted to reach out, to try and feel for the currents she knew were floating around the house, but she didn’t. Bad manners, and dumb besides. This was her last stop of the day, and she was tired, short-tempered, and really not looking forward to this at all.
“Max!” A pause. “You mangy bastard, it’s Wren!”
A harsh bark of laughter right in her ear startled her, but she schooled her body, refusing to let it jump. Sound waves were easy to manipulate. A cheap trick.
“Come in then, you brat. Before I forget you’re out there.”
That had been easier than she expected. Suspicious, she stepped onto the grass, watching as the blades bent out of her way, creating a path directly to the porch steps.
Far too easy. She had a bad feeling about this.
The inside of the house was actually quite comfortable, if you liked extreme lo-tech living. The front door opened onto a large room, encompassing the entire front of the house. A fireplace took up all of the far wall, and bookshelves covered much of the other three walls. No television, no computer, no phone in sight. Just books and the occasional piece of what might have been artwork. Not that she had anything against books, but there was only so long you could live in someone else’s head. Wren didn’t trust anyone who didn’t get out and do for themselves.
Not that she trusted The Alchemist worth a damn to begin with. Not anymore. She learned slow, but she did learn. But this wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you could do over the phone. Assuming he had access somewhere, somehow, to one. And that it didn’t go snap-crackle-pop the moment he touched it. Wizzarts were even more prone to short-circuiting electronics than your average Talent, because they didn’t think to be careful.
Some would say that they didn’t think at all.
There was no sound at all in the house, not even the hum-and-whir of appliances somewhere, or the clink-clink of water draining through pipes. It made Wren nervous, that absence of sound. So what if she’d grown up in the ’burbs, back when you might still see deer or fox or occasionally a bear in your backyard; she was too much a city girl now to feel comfortable without the endless background accompaniment of screeching brakes, sirens and horns.
Even the damn crickets outside had been better than this. Silence wasn’t a thing; it was the absence of a thing, of noise. And her mind always wanted to know what had swallowed the noise, how, and when was it coming for her.
To distract herself from that thought, she looked around again. Two overstuffed sofas and a leather reclining chair were matched with sturdy wooden tables, obviously handmade. The plaid upholstery was worn and comfortable-looking, and the floor was wood, scarred with years of use, and covered with colorful cloth rugs scattered with more concern for warmth than style. A large dog of dubious parentage lay on one of the sofas. It lifted its head when she came in, and contemplated her with brown eyes that didn’t look as though they had been surprised by anything in the past decade, or excited about anything in twice that time.
“Hi there,” she said. The narrow tail thumped once and then lay still, as though that much effort had exhausted it. “Let me guess—Dog, right?”
“Don’t see any reason to change a perfectly workable name,” the voice said from off to her left. “I’m the man, he’s the dog, and we both know our places.”
“And his, obviously, is on the sofa.”
Max let out a snort as he came completely into her line of sight. He was wearing an old, worn blue cotton sweater and khaki safari-style shorts that showed off knobby knees, red-banded tube socks sagging around his ankles. “That one’s his, this one’s mine. We stay out of each other’s way. Which is more than I can say for you. Didn’t my throwing you off a