Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [46]
“It’s not funny.” She used an elbow to make her point, and he obligingly rolled onto his side, letting her lift her face from the floor and breathe again.
“Yes, it is.” He looked down at her, his eyes half-shut as he laughed, more quietly now. The smell of his sweat mixed with whatever cologne he used that she’d never quite been able to place; browsing through the men’s fragrance counters made her dizzy. “It’s really quite funny. One of these days he’s going to finally manage to kill you, and he won’t even have meant it.” His tone was weird: sort of off, like he was strangling on the words.
“Congratulations, you’ve finally figured wizzarts out. Now get off me, you oversized Russian oaf.” She was finding it hard to think, his weight pressed up against her like that. She was tired, that’s all. Emotional roller-coaster of a day, of a week. That was why she was having to fight off the urge to topple him all the way to the floor and…
Don’t go there. Not with Sergei, who so isn’t around for that. It’s post-stress somethingorother. That’s all. Plus, you need to get laid. Badly. Retrieval played havoc on a social life, especially if you had already run through all the eligible, moderately attractive single Talents in the area. Non-Talents were too risky, mostly, for relationships. She couldn’t remember the last time…oh, right, him. Cute but obviously forgettable.
“I grew up in Chicago,” he reminded her, getting to his feet and extending a hand to help her up.
“Details, details,” she said dismissively. Ignoring the hand—not trusting herself to touch him just yet—she rolled over and sat up by herself, remaining on the floor in order to plug the computer back in. “If he had fried my computer, all of Canada wouldn’t have been enough to hide his sorry static butt in.”
Her back aching more than it should have, Wren got up and sat in the chair Sergei had discarded when the excitement began, and dialed into her server. She longed for DSL or cable connections, but even if you ignored the cost, she shuddered to imagine what could have happened if she’d been online when Max came to visit. No reason to short out everyone else on the system if you could avoid it. “Prevost, right?”
“That’s what the man said.”
“Right.” She directed the search to include variable spellings, and hit send. In the meantime, Sergei pulled out his cell phone, and dialed a number. “Lowell. Pull up my files and do a search for Prevost—that’s P, r, e, v, o, s, t, first name Matthew. Start with the buyers, then go to the miscellaneous file. No, I don’t think he’s a dealer or seller. Thanks. Right. No, no problems—the name came up in conversation and it pinged my memory. Great. Any messages? Uh-huh.” He frowned, a look of anger settling onto his face before it was banished. “No, I can handle it, thanks. Call me back at this number if you find anything.”
He closed the cell and replaced it in his pocket. “You want anything to eat?”
“Sure,” she said, scanning the list of names her search had returned. “Chinese or Mexican?”
“Forgot to go shopping again?”
“Hello? Who had time? You had me out in Connecticut trying to get a reading on that stuffed horse last week, and then I get home, catch a few zzz’s, and good morning, another job.”
“You’d rather business was slow?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I’d rather you got back on the horn and called Noodles. Sesame chicken, brown rice, and a Diet Sprite for me.”
Noodles was around the corner, a quick walk. Faster to pick it up than wait for a delivery person to get around to them on a weeknight. Sergei didn’t bother with his coat, merely taking his wallet out of the inside breast pocket before he left. And if he was a little too eager to get away from the debris of Wren’s office, where she was using an ancient Dust Buster to find the last of the light-bulb shards,