Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [47]
Idiot. Idiot! Despite what Wren thought, he wasn’t totally clueless about his tendency to overprotect. But when Max had crashed in like that, his reaction had been way out of line. What the hell did he think he was going to be able to do? He had been the liability in that room, the weak link, not Wren.
Sergei had no trouble letting her protect him, when it came to magical threats, or where current could do more than physical strength. It wasn’t an ego thing, as she said about mages. He was pretty sure it wasn’t, anyway. But while his brain knew she was perfectly capable in these instances, his body’s reactions were slow to catch up.
And his heart, Sergei was slowly coming to realize, staunchly refused to hear. It wasn’t a matter of being her protector, her knight in shining armor, or anything as hackneyed as that. But when his heart risked imagining a world where she was gone, it—
Went insane?
That was as good a description as any.
And when the threat came, not from a magical source, but one he was best-suited to deal with, heart, mind and physical instinct were all in accord.
Taking the narrow stairs as swiftly as he could, Sergei left the building and, rather than walking to Noodles, stepped into the shadows where he wasn’t immediately visible. With a quick glance upward to make sure that Wren wasn’t looking out the window, he took out his cell phone again, entered a local phone number, then a short string of code.
“You left a message?” His voice was calm, with an edge of irritation, like a dog reluctantly yanked to heel. He kept walking, his eyes scanning the street, as the voice relayed information to him. “You did what?” He stopped short, and his voice sharpened into real anger. “Who decided she was ready for recruitment? My last report…” He listened, then interrupted “—Since when is my word not good enough?”
The person on the other end made placating noises. He scowled, the sharp lines of his face emphasized by the frown. “No. The agreement was that it would be my call. And I still don’t think it’s a good idea. Leave her alone.”
The voice at the other end tried to say something, but Sergei was through listening. He hung up the phone and turned it off, then increased his pace down the street. They wouldn’t do anything, not without his signing off on the project. That wasn’t the way things worked. But the scowl returned. That was the way things had worked. But things could change.
You’ve already sold your soul, he reminded himself sourly. Why are you surprised that the devil’s greedy for more?
eight
“A grazing mace, how sweet the sound, that killed a wrrrrreeetch like youuuuuuu…” Wren could sing when she wanted to, but the horrible faux-Scottish accent she put on made her sound more like a dying cat than a halfway decent alto. The worst of the damage from electrical storm Max cleared up, she was picking up the paperwork scattered all over her office while she waited for Sergei to come back with dinner. She had a faint hope that somehow an orderly room would result in an orderly brain.
At this point, with a name and a focus, it was all about circling in until they had a probable location, and then she could go in and do that voodoo that she do so well.
“I once was lost, but now am found, my amazing mace and meeeeeee.”
Besides, filing made Sergei happy, even if it was incredibly low on her priorities. The IRS wasn’t likely to come calling when you worked in a cash-and-handshake market. But you never knew when you might need to reference a past job. Like that lock she had been working on earlier. It came from a nasty little retrieval she did four years ago, but she had run into a similar one on the job in Connecticut. Preparedness.
Preparedness was key, and the third completely unofficial, unwritten law of lonejacks. First was: Stay free of Council maneuverings and politics. Second