Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [54]
“Wren! Come on, what’s wrong? Wren? Genevieve! Come back to me, Genevieve. Come on, look at me. Wren, look at me!”
His heart contracted, then she blinked, and animation slowly returned to her expression. “Whoa. Shit.”
“What the hell just happened?” His question was shy of a roar, but only just.
“Someone tried to tag me.”
He blinked, stared at her. “You brushed it off?”
“Not sure ‘brushed’ is the right term, but yeah. Told whoever it was in no uncertain terms to go bother someone else, I didn’t have time for head games. Sheesh. Whoever it was, had serious mojo.”
Tagging was the act of challenging a current-user, one lonejack to another. Typically it occurred during a turf battle, when lonejacks quarreled over a patron, or to scope out the local competition. Or, more often according to Wren, as the start of a practical joke among friends.
Wren didn’t have any friends who could and would do that. Not anymore. And she didn’t have a patron to fight over, the way Council mages did.
“You want to go back?” he asked, already swinging her around to face the way they came, but she swatted him on the arm.
“Screw that. He or she or it wants a rematch, I want my ice cream first.” She shrugged, walking forward again. “Besides, it was probably just someone testing the waters. I shook ’em off. That’s probably all they wanted to know.”
Sergei sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose as though he were the one with a killer headache forming. “There are days I really wish there was a rulebook for all this.”
“Council frowns on that. Heavy. But what the hell, write it.” She took his hand again, the casual appearance betrayed by the sweat on her skin. “We could make a fortune selling it out of the trunk of your car before they took us down.”
He smiled at her flippant tone, but his eyes were shadowed. “Seriously. I don’t like this. Not when we’re on assignment.”
“You think this is connected to the case?” She let out a short sharp laugh. “No offense, Sergei, but that seems damned unlikely. Who would care?”
“The person who took the stone,” was his answer, as reasonable as he could make it, considering the way his instincts were still screaming to get her off the street, as though her apartment was proven to be any safer. He also noted, almost as though watching someone else, that he had gone into what Wren called watchful predator mode, like the hawk alert for someone who might try and take his kill. From the expression on her face, she had noticed it too, and wasn’t sure if she should feel protected or insulted.
“It’s unnerving me, Wren. This whole situation is starting to unnerve me, and I don’t know why, which unnerves me even more.”
“Yeah.” She paused, her hand holding his a little more tightly. “It’s probably just coincidence. Some newbie wanting to see what’s in the neighborhood.”
“I don’t buy into coincidences. You know that.”
“And you know damn well that current plays merry hob with the usual laws of probability. So lighten up. Come on, I want a double scoop of mint-chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream, and I want it now.”
The brittle tone in her voice, more than her words, convinced Sergei to lay off the topic. For the moment.
Marco’s was still open, as Wren had predicted. It was a narrow storefront, barely wide enough for the glassed-in display. Farther in the back the store widened enough for two small tables and eight chrome-back chairs, like something stolen from a cheap diner. A teenager with long shiny black hair down her back was behind the counter sullenly serving out cones to a group of kids even younger than she was. When she looked up and saw Wren, though, her expression brightened. “Jenny, hi!”
“Heya Sandy. Didn’t know you were still on night shift.” She didn’t bother, as usual, to correct the nickname. It stopped bothering her around seventh grade.
“Yeah, got my classes switched to the afternoon. Sleep in the morning. Sucks to be me.”
Wren laughed. “Give me a—”
“Double mint-chocolate-chip-cookie-dough. And you?