Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [55]
“Vanilla, please.”
Sandy’s gaze flicked from Sergei’s face to Wren’s, and something in there made her step back. “Right. Two cones. With tax, that’s six twenty-five.”
“That’s side street robbery,” Sergei muttered, reaching for his wallet.
“Isn’t it though? But worth it.” Wren accepted both cones, turning to hand the vanilla one to him, when a terrible shriek filled the air.
“What the hell was that?” one of the kids seated at the back tables demanded. Sandy had paled, and Wren’s eyes went wide. Sergei had enough presence of mind to grab her cone before she was heading out the door. “Stay there!” she shouted back. Sergei assumed she was talking to him, since Sandy had jumped the counter and was following already. In passing, he noted that although shapely, her legs ended in hooves. Cosa, although no fatae he was familiar with. Not that that meant much. Wren had forced him to confront his own xenophobic tendencies—and that had been an ugly scene—but there it was and he had to deal with it. Mainly by letting his partner deal with the fatae as much as possible. Although occasionally, as now, he found himself wondering how many times he had encountered fatae without knowing it. Not a comfortable fact, which led him back to another uncomfortable fact, which was that his partner had just gone out into possible if not probable danger…
Stay put. She said to stay put. His resolution to heed her order lasted all of three minutes. It might just be a random mugging. Or it might be whoever had taken the magical potshot at her earlier. In which case he’d be of no possible godly use to her, but…“Stay where you are. Don’t move, if anyone except us comes in the door, get down.” The seven kids nodded, clearly unnerved but confident in their ability as New Yorkers—and teenagers—to handle whatever happened. Sergei looked for a place to put the cones down. Seeing none, he pushed open the door with one shoulder and went outside anyway.
He found them in the alleyway halfway down the block. Wren was crouched next to something large and faintly…Sergei looked more closely. No, the figure was definitely glowing, in a sort of hazy, pulsing light. Closer, and he saw that Sandy was sitting cross-legged on the pavement, the glowing thing cradled in her lap. As he watched, the glow pulsed one last time, then went out.
“Damn. Damn and…damn.”
She’s furious, part of his mind noted with detached curiosity. When she’s just angry, she gets creative. He couldn’t recall ever, in ten years, seeing his partner so upset she couldn’t curse, mostly with words he had inadvertently taught her.
Sandy bowed her head over the figure, her long dark hair falling to cover both of them. Wren reached out her hand as though to stroke her hair, then rose to her feet and stumbled away, bumping into Sergei almost blindly.
“An angel?” It was the only thing it could be, with that glow.
“Yeah. Someone…bastards must have jumped him. Threw something in his face, it was all…all melted.” She swallowed hard, then set her own face into determined stoicism. “Lye maybe. Cleaning fluid. That would…it would fit. Then, when he couldn’t see to protect himself, they stabbed him. Bunch of times. Even an angel can’t survive that much cold steel.”
Sergei whispered a brief prayer for whatever soul angels contained. They might not be the godly messengers he had been taught in catechism, but nothing deserved to die like that. Not even a fatae.
“Okay, this has got to stop. It was one thing when they were just preaching, or making life awkward, but how am I supposed to get any info if half the Cosa’s afraid to