Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [56]
Sergei, not knowing what else to do, handed her the now-dripping cone. She took one look, and started to hiccup, the laughter fighting it out with the tears. Her hand shook, but she took the cone.
“They? The…pest-control group you mentioned?” He didn’t know what to do, to make it better, so he fell back on the old standby—work. Keep her thinking, keep her moving.
“Yeah. Have to be. Who else—” Her voice caught. It wasn’t death, he realized suddenly—she had seen dead bodies before, had seen people die in front of her. But this…Never a fatae. She had never seen one of the fatae die before. Knowing they were mortal was different from having it proven to you. And there was just enough daydreaming little girl left in Wren that the proving was painful.
Behind them, Sandy stood, leaving the rapidly-cooling body of the angel in the trash.
“His brothers will come and find him soon enough,” she said. Her eyes were red, but her voice was steady. “I’d rather we not be here when they do.”
“Right.” Angels weren’t all that fond of humans. Or…whatever Sandy was.
“You going to be okay?” Wren asked, obviously thankful to have someone else to focus on, rather than her own—perceived—weakness. They were both on emotional bungee cords, it seemed, being pulled way too tight and dropped from way too high.
“Yeah. Or, no, but whatchagonna do?” And with that, the sullen teenager mask fell down again, and she shrugged. “I got to shut down the store. Marco will be by at closing. I’ll have him walk me home. You, go.”
They went.
nine
There were thirty-eight floors in the Frants Building. It was by no means the tallest building in the city, even post-9/11. Nor was it the most attractive, or the most striking, or the best situated in terms of prestige or ease of commute. But for many years, it had the reputation for being the best maintained, the safest. No false alarms dragged the local fire engine company out to investigate, no cops had to come and investigate any robberies, any B&E. It was, all told, considered an excellent place to work, in any of the thirty-six floors that held the offices of nine different companies and two multipartner law firms.
Oliver Frants would be quite proud of it. If he ever gave the matter any thought.
“Why are you wasting my time with this?” He strode into the private elevator, dressed in a gray sweatshirt and jogging shorts, both damp with sweat, speaking into the cell phone microphone clipped to his collar. His bodyguards moved with him; one before, one after. They weren’t necessary within his own building. Rather, they shouldn’t have been necessary. But recent events had changed all that.
The elevator doors closed, the cage sliding smoothly up. Frants continued to talk; the elevator shaft had been wired to ensure there was no interruption of service. “Do I not pay you good money? No, better than good money! All I expect is that you do what needs to be done. Is that such an impossible burden?”
The person on the other end of the line mumbled a response that did not mollify his boss.
The top two floors of the building were used for a distinctly different purpose than the levels below. Completely renovated a decade before, soundproofed and insulated from the office space, on a separate electrical system, they were both apartment suites, but there the similarity ended. The uppermost floor was filled with clutter, almost homey in the scattering of glossy porn magazines and dog-eared paperback books, the battered black leather sofas placed around a widescreen television, the occasional slightly wilted plant near the windows, and the debris of food and dishes in the large, open-plan kitchen. Seven rooms led off the main space, each one with a closed door. In the floor of the main room, at each corner, there was a trap door. Opening one would reveal a curving chute or a sturdy ladder, both made of thick plastic. No metal, no electronics, nothing that could possibly be magicked by current, or jammed by high tech.
Those trap doors