Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [64]
Walking down the street, he forced the tension out of his shoulders, breathing in the soft spring air and letting it settle in his lungs, carrying away the smoke and cologne-scented air from inside. What-ifs and maybes were theory. He wouldn’t borrow any more trouble than he already had to hand. And right now, with Douglas appeased for the moment, that trouble was the current situation.
Wren had taken off earlier that afternoon, saying she had a few things to deal with before doing the job. Magic things, he knew. It was frustrating, being left out of that part of her life. Oh, he’d gone along on a job a time or three, but almost always as an adjunct, or a distraction. He didn’t delude himself into thinking that what he did wasn’t important—they were a functional team, neither side as effective alone. But the fact of the matter was that she was the Talent, the retriever. He was just…the money man. The dealmaker. The borderline Null.
He knew the bitterness in his thoughts was silly, and he also knew its source. There was a canker of worry eating away deep in the pit of his stomach, and not all the confidence in the world in their abilities could soothe it. Not about this case, or at least not only, but about what the Silence planned to do. Wren sensed changes in the air, things that frightened her. He hadn’t told her that fear came from him, that she was picking up on his own emotions. He had been a successful agent because he could sense threads being spun around him before they were visible, could take action against them before they became a problem. But he couldn’t get a grip on anything right now.
He had made promises: to his partner, to her mother, hell, even to Neezer, although he’d never met the man. And tied into all that, the growing fear that he wasn’t thinking clearly when it came to Wren Valere. Was he honestly trying to keep her safe? Or just keep her dependent on him?
“You don’t want to be controlling her?” Douglas had said. “Then stop controlling her.”
A five-year-old memory surfaced, brought up by the events of the previous night and the sudden reemergence of The Alchemist in their lives. Wren, bruised, battered, grinning from ear to ear. “You were fabulous!” Her voice was shaky, her eyes bright with the adrenaline rush of having been thrown over a cliff and dragged back by the sheer power of his one hand on her ankle, almost too late. He wanted to bury himself in her static-wild hair, and never come out. Never face a world again where he could see her falling, falling down to the cliffs and the water below…
“Gahhh…” Shaking his head violently to rid himself of the image, he shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and strode off with renewed energy down the street. Too many years ago, too many scrapes and close calls, and that was still the nightmare that made him break out in a cold sweat. Overprotective? Me?
He would talk to her. Tell her what was going on. Somehow. And then it would be up to her to decide. To judge his choices. And he would put his own fate into her hands as well.
“Only you would find walking down 8th Avenue at one in the morning to be relaxing.”
Sergei chuckled, a low, contented sound. “Look around you, Wren. Hookers and johns, drug dealers and buyers…and cops. Everyone’s out on the street watching everyone else. This is the safest, most interesting place to be in the entire city at night.”
“You’re insane,” she said, just to hear him laugh again. He’d shown up at her apartment around midnight, pacing and fidgety like a cat overdosed on catnip. When she tried to get him to tell her what was wrong, he’d grabbed coats in one hand, her arm with the other and said: “Let’s take a walk.”
“And you’re with me,” he said now. “What does that make you?”
“Your bodyguard.” She nodded at a cop who was talking to two hookers, an Asian transvestite and a skinny little redheaded girl who looked all of fourteen and was probably twelve. The cop stopped in midlecture and gave them both a professional once-over, then nodded, the action a little more than casual.
“One of yours?” Sergei asked