Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [68]
She sat in the vee of a decent-sized tree, hidden behind a fall of small, spear-shaped leaves that shifted and turned in the occasional breeze. The target’s home looked quaint from the exterior; a pretty little white two-story building in the middle of seven acres of rolling lawn. There was the main farmhouse-style building, circa 1950, plus two wings added on by the current owner in a similar enough style to look natural. The entire property was framed on three sides by a man-height stone wall with sharp-cut metal shards set into the top, and backed on the other by a wooded patch that led into another private enclave that was patrolled on a regular basis by armed guards. Nasty neighbors, Sergei had reported: not the kind to invite over for a picnic. But the target wasn’t much for socializing. Parties were occasionally held, written invite only, black tie not optional. Money, money, and more money. It was enough to make a girl salivate.
There were two ways in and out; through the huge iron gates at the end of the long, winding driveway, or through the equally impressive iron door that was the only break in the wall. The door was locked by remote control, with a mechanism that looked very pretty, and very unfamiliar, and nobody went through the gates without a digital pass that was scanned five feet in front of the gate, under the watchful eye of screened-in surveillance cameras.
So Wren wasn’t going in through either entrance.
The mark was smart enough to keep his landscaping trimmed—no convenient tree limb close enough to the wall to swing over on. “Why is nothing ever easy?” Dropping gently out of the tree, she landed on her heels and palms. Keeping to the low brush that did grow there, she edged closer and stopped about ten feet from the wall.
What the hell…?
She had already noted the stirrings underground, where the electric cables were run into the house. He probably got premium cable, too. But the ground muffled the current, making it a background sensation, like the crickets and the peeper frogs. She could probably pull power from it, if pushed, but it would be more effort than it was worth, even in an emergency.
No, this was different. This current was live, and practically twitching with energy. It was like waving a candy bar under a chocoholic’s nose. But where was it coming from? Could a mage have left a storage cell somewhere on the grounds? But why here, with a mark that hired out all his work? It didn’t make sense. No, this had to be a natural source, somehow. Maybe a lodestone, or—
Or the goddamn stone wall was hiding a nasty electrical alarm system. And she bet those metal shards carried a charge, too. Tricky, tricky. Very nice. Bastard.
“Thank you sir, may I have another?”
She had two choices. She could try to use magic to untangle all the strands, figure out how the alarm worked, and try to shut it down. Thereby likely alerting whoever was manning the system that there was a problem, and taking up lots of valuable time off her schedule, even assuming she could figure it out. Or, she could stick to her original plan, to vault the fence, and pray that she didn’t set off any charge that floated above the wall as well. He had hired a mage to steal the client’s possession, why not use one to protect his home as well? It was unlikely—people who know that mages can be hired tend to shy away from magical defenses; what can be bought can be sold—but still a concern. Or—
“Monty, I’ll take what’s behind Door Number Three.”
Moving backward on her hands and knees, Wren retreated almost to the road she had come in on. A pastoral country road, with large trees lining its winding