Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [80]
A pain started, just behind her left eye, and Wren winced. Closing her eyes to rest them for a moment, she did a few deep-breathing exercises, trying to chase down the pain and squash it. Although she had met a few people who could use current to heal serious wounds, she had never been able to pick up more than the basics of burn-ease and pain-reduction—nothing a few aspirin, a cool compress or a good massage couldn’t do just as well.
And asking Sergei for a quick massage was out of the question, too. Normally he’d oblige, but recent events had made her shy away from asking for physical contact. She shoved her hair out of her eyes, impatient both with it and herself. Although even without that she might not have bothered him. Her partner was tense about something, too. Wren didn’t want to ask; if it was job-related they’d just start feeding into each other worse, and if not…if not, then it fell outside the established partnership rules, and that led back to her own reasons for not wanting him to touch her and…God, what a freaking mess.
A twitch of the energies flowing through the apartment, and the stereo came on, thankfully set low from Sergei’s use. Another twitch, and the dial moved until it hit the local soft jazz station. She caught the tail end of a commercial, then the music came back, a horn instrumental with a light, catchy repeat to it. Nothing that demanded her brain pay any attention to it. Wren let herself float along with the sound for a few moments, then pried her eyes back open and refocused on the page.
Sergei heard the music come on, and paused a moment to listen, then put it into the background, barely audible to his working brain, and went back to his Web-surfing. He had three windows open at once, running down links as swiftly as he could. Wren’s refusal to spring for a DSL line was a sore point, although he couldn’t fault her desire to save money.
Links that led to Web sites that looked reasonable on the crank scale he bookmarked, the others he shined on. This sort of skimming was a strange type of research, and one he had come relatively late to, but it suited the way his mind worked on several different tracks at once.
And while one track was dedicated to the job at hand, another segment of his mind was replaying the conversation he’d had, unwillingly, the night before. He had been working late in his office—dithering, he admitted to himself—while waiting for Wren to contact him, and let him know everything had gone off as planned, or not. But shuffling invoices and re-plotting gallery displays would have been preferable to having his cell phone ring and picking up to hear, not his partner’s voice, but a masculine tone from years in the past. Matthias. North American branch coordinator for the Silence. The man who used to hand down Sergei’s orders. Emphasis on the used to.
“We’re taking the matter out of your hands.” A protest, barely formed, was overrun. “You’re not impartial in this anymore.”
Douglas had promised to consider his offer, himself, his abilities, in exchange for Wren. Was the old man not as powerful as he’d once been? Or were things that urgent, that promises made to their own people now meant nothing?
But then, he wasn’t one of theirs, was he? Not now. Not until he folded himself back into the mix officially. If he ever did—if his half-spoken promise to the old man wasn’t just a bluff to gain more time, the way they both half suspected it might be. And until then…until then he was just a chess piece like everyone else.
Sergei took a moment to gather himself, to lock his emotions into the box built for them. The box men like the one on the other end of the line had shown him how to build. Steadied, his response was cool, in control of himself and the moment: “It was never about impartiality. It was about judgment. And my call is still that her skills, while impressive, are too limited, not worth the risk. Nor is she well suited to the…discipline of what would be required.
“You’ve not questioned me before. Has there been