Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [83]
“Charlie! Morning!”
The young man putting cans away in the back of Jackson’s E-Z Shopper looked as though he’d had a worse night than Sergei. Or maybe a better one, the way he winced at her greeting.
“Whoops, sorry,” she stage whispered. “Why don’t you do something for that hangover?”
“Can’t,” he said. “No focus.”
She looked around, saw that the only other customer was at the front of the store paying for her purchases. “C’mere.” He leaned forward, and she rubbed her hands together briskly, feeling heat build in her palms, then placed the palms on either side of Charlie’s skull. She might not be great at it, but even a mediocre healer was better than none at all. After a moment or so, he sighed in relief, and she let her hands fall away.
“Thanks.” His eyes were already brighter, his skin a healthier tone. “What can I do ya for?”
“A bunch of almost-ripe bananas, the best tomatoes you’re hiding from the rest of the customers, a pound of coffee and some information.”
Charlie’s skin lost some of its color again, and his eyes shifted to the left and up, the giveaway of a liar, or someone about to lie.
What now? Wren thought in irritation.
Four hours later, Wren was in what could be best described as a flaming snit. Charlie had actually been the most welcoming of all her contacts. Not that anyone had shied away from greeting her, but the moment she tried to dig even the faintest butterfly touch, they got skittish and silent.
And that is just so not Cosa style. She paid for her coffee and looked around the tiny, crowded Starbucks for a place to sit down. A couple got up to leave, and she snared their table quickly, ignoring the irate looks from another couple who had also started for it. No, not the usual at all. More often you can’t get them to shut up! Especially if you’re admitting you don’t know something they might. I should have just gone to the damn simurgh up on 80th and bartered something for the answer. More expensive, but a hell of a lot faster.
Wren frowned, that thought tapping into something else in her brain. She had been sticking to the human contacts at this point, simply because they were easier to meet in public, but now that she thought about it, stirring a packet of sugar into her coffee and stirring absently, she hadn’t seen any of the fatae recently. Not even P.B.
“Mind if I join you?”
She looked up into wide-set black eyes, and grinned. “Think of the devil—sure, please, save me from the coffee-swilling masses.”
“We are the coffee-swilling masses,” Lee said, folding himself into the molded plastic chair. At 6’5”, Lee Mahoney was almost Wren’s polar opposite. With his shock of white hair contrasting with golden skin and ebony black eyes, there wasn’t any way you could not see him in a room.
It served him in good stead at gallery openings where the press honed in on him like bees to pollen—she had in fact met him through Sergei’s studio, where he had been part of a group show. His sculptures, for the most part, made the critics happy. His appearance made the reporters happy. And both made Sergei happy, for the money he could command for a Mahoney original.
Wren was happy because Mahoney was the first lonejack she’d met on moving into the city. Which meant that they had been friends now for almost five years, and a happy successful friend was a useful friend.
“How goes married life, Tree-Taller?”
“It goes,” he said, taking the lid off his coffee and sipping carefully. “Although she told me she’d divorce me if I ever came to her studio again.”
Wren snickered.
“Not funny. All I meant to do was help them move some furniture, so I gave a little push, and—”
“Let me guess, shorted