LITMIR.BIZ

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and buried and sleeping. She left it alone. Satisfied that her body was settled, Wren reached down into her core, pushing a mental hand down and coaxing up one vivid blue tendril. It climbed up into her arm, pulsing with raw possibility.

      This was the tricky part, to engage but remain passive, receptive instead of proactive.

      And three and two and one and… She felt herself fall into the familiar working fugue state, where the entire world was narrowed down to what was exactly in front of her, the familiar hazy sharpness kicking her Talent into gear.

      Opening her palm over the surface of the drawer, Wren let the current flow gently out of her like a sprinkling of multicolored confetti falling in slow motion. Watching the current-confetti, she directed it to show her the item which had been there before, the shape and outline and concept of it, but not the details, not yet.

      Normally this worked better with words to shape the intention, but she didn’t want to tip her hand in front of her already unhappy observer, not when she was supposed to be in the closet, as it were.

      The current swirled, as though confused by her instructions, then seemed to catch on, flowing and coalescing into a rectangular shape. It seemed as though it were taking hours, but she didn’t dare look away to see what Frederich was doing.

      Wren blinked at what was forming under her hand, and had to hold on to her temper for fear of disrupting the current. A blank surface…that couldn’t be right. Oh. Duh. Show me the shape of what was in between the slate, she amended her direction, annoyed beyond belief at her own stupidity. Hadn’t Teodosio just told them about it being stored in an envelope of sorts, to protect it?

      She committed the image that appeared before her to memory, and slowly released the current, allowing the now-useless particles to dissipate.

      Pulling her hand back, she cast a quick look at Frederich. He had only moved a few paces, and from his still-bored expression she figured that only a minute or two had passed. Closing the drawer carefully, she pulled up another spark of current and fed it the memory she had in her mind of the parchment and its covering. Shaping the current into a bloodhound, she set it on the trail of the missing item. Where had it been? Where was it moved to? The spark flitted back and forth as though confused. Either the tracks were too old for it to follow, or it had been moved too often, to too many places in the room for it to settle on any one trail.

      Neither of those options made sense. Teodosio had told them that the parchment was checked every six months like clockwork, no less and no more, and that it was never taken out of its slate envelope, the implication being that it shouldn’t have moved very far from the drawer except on the occasion of it being stolen.

      Normally, on something like this, she would be looking for elementals to question. They were mindless bits of electrical fluff, but they were occasionally useful, if you could get them focused long enough. But elementals were lazy things that preferred to gather where there was already a source of current for them to rest in. A building without electrical wiring was not going to appeal to them.

      Appeal…current…elementals…slate covers…Something about that—

      Suddenly she was back in the tiny office off the bio lab in her old high school. John Ebeneezer perched on his usual stool, lecturing her about what she needed to know, to control her Talent, to be an effective conductor of current…

      Wren unconsciously pulled more current up out of her core, molding it in her hand like clay as she tried to remember. It was an old habit, from back when Neezer was on her constantly to think of current as an extension of her own body.

      Think, Valere, think. Slate was graphite, at least partially. Graphite conducted electricity. But slate was the least conductive form of the natural graphites, which is why it was okay for roofing…Why had they used slate to protect the parchment? Were they trying to keep current out? Or bring it in? Something was wrong. Something didn’t fit.

      “Ehi! Che cosa fai?”

      The sudden noise startled her, and she lost control of the strand of current. It leaped from her hand, hitting the ceiling and bouncing back at her, expanding onto a sparkling, sparking jellyfish shape as it stretched out like a living thing, visible to anyone, Talent or Null.

      Frederich screamed, and Wren swore, trying to recapture the current before it did damage to any of the furnishings. Frederich could take care of his own damn self and whatever happened he deserved, spooking her like that when she was working!

      “Damn, damn, damn, damn,” she singsonged. Calm, damn it, be calm! She reached out, coaxing it back into her hand. As each bit touched her skin, she took it back down through her epidermis, through the muscle tissue, and down into her core. She was too tired, too suddenly hyped on adrenaline, to be as thorough as she should, and it fought her, sparking and burning wherever it could.

      “Diavolo! Strega!” Frederich was screaming at her now, but she couldn’t focus on what he was saying, even if she’d been able to understand it. He was waving his arms and making faces. She hoped, with whatever attention she had to spare, that he wasn’t having an epileptic fit or anything.

      “Wren!”

      Sergei burst into the room, followed hard on by Teodosio and two other men. She assumed they were monks. She didn’t particularly care, at that point. The last of the current sank below her skin and disappeared with a sharp, stinging slap on her flesh. Sinking to her haunches, she curled her arms around herself and tried to force the current all the way down, down to where it couldn’t do any harm, couldn’t give her away.

      “Wren?” And then Sergei was there, his arms around her, and she felt herself fall apart. “I’m sorry,” she thought she whispered, but didn’t know quite what she was apologizing for.

      “What do you mean, mellow out? She’s never been out of the country before, you know.” P.B. bit back a growl, feeling his ears go flat against his head in agitation. The water fountain against the far wall made a metallic plinking noise as drops fell, turning wheels and gears that powered the ceiling fan circling lazily overhead. Through the one window the sounds of midday traffic came through, sounding farther away than it actually was.

      “I mean, relax, okay? Genevieve’s a big girl. She knows how to take care of herself. And anyway, she went to Vancouver last year.”

      P.B. waved a clawed paw in dismissal. “Vancouver. Pfffhah. Canada. That’s not a real border. And they speak English there. Mostly. They do, don’t they? Yeah, ’cause they filmed X-Files there. And Forever Knight. And SG-1.”

      “You watch way too much TV.”

      “Oh yeah, ’cause there’s so much else in my life that needs to be doing. Gimme a break. Cable is all that makes Western civilization worthwhile.”

      The demon was pacing back and forth in the open area of Lee’s studio, tapping his claws together in a way that Wren had once told Lee indicated extreme emotional agitation. So far, the lanky artist had been forced to redirect P.B. at least once, when his pacing path came too close to the work in progress, a surprisingly delicate apple tree, four feet high and made entirely of copper and pewter. Sergei had promised him a show if he could come up with works smaller than his usual garden installments of bronze and steel, and Lee rather thought this piece was the start of that show. Be damned if he’d let some hyper-tense fatae screw it up by waving an arm in the wrong place.

      “What’s really bothering you? The fact that she’s out of the country—or the fact that Didier’s with her?”

      P.B. stopped, turned, and stared at Lee. While the human was glad that he’d gotten the demon’s attention, having those dark red eyes stare at him was…unnerving. He mentally ratcheted his opinion of their mutual friend up from “brave but crazy” to “brave but insane” for describing the fatae in front of him as “adorable.” Even if she had added “like a rabid mongoose” to that.

      “You think—that I—I could…” He finally spluttered down, and returned to glaring at the Talent. “It’s not that I don’t like the guy, okay? ’Cause, well,

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