LITMIR.BIZ

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on a little bitterly, “several thousand fatae who, for whatever reason of stupidity have no idea what’s going on.”

      “I thought the Quad was taking care of that?” he said, clearly taken aback by that intelligence. “Wasn’t that the entire idea, that they would pass word along, whatever was happening, whenever?”

      Since her hair was, for once, actually coiled neatly at the back of her head and gelled into submission, she settled for slapping the table one last time, rather than running her fingers through her hair, then looked up at her companion. Sergei looked every inch the well-heeled businessperson: expensive white button-down shirt tucked into dark gray wool slacks, a just-ever-so-slightly-artsy tie knotted under his collar, and his hair trimmed back in a fashionable cut that had obviously been rumpled more than once by an exasperated hand raking through it, but still looked good. Clearly, his hair product was better than hers.

      She snorted at Sergei’s comment. Now and again she forgot how little he knew about that side of her life. “What, you think humans have the lock on Don’t Know, Don’t Care? Half of the fatae are convinced it’s a human plot, anyway, and the Quad’s just a tool being used to herd them to their doom, etc. etc. grassy knoll, bleat bleat bleat.”

      The Quad were the four fatae—nonhuman—representatives for the area, each with their own constituency to match the four lonejack leaders. Wags within the Cosa quickly started using “the Double-Quad” when referring to both sets of leaders—and it was just as often “that damned Double-Quad.”

      Wren still marveled not only that the fatae had managed to elect leaders without too much obvious politicking among the hundreds of breeds, but that in the months since, nobody had—to the best of her knowledge—tried to change horses midstream. They were trusting their chosen leaders.

      Trust. What a simple word, Wren thought, not for the first time. What a deceptively simple, shrapnel-laden word it was. And how little of it there was to go around, even on a good day.

      There hadn’t been many good days in Manhattan, lately.

      In the past year, factions had formed, gotten paranoid, and turned against each other; all fueled, as far as anyone could tell, by the double-edged sword of antifatae thugs killing anything even vaguely nonhuman, and the Mage Council trying to strong-arm lonejacks, unaffiliates, into joining their lockstep union. It had all gotten too bloody to allow. Hence, the Quad, and the Double-Quad. And hence, this meeting, where all sides were going to put cards on table, eggs in basket, pick your cliché.

      “Okay, good point,” he allowed. “So what do we do about it?”

      Wren slumped even further. “I haven’t a goddamned clue. All depends on what happens here.”

      “Here” was a rented conference room, complete with a huge fake mahogany table, a whiteboard, pads of paper and pens, and a sideboard filled with pastries and large urns of coffee. All the teleconferencing materials typical to such rooms had been removed prior to the meeting time. Wren approved whoever had thought of that, and then wondered uneasily if that was supposed to have been her job. Nobody had ever been able to tell her exactly what she was supposed to be doing as the so-called lonejack advisor, other than “observing and advising” the lonejack leaders.

      They had wanted her to be one of the leaders, back when this all started. Only the fact that she had become a Retriever, partially because people consistently and completely overlooked her, had saved her from that fate: tough to follow a leader nobody could remember seeing!

      She had never been so damn grateful for that particular quirk of Talent and genetics before.

      Michaela finished her meditation, and quietly moved her chair back to the table, looking over last-minute notes and pretending not to hear anything Sergei and Wren were saying to each other. The lonejack representative was dressed in her usual posthippie, protogypsy style, only now the skirt and soft, flowing top were made of a thick, nubby, warm-looking material, rather than the silks and gauzes she favored in the summer, and her feet were encased in practical boots. She should have looked ridiculous, sitting in that corporate setting. Instead, she looked cool, confident, and powerful. All of which she was, and then some. Bart, Rick, and Susan, the other three members, were all strong Talent, and with other skills that made them the right choice to speak for their respective areas, but Michaela could outpower them, on sheer current.

      She also kept her temper better than any of them, which was the true reason she was in the room today, and they weren’t. There was no such thing as a fair straw-pull among Talent.

      “I mean it, Sergei,” Wren went on. “Things are way too tense right now. Everyone’s walking cross-eyed and pigeon-toed from trying to predict the next move.”

      Manhattan was a huge city, even if it didn’t technically qualify as more than a borough. It was also a very small island, especially when filled with paranoid paranormals.

      Sergei had nothing to say in response to her words, and so they sat in silence while his outrageously expensive gold watch ticked off another minute, then another, and the door to the conference room opened to allow two more humans to walk in.

      “Ayexi. Jordan.” Wren rose to meet them. Sergei stayed seated until she kicked him in the shins, at which point he rose, but remained silent.

      “Valere.” The dark-haired, middle-aged man named Jordan didn’t seem happy to see her, but the other, a slight, almost frail-looking man in his eighties, came forward with a delighted smile on his face. “My dear, my dear. Ah, you look so well. John would be so proud of you.”

      “Neezer would kick my ass for getting conned into this,” Wren retorted, kissing both offered cheeks, European-style, and receiving the same in turn from the elderly Talent. “And you. Gone all Council. The shame!”

      Ayexi had been her mentor John Ebeneezer’s mentor more than four decades earlier. Lines of mentoring were the closest thing Talents had to a family tree, and although she had not seen Ayexi since she was a teenager, and then only infrequently, the bonds remained strong.

      “What can I say? The body grows old and weak. The health-care benefits begin to appeal.”

      “They bought you, you mean.”

      “And paid very well for the privilege, I assure you.” His gray eyes twinkled, and Wren shook her head.

      It was impossible to be angry at Ayexi. He simply deflected negative energy, and returned only good humor. It was probably the only reason he was still alive, considering the trouble he used to get into. Neezer used to say that the mischief gene had clearly skipped a generation, as he—the middle generation—was so well-behaved.

      Neezer was also the only one who had wizzed, who had been overwhelmed by his current and driven mad by it. Someday, when she actually had some downtime, she might do a little research into that fact. Or not.

      “Ayexi, my partner, Sergei Didier.”

      For all that Sergei had partnered with her for more than a decade now, he still didn’t know most of the major players, not even on their own team. Hell, being honest, Wren didn’t know most of them, either. Just the ones she had used, or had used her at some point.

      Introductions made, the two men sized each other up and down, and she could practically see both of them file the other under “ally, for now.” About as much as anyone could hope for, these days.

      The two Council members nodded with significantly less enthusiasm at the lonejack representative also seated at the table. Ayexi was there to support Jordan, the same way Wren was there to support Michaela. Sergei was there because nobody had said a Null couldn’t attend, and ever since the Council had accepted him as her proxy for a meeting during that damned Frants job, everyone pretty much took the two of them as one player. She wasn’t complaining: since she had gotten involved in Cosa politics, getting attacked by a slavering hellhound intent on protecting his master’s property seemed like small change, danger-wise. Sergei was a good man to have at her back. Or at her front…

      She shoved those thoughts down as being totally inappropriate and distracting,

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