LITMIR.BIZ

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knew his mood, and if I reached just an inch, I’d get my fingers into his thoughts.

      Same for him, with me.

      It was making us…cranky. Venec was a fair guy, for all that he was a bastard, and wouldn’t play favorites or punish someone for a screwup once the lesson was learned. My hair color was only an excuse for him to blow off some of that crank into an actual reason. Knowing that rationally didn’t make the scolding hurt any less, though.

      And Lou thought I never doubted myself? That was almost funny. The Merge had made me doubt my entire personal philosophy, change the way I interacted with people, second-guess every flicker and twinge of my emotions…. I needed to get a handle on myself. A distracted investigator could not do her job, and leaving this job was…not an option.

      Pietr touched his hand on mine, lightly. “Bonnie…”

      I shook my head, staring at the advertisement across the subway car instead of looking at him, listening to the chunk-chunk-whirr of the car’s movement, focusing on the subtle but real hum of current running along the third rail, instead of listening to him. “No. Stop. Work hours.”

      I wasn’t talking about the touch, but what he was going to say. How the two of us blew off steam and gave comfort off-hours was off-hours. Neither of us wanted it to spill into the workday, especially if there was half a chance that it would screw up our professional relationship. Pietr and I worked well together. He backed me up, I pushed him on…we got things done.

      That was why Venec had paired him with me, today. Probably. Anything else would be petty, and Benjamin Venec wasn’t petty.

      Except, of course, when he was.

      We rode the rest of the way in a more comfortable, companionable silence, switching from the train downtown for a crosstown bus that dropped us off at the Manhattan Bridge, and we walked the rest of the way, stopped by the usual tangle of the FDR Drive. Finding a safe place to cross would require some backtracking. Mass transit sucked when you were working a crime scene, but without a siren, cars could be even slower, and Translocation, using current to move someone from point A to point B, was a serious drain on the core of the person doing the sending, with the additional inherent risk of finding a safe place to land. You couldn’t actually land “on” someone—magic follows the same rules as physics, mostly, and two objects can’t occupy the same space—but you could get knocked over or hit by a moving object or person. As usual with magic, the odds of actually being seen doing anything was small. Nulls didn’t see what they didn’t want to see.

      Oh, hell, Talent didn’t, either.

      We stood there, and watched the traffic moving along the FDR, a steady stream of cars going too fast, and I heard a thoughtful hrmm rise from my companion.

      “I don’t know about you, but I have absolutely no desire to become a greasy splat on the highway.”

      The hrmm turned into a heavy exhale that wasn’t quite a sigh. “Me, neither.”

      Especially since there was no guarantee that, in racing across the street, Pietr wouldn’t ghost out of sight, and get hit by an otherwise-paying-attention driver. After you worked with him for a while, you started thinking about things like that.

      I looked around to make sure nobody was watching us, and pointed to a spot across the wide highway. He followed my finger with his gaze, and nodded.

      Three seconds later, we were both on the other side, intact and unrun-over, the traffic now at our back. The sharp smell of the East River hit my nostrils, overwhelming even the smell of diesel behind us, and for a brief moment I was homesick for Boston, and J’s apartment overlooking the bay, where the smell of salt air was a daily greeting.

      The moment passed, the weight of the kit in my hand reminding me what we were here for. I checked my core, making sure that it was settled, because the last thing you wanted to do was walk onto a scene with your core-current ruffled. I glanced over at Pietr, who looked to be doing the same.

      “Ready?”

      “Yeah.”

      A short walk farther, the smell of the river getting stronger, and we were on a concrete dock that housed a parking lot, a warehouse of undetermined ownership, and, I presumed, a dead body.

      We were met on the scene by a cop who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else but there. She was little, by cop standards, with thick black hair cut short, and a tea-stained complexion I’d have killed for. Talent—I thought I recognized her, but wouldn’t swear to it. New York’s a big city, and Talent don’t really clump together outside of Council functions and cocktail parties—or the occasional impromptu gossip session—but only a Talent, a magic-user like us, would have been left to guard this particular body. The NYPD had at least half a clue, even on bad days.

      “You the pups?”

      As questions went, it was pretty stupid, but there was a protocol that needed to be followed: I didn’t know her, and she didn’t know us. “Bonita Torres, Pietr Cholis,” I said. I waited for her to ask for official identification, but I guess she really didn’t care that much. We were here, which meant it wasn’t her responsibility anymore.

      Pietr bypassed the cop and crouched to look under the orange tarp, and then backed up a step, almost involuntarily.

      “What is it?” I asked her.

      “You’re the investigator,” she said, looking bored. “You tell me.”

      I gave her a sideways stare, and she took it without flinching. Great, now I was trying to tough-out the NYPD? Right.

      I thought about pointing out that covering the body was not SOP, and that she might have ruined evidence, then decided that she already knew that and had her reasons.

      “Bippis,” Pietr said. I was the nominal specialist on fatae politics, but Pietr knew a lot more about the various breeds than I did

      “A what?” Distracted, I tried to place the word, and couldn’t.

      “Bippis. I think that’s how it’s pronounced, anyway. I recognize the arms.”

      I went to look at the body under the tarp, and saw what Pietr was talking about. The corpse looked almost human, if you could ignore the dark green skin that glittered like mica, but the arms were twice as thick around as mine, and all muscle, and extended like an orangutan’s down to its knees. And the head, which was hairless, and shaped like an anvil, almost. No wonder she’d covered it. Even in NYC, even out here where tourists didn’t wander, a corpse like that might draw notice.

      “Is the color normal, or did it react to the water?” Weird question, but when it came to the fatae, it paid to ask. Or, actually we were paid to ask.

      “Damned if I know.” He knelt down on the grass and touched the skin before I could remind him that we were supposed to wear gloves. Not because we might interfere with evidence—we collected data a little differently from Null CSIs—but because, well, look at what happened to poor Nifty. Some things bit even without teeth. Or even dead.

      “Skin’s cool, but dry. I’m thinking the color’s natural.” He rubbed his fingers together thoughtfully. “No flaking, either.”

      “You people freak me out.” That was our cop, looking a little queasy now, rather than bored.

      “Human floaters are better?”

      “At least they’re human,” she said, distaste evident in her voice.

      Ah, bigotry, alive and stupid in New York City. She should be glad it wasn’t summer, yet. I didn’t think this guy would smell too good, a few hours in the heat.

      “Somebody tied him up,” I said, taking Pietr’s lead and ignoring the cop, who returned the favor, wandering off to pointedly look away from whatever we were doing. I crouched beside him and pulled the tarp aside a little more without touching the corpse itself. “Hands and feet—they didn’t want him to be able to swim at all.”

      “Assuming

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