LITMIR.BIZ

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she hesitated, as though something in her brain had clicked over unexpectedly.

      “Yes?” He leaned back in his chair, watching as whatever it was she was processing worked its way to the front.

      “I was just remembering—it may be nothing…but I was working on another situation, and part of that involved interviewing a couple of FocAs, and one of them said something…okay, Cross, what did he say?”

      FocAs was slang for Focused Actives, field agents who were also Talents. There weren’t many, and none of them were overly gifted—until Wren Valere—but still useful enough to warrant their own category.

      “Right.” She snapped her fingers, making Andre blink. “He said that there’d been rumblings back home…. They were talking to each other, actually, so I was only half-listening, and yeah, ‘my dad says there’s a schism in the community, something coming big and ugly.’” She broke off, her voice rising back to her normal tones. “Think it’s related?”

      “No, it’s not—wait.”

      This might not be related to the specific item he had set her on, but from what he knew of the political structure among human Talents—and damn Sergei for the tight-lipped bastard he was—the relationship between the Mage’s Council and the rest of the Talent community was a fault line just waiting to rupture. As he understood the gist of Sergei’s reports, the Council wanted to be the sole arbiter of what all Talents did or didn’t do within their community. Lonejacks, the freelancers to the Council’s union, if you would, were the largest, loudest—if totally disorganized—voice in opposition to those plans.

      Wren Valere was a lonejack—and one already in the Council’s crosshairs. Any trouble would certainly impact her. And now, by association, the Silence. That was reason enough to follow up on any gossip, no matter how vague.

      “Sir?”

      He held up one finger, to indicate that she should allow him a moment longer to process.

      Even if this newest information were completely unrelated—unlikely but possible—the information could still be useful, long-term. While all Talents were considered part of what they referred to slightly tongue-in-cheek as the Cosa Nostradamus, not all of the Cosa were lonejacks or Council members. None of the Talents successfully recruited by the Silence Handlers, for example, had affiliations to either group; few of them knew much about the Cosa other than the fact that it existed. Like any large family, Andre thought without amusement, there were always branches that hadn’t spoken in generations.

      That was the main reason why the Silence knew a little about the Cosa, but until Sergei had met up with his Wren, nothing at all about the Council. Cosa members were gossips, and the Cosa creed was inclusionary. The Council was neither.

      While they might have been able to pry details from their FocAs, Handlers were instructed never to place their active’s personal obligations against the Silence’s interests, to the point where Andre had taken people off situations entirely if it was deemed a conflict of interest.

      It had nothing to do with compassion and everything to do with practicality. The Silence needed their people to be one hundred percent on the job, and conflict impaired judgment. And that was even more emphasized with FocAs. They were too few, too valuable to risk.

      Not to mention, Andre thought mordantly, that having even a low-level Talent gunning for you could make life in this electronic age…uncomfortable.

      “So…?” Darcy was still standing in his doorway, waiting while his thoughts chased each other to a decision.

      “Get him in here, without his Handler,” Andre said. It was a risk, but since the boy had already had contact with Darcy, less of one than sending someone else might have been. “Quickly, but quietly. And—no, wait. Send him directly to me.” That was a risk, but knowledge was power. And this might be—or become—something it would be wiser to keep for himself, rather than sharing.

      After she left, he picked up the phone once again and dialed an outside number.

      “Poul. I have an assignment for you.”

      It was going to be a longer afternoon than he had planned.

      “You think P.B.’s going to be okay while we’re gone?”

      Sergei finished putting their carry-on luggage in the overhead bin and looked down at his partner.

      “Yeah. I think the obnoxious little walking blanket will be fine.” He shifted to let another passenger drag his luggage by, and then closed the bin, unlacing and removing his shoes and placing them in their fabric carry bag, then storing them under the seat in front of their row. Wren had already kicked off her own shoes, practical and comfortable leather skimmers, and curled up on her own seat. The only good thing about being short, she thought, was that she got to be sort of comfortable in airplane seats.

      “And Andre’s check cleared?”

      “Cleared before I let you start packing.”

      She knew all this. She just liked hearing Sergei say it again. His voice was deep and raspy, like a lion’s purr. It made her feel better. He could probably be reciting the back ads in the Village Voice and it would still make her feel better. You’re so astonishingly easy, Valere.

      “Passport?”

      “In my pocket with all our other papers.” He was fighting back a smile behind that stern expression, she could tell. In any other situation it would annoy the hell out of her. But not right now. Now she was out of the airport, with all the worried-looking people and loudspeaker announcements and hurry-hurry-wait-wait and all those windows looking out at all those…planes.

      The fact that she was currently sitting in one of those planes hadn’t escaped her attention. But somehow being in one was better than looking at and planning on getting in one.

      Wren knew it didn’t make any sense. And thinking about it just emphasized the fact that she was in a plane rather than a weirdly shaped train, or something. And if she thought in that direction too long, bad things would start to happen again.

      “Emergency rations?”

      “Are in your bag, next to the newspaper. And yes, I packed those disgusting maple nut things.” He sat down next to her, raising the armrest between them to put his arm around her more comfortably. “Wren. Hush. It’s going to be okay.”

      Easy for him to say, she thought a little resentfully. He didn’t feel this beast singing beneath him, all filled with electronic devices practically begging to be drained. What happened if they ran into trouble, and she panicked, and tried to reach for current? What if—

      “You’re thinking too much,” he said.

      Guilty as charged, Officer. But he was right. If she just stopped thinking about it, her instinct for self-preservation—incredibly strong, as she knew from previous close calls—would kick in and keep her from doing anything suicidal in her panic. Probably. So. Change the subject.

      “Do you think that Andre wasn’t telling us everything?”

      Sergei snorted at that. “Andre never tells anyone everything. But no, I think that he was as up-front as he’s capable of being on Silence business.”

      Oh, that was reassuring. She felt totally reassured. Really.

      “Did I mention that I’m hating this job already? Even without the being on this thing I’m not thinking about being on?”

      “I don’t like it either, woman. If you’ve any better ideas, I would love to hear them.”

      “Bet Noodles would hire me.”

      “Yes, I can see you spending your life as a Chinese short-order cook. Or a bicycle delivery girl. If you could Translocate better, maybe.”

      “All right, that was low.” Her recent attempts at Translocation had been done under only extreme duress, once to save their own lives during a job gone bad,

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