Staying Dead

Staying Dead

Laura Anne Gilman

For Mom and Dad, of course.

And for Mir and ElaineMc,

who have some small blame in all this…

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Because no writer works alone,

no matter what it feels like at 3:00 a.m.,

I need to praise and thank the following people:

Jennifer Jackson (agent) and

Mary-Theresa Hussey (editor). Finestkind.

Peter, who understood that there was something I

needed to do, and gave me the space to get it done.

The Cross-Genre Abuse Group, for smacking this

around the room more than a few times.

eluki, who said “yes” to my kids before anyone else,

and Dana and Lynn, all of whom took time out

to pay forward.

The folk in my newsgroup who came up with the info

when I needed it (and the Hounds, who howl on cue).

James, who told me to shut up and get back to work.

Marina Frants, who taught me all sorts of lovely Russian

phrases…some of which even made it into the book.

To you all, if I haven’t said it recently,

grazie. Molto grazie.

The Mississippi’s mighty, but it starts in Minnesota

At a place where you could walk across

with five steps down…

—Indigo Girls

“Ghost”

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

one

“Hey, lady! Move it or lose it!”

The cyclist sped past her, a blur of expensive aluminum, narrow wheels and Lycra-clad body topped by a screaming-orange helmet. He—she? it?—hopped off the curb and dove into the light traffic moving up Madison Avenue, almost slamming into a cab that was cruising around the opposite corner looking for an early-morning fare. The cabbie slammed on the brakes and the horn at the same time, and the bike messenger made a rude gesture as he wove in and out of the middle of the street, heading downtown.

“Oh, for a stick to spoke his wheels,” Wren said wistfully, staring after the cyclist with annoyance. The man standing next to her smothered a surprised burst of laughter. Wren blinked. She hadn’t been kidding; bicycle messengers were a menace.

Dismissing the incident with the single-minded focus she brought to every job, Wren turned her attention back to the building in front of her; the reason she was standing out on the corner at this ungodly hour of the a.m. on a Monday. What terrible sin had she committed in a past life, to get all the morning gigs in this life? She made a soft, snorting noise, amused at her own indignation. At least it was a pretty morning as those things went.

In fact, Manhattan in the spring was a pretty decent place to be. Winter meant slush and biting winds, while summer had a range of heat-induced smells that ranged from disgusting to putrid. You could live in the city then, but you generally didn’t like it. But spring, she thought, spring was the time to be here. The sun was warming up, the breeze was cool, and people were in the mood to smile at each other. Even bad days had an edge of promise to them.

But right now, spring weather aside, Wren couldn’t find a damn thing to be happy about. Seven in the morning was way too early, and the job that had sounded like quick and easy money at first was rapidly going deep into the proverbial shitter. She was going to have to do some actual work for her paycheck on this one.

“Maybe that will teach you to answer the phone before six,” she said out loud.

“Excuse me?”

Rafe, the guard who had been detailed to “help” her, had a cute little wrinkle between his eyebrows, totally spoiling his until-now perfect Little RentACop look.

“Nothing. Never mind.” Don’t talk to yourself in front of civilians, Valere. It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. Even if she had ignored the phone’s ringing two hours ago, before either she or the sun had thought about getting up, the sound of Sergei’s voice on the machine would have made her pick the receiver up. She might have the skills that people paid for, but her partner was the one with a nose for jobs that was slowly but surely making them moderately well-off, if not obscenely wealthy. Only a fool would pass up a call from someone like that, no matter what the time.

And while Wren Valere was many things, a fool had never been one of them.

“Rafe? Can you go get me a refill of water?” she asked, handing him the plastic sports bottle she had been holding. He wasn’t thrilled at being an errand boy, she could tell, but his orders had been explicit. Give Ms. Valere all the help she needed. Type of help not specified. So he went.

Freed from observation, she sat back on her heels and closed her eyes slowly, holding them shut for a count of ten. She had been doing this long enough that it didn’t take her any longer than that to slip into a state of clear-minded awareness. The sounds of early-morning traffic, the smells of exhaust and fresh-budding greenery all faded, leaving her with a clear, concentrated, settled mind. As she opened her eyes slowly, not rushing anything, her gaze went back to the sleek marble foundation in front of her, as though there might have been some change in those ten-plus seconds of blackout.

Nope. Nothing. It still looked as ordinary and commonplace as before, one of any of a hundred-plus buildings throughout the city built in the same time period. No bloody handprint, no chisel marks or dust left on the pale gray surface, no sign of any kind of disturbance at all. Nothing to suggest there was something different about this northeast corner of the building, as opposed to the southeast, the southwest or the northwest sides. The four corners of this building stretched out over a full city block, and she’d just spent the past hour becoming far too familiar with all four.

God, she hated prep work! But you had to check everything before you started looking for anything. Even the stuff you knew you wouldn’t find. Except, of course, the fact that one corner, or rather one small block inside of this corner, wasn’t really there anymore.

A deliberate letting-go of her concentration, and the fugue state slipped away. Wren stood, arching her back to release some of the tension that had gathered there. Magic—current, in the post-eighteenth century terminology—was easy enough to use, if you had the Talent, but that didn’t make it easy.

Her throat felt like sandpaper. She looked around, but Rafe wasn’t back yet with her water. He must have gone all the way up to the executive lunchroom for San Pellegrino.

She clicked on the miniature recorder in her hand, and spoke into it, remembering to speak slowly enough that she would be able to transcribe correctly later on that day. “No indications of newly-made marks or disturbances on the site, not that that means anything—I bet they have a team of sanitation experts who come in every morning and sluice the building down, just in case a pigeon poops on it accidentally.”

All right, she thought. A slight exaggeration. But not by much. The guy who’d designed this had obviously had some penile issues that needed to be worked out, though.

The building in question was a thirty-eight-floor skyscraper, gleaming steel and glass in the early-morning light. A troop of window washers could spend a full year just wiping and polishing the expanse of windows. An edifice built to proclaim the owner’s ego to a city already overwhelmed with capital-P Personalities.

“From the exterior, the building looks intact. This is supported by the engineer’s report—” And how the hell had they found someone willing and able to do a full review of the building this morning? Money not only talked, it must have bellowed.

But the report she had found in the folder left at her door by one of Sergei’s ever-efficient contacts was clear on that. The missing piece had been removed from within the building, without cracking the concrete and steel surrounds. The building itself had not been harmed in any way by the alleged disruption to its structural integrity. Therefore, it was only her imagination that made the headquarters of Frants Enterprises tilt ever-so-slightly to the left. Cornerstones didn’t actually support any weight in modern buildings, or so she had been informed by a quick skim through the multitude of building and construction sites on the Internet while she waited for her coffee to brew. They were there for show, to display the construction date, as tradition. Sometimes, as receptacles of time capsules, or good-luck charms—

Or protection spells.

Wren had been part of the magic-using community since she was fourteen. She’d never once used a protection spell, or known anyone else who did, either. But a lot of people swore by them, apparently. And were willing to pay good money to get them back.

She drummed her fingers on her denim-clad thigh, thinking. Sometimes you needed to know all the facts. Sometimes, knowing anything more than the essentials just clogged the works. The trick was knowing which situation called for what method. She glanced up the length of the building, then blinked and looked away again quickly. The view made her dizzy, not so much from the sunlight reflecting off the glass as the sense of…no, not menace, exactly. But a looming emptiness that was disturbing. As though something more vital than a chunk of rock had been stolen away.

Wren frowned, redirecting her attention to the building’s foundation again, squinting as though hoping to suddenly be struck with X-ray vision. Not one of the recorded skill sets of Talent, worse luck. But if a Talent couldn’t get the job done, it was time to use your brain, and she had a pretty decent one if she did say so herself. Eliminating the impossible, you’re left with the obvious; it would take magic to get the missing slab out without doing major damage to the entire building. And that was exactly the feat someone had apparently mastered on this very building, at approximately 11:32 the night before. So, magic. Which narrowed the playing field not only for culprits, but motives.

She nodded to herself, twirling the recorder absently in one hand. A rather impressive act of vandalism, in more ways than one; it showed off the vandals’ abilities without making a fuss the usual authorities could follow, assuming they would even be interested in a case like this; it in no way harmed the integrity of the building and therefore didn’t put anyone working there at risk; and it struck deep in the heart of the building’s owner and prime resident’s deepest, ugliest fear.

It was a hacker’s trick, showing how easy it would be to really harm the target, without doing anything they could easily be prosecuted for. Only in this case, it wasn’t all just show. Damage had been done, if not anything you could explain on a police report, or an insurance waiver.

Their employer had two very simple questions: who did this, and how soon can you get it back? Right now Wren was more concerned with how it had been done. In her experience, once you found the tools, it was generally a simple matter to find the workman. And once they’d found him, the fun part began.

Only problem was, this bastard didn’t seem to have left any external traces at all. Wren was—grudgingly—impressed.

Clicking on the ’corder again, she continued making her comments, pacing down the sidewalk.

“The night watchman finished his rounds at 4:45 a.m. At that point, he claims not to have seen anything out of the ordinary—nothing that would have given him even an instant’s pause at all.” She hesitated, continued. “Which raises the question, I guess, if the theft was done remotely, or if the guard was under the influence of a spell himself.”

A jogger went past her at a heavy-breathing clip, and she moved out of the way with the instinctive radar that big-city residents evolve by instinct, but didn’t pause in her recitation. Even if the jogger had been inclined to listen in—selective deafness being another big-city survival trait—Wren doubted that he would have recalled it—or her—an instant later. Being invisible was one of the things she did very best. Part of it was by design: her jeans, white button-down shirt and leather jacket were quality enough that she would be categorized as “employed,” and the temporary security badge that came with the reports was now hung around her neck, giving her a reason to be in the building. Most people didn’t look any further than that. But the real secret to her success was a carefully cultivated result of the genetic lottery. Not a winning ticket; more like a “sorry, try again” one. Her shoulder-length hair was the color that could only be described as “brownish,” and her features were unremarkably regular. Average height, average weight, unremarkable measurements—she never warranted more than a swift once-over by anyone, male or female. Her appearance was neither unpleasant nor remarkable. Forgettably average.

Sometimes she wondered if dying her hair bright screaming red, or bleaching it platinum blond would make any difference to the way the world didn’t see her. But it never seemed worth the bother to experiment. And why screw with success? Besides, Sergei would kill her.

“The fact that there is no sign from the exterior of the building of digging, or any kind of disturbance at all, confirms the suspicion that it was a purely magical theft.”

Well, duh. But you checked everything anyway, just so it didn’t come back later and bite you on the ass.

“A remote grab seems more and more probable.” And narrowed her eventual list of suspects. Far easier to steal line-of-sight, especially something this size.

Rafe appeared by her shoulder, holding out a water bottle glistening with fresh condensation. Wren shut off the recorder and tucked it into the inside pocket of her bomber jacket, then took the bottle from him and poured a stream of the water down her throat.

“Thanks. Let’s go take a look at the inside, shall we?” The we was ironic, and they both knew it. Rafe wasn’t so cute when he was annoyed. Oh well. She shouldered her way through one of the large revolving glass doors that led to the lobby, and walked inside the building, her eyes scanning the floor and walls with a practiced eye. She was looking for any indication that something might have been chalked or painted on the gleaming marble surfaces. Especially if it was a remote grab, signposts would show up somewhere. Remotes were tough enough, easier to focus if you had something there to guide you in. Leaving something of your own was best, but risky if you couldn’t pull it on your way out.

Admittedly, it would have been difficult for anything to adhere to that expensive marble-and-brass slickness, but the lobby would be the logical—easiest—place for the thief to lay a marker. Wren was surprised when her scan didn’t turn up anything. Markings were a safer way to do the job than actually being on-site at the time, something you could do well in advance of the job, and assuming that the victim knew enough to call in someone like herself afterward. If she had been doing the grab, she would have marked…the ceiling. Wren scanned upward, squinting against the overhead light, and let out a soft triumphant “hah!” There, up on the ceiling behind her, by the door. A faint streak, difficult to find even if you knew where and how to look for it. Wren did a rough calculation and decided that if you followed the end of the streak down and at an angle, it would point directly to where the northeast cornerstone was laid.

“Now, how did you get up there…and is it worth my time to go up and check you out?”

Probably not, she decided. Maybe later, if need be. But for now, the evidence was enough. Nobody was going to go up there and erase it, after all. Not without leaving even more trace for her to follow.

Something beeped. Rafe excused himself, going off into the far corner to talk into his walkie-talkie. He looked upset. Somebody must have seen him snatching the water, she thought with an evil grin.

Nodding to the morning guard at his station, she stopped so that he could compare the code of her temporary security pass against the list in the computer.

“Anyone else come in last night with a visitor’s pass?” Overlook nothing; assume the perp was either insanely clever or astonishingly dumb. You never knew when a simple question could get you an important answer.

“Nope. Heard there was a problem last night?” The guard was a short black guy in a standard-issue polyester blue jacket and tie a shade darker than Rafe’s. Although the tie might have been silk—he looked like a guy who would upgrade when possible. He sat the long security desk like a command center. Which, based on the number of blinking lights and constantly-changing screens set into the five-foot-wide surface, it was. Like something out of Star Trek, only without the nifty beeps and pings and whirring red alerts. This console was sleek and silent, even when a knob flicked red. He glanced at it, flipped a switch, and corrected whatever the problem was, all without taking his attention off her.

“You asking me, or telling me?” Wren asked. She heard the hardness in her voice, and winced inwardly, trying to tone it down a little. Don’t antagonize the witnesses, you idiot! A slight cock of the head to the right, like the bird she was nicknamed for, and a faint smile that could be mistaken for encouragement softened her words.

It worked enough to take the edge off his initial reaction. “They told me there was going to be a full-scale shakedown later today. That says trouble.”

She nodded, shifting her weight slightly to convey interest, and a willingness to hang around and listen to him for as long as he wanted to talk.

“And it had to be last night,” the guard—his name tag read Blair—continued. “’Cause when I came in this morning, Joe had already gone off shift, and there were two guys here in way-too-expensive suits, working the desk instead of him. And here you are, full clearance pass, asking to see my log book. So, you with FullTec?”

The name was familiar from her predawn briefing materials. FullTec was the name of the company that had installed the security system for this building back when it was built in 1955, and rewired it every ten years or so thereafter. She’d checked them out online, too. They’d been ahead of their time even then, and were still riding the cutting edge of security technology now. No building wired by them had ever been broken into, held hostage, or otherwise menaced. The upper level executives who gathered for multibillion-dollar conference calls rested easy in a FullTec building. Said so right on their Web site.

But, according to her job notes, they hadn’t been the ones to prepare the missing item. Which meant that they—probably—didn’t know anything at all about the special protections built into it. That had been Talented work: a mage, probably, or maybe one of the earliest lonejacks. Special protections that kept the owner, the ruler of this little financial empire, safe and secure in his dealings with the outside world.

A protection that had disappeared at 11:32 p.m. last night.

She banished those thoughts for later, returning her full attention to the guard and the here-and-now.

“No, actually, I’m a freelancer. Called in special to double-check some of the systems.”

Blair nodded his head, sagely impressed. The tie was definitely silk. “Ah. Watching the watchdogs, huh?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“So, you a tech? Some kind of whiz-kid hacker?”

Wren laughed, thinking of Sergei’s caustic comments while he watched her fumbling attempts to upgrade her computer last weekend. Current—the power source of magic—screwed with electronics, so her relationship with her computer was at best user-cautious. “Nope.” She paused, a germ of mischief making her tell this poor bastard the truth. “I’m a thief.”

Twenty minutes later, she was alone with the main control box for the building’s wiring system. The guard had laughed at her words, but the look in his eyes had been cool, and suddenly she’d been given an escort down into the basement. Not Rafe, either. A new guy, still polite but bulkier and much less cute. Not quite a goon, but with definite goonlike tendencies only barely tamed by the neatly pressed blue blazer that didn’t quite hide the bulk of a stun gun at his hip. Nor, she suspected, was it supposed to.

“That’ll teach me to be honest,” she muttered, opening the box and surveying the neatly laid-out and labeled assortment of wires. A stun gun would only take her out for about half the time of a normal human, since her body was used to channeling electrical energy in the search for current, but it would still be unpleasant, if she were taken unprepared. “Sergei’s right. Never gets me anywhere except in trouble.”

“Did you say something, miss?”

“No, nothing, sorry. I talk to myself when I work. Just ignore me.”

And she wasn’t really a thief, anyway. She was a retriever, thank you very damn much. A person, as Sergei would say, of specialized skills, who could bring objects back to their rightful—the client was always rightful—owner without the fuss of a police investigation, or the bother of insurance companies getting involved. Sergei had a way of making everything sound so damn high-class.

All right, so sometimes a legality or two got bent out of shape, in the course of a retrieval. But bending wasn’t breaking. Not so long as she wasn’t caught, anyway. And nobody told her mother.

Reaching out, Wren traced a wire gently, pressing just enough to make it resist her touch. According to the label under it, this section of wires connected to the fire alarm system. Probably not what she was looking for, since those things were notoriously temperamental. Dropping her hand several inches, she came to the security alarm. Again, not likely. That would have been the very first thing they would have checked.

When he’d called with the details, Sergei had made it clear to her that the client wanted this done with an absolute nil of noise. Which meant, ideally, she’d be the only one on the job. But the guard’s words indicated, to no real surprise at all, that that was already screwed. If the “mondo suits” at the board this morning hadn’t been Mage Council troubleshooters, high-powered magic-users-for-hire, she’d eat her hat, if she owned one. Oh well. Never assume the client’s going to tell you the truth. Especially if it involves anything that might actually let you get the job done.

But she had one advantage—high-powered magic-users tended to think in high-powered ways. Which she didn’t, as a rule. Start low on the spectrum, work your way up. Nobody uses more power than they have to. Call it Valere’s Strop to Occam’s Razor.

Closing that control box, she opened the one directly below it and snorted without amusement. The labeling confirmed her initial suspicion: the electrical system for the entire building. Everything that had an On button was initially powered from this one place. She tsked under her breath. Sloppy, sloppy. With the quick close-and-yank of current, she could give every overworked, underpaid secretary a day off.

And then end up explaining to Sergei why the job went south. From a jail cell. Not one of your better impulses, no.

Reaching in, she touched her index finger to one of the wires, and instantly felt a familiar answering hum in the blood running under the skin. You could describe magic any way that worked, and one mage’s science was another wizzart’s chaos. It all boiled down to using the existing energy that was generated by almost everything knocking about the universe. Call it electricity, call it life force, or chi: hell, call it Norman if it works. Wren didn’t pay much attention to any of the various and contentious schools of magic theory. She wasn’t much for schooling, period. You used what you had.