Kindred Spirits: The Gambit, #2

Kindred Spirits

The Gambit 2

Nicolas Wilson

The Portland Gambit survived the Black King's takeover, but not all of the enemies have been identified, and fewer yet have been captured. Wit No Han, a war criminal who assisted the Black King, was deprived of his ability to do magic, and is consumed with revenge. And he's found an unlikely ally in Baldur and the Kindred, a gang of militant magical racist anarchists, making them a far deadlier opponent than before. With a serial killer draining Portland's most powerful mages of blood, another attacking waeres, and other traitors working against the Gambit from the inside, Knight and Rook's brief respite is at an end. The only way out is through as they strive to contain the damage, and disable Wit No Han... again.

Kindred Spirits contains graphic content, and is intended for mature readers.

Copyright 2015 Nicolas Wilson.

Kindred Spirits is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

One

Sweat beads off my forehead, as the strain of simply standing is nearly too much for me.

Humans, weak enough for microscopic organisms to be your undoing, Scarlat says through a grin sharpened with vampiric fangs.

Michaelangelo blanches. His human instincts—hell, his pride—tell him he shouldn't accept that kind of an insult off of a vampire. But it's been a long time since he's been a hunter—and just as long since he was human.

I'm glad my infirmity can bring you amusement, I say. But unless mocking your foodstuffs helps you think more clearly, we should table it.

Mike glances at me. He knows as well as she does that they don't snack on my kind—mages, to be specific. The energy, and the rest of the hocus-pocusry gets into their brains, and turns them into vampire meth-heads. It's funny for an evening, until you wake up to find that they sold all the wiring out of your car.

We've been tracking a killer for weeks. These two, delegates of the local vampire colony, are riding shotgun on a Gambit investigation because the dead mages in question were drained of their blood. That could be a coincidence; there's a whole branch of magic that involves the use of blood in elixirs, or just as a plain old reagent. But on that presumption, the VC saw fit to give me its two heaviest hitters. Mostly because if it is one of theirs, they don't want even the appearance of aiding a rogue vamp.

Scarlat's older than me, by decades at least, though you'd never know it to look at her. She's as beautiful today as she was the day I first saw her.

Mike's still a recent turn, and trying to get his bearings. He was a hunter, when we met, and every once in a while I notice the way he looks at Scarlat—he's sizing her up. He still wants to kill her, kill all of them.

I'm not surprised. His old brothers in the Order of San Michelle all but brainwashed him into believing that killing things like vampires was the lord's work, rather than murderous, bigoted myopia. A rogue vamp is close to a rabid animal—it's in everybody's interest to put it down, because none of us benefit from the kind of scrutiny wanton killing brings. But a vamp like Scarlat? I know for a fact I've killed more recently than she has—and despite how many years she has on me, I'd bet I'm competitive on quantity, too.

Because he spent the better part of his time among the living hunting, Mike's a better tracker than I am. But whoever the killer we're up against is, he hasn't left us anything to go on. Not even the best tracking spells Rook and Bishop can provide have given us so much as an inkling where the bastard goes to ground; it might mean he stays out of town except when he's hunting.

The latest victim was a hunter, and that's got Mike's blood up, too. It also strengthens what was only a hunch, before; if it is a vamp, hopped up on magic-tainted blood, then a hunter is the perfect victim. Most of them know at least a handful of rudimentary spells—they have to, really, to play on an even plane with a vampire. But only just. Half of them are religious zealots, like Mike, who view anything adjacent to witchcraft as evil, too—sometimes a necessary evil, but always in moderation. 

My phone goes off. I answer it without looking at the ID. Speaking.

You sound like shit, Detective Vergara of the Portland Police Bureau says from the other end.

Smell a bit off, too, Mike says. Goddamned vampire hearing. I turn down the volume on my phone, though I doubt it'll do a bit of good.

What did you need? I ask, though it sounds nearly like a goose honking, my nose is so thoroughly stuffed up.

I caught a body.

Why would somebody throw a body at you?

Har-har, she says sarcastically.

Nevermind, I understand, having met you.

It's something weird, she says over the phone.

So? I ask.

So weird is kind of your wheelhouse. So much for it being a booty call. A man, mid-thirties, skinned alive.

Ooh, I’ve seen this one. Predator did it.

Guy’s squeaky clean, aside from a tendency to move around a lot, and keep a low profile. I've seen this one, too. He's a werewolf, but I can’t tell her that. A nomadic waere usually means one of two things: he hasn’t figured out how to check his violent tendencies, or he watched too much of the old Incredible Hulk show, and romanticized the hell out of the idea of wandering the Earth with a caged monster in his belly. I’d put money on the latter, since Vergara isn’t a bad cop, and she would have noticed a string of unsolved mutilations correlating with this guy’s former residences. I’m going to need to see the body. Text me an address. I'm on my way.

I hang up. Looks like we'll have to table this whole discussion, I say. Should be plenty of time to make it home, but you're both welcome to stay here, if you like. There's tin-foil over the windows in my room, should keep you cozy.

Do you think the body is one of ours? Scarlat asks.

Not sure. It's weird, is all I can tell you. I only get called for weird.

I walk to the second bedroom, and knock twice. Vergara called, I tell him.

Are they gone? Harry asks from inside.

They're not monsters, I say, just vampires.

"It isn't all vampires. But those two? They have serious haunting problems."

Really?

Yeah. I can't imagine how many people they've killed to have so many... hangers-on. But it's mind-numbing.

I glance back at the front room, and see that they've departed, leaving the window open and the curtains fluttering in the wind.

Gone, I tell him.

Good, he opens up the door. I think the smell of litter-box was starting to get to Snowball.

"It's her litterbox," I say.

Do you like to smell your own shit? he asks. "Actually, you might."

Not being homeless has made you awfully sassy.

He sighs. No. Being at your beck and call has. And we're both haunted by what we did to Apotheker, even if I feel it more acutely. And this investigation is only putting me further on edge. I don't like people. Or at least, I don't like people who don't gently piss themselves to sleep at night in cardboard boxes. And I've been dealing with more and more of those lately.

"We'll catch the guy, and then you can get back to binge-watching Adventure Time."

He narrows his eyes. You knew?

It's my Hulu account. You think I can't see what's in our recently watched list?

Touche. He wraps a fraying coat over his shoulders. Think we have time to grab some chicken on the way?

I think there's no way in hell I'm letting you bring chicken to another crime scene. Everybody threw up.

It's not my fault you people have an unhealthy relationship with death, he says, and I raise an eyebrow at him.

The man was roasted alive. And you were eating fried chicken. It's not a great mental leap to go from fried bird meat, to fried human meat, think the one sounds delicious, then start picturing eating the latter, and— I pause and heave a little, I'm going to stop there before I make myself sick again.

I lead Harry out to my car. For all of his rough edges, he's probably the best necromancer in the city, maybe the whole Pacific Northwest. He rolls his window down, and sticks his head out it. He takes in a deep breath of the city's musk.

You miss it, don't you?

Being homeless? he asks, and frowns as he thinks. I miss the people, people who recognize the artifice of this existence, and have let it slip—however unintentionally. And I miss the smells, including the smell of piss in a fire. I don't miss being cold. I don't miss lacking a mattress. I don't miss the occasional struggle as someone not quite far gone enough tries to knife me for shoes with holes in them. But out there was home, for a very long time. And those were my people. He lets out a ragged sigh.

It's not the first time I've seen him like this. Hell, I've rarely seen him otherwise. Working as closely with death as he does takes its toll, and it's a toll better understood by those closer to death.

We'll get chicken on the way back, I tell him, and his face brightens. Aren't you the least bit haunted by the multitude of fowl you've sent to a friery death?

"Not a bit. One, chicken is delicious. Two, chickens are too stupid to actually haunt anything. Three, even if they did, all you'd get is the occasional squabbling—no worse than the neighbors and their coop."

Yeah. I'm still weirded out they're allowed to keep them.

Well you're the big bad sheriff, he says, and I can already hear him sliding into a John Wayne drawl. Why don't you go put the fear of the law into them?

I'm pretty sure they aren't mages, and even if they were, unless the chickens have been hexed to lay some kind of magically insidious egg, I'm pretty sure on both counts they're outside my jurisdiction.

Vodun uses chickens, he says noncommittally.

So does KFC. And unless you're telling me you think they're Botonos, then there's still nothing I can do about it.

He shrugs. You nervous? he asks.

I'm several bodies deep on that other case, and I haven't made any headway. If this is the same MO, I've got nothing. Vergara doesn't trust me, but she tolerates me, works with me, because while she can't understand how I help her close strange cases, they close, and usually with enough solid evidence to close without me swearing any questionable oaths. But I've never been this stuck before.

It'll be fine. Not every case closes nicely. I'm sure she knows that.

My GPS tells me to turn right into a parking lot. I spot squad cars, and park near them. From there, we follow the crime scene tape and footfalls of flat feet. Eventually someone remembers enough of his job to stop us. Vergara sent for us, I tell him.

Great, he responds, probably not intending for me to hear, the weirdo.

The one and only.

He waves us through.

She greets us, not with a smile, but with relief. Good, you brought Creepy Guy.

Harry, he says, and starts to put out his hand, before realizing that she probably won't want to shake it, anyway.

My grandmother have anything else to say?

Things about your grandfather she probably wouldn't want repeated, Harry says, and starts to spread his hands apart like he's showing the length of something, before folding them in front of himself.

Gross, she says. Come in. Make yourself at home. Mind the dead guy in the kitchen, though; I'd hate for you to have a nasty spill.

We follow her far enough inside to see a pool of blood flowing over the linoleum lip in the kitchen, and soaking into the carpet. Like he did? I ask.

Only if he landed on an entire Ginsu factory.

We round the island in the kitchen, separating us from the corpse. It's been skinned, recently, the skin peeled away and taken. I can make out bone, meat, and sinew, though it's tough to, because of all the blood.

Got anything? I ask Harry.

Nothing useful, he says. Dying... hurt.

"There's a shock," Vergara says.

Murder weapon? I ask.

That is also a shock, she says. He was butchered. But none of the knives in the kitchen were used. Preliminary indications from CSI is that multiple implements were used, specialized kind of equipment, the sort you'd expect a surgeon or at least some kind of an EMT to keep on hand. They brought their own tools, used them, and left with them. We've looked around for prints, but it would seem that the killer was cautious there, as well, because this place is spiccer than span.

That sounded vaguely racist, Harry says.

I don't think it was, Vergara says; she doesn't play the Latina card, though she could. But that's a sideshow. The main event, she shows me a sigil burnt into the wall. It was hidden behind a cabinet door. I recognize it. Pawn has a similar mark in his apartment, parked behind the largest naked poster I've ever seen—it takes up practically a whole wall.

The sigil dampens sound—meaning the poor bastard could scream while he was being vivisected, and nobody would hear. He probably did, too—screamed his goddamned head off.

No clue what it means, she says, other than gangland killing? Cultists? Shit's weird enough I assumed it would be your baliwick.

Let me make a guess, first. Nobody heard anything. Defensive wounds on the body would indicate he was alive, as would the random foot and handprints in blood. The killer restrained him, maybe even knocked him out with something. But he was alive when he was being butchered, and woke up. He should have screamed loud enough to wake the devil.

So you can read a crimescene, she says with a modicum of sarcasm.

Not a single witness heard a thing, I insist.

They're still canvassing the neighboring apartments. Then she gets my drift. What you're telling me is there's some kind of a sound dampening device that leaves that kind of a mark?

What I'm telling you is you aren't going to find anybody who heard a thing.

How about a witness?

To the crime? Doubtful, since I'm here. But exiting the building? Maybe. Place is too low-rent for a doorman or guard. Might have a camera, or somebody who came home late.

What about your forensic expert?

Beatrice? I asked.

I'd hoped you'd bring her.

I pull out my phone and text Bishop.

Thanks, Harry says, feigning annoyance.

I'm happy for anyone who can help. Now can you? Because a fourth grader could walk this scene and tell me the victim died screaming.

What kind of a monster would bring a fourth grader to a crime scene? Harry asks.

Cute, she says.

Bishop texts back. She and Rook are still working on a new Keep spell, but they're a ways off from finishing, nothing that can't wait until the morning. She texts that she'll come to us.

She's in, I tell Vergara.

Good. I'll clear as many of the looky-loos as can be. I wouldn't want her getting stage-fright. And I have to call Wilbur. She trots off.

What are you thinking? Harry asks.

I glance at him from the corner of my eye, and howl.

It’s a possibility, since he was skinned. I’m not getting anything coherent from him. Just screaming. It’s giving me a migraine. I hope we can go, soon.

You're just worried the chicken place will close before we can get away.

As if to answer, his stomach gurgles. I'm the reasonable one; I'm just saying, you screw with a man's chicken, you'll have the rumbling beast in his belly to contend with.

For fuck's sake, man, we'll get your goddamned chicken. Just meditate. Or go take a nap in the alley. Whatever.

He takes me up on the latter, and merely shrugs when I try to give him the keys so he can sleep in the car.

Two, Bishop

I'm a lousy teacher. I guess I always assumed being an exceptional student meant I'd be a natural tutor. Or maybe Rook's a lousy study. It might explain how a grown mage could know so little practical magic. I've met enough coven witches to know they can be a bit... folksy in their expertise, but they usually have at least a passing familiarity with the meat and potatoes of magic.

And it feels like Knight catches onto things faster. Though not Pawn. Maybe that means she's just my momma bear.

Her face is contorted by concentration. It isn't a simple spell we're using as the catalyst for the Keep spell, but the complexity is part of its strength. It has to be impenetrable, or it would make for a lousy fortification, and an even worse prison. But it's also not the most complex part of the spell, either.

Harder is the mana. It's not terribly dissimilar in principle from carbo-loading, except that the carbs are magical energy, and generally speaking, getting that much energy into a person hurts. There are a few less painful methods, but they're so inefficient we'd be at this for years before we could get anything useful out. I don't think we can get away with that. Not with the Kindred still waiting in the wings.

My phone goes off. It's Knight. I pray quietly for something to alleviate the boredom of going over the same damn spell over and over again for the rest of the night, knowing that an episode of Jeopardy would be more exciting—even if it was a rerun.

I hang up after a few terse words. We've got to go, I tell Rook.

Something important? she asks. More important than both of us beating our heads against my table.

Sounds like it, I say. Skinned body. They want me to bring my tools.

Gross. Well, at least we didn't get lasagna like we planned. Pretty sure playing with a corpse would make me lose my lasagna.

We could get some on the way. It's no trouble. She doesn't smile. But that's okay.

She drives. I can drive, but then I wouldn't be able to take the time to work on math while she drives. Plus since she's my Rook, she's supposed to protect me from drunk drivers and maybe homeless people wandering into the road.

Knight's directions get us there, probably by the fastest route, but also definitely through the skeeviest parts of the city. I think Rook could tease him about that; from me, it would just sound too much like the sheltered little nerdgirl who can't hang with the streetwise menfolk. Which is bullshit, but... I'm not so disconnected I don't know it's how people see me.

Knight meets us at the doors. There's a squad car still sitting outside. He stares daggers at them until they leave.

It's a crappy apartment building, the kind I lived in when I first moved out on my own in Seattle. My front door was rotted about a third of the way through. I found out, after about three months, that this was because my neighbor, who was a drunk, was constantly pissing on my door after the bars kicked him out. I put a hex on the door, that made it hurt like the piss coming out of him was on fire. He shrieked, then mumbled something about it being an STD. But he never pissed on my door again.

Finally, Wilbur mutters when he sees me. But he's also a little happy to be in a room with a woman who recognizes him. I didn't touch it, in case you're worried over booby-traps.

I smile at him. No. No traps. Different MO. I set my bag down on the floor beside the corpse. I kneel next to it, and open up my bag.

I'm not sure how much theater we want, or how eager Knight is for a concrete answer. I select a big hypodermic, then plunge into his chest, between ribs, right into the heart, and take a big sample of blood. I dab some into a petri dish with a prepared solution, which reacts by turning a greenish tapioca, and vomiting off a purplish smoke.

He's a carrier, I tell Knight.

Carrier of what? Wilbur asks.

Nothing you'd understand, I tell him, or be able to test for.

Doesn't sound very scientific to me, he snorts.

Science requires verifiability. I could get the same results, again and again, off this corpse, for probably several more days, as could anyone else with my expertise. You don't have it. Though presumably you've got stronger anatomical knowledge than I do.

What's that tell us? Knight asks.

That it wasn't a hunter. Because a hunter would clear the... taint.

Rook badly stifles a giggle.

Wilbur, clear the taint, Vergara says.

I don't think a corpse without skin has a taint, technically, Wilbur says.

She raises an eyebrow. He lifts the legs apart, and Vergara shines a light onto its bloodied crotch. 

I meant the pathogen—though I'm not sure that's the right word for it. But it's definitely something not human, attached to a human being.

A parasite? Wilbur asks, as he puts the leg down.

A symbiotic organism, maybe, I tell him, because the science on waeres is still a little esoteric.

What kind of a hunter are you talking about? Vergara asks.

The kind that thinks a human being tainted like this ought to be... cleansed, Knight answers.

"But you're saying it wasn't a hunter?"

Not a professional one. They'd clean the body. Not so much to prevent spread of a contagion, more because... their whole schtick is about purity. They kill the unclean, then purify the body.

Religious whackos, then.

But it wasn't them, this time, he says, and turns back to me.

This is different, I say. "A hunter might take the skin. For study. For sport. But this was careful. Surgical, but done by an unsteady and untrained hand. They wanted the flesh, every last centimeter of it. You can see it, here, I use a pair of tweezers to pull back a flap from the pectoral muscle, they cut down to the clavicle, took a hell of a lot of meat with it, just to make sure they didn't leave behind a single scrap of skin."

What would they want with it? Wilbur asks.

What could anyone want with a whole body's worth of skin? I ask, before answering the question myself, nothing pleasant.

And that's all you can tell me? Some kind of hunter who wants to do unpleasant things to several pounds of human skin?

I can tell you skin has supposed shamanic properties, specifically that by wearing enough of another person's or animal's skin, you could essentially become them.

"Like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs?" Wilbur asks.

We all exchange a glance, nonverbally agreeing to ignore him.  It's the general idea behind the Norse berserkers and the lesser known ulfhethnars—men who berserked beneath the skin of wolves.

Interesting as trivia, Vergara responds, but unless you're thinking this has something to do with a neopagan Norse cult—wait, wasn't there a similar movement last year?

The Kindred, Knight tells her. Might be worth shaking their trees, to see if anything falls out. Not that he thinks it's them. They're jackbooted thugs; the fact that the door wasn't kicked in, and there aren't muddied bootprints all over the apartment tells me it wasn't the Kindred—at least not operating en masse.

Fuck. That means going through the gang task force. I hate Malco. Fucker always wants to barter  my affections for him doing his goddamned job. Knight's eyebrows shoot up. "He asks me out, at every opportunity. You really think this has to do with Norse voodoo bullshit?"

Knight shrugs. It might. There's only one spell I've ever heard of that requires this much intact skin. It's the same spell used by the Norse berserkers. But it's more sinister than it sounds. Because you couldn't just take the skin off a wolf. You had to skin a man who was a wolf—a werewolf. Alive.

Three, Knight

I only half-remembered the ulfhethnar spell, on account of how nasty it was. A live skinning tends to stick in your head. Bishop confirms it as soon as Vergara is out of earshot.

Makes the case interesting. But it also makes it not much of my concern. The idea of the ulfhethnar and the bear-skins was that by way of the spell, you gained all of the strengths of the beast, but maintained your intelligence and humanity. But the progenitors of the spell were called berserkers, so how successful do you think it actually was?

Over time, most waeres get their bestial urges in check. It's often a combination of meditation, wolfsbane tea, and where necessary secluding themselves chained in a basement or deep in a forest for the worst of it.

But the waere means one other thing: this isn't part of my other case. I'd have noticed if the other bodies were waeres hiding out in polite mage society.

I've been putting off a trip to the Bust, and to Devi, for some time. For one, I almost always end up owing her more of my time than I want, since usually my time is worth less than finding and buying a mana battery for her.

She dances at the Bust, a cop bar with strippers. The girls who work the place are friends and family of cops, a few wives and ex-wives. The bouncers are all off-duty police. Knight, the one at the door says. They don't like me much, so they feel me up extra rough on my way in. He finds my piece—they always do, because I don't hide it.

He gives me the stink eye, Got a permit, I tell him. He's seen it before, even called it in a few times, to fuck with me. But tonight he's focusing on the dancers, giving himself a hard time rather than give me one.

I pass a second man stationed at the hall. Down that way are the girls' dressing rooms, and Devi's place. Technically, I think it's classified the way they class a sex dungeon, which is to say it's more anything goes than the main stages. I do know she plays as hard as she has to, to get what she needs. Most of her customers are cops; they come to her because they're stuck someplace in a case. They come back because... well, she moves like no woman I've ever seen, and because she's the best there is at heating back up a cold case.

I shut her metal door behind me, thick enough it would withstand a nuclear blast, along with the heavy concrete walls. I wonder if she knows something I don't, but the answer to that question is, Always, she says, and it echoes from every direction. It's either magic, or one hell of a sound system.

But she doesn't say anything else. She waits for me to wrap my coat around the back of the metal chair in the center of the room and sit down.

Then the beat begins. It's familiar, but different, and as the room fills with fog, I piece together that it's Lana Del Rey, slowed down just enough to be perfect to dance to. Then I see Devi's silhouette stalking through the mist. She moves like a tiger, if that tiger was trying to seduce you, rather than tear your face off in its paws. Then again, maybe she and the tiger are both doing the same thing.

I close my eyes, because I don't want to be her partner in this dance. It's manipulation, seduction for the sake of using desperation and loneliness to pull power out of me. I stay anyway, because she needs the power to divine for me, and I try to tell myself it's all right, because we're both knowingly using each other. It's a lie I can't make myself believe.

She whips around me. I feel the warmth and moistness of her sweat as she arches her back around me, and her hair falls to my opposite ear. It's longer than before. I wince, knowing that paying attention to those kinds of details, those little moments of infatuation, she feels. It's worse, realizing she knows when she gets one over on me, that she wants my weakness, and feels it the moment she finds one.

I see it in her eyes when she finally wends around to face me. They're a different color, magic or contacts, than the last time I saw her. The bloodless killer, she says, into my ear, and I'm not ashamed to say I'd let her whisper all manner of horrible things to me, so long as she did it with that much breath.

I'm beginning to wonder why you make me come down here at all.

Maybe I just like having you here, she says with a smile. She's playing me, teasing me, taunting me, because that's where her power comes from. I hate it, because I hate being used; maybe the other reason I hate it is because I like it so damned much.

She's a dangerous woman because she knows what everyone wants, and exactly how much of it she can give them without driving them completely crazy, just crazy enough that the emotional bleed coming off them is like raw sap from a maple, just waiting to be converted into magical energy.

I've been working on it. But I can't get... anything. The necromancer was strange. I think the... magnitude of what happened to him, and for an instant, she can't finish the thought, and can't look at me, because she knows what I did to Apotheker. I don't blame her for the reaction. I think the traumatic nature of it scrambled my radar. She catches my eyes in the darkness, and trembles. That hurts me, and I'd reach out, to comfort her, but I know better—she touches you, not the other way around, and the last thing a woman afraid of a man wants is to be touched by him.

But she also knows me well enough to know he had what I did to him coming, or at least she gives me the benefit of the doubt, and moves past it, and continues to dance. "This is different. That was a whirlwind in a mist, one I couldn't see through. This is a wall, a deliberate construction, built to keep me out."

Not just any diviner? I ask.

At the risk of flattering myself— She strokes her hands down her chest, and across her taut stomach, and I know the rise she gets out of me is flattery enough. There are specific counter-spells targeting the kind of divination and magic I use. There's some other stuff, too—Queen would probably have a hard time getting through it, as would just about any of us, but it's— She realizes we're dangerously close to drifting into shop talk. "It feels like it was erected with my talents in mind." Then she laughs, light and sexual, the kind of laugh a man could hear mid or post-coital, without feeling like it was at his expense.

Not that I've given up. I'm just saying breaking into a fortress of counter-spells is going to take some serious heka. We both smile. I know what it's like to be an oil well, and she gets an extra bump when my mind drifts to drilling, even if I never make it past the metaphor.

She presses soft breasts against my cheek. It's more aggressive than usual. My heart skips a beat when I ask myself if it's because she's getting sweet on me. I hate myself a little, for recognizing a moment later that that's the point—whatever it takes to break through my indifference and cynicism, whatever it takes to get my pulse racing, to make me hope this is just the foreplay. It's to her credit that she manages, time and again, to get through that, and not just with me. She works with the most cynical slice of humanity she could find, and breaks them down, every goddamned time. She's an impressive woman, in a lot of respects.

You should come work for me, I say.

She laughs, light again. You know I don't work that way. Besides, working in the Bust I make three times what you could offer me.

I haven't offered anything, yet, I say, but I smile, because I know who I'm talking to. Wiley minx.