At the same time, they were beautiful. And hers. She moved closer, soothing the snakes, gathering them in. There was no fear, no loss of control. They were part of her, and would do as she willed them, damn it—
“Miss?”
Wren started as someone touched her shoulder. She could sense Sergei swinging into action even as she gasped, putting his well-tailored bulk between her and the intruder.
Wren wasn’t used to being noticed—she normally cultivated her slight, innocuous appearance into invisibility. She must be screaming tension in her body language. Not good. The last thing she needed was attention from security making her even more nervous.
“Yes?” she said, moving around her overprotective partner and shoving the current-snakes down even more firmly. Everyone stay cool, she thought, not sure if it was directed at herself, the current, or Sergei. Or all of the above.
The guard took a hard look at her, glanced at the passport held out to him and then reached out one hand, palm up and fingers flat, as though calming a nervous horse. His hand was covered with fine lines, a webbing of creases run amok, and there was a callus on the pad of his index finger. Wren thought that someone who read palms could have a blast with him. “Are you all right, Ms. Valere?”
Sergei started to answer him, but Wren shook her head at him in warning. Let me handle this. “Yes, thank you.”
She shifted her carry-on, and took Sergei’s hand in her own. The cool, firm skin of his hand was like a lifeline, and she squeezed it once, gently, feeling him return the pressure. It’s okay, that squeeze said.
Rather than restraining the current any further, Wren focused it instead, turning her full attention to the guard. Seeing the suspiciously twitchy passenger relax under his gaze, the guard—a baby-faced blonde in his mid-twenties, if that, probably just out of training on how to use the gun in his holster—began to relax. His watery blue eyes were kind, at odds with the weary boredom on his face. You’re feeling sorry for me, she thought, her brain taking on an intensely dreamy but sharp-edged feel of a working fugue stage. You think I look terrified of flying—true—and it’s a shame I have to be put through all of this.
The “Push” was one of her strongest gifts. It was also the one she hated to use the most, for purely embarrassingly moral reasons—more than any other skill, it had the potential to be abused. The problem was, it was so damn useful. Coupled with her ordinary looks and slight frame, it was enough to get her into the most closely guarded places without being seen. But sometimes you wanted to draw someone’s attention to you, not away…and once you had it, you could move it to other places…other thoughts. And they would never know, if you were careful, how they had been coerced. Get me through this…get me past these machines so I don’t have a screaming fit and set off every single security measure you have….
“Bad flyer, huh?” the guard asked conversationally.
“Bad doesn’t even begin to cover it,” Wren admitted, squelching her self-disgust into a tight box and locking the lid. Her mother would have a fit if she knew how badly her only daughter was messing with some poor guy’s mind. But when needs must, as her own mother forever said—if about other, way more ordinary things—you did what you had to do….
Sergei Didier watched his partner wind the security guard around her little finger, and stifled a smile of relief. With luck, having something to focus on other than her fear of flying would keep anything…dramatic from happening. He’d been intentionally not thinking of all the ways a panicked Talent could create chaos in an airport, especially one as tightly wound as Newark, as though that blankness in his mind would prevent anything from happening. Talismanic magic, the ancient kind Wren scoffed at.
His feeling was, don’t knock anything that might work.
He glanced at the decadently expensive and self-indulgent wind-up gold watch on his wrist and made a bet with himself that it would take her less than three minutes to “push” the guard into hand-walking them through security. There was much less risk in her being wanded off to the side than walking through one of their damned machines, in the state she was in. If she managed that, it would be the first thing that had gone right since they’d taken this damned job.
No, scratch that. The first thing to go right since May. Since that damned Frants case, since that damned Council—since everything had changed.
He rested his gaze on his Wren, currently being ushered out of the line by the solicitous guard, and smiled again. Not that everything that had happened in May was so bad.
She looked back, making sure that he was okay with her being taken out, alone, and he made a small go-ahead gesture. It wasn’t as though they were joined at the hip. She’d catch up with him on the other side of the security gate. Once she was out of the way, things were bound to go more smoothly.
Picking up his bag, Sergei shuffled forward with the rest of the line to fill the space Wren had left. Yes, things would go more smoothly without her there. But he missed her presence already.
Since May…although he wondered again how much had actually changed, and how much was just finally being dragged out into the light of day.
Two days earlier…
“Why the hell don’t you get an air conditioner?”
Wren looked at her partner as though that was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. He flushed slightly, the color rising over his damnably fine cheekbones, although that might have been the heat. It was seven o’clock in the evening, and the temperature was still hovering in the low nineties. Summer in Manhattan. God, how Wren hated it.
They were sitting on the hardwood floor of the largest room in her apartment, not that large meant much in the city. The space was empty save for the stereo system against one wall and an overstuffed armchair at the perfect midway point between speakers. All the windows in the apartment were open, on the off-chance of catching a breeze to supplement the low-tech floor fans that were pretty much just redistributing the warm air. But at least they were low-risk, compared to running an air conditioner. She wasn’t going to be the Talent who shorted out the entire city because she couldn’t stand a little heat.
She could, she supposed, have drawn the oppressive heat off her body magically. But even thinking about it made her exhausted. Actually doing something was beyond her ability right now.
Sergei, who didn’t have that option, looked as exhausted as she felt. Still dressed in the grey summer-weight wool slacks and long-sleeved cotton shirt he had worn during the day, he was sprawled on his back, a clear plastic cup on the floor near his hand, the dregs of a squeezed lemon and the last drops of iced tea at the bottom of the cup. His collar was undone, and his sleeves had been unbuttoned and then left, as though it were too much effort to roll up the cuffs. He wouldn’t be caught dead in anything more casual, not when he needed to be “Sergei Didier, owner and proprietor of Didier Gallery, home of overpriced artwork,” anyway. Sergei, her partner in we-don’t-call-it-crime, it’s-Retrieval-thank-you-muchly, could dress down as needed. Although she could probably count on two hands the number of times she’d seen him in jeans. Pity, that. For thirty-nine-ish, her partner’s ass was worthy of well-fitting jeans. Not that slacks weren’t a good look on him, too….
She shook her mind away from those thoughts with an effort, aware he was waiting for a response.
“You could have gone back to your own place, you know,” she said. He had central air. And tile flooring, which was much nicer to lie on when it was really hot outside. Not that she’d done that…more than
