Curse the Dark. Laura Anne Gilman

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Curse the Dark - Laura Anne Gilman

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you got B. Consistent, quantifiable. Mostly. Wish up folk-style magics—hedgewitchery, voudon, faith-healing—and you never knew what might come out.

      Bad stuff, sometimes. The older the magics, the less human-friendly they were. She’d never dealt with any of that herself. There were stories, though. Even the Cosa had bogeymen.

      “So, what’s this unknown, maybe-magical bit of paper do?” she asked, focusing herself on the problem at hand. Don’t worry about the long-term stuff, Valere. You’re not in this to save the world. You’re not even in this to save the innocents and uninformed, the way the Silence claimed to be. You’re in it for the paycheck, and the smug satisfaction of a job decently done.

      “It’s a parchment. And we don’t know,” Andre said, finally looking back at her. Guy didn’t look like he wanted to give them that particular bit of information, either, but she wasn’t sure if it was because he was worried about Silence secrecy, or he just didn’t want to tell them anything on principle. Probably both. Sergei had warned her, and warned her, and then warned her again that the Silence liked to play things close.

      “It’s a difficult situation, as all we know is that a number of people have disappeared after coming in contact with it. With no other available information, save that the monks were most insistent that it be returned to them, we have to assume there’s danger.”

      “So you’re acting as agent for them, not taking this on your own?” Sergei, wheelin’ the deal.

      “In this instance, yes. Although we would have taken steps of our own, had they not contacted us.”

      “If you’d heard about it,” Wren said, her tone intentionally doubting.

      “We would have.”

      Andre was solid, confident. Wren had her doubts, but it wasn’t really important here and now.

      Sergei exhaled, a sharp, loud breath of air that recaptured Andre’s attention, his head turning as though he were watching a slow-motion tennis game. “You said that people disappeared after coming in contact with the manuscript? As in, they put it down and walked away, or…?”

      The older man hedged uncomfortably, and Wren took malicious and unashamed pleasure in it, after that little omission of information, earlier.

      “We’re not sure,” he said, finally.

      “Where did it go?” Sergei asked with marked patience.

      “We don’t know.”

      “Okay, so what’s written on this parchment?”

      “We don’t know. Everyone who has read it has disappeared.”

      Sergei exchanged a glance with Wren, who made a “what do you want from me?” gesture back at him. He was the guy who got the details, she was the one who acted on them.

      Sergei’s mouth set in a really tight line. “So, basically, you’re sending us in after an unknown factor in an unknown location with an unknown threat vector.”

      “Yes.”

      She couldn’t help it; she’d swear it on a stack of bibles, the words just came out. “And you people wonder why you can’t keep help….”

      She might as well not have said anything, the way the two of them were still staring at each other, cobra to mongoose.

      “We have arranged for you to take a flight out from Newark airport tomorrow evening. When you arrive in Milan—”

      “Monday.”

      That stopped Andre, who was clearly not expecting to be interrupted at this point, and certainly not by her. “Beg pardon?”

      “Monday,” Wren repeated firmly. “No way I can just up and leave the country in twenty-four hours. Nuh-uh. Forget about it. I need two days, at least.” Leave the country? That meant flying. She didn’t want to fly. Anywhere. “A week would be better. I don’t even know where my passport is—hell, I don’t even know if it’s still valid!”

      “We can and will take care of that,” Andre said, trying to be reassuring.

      Wren was already running off a checklist in her mind. “Yeah, today’s what, Wednesday? Saturday, earliest. I have to let my mom know, and—how long do you think I’ll be gone? I need…luggage. Sergei, can I steal a suitcase? Borrow. I meant borrow. You must have something I can use. And I’ll need to stop my mail. And pay bills. And—”

      “Wren. Be still.” Sergei didn’t use that tone of voice very often. Not in years, she thought. But the ice-sharp tones worked. She stopped cold, the panic that was threatening to take over her brain subsiding to somewhat more manageable levels. Negotiations. Let him handle it. Right.

      “Two tickets. For Friday,” Sergei said to Andre in that same tone of voice. It didn’t work quite so well on his former boss.

      “Ah. Actually.” Andre tapped his fingers on the kitchen table, and the sound immediately pulled Wren out of her own internal nosedive and put her on alert. That was the tap-tap-tap of doom. She shot a sideways glance at Sergei, and was not reassured by what she saw. His shoulders were broad to begin with, but now the way his head had lifted, and he was looking at Andre, she swore he’d gained another couple of inches across, all of it annoyed.

      Andre didn’t seem to notice the storm brewing. “We had hoped that, while Ms. Valere was otherwise occupied with this situation, you would be available to work on another project back—”

      “Two tickets.” The faint rose flush over his cheekbones was subsiding, but the jaw and neck muscles were still corded. “Two, or none.”

      There was a brief testosterone-fueled staring match that broke when Andre looked away. Wren suddenly remembered to breathe again. Score one for the home team. But the thought was a little shaky.

      “Wren doesn’t speak Italian,” Sergei said. It was almost as though, Wren thought, he were apologizing for winning.

      Maybe he was. She still so didn’t get their relationship, her partner and Andre. Yes, she knew they’d been coworkers, back in Sergei’s We Don’t Discuss It days with the Silence. And that Andre had been the one to train him. But other than that, a big blank nothingness of information. A mistake, letting that go on. She counted on her partner to get her the necessary details so she could do her job, damn it. And if the two of them were going to have Dramatic and Meaningful pauses in the conversation, she needed to know why.

      She hated being out of the loop in her own life. And she already hated this job.

      “I do hope you’re not going to insist on business class,” Andre said, finally, dryly.

      “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sergei said in return. She was relieved to see that he’d dropped the menacing body language, not that he wasn’t a tall bastard to begin with, at least by her standards. Kitchen wasn’t large enough for all the egos in here.

      “Fine, fine, details settled. One last really important question Sergei seems to have forgotten to ask.” When the two men looked at her she put on her very best, guaranteed-annoying chipper and chirpy inquisitive face, this time smiling without showing teeth. “How much—in addition to the stipend—are we getting

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