Burning Bridges by Laura Anne Gilman

Author:Laura Anne Gilman [Gilman, Laura Anne]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Contemporary, Fiction, General, Romance - Fantasy, Fiction - Fantasy, Fantasy - Contemporary, Romance: Gothic
ISBN: 9780373803071
Publisher: Luna
Published: 2010-01-31T09:00:00+00:00

Twelve

It was almost midnight when Wren made it up the stairs to her apartment, replete with excellent food, new information about the nature of current, and a surprisingly entertaining amount of gossip. Bonnie had perfected the art of scandal without cruelty, mainly because she so clearly loved knowing to know, not to use that information in any way. Wren supposed that was what made her so good at her job, that sense of information as an end within itself. Let others put what she knew to whatever use they wanted; it was enough that Bonnie got there first.

Wren made a mental note to buy the PUP flowers, or something. She hadn’t given the Retriever anything of specific use tonight…but you never knew when something might come around.

There was a flat manila packet propped up against her apartment door. Wren stooped to pick it up, checking—as had become habit—for any disturbance in the elementals she had left clustered around the entrance. They were mostly mindless creatures, satisfied to bask in any pooling of current they could find, but there was enough coherent thought in a mass of them to make semireliable watchdogs, as needed. And they worked cheap; all she had to do was siphon off a bit of power and leave it there for them.

They were still there, like old ladies clustered around the bingo table, chatting to each other about nothing at all. She stroked her way past them, and went inside.

After the warm cheeriness of Bonnie’s apartment, Wren’s own place seemed depressingly bare. Even the lovely, delicate Japanese silk-painting hanging on the hallway wall outside her bedroom just served to point up the fact that, despite best intentions, she still hadn’t managed to do any sort of significant decorating at all.

“I’m just not the nesting sort,” she told the empty apartment. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. At all.”

She dumped a plastic bag filled with fresh-baked dinner rolls on the counter, stored her baked salmon leftovers—in a container marked Poison For Demon—in the fridge, and opened the manila packet.

Inside was a series of clippings she had requested, involving her client: the guest list of every gathering—social or otherwise—he had held in his Forest Hills apartment in the past year. If this had been a theft of opportunity, as so many blackmail-related thefts were, that person had access to the client’s belongings at some point, probably more than once.

“Hrmmm.” Her brain clicked over, almost an audible sound, from Cosa to Retrieval mode.

Blackmail was always ugly, no matter what the cause or cost. Although it was odd that the man hadn’t received a blackmail demand yet, for the return of those papers, no? Might there be another reason—maybe the material stolen had more going for it than they’d been told? It wouldn’t be the first time a client had lied to them, God knew. Sergei had provided a list of proposals that would be coming up for vote in the next few months…she’d have to double-check that list against this one, see of any names jumped out at her.

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