“Or like they weren’t here at all.”
Not a Talent, he meant. “Client may not know as much as he thinks he does,” Sharon said, “but I’m inclined to agree with his conclusions, whatever I think of his logic. There’s no way a Null could have gotten in, and done all this. Not in the time he claimed, without a clear point of entry.”
Nick lifted one narrow shoulder in a shrug, a move he had stolen from Pietr. “Fatae? Some of them are pretty good at fast and sneaky, and those slashes might have been claws. That’s a guess, though. I’m nowhere good enough to pick up an unknown fatae trace. Hell, I’m not even sure I could pick up a known breed, unless I’d encountered it before. We need to find out more about the client, see if he might have pissed off any of the Cosa- cousins.”
Sharon considered it, then put the crystal into her suit pocket, and lifted her kit up off the carpet. “If he did, Lou will turn it up, and Venec will let us know. Come on, let’s check the other rooms.”
They both had the bad feeling they weren’t going to find anything useful, but by god, they’d check every inch, first.
three
Not every aspect of PUPI involved investigation. Some times, it required suasion and statistics. That particular part of running the company they left to Ian Stosser.
Or, more to the point: that part, he kept for himself.
Ian stood in front of his audience, making eye contact with selected members seemingly at random, and infused his words with the firm and fervent belief he had in his team, his methods, and his results. “In the year we have been accepting clients, our success rate has been a rather significant 87%. Of the remaining 13%, we still managed to bring up enough information to pass along to Null authorities. The fact that my team has not yet been able to close the case you referenced—” organ-leggers, an open ticket that still annoyed Ian “—merely emphasizes the difficult and delicate nature of the work we do. More, that we are the only force that is both willing and capable of taking on cases involving magic.”
He did not emphasize the willing part, but knew that his point had been taken, here among those who could do good, and instead chose to hamstring his efforts.
Someone in his audience tapped a gold-plated pen on the table, impatiently. “There are others who work with magic, Stosser. You’ve been involved with some of them yourself.”
“Private investigators, working on a borrowed shoestring and their own instincts.” That was damning the half-fatae detective, who was actually reasonably capable, but Ian Stosser did not let anyone get the upper hand in presentations he was making. “My team is trained to use science as well as magic, harnessing their instincts into verifiable and logical routes, using teamwork to pool our respective skills into something greater. Perhaps more importantly, we determine the evidence not by who hires us, but by what the investigation reveals as facts.”
The feel of the room remained resistant. The individuals gathered here didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to know, and most especially didn’t want to have to change their minds.
Ian Stosser was too trained, too skilled to sigh, and to turn up his current-driven charisma in a room filled with already-suspicious Talent of comparable skill would be a disaster. Instead, he ratcheted his body language up a notch, using the cast of his shoulders, the cant of his hip, even the way he rested his arm to project a calm, reasoned, pragmatic appeal that would—hopefully, ideally—reassure them without their knowing why they were reassured. That was the trick with the Council: most of them so relied on current, they forgot the basics of human psychology, too.
“What I am asking of you is a rational decision, not an emotional one,” he continued. “When a crime has been committed, the offender must be determined, and punished. We are all in agreement about that.” A firm, if subtle nod, and he was pleased to see several in his audience nod back, almost automatically. “I am offering you, again, the way to determine, fairly and without prejudice, where the responsibility might rest, in any given situation. That way the proper individuals will be taken to task.”
A voice from the far end of the table, previously quiet, spoke up then. “And what happens when you cannot determine, for certain, who that party is? Or, worse, when you accuse the wrong person?”
Once. Once, they had… Ian beat down his irritation.
“We do not claim to be perfect,” he said smoothly. “We do claim to be extremely good. And that, sirs, madams, is more than you have right now, with your refusal to accept the results of our investigations into your deliberations.”
It was the same song and dance he’d done twice before, for each regional Council, crafting his argument to each specific region’s objections, designed to entice each specific Council with what he thought they wanted.
According to Cosa history, the Mage Council had been split into regional areas back in the 1800s to keep them from becoming too powerful and overshadowing the lonejacks, or unaffiliateds, in each region. In theory. In practice, it was because the seated Council members didn’t trust each other any more than the lonejacks trusted the Councils et al. So far, two Councils had voted to accept his people’s testimony to their deliberations. The Eastern Council was not one of those, and their refusal, here in PUPI’s base of operations, where they could see the good being done directly, stuck in Ian’s craw. He took that personally.
“Already, the Midwest Council has benefited from our work. You know this.” The pups had determined the truth of a murder, causing some embarrassment to the Council, true, but saving them considerable danger going forward by revealing the presence of a stone killer for hire, who also happened to be a Talent. “And you, yourself, saw the results of our efforts.” He did not go into detail; he didn’t have to. The events of the previous spring, where they had exposed a scam that might have set human against fatae, had been covered up for fiscal and political reasons, but they all knew the truth. Had it not been for PUPI, the damage could have been devastating—and bloody.
“You make strong points.” Madame Howe, the leader of the Eastern Council, was a delicate woman, but nobody ever made the mistake of thinking her frail or gentle. The Talent who worked for her called her the electric dragon, and it wasn’t an affectionate nickname. “And we appreciate your restraint while making this presentation.”
She might have been speaking for the entire Council. Or she might have been using the royal “we.” Ian merely inclined his head to her, accepting both the reminder that they were his equals, in current-usage, and that his part in this meeting was over.
“I shall leave you to your discussions, then. Madame, Council members.”
He left the wood-paneled conference room at exactly the right pace, neither hurried nor lingering, counting off the steps deep in his head. When the door closed behind him, he did not stop or breathe a sigh of either relief or disgust, but kept moving, headed not for the elevator, but the stairs. He needed to move.
The hard sound of his shoes in the stairwell gave him something to focus on, and once out on the street, he let his stride lengthen, taking full advantage of the mid-morning lull in street traffic. He pushed all his excess energy, both physical and magical, down through his hips, down his legs, and out into the pavement, a sort of walking meditation and grounding all at once.
Everything was working; it was working exactly the way he had planned. They had enough work coming in that—for the first time since starting this venture—he wasn’t paying the bills out of his personal account. If the Council relented, and approved PUPI to their members, they might actually have more work than they could handle. He would need to rearrange the office structure, bring in another investigator, maybe set up a separate lab, so they could work out new spells without worrying about shorting out the entire building….
His mentor would warn him against building a business plan on ifs. Stosser believed that it was almost impossible to fail, betting on the trouble that the combination of magic and human folly could create. Even if this Council refused to approve them, eventually they would gain clients from within these ranks,