Pack of Lies. Laura Anne Gilman

didn’t look surprised, either. I bet he’d seen a lot of that kind of scared-silent, all the years he spent playing high school and college football. The bitterness in my own brain surprised me again. I knew, with the rational portion, that I was being unfair, tarring Nifty just ‘cause he’d been a jock. But the rational part wasn’t leading in this dance.

      Nick was nodding sagely. “Stosser told Venec, who just told me. I think she thought the ki-rin was going to pretend it didn’t happen, or something. She went totally hysterical in the emergency room.”

      “Nicky, you’re an insensitive asshole,” I said. Nick must have realized how his words sounded, because he blushed. “I didn’t …”

      “The ki-rin is refusing to acknowledge her now, isn’t it?” Pietr asked

      The bitterness in my brain escaped into my voice. “You expected anything different? That’s how ki-rin are—it’s like asking a dryad not to put down roots, or a griffon not to fly. It’s what they are—she had to know that before she agreed to the terms, and evidence is that she’d adhered to her part of it all the way up to that night. Being a ki-rin’s companion isn’t something you pull out of a Cracker Jack box. There’s no greater honor, by fatae standards, a human can aspire to, and one asshole with more brawn than humanity took that away from her, for his own jollies. You think you’d be calm and rational right now, if it was you in that emergency room?”

      That pretty much put a damper on the entire conversation, and Nick took his coffee and his mug out with enough speed that I almost felt sorry for snapping at him. Almost.

      “So if we can’t do anything for her, and the guy who did the attacking is dead … are we still on the job?” Nifty wondered, giving up on his napkin-puzzle. “I mean, what does it matter? Christ, I’m sorry for the girl, but I can’t see our client paying for our time if the girl is going to sweep it under the rug her ownself. It’s over and done with, nothing to see here, move along, thanks for your time. Right?”

      He probably wasn’t wrong, and I’d wondered the same thing myself. Except… “J says—” it wasn’t really a secret in the office that my mentor had Connections into all the best gossip lines, or that I tapped into them as needed “—that there’s been a bunch of fatae-related incidents in town already. Folk are tetchy, rumbly—like the crowd we saw at the scene.” I saw the guys process that, then nod. “He thinks the Eastern Council thought that if they did some proactive digging into this, or had us do it …”

      “They’d be off the hook for whatever happened after,” Pietr finished for me. “Nice.”

      “Council.” The disgust in that single word dripped from Nifty’s mouth and splashed into a thick puddle. “So that’s who we were working for—again?”

      Other than Stosser, I was the only Council-side member of the pack, and even my connection was only through J. Lonejacks didn’t have much use for the Council, either the actual seated members who made the rules or the general members who followed those rules. Lonejacks didn’t have much use for anyone who followed rules, period, which made for interesting group interactions—and probably why Stosser and Venec kept us on such a loose rein most of the time, when we weren’t in training.

      “You didn’t guess that?” Pietr sounded surprised. “Most of our work’s going to come through Council contacts, at the very least, not lonejacks. Lonejacks settle their own scores. They’re not going to suddenly step back and let us determine who’s at fault—not until we have a lot more street cred, anyway.”

      I had a feeling Pietr’s family was Gypsy—they tended to be more clannish than the independent lonejacks, but just as regulation-scorning, hence the nickname—but he had a strong pragmatic streak that put even Venec to shame.

      “Council leads may be callous bastards,” he went on, “but they’re the callous bastards with a checkbook. And their checks clear faster than most. Get used to it.”

      Nifty looked like he wanted to argue the point, but couldn’t.

      “Doesn’t matter, anyway,” I reminded them. “Until we’re told otherwise, we’re still on the job.”

      “Here …” Pietr held out the file he’d been reading, offering it to me. “The dossier Ben put together, plus what we were able to add in the follow-up.”

      “Give me the highlights,” I said, not taking the file. I thought better hearing information than I did reading it.

      “Right. Dead would-be rapist was a local boy—lonejack, but his mentor’s long dead and his only remaining family’s crossed the river down in Ohio.” Crossing the river meant going from lonejack to Council, or vice versa. It happened, but not all that often. “Not very well-liked, from what the people who were willing to talk about him said.”

      “Nasty? Or did he owe everyone money?”

      “Had a less than savory reputation with women. No criminal charges, but a restraining order against an ex, and rumors he didn’t always take no for an answer. Nobody’s surprised he moved up—or down—to assault.”

      Nifty made a note in his pad. “Someone should have taken him out before this. Ten minutes in the alley would’ve done it.”

      Nifty had two little sisters still living back home, I suddenly remembered. I wasn’t going to argue the pros and cons of presumptive justice, though, not right now. Especially when I pretty much agreed with him.

      “His friend, on the other hand, the guy who landed in the recovery ward, is fourth gen lonejack, and a first-time offender. Hangs out with a stupid crowd, reportedly, but stupid isn’t a crime, more’s the pity. The two of them don’t have any connections before about a month ago, when they reportedly met in a bar, and hit it off. So we’ve got bad seed leading bent sapling astray….”

      “Or giving him the courage to do what he wanted to, anyway,” I said. The fact that the guy was there in the first place made him just as responsible for what happened as the dead guy. The ki-rin might only be interested in actions. Me, I thought about intent, too.