She smiled at me, her eyes growing vacant. 'For fifty nuyen I'll do anything you like.'
'Yeah?'
She nodded solemnly. 'Anything.'
'You got it.' I pulled out my slender cash supply- figuring she'd find the bills easier to use than a credstick-and laid down two twenties and a ten. 'You said anything, right?'
Cutty licked at the frosting in a way she hoped was suggestively erotic. 'You pay, piper, and you call the dance.'
'Good.' Had I a necrophile's taste for skeletal women, I might have come up with something truly inventive for her to earn my money. As it was, I had a more sinister plan in mind. 'For this fifty nuyen you're going to sit here and wait for an elf named Salacia to come see you. She was a friend of Albion's before you knew him-just friends, not lovers. Tell her about him.' I got up from the booth. 'Stay with her and the rest of Albion's family and let them know what happened to him.'
Cutty looked up at me and shook her head. 'Albion always said you were a weird chummer, but one he could trust. He didn't trust many.' 'You'll wait?'
She nodded sadly. 'I'll be with Salacia, and then you can tell me how Albion's story ends.'
I left Cutty in the diner and made my way back to the Fenris. Though he's not much on technology, even the Old One likes the Fenris. Low and sleek, angled except where the flat black body curves neatly around a wheel well or back around a bumper, the car looks like a wedge sharp enough to split the sky from the planet at the horizon.
Even before rounding the corner of the alley I pulled out the remote for the antitheft system. Because this section of town wasn't that bad, I'd set it for only one chirp, with the defenses on Stun. As the car came into view, I tapped the control and got a single chirp back in response as I deactivated the security system. From behind the car two startled kids jumped up and started running down the alley.
Their laughter made me believe they'd been up to mischief and little more, but caution made me check the rear of the Fenris. Two big old rats, the fat kind that feast in dumpsters, lay twitching on the ground. The kids had been amusing themselves by catching the rats and tossing them against the Fenris' body. The resulting shock left the rats half-dead, but served as a practical lesson to warn the kids off messing with my ride.
The Fenris whisked me through the Seattle streets. The radar-bane coating Raven had sprayed over the car's surface made it reflect less light than the rain-slicked street. I cruised around, checking my six for folks following me. When I saw it was clear, I made for Raven's place and used the car phone to call Salacia at the house in the Barrens.
Another of the kids who lived at the house answered the call. Sine said she'd get word to Salacia and they'd pick Cutty up quickly.
'Good,' I told her. 'But the girl's in shock. Maybe you can do for her what none of us could do for Albion.'
She agreed and I hung up as I guided the Fenris into Raven's underground parking garage. The automatic door shut behind me and locked tightly. I climbed out of the Fenris and locked it, then put the security on two chirps and set it on Mangle. Anyone stupid enough to break into Raven's place deserved all the surprises he could handle.
I went from the garage straight into the basement computer room. The sanitary white of the walls and tiles is a shocker at the best of times, but it seemed almost dreamlike after the rainy Seattle evening. The same could be said of the room's sole occupant after an evening spent with Braxen and Kid Stealth.
Valerie Valkyrie covered a yawn with a slender-fingered hand. She still looked radiant from having met Jimmy Mackelroy, theenfant terrible of the Seattle Seadogs2. Actually I think the radiance came from helping him through the trauma of Seattle's loss in the series, which beat the hell out of how she'd moped last year until spring training. Though she'd lost her heart to him, she still had a smile for me and I returned one with interest.
'Good morning, Ms. Valkyrie. Are you up early or up late?'
Heavy lids half-hid blue eyes. 'After thirty-six hours that sort of question hardly matters.' She glanced back at the deck and the datacord that usually fit snugly into the jack behind her left ear. 'Another marathon Dementia- Gate session. I could have gone longer, but Lynn said she wanted to leave the game so she could rest up for your date tomorrow night. You getting serious on her, Mr. Kies?'
2 Valerie took it as a personal victory that Jimmy referred to the team as the Seadogs in Matrix chat she set up for him, despite the trouble it could have caused him. Granted, only a few of her closest friends were present, and the one transcript of the chat came bundled with a virus that did nasty things, but it was a victory for her nonetheless. 'That date's tonight, Val, after the sun comes up.' If it weren't for Valerie's cafe-au-lait complexion coming to her through genetics, she'd have looked as pale as Albion. 'You have seen the sun this month, haven't you?'
'Nice dodge, Wolf.' She smiled and killed another yawn. 'You here from the Committee For the Production of Vitamin D, or have you got a job that's beyond your meager computer talents?'
'Meager?' I frowned as I pulled off my black leather jacket and tossed it onto one of the white leather chairs sitting in a corner. 'I know how to turn one of these things on and off, you know. Meager, sheesh.'
She gave me an exaggerated nod. 'Sure you do. What do you need?'
'The Pacific Northwest Hunting Club lost an employee tonight. You pulled a file on him back when we went after Reverend Roberts. You remember Albion?'
'His file was a null. Burkingmen had some anecdotes about him. He was working at PNHC?'
'So I understand. A member recommended him. I want to know who that was and something about him.'
'Is that all?' Valerie rolled her eyes. 'Look, Wolf, no jack.'
I stuck my tongue out at her, but she'd already started beating out a harsh staccato on her keyboard. I left the room and mounted the stairs to the first floor. In the kitchen I grabbed two cups of kaf and exchanged a series of uninformative grunts with Tom Electric. He had his eyes glued to a Bookman and was doing his best to upload some self-help book into his gray-ROM.
'Annie's coming back to town, eh, Tom?'
Grunt and nod.
I looked at the container that had carried the book chip.'All I Need to Know to Understand Women I Learned In Catholic School? Are you sure that will help you, Tom?'
Hopeful grunt and emphatic nod.
I shrugged and carried the dual mugs of soykaf from the room. Tom's ex-wife comes to Seattle every six months or so, whether Tom's recovered from the last visit or not. I wondered at his choice of scanning material because Annie struck me as about the most un-nunlike woman I'd ever met. Then again, I couldn't rule out the possibility that she'd found a convent out there that catered to macrobiotically nourished, politically correct, archeo-feminist, neo-retro splatter-metal enthusiasts with bipolar disorders.
Valerie silently forgave me for taking so long when I handed her the brimming mug. 'Got your prey.'
'It was thateasyT
'No, love. I'm that good.' She shook her head, her thick brown braid flopping from shoulder to shoulder. 'What does Lynn see in you?'
'She knows, deep down, I'm just a real sensitive guy.' I gave her a crocodile smile, then leaned against a mainframe cabinet. 'Who is he?'
'She. Selene Reece is her name. She's a great granddaughter of Harold Reece. He was a newspaper tycoon before the Awakening. He diversified and left everyone a lot of money. She's a black sheep of the family, the illegitimate daughter of a granddaughter who used a lot of recreational chemicals at a time when it was thought LSD could keep one from goblinizing.'
I nodded. Orks and trolls usually bred true, but some folks in the general population are tagged with 'monster' genes. They tend to kick in around puberty, causing embarrassment somewhat greater than having your voice crack or your face break out. In essence, their whole body breaks out, and they shift from being normal human kids to orks or even worse.
It's not pretty and usually very confusing. There are plenty of orks who don't make it through the transformation with their psyches intact. There are even more con artists making a fortune selling everything from sugar pills to votive candles to prevent kids from undergoing the change. While kids might not fully understand the problem, their parents do and will do just about anything to avoid the humiliation of having a child 'run away.'
'This Reece recommended Albion to the Club as a hire? I have a hard time placing Albion and his porcupine
