Pack of Lies Read Online Free PDF Page A

bruises.
    â€œYeah. Boss?”
    He paused, one narrow red eyebrow cocked under that stupid watch cap.
    â€œThe girl…” I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to say. Actually, I knew exactly what I wanted to say, I just wasn’t sure how to do it without getting fired.
    He showed his teeth in a reassuring smile, a Stosser specialty. “I’ll be gentle, Torres. Get to work.”
    With that, Stosser headed off for, I presume, the hospital. I watched him disappear into the crowd, then turned back to look over the scene. He was right: Time for me to do what I did, before anyone muddied the scene, or the cops came back and kicked us out, or anything else came along to make the job tougher.
    I hesitated a moment, looking over the ground. We were down in what had once been the meatpacking district, alongside the Hudson River. It’d been prettied up over the past few years, and the city had put in walkways and greenery so during the summer it was a nice enough place to skateboard or bike, or walk your dog, but on an overcast, blustery almost-but-not-quite-yet spring day? Not so nice. Why had they been out here before dawn? A ki-rin wasn’t the sort to club it up…but he wouldn’t be able to say no to his companion, I bet. She might not be having sex, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t like to dance.
    So. Run through the probable scene, capture the details, gather the pieces. I turned slowly, letting my gaze take in the entire area. The woman and her companion, maybe flushed and tired after a night out, had been walking along the path, there. It’s not quite dawn, the visibility’s crap, maybe some of the streetlamps flickered or went out. They’re talking, maybe laughing, maybe arguing. Had she been drinking, drugging? Ki-rin companions were virgins, but I never heard they had to be pure every other way, too. And who knew what a ki-rin did for entertainment. So. Maybe not too steady on all six legs, maybe not seeing so well, andthey came up to the building there, where the shrubs were planted, and…two men had…approached them? Jumped out at them?
    I cast another glance over to where the two Council flunkies had been. As though they’d heard me wondering, they were now leading the ki-rin away, flanking it like a suited honor guard, to where a small trailer-van had pulled up to the curb. The ki-rin was smaller than they looked in pictures, with a pattern of marks on its linen-white neck that didn’t look natural—bruises, maybe, or current-burns? A Null, someone who couldn’t use current, didn’t know about the fatae, might have been confused in the predawn light, might have thought that it was a really large dog, or maybe the girl was walking alongside a pony, or something. Or maybe not even seen it, if they were completely Null. That happened, sometimes: Something in a Null’s brains just refused to acknowledge the presence of the supernatural, even when it was right in front of them, like not being able to see blue or green: current-blind.
    A Null might not have seen it. The would-be rapists had been Talent, both of them. A Talent, ignoring the presence of a ki-rin? Impossible. Insane. Maybe they were high, or drunk, or…
    Staring at the landscaping wasn’t going to tell me anything, and we only had a small window before the NYPD came back to reclaim the scene. Time to stop avoiding, and do my job.
    I took a deep breath, then let it out. “Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven…” In the exhale, I sank into myself, burrowing down into my core, gathering my magic to me.
    During my mentoring period, J told me that everyone saw their core differently; for me, it was a tangle of threads and cables, neon-bright blues and greens and yellows. Personal magic, gathered from external sources and hoarded; like a tank of gas, if you ran out you were screwed.
    For once, I had more than enough current gathered and stored; the trick was to control