Blood from Stone. Laura Anne Gilman

      “I often do,” she replied drily. The furniture was new, and she had warned the four-foot-high demon what would happen if he scored claw marks in any of it. She had forgotten to warn him against shedding, but so far he seemed to be keeping his coarse white fur to himself.

      “You know,” she said to nobody in particular, “I have problems nobody else in this world does.”

      A snort was his only response: he had gone back to reading the paper. He clearly wasn’t impressed with her trauma.

      She went back into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

      You have reached this number, I assume by intent. Leave a coherent message and I will get back to you.

      “Your dossier was missing a rather important bit of information, Didier. But everything’s copacetic, I’m home, I’m done, I’m going to bed. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

      She hung up the phone, wishing not for the first or last time that she could use a cell phone without frying the innards seven ways from Sunday. Being able to call him from the road, and not relying on finding a working pay phone…

      Might as well wish for another four inches of height, while you’re at it, Valere. Besides, you as a Null? She couldn’t imagine it, not even for a laugh.

      Turning around in the galley space, she opened the fridge and considered the half-drunk bottle of wine—Sergei’s contribution to last night’s dinner—and the various beers, and instead grabbed a diet Sprite. Popping the top and slugging half of it, she went into the main room.

      “You here for dinner?” she asked her uninvited guest, meaning it as a prelude to kicking him out.

      “So long as you’re not cooking.” He snickered when she glared, then relented. “Bonnie came up and offered to cook dinner, if you got home before ten.”

      Bonnie, the other Talent who lived in the building, was a fabulous cook. Wren didn’t cultivate a friendship with her for that—the younger woman was fun just to hang around with—but it was a much-appreciated benefit. Suddenly, staying awake a little while longer gained appeal.

      *yo* she pinged downstairs.

      A faint sense of awareness and busyness, and a tantalizing mental aroma replied.

      “She’s already cooking,” she told the demon, sitting on the new brown-and-cream geometric pattern rug on the hardwood floor and gathering the mail onto her lap. As long as she was staying awake, might as well deal with the domestic shit. “Half an hour, we should go down.”

      “Gotcha.” The demon didn’t even bother looking up from his newspaper, turning pages with surprisingly delicate, claw-tipped paws.

      What to do for dinner settled; Wren went to work organizing the pile. Catalogs were tossed, credit card bills were put to one side for paying, and anything that looked like junk mail was thrown back onto the table. One envelope looked like an invitation, and she slit it open and pulled out the card. A gallery opening. She didn’t recognize the name, but that didn’t mean anything—Sergei was the one in that field, not her. She didn’t know from art, just what she liked. Often as not, it wasn’t the stuff that sold well.

      Because of who she was sleeping with—Sergei having reached a certain level of Impressive in the New York gallery world—she got added to the invitation lists at some of the weirdest places—and some of the toitiest, too. From the address, this one was on the upscale mark.

      A few years ago she would have panicked, worried about what to wear, and then had a miserable time comparing herself to the inevitable models and high-gloss money-movers. Now…Well, she’d still worry about what to wear. Everything else got less important after you almost died a couple of times.

      There was one remaining envelope, looking ominously business-like. She frowned at it, and took another slug out of the soda can. Slitting the envelope open, she removed a single sheet with a very severe-looking letterhead.

      Dear Ms. Valere. We are pleased to inform you that we have acquired your building from Machi Management. In the coming year, we plan to make considerable improvements to the building with the goal of selling the units. As a current tenant, you will of course have the first option to purchase your unit….

      Wren stopped reading. She refolded the letter very carefully, placing it on the coffee table, and then went back into the kitchen and grabbed the bottle of wine out of the fridge. She didn’t bother with a glass.

      “Trouble?” P.B. put down the newspaper and looked at her, a worried expression in his dark red eyes. He didn’t have eyebrows, just a faint ridge under the fur. She had never noticed that before, really.

      “No. Not really. Sort of.” She shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again, not quite sure what she felt. Her demon’s expression as he tried to follow her head motions almost made her laugh. “Maybe. My building’s going condo.”

      The New Yorker’s nightmare and dream, all in one. P.B. winced, his muzzle drawing back to show sharp white teeth and black gums in an expression you had to know meant sympathy for it to not be menacing. “Ow.”

      ‘Yeah, ow.” Bonnie had to have gotten one, too. Suddenly, the offer of dinner made more sense. Bonnie was younger, with less money in the bank, and had only just moved in the year before. She was probably freaking more than a little bit over this letter.

      “This has been a hell of a day, my friend,” Wren said heavily. “A hell of a day. Let’s go get us some home cooking. And a drink before dinner.”

      As expected, that proposed drink before dinner turned into two, and then more with dinner, and a late night overall, ending with human and demon staggering up the stairs trying to sing the chorus of a disreputable sea shanty in Norwegian, a language neither of them spoke—or sang—a word of.

      When Wren finally crawled out of the bedroom somewhere between oh God and semihuman the next morning to make coffee, there was a tall, well-built, reasonably good-looking man with a hawkish nose drinking a mug of tea at the kitchen counter.

      “When’d you get here?” She knew he hadn’t been here last night; the bed had been cold when she fell into it. Even drunk off her ass, she knew when Sergei was in bed with her. He was an excellent bed-warmer.

      “The client was surprised that the handoff wasn’t done as arranged,” her partner said by way of greeting, without bothering to respond to her question. “And by ‘surprised’ I mean more than vaguely upset. You delivered the package to his office?”

      Coffee was suddenly too much effort, if she was expected to talk coherently about business while figuring out how many scoops she had already put in. She waved a hand and muttered something vaguely in English at him, promising to return, then went to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. The reflection in the mirror looked worse than she felt, which was saying something. Her shoulder-length brown hair was mussed and tangled, and her eyes were red-rimmed. Her skin, normally a healthy if pale color, was decidedly green.

      Bonnie Torres could out-drink a demon, much less one slightly built Retriever. Someday, both demon and Retriever would remember that. Ideally, before the evil bitch pulled out the “after dinner, one last drink” brandy to toast the encroaching condo-ization of their building.

      God. Condo. Don’t even think about it right now, Valere. Her partner was waiting. He wouldn’t thank her for skimping on her shower, though. Not if he needed her brains this morning.

      The bathroom was old-fashioned, with a simple pedestal sink and pipes that clugged and clunked when you were waiting for hot water, but the heater did work and the pressure was fabulous, and a quick shower turned her into something closer to human.

      “Client can bite me,” she said, walking into the kitchen wrapped in a towel, in search of coffee. Her partner was dressed in his usual suit and tie; the suit a beautifully cut dark gray pinstripe, the tie a nonregulation purple tie-dye. Friday morning, the gallery was closed; he must have a meeting with a new agent, or maybe a private