Dragon Justice. Laura Anne Gilman

but shoved aside. “Seriously?”

      Nick finally looked up from his notebook. “Serious as a heart attack. No idea the breed. They were cloaked like it was midwinter. Human-tall, human-wide, no visible tails or fur.”

      That didn’t rule much out—most of the fatae in New York City were human-shaped, enough to get by on a casual glance, anyway. There were a few horned and hooved types, and a few clearly not-human breeds living in the parks or underground, but they were the minority. And when they had a problem, most of them dealt with it internally. In fact, most of the breeds dealt with their own shit. For one of them to come to us…

      It could be good, or it could be seriously bad. The last time we’d gotten tangled in fatae business, we’d had to drag a ki-rin into disgrace. Never mind that the Ancient had brought it on itself; we were still the ones who had exposed it. The fact that the honored one had chosen suicide rather than live with the knowledge of what it had done…

      Technically, and what passed for legally among the fatae, what happened wasn’t our fault, nor our responsibility. But I still felt sick about it and suspected the others did, too. I didn’t want to deal with a fatae case.

      “Still.” I was running through excuses and justifications in my head, if only for the practice. “Someone else could handle it. What about Sharon? She’s good with delicate situations.”

      “You’re the fatae specialist,” Nick pointed out with damnable reasonableness. “Stosser will put you on it, if there’s anything to be put on.”

      Right on cue, there was a touch of current against my awareness. *torres*

      The feel of that ping was unmistakable. I sighed and got to my feet. “I hate it when you’re right,” I grumbled, shoved my lunch back into the fridge, and headed into the office to face my fate.

      We had started two years ago with one suite, taking up a quarter of the seventh floor. About a year back the guys acquired the second suite of offices on our side of the building and combined the space, repurposing the original layout into a warren of rooms that gave the illusion of privacy without sacrificing an inch of workspace. Nice, except when you were doing the Tread of Dread, as Nifty had dubbed the walk from the break room to Stosser’s office at the very end of the long hall.

      I knocked once, and the door opened.

      “Sir?”

      Usually I’d have started with “you rang, oh great and mighty?” but what worked with humans could backfire spectacularly with fatae. The fact that I knew that—the result of years more experience interacting with the nonhuman members of the Cosa than anyone else in the office except possibly Venec—was why I’d been called here. Nick had it in one.

      “Torres. Come in.”

      I came in, closing the door behind me, uncertain of where to go after that. The office was large enough to hold five people comfortably, seven if we all squeezed. Right then, there were only four—me, Stosser, and two figures, cloaked, with their backs to me—but it felt crowded as hell.

      Then they turned around, and all the air left my lungs in a surprised, if hopefully discreet, whoosh.

      * * *

      Benjamin Venec took good care of his investigators. If they were stressed, he gave them something to snarl at. If they were worried, he could provide a sounding board. If they were pissed off, he was willing to fight with them. But he couldn’t force them to relax; even if that had been his style, his pups were stubborn. They’d decide when they went down, not someone else, opponent or boss.

      So he could have told Torres to go home and get some sleep. She might even have gone—or at least started to. But he knew her: something shiny would catch her attention, either a case or a person, and she’d be off again. That was just…Torres.

      The fact that he had given up any right to be jealous of either things or people she deemed shiny didn’t seem to help the slight burning sensation to the left of his gut when he felt her sudden rush of surprise, followed by a shimmer of glee and anticipation that was uniquely Bonita Torres.

      Her signature was like coconut liquor, spicy and warm, and he let himself enjoy the taste—offsetting the burning sensation, or enhancing it, he wasn’t sure.

      The pleasure was balanced by a sense of moral discomfort, though. They’d agreed to stay out of each other’s headspace unless invited. Bonnie had been scrupulous about maintaining that agreement. He hadn’t. And claiming that it was part of his job, as her boss and teacher, nothing more than he did for the others, only went so far in justifying what his mentor would have called a blatant misuse of Talent.

      Ben didn’t even try to justify it, not to himself. He might be a bastard, but he was an honest one. He simply couldn’t avoid the overlap: even with his walls up, he was hyperaware of every strong emotion that passed through Torres, and the girl never felt anything halfway. It should have been annoying to his more cynical, jaded self, the way she threw herself wholeheartedly into every step of her life and dragged him along, via the Merge, without even realizing it. Instead, the experience amused, exasperated, frustrated, and invigorated him, sometimes all at once.

      He let it ride. The first rule of dealing with the Merge, they had discovered, was not dealing with the Merge, and so far, he had been able to ignore the other, totally unprofessional urges. Mostly.

      The fact that Bonnie took other lovers had been established—by her—early on. Also established: it was none of his damn business. She kept her private life private, but the Merge… If she knew how much leaked, even when she thought her walls were up, she’d be horrified. And mortified. Thankfully, she was as particular as she was omnivorous, and they had been few and far between lately. He always knew, though.

      He waited a minute, just letting the Merge-connection wash over him, and the sense of surprise and excitement faded, her thoughts settling into the focused hum that meant that whatever was making her quiver was work-related.

      Work was within his purview. Ben tapped his pencil against the desk, resisting temptation for all of ten heartbeats.

      *new job?* he queried his partner.

      *interesting problem* Ian sent back, not so much words as a perception of something sharp and dark, versus Bonnie’s sense of shiny.

      Ben tapped the pencil harder.

      *too much* he suggested, with just the sense of scales tilting too far to one side. The past few months they’d been getting a steady stream of work, from piddling jobs like the one they’d tested Farshad on to the more complicated blackmail-and-possible-murder case he’d given Sharon, Pietr, and Jenna.

      There was silence from Ian, which could mean anything from disagreement to his being attacked at knifepoint by the supposed client.

      No, if that were the case, even if Ian were his usual cool self, Torres would have reacted. So: he was being ignored.

      In its own way, that was reassuring. Torres and Stosser both had the kind of focus that didn’t miss much. Whatever was going on there, he could safely ignore it for now in favor of…

      Ben paused his pencil-tapping. Actually, there was nothing pending on his desk. Lou, their office manager, had the day-to-day things running smoothly, and with the exception of Ian’s new project, whatever it was, nothing new had come in needing his attention.

      Ben exhaled, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nothing did. Everyone was either out on a job or finishing up their paperwork. Nothing new needed to be evaluated and assigned. That meant he was free to pick up the job that had come across his desk this morning. Not a PUPI investigation; something from his previous line of work. He’d given up his sidelines while they got PUPI running, but not gotten out of the game entirely.

      This project would only take a day or three, and it would be good to get out of Big Dog mode, use his other skills before they got rusty…and, he admitted, get himself out of Bonnie’s immediate vicinity, give the connection between them time to cool off a bit. She’d been single for a couple-three months now, but every