Pack of Lies. Laura Anne Gilman
Like carrying around the memory of an assault that didn’t happen to you. I lifted my spoon. “You want some soup?”
Nick made a face, indicating his opinion of soup. “Nah. Nifty said he’d pick up a pizza on his way back.”
I must have gone green or something, because he grabbed the container of soup and had the trash can under my face before I was halfway off the sofa. My boy’s got good ref lexes.
“Sorry, ah, hell, Bonnie, I’m sorry … here.” He put the soup down and grabbed a paper towel from the counter, wetting it under the faucet and handing it to me.
I sat back and wiped my face with the back of my hand, then realized what he’d given me the paper for and wiped my hands with it, instead. So much for that soup.
Nick got me back on the sofa, and dropped himself down next to me.
“You okay? You got a stomach bug?”
Easier to claim that, but … his concern was real, and we were honest with each other. You had to be, if you expected them to have your back. Nobody got to pretend to be a hero. “Scummy,” I said, and tried to smile. He got it. He knew what my job on the scene had been, and what it meant.
He put his arm around my shoulders, his brown eyes puppy-sorrowful. “These things … nobody should have to go through it, and we shouldn’t have to witness it, either.”
I smiled a little and nodded, but there wasn’t any comfort in his words. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t really. Oh, he got it intellectually. Intellectual understanding had shit to do with it.
You talk about rape, and every female over puberty understands, way more than a guy ever could, even the most sympathetic gay-or-straight male. Women know, instinctively; hammered into us by society, every single day of our lives, even before we know what sex really is. Even if you never talked about it, it was there, lurking behind your left shoulder, an awareness of risk, even if nobody ever touches you without your consent.
But that wasn’t what was making me uneasy, why what I’d seen was bothering me so. Not exactly. Violence I could handle. I had never been a sheltered child, and I knew that people weren’t angels—not that the angeli were all that nice, from what I’d heard. It was the entire concept of sex-as-violence that was … More than alien to me, it was supersize noncarbon-based life-form alien. J said I was a hedonist, I just believed that mutual pleasure was a noble goal. To me, sex was play: it was an expression of affection, of mutual satisfaction, and yeah, when time, of procreation. That someone could use it to hurt someone else? Being reminded that, in the wrong minds, it can also be a weapon? Scummy. Scary.
I struggled to hold on to my anger from before. Anger was better than fear. Anger I could use.
Nick rested his head on my shoulder, almost a cuddle, and even though it wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before, on tough days, my body shifted away from his. Then he sighed, and I felt a sudden urge to comfort him overriding my own discomfort. Unlike me, Nick had been sheltered. Dealing with scummy took more out of him than he wanted to admit.
Without thinking about it, my arm lifted, draping itself around his shoulders. Nick and I’d flirted—hell, we still flirted, because that was what we did—but I just didn’t react to him that way, and Nicky’d adapted. Sometimes it was nice to have sex out of the picture and off the table, so you could offer comfort without wondering if anything else was being offered, too.
“Hey, guys. Whoops, did we interrupt something?”
Pietr had come in, unnoticed as usual, followed by Nifty, burdened with two pizza boxes, and Sharon, closing the door behind them. Still no sign of Stosser, unless he’d come in while I was in the workroom and Venec hadn’t thought to mention it?
“Bonnie …”
“Bonnie is just fine,” I interrupted, giving Nick a hard elbow in the ribs, and forcing him to move away a little. I’d let him coddle me, a little bit, because he was Nick and it made him feel better. But be damned if I’d announce it to the entire damned pack. He took the hint, and shut up.
“I put the gleanings on loop in the warded workroom,” I told them, even as they were stuffing their coats in the closet, and heading for the coffee. “Venec’s in there now. No idea where Stosser is—he went to interview the victim.”
There were a few winces at that: I wasn’t the only one assuming the worst. Ian Stosser might be smooth to the outside world, but we knew him a little better than most. Still, when he wanted something he could ooze compassion and caring. Just because he rarely used it on us anymore was no need to assume the worst … right? And he had agreed to be gentle with the girl. He wasn’t going to screw it up.
Nifty put the pizzas down on the counter, and opened the lid of one. The smell filled the air, and while normally the combination of tomato, garlic and oregano would make me a happy girl, at this exact moment I didn’t want to be anywhere near food.
“I’m … going to go get Venec,” I said, uncurling from the sofa and making my escape into the hallway before anyone could say anything. I made a quick pit stop into the bathroom, to splash some water on my face and rinse my mouth out. It was your basic small-office restroom: two stalls, two sinks, wall-size mirror over the sinks, but about a month ago Sharon had made a big deal about putting new bulbs in overhead, so she could, as she said, apply makeup without looking like a corpse, and they cast a gentler, kinder light I suddenly really appreciated.
I leaned on the counter and stared at myself, taking inventory. Hair: still blond, still short, still almost-curly, like a palomino poodle. Eyes: a little bloodshot but nothing that couldn’t be attributed to a lack of sleep. Skin: pale, but that was normal for me. Were there new lines around my mouth and eyes that hadn’t been there last night? Probably. I was only twenty-two, but sometimes I felt like I was thirty, at least.
I loved my job. Ian had something else driving him, some figurative demon crowding his shoulder, but the rest of us … we just wanted to know why, who, what … and we liked to push ourselves. It wasn’t an obsession: I could walk away, if it got too much—and I knew I never would. This was my passion, what I was driven to do.
I practiced a smile, something cheery and bright to reassure everyone I was fine, and shuddered at the result. Maybe not just yet.
I loved my job, but some days the fun level … wasn’t.
Face splashed and mouth rinsed out, I wandered down the hallway and found Venec, as expected, in the room I’d left. The door was open, so I just stuck my head in enough to see him sitting at the table, back straight, elbows on the chair-arms, watching the display the way a meter maid watches a parking meter ticking down the last seconds.
I didn’t say anything: He knew I was there.
One hand lifted, and the display stopped just as the ki-rin dropped behind his companion, a scarce minute before the attack. “The others are back?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Tell them to start writing up their reports, and I’ll be with them in a minute.”
I nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at me. “Should they come here?”
“No.” He stared at the frozen display. “No, I want them to come to the discussion with a blank slate. Time enough for them to watch this when we’ve looked at the rest of the picture.”
In other words, nobody else needed to get their facts tangled by an emotional reaction. It made sense. Part of me was relieved that the girl wouldn’t have her trauma spread around, and part of me was pissed that I got stuck with it … but Venec had gone there, too. I wasn’t alone.
It didn’t help as much as I’d hoped.
“And Torres?” His voice was quiet, a softer growl than usual.
I paused, but didn’t look back. “Yeah, boss?”
“You did good.”
That didn’t help,