54.
Sienna
Apparently, Nadine Griffin went home at two in the afternoon on weekdays. Bankers’ hours were getting shorter all the time. Welch had texted me her address, so I pulled it on my phone’s GPS as I left Wall Street, taking off from the roof of Nadine Griffin’s building, where I’d stopped to concentrate on setting my next destination and bringing up one of my contacts to dial. The wind was rushing in my face as the Bluetooth headset I’d grabbed on my way out of the hotel felt snug in my ear, hissing and ringing to let me know my call was going through.
There was a cool female voice at the other end. “Veronika Acheron speaking.”
“I like how you pretend you don’t know it’s me calling,” I said.
“Well, I assume you’re calling me for business and not to meet for a happy hour to swap stories, so I try to keep my tone professional—because I love money more than answering the phone, ‘Hey, girl.’ At least a little more.”
“Honestly, if having you burn off half my face with plasma hands didn’t dissuade me from hiring you, answering your phone like a Ryan Gosling meme isn’t likely to flip the table, if you know what I mean.”
“I figured burning off your face was a key factor in you hiring me,” Veronika said, hiding her amusement under the veneer of professionalism. “By the way, I haven’t heard from Kat Forrest yet. I figured she’d be calling five minutes after she landed.”
“She probably hasn’t even picked up the casefile yet, honestly,” I said. “But I appreciate you being willing to babysit.”
“Long as my pretty face doesn’t end up on camera and your check clears, I’ll help your blondie Nancy Drew all you want,” Veronika said. “But I assume since you’re calling me, you have reasons of your own that don’t involve your adopted child.”
“Reasons of my own?” I asked. “More like problems of my own. You watching the news at all?”
“Not today,” she said, a little tautly. I thought I could a heartbeat monitor somewhere in the distance behind her, but it was pretty faint and staticky, what with the wind blowing on my end and the limitations of the phone on hers stifling my meta hearing. “Why? What did you do this time?”
“Very little, surprisingly,” I said. “I’m in New York—”
“Hold on,” and I could hear her pull the phone away from her ear for a second as she punched the speaker button and a door closed behind her. “I see … FBI headquarters in Manhattan destroyed … and the US Attorney’s office … and a bank robbed … car crashes in the streets … a container ship blowing up off Long Island …” She put the phone back up to her ear and the hiss of the speakerphone and the tinny quality of her voice ceased. “Yeah. I could have figured out you were in New York just by looking at the headlines.”
“Har har,” I said. “Listen, the US Attorney’s office … it got hit by a meta who turned the whole place to glass.”
“Ouch,” she said. “I’m not an architect, but I’m guessing without concrete and steel to hold it up, that sucker collapsed on itself.”
“It’s in slivers, yes. But the problem is, we have nothing on the meta who caused it. No type, no idea, nothing. I figured you—”
“Ooh, I can feel the butter coming out, and I’m worried for my arteries. I’m about to get slathered.”
“—as a much wiser, more traveled, and quite brilliant meta with worlds of experience—”
“I like that better than ‘old.’ Good call.”
“—and someone with a keen insight into the domain of metas for hire … might have some idea who could have done this.” I paused a second as I flew over Brooklyn’s congested shorefront. “Or, failing that, maybe a type name for what kind of meta is responsible.”
“The latter, yes, for sure,” she said. “I don’t know that there’s an official type name, but I’ve always called them ‘Alchemists.’ They’re a lot like that family of idiots you ran across in Nebraska—”
“The Clarys.” I thought about them, with their meta abilities to turn their skin into seemingly whatever substance they wanted—I’d seen rubber and steel, but there were probably other possibilities. “But they can’t change the state of unconnected matter.” I paused. “I don’t think. Because that would have made kicking their asses a lot harder.”
“Yeah, their steel skin melts like that butter you just applied to me under plasma’s heat,” she said, then paused. “That … wow, I went to the awkward place this time, didn’t I?”
“It’s okay, I kinda live there.”
“So, anyway, same ballpark, different … uh, game? Sport, maybe? Whatever,” she said, “I’m not into athletics and stuff.”
“I figured, seeing how you weren’t too torn up about us destroying Soldier Field.”
“Well, that’s the Bears, so …” Her wry amusement died. “This power, though. I knew of a meta who used those powers for profit.”
“Illicit gain, you mean?” I teased her.
“I forgot that you use your powers for charity these days,” she shot right back.
“Ouch. Counterpoint taken.”
“You’re entirely too fun,” she said. “We should totally have another team-up sometime. I bet I’d be a better wingwoman than any of your other lackeys. This meta, though, the one who changes matter for profit—”
“The alchemist?” I asked.
“I’ve heard him called ‘the Glass Blower,’” Veronika said. “He bounces around a lot, but he’ll basically put his talents to work for anyone. The first thing I ever heard about him was a job he took on a few years ago for a really rich creep who wanted an ex transmuted into pure gold.”
“Gross,” I said. “That poor woman.”
“It was actually a guy that got turned into a statue,” Veronika said, and I could hear her smirk bleed through the line. “You know what happens when you assume, right?”
“You make an ass out of you,” I said, “but not me.” I paused for comic effect. “Because I’m way too busy being an ass on my own merits.”
“And you win a counterpoint of your own. Anyway, the Glass Blower takes contract jobs like that, I assume. Only other work I’ve heard of his is whispers, like creating gold for some small country somewhere to buoy their economy—”
“Any idea which small country?” I asked.
“No clue. It was all rumors anyway, because I’d imagine if someone actually was able to do that, they’d really crash the precious metals market.”
“What do you even pay a guy like that?” I asked, frowning as I flew over small houses in Brooklyn, tree-lined streets that looked like they were from a bygone age.
“Lots of non-monetary exchanges in my business,” Veronika said. “Favors and rare objects and things like that. Most of our kind can get money pretty easily. Power trades for power, generally speaking, because let’s face it, money always follows power’s lead.”
“As true with metas as with the rest of the world, I guess.” I could see Long Island stretching ahead, and I pulled my phone away from my ear for a second to check my course. It was all good. “So no idea where this ‘Glass Blower’ originates? Hangs his hat?”
“Sorry,” she said, sounding almost apologetic, “but I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew—which I don’t. Professional courtesy. Besides, this guy isn’t your problem. Whoever hired him is. He’s the instrument, so the most you could hope for from him was a line to your real villain. Odds are good, though, that he’s long gone.”
“Well, damn. I don’t imagine it’d be much of a joy to try and contain this Glass Blower even if I could catch him. Thanks for the info,” I said. “If you think of anything else—”
“I’ll send it along in a mash note, written on pink paper, with big flowery writing and—”
“Bye, Felicia.”
“You did not just ‘bye, Felicia’ me!”
“I did. Figured you might think I’d forgotten your name, but I was totally meme-ing you. Since you didn’t ‘Hey, Girl’ me when you answered.”
She sighed in disappointment. “So pedestrian. Go trade wits with others who are unworthy of you. And when you get bored of that, call me back. I’ll be here, unless Kat calls me first to bail her out of something infinitely stupid.” She hung up.
I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared down at the map display again. I was very close to my destination now, flying over neighborhoods with much more space between the homes than anything I’d seen in Brooklyn. I flew lower and lower, looking at the tree-covered grounds of the palatial estates. It was a far cry from the high towers of Manhattan, but not such a far distance, really.
I set down in Nadine Griffin’s brick-paved driveway. Her house looked older, but with touches on the outside that suggested to me that this august estate had seen some reconstruction projects in the years since it was first built. The lawn looked like hell, like the gardener had resigned in protest or something. I’d gotten the lay of the land on the way in, and Ms. Griffin had some serious property, with Long Island Sound at the edge of her giant backyard. I walked toward the door slowly, easing my way up, and rang the bell. I could hear it chime inside, loud and lovely, echoing like a church bell in a European village. I pressed it again. And again. For fun.
“I can hear you!” an irritable female voice shouted from inside. “Just a second!” I heard swearing, a little lower than the frustrated commentary, so I pushed the bell again for kicks.
Nadine Griffin swung the door open without even checking who was outside first, which was a mark of either how pissed off she was at me for the repeated ringing or the utter contempt in which she held even the most basic smart security precautions. If I’d been in her shoes, I wouldn’t have answered the door, not a chance.
Then again, I thought as I looked down to see her clad in four-inch heels that looked uber-expensive, if I were in her heels, even my meta powers of increased dexterity couldn’t save me from the turned ankle that would result.
“Nadine,” I said, greeting her with a growling sort of contempt that I reserved for people I knew well and disdained.
Give the woman credit: she was a cool customer. When she saw it was me at the door, her eyes didn’t even widen, though her pupils dilated a little bit. She froze, but just for a second, and the expression on her face went from that momentary surprise into a swift return of the contempt I’d leveled at her only a moment earlier. “Oh,” she said, disappointed, “it’s you.” Like I always just showed up on random peoples’ doorsteps.
“It’s me,” I said, smiling brightly. “Let’s have a chat.”