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None of Henry's students looked promising, and Zhune was bored. Bored, and still smarting from the loss of the previous babysitting project. The Boss wouldn't hold it against him, no one with an ounce of reason would have, but. He didn't like losing attuned, not the permanent ones.
And so the summons from the Boss felt like--well. He wasn't sure. A reprimand or a new job, either could be true. Either way it would be interesting, wouldn't it? Valefor was never boring, for better or worse.
They met in a mall, mortals streaming past them in every direction without seeing them. The Boss looked more Calabite than he bothered to some days, rumpled and sleek and full of swagger like a master of reality who knew how to throw punches. With a cut across one cheek like he'd just been doing that, against someone who could return the favor. (For the image, or from reality? Even Princes might take a little damage in an instantiation, now and again. The delightful thing about his Boss was not being able to tell which.) There were rings on his fingers, and he spun one about with his thumb.
"Zhune," he said, "want to play a game?"
The most dangerous question, which made it the best. "Global thermonuclear war?" Zhune asked, and swiped the wallet of a man passing by. Reflex, these days. Too much by reflex. He could use a challenge.
"Wrong Word, puppy. I've got a new kid for you to babysit. Picked him up last night, and he's a hot one. Renegade from Fire and War, and he's been playing with angels."
Zhune sorted through connotation. Puns, ha, not usually the Boss's style. Hotshot kid (how young was this demon?), fire hot, hot like stolen goods with someone in pursuit. "Filling out the collection?" He remembered another Calabite of Fire, some eight hundred years ago. Couldn't remember the last time he saw her. Lots of stolen Servitors didn't last long for any variety of reasons.
(Lots of Servitors didn't last long, stolen or otherwise. He prided himself on not being counted among them. No First Fallen, him, but spend a few thousands years without being eaten by anyone in Hell, and consider yourself more than lucky. Clever.)
Valefor shrugged one shoulder, and watched the crowds like he was looking for his next meal. "He's got promise. Talked a Seraph into helping him storm a trap Baalites set for him, and then swiped the bait and ran when the snake wasn't looking. This kid is going somewhere great, Zhune, or he's going out with a bang." The Boss's attention was suddenly on him again, gaze looking deep into his soul, down where a very old part of him still said, Oh, this will be fun. "He's been claiming allegiance to Theft for nearly two years. We've made it official. And now the official story is that he's been here since three weeks after his last Heart shattered. Got it?"
Well. Didn't that just put a spin on things. Didn't that just raise questions, like Why reward and not punishment or maybe Am I the punishment or Who would be that stupid or Can I keep this one? But the time for questions was before the Boss asked one.
"Got it," Zhune said. "I'll show him the ropes."
"Good," Valefor said. "Strip him clean. We'll catch up afterward."
A promise was as good as theft, from the Boss. Zhune took the knowing that settled into his mind, and followed it. Took a car from the parking lot as a matter of course, and kept on following, that edged wire between himself and his target that felt nothing like an attunement and everything like a magnetic force dragging him along.
He hoped the Boss was--well, the Boss was always right, but the Boss gambled, and who knew how the dice would fall on this one? He hoped for a payout on all that promise in that description. Something to kill the boredom for a while. A game worth playing.
#
He found the Calabite in a diner, having a fierce, quiet argument with some human child with a snotty nose and (oh wasn't that interesting, to see the way the fabric moved and realize it suddenly, where he hadn't expected anything of the sort) a pistol in the inside pocket of her bulky coat. Zhune slid into the booth beside the human, grabbed her nearest hand, and told her without looking at her, "Quiet."
Then he smiled at the Calabite, because it was a good idea to get off on the right foot, and the right foot was the other man not knowing where the hell they stood. See how long it took him to figure things out. (He recognized that flicker of gaze, a search for backup, lines to exits, more information. He approved.) "Nice to meet you, Leo," he said, and offered a hand over the table. "The Boss sent me."
He counted how long it took the Calabite to make up his mind. Take the hand, while knowing what that meant. Long enough that the Destroyer was thinking, short enough that the Destroyer was thinking quickly. "Took you long enough," Leo said, and looked deliberately away from him, towards the child. "Eat your dinner, Katherine. We need to leave soon."
Zhune paid for dinner. Only polite. But he got them out of that diner in ten minutes flat, because there was knowing who might be on their tail. (He could feel the pronouns shift around him, as the attunement settled into place. The lock on the human child went in its usual slot, the place labeled Do what I say, and that would wear off. The lock on the Calabite hooked in deeper, where the inside of his head started shifting everything from I, me, mine to We, us, mine, mine, mine.)
"We'll take my car," he said. Damn good thing there was space for three, and why hadn't the Boss mentioned the third? Who ever heard of a Calabite dragging around a human child, more an Impudite thing, Habbalite, or if it had been a Shedite--
--no, wait, the Boss had mentioned that. Just hadn't made it explicit. Strip him clean, Zhune. Fine. So it'd take a little more delicacy, that's why the Boss sent him, wasn't it? You couldn't just shake someone out of the old and shove them into the new, not without breaking some things you might not want broken.
Leo shrugged. "Bring it over, then. We'll get our stuff out."
A backpack and handful of kiddy trash for the human, check. That went in the back seat, the child bundled in, and Zhune told her, "Quiet," when she tried to protest. Then the Calabite opened the trunk of his car, and Zhune figured out why he'd wanted to do this in the back of the parking lot, under shadows and out of sight.
"You picked this up from the War?" Zhune asked, and hauled cases between the trunks. Noticed that he could do that more easily than the Calabite, and that was interesting in its own way. (A little bitty Calabite? Or just one that didn't focus so much on being a bruiser? Let's look at his track record. The latter.)
"More or less," Leo said. "I borrowed it from an old friend."
"They likely to want it back?"
"No," Leo said, and smiled sharply. A good expression. He ought to be encouraged to use it. "I don't think she's going to want any of this back."
#
He started with the contents of the trunk.
They found an Impudite to deal with. An old demon, smart enough to keep on her toes, smart enough to play nice with Zhune, smart enough to handle weapons taken from the War (the Calabite implied the story was complicated, a little smugly, and did not give details, fine for now), and smart enough to not ask questions.
"If you need any favors," the Impudite said to Zhune, and with an eye kept only peripherally on the Calabite, "now's the time to ask. I'm taking a long vacation back home after I get a few jobs finished." She drew slim fingers over a case she was pricing. "As long as we're all here."
"Not the kind of favor I need," Zhune said, and glanced at Leo. "Do you need anything set on fire, before we move on?"
"I usually ask the kid to do that," Leo said, "but if you're offering, I've got a building in mind."
"Noisy," the Impudite said.
"Not if you get the humans to handle it." And the Calabite's arch look said, Surely you can manage that, if I can. Surely the Destroyer isn't the sneaky one in this group.
The Impudite clicked her teeth together, and looked at Leo directly. "Who's in it?"
"No one much. Government building. And not," he added, bone dry, "the euphemistic kind where I actually mean the Game or Judgment, so no worries there. I need something inside destroyed, and I'd like it done without making it obvious what the target was. Think you can handle that?"
Zhune let the Calabite handle the negotiations. Didn't get a great price, didn't get ripped off. Acceptable for an amateur. Plenty of room to improve.
#
When the attunement on the child wore off, she tried to set him on fire. Ha. A hot one indeed. The Calabite stopped her, scolded her for starting fires in the car, and seemed to consider the matter dealt with. Didn't take away her lighters or her pistol, no, just a scolding. Surely he hadn't learned that method of discipline in the War. Or in Fire.
"Maybe," he said to Leo, after getting her under control again and stowed away in the back seat (and he thought about the empty trunk, but he didn't want to have that fight just yet), "the little girl shouldn't be carrying weapons."
"It didn't even catch," Leo said. He leaned back in his seat to say to the child, "Didn't I tell you about checking on materials? Did you really expect that jacket to catch with no accelerant?"
"It's been a long time," the child said. "I forgot some of that stuff."
"So we'll go over it again." Leo turned back to the front, and said, "No offense, Zhune, but you're a terrible driver."
"Haven't hit anything yet, have I?" And oh, he could recognize a smooth subject change when he heard one. "Even if she keeps the matches, she shouldn't have a gun. Humans can't aim for shit, and she's as likely to hit one of us as anyone else if she tries."
"She kept a Malakite from killing me, once," Leo said. "She gets to keep the gun."
Zhune wondered if that was one of the angels Leo used to play with. Human child as bait, and then pounce? But. No. Didn't fit what the Boss had said. Not playing like a cat with a mouse, but playing like a card shark with a patsy. A thought for later.
#
He moved down the list. Clothing. Should've been easy to convince a Calabite it was time to ditch ragged clothes and try something new, but no, all he got was the stubborn insistence that the next set would wear down to the same state anyway. Why bother?
Well, why bother? Because the human needed clean clothes, that's why, and neither of them wanted to hit a laundromat, did they? So that worked. Went to a mall. Zhune picked the one where he'd met the Boss, because crossing your own tracks was smart sometimes. Got the kid stashed somewhere with cash and instructions (No talking. Buy what you want. Stay here until we get back. Good girl.) and took the Calabite walking.
The vessel looked harmless, but its outfit didn't. So people veered away from Leo. Not a big dramatic swing, just the unconscious edging away humans working on autopilot and classifying someone dressed that way as Not one of us. Zhune walked a few feet away, a big enough gap to channel half the people so veering through, and shook them down as they passed. Wallets and watches and the contents of purses, a ring here and there, filling out his pockets a little at a time.
He waited for the Calabite to notice. And he was just about to feel disappointed--sure, it was subtle, unspoken, a dirt-simple two-man con most Magpies would never bother with, but they had to start somewhere--when he realized that Leo was doing a sorting process on people coming in. The pricier the outfit coming towards them, the more likely the Calabite would swing his steps outward to channel the human between them. The less pricy the mark, the more likely it got sorted outside the gap, out of the way of his hands.
Clever. And a lot more subtle than he'd given the kid credit for before. Which meant that two gives you one the Calabite was getting a few things past him already, and would in the future. This would require planning. Ha, planning ahead was what he needed, and a lot more observation. Which would be easier to do without a third party to track and control, even if that third party was easy to push around. Humans always were. Demons were the only ones who gave interesting pushback. (Or angels, sure, but he didn't get to play those games nearly so often since the Boss had stolen him. A lot less call for that kind of work in Theft, but now the forecast for future play was looking golden. If he could keep this one alive, focused, trained.)
He talked the Calabite into new shoes, new coat, and then new clothing proper. Talking about presentation. There was scruffy and then there was dangerous, and most of the time dangerous wasn't the appearance you wanted to give off. Only as a dodge, a distraction, and with two people more often than not you didn't want distractions, just focus. Let the wilder packs of Magpies have lookouts and distracters and bruisers and sneaks, but the two of them? Better to play it quiet and safe.
Zhune watched Leo fill his new pockets with the contents of the old. Cigarettes and cash and a handful of cheap plastic lighters, cinnamon candies and keys to a car left two states behind. That could wait. One step at a time.
#
The attunement on the human wore off, and when Zhune reached for her, Leo said, "Would you stop that." Like it was some sort of imposition. Like he was tired of loaning out his toys, and starting to define some boundaries. (Good. Couldn't push the boundaries until they were tangible.) "She's not an idiot. She knows how to keep quiet about important things."
"She's human," Zhune said, which was all that really needed to be said on the topic of intelligence.
"Yes, and if we keep speaking in Helltongue in front of her, she's going to pick up on it, because we're giving a kid immersion experience. I'd rather put that off a while longer." Leo swapped back to English. "Katherine, put down that lighter, and sit down. Why isn't your seatbelt on?"
"I'm tired of cars," the child said. "I'm tired and I want to sleep in a bed and I want to go--"
But she didn't finish the sentence, so maybe the Calabite had the right of it, about discretion. Even in the young.
"If we get a motel tonight," Leo said, "can you stay put? All night?"
"Sure," said the child. "I'll stay inside."
Leo looked to Zhune. And it wasn't to ask permission, it was to say, "How about we try hitting some commercial places tonight? I don't have much experience in those, not on my own."
"Who did you work with before?" Zhune asked, and he didn't get a straight answer out of the man.
#
It felt a little...cheap. Petty. But there was style, and there was practicality, and sometimes the latter won out. So when Zhune delivered Leo back to the motel room with the implied instruction (not an order, he didn't want to discover that boundary quite yet) to stay there for the night, and went out to take care of a few more chores by himself, he bugged the room. (There was a thought, that it'd be tricky to deal with his Tech contacts for a while. Always fussy when he had a Calabite in tow. No matter, he could split up long enough now and again to keep those favors active and waiting.) Wandered the streets of the dark city with the voices playing in his ear while he considered what car to take next. He had opinions on that.
"You can't go back," Leo said. "They had their shot, and look how that worked out. Besides, half of them are dead."
"They're not really dead," said the child. A wavering voice, as if she spoke through tears. "They'll be back, and I could go back."
"So that Regan can swipe you again? Get them killed all over? I'm only going to make that mistake once, and you should be smart enough to learn from my mistakes without repeating them personally."
"I want to go home," she said. "Or somewhere else. I don't like him. You don't like him. He's as bad as Regan. He's worse."
"You're only saying that because he hasn't been buying you weaponry," Leo said, voice moving nearer and further from where he'd left the bug. Footsteps on the carpet. Huh. Wouldn't have taken the Calabite for a pacer. His favorite stress reaction so far was lighting cigarettes and letting them burn out, or trying to provoke arguments over stupid little things. Zhune generally didn't bite on those, unless he wanted to tease them out into a stream of more information.
Zhune picked out a car. Popped the lock, checked inside for keys. No? Fine. Next one. Cars were like humans. All types, all qualities, but ultimately, not that much spread in nature. Get a good car, use it until you're bored of it, or get a bad car and ditch it faster. Simple. They had no complexity. No interesting boundaries. They were too fucking easy to push around to make it worthwhile, long-term, and, ha, long-term. Like humans could manage that, either.
"We could go somewhere else," the child said, after that long pause. "Somewhere safer."
"If you want me to find a safe place for you," Leo said, "I will. Safer than last time, I promise. You would think that of all people Trade would have been able to come up with a few more options. Lesson learned."
"No," said the child, while Zhune gave what the Calabite had said a long, slow amount of consideration. "Not me. Us. You came back for me. You always come back, every time, and if you send me away you'll just have to find me again. We can go right now, while he's not here. We could just run away and find that safe place."
"Someone always catches up," Leo said. "Running away's not in the cards. Come on. Give me a decision. You want me to send you away?"
"No," said the child.
"Then that's that. Drop the subject. And stop harassing the Djinn. You remember your aunt. They don't like that."
"I don't like him," muttered the child, but that wasn't relevant information. Human opinions seldom were.
#
He picked up a little heat from the mortal authorities, and that was an exquisite three hours of work. Dropping enough clues to make Leo nervous about being tracked down, without looking sloppy, or like the attention was picked up deliberately. (Of course it was. He was too good for them to spot him otherwise.) They swapped cars in a parking lot, bundling the child out of one and into the next, and left everything behind. Zhune had tagged the human again, made her hush and mind, so she didn't throw a tantrum about losing her possessions until the next day.
"I'll buy you more things," Leo said wearily. "And you still have your gun, don't you? So you're fine."
"I hate this," said the child. "I'm bored. I'm tired. I want to do something else."
"Tell you what," Leo said. "You help us with our next hit, and you can spend a quarter of the take at the toy store of your choice. Whatever you can grab from the shelves in twenty minutes and fit in the back of the car. Fair?"
"A third would be fair," said the child.
"Not until you learn how to pick locks, it isn't."
And he didn't have to make the suggestion at all. Wouldn't have, maybe, because detaching the child would be easier if the Calabite got bored of her, as he should've already. (But Zhune could understand, when he thought about it, wanting to keep the prize. Stolen from the angels, stolen from the War, stolen with an angel's help? He might've kept that prize a while himself.) But he wasn't going to argue with the Calabite learning to think of these things first. Theft and deals and theft and deals in a whole cycle, like pawn shops were the restart point for spinning around again.
Zhune had robbed pawnshops, occasionally, but only when he wanted something very specific inside and needed to get it without his taking of it being known. He left them alone, otherwise. Professional courtesy.
#
The third time she tried to set him on fire, he got a little annoyed. Like stealing a car and noticing two miles down the road that it was on the last fumes of its tank. Nothing he couldn't cope with, but, yes, annoying. He was not the sort of Djinn wouldn't admit to that.
He swapped cars a few more times, left everything behind each time. Not just punishment for her. He was making a point. Until the Calabite finally asked why, and he got a chance to explain. Never hold onto anything so long they can track you by it. Take what you want, use it, leave it. Take what other people want, sell it to them. (Take it back, if the price wasn't good enough.) Theft isn't about keeping things; that's an optional upgrade, better suited to people with rules and servants and some sort of home base. It's about other people not having those things anymore.
Taking something away and destroying it is better than never taking it at all.
"I can understand that part," Leo said, but in that dry voice that suggested he was taking the wrong lesson from the lecture. No matter. Not much longer to go.
#
They parked at a rest stop on the highway, and Zhune nodded to the cars. "Pick one." He waited until Leo was reaching for the door handle. "You're heading out on your own. I'll watch her while you're gone."
"Will she be here when I get back?" Leo asked, and his hand was on the door, and he wasn't opening it yet. "Because if she's not, I'm going to be a little annoyed." Such a dry voice, and it promised...explosions. Yes, Zhune thought that voice was ready to make good on its promises.
"You're working with me," Zhune said. "I'm not going to steal anything of yours. Head into the city, do something exciting. Meet us back here. Try to make it before sunrise, if you could." He shrugged. "Surprise me."
The Calabite watched him narrowly.
Zhune reached back and grabbed the human's arm. "She's tagged. I'm not going to break your toys, Leo. Go show me that you can do a little work on your own. I'm supposed to have some progress to report."
He liked how the Calabite went very still whenever the Boss came up, even in a peripheral manner. Smart kid. Some Magpies took the whole casual thing too far, started thinking that because they got off easy a few times for mistakes, that'd last forever. Like they were friends, special pets, valuable enough to cover up for failure indefinitely. This one knew better. And this one was smart enough to get moving, find a car, and go.
Once Leo had driven away, Zhune turned back to look at the child. "Come on," he said. "Let's play a game."
And, what, she was going to say no?
He took her across the grass, to the trees lining the back of the rest stop. Over the fence, and she could scramble over in great time once he told her to. Pity she was human, really. A demonling of the same number of Forces who acted like she did would be showing some progress. Throw her down into Stygia for a few years, let Henry work the details out... But there was no point in training humans. They never got far enough, never lived long enough. A waste of time.
"I don't want to play a game," the child said, her voice reedy. "I want to go back to the car."
"I thought you were bored." He knew this place. Hid out in the rough land just beyond here some nine months back, when his previous babysitting project had still been alive, dumb, starting to annoy him. She had her compensations, but not enough for him to much mind her destruction. The replacement was better already in every way but one. (He'd ask the Boss about another vessel, if he got to keep this Calabite. Something sweet.) "So we're going to play tag."
"I don't like that game," she said. "It's boring."
"Not when I play it." He let go of her hand, and said, "Run."
Quick on her feet. Terrified, he'd say, though he was no Habbalite to be sure of these things. He gave her a ten count every time, caught her every time, restarted the game every time. Kept her pointed away from the fence; the rest stop wasn't busy, but had more traffic than he wanted to deal with. Wouldn't do to pull in attention over a game, when he wanted the Calabite to swing back with something to show off. It'd be awkward if they had to meet up somewhere else, and then what? Explain the play? Nah. Not worth it.
When she started crying, he gave her a few minutes to get over it, and catch her breath. No point in chasing if she couldn't see straight to run. "One more time," he said. "Let's finish the game. I'll give you two minutes to run, but if you go over the fence, we have to start over. Think you're ready for that?"
She drew in deep, shuddering breaths, and worked up a glare for him. Why couldn't Leo have found a pet gremlin instead of a pet human? Clearly he had some parenting skills. "Two minutes?"
"And stay away from the fence. Ready?"
"Ready," she said, and bolted.
He waited a full minute, and went ambling after her.
She made it to the highway. Around the fence, back through the woods, to the edge of the road, out to wave her arms at passing cars from the shoulder. He stood in the trees and considered his move. Decided on it. Waited until a car stopped for her. Waited until the one human in the car (adult, male, nice watch, tacky shirt) stepped out to talk to her.
He stepped out of the trees, and dragged the new human away with him. Too fast for anyone speeding past to see. Not so fast that she couldn't see, react, and follow him back between the trees.
"You see, Katherine," Zhune said, one hand around the human's wrists, an elbow clamped over the human's mouth, "your problem is that you're not very good at following the unwritten rules. It's not just about the explicit ones. Avoiding the fence was a good move. But you knew you weren't supposed to run for help, and you tried that anyway."
"Let him go," Katherine said. "Please, let him go, I'm sorry." She stumbled after him between the trees. "It's not his fault."
"Too late now," Zhune said. He held the human out, and shook him like a rat until his neck broke. And the little one didn't scream, just pressed her hands into her mouth and stared at him with enormous eyes. The Calabite must've taught her well. "When you break the rules, someone always gets hurt. Maybe it'll be you, maybe it won't be. But always someone."
He dropped the body on the ground, and looked down at her. What a mess. He'd need to make sure she washed up before Leo got back. "I'm a little surprised," he said, "that you didn't try to shoot me."
"It wouldn't work," she said thinly, tears rolling down her muddy cheeks. "Leo said. It wouldn't work. He would if he could, I know he would, he hates you."
"No," Zhune said, "he just doesn't like that you don't like me." He rubbed his hands clean of sweat across the sleeves of his coat. "So that's a problem, Katherine. You're distracting him. I need you to behave better. Be helpful, and quiet, like a good girl. Otherwise the next time you break the rules, you'll be the one getting hurt."
"He wouldn't let you," the human said.
"He'd try to stop me, if he knew," Zhune admitted. "So I wouldn't let him know, and I'd come up with some story about what happened, and after a while? He'd get over it." He offered her a hand. "Now we're going back to the rest stop to wait for him, and you won't tell him about this. You will sit in the back seat and be quiet, and you will think very hard about the rules."
She stared back at him.
"Understand?" He left the hand waiting. Because, really, that was the question. If she could manage that much. Figuring out the unspoken rules.
She took his hand.
"Good," he said.
#
One less annoyance. Or one annoyance made lesser, he still wasn't sure. They stopped at a bar, leaving the kid at a motel (with instructions she would follow, the explicit kind), and he found himself a human to fuck. Offered the same to Leo, or another of the Calabite's choice, and got nothing but baffled refusal. Which was interesting. He should've tried that sooner.
"Not into adults?" he asked the Calabite afterwards, back at the motel room, while the child snored in the bed.
"Not into humans," Leo said.
Zhune turned that over in his head, and wondered if that changed anything.
#
And one time he came back to the car, and the Calabite was there, and the child wasn't. Leo sat on the trunk, a cigarette burning down to ash between his fingers, and stared off across the lake. It was a decent sort of lake, if you liked that kind of thing. A good view from a place to stash the car out of sight until they had a chance to pick up a new one, with how hot this one had turned out to be.
"Come on," Zhune said. "I got another ride."
Leo tossed his cigarette to the ground, and stomped it out before dry pine needles to catch ablaze. "Keys?" Zhune tossed them over. "About time."
He waited for a half hour of space, letting the Calabite pick whatever highway he felt like, before he asked, "What happened to the human?"
"Got rid of her," Leo said. "There's this Free Lilim I did a few jobs for before. She's been looking to put together a Role for herself. Said she could take in a kid who knew how to keep her mouth shut about some things."
Plausible. Improbable, but plausible. Zhune watched the road and not his partner, and dug up a useful question. "Everyone was happy with this arrangement?"
"Fuck, no. I gave Katherine some excuse about babysitting and ducked out while she was distracted with cartoons. If a Lilim can't keep that kid nailed down with a stream of toys and Geases, no one can."
"Huh," Zhune said, and wondered if he believed this. Decided that it didn't matter if he did or not. "Good plan," he said, and went back to thinking about the next job to pull.
#
When he found a silver lighter in the desk of the office they were shaking down for an old friend (who must've been desperate to ask, desperate to even acknowledge a friendship with a Thief, given the Word she served), he pocketed that, and knew it was time.
At the next gas stop, he pulled Leo's jacket off. Shook out the contents of the pockets onto the ground beside the car while the Calabite stared in bemusement.
"You carry this cheap junk," Zhune said. He handed the jacket back to Leo, with the silver lighter and a pack of cigarettes. "If you're going to carry anything, make it quality."
"It all breaks anyway," Leo said, "since it's near me."
"Everything breaks," Zhune said. "This will take longer."
They drove away, and he could not think of one thing left to the Calabite of his old life, except internally. Which was fine. The Boss could take care of that part himself. Zhune had done his part.
#
The Boss was there beside him while he watched the door where his Calabite would show up. (Soon. He could feel the kid wasn't running.) "So," Valefor said, and she smiled lazily at him, like another Djinn with all the time in the world, "how's it going? Stripped down?"
"Top to bottom," Zhune said. "He's got talent, if not the skill. Sharp eyes and sharp reflexes. I'd like to try--" He shut up at the motion of her hand. Not like she was going to hit anyone, but that relaxed move of her fingers. He knew the unwritten rules. He knew what broke next when he broke those.
"Tether work," she said. "Plus whatever you want to play at between jobs. Unless you want another project? When he goes out, there'll be collateral damage. Count on it."
"I want to keep this one," he said.
"Your funeral," she said. She slung an arm over his shoulders. "Has he been playing with angels since you got him?"
"Not that I could find out."
"Keep an eye on that," she said. And what she meant was both See what you can reel in with this bait and If he runs, I'm holding you responsible. Which was fair. She gave him the choice, and he took it. Valefor had rules like anyone else, like everyone else, whether or not most people were smart enough to pick up on them.
"Sure thing, Boss," he said, and she was gone. Typical. So was his wallet, his watch, a talisman ring he'd been wearing, and his uncertainty. No room for uncertainty in Theft. Keep on running, and don't get caught.
Leo walked through the door, a folder tucked under his arm. "I don't know why we even need Impudites," he said. "Who needs a resonance to charm the socks off lonely humans?"
Zhune put out his hand. "Job's done?"
"Yeah."
"Good," he said. "We've got another one lined up."