Paranormal Scene Investigations Series by Laura Anne Gilman
Paranormal Scene Investigations #1
Hard Magic psi-1
Laura Anne Gilman
Welcome to P.U.P.I. — Private, Unaffiliated, Paranormal Investigations A handpicked team trained to solve crimes the regular police can't touch — crimes of magic. My name's Bonnie Torres. Recent college grad, magic user and severely unemployed. Until I got a call out of nowhere to interview for a job I hadn't applied for. It smelled fishy, but the brutal truth was I needed the work — so off I went. Two days later I'm a PUPI — me and Nick, Sharon, Nifty and Pietr. Five twentysomethings, thrown into an entirely new career in forensic magic. The first job we get is a doozy: proving that the deaths of two Talents were murder, not suicide. Worse, there are high-profile people who want us to close up shop and go away. We're sniffing out things they'd rather keep buried. Looks as if this job is gonna get interesting. The only problem is, we're making it up as we go along..
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Paranormal Scene Investigations #2
Pack of Lies psi-2
Laura Anne Gilman
My name is Bonita Torres, and eight months ago I was an unemployed college graduate without a plan. Now I'm an investigator with the Private Unaffiliated Paranormal Investigations team of New York. Pretty awesome, right? The Cosa Nostradamus, the magical community, isn't quick to give up its secrets, though. Not even to fellow members. Not even when it's in their best interests. So we've been busting our tails, perfecting our forensic skills, working to gain acceptance. The team's tight... but we have our quirks, too. And our Big Dog, Benjamin Venec...well, he's a special case, all right. But we can't give up. We're needed, especially when a case comes along that threatens to pit human against fatae. But one wrong move could cost us everything we've worked for....
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Paranormal Scene Investigations #2
Pack of Lies
Laura Anne Gilman
From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Gilman follows 2010's Hard Magic with another winning mix of snappy writing and a fun and intelligent story about crime-solving magic users. Bonita Torres loves working with Private Unaffiliated Paranormal Investigations (PUPI), but the team's latest case, the attempted rape of a magical ki-rin's human companion, has her on edge. The ki-rin killed one assailant and partially disemboweled the other, and everything looks simple until the survivor claims she was used as bait. Human/nonhuman relations are already unstable and could explode if PUPI can't figure out what really happened. Riding on the case are a woman's reputation, a man's death, and the future of PUPI. Grabbing readers from the get-go, Gilman delivers style and substance with layers of mystery, science, politics, romance, and old-fashioned investigative work mixed with high-tech spellcraft. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.We were surrounded, outnumbered, and out of luck. I risked a glance at my partner, and saw the same desperation on his face. We needed to think of something, something brilliant, something fast.Too late. There was a crack like thunder, lightning filling the entire room, and we both fell to the ground like someone slammed a two-by-four over our heads.A deep male voice pronounced our doom. "You're dead. Also, stupid."There really wasn't much to say to that. Of the four PUPIs in the room, Nick probably would have milked the death scene. Sharon would have argued her way into a second chance. Nifty wouldn't have been dead or stupid, probably.Pietr and I lay on the floor and were dead. Also, stupid.The deep voice continued. "Now. Can one of you surviving idiots tell me where your cohorts fucked up?"The voice belonged to Benjamin Venec. Top-notch magical Talent, experienced private investigator, owner of a pair of gorgeously intense brown-black eyes, and, along with Ian Stosser, one half of the leadership of Private Unaffiliated Paranormal Investigations, also known as PUPI. Yeah, Puppy. The jokes just write themselves, and we'd already made most of them.If we were PUPIs, though, Venec was Big Dog, and obedience school was in session. I loved my job, but this seriously was not my idea of how to start out a Monday morning, especially the Monday after my old college roommate's annual April Fool's Bacchanalia. My eyes felt like sandpaper, and I was cranky over more than getting killed. Even on a good day, I was emphatically not a morning person.Since Venec had moved on to his next victims, I risked raising my face from the carpet to see who of the remaining three PUPIs was going to chime in first. What, as Venec was always asking, did the available evidence tell me? Nick's shoes needed polishing, and the way he was rocking back into his heels suggested he wasn't going to volunteer. Sharon had toed off her two-inch heels, and there was a run in her left hose. That was unlike her, and I wondered briefly what epic catastrophe had hit her wardrobe that morning. Also, she was humming under her breath. She only did that when she was stumped, and was trying to scramble for an answer.That left only one person, but he was out of my line of sight."Mister Lawrence?"His voice amused, our former college linebacker made the call. "They zigged when they should have zagged."Pietr, his face still down on the carpet, made a rude noise. Venec kicked him in the ribs, gently, and he subsided. Dead puppies weren't supposed to talk back."Right," Venec said, his voice thick with disgust. "I stand corrected, you're all stupid. Dead bodies, off to the side. Sharon and Nick, you're up. Don't expect the attack to come in the same pattern. I'm not going to make it that easy for you."Easy. Hah.Pietr rolled over and jumped to his feet with annoying agility. Show-off. I sat up slowly, feeling my back crack in protest. Venec reached down and hauled me to my feet without taking his attention off the rest of the team, like he had some kind of sonar that told him where I was. Maybe he did: Venec was occasionally scary like that.Benjamin Venec. Not much scared me, but I was willing to admit that this particular Big Dog could unnerve me occasionally. His hand was dry and strong, his fingers wrapping around my wrist with a casual familiarity. I was so tired, I guess my control wasn't as strong as it usually was, and the touch sent sparks—of the purely incendiary, nonmagical sort—through my veins. Hoo-cha.I took the lift, and ignored the sparks with the strength of months of self-denial and fierce rationalization. Unnerving, in the sexually charged way. We'd been doing a weird sort of dance since the first day on the job, me and the boss man—well, me anyway. Venec played everything close to the vest, and I had no idea if he felt it, too.From across the room, Nick caught my eye, and gave me a slight but unmistakable smirk.Yeah, Venec was undeniably hot, if you liked the brilliant, dark-eyed, moody, remote sort, and I knew damn well that he felt some of those sparks, too. I'd been around that block a time or two before, and I could tell when someone was reacting. He was also the boss, and that was more important than any fireworks show. I might be dead and stupid, but I wasn't dumb. A bed partner was easy enough to find. A good job? Lots tougher. Especially for someone with our… call them specialized skills. I wasn't going to risk that, not for anything."Move the chairs over here. Lawrence, shove the chest into the middle of the room. No, more to the left." Venec was barking orders like a B-grade movie director, resetting the stage for the next test. Nifty and Pietr lifted and toted, while Sharon paced around the edges, checking the layout as it emerged and trying to get one step ahead of whatever Venec was going to throw at them.I snorted. Good luck with that. We were all damned good, but we were damned good because Venec taught us to be. He still knew shitloads more than we did all put together, with a decade more experience, and there was no way to predict the way his brain was going to jump.Ian Stosser, Venec's business partner and the public face for PUPI, was widely acclaimed to be brilliant. For my money, though, I'd place the bet on Benjamin Venec. Ian was a flashy thinker, but my mentor always told me to watch the quiet ones."Pay attention," Venec said sharply, and I jerked a little, sure he was scolding me. But no, he was glaring at Nifty. Good. Nifty could use the occasional slap down to remind him he was only two-thirds as smart as he thought he was.Everything was finally rearranged to the Big Dog's satisfaction. Out of the game, Pietr and I sat on the chairs now shoved against the far wall of the office conference room, while Nifty leaned against the wall like a bouncer on break, and we watched Venec put Sharon and Nick through their test.Venec was re-creating a scenario we'd run into last week: lung-runners, illegal organ-leggers, working out of a warehouse on Staten Island. They'd been a mixed group, Null and Talent, operating off the grid—literally—so that law enforcement was having trouble finding them. The pirates used current to keep the tissue fresh until they found buyers, which was a particularly nasty bit of work, and exactly the kind of thing PUPI had been founded to track down: magic used in the commission of a crime.The hospital the tissue had been stolen from had hired us on the recommendation of a Board member who was also a Talent—our first "corporate" client.We'd followed the traces of current they left behind, and confirmed the site, catching them with a half-dozen coolers filled with stolen human tissue. We had meant to alert the cops to come in and arrest them, but things got a little messy, and then they'd been tacky enough to try to kill us, rather than surrendering or running away. Venec took it personally when someone tried to kill us. Especially since the bastards got away. The fact that we'd recovered the coolers and gotten enough information to put the lung-runners on the radar for more traditional investigations was enough to get us paid—but not enough to avoid one of Venec's lecture/training sessions. "Fail better" was probably tattooed on his ass somewhere.The good thing was that we were just as fanatical about learning as he was about drilling this stuff into our heads and reflexes. That had been one of the requirements to become a PUPI—the desire to learn how to do something new, and do it better, instead of following the worn track.Sharon had put her shoes back on, and was kneeling by the foam chest that was standing in for the medical cooler of tissue. Nick had her back, the way he should—good boy. Nicky-boy was really good at his specialization, but sometimes a little flaky outside that, and I'd had to remind him more than once to keep his eye on the game.Venec stepped forward and raised his left hand, indicating the show was about to start.I wished deeply for a bucket of popcorn, because once you're dead, and not worrying about what's going to hit you next or how you're about to screw up, Venec's fun to watch. He has what my mentor calls an economy of motion that tells anyone paying attention just how damn good he is at manipulating current. No muss, no fuss, no showboaty waste of energy, just results. You can learn a lot by watching carefully.The fact that he was hot like a hot thing was just a distracting plus. I'm a red-blooded twentysomething female who hadn't had a date, much less sex with another person, in three months thanks to the demands of this new job and all it was throwing at us. I might only be able to look, in Venec's case, but look I would, and appreciate.The subject of my ruminations dropped his hand, and a wall of current-fire rose around Sharon and Nick, pushing them away from the cooler. They shifted fast, standing back-to-back. There was no heat, but the sparks were sharp and bright, crackling in the air as Venec directed them with just a flicker of a glance. I almost lost track of what he was saying, watching the neon-bright strands weave through the air.Current—magic—had one aspect that people always seemed to forget: it was pretty.It was also dangerous, and Sharon and Nick were giving the strands their full and complete attention. Just because Venec was controlling it didn't mean it couldn't hurt them, as per our prime example a few minutes before. My skin still itched from the bolt that had taken us out."All right," Venec said, his deep voice patient, but still rock-hard. "You're in the middle of a warehouse, the perps have outsmarted you and backed you against the wall, and your evidence is across the room. What are you going to do?"The wall of fire was new—Pietr and I'd gotten hit from above, suddenly, in a literal rain of energy—but it was the same question. What are you going to do? I leaned forward, waiting to ...
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Paranormal Scene Investigations #3
Tricks of the Trade psi-3
Laura Anne Gilman
When magic goes wrong, who are you going to call? The name's Torres, Bonnie Torres, and I'm a paranormal scene investigator — rooting out the truth about crimes of magic. It's dangerous and boring and scary and fascinating. Though not everyone in the Cosa Nostradamus is happy we're around, which can make things.tricky. Working two cases — looking into a murder for the NYPD, and a rich man's break-in — should be well within our abilities. But when things start getting weird in the Electric Apple, Private Unaffiliated Paranormal Investigations is stretched to the limits, trying to keep one step ahead and out of trouble. Add in rumors of a powerful creature gunning for us and it's not just our rep on the line this time — if we don't solve this case, everyone will suffer. Fortunately, around here, when the going gets weird, the weird hire us..
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Paranormal Scene Investigations #3
Tricks of the Trade
Laura Anne Gilman
Review"Gilman's deft plotting and first-class characters complement her agile blend of science and spell craft, and readers will love the Mythbusters-style fun of smart, sassy people solving mysteries through experimentation, failure, and blowing stuff up."-Publishers Weekly on Hard Magic, starred review"Features fast-paced action, wisecracking dialogue, and a pair of strong, appealing heroes."-Library Journal on Curse the Dark"An intelligent and utterly gripping fantasy thriller, by far the best of the Retrievers series to date."-Publishers Weekly on Free Fall, starred review Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Every Talent in the city probably felt it when The Roblin arrived, but most of them didn[HTML_REMOVED]t know what it was, not even after everything was done and dusted. There was maybe a sense of unease, a niggling in the back of their minds, not like they[HTML_REMOVED]d forgotten something but that something was happening that they should know about, that was going to affect them.And then it was gone: fading into the still-chilly predawn air, lost in the quiet bustle of hospital workers changing shifts, police cars idling on street corners, shortorder cooks strapping on fresh aprons and firing up grease-skimmed griddles. Those particularly sensitive to bad vibes, Null and Talent alike, shifted restlessly in their sleep, or woke feeling particularly anxious or alert, but there was nothing to tell them why they felt that way, and most of them forgot it after the first cup of coffee, and the first crisis of the day.But because it was forgotten didn[HTML_REMOVED]t mean it was gone.The malaise started downtown, and spread, like fingers of a hand stretching out to cover all five boroughs of New York City. Barely touching anything, yet sensing, feeling, absorbing the pulse of the city, finding the weak points, the delicate spots, the danger zones. And, finding them, narrowing in for the kill."All right, people, settle down."The noise level hadn[HTML_REMOVED]t been high to begin with, but the restless movements stilled almost immediately. It was Wednesday, and we were all gathered in the main conference room in the PUPI offices, which were on the seventh floor of a nondescript seven-story brick building uptown in Harlem. Outside I could hear the muffled sounds of traffic, trucks and buses and cabbies in their usual dance, sirens cutting in and out like a soprano having diva-fits in a cast of baritones. Seven of us: me, and Sharon, Pietr, Nifty, Nick, and our newest hire, Lou. And Benjamin Venec, our boss."After the past few weeks I had planned on spending time working on your defensive work, but—""We[HTML_REMOVED]ve got a job? Do I get to—?"Venec scowled at the interruption. "No."Nifty was getting itchy. Literally: he[HTML_REMOVED]d had a run-in with a molting Istiachi two weeks ago, which was unfortunate, since molting made them both pissy and toxic. He[HTML_REMOVED]d ended up with a bad rash—startlingly bright green against his black skin—that he was under strict orders not to scratch. He was also stuck on office duty until it healed, while we[HTML_REMOVED]d been out on a case, and that was really making his skin itch.The first time I[HTML_REMOVED]d ever seen Nifty during our group interview/audition for this job, I[HTML_REMOVED]d thought "well-dressed jock" and assumed he was all bulk and no brain. Working with him for the past year had proved that assumption wrong: he was smart and surprisingly sophisticated. But right now, he was more like a petulant ten-year-old than a pro-quality athlete turned paranormal P.I."Why can[HTML_REMOVED]t I…" he started to ask again, his voice not quite whining, but getting awfully close."Because you[HTML_REMOVED]re still contagious," Venec said, not even looking at him. "That[HTML_REMOVED]s fine here, where we can protect ourselves, but letting you out among Nulls, who[HTML_REMOVED]d freak if they started coming over in sparkling green itches? Forget about it, Lawrence."I hid a smile. Venec would not appreciate knowing how very much more like a parent than a boss he sounded, right then. Benjamin Venec was many, many things: smart, savvy, fierce, an utter bastard when it suited him, and hotter than hell, with dark eyes that I still couldn[HTML_REMOVED]t identify the color of, because every time I looked into them I got seriously distracted, but he was absolutely not daddy material.Nifty didn[HTML_REMOVED]t have the same physical—or emotional—reaction I did to Benjamin Venec, but Venec was the Big Dog, so Nifty subsided, spreading his hands—plate-size, and equally capable of pulling a pigskin out of the air or dragging a suspect to the ground—flat on the conference room table to keep from rubbing at his arms or legs. Since I[HTML_REMOVED]d been right behind him when the Istiachi lifted its tail and sprayed, I was sympathetic. That could have been me, if my coworker hadn[HTML_REMOVED]t massed twice my weight, and protected me from the attack.It was funny, really. When I[HTML_REMOVED]d agreed to work for the mad Talent combination of Ian Stosser and Benjamin Venec, I never thought it would result in me facing down a foot-long land-squid and ducking toxic urine in order to get the skinny on a bank robbery.J, my mentor, says I need to read more noir mysteries, to expand my expectations about this job. J still isn[HTML_REMOVED]t really 100% behind my career choice, but he tries to be supportive. I[HTML_REMOVED]m not sure Dashiell Hammett wrote about Istiachi, myself. More Lovecraft[HTML_REMOVED]s style. The land-squid were fatae, technically full and valued members of the Cosa Nostradamus, but you didn[HTML_REMOVED]t invite them to Gathers, and certainly never to lunch."Besides," Venec went on. "I need you here to work on those files with Lou."There was a faint snicker that sounded like it came from down the table, which meant Nick, which wasn[HTML_REMOVED]t a surprise. Boy still didn[HTML_REMOVED]t have an inch of self-preservation in him. Nifty glared around the table, and went back to sulking. Lou merely nodded her head, accepting both the assignment and the partnering.Nick was one of the Original Five. He looked like your basic geek…and okay, he was. But he had skills nobody else could match. Lou was new to our pack—she[HTML_REMOVED]d come on board two months ago, when the cases started coming faster and Stosser decided we needed more hands. The oldest of us by a decade, she had actual experience, having worked for a Null P.I.[HTML_REMOVED]s office before, but the first time she went out into the field as an active PUPI.Well. It had been spectacular, and not in a good way. Lou[HTML_REMOVED]s control was fabulous under training conditions, and not so much in the real world. Now she worked the back office, making sure the research records were in order, the supplies properly kept, and we[HTML_REMOVED]re never caught without proper background files. At that, she[HTML_REMOVED]s a whiz. We didn[HTML_REMOVED]t know how badly we needed an office manager until we had one in place.Venec waited to see if anyone was going to make any other comments. We weren[HTML_REMOVED]t. "After the backlog last week—" The Big Dog held up a hand to keep anyone from trying to explain or protest. "Yah, I know. That job was a goddamned disaster, and we were all stressed. But not a single one of you filed paperwork all case, and then every damn one of you dumped it on Lou[HTML_REMOVED]s desk Thursday afternoon. Tacky, people. She[HTML_REMOVED]s already gone through her initiation.""Ast mem!" Lou muttered, leaning back in her chair, and I tried not to crack a grin. My father might not have taught me much Spanish before handing me over to J, but I[HTML_REMOVED]d learned enough over the years to know what she[HTML_REMOVED]d said—and even if I hadn[HTML_REMOVED]t understood the particular slang, her tone made it clear. The rest of my cohorts—middle-class whitebread to the core, even Nifty—were clueless."As I was saying, after the backlog of last week, I had wanted you all to do some skill-work—Sharon, you still need to work on your binding spells, and Pietr and Bonnie are due for a refresher course in ducking a tail."How someone who could disappear as thoroughly as Pietr when he was stressed couldn[HTML_REMOVED]t manage to shake a tail still amazed me. But it was true: for a ghost-boy, he stuck out like a sore thumb when he was focused on following someone.My problem, according to Venec, was my hair.I reached up and touched my short blond curls selfconsciously. I[HTML_REMOVED]d thought the blue streaks were kicky. Venec had informed me, in no uncertain terms, that they were distracting, and unprofessional. And, apparently, they made me easy to pick out of a crowd.We weren[HTML_REMOVED]t supposed to stand out; we were supposed to blend in, the better to find out things people didn[HTML_REMOVED]t want known. Or, as he put it, "This isn[HTML_REMOVED]t a peacock show, damn it."He was right, okay, he was absolutely right. But I[HTML_REMOVED]d spent most of my life standing out, gleefully and with encouragement from my mentor, and this.This drabbing down to dullness was hard.Even as I let that thought slip, there was a mental touch of something, not quite sympathy—never sympathy—but a rough buck-up sort of pushback, and I sighed. Of course Venec would know I was indulging in self-pity.There was no such thing as telepathy, beyond the ping—a quick burst of information that was more visual than heard or seen—but about eight months ago we[HTML_REMOVED]d discovered that Venec and I could pick up each other[HTML_REMOVED]s emotions, even thoughts.Worse and weirder than that: our current kept getting tangled together without our willing it, something that was supposedly impossible. Magic didn[HTML_REMOVED]t work that way.The old texts, what Venec had been able to find, called it the Merge. It was rare, annoying, and not something either of us had wanted: We still didn[HTML_REMOVED]t want it. But, like Nifty[HTML_REMOVED]s rash, we had to deal with it and not let it interfere with the job.I, at least, was dealing with it by total denial. So far, so good."You had wanted to give us a break?" Sharon asked, her coffee mug—a robin[HTML_REMOVED]s-egg-blue color that matched her blond perfection, well, perfectly—halfway to her lips. "Implying that you[HTML_REMOVED]re not going to.or not able to?"Sharon liked to have things nailed down definite-like, the better to tear them apart. She was probably our best in-field operative. That scalpel-sharp brain, matched to the fact that she looked like a 1940s movie goddess, cool and lush at the same time, made her a killer investigator: people got distracted, and then she zoomed in without mercy, finding exactly what they were trying to hide.The fact that she had the ability to sense when they were actively lying was just icing on that cake."Not able to," Nifty said. As usual, he and Sharon were jocke...
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