Immortal at the Edge of the World by Gene Doucette

today’s equivalent would be—and listen in effectively. We had no adjoining doors either.
    But again, that didn’t mean nobody was listening. It just meant I didn’t know how they were doing it.
    “What did you see, Iza?”
    “Men,” she said.
    “How many?”
    “Lots.” Talking to a pixie is an unnerving experience sometimes. I’m mostly used to it, but I imagine it looked a lot like I was talking to a spirit or something because one only ever addresses the air formerly occupied by the being one is addressing. And her words tended to come from every direction at once.
    “This is absurd,” Mirella said. “I know how to shake a tail.”
    “I’m sure you do. Iza, are they here in the hotel?”
    “Uh-huh. Waited.”
    “They waited for you to come back?”
    “Waited.”
    “Well, that’s your explanation,” I said to my increasingly aggravated bodyguard.
    “That’s no explanation.”
    “You may very well have successfully lost whoever was following you at the cemetery, but they weren’t tracking you because of Tchekhy, they were tracking you because of me. They must have been here at the hotel already.”
    She shook her head and took a turn at the window. It’s one of those things people do when they find out they’re being followed, as if a sneak peek through a curtain will be miraculously illuminating. “I’m very good at what I do, Mr. Justinian. If we were being followed from the airport I’d have known it from the airport.” She closed the curtain. “Paranoia is something new for you. Everything you’ve done to this point has been loud and attention getting. You don’t act like someone who cares about any of this.”
    “I didn’t, but now I do. Did you bring the phone?”
    “Of course I did.” She pulled the device from her pocket and handed it to me. “Provided it’s actually a phone at all.”
    “It is.”
    “It has no key pad.”
    The device in question was a flip phone with a single button and a small screen. It looked like the sort of futuristic device someone in the 1960s would make in anticipation of what this kind of technology would eventually look like.
    “If you want to know why I’m suddenly acting paranoid, this is why,” I sort of half-explained. “If he’s using this, we have a serious problem.”
    Mirella stared at me levelly with a cold expression I was growing used to and starting to like a bit more than I probably should have. “You are not going to explain this in a way that will make sense, are you?”
    “Not right now, no.”
    “Fine. I’m going to go wash this city off of me.”
    She marched to the shower, which was actually perfect because I needed all the background noise I could get before using the phone in my hand.
    I flipped it open.
    A little while ago, a man named Robert Grindel put a bounty on me. The men—and other creatures—he hired all received a phone like the one in my hand. According to Tchekhy, the phones used an advanced form of encryption that was essentially unbreakable. So in a way it actually was a futuristic device, in the sense that it was the only truly secure electronic communication method in the world. That I was aware of.
    They were also supposedly one-use-only devices, and one of the two I’d given to my Russian friend had already been used. But he’d had a long time to fiddle with them.
    I hit the button and waited. It didn’t ring. Instead I heard a series of clicks, and then a familiar voice.
    “Who is the girl?” Tchekhy asked without preamble.
    “It’s good to hear from you, too.”
    “Yes, yes. Who is the girl?”
    “My personal bodyguard.”
    “I told you to trust no one, and you send this girl and your insect to the drop site. I should hang up and leave you to your fate.”
    “Oh come on, that’s not fair. You know better than anyone that was the safest play. Now what’s the problem?”
    “Right now my problem is that you are not listening to my advice.”
    I had never heard him so agitated before.