Tricks of the Trade by Laura Anne Gilman

a game?”
    He picked up the pace a little, not fast enough to lose anyone but moving past the other pedestrians with the air of a man late for something. He went the length of the block, and then stopped, bending down as though to tie the lace of his shoe.
    The sense of someone watching stayed close, but no closer than it had been before. A maintained distance.
    That meant his stalker was human, not fatae. The fatae tended to let him know they were there, to try to make him uneasy with their regard. Only humans hid. Ben felt his mouth draw into an unamused smile. He could test the air, see if his tail was Talent or not, but that risked letting the other know he or she had been spotted, and spoiling the game. There were other ways to tell, though.
    Slowing his steps to a more casual pace, he circled around the block, and headed for the nearest cogeneration building.
    The miniature power generators that had become popular recently didn’t have the same catnip appeal of the big’un power plant, but a cogen attracted the attention of every Talent who walked by the same way a pretty girl caught the eye. If his tail was Talent, he would know the moment they crossed the street; they wouldn’t be able to help themselves.
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    I spent the rest of the day looking over Sharon’s notes, not so much looking for something as looking for what wasn’t there, a missing element or fact that would open up a new level of questions. All I got was a slight case of eyestrain: Sharon might not have my perfect memory, or Nick’s ability to make intuitive leaps, but she was exactlyas methodical as you’d expect for someone originally trained as a paralegal.
    â€œYou checked the rest of the house?”
    â€œYes.” Nothing in Nick’s tone let me know what an insulting question that had been, which I appreciated. “The kitchen was spotless, and surprisingly Spartan. I guess he doesn’t entertain much, or have any interest in food.
    â€œUpstairs was nicer, but still pretty plain,” he went on, tapping a finger on the table as though the beat would jog his memory. Hell, maybe it did. “I mean, nice but not lush, the way you’d think somebody that rich would do it.”
    My mentor had that kind of money, or maybe even more. His apartment in Boston was… I thought about the casual way he slouched in a nineteenth-century armchair, and how Rupert was allowed to sleep on a hand-knotted Persian rug, and allowed as how maybe my idea of lush was kind of skewed.
    â€œCheap-looking, or…?” If he was skimping on the private rooms, that might mean a lack of ready cash, or some other cause for trouble.
    â€œNo. I mean, not that I’m any judge of it, but no I don’t think so. I’ve seen enough of your stuff to know quality, and this was all good. Just not…” He was struggling to put what he’d seen into words. I waited.
    â€œSparse. Like he only cared about the rooms where he spent time, where people saw him. Everything else had the minimum for living but…” And I could practically smell Nicky making another one of his leaps, sussing out people in a way I could only wonder at. “He doesn’t careabout other people. Not about making them comfortable, or seeing to their needs. It’s all about him.”
    â€œA narcissist?”
    â€œNo. That’s all about perception and self-interest, right? This is more…he isn’t aware that anyone might have needs or wants, beyond where they connect to him, or that they even exist, when he can’t see them? Like a sociopath.”
    Oh. Oh, that was not what I wanted to hear. At all.
    â€œSo…what does that add to the case?”
    Nick shrugged, which drove me crazy. I hated shrugs; they were so utterly useless as communication because they could mean too many things. Lazy, my mentor used to say, and he was right. “Nothing, really. Not yet, anyway.”
    â€œRight.”