Blood from Stone by Laura Anne Gilman

city, her line of investigation was cut off. Officially.
    A man came to the office door, pushing it open just enough more to stick his head in. “The Old Lady wants to see us,” he said.
    “Uh-huh.” The room’s original resident didn’t seem impressed with the news.
    “I don’t think it was a request, Chang. I think it was something like an order. As in, right now she wants to see us.”
    “I’ll be there in a minute.” Chang said, reaching for another pretzel rod, then being distracted midthought by a new possibility.
    “Christ. You are trying to get yourself fired, aren’t you?”
    “She won’t fire me. I work too cheap.”
    “Nothing’s cheap enough for this place,” the second agent said with mordant humor, then shook his head, coming into the office and looking at the papers on the desk. “Are you still working that lead? Give it up, already. I think someone’s pulling your leg. All you’re doing is wasting Bureau time, and you know how they feel about that.”
    The only response he got was the wave of one arm, middle finger extended in universal sign language. He shrugged. “Your funeral. I’ll see you upstairs. Now, Chang. Seriously. The Old Lady is not in a good mood today.”
    The figure pushed the chair back with a squeak of wheels and a muttered curse, reaching with the right hand for one of the less-chewed pretzels, the left hand being preoccupied with writing something down. Numbers, possibly, or some sort of intricate code. The muttering was cut off as teeth slid across the length of the pretzel, harvesting the salt with the heedless competence of a beaver stripping bark.
    The photographs were joined by several pencil sketches of another figure, this one much shorter and, at first glance, wearing some sort of furry costume under a trenchcoat. The only color in those sketches was the dark red used to indicate the eyes, and the comments written in navy-blue ink along the margins. Having recovered them from the pile, Chang was sorting through those now, shuffling them like some sort of static cartoon book as though hoping to see it suddenly start to move.
    A phone rang, this time in the office.
    “Agent Chang.”
    A familiar voice was on the other line; the same voice that had originally brought in the lead a year ago, off her half-joking comment about a seemingly impossible, almost supernatural event that had occurred on her watch.
    He was an old friend, a trusted source and a general pain in the ass. Chang half suspected that the other agent was right, and he was playing this out for his own twisted amusement, to see how far she’d buy into his claims of something powerful and weird just out of reach.
    The thought that it might be true, that there might be a source of power—of information—out there that she might be able to tap into, to use, was the only reason she hadn’t told him to take a flying leap, and his wild stories with him. But maybe it was time. There were other ways to climb the ladder, other sources she could cultivate, if she spent the time and energy…
    “Either give me something useful or go the hell away,” Chang said now, and this time she meant it.
    Surprisingly, her source came through. “I can get you a meeting.”
    “Why now?” The timing seemed suspect; why now, just when she was about to give up? How had he known?
    Her contact, surprisingly, answered that, too. “He wouldn’t talk to you before, would have shut you down, hard. But things have changed. If you can convince him you’re useful to them. ” A pause, and then, in a thoughtful voice that made her believe him, “I really think you two should talk. And soon.”
    Chang agreed to let him arrange it—as if she was going to argue?—and hung up the phone. Was it moreof his game? Or was the situation, as he suggested, really reaching a point where the contact—one of these alleged supernaturals—might welcome a Federal ally?
    Suddenly recalling the Old Lady’s summons, Chang swore, then