by Jim Butcher
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “Someone tries to send good vibes at us, they’ll get that bounced back at them. They go trying to pull off another killing . . . well. What goes around comes around.”
“Hey, that’s a fundamental core of many religions,” Jake said. “Golden rule, man.”
“Yeah, it is,” I said. “Maybe a little more literal than usual, in this case.”
“You really think this place is cursed?” Jake said. His expression was thoughtful.
“I think someone doesn’t want Arturo’s new company to succeed,” I replied. “Among other things.”
Jake frowned. “You think Silverlight Studios is behind it?”
“Possible,” I said. “But things have been pretty nasty for someone with a money motivation.”
“Materialism is not good for the soul,” Jake said. “Those are the folks who can do the worst, when they’re after money.”
“Money’s new,” I answered. “Power’s old. Power is the real deal. Money, voters, oil, SUVs—they’re just stand-ins for power.”
“For a feng shui artist, you’re sort of intense, man.”
I shrugged. “That’s the first time anyone’s ever told me that.”
“You got a woman?”
I rolled up the chalk line. “Had one. Didn’t work out.”
“That could explain it,” Jake said. “Arturo gets like you between wives. Thank God that’s over.”
I blinked and looked Jake. “Over?”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “I mean, he hasn’t sent out invitations or anything, but I know the guy. He’s had hearts floating around his head for a couple of months, and he’s in his days-before-wedding phase now.”
That was important. That was really freaking important. “Are you sure?” I asked.
Jake shrugged, his expression puzzled. “I’m not gonna testify to it in federal court or anything, man. I mean, city court, sure.”
Footsteps came around the corner, and Bully Bobby appeared, wearing shorts and a T-shirt and carrying a little notebook with a golf pencil. “Jake,” he said. “Finally, man. Arturo says I have to tell him today. What do you think of Rocko Stone? Or maybe Rack McGranite?”
“Rocko is way overdone already,” Jake said. “And racks are more of a girl thing.”
“Oh, right.”
“Go with something nonstandard, man. How about Gowan?”
“Gowan?” Bobby asked.
“Sure, he was a knight.”
“Like those Round Table guys?”
“Yeah, like that,” Jake said.
“Sounds kinda . . . soft, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” Jake said. “Stiffen it up with a heavier last name. Like Commando.”
Bobby frowned. “Gowan Commando,” he said, and from his tone the kid just didn’t get it. “I guess that might work. Thanks, man.” He paused and noticed me for the first time. “Oh, hey. Uh, Harry, right?”
“Like yesterday,” I said. I didn’t use my happy voice. “Morning.”
“Yeah, morning.” Bobby coughed and glanced at Jake, who clenched a fist in an encouraging be-strong sort of gesture. “Harry,” Bobby said, “I was kind of an asshole to you yesterday, man. Sorry.”
It probably says something about me that I didn’t even consider the possibility that he might be sincere until he coughed and shuffled over to offer me his hand. “We okay?” he asked.
I blinked at him. People didn’t apologize to me much, as a rule, but I’d seen enough after-school specials to understand the theory. “What the hell.” I traded grips with the kid and said, “It’s nothing. Forget it.”
He smiled a little and said, “Cool. So what are you guys doing?”
“Feng shui,” Jake said.
“You know martial arts?” Bobby asked me.
Now that he wasn’t threatening violence, I could see that this kid was a jewel. He could potentially provide some lucky wiseass with straight lines for the rest of his natural life, and you can’t put a price on that. “A little.”
“Cool.”
Jake shook his head, and managed to keep from smiling. “Need anything else then, Harry?”
“Not right now.”
He nodded. “Come on, Gowan. Let’s go see if Joan needs help with anything.”
“Hey,” I said. “Jake.”
“Yeah?”
“Is Lara here today?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Yeah. Why?”
“No reason,” I said. “I’ll catch up to you later.”
They left, and I sat down in my dim, magically booby-trapped corner to think.
It was important that Arturo was in love. My gut told me it was important, but I couldn’t kick my tired brain into telling me why. I rubbed at my eyes. I needed more sleep to do any thinking, so I went looking for the next best thing—coffee and a backup brain.
Murphy answered the phone and I greeted her through the coffee and most of a doughnut.
“You’re mumbling, Harry,” Murphy said. “Speak up.”
I slurped coffee, scalded my mouth on the stuff, and set it aside to cool off a little. “Sorry, burned my tongue. Did you get any more information about Arturo Genosa?” I asked.
“Some,” Murphy said. “I got in touch with a guy I know in LA. He came up with municipal records and even some files from Genosa’s lawyer, but there’s not much in the way of admissible.”
“That’s okay. Just trying to get a picture.”
I heard her digging out a file and opening it. “Okay. He’s got a will on file, leaves everything to a couple of charities and his next of kin, looks like his mother in Greece—but she died a couple of years ago, so I guess the money all goes to charity.”
“What about his wives?” I asked.
“Control of their fund would have gone to his mother, but since she’s dead they get to keep drawing from it indefinitely. It’s in the prenuptial agreement for all three of them.”
“Three?” I asked. Hell’s bells, if the man was in love . . . “Does it mention a fourth wife?”
“Nope.”
“What about a fourth marriage license?”
I heard her rustling around the file, and tested the coffee while she did. Ah, perfection. “Stupid fax machine paper,” she growled. “It’s floppy and the pages all stick together.” Then she stopped for a second and said, “Son of a bitch, there is one.”
“When?”
“Dated for next Thursday.”
“To who?”
“I can’t tell. There’s a big blurry spot,” Murphy said. “Fax machine must have messed it up. But it’s definitely marriage license number four.”
“But with no prenuptial number four,” I said.
“No prenup number four.”
“Hello, new next of kin,” I said.
“Hello, motive,” Murphy agreed. “Hello, suspects.”
The greenroom door opened and I looked up in time to see a woman with a lingerie-model body under a flimsy robe enter the room, holding a big revolver. She pointed the gun at me, found the extension of the phone I was on and pulled it out of the wall, then said into a cell phone, “I’ve got him.”
I sat there holding the dead phone and the warm coffee and said, “Hello, Trixie.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Trixie Scrump-Genosa-Vixen-Expialidocius leaned against the door and said, “Don’t get up, Barry. And don’t move your hands.” Her voice shook with nervous energy, and the barrel of the gun waved drunkenly back and forth. The knuckles of the hand holding the cell phone to her ear were white. “I don’t want to shoot you.”
“You know, people don’t want to crash their cars either. But there is always some idiot who drives and talks on the cell phone at the same time, and crunch,” I said. “Maybe you should put your phone down until we’re done. Just to be safe.”
“Don’t give me orders,” she snapped, pushing the gun at me like it was some sort of sexual aid. She wobbled on her high heels when she did, but managed not to fall over. �
��Don’t you dare give me orders!”
I shut up. She was already wound pretty tight. I have a bad habit of turning into a real wiseass when someone makes me nervous. It’s just a reflex. But if I pushed Trixie too hard, her precarious self-control might snap, accidentally setting off the gun. I’d die of shame if she unintentionally shot me, so I resolved to keep my mouth shut. Mostly. “Okay.”
“Keep your hands right there, and don’t move.”
“Can I sip some of my coffee at least?” I asked. “It just got to the right temperature.”
She scowled. “No. You never got me my latte.”
“Right,” I said. “Good point.”
We sat there for a couple of minutes while my arms started getting tired, holding coffee and a useless phone in place like that. “So what happens now, Ms. Vixen?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s me and you here, and then there’s that gun. Usually there’s a specific purpose to using a gun as a negotiation tactic, but so far all you’re doing is pointing it at me. I’m no expert, but as I understand it, you get to make demands or something.”
“I know you’re afraid,” she spat. “That’s why you’re talking. You’re nervous and talking because you’re afraid of me.”
“I am paralyzed at the thought of losing my senior division shuffleboard career,” I said. “That’s just how much you scare me. But I’m also curious about our next step.”
“There is no next step,” she said.
“Um. So we sit here for the rest of eternity?”
She sneered. “No. In a minute I’m going to leave.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Just like that?”
“Yeah.”
“You . . . brilliant fiend,” I said. “I wouldn’t ever have guessed that your plan was to do nothing.”
She smirked. “It’s all I need to do.”
“I thought you might be worried that I would tell the police about it afterward.”
Trixie laughed and looked genuinely amused. “Oh? You’re going to tell them what? That I held a gun on you for no reason, did nothing, and then left?”
“Well. Yeah.”
“Which are they going to believe? That crappy story or that you confronted me when I was alone, made unwanted sexual advances, and that I had to pull the gun out of my purse to discourage you?”
I narrowed my eyes. Actually, that wasn’t a stupid plan, which made me doubt Trixie had come up with it all on her own. But why hold me in place for only a few moments? I checked the room’s clock. Eleven forty. Crap. “Oh,” I said. “You want me sidelined for the next time you call up the curse.”
Her eyes widened. “How did you know th—” She broke off abruptly, her head twitching, evidently listening to someone on the phone. “Oh. I know. I’m not telling him anything. I don’t see why you . . .” She winced. “Oh. Oh. Yes, all right. Do you want to come down here to do this? Fine, then. Fine.” Her face darkened into a vicious scowl, but most of her attention came back to me.
“Who’s on the phone?” I asked her.
“None of your business.”
“Actually it is. Literally. Since I’m being paid to find the identities of whoever is swinging that curse.”
Trixie let out an ugly laugh. “What difference would it make if you did? It isn’t as though the police are going to believe the use of a magic curse as a murder weapon.”
“Maybe. But cops aren’t the only authority in the universe. Anyone ever tell you about the White Council?”
She licked her lips, and her eyes flickered around the room. “Of course they did,” she lied.
“So you know that employing magic to murder another human being carries the death penalty.”
She stared at me. “What are you talking about?”
“The trial wouldn’t be real long. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes, tops. And once they find you guilty, you’ll be executed on the spot. Beheaded. With a sword.”
Her mouth worked uselessly for a second. “You’re lying.”
“I’m an honest guy. Maybe you’re in denial and projecting.”
“I am not,” she snapped. “You’re just trying to scare me. It’s a lie.”
“I wish,” I said. “My life would have been simpler. Look, Trixie, you and whoever you’re working with might get away with it if you back off right now. Leave off the curses and get out of town.”
She lifted her chin defiantly. “And if we don’t?”
“Bad things happen. You’re already beaten, Ms. Vixen. You just don’t know it. If you roll out that curse again, you’re going to get a taste of it for yourself.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Not a threat,” I said. “Just a fact. You and your ritual are done.”
“Oh,” she said, regaining her composure. “You underestimate my powers.”
I snorted. “You haven’t got any powers.”
“Yes, I do. I’ve killed with them.”
“You’ve killed with a ritual,” I said.
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference,” I said, “is that if you have any skill of your own at magic, you don’t need a ritual.”
“Whatever. They’re the same thing anyway. Magic. Power.”
“No,” I said. “Look, a ritual spell like that doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s like a cosmic vending machine. You put two quarters in, push the right button, and the curse comes flying out, courtesy of some psychotic otherworldly force that enjoys that kind of thing. It doesn’t take skill. It doesn’t take talent. You could be a freaking monkey and invoke that curse just as well.”
“There’s no practical difference,” she maintained.
“Yes, there is.”
“What?” she asked.
“You’re about to find out.”
Instead of looking uncertain, she smiled. “You’re talking about that sacred circle you had set up on the soundstage.”
She’d recognized the circle? Oh, crap.
“We knew that you’d try something,” she went on. “All I had to do was follow you when you came in. I don’t know what you thought you were going to accomplish, but I’m pretty sure all of your squiggles and candles aren’t going to do whatever you wanted them to, given that I broke your circle and smeared all your chalk lines.”
And she was right. Double crap.
“Trixie,” I said. “You can’t possibly think that this is all right. Why are you doing this?”
“I’m protecting what’s mine, Larry,” she said. “It’s business.”
“Business?” I demanded. “Two people are dead already. Giselle and Jake were at death’s door, and I don’t even want to think about what would have happened to Inari if I weren’t there. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“I don’t feel any need to explain myself to you.”
I blinked at her slowly and then said, “You don’t know either. You don’t know who he’s marrying.”
She didn’t say anything, but her eyes blazed with scorn and fury.
I shook my head, continuing. “So you’ve just been eliminating all the women around Arturo Genosa. One at a time. You don’t even know if you’re killing the right person.”
“There’s only one little girl toy left pretty enough to suit his tastes,” she said.
“Emma,” I said.
“And once she’s gone, I won’t have to worry about her stealing what’s mine.”
I stared at her for a second. “Are you insane?” I said. “Do you think you’ll get away with this?”
“I’d love to see some prosecutor try me for witchcraft,” she responded.
Trixie was too stupid to believe me about the White Council and too self-absorbed to keep my name straight, but for crying out loud, she had to be human. “Hell’s bells, Trixie. Emma’s got kids.”
“So did Hitler,” Trixie snapped.
“No, he didn’t,” I said. “He had dogs.”
“Whatever,” Trixie said.<
br />
I checked the clock. Eleven-forty-three. In four minutes, give or take, Emma would die.
Trixie’s attention snapped to the phone and she listened for a moment, throwing out a terse, “Yes.” Then the phone abruptly squealed with feedback, and Trixie flinched hard enough to make me worry that she’d lost control of her weapon. “Dammit,” she said. “I hate these stupid cell phones.”
Cell phones are the caged canaries in the coal mines of the supernatural. When a little magic gets moving, cell phones are some of the first pieces of equipment to be disrupted. Odds were good that someone on the other end of that phone was starting to move energy around.
Which meant that the malocchio was coming to kill Emma.
And so long as Trixie kept me in the greenroom, there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to prevent it.
Chapter Twenty-six
If I didn’t do something, another woman was going to die, and a couple of kids were going to become orphans. Of course, I also had a gun in my face. If I did do something, I would die. The smart thing would be to let Trixie finish delaying me and wait for her to leave. Emma would be dead, but I’d have at least twelve hours in which I could shut the Evil Eye franchise down. If I didn’t cooperate, Emma and I would both die, and the bad guys would still be at large.
So the smart money was on staying put. Simple logic.
But there are things older than logic—like instinct. One of the most primal instincts in the human soul is the desire to protect children from harm. Even if the idea of Emma’s death hadn’t been motivation enough, the very thought of how savagely this stupid, venal, selfish harpy might scar Emma’s children made me want to call down fire enough to roast Trixie Vixen and her sculpted ass to ash.
I found myself tensing to go after her, and damn the gun. It wasn’t as brainless as you might think. Killing is not so easy as it seems. Most people are wired to be careful of their fellow human beings. Soldiers and cops both are specifically given training to overcome that instinct, and the criminals who fire at other people are usually driven to it by desperation.
And even trained soldiers and hardened criminals are often wildly inaccurate. Billy the Kid once emptied his Colt revolver at a bank teller from less than three feet away, and missed him six times. I’d seen a police reel of a cop who had been forced to draw and fire at a suspect, and he’d emptied a full clip at the man from less than twenty feet, missing him every time.
