by Jim Butcher
Chapter Sixteen
I woke up with someone shaking my shoulder and someone else holding the back of my head against a running band saw.
“Harry,” Molly said. She was speaking through some kind of megaphone pressed directly against the side of my head, evidently while pounding my skull with the pointy end of a claw hammer. “Hey, boss, can you hear me?”
“Ow,” I said.
“What happened?”
“Ow,” I repeated, annoyed, as if it should have been explanation enough.
Molly let out an exasperated, worried sound. “Do I need to take you to the hospital?”
“No,” I croaked. “Aspirin. Some water. And stop screaming.”
“I’m barely whispering,” she said, and got up. Her combat boots slammed down on the floor in great Godzilla-sized rolls of thunder as she went up the stair steps.
“Bob,” I said, as soon as she was gone. “What happened?”
“I’m not sure,” Bob said, keeping his voice down. “Either she’s been working out, or else she’s started using some kind of cosmetics on her arms. She still had some baby fat when she got the tattoos, and that’s always bound to make any kind of changes more noticeable, and—”
“Not her,” I growled, images of genuine mayhem floating through my agonized brain. “Me.”
“Oh,” Bob said. “Something hit the model, hard. There was an energy surge. Boom. The psychic backlash lit up your mental fusebox.”
“How bad?”
“Hard to say. How many fingers am I holding up?”
I sighed. “How bad is Little Chicago, Bob?”
“Oh. You’ve got to be more specific with this stuff, Harry. Could be worse. A week to fix, at most.”
I grunted. “Everything’s too loud and bright.” I tested my arms and legs. It hurt to move them, an odd and stretchy kind of pain, but they moved. “What happened, exactly?”
“You got lucky, is what. Something you met out there threw a big blast of psychic energy at you. But it had to come at you through your threshold and the model. The threshold weakened it, and Little Chicago shorted out when the blast hit, or…”
“Or what?” I asked.
“Or you wouldn’t have that headache,” Bob said. Then his eyelights winked out.
Molly’s boots clumped back down the stairs. She set down on the table a couple of fresh candles she’d brought, took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and then very carefully used the same spell I did to light them.
The light speared into my brain and hurt. A lot. I flinched and threw my arm across my face.
“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking. I couldn’t even see you down here, and…”
“Next time just shove some pencils into my eyes,” I muttered a minute later.
“Sorry, Harry,” she said. “The aspirin?”
I held out a hand. She pressed a bottle of aspirin into it, and then pressed a cold glass into my other hand. I opened the aspirin with my teeth, dumped several into my mouth, and chugged them down with the water. Exhausted from this monumental effort, I lay on the floor and felt somewhat sorry for myself until, after several more mercilessly regular minutes, the painkiller started kicking in.
“Molly,” I said. “Were we supposed to have a lesson today?”
“No,” she said. “But Sergeant Murphy called our house, looking for you. She said you weren’t answering the phone. I thought I should come over and check on you.”
I grunted. “Good call. Any trouble getting through the wards?”
“No, not this time.”
“Good.” I opened my eyes slowly, until they started getting used to the glare of the candles. “Mouse. Mouse probably needs you to let him out.”
I heard a thumping sound, and squinted up the stairs. Mouse was crouched at the top, somehow managing to look concerned.
“I’m fine, you big pansy,” I said. “Go on.”
Molly started up the staircase, and then froze, staring back down at Little Chicago.
I squinted at her. Then rose and squinted at the table.
There was a hole melted in the metal table, not far from the spot where Grey Cloak had entered Undertown. One of the buildings was half slagged, the pewter melted into a messy runnel that coursed down the hole in the table like dribbled wax. There was a layer of black soot over everything within several inches of the hole in the table.
If the table hadn’t taken the magical blow, it would have been my head with the hole burned in it. That had been part of the purpose in creating Little Chicago—as a tool and a safety measure for working that kind of magic. All the same, it was a sobering thing to see.
I swallowed. Cowl. It had been Cowl. I’d heard the hatred and venom in his voice, the familiarity—and the overwhelming power of his magic had been unmistakable. He’d survived the Darkhallow. He was working with this “Circle,” who were almost certainly the Black Council, and there was some kind of larger mischief afoot in Chicago than I had suspected.
Oh, yeah. This whole situation was definitely starting to make me nervous.
I turned back to Molly and said, “Like I said. This thing is dangerous, grasshopper. So no playing with it until I say so. Got it?”
Molly swallowed. “Got it.”
“Go on. Take care of Mouse. Do me a favor, and call Murphy’s cell phone. Ask her to come here.”
“Do you need me to help you today?” she asked. “Like, go with you and stuff?”
I looked at her. Then at the table. Then back at her.
“Just asking,” Molly said defensively, and hurried on up the stairs.
By the time I’d gotten a shower, shaved, and climbed into fresh clothes, I felt almost human, though I still had a whale of a headache. Murphy arrived shortly after.
“What the hell happened to you?” she said, by way of greeting.
“Took a psychic head butt from Cowl,” I said.
Murphy greeted Mouse, scratching him under the chin with both hands. “What’s a Cowl?”
I grunted. “Right, forgot. When I met Cowl, you were in Hawaii with your boy toy.”
Murph gave me a smug smile. “Kincaid isn’t a boy toy. He’s a man toy. Definitely a man toy.”
Molly, lying on the floor with her feet up on the wall while she read, dropped her book onto her face. She fumbled it back into her hands and then tried to appear uninterested in the conversation. It would have been more convincing if she weren’t holding the book upside down.
“Long story short,” I told her. “Cowl is a wizard.”
“Human?” Murphy asked.
“Pretty sure, but I’ve never seen his face. All I know about him is that he’s stronger than me. He’s better than me. I stood up to him in a fair fight and got lucky enough to survive it.”
Murphy frowned. “Then how’d you beat him?”
“I stopped fighting fair and bumped his elbow while he was handling supernatural high explosives. Boom. I figured he was dead.”
Murphy sat down in one of my easy chairs, frowning. “Okay,” she said. “Better give me the whole thing.”
I rubbed at my aching head and started from where I’d left Murphy yesterday up until the end of my confrontation with Cowl. I left out some of the details about Elaine, and everything about the Circle. That was information too dangerous to spread around. Hell, I wish I didn’t know about it, myself.
“Skavis,” Murphy mused aloud. “I’ve heard that somewhere before.”
“It’s one of the greater Houses of the White Court,” I said, nodding. “Raith, Skavis, and Malvora are the big three.”
“Right,” Murphy said. “Psychic vampires. Raith feed on lust. Malvora on fear. How about these Skavis?”
“Pain,” I said. “Or despair, depending on how you translate some of the texts the Council has on them.”
“And suicide,” Murphy said, “is the ultimate expression of despair.”
“With a mind like that,” I said, “you could be a detective.”
&
nbsp; We were quiet for a minute before Murphy said, “Let me see if I’ve got this right. This Skavis is in town. According to your ex, the private investigator Anna Ash hired, he’s killed women in four other cities, and he’s doing it again here—four so far, and Anna’s meant to be number five.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Meanwhile, this Grey Cloak, who works for Cowl, is in town doing more or less the same thing, but you don’t think he’s here to help the Skavis, whoever he is. But you do think he’s working against the killer, along with this Passenger, whoever he is. You think those two left the clues you found on the bodies to pull you into an investigation and take out the Skavis.”
“Even better,” I said. “I think I know who Passenger was.”
“Who?” Murphy asked.
“Beckitt,” I said. “It makes sense. He’s got his wife on the inside as an information source. He’s gone up against me before, and walked away, and I cost him years of his life and a lucrative share of a criminal empire. He’s got plenty of reasons not to like me. That’s who Grey Cloak the Malvora was talking to.”
“Whoa. Grey Cloak the Malvora? How’d you get that?”
“Because,” I said, “he talked about sharing some tastes with the Skavis, when it came to letting the prey anticipate what was coming before the kill. The Malvora do it so that their prey will feel more fear. The Skavis do it so that they’ll be more tired, be more ready to give in to despair.”
Murphy nodded, lips pursed. “And the White Court loves manipulating everything indirectly. Using others to do their dirty work for them.”
“Like using me to wipe out his Skavis competition,” I said.
“Which makes sense because Malvora and Skavis are rivals.”
“Right,” I said. “And I’m fairly confident in my guess. Just like I’m fairly confident that Beckitt must be our passenger.”
“That’s a sound theory, Dresden,” Murphy said.
“Thank you, I know.”
“But Beckitt died almost seven years ago. He was killed in prison.”
“I figure Beckitt must have made a deal with the Malvora and—” I blinked. “He what?”
“Died,” Murphy said. “There was a riot. Three prisoners were killed, several injured. He was one of them. As near as anyone can tell, he was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. A prisoner was wrestling for a guard’s gun. It discharged and killed Beckitt instantly.”
“Um,” I said, frowning. I hate it when the real world ignores a perfectly logical, rational assumption. “He faked it?”
She shook her head. “I looked into it, and I talked to the guard. There was an autopsy, an identification of the body from his family, a funeral, the whole nine yards. He’s dead, Harry.”
“Well, dammit,” I said, and rubbed at my headache. “He made sense.”
“That’s life,” Murphy said. “So this hidey-hole you found…”
“Long gone by now,” I said.
“Might be worth going anyway, if you take Krypto here with you.” She leaned down and planted a kiss on top of Mouse’s head. My dog gets more play than me, sheesh. “Maybe Grey Cloak the theoretical Malvora left a good scent behind.”
“Worth a shot, I guess,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure he’s going to be thorough enough to remove that, too.”
“Who goes around removing their scent from places?” Murphy asked.
“Vampires. They can track that way, just like Mouse.”
“Oh. Right.” Murphy sighed. “Another burned building.”
“Not—” I began.
“Not his fault!” Molly said.
“Not your fault,” Murphy said, “I know. But it’s going to look awfully odd. My car gets firebombed. A building less than a block away gets firebombed a few hours later.”
I grunted. “Same device?”
“What do you think?”
“Same device.”
Murphy nodded. “I’m sure it will be. It’s going to take them time to figure it out, though. Were you seen?”
“Me and about a million other people,” I said.
“That’s something, at least. But a lot of people are going to be asking questions before long. The sooner we get this thing put to bed, the better.”
I grimaced. “I shouldn’t have gone for the subtle maneuver last night. I should have smashed him to paste right there. I don’t have any way to find him now, and he’s aware that we’re looking.”
“Yeah, but Grey Cloak isn’t our first problem,” Murphy said. “He’s a sideshow. The Skavis is the real killer. Right?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Right. And we’ve got no clue who or where he is.”
Murphy frowned. “But he’s a vampire, right? I mean, you can tell if someone’s a vampire, can’t you?”
“It isn’t so simple with the White Court,” I said. “They hide themselves a lot better than any other breed. I had no idea what Thomas was when I met him. And you remember talking to Darby Crane.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you get ‘vampire’ off him?”
“Mostly I got ‘player,’” Murphy said. “But you knew he was really Madrigal Raith.”
“I guessed,” I corrected her. “Probably because I unconsciously recognized the family resemblance to Lord Raith. That’s why I stopped you from touching him. There was no magical tip-off about it.” I frowned. “Hell, I wouldn’t be shocked if they had some kind of ability to cloud their prey’s judgment. When Inari Raith tried to feed on me, even though I was in their freaking house, even though I knew she was a baby succubus, and in my room, it never really occurred to me that she might be dangerous to me, until it was too late.”
“Just like that never occurred to me about Crane,” Murphy said. “So the Skavis…he could be anyone.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s not me,” I said. “I’m almost as sure he’s not you.”
“Are you sure you’re a professional investigator?”
“I sometimes wonder.”
“What about Thomas?” Murphy asked.
“He’s more of a hired thug than a shamus.”
Murphy glared.
It drew a little bit of a smile from me, but it faded quickly in the light of reality. “I left messages. Nothing yet.”
“That’s not what I meant, either,” Murphy said quietly. “Could he still be involved? Could he have been the passenger?”
“He wasn’t.”
Again, she held up a hand. “Harry. Is it possible?”
“Look, we know the killer is a Skavis.”
“We know what Grey Cloak thinks,” Murphy corrected me. “But you’re forgetting something.”
“What?”
“That at least one of those women was killed in the throes of supernatural passion. Not amidst fear. Not amidst despair.”
I scowled at her.
“Is it physically possible, Harry? Possible. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I suppose,” I said quietly. “But Thomas isn’t Grey Cloak’s partner. What if…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“What if your passenger has him?” Murphy asked. “What if the ‘endeavor’ he’s talking about is pressing Thomas for some kind of information?”
I grimaced. “Thomas should have been in touch by now.”
“We’ve got a little time. Grey Cloak thought it would be another day or so before the Skavis moved again, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So far, you think he’s been smart about most things. Maybe he’s smart about that, too.”
“We can hope,” I said. “What did you find about Jessica Blanche?”
“Still working on it. I’ve got feelers out, but I’ll need to follow up with some legwork.”
I blew out a breath. “And I need to get in touch with Elaine and the Ordo. Maybe I can get Helen Beckitt to talk. And I can make some calls to other Wardens. Maybe someone’s heard something about recent White Court activities.”
Murphy rose. “Sounds like we
have a plan.”
“If we repeat it often enough, maybe we’ll even believe it,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ramirez’s contact number went to a restaurant his family ran in eastern Los Angeles. I left a message with someone whose English sounded like a second or third language. It took Ramirez only about ten minutes to call me back.
“White Court?” my fellow Warden said. “Can’t think as I’ve heard anything about them lately, Harry.”
“How about a professional wizard investigator?” I asked him. “Works out of Los Angeles.”
“Elaine Mallory?” he asked. “Tall, pretty, smart, and nearly as charming as myself?”
“That’s the one,” I said. “What do you know about her?”
“Far as I know, she’s straight,” he said. “Moved to town five or six years ago, college in San Diego, and working for an investigative agency out here. She’s got a decent grounding in thaumaturgy from somewhere, but when I ran her through the standard tests, she didn’t score quite high enough to be considered for Council membership.” He was quiet for a second, before saying, in a tone of forced cheer, “Unless we keep on losing people to the vamps, in which case I guess we might lower our standards.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “But you think she knows what she’s doing?”
“Well,” Ramirez drawled, “I hinted that she might want to advertise as something other than a ‘wizard,’ eventually. If we get the time to look away from the war, some hidebound dinosaur might take exception to someone claiming the title.”
I snorted. “Don’t call me a dinosaur. It isn’t fair to the dinosaurs. What did a dinosaur ever do to you?”
“Other than give me a ride right next to this big skinny lunatic? Mallory’s not stupid, and she’s done people some good out here,” Ramirez said. “Lost kids, especially. Couple of exorcisms I wouldn’t have had time to handle. Maybe she can be of some help to you. Though I’ve got one reservation about her.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Her taste in men. I keep asking her out, and she’s turned me down about a dozen times, now.”
“Shocking,” I said.
“I know,” Ramirez replied. “Makes me wonder how smart she could really be. Why?”
