by Jim Butcher
“Oh, right,” I said. I pointed at the catnip bag. “The leaf ’s in there.”
“Isn’t that just going to draw Summer’s goons here?”
I let out a nasty laugh. “No. They can’t see it through the wards around the lab.”
“Then why the big rubber band?”
“I linked Summer’s beacon spell to the matrix around Little Chicago. Every time the leaf gets within a foot of the model, my spell transfers the beacon’s signal to the corresponding location in the city.”
Thomas narrowed his eyes in thought, and then suddenly grinned in understanding as Mister pounced on the catnip again, this time landing near the Field Museum. “If they’re following that beacon, they’ll be running all over town.”
“In two and a half feet of snow,” I confirmed, grinning.
“You’re sadistic.”
“Thank you,” I said solemnly.
“Won’t they figure it out?”
“Sooner or later,” I admitted, “but it should buy us a little time to work with. ’Scuse me.”
I shambled to the door and put on my coat.
“Where to first?” Thomas asked.
“Nowhere just yet. Sit tight.” I grabbed my square-headed snow shovel from the popcorn tin by the door, where it usually resided with my staff, sword cane, and the epically static magic sword, Fidelacchius. Mouse followed me out. It was a job of work to get the door open, and more than a little snow spilled over the threshold. I started with shoveling the stairs and worked my way up, a grave digger in reverse.
Once that was done, I shoveled the little sidewalk, the front porch of the boardinghouse, and the exterior stairs running up to the Willoughbys’ apartment on the second floor. Then I dug a path to the nest of mailboxes by the curb. It took me less time than I thought it would. There was a lot of snow, but it hadn’t formed any layers of ice, and it was basically a question of tossing powder out of the way. Mouse kept watch, and I tried not to throw snow into his face.
We returned to my apartment, and I slung the shovel’s handle back down into the popcorn tin.
Thomas frowned at me. “You had to shovel the walk? Harry…somehow I’m under the impression that you aren’t feeling the urgency here.”
“In the first place,” I said, “I’m not terribly well motivated to bend over backward to save John Marcone’s Armani-clad ass. I wouldn’t lose much sleep over him. In the second place, my neighbors are elderly, and if someone doesn’t clean up the walks they’ll be stuck here. In the third place, I’ve got to do whatever I can to make sure I’m on my landlady’s good side. Mrs. Spunkelcrief is almost deaf, but it’s sort of hard to hide it when assassin demons or gangs of zombies kick down the door. She’s willing to forgive me the occasional wild party because I do things like shovel the walk.”
“It’s easier to replace an apartment than your ass,” Thomas said.
I shrugged. “I was so stiff and sore from yesterday that I had to do something to get my muscles loosened up and moving. The time was going to be gone either way. Might as well take care of my neighbors.” I grimaced. “Besides…”
“You feel bad that your landlady’s building sometimes gets busted up because you live in it,” Thomas said. He shook his head and snorted. “Typical.”
“Well, yeah. But that’s not it.”
He frowned at me, listening.
I struggled to find the right words. “There are a lot of things I can’t control. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few days. I don’t know what I’m going to face, what kind of choices I’m going to have to make. I can’t predict it. I can’t control it. It’s too big.” I nodded at my shovel. “But that, I can predict. I know that if I pick up that shovel and clear the snow from the walkways, it’s going to make my neighbors safer and happier.” I glanced at him and shrugged. “It’s worthwhile to me. Give me a minute to shower.”
He regarded me for a second and then nodded. “Oh,” he said, with the tiniest of smiles. He mimed a sniff and a faint grimace. “I’ll wait. Gladly.”
I cleaned up. We were on the way out the door when the phone rang.
“Harry,” Murphy said. “What the hell is going on out there?”
“Why?” I asked. “What the hell is going on out there?”
“We’ve had at least two dozen…well, I suppose the correct term is ‘sightings.’ Everything from Bigfoot to mysterious balls of light. Naturally it’s all getting shunted to SI.”
I started to answer her, then paused. Marcone and the outfit were involved. While they didn’t have anywhere near the influence in civic affairs that they might have wanted, Marcone had always had sources of information inside the police department-sources his subordinates could, presumably, access as well. It would be best to exercise some caution.
“You calling from the station?” I asked her.
“Yeah.”
“We should talk,” I said.
Murphy might not want to admit that anyone she worked with could be providing information to the outfit, but she wasn’t the sort to stop believing the truth just because she didn’t like it. “I see,” she said. “Where?”
“McAnally’s,” I said. I checked a clock. “Three hours?”
“See you there.”
I hung up and started for the door again. Mouse followed close at my heels, but I turned and nudged him gently back with my leg. “Not this time, boy,” I told him. “The bad guys have a lot of manpower, access to skilled magic, and I need a safe place to come home to. If you’re here there’s no way anyone is going to sneak in and leave me a present that goes boom.”
Mouse huffed out a breath in a sigh, but sat down.
“Keep an eye on Mister, all right? If he starts getting sick, take the catnip away.”
My dog gave the door to the lab a dubious glance.
“Oh, give me a break,” I said. “You’re seven times as big as he is.”
Mouse looked none too confident.
Thomas blinked at me, and then at the dog. “Can he understand you?”
“When it suits him,” I grumped. “He’s smarter than a lot of people I know.”
Thomas took a moment to absorb that, and then faced Mouse a little uncertainly. “Uh, okay, look. What I said about Harry earlier? I wasn’t serious, okay? It was totally a joke.”
Mouse flicked his ears and turned his nose away from Thomas with great nobility.
“What?” I asked, looking between them. “What did you say?”
“I’ll warm up the car,” Thomas said, and retreated to the frozen grey outdoors.
“This is my home,” I complained to no one in particular. “Why do people keep making jokes at my expense in my own freaking home?”
Mouse declined to comment.
I locked up behind me, magically and materially, and scaled Mount Hummer to sit in the passenger seat. The morning was cold and getting colder, especially since I was fresh from the shower, but the seat was rather pleasantly warm. There was no way I’d admit to Thomas that the luxury feature was superior to armored glass, but gosh, it was cozy.
“Right,” Thomas said. “Where are we headed?”
“To where they treat me like royalty,” I said.
“We’re going to Burger King?”
I rubbed the heel of my hand against my forehead and spelled fratricide in a subvocal mutter, but I had to spell out temporary insanity and justifiable homicide, too, before I calmed down enough to speak politely. “Just take a left and drive. Please.”
“Well,” Thomas said, grinning, “since you said ‘please.’”
Chapter Eleven
E xecutive Priority Health was arguably the most exclusive gym in town. Located in downtown Chicago, the business took up the entire second floor of what used to be one of the grand old hotel buildings. Now it had office buildings on the upper levels and a miniature shopping center on the first floor.
Not just anyone could take the private elevator to the second floor. One had to be a member of the
health club, and membership was tightly controlled and extremely expensive. Only the wealthiest and most influential men had a membership card.
Oh, and me.
The magnetic stripe on the back of the card didn’t work when I swiped it through the card reader. No surprise there. I’d had it in my wallet for several months, and I doubt the magnetic signature stored on the card had lasted more than a couple of days. I hit the intercom button on the console.
“Executive Priority,” said a cheerful young woman’s voice. “This is Billie, and how may I serve you?”
Thomas glanced at me and arched an eyebrow, mouthing the words, Serve you?
“You’ll see,” I muttered to him. I addressed the intercom. “My card seems to have stopped working. Harry Dresden and guest, please.”
“One moment, sir,” Billie said. She was back within a few seconds. “I apologize for the problem with your membership card, sir. I’m opening the elevator for you now.”
True to her word, the elevator opened, and Thomas and I got in.
It opened onto the main area of Executive Priority.
“You’re kidding me,” Thomas said. “Since when do you go to the gym?”
It looked pretty typically gymlike from here. Lots and lots of exercise machines and weight benches and dumbbells and mirrors; static bikes and treadmills stood in neatly dressed ranks. They’d paid some madman who thought he was a decorator a lot of money to make the place look hip and unique. Maybe it’s my lack of fashion sense talking, but I thought they should have held out for one of those gorillas who has learned to paint. The results would have been of similar quality, and they could have paid in fresh produce.
Here and there men, mostly white, mostly over forty, suffered through a variety of physical activities. Beside each and every one of them was a personal trainer coaching, supporting, helping.
The trainers were all women, none of them older than their late twenties. They all wore ridiculously brief jogging shorts so tight that it had to be some kind of minor miracle that allowed the blood to keep flowing through the girls’ legs. They all wore T-shirts with the gym’s logo printed on them, also tight-and every single woman there had the kind of body that made her outfit look fantastic. No gym in the world had that many gorgeous girls in its employ.
“Ah,” Thomas said after a moment of looking around. “This isn’t a typical health club, is it?”
“Welcome to the most health-conscious brothel in the history of mankind,” I told him.
Thomas whistled quietly through his teeth, surveying the place. “I’d heard that the Velvet Room had been retooled. This is it?”
“Yeah,” I said.
A brown-haired girl jiggled over to us, her mouth spread in a beauty-contest smile, and for a second I thought her shirt was about to explode under the tension. Bright gold lettering over her left breast read, BILLIE.
“Hello, Mister Dresden,” she chirped. She bobbed her head to Thomas. “Sir. Welcome to Executive Priority. Can I get you a drink before your workout? May I take your coats?”
I held up a hand. “Thanks, Billie, but no. I’m not here for the exercise.”
Her smile stayed locked in place, pretty and meaningless, and she tilted her head to one side.
“I’m here to speak to Ms. Demeter,” I said.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Billie said. “She isn’t in.”
The girl was a confection for the eyes, and I felt sure that the other four senses would feel just as well fed after a bit of indulgence, but she wasn’t a good liar. “Yeah, she is,” I said. “Tell her Harry Dresden is here.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said again, like a machine stuck on repeat. “Ms. Demeter is not in the building.”
I gave her my toothiest smile. “You’re kind of new here, eh, Billie?”
The smile flickered, then stabilized again.
“Thomas.” I sighed. “Give her a visual?”
My brother looked around, then went over to a nearby rack of steel dumbbells and picked up the largest set there, one in each hand. With about as much effort as I’d use to bundle twigs, he twisted the steel bars around each other, forming an asymmetric X shape. He held it up to make sure Billie saw it, and then dropped it at her feet. The weights landed with a forceful thump, and Billie flinched when they did.
“You should see the kinds of things he can bend and break,” I said. “Expensive exercise machines, expensive furniture, expensive clients. I don’t know how hard he could throw some of this stuff around, but I’d be lying if I told you that I wasn’t kinda curious.” I leaned down a little closer and said, “Billie, maybe you should kick this one up the line. I’d hate them to dock your pay to replace all the broken things.”
“I’ll be right back, sir,” Billie said in a squeaky whisper, and scurried away.
“Subtle,” Thomas noted.
I shrugged. “It saves time.”
“How’d you get a membership to a place like this?”
“It’s Marcone’s place. He thinks I’m less likely to trash it if I’m dazzled by friendly boobs.”
“Can’t say I blame him,” Thomas admitted. His eyes locked on one particular girl who was currently at a table, filling out paperwork. She froze in place, and then looked up, very slowly. Her lips parted as she stared at Thomas, and her dark eyes widened. She started breathing faster, and then shook herself and hurriedly looked down again, pretending to read her paperwork.
My brother closed his eyes slowly and then turned his head away from the girl with the kind of steady, deliberate motion one uses to shut a heavy door. When he blinked his eyes open again, their color had shifted from deep grey to a pale grey-white, almost silver.
“You okay?” I asked him quietly.
“Mmmm,” he murmured. “Sorry. Got distracted. There’s…a kind of energy here.”
Which I probably should have thought of, dammit. This building was home to constant, regular acts of lust and desire. Those kinds of activities left a sort of psychic imprint around them, a vibe Thomas must have picked up on.
Vampires like my brother take not blood, but life-energy from their victims. Showing off his supernatural strength might have simplified things for us, but it also cost Thomas some of that energy, the same way an afternoon of hiking might leave you and me particularly hungry.
Usually vampires of the White Court fed during the act of sex. They could induce desire in others, overwhelm their victims with undiluted, primal lust. If he wanted to Thomas could have paralyzed the girl where she stood, stalked over to her, and done whatever he pleased to her. There wouldn’t have been anything she could do to stop him. Hell, she would have begged him to do more, and to hurry up about it.
He wouldn’t do it. Not anymore, anyway. He’d fought that part of himself for years, and he’d finally found a way to keep it under control-by feeding in the equivalent of tiny, harmless nibbles from the customers in the upper-tier beauty salon he owned and operated. I gathered that while it did enable him to remain active and in control of himself, it was nowhere near as satisfying as acquiring energy the old-fashioned way-in a stalking seduction culminating in a burst of lust and ecstasy.
I knew that his Hunger, that inhuman portion of his soul that was driven by naked need, was screaming at him to do exactly that. If he did, though, it could do the girl serious harm, even kill her. My brother wasn’t like that-but denying his Hunger wasn’t something that came naturally. It was a fight. And I knew what drove him to it.
“That girl looks a little like Justine,” I commented.
He froze at the name, his expression hardening. By gradual degrees his eyes darkened to their usual color again. Thomas shook his head and gave me a wry smile. “Does she?”
“Enough,” I said. “You okay?”
“As I ever am,” he said. He didn’t actually thank me, but it was in his voice. I pretended that I hadn’t heard it there, which was what he expected me to do.
It’s a guy thing.
Billie came fibrilla
ting back over to us. “This way, please, sir,” she said, her smile once again firmly in place. She led us rather nervously through the gym, passing the hallway that led to the showers and private “therapy” rooms in back. The door she led us through went to a very plain, practical, businesslike hallway, one you’d find in any office building. She nodded to the last door in the hall, the corner office, and then retreated quietly.
I ambled up to the door, knocked once, and then opened it to find Ms. Demeter sitting in her large but practical office behind her large but practical desk. She was a fit-looking woman in early middle age, lean, well dressed, and reserved. Her real name wasn’t Demeter, but she preferred the professional sobriquet, and now wasn’t the time to needle her.
“Ms. Demeter,” I said, keeping my tone neutral. “Good day.”
She finished turning off her laptop, folded it shut, and put it away in a drawer before she looked up and gave me a quiet nod. “Mister Dresden. What happened to your face?”
“It’s always like this,” I said. “I forgot to put on my makeup today.”
“Ah,” she said. “Will you have a seat?”
“Thanks,” I said. I sat down across the desk from her. “I apologize if I’ve inconvenienced you.”
Her shoulder twitched in a nanoshrug. “It’s nice to know the limitations of those I’ve appointed my receptionist,” she replied. “What can I do for you?” Then she lifted her hand. “Wait. Allow me to rephrase. What can I do to most quickly get rid of you?”
A sensitive guy might have felt a little hurt by that remark. Good thing I’m me. “I’m looking for Marcone,” I told her.
“Have you called his office?”
I blinked slowly at her once. Then I repeated, “I’m looking for Marcone.”
“I’m sure you are,” Demeter said, her expression never flickering. “What does that have to do with me?”
I felt a tight smile strain my lips. “Ms. D, I can’t help but wonder why you instructed your receptionist to tell anyone who asked after you that you weren’t in the office.”
“Perhaps I had some paperwork I needed to get done.”
“Or perhaps you know that Marcone is missing, and you’re using it as a tactic to stall any of his lieutenants who come nosing around looking to fill the void.”
