by Jim Butcher
“Right.” Murphy used a wipe to clean both sides of my hand, and then she put more disinfectant on. It hurt a bit less. “He had contusions consistent with a fall, and he was an old man. No one seen entering or leaving an apartment building with a high-security system, so naturally—”
“—no one looked for a killer,” I finished. “Or reported anything that might have indicated one. Or, wait, did they? Says here that the first officer on the scene found ‘slippery goo’ on the landing above where Reuel fell.”
“But none of the detectives on the scene later found any such thing,” Murphy said. She pressed a gauze pad against the wound from either side and began wrapping medical tape around to hold the pads on. “The first officer was a rookie. They figured he was seeing a killing where there wasn’t one so he could get in on a murder investigation.”
I frowned, turning the printouts of the photographs around. “See here? The sleeves of Reuel’s coat are wet. You can see the discoloration.”
She looked and admitted, “Maybe. There’s no mention of it, though.”
“Slippery goo. It could have been ectoplasm.”
“Is that too tight? Ecto-what?”
I flexed my fingers a little, testing the bandage. “It’s fine. Ectoplasm. Matter from the Nevernever.”
“That’s the spirit world, right? Faerieland?”
“Among other things.”
“And stuff from there is goo?”
“It turns into goo when there’s not any magic animating it. As long as the magic is there, it’s as good as real. Like when Kravos made a body that looked like mine and came gunning for you.”
Murphy shivered and started putting things back into her kit. “So when whatever it is that has made this ecto goo into matter has gone, it turns back into . . . ?”
“Slime,” I said. “It’s clear and slippery, and it evaporates in a few minutes.”
“So something from the Nevernever could have killed Reuel,” Murphy said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Or someone could have opened up a portal into the apartment building. There’s usually some gunk left when you open a portal. Dust drifting out from the Nevernever. So they could have opened a portal, then gotten out the same way.”
“Whoa! Hold it. I thought Faerieland was monsters only. People can go into the Nevernever?”
“If you know the right magic, yeah. It’s full of things that are fairly dangerous, though. You don’t just cruise through on a Sunday stroll.”
“Jesus Christ,” Murphy muttered. “So someone—”
“Or something,” I interjected.
“—or something could have gotten into the building and out again. Just like that. Past all the locks and guards and cameras. How scary is that?”
“Could have, yeah. Stepped in, pitched grampa down the stairs, stepped out again.”
“God. That poor old man.”
“I don’t think he was helpless, Murph. Reuel was mixed up with the faeries. I kind of doubt his hands were squeaky clean.”
She nodded. “Okay. Had he made any supernatural enemies?”
I held up the picture of the body. “Looks like it.”
Murpy shook her head. She swayed a little bit, and then sat down next to me, leaning her head against the corner of the couch. “So what’s the next step?”
“I go digging. Pound the proverbial pavement.”
“You don’t look so good. Get some rest first. A shower. Some food. Maybe a haircut.”
I rubbed my eyes with my good hand. “Yeah,” I said.
“And you tell me, when you know something.”
“Murph, if this was something from the Nevernever, it’s going to be out of your”—I almost said “league,”—“jurisdiction.”
She shrugged. “If it came into my town and hurt someone I’m responsible for protecting, I want to make it answer for that.” She closed her eyes. “Same as you. Besides. You promised.”
Well, she had me there. “Yeah. Okay, Murph. When I find something out, I’ll call.”
“All right,” she said. She curled up in the corner of the couch again, heavy eyes closing. She leaned her head back, baring the lines of her throat. After a moment, she asked, “Have you heard from Susan?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“But her articles are still coming into the Arcane. She’s all right.”
I nodded. “I guess so.”
“Have you found anything that will help her yet?”
I sighed and shook my head. “No, not yet. It’s like pounding my head against a wall.”
She halfway smiled. “With your head, the wall breaks first. You’re the most stubborn man I’ve ever met.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
Murphy nodded. “You’re a good man, Harry. If anyone can help her, it’s you.”
I looked down so she wouldn’t see the tears that made my eyes swim a little, and started putting the file back together. “Thanks, Murph. That means a lot to me.”
She didn’t answer. I looked up and saw that her mouth had fallen slightly open and her body was totally relaxed, a cheek resting on the arm of the couch.
“Murph?” I asked. She didn’t stir. I got up and left the file on the chair. I found a blanket and draped it lightly over her, tucking it in around her. She made a soft sound in the back of her throat and nuzzled her cheek closer to the couch.
“Sleep well, Murph,” I said. Then I headed for the door. I locked what I could behind me, made my way back to the Beetle, and drove toward home.
I ached everywhere. Not from sore muscles, but from simple exhaustion. My wounded hand felt like a big throbbing knot of cramping muscle, doused in gasoline and set on fire.
I hurt even more on the inside. Poor Murph had been torn up badly. She was terrified of the things she might have to face, but that made her no less determined to face them. That was courage, and more than I had. I at least was sure that I could hit back if one of the monsters came after me. Murphy didn’t have any such certainty.
Murphy was my friend. She’d saved my life before. We’d fought side by side. She needed my help again. She had to face her fear. I understood that. She needed me to help make it happen, but I didn’t have to like it. In her condition, she would be extra vulnerable to any kind of attack like the one by Kravos the year before. And if she got hit again before she had a chance to piece herself back together, it might not simply wound her—it might break her entirely.
I wasn’t sure I could live with myself if that happened.
“Dammit,” I muttered. “So help me, Murph, I’m going to make sure you come out of this okay.”
I shoved my worries about Murphy to the back of my mind. The best way to protect her would be to focus on this case, to get cracking. But my brain felt like something had crawled into it and died. The only cracking it was going to be doing was the kind that would land me in a rubber room and a sleeveless coat.
I wanted food. Sleep. A shower. If I didn’t take some time to put myself back together, I might walk right into something that would kill me and not notice it until it was too late.
I drove back to my apartment, which is the basement of a rooming house more than a century old. I parked the Beetle outside and got my rod and staff out of the car to take with me. It wasn’t much of a walk between my apartment and the car, but I’d been accosted before. Vampires can be really inconsiderate that way.
I thumped down the stairs to my apartment, unlocked the door, and murmured the phrase that would disarm my wards long enough to let me get inside. I slipped in, and my instincts screamed at me that I was not alone.
I lifted the blasting rod, gathering my power and sending it humming through the focus so that the tip burst into brilliant crimson light that flooded my apartment.
And then there she was, a slender woman standing by my cold fireplace, all graceful curves and poised reserve. She wore a pair of blue jeans over long, coltish legs, with a simple scarlet cotton T-shirt. A silver pentacle hung out
side the shirt, resting on the curve of modest breasts, and it gleamed in the light from my readied blasting rod. Her skin was pale, like the inner bark of an oak, the living part of the tree, her hair the brown-gold of ripe wheat, her eyes the grey of storm clouds. Her fine mouth twitched, first into a smile and then into a frown, and she lifted elegant, long-fingered hands to show me empty palms.
“I let myself in,” she murmured. “I hope you don’t mind. You should change your wards more often.”
I lowered the blasting rod, too stunned to speak, my heart lurching in my chest. She lowered her hands and closed the distance between us. She lifted herself onto her toes, but she was tall enough that it wasn’t much of an effort for her to kiss my cheek. She smelled like wildflowers and sun-drenched summer afternoons. She drew back enough to focus on my face and my eyes, her own expression gentle and concerned. “Hello, Harry.”
And I said, in a bare whisper, fighting through the shock, “Hello, Elaine.”
Chapter Eight
Elaine walked past me, making a circuit around my apartment. It wasn’t much of a tour. The place consists of a living room and a tiny bedroom. The kitchen is pretty much just an alcove with a sink and a fridge. The floor is smooth grey stone, but I’d covered a lot of it with a few dozen rugs. My furniture is all secondhand and comfortable. It doesn’t even come close to matching. Bookshelves fill up most of the wall space, and where they don’t, I have several tapestries, plus a Star Wars movie poster Billy gave me for Christmas. It’s the old poster, the one with Princess Leia clinging to Luke’s leg.
Anyway, that was my apartment on a normal day. Lately it had suffered from disrepair. It didn’t smell so great, and pizza boxes and empty Coke cans had overflowed the trash can and spilled over a significant portion of the kitchen floor. You could barely walk without stepping on clothing that needed to be washed. My furniture was covered with scribbled-on papers and discarded pens and pencils.
Elaine walked through it all like a Red Cross worker through a war zone and shook her head. “I know you weren’t expecting me, Harry, but I didn’t think I’d be overdressed. You live in this?”
“Elaine,” I choked out. “You’re alive.”
“A little less of a compliment than I would have hoped for, but I guess it could have been worse.” She regarded me from near the kitchen. “I’m alive, Harry.” Her face flickered with a trace of apprehension. “How are you feeling?”
I lowered myself onto the couch, papers crunching beneath me. I released the power held ready to strike, and the glowing tip of the blasting rod went out, leaving the apartment in darkness. I kept staring at her afterimage on my vision. “Shocked,” I said finally. “This isn’t happening. Hell’s bells, this has got to be some sort of trick.”
“No. It’s me. If I was something out of the Nevernever, could I have crossed your threshold uninvited? Do you know anyone else who knows how you set up your wards?”
“Anyone could figure it out eventually,” I said.
“All right. Does anyone else know that you failed your driver’s test five times in one week? Or that you sprained your shoulder trying to impress me going out for football our freshman year? That we soulgazed on our first night together? I think I can still remember our locker combination, if you like.”
“My God, Elaine.” I shook my head. Elaine, alive. My brain could not wrap itself around the idea. “Why didn’t you contact me?”
I saw her, dimly, lean against the wall. She was quiet for a while, as though she had to shape her words carefully. “At first because I didn’t even know if you had survived. And after that . . .” She shook her head. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Wasn’t sure you’d want me to. So much happened.”
My shock and disbelief faded before a sudden aching pain, and an old, old anger. “That’s putting it mildly,” I said. “You tried to destroy me.”
“No,” she said. “God, no, Harry. You don’t understand. I never wanted that.”
My voice gained a hard edge. “Which is why you hit me with that binding. Why you held me down while Justin tried to destroy me.”
“He never wanted you dead—”
“No, he just wanted to break into my head. Wanted to control me. Make me into some kind of . . . of . . .” Words failed me in the face of my frustration.
“Thrall,” Elaine said quietly. “He’d have wrapped you in enough spells to guarantee your loyalty. To make you his thrall.”
“And that’s worse than dead. And you helped him.”
Her voice crackled with anger of its own. “Yes, Harry. I helped him. That’s what thralls do.”
My rising ire abruptly quieted. “What . . . what are you saying?”
I saw her dim shape bow its head. “Justin caught me about two weeks before he sent that demon to capture you. That day I stayed home sick, remember? By the time you got home from school, he had me. I tried to fight him, but I was a child. I didn’t have enough experience to resist him. And after he had enthralled me, I didn’t see why I should fight anymore.”
I stared at her for a long minute. “So you’re telling me that you didn’t have any choice,” I breathed. “He forced you to do it. He made you help him.”
“Yes.”
“Why the hell should I believe you?”
“I don’t expect you to.”
I rose and paced back and forth restlessly. “I can’t believe you’re trying to tell me that the devil made you do it. Do you have any idea how lame that excuse sounds?”
Elaine watched me carefully, her grey eyes pensive and sad. “It wasn’t an excuse, Harry. Nothing can excuse the kind of pain I put you through.”
I stopped and frowned at her. “Then why are you telling me?”
“Because it needs to be said,” she murmured. “Because that’s what happened. You deserve to know that.”
It was quiet for a long time, then I asked, “He really had enthralled you?”
Elaine shivered and nodded.
“What was it like?”
She fretted at her lower lip. “I didn’t know it was happening. Not at the time. I didn’t have the ability to think clearly. Justin told me that you just needed to be shown what to do and that if I would hold you still long enough to let him explain things to you it would all work out. I believed him. Trusted him.” She shook her head. “I never wanted to hurt you, Harry. Never. I’m sorry.”
I sat down and rubbed my face with my hands, my emotions running high and out of control again. Without the anger to support me, all that was left inside was pain. I thought I had gotten over Elaine’s loss, her betrayal. I thought I had forgotten it and moved on. I was wrong. The wounds burst open again, as painful as they had ever been. Maybe more so. I had to fight to control my breathing, my tone.
I had loved her. I wanted very badly to believe her.
“I . . . I looked for you,” I said quietly. “In fire and water. I had spirits combing the Earth for any trace of you. Hoping that you’d survived.”
She pushed away from the wall and walked to the fireplace. I heard her putting in wood, and then she murmured something soft and low. Flame licked up over the logs easily, smoothly, low and blue, then settled into a dark golden light. I watched her profile as she stared down at the fire. “I got out of the house before you and Justin were finished,” she said finally. “His spells had begun to unravel, and I was struggling against them. Confused, terrified. I must have run. I don’t even remember doing it.”
“But where have you been?” I asked. “Elaine, I looked for you for years. Years.”
“Where you couldn’t have found me, Harry. You or anyone else. I found sanctuary. A place to hide. But there was a price, and that’s why I’m here.” She looked up at me, and though her features were calm and smooth, I could see the fear in her eyes, hear it coloring her voice. “I’m in trouble.”
My answer came out at once. For me, chivalry isn’t dead; it’s an involuntary reflex. It could have been any woman asking for help, and I’d have said the s
ame thing. It might have taken me a second or two longer, but I would have. For Elaine, there was no need to think about it for even that long. “I’ll help.”
Her shoulders sagged and she nodded, pressing her lips together and bowing her head. “Thank you. Thank you, Harry. I hate doing this, I hate bringing this to you after all this time. But I don’t know where else to turn.”
“No,” I said, “it’s all right. Really. What’s going on? Why do you think you’re in trouble? What do you mean, you’re paying a price?”
“It’s complicated,” she said. “But the short version is that I was granted asylum by the Summer Court of the Sidhe.”
My stomach dropped about twenty feet.
“I built up a debt to Titania, the Summer Queen, in exchange for her protection. And now it’s time to pay it off.” She took a deep breath. “There’s been a murder within the realms of the Sidhe.”
I rubbed at my eyes. “And Titania wants you to be her Emissary. She wants you to find the killer and prove that the Winter Court is to blame. She told you that you would be contacted tonight by Mab’s Emissary, but she didn’t tell you who it was going to be.”
Elaine’s eyes widened in shock, and she fell silent. We stared at one another for a long moment before she whispered, “Stars and stones.” She pushed her hair back from her face with one hand, in what I knew to be a nervous gesture, even if it didn’t look it. “Harry, if I don’t succeed, if I don’t fulfill my debt to her, I’m . . . it’s going to be very bad for me.”
“Hooboy,” I muttered, “tell me about it. Mab’s more or less got me over the same barrel.”
Elaine swore quietly. “What are we going to do?”
“Uh,” I said.
She looked at me expectantly.
I scowled. “I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Uh.”
She rose and took a few long-legged strides across the living room and back, agitated. “There must be something . . . some way out of this. God, sometimes their sense of humor makes me sick. Mab and Titania are laughing right now.”
If I’d had the energy, I’d have been pacing, too. I closed my eyes and tried to think. If I didn’t succeed on Mab’s behalf, she wouldn’t grant rights of passage to the Council. The Council would judge that I had failed my trial, and they’d wrap me up and deliver me to the vampires. I didn’t know the specifics of Elaine’s situation, but I doubted she had a deal that was any less fatal. My head hurt.
