Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files

by Jim Butcher

  So it was entirely possible that he was on the up-and-up. Or at least that he was as sincere as I was about following through on the whole alliance thing. We had to get his McGuffin and get out again. Until then, I was betting, he might be good to his word.

  And after that, everything would be up in the air.

  On the other hand, Nicodemus had gone out of his way to remove as much memory of himself as possible from the human race, by destroying records of his deeds over the centuries. Guys who are on the up-and-up don’t go to those lengths to hide what they’ve done.

  Not that it mattered. Mab had given her word. I had to play nice until we had grabbed the loot from Hades, or until Nicodemus tried to stick a knife in my back.

  Fun, fun, fun.

  I flipped to the second page of the folder and found a photo of a woman I knew, and hadn’t seen in . . . Hell’s bells, had it been almost ten years? She hadn’t changed much in that time, except for maybe looking leaner and harder. I wasn’t sure she’d be at all happy to see me, and I knew for damned sure what she would think of Nicodemus.

  And since when had I become the guy that things happened to ten years ago?

  Nicodemus continued in his lecture voice. “Entry to the target in the Nevernever requires us to find a matching site here in the mortal world. That means breaking into a high-security facility in the real world before we can even get started in the Nevernever.”

  I raised my hand.

  “Pursuant to that,” Nicodemus said, and then paused. He sighed. “Yes, Mr. Dresden?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “She’s never going to work with you.”

  “Probably not,” Nicodemus agreed. “She may, however, work with you. We need an expert in security systems with a working knowledge of the supernatural world. The pool of such individuals is rather small. I’ve arranged a meeting with her at a local event in approximately ninety minutes. You and Miss Ascher will make contact and convince her to join our cause.”

  “Suppose she won’t?” I asked.

  “Be more convincing,” he said. “We need her in order to proceed.”

  I clenched my teeth, and then nodded once. Hell, if he needed her to make it happen, then by screwing this up, maybe I could make sure it didn’t. “Fine. But it’s me and Murphy.”

  “No,” Ascher said. “It’s me and Binder.”

  “I’m afraid the event is a formal one,” Nicodemus said. “I’ve taken the liberty of securing appropriate attire and identities for Dresden and Miss Ascher, neither of which would be compatible with Miss Murphy or Binder. Perhaps Miss Murphy could serve as your driver. She has the shoes for it.”

  I couldn’t actually hear Karrin grind her teeth, but I knew she had.

  “Binder,” Nicodemus said, “I have another errand for you. You’ll need to pick up the fourth—pardon, Miss Murphy, the fifth—member of the team at the train station. He’s stated that he’ll only meet someone he knows.”

  Binder nodded once. “Who is it?”

  “Goodman Grey.”

  Binder’s face went pale. “Ah. Yes, I’ve worked with the gent.”

  “Who is he?” Ascher asked.

  “He’s . . . not a man to cross,” Binder said. “But a pro. I’ll pick him up. Smoother that way.”

  Ascher pressed her lips together, as if she didn’t like it, but nodded. “Fine, then.” She looked down the table at me and smiled. “Well, Dresden, it looks like it’s time to put on our party dress.”

  “Gee,” I said. “What fun.”

  And I closed the folder on the picture of Anna Valmont.

  Eight

  Deirdre brought me a garment bag and pointed me to a small employees’ kitchen and break room with another pair of work lights set up in it. I went in, closed the door, and opened the garment bag. There was a black tux inside with all the necessary accoutrements. I held it up enough to determine that it looked like a tolerable fit.

  For a moment, I had a few paranoid misgivings. What if the entire point of the exercise had been to get me to take off the coat so that they could open fire with a machine gun and grease me through the wall? I already knew what it was like to be shot, and I was pretty well over the experience. Visions of Sonny Corleone danced in my head.

  But I didn’t think that was going to happen. Karrin was on guard outside. There was no way they’d move a gun into position without her at least making noise to warn me. Then, too, Nicodemus had plans in motion. I didn’t think he’d want to jeopardize his “faithful associate” image until he could screw everyone over much more dramatically and permanently. And if he just murdered me outright, Mab would take it personally. I don’t care how long you’ve been in business. If you cross Mab, you can skip your next five-year plan.

  So I doffed the coat, stripped down, and started getting dressed in the tux.

  I was at pretty much the damnedest point of the process when the door opened again, and Hannah Ascher prowled into the room, carrying a garment bag of her own.

  She gave me a slow and blatant once-over, that small smirk still on her mouth.

  I’m pretty sure the temperature of the room didn’t literally go up, but I couldn’t have sworn to it. Some women have a quality about them, something completely intangible and indefinable, which gets called a lot of different things, depending on which society you’re in. I always think of it as heat, fire. It doesn’t have to be about sex, but it often is—and it definitely was with Hannah Ascher.

  I was extremely aware of her body, and her eyes. Her expression told me that she knew exactly what effect she was having on me, and that she didn’t mind having it in the least. I’d say that my libido kicked into overdrive, except that didn’t seem sufficient to cover the rush of purely physical hunger that suddenly hit me.

  Hannah Ascher was a damned attractive woman. And I’d been on that island for a long, long time.

  I turned my face away from her and tried to ignore her while I laid out my cummerbund. Mighty wizards do not get rattled because someone sees them standing around in their boxer briefs.

  “Damn, Dresden,” she said, taking a few steps to one side and looking me over again. A slow smile spread over her mouth. “Do you work out?”

  “Uh,” I said. “Parkour.”

  The answer seemed to amuse her. “Well. It’s definitely working for you.” She hung the garment bag up on a cabinet handle and unzipped it by feel, her eyes on me the whole time. “So many scars.” She had long arms. Her fingers brushed my shoulder. “What’s that one?”

  The touch sent a zing of sensation down my spine and through my belly. There wasn’t anything magically coercive about it. I’d been on alert for that kind of nonsense from the moment my feet had hit the shore. It was worse than that—chemistry, pure and simple. My body had the idea that Ascher was exactly what I needed, and it wasn’t paying any attention to my brain.

  I pulled my shoulder away from her, gave her a glare, and said, “Hey. Do you mind?”

  She folded her arms, her smile widening. “Not at all. Where’d you get it?”

  I glowered and turned back to my tux. “The FBI shot me, maybe twelve years ago.”

  “Seriously?” Hannah asked. “It faded out really well.”

  “It’s like that with wizards,” I said.

  “Your left hand,” she said. “That’s from fire.”

  “Vampire’s flunky,” I said. “Homemade flamethrower.”

  “Which Court?” she asked.

  “Black.”

  “Interesting,” she said, and stripped out of her sweater in one smooth motion.

  Her body was exactly as pleasant to look at as the contours of the sweater had promised, possibly more so. My libido approved vigorously.

  I hurriedly turned my back. “Hey.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” she asked, something like laughter in her voice. “Turning your back, really? On this? What kind of big-time badass are you, anyway, Dresden?”

  “The kind who doesn’t know y
ou, Miss Ascher,” I said.

  “That’s a fixable problem, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice teasing. “And it’s Miss Ascher all of a sudden, huh? I wonder why that is.”

  Her black satin bra hit the counter in my peripheral vision. It had little bits of frilly lace along the edges.

  I hurriedly jumped into the pants before I embarrassed myself. “Look,” I said. “We’re working together. Can we just get the job done, please?”

  “Not nearly so many scars on your back,” she noted. “You don’t run from much, do you?”

  “I run all the time,” I said, stuffing my arms into the shirt. “But if you let yourself get attacked from behind a lot, you don’t get scars. You get a hole in the ground.”

  Her boots made some clunking sounds on the floor. Socks and jeans joined the bra on the counter. “This thief we’re picking up,” she said. “You two have some history, huh?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “She stole my car.”

  She let out a brief laugh. “And you let her?”

  “She gave it back,” I said. “I bailed her out of trouble once.”

  “Think you can get her to go with us?”

  “If it was just me, it would be more likely,” I said.

  “Or maybe you’d try to throw a wrench into the works by making sure she didn’t get on board,” she said, her tone wry. “After all, you like Nicodemus so much.”

  Oops. The woman was sharp. “What?” I asked.

  “Based on your response, I’m going to assume that you don’t have much of a poker face, either,” she said. Cloth made soft rustling sounds. “Don’t feel bad. It’s one of the things I’m good at. I’ve got a feel for people.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that I can tell that right now, you’re wound up tighter than twenty clock springs,” she said. “You’re nervous and scared and angry, and you’re about to explode with the need to have sex with something. I’ve met guys fresh out of prison who aren’t bursting at the seams as hard as you.”

  I paused in the midst of fastening cuff links.

  “Seriously, I can promise you that you are impaired right now. You should blow off a little steam. Be good for you.”

  “You’re an expert, eh?” I asked. My voice sounded a little rough.

  “On this?” she asked, her voice teasing again. “I’m not bad. Zip me?”

  I turned to find her facing away from me. She was wearing the hell out of a little black dress accented with shining black sequins. Her legs were excellent. There wasn’t much of a back to the dress, but there was a short zipper running a few inches up from the top of her hips. I was pretty sure she could have managed it alone. But I took a step over to her and did it up anyway.

  She smelled like late-afternoon sunshine on wildflowers. Her long, curling hair touched the backs of my hands as they moved.

  I felt the Winter in me stirring, taking notice of whatever had gotten to my sex drive, hungry for an outlet. That wasn’t a good thing. Winter thought sex was almost as much fun as violence, and that they went even better mixed together. Like chocolate and peanut butter.

  I started multiplying numbers in my head and stepped away again, focusing on getting dressed, and eight times eight, and putting on socks without sitting down or noticing the woman whose gaze remained on me.

  “Man,” she said finally. “You’ve been burned more than once.”

  I fastened the pretied tie onto the collar and straightened it by feel. “You have no idea.”

  “Fine,” she said, her voice steady and calm. “You don’t want to have fun at work, that’s cool. I like you. I like your style. But this job is important to me, and to my partner. Get it right. You screw us over, and you and I are going to have a problem.”

  “You really think you can take on a Wizard of the White Council, Miss Ascher?” I asked.

  “I have so far,” she said, without a trace of threat or bravado.

  I turned to face her and found her on something almost like eye level with me, thanks to a pair of heels that went with the dress. She was fastening a diamond tennis bracelet onto her left wrist.

  I stepped up close to her and took the ends of the bracelet in my fingers. “You should hear my terms, too,” I said, and as I did, I could hear the Winter in my voice, making it quiet and cold and hard. “This town is my home. You hurt any mortals in my town, I take you out with the rest of the trash. And you should remember the state of my back, if you start thinking about putting a knife in it. Try it, and I’ll bury you.” The clasp closed, and I looked up to see her keeping a straight face—but I could see considerable uncertainty behind it. She drew her arm back from me a shade too quickly, and kept her eyes on my center of balance, as if she was expecting me to take a swing at her.

  I’d had to talk tough to monsters and dangerous people before. I just couldn’t remember doing it while sharing a somewhat intimate domestic moment, like getting dressed together, or while helping them put on jewelry. There was something in that gesture that made Hannah Ascher a person first, a woman, and a dangerous warlock second. And I had effectively threatened her during that moment—which had probably just made me, to her, a dangerous Warden of the White Council slash paranormal criminal thug first, and a human being second.

  Super. Harry Dresden, intimidator of women. Probably not the best foot to get off on with someone with whom I was about to face considerable intrigue and danger.

  Maybe next time, I’d just stick a gun in her face.

  “You look great,” I said in a voice that sounded a lot gentler than it had a few seconds before. “Let’s get to work.”

  Nine

  The Peninsula is one of the ritzier of the ritzy hotels in Chicago, and it has a grand ballroom measurable in hectares. The serious events of Chicago’s nightlife rarely start before eight—you need time for people to get home from work and get all pretty before they show up looking fabulous—so when we arrived around seven thirty, Ascher and I were unfashionably early.

  “I’m going to be right down here on the street,” Karrin said from the front seat of the black town car Nicodemus had provided. She had checked it for explosives. I’d gone over it for less physical dangers.

  “Not sure how long it will take,” I said. “Cops going to let you loiter?”

  “I still know a few guys on the force,” she said. “But I’ll circle the block if I have to. If you get in trouble, send up a flare.” She offered me a plastic box with a boutonniere made from a sunset-colored rose in it. “Don’t forget your advertising.”

  “Not like I need it,” I said. “I’ll recognize her.”

  “And she’ll recognize you,” Karrin said. “If she doesn’t know she’s supposed to talk to you, she might avoid you. It’s not exactly hard to see you coming.”

  “Fine.” I took it, opened the box, and managed to stab myself in the finger with the pin while trying to put the damned thing on my lapel.

  “Here,” Ascher said. She took the flower, wiped the pin off on a tissue, and passed it to Karrin, along with whatever tiny bit of my blood had been on it. Then she fixed the flower neatly to the tux. She wasn’t making any particular effort to vamp, but her dress was cut low, giving me several eyefuls during the process. I tried not to notice and was partially successful.

  “Here we go,” Karrin said, and got out of the car. She came around and opened the door for me. I got out, and helped Ascher out, and she flashed enough shapely leg to keep anyone on the hotel staff out front from noticing me except in passing. Karrin got back in the car and vanished with quiet efficiency, and I gave Ascher my arm and escorted her inside.

  “Try not to look like that,” Ascher said under her breath, after we were in the elevator.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like you’re expecting ninjas to leap out of the trash cans. This is a party.”

  “Everyone knows there’s no such things as ninjas,” I scoffed. “But it will be something. Count on it.”

  “Not if we
do it smooth,” Ascher said.

  “You’re going to have to trust me on this one,” I replied. “There’s always something. It doesn’t matter how smooth you are, or how smart the plan is, or how plain the mission—something goes wrong. Nothing’s ever simple. That’s how it works.”

  Ascher eyed me. “You have a very negative attitude. Just relax and we’ll get this done. Try not to look around so much. And for God’s sake, smile.”

  I smiled.

  “Maybe without clenching your jaw.”

  The doors opened and we walked down a hallway to the grand ballroom. There were a couple of security guys outside the door dressed in the hotel’s colors, trying to look friendly and helpful. I breezed up and presented them with our engraved invitation and fake IDs. I’d say this for Nicodemus—he didn’t do things halfway, and his production values were outrageous. The fake driver’s license (in the name of Howard Delroy Oberheit, cute) looked more real than my actual Illinois driver’s license ever had. They eyed me, and then my license, closely, but they couldn’t spot it as a fake. Ascher (née Harmony Armitage) gave the guards a big smile and some friendly chatter, and they didn’t look twice at her ID.

  I couldn’t really blame them. Ascher looked like exactly the kind of woman who would be showing up to a blue-chip evening event. In me, the hotel’s thugs recognized another of their kind—and one who was taller and had better scars than they did. But with Hannah on my arm, they let me pass.

  The interior of the ballroom had been decorated in a kind of Chinese motif. Lots of red fabric draped in swaths from the ceiling to create semi-curtained partitions, paper lanterns glowing cheerfully, stands of bamboo, a Zen garden with its sand groomed in impeccable curves. The hotel staff was mostly women in red silk tunics with mandarin collars. Caterers in white coats and black ties were just getting a buffet fully assembled. When we came in, I couldn’t see them, but I could hear a live band running through a number—seven pieces of brass, drums, and a piano, playing a classic ballroom piece.