by Jim Butcher
“Subtle,” Valmont said. “You.”
I sniffed and ignored that remark, as it deserved.
“Ah,” Nicodemus said, as we reached the pool of light around the conference table. “Mr. Dresden. I’m glad to see you here on time. Will you have doughnuts?”
I looked past him to the snack table. It was indeed piled with doughnuts of a number of varieties. Some of them even had sprinkles. My mouth started a quick impression of a minor tributary.
But they were doughnuts of darkness. Evil, damned doughnuts, tainted by the spawn of darkness . . .
. . . which could obviously be redeemed only by passing through the fiery, cleansing inferno of a wizardly digestive tract.
I walked around the table to the doughnut tray, eyeing everyone seated there as I did.
Nicodemus and Deirdre were present, looking much as they had yesterday. Binder and Ascher sat there, too, a little way down the table, speaking quietly to each other. Binder, in his dark, sedate suit, was eating some kind of pastry that didn’t look familiar to me.
Ascher had a plate covered in the remnants of doughnuts that she was apparently struggling to redeem from the hellfire even now. She had changed back into her jeans-and-sweater look, and bound up her hair. A few ringlets escaped here and there and bounced slightly as she spoke. She gave me a small nod as I went by, which I returned.
Seated at the table a little apart from everyone else was an unremarkable-looking man who hadn’t been there yesterday. Late thirties, if I had to guess, medium height, solid-seeming, as if he had more muscle to him than was readily apparent beneath jeans and a loose-fitting designer athletic jacket. His features were clean-cut, pleasant without being particularly handsome. He had a slightly dark complexion, and the right bone structure to pass for a resident just about anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, and in chunks of the rest of the world. His dark hair had a few threads of grey in it.
One thing about him wasn’t average—his eyes. They were kind of golden brown with flecks of bronze in them, but that wasn’t the strange part. There was a sheen to them, almost like a trick of the light, a semi-metallic refraction from their surface, there for a second and then gone again. They weren’t human eyes. They looked human in every specification, but something about them was just off.
Something else about him bothered me, too . . .
He was entirely relaxed.
Nobody in that damned building was relaxed. It was an inherently disturbing place, riddled with dark energy. It was filled with dangerous beings. I know I looked tense. Karrin was walled up behind her poker face, but you knew she was an instant away from violence. Binder looked like he was trying to watch everyone at once, the better to know when to beat a prudent retreat, and Ascher’s gaze kept hunting for targets. Nicodemus and his daughter sat with a kind of studied air of disinterest, feigning confidence and relaxation, but they were the paranoid type by nature. When I looked at them, I knew they were ready to throw down at a moment’s notice. Even Valmont looked like she was ready to dart suddenly in any direction necessary, like a rat daring a trip across open floor for something it wanted to eat.
Every one of us was exuding body language that warned the others that we were potentially violent or at least hyperalert.
Not the new guy.
He sat slouched in his chair with his eyes half-closed as though he could barely keep them open. There was a half-empty Styrofoam cup of coffee in front of him. He’d drawn hash marks in it with his thumb and played a few rounds of tic-tac-toe with himself in a gesture of pure boredom. There was no sense of violence or alertness in him, no wariness, no caution. None at all.
Now, that made the hairs on my neck stand up.
Either this guy was stupid or insane, or he was dangerous enough that he genuinely was not bothered by this roomful of people—and Nicodemus did not seem the type to recruit the stupid or insane for a job like this one.
I secured a doughnut and coffee. I checked with Karrin and Valmont. Neither wanted to save the doughnuts from Nicodemus’s corruptive influence. Not everyone can be a crusader like me.
“I was pleased to hear that you were successful last night,” Nicodemus said. “Welcome to our enterprise, Miss Valmont.”
“Thank you,” Valmont said, her tone carefully neutral. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am to have this opportunity.”
That brought a knife-edged smile to Nicodemus’s face. “Are you?”
She smiled back, a pretty and empty expression. Then as I sat, she settled into the chair next to me, making it a statement to the room. Karrin took up her stance behind me, as before.
“You have the files, I trust?” Nicodemus asked.
I reached into my duster and paused with my hand there for a moment too long before beginning to draw the file out again, a shade too quickly.
Everyone jumped, or performed some vague equivalent of the gesture. Binder flinched. Nicodemus’s fingers tightened slightly on the tabletop. Deirdre’s hair twitched, as though thinking about becoming animate and edged. Ascher’s shoulder rolled in a tiny back-and-forth motion, as though she’d stopped herself from lifting a hand in a defensive gesture.
The new guy remained lazily confident. He might have smiled, very slightly.
I put the file on the tabletop, tilted my head at the new guy, and asked, “Who’s he?”
Nicodemus stared at me for a moment before answering. “Everyone, please meet Goodman Grey. Mr. Grey has kindly consented to assist us in our endeavor. I’ve already briefed him on each of you.”
Grey looked up and swept those odd eyes up and down the table.
They stopped and locked on Karrin.
“Not everyone,” he said. His voice was a resonant baritone, with a very gentle accent on it that might have been from somewhere deep in the American South. “I don’t believe you mentioned this woman, Nicodemus.”
“This is Karrin Murphy,” Nicodemus replied. “Formerly of the Chicago Police Department.”
Grey stared at her for a long time and then said, “The loup-garou videotape. You were in it with Dresden.”
“Set the Wayback Machine for a damned long time ago,” I said. “That tape went missing.”
“Yes,” Grey said, not quite amicably. “And I wasn’t actually talking to you, wizard, was I now?”
That made everyone at the table notice. It got quiet and they got still, waiting to see what would happen next.
One thing you learn hanging out with people like Mab—you don’t show weakness to predators. Especially not to the really confident ones.
“Not yet. I should ask you,” I replied, “how thick do you think that wall behind you might be? When you go flying through it a few seconds from now, do you think you’ll knock out a whole section, or just a little chunk the size of your head and shoulders?”
Grey blinked at that, and then turned a wide smile on me. “Seriously? You want to whip them out already? You’ve been here for about two minutes.”
I took a bite of my doughnut, swallowed it (heavenly), and said, “You’re not the toughest thing I’ve ever seen. You’re not even close.”
“Oh,” Grey said. “You don’t say.”
Though he didn’t rise or stir, the air got thick.
Karrin broke the silent tension by putting a small, restraining hand on my shoulder. “That was me in the video,” she said.
Grey’s eyes went back to her. “You took a shot right past this idiot’s ear to take out that guy behind him. That takes some resolve. Good for you.”
“I’m a better shot now,” she said.
Grey lifted an eyebrow. “Damn, threats from both of you?” He turned his gaze on Valmont. “How about you, sister? Want to jump on this train?”
Valmont didn’t meet his gaze. “I don’t know you,” she said.
Grey snorted. He considered me for a moment. Then he said, “Nicodemus?”
“Hmmm?”
“Do you need the wizard for the rest of the plan?”
“I’m
afraid so.”
“What about Murphy?”
“Not particularly.”
Grey exhaled through his nose, his eyes glittering. “I see.” Then he nodded and said, “Shall we put a pin in this, Dresden, until later?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Nicodemus?”
This time Nick’s reply was warier. “Yes?”
“What is this jerk good for?”
“I’m the only person in the world who can get you where you want to go,” Grey drawled.
“Yeah?” I asked. “Why? What do you do?”
Grey smiled. “Anything. This week, I’m opening doors.”
“You’ve already opened the one that said AN ASS KICKING,” I assured him. “We’ll get to it eventually.”
Grey regarded me levelly. Then he got up, moving lazily, and settled down in the chair next to Deirdre and Nicodemus, another statement. He took a slow sip of his coffee and studied Karrin the way a recently fed mountain lion might watch a baby mountain goat taking its first steps: with calm, patient interest.
“Thank you, gentlemen, for putting that aside for the nonce,” Nicodemus said smoothly. He did not seem displeased either by Grey’s choice of seats or by the focal point of his attention. “Dresden, may I assume you are ready to get to work?”
“When you assume,” I said, “you make an ass out of you.” I took another bite of doughnut and said, “Yeah, fine.”
“The file, please.”
I grunted and slid it down the table. Nicodemus promptly passed it over to Grey.
Grey opened the file and started reading it. Those odd eyes of his flicked over pages as if he could take in their entire contents with a glance, then moved to the next. He finished it in maybe six or seven seconds.
“Well?” Nicodemus asked.
“For the simple part, that’s enough,” Grey replied. “But to pull it off properly, I’ll need a sample. A fresh one.”
“We’ll add that to today’s list,” Nicodemus said. He nodded to Deirdre, who got up and went around the table, passing out thin manila folders labeled DAY TWO. We each got one. I opened mine up to find a top page that simply read:
PHASE ONE PREPARATION:
WEAPONS
SPELLS
ENTRY
“We have considerable work in front of us today,” Nicodemus said. “Binder, I’ve already had the weapons brought in for your associates to use, but we’ll need to see to their maintenance and loading. Perhaps Miss Murphy will be willing to assist with that.”
“Sure,” she said. “Why not.”
Nicodemus smiled. “Miss Valmont, you’ll find a schematic for a vault door in your folder. You’ll need to be able to open it without damaging it. Today will be the day you plan your approach and requisition whatever equipment you need. Just make a list and give it to one of the squires.”
Valmont flipped to the next page, frowning, and studied a diagram. Then she said, “This is a Fernucci.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to say it’s impossible,” she said. “But what I will say is that I’ve never cracked one successfully before and I don’t know anyone who has. Easier to blow it.”
“But we will not be doing so,” Nicodemus replied calmly. “Life is challenge. Rise to it.”
“Great.” She shook her head. “What, are we hitting Vegas or something? Who has a vault door like this around this town?”
“We’ll discuss that at the evening meeting,” Nicodemus said. “Miss Ascher, Mr. Dresden. Phase One will require us to breach a secure building. We may need to make entry through a wall, neatly, without an explosion, and we will certainly need a loud and obvious distraction to occupy the attention of local security forces while we enter. Those tasks will fall to you two.”
I grunted and eyed Ascher. “You want walls or noise?”
“He said loud and obvious,” Ascher replied, her voice light. “That screams Dresden to me.”
“And we don’t want the building collapsing on us,” Karrin added in a murmur.
I sniffed and said, “Fine. I’ll make the noise, then.”
“Releasing enough energy to open a hole without an explosion? That’s tricky,” Ascher said. “I can adapt a spell I know, but I’ll need some time to practice it.”
“You have until sundown,” Nicodemus said. “Deirdre, you will take Mr. Grey to the factor’s address and assist him in obtaining a sample.”
“No,” I said. “These two stay. I’ll go get the sample.”
Nicodemus looked up at me sharply.
I showed him my teeth. “Grey’s a shapeshifter, isn’t he?” I asked. “You’re going to use him to duplicate poor Harvey there.”
“If we are?” Nicodemus asked. There was an edge of frost to his words. He didn’t like that I’d figured out the next step of his plan.
“Harvey lives in my town,” I said. “You turn these two psychos loose on Chicago, and Harvey winds up dead somewhere. So I’ll do it. I’ll get the sample your doppelgänger needs without killing anyone.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Grey wondered aloud.
“The fun part is where you get to live,” I replied. “Besides. If his death is discovered before we pull the job, don’t you think someone’s going to be able to put two and two together and figure out that the place is about to get hit? So we do it smart.”
Grey sighed and looked at Nicodemus. “Honestly. Where do you find these people?”
Nicodemus never took his eyes off me. “Agreed,” he said finally. “Finesse seems a wiser option.” His dark eyes sparkled maliciously. “The three of you should have no problem accomplishing the task.”
“What?” I asked.
“Grey, Deirdre, and Dresden will run this particular errand,” he said, “while the rest of us busy ourselves here.” He paused. “Unless, of course, Dresden, you wish to cease lending me your support.”
I ground my teeth. I wanted to give him a solid punch in the nose—but that would not be upholding Mab’s honor. “No,” I said.
“Deirdre and Mr. Grey will bear witness to your sincerity.”
My eyes tracked over to Deirdre, who was regarding me with a wide, intense smile that made her dark eyes too bulgy and conveyed a number of awful things. Her hair had begun to slither back and forth over her suit jacket’s shoulders.
Grey just looked at me with that calm smile. He made a little motion of his hand, pantomiming sticking a pin into something. Or maybe pulling it out again.
“Oh, goodie,” I muttered. “Field trip.”
Sixteen
Harvey kept an office just off Logan Square, on the second floor of a brownstone he shared with a Chase bank. I drove us past the building and then around the square twice in Nicodemus’s black town car, using the time to think. It was a sunny morning, promising a mild spring day.
“You are literally driving in circles,” Grey noted, from the passenger seat.
“Harvey shares a building with a bank,” I pointed out.
Grey made an unhappy sound.
“What difference does that make?” Deirdre asked from the backseat.
“They’ll have at least one armed guard on-site,” Grey said, “and probably more than one. Additionally, everyone there will have rapid access to alarms that will summon the local constabulary.”
“Then we’ll take him quickly and go,” Deirdre said.
“A broad-daylight kidnapping,” I said. “In view of all this foot traffic, bank customers and . . .” Even as I spoke, a white sedan with blue and white bubs and a sky blue horizontal stripe rolled through on the opposite side of the square’s roundabout. “And Chicago PD patrol cars, which regularly prowl through here.”
Grey sighed. “He’s right. We’re going to have to be patient.”
“Can’t keep circling the square,” I said, pulling off. “We’ll hit the next street over, try to find someplace we can park that gives us a view of the building.”
Deirdre scowled at me in the rearview mirror. “The s
implest way is to walk in, kill him silently, and take what we need. No one will be the wiser until the body is discovered.”
“Point,” Grey said.
“Simple, all right,” I said. “I mean, we don’t know his schedule today, who is coming to his office, where he is expected to be, who might raise a cry if he goes missing, or anything like that, but why let inconvenient little things like facts slow us down?”
Deirdre’s scowl turned into a glower. Her hair whipped back and forth a few times, like an agitated cat thrashing its tail. I ignored her and drove slowly down the street on the other side of the bank building. It was early enough that I managed to find a parking space with a view of Harvey’s office door, and I wedged the town car inexpertly into it.
“There’s his car,” Grey noted, as I did. “Our man comes in to work early.”
“Maybe he loves his job.”
“How tiresome,” Grey said. He settled back in his seat with his odd eyes half-closed and unfocused.
“So?” Deirdre asked. “What are we going to do?”
“Await developments,” Grey said.
“Harvey will leave eventually,” I said, “to get lunch, if nothing else. We’ll follow him until he’s somewhere a little less likely to result in alarms and swarms of cops.”
Deirdre didn’t like that. “We are on a schedule.”
“I guess Daddy should have thought of that before he decided to proceed without telling anyone his plans,” I said. “We could have gotten started days ago.”
“Patience, Miss Archleone,” Grey advised, barely moving his lips as he spoke. He had the look of someone who was comfortable with the idea of spending a lot of time waiting. The man had worked stakeouts before. “We have a little time—and we can always do it the direct way should we need to change our minds.”
And we waited.
* * *
“Why?” Grey asked me abruptly, a couple of silent hours later.
