by Jim Butcher
I whistled softly. "How?"
"We've been experimenting," Will said quietly. "Closing an injury isn't really much different from shifting back into human form. My arm still hurts like hell, but I can stop bleeding-probably. If it isn't too bad. We're not sure about the limits. Leaves a hell of a mark, though." His stomach gurgled. "And the energy for it has to come from somewhere. I'm starving."
"Neat trick."
"I thought so." Will kept pace beside me as we headed back to the car. "What do we do next?"
"Food," I said. "Then we contact the bad guys."
He frowned. "Won't that just, you know… warn them that we're on to them?"
"No," I said. "They'll want to meet me."
"Why?"
I looked up at him. "Because I'm going to be selling them some new talent." WE WENT TO my place.
There wasn't much point in setting the dogs on the owner of the e-mail address. It would prove to be anonymous, and given what I had for hard evidence, even if I could get someone to pay attention to me, by the time it went through channels and peeled away all the red tape and got a judge somewhere to move, I was sure the address would be old news, and anyone connected to it would long since have departed.
I might have gotten some help from a friend at the Bureau, except that in the wake of the Red Court attack on their headquarters building, they would be going crazy looking for the "terrorists" responsible. They, too, were long since departed. Dresden had seen to that.
The TV news was all about the bombing, the attack, while everyone speculated about who had done what and used the occasion to put forward their own social and political agendas.
People suck. But they're the only ones around who can keep the lights on.
I turned Will loose on my fridge and then sent him out to make a few discreet inquiries of the local supernatural scene. I heard his car door close when he returned, about the time the daylight was turning golden orange. It looked like it would be another cold night.
There was the sound of a second car door closing.
Will knocked at the front door, and I answered it with my gun held low and against my leg. There proved to be a girl with him. She was a little taller than I, which still put her below average, and I had pencils bigger around than she was. Her glasses were oversized, her hair thin, straight, and the same brown of a house mouse's fur. Still, there was something in the way she held herself that put up the hairs on the back of my neck. The young woman might be a lightweight, but so were rats-and you didn't want to trap one of them in a corner if you could avoid it. She contained a measure of danger that demanded respect.
Her eyes flickered to my face and then down to my gun hand in the same first half second of recognition. She stopped slightly behind Will, her body language wary.
"Murphy," Will said, nodding-but he didn't try to come in or make any other movement that might force me to react. "Uh, maybe you remember Marcy? We were all at Marcone's place, stuck down in that muddy pit? Drugged?"
"Good times?" the young woman asked hopefully.
"My partner died the day before, when the loup-garou gutted him. Not so much," I said. I looked at Will. "You trust her?"
"Sure," Will said without a second's hesitation.
Maybe I'm getting cynical as I age. I stared at Marcy hard for a second before I said, "I don't."
No one said anything for a minute. Then Will said, "I'm vouching for her."
"You're emotionally involved, Will," I said. "It's compromising your judgment. Marcone could have put a bullet through your head instead of tossing that little knife at you. If Dresden was standing here telling you to be suspicious, what would you do?"
Will's expression darkened. But I saw him get ahold of himself and take a deep breath. "I don't know," he said finally. "I don't know. I've known Marcy for years."
"You knew her years ago," I corrected him with gentle emphasis.
Marcy rubbed one foot against the other calf, and stood looking down, her eyes on her feet. It looked like a habitual stance, social camouflage. "She's right, Will," she said in a quiet voice.
Will frowned at her. "How?"
"She should be suspicious of me, given the circumstances. I've been back in town for what? Two weeks? And something like this happens? I'd be worried, too." She looked up at me, her expression uncertain. "I want to help, Sergeant Murphy," she said. "What do we do?"
I stared at them both, thinking. Dammit, this was another one of those Dresden things. He could have pinched his nose for a second, then swept his gaze over them and reported whether or not they were who they said they were. Supernatural creatures are big on shapeshifting. They use it to get in close to their prey. In an attack like that, a mortal has the next-best thing to zero probability of escaping.
I knew. It had been done to me. The sense of chagrin and helplessness is terrible.
"To start with," I said, "let me see if you can come in."
Marcy frowned at me. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that if you're a shapeshifter or something, you might not have an easy time coming over the threshold."
"Christ, Sergeant," Will began. "Of course she's a shapeshifter. So am I."
I glowered at them both. "If she's who she says she is, she won't have a problem," I said.
Will sighed and looked at Marcy. "Sorry."
"No, it's fine," the young woman said. "It's smart to be careful."
Marcy held her hands out to her sides, in plain sight, and stepped into the house. "Good enough?"
Houses are surrounded by a barrier of energy. Dresden always called it the threshold. It's all murky magic stuff to me, but the general guideline is that anything that's too hideously supernatural can't come in without being invited. A threshold will stop spirits, ghosts, some vampires (but not others), and will generally ward away things that intend to eat your face.
Not everything. Not hardly. But a lot of things.
"No," I said, and put my gun away. "But it's a start." I nodded to a chair in the living room. "Sit down."
She did, and she sat looking down at her hands, which were folded in her lap.
Will followed Marcy in and gave me a look that meant, in Martian, What the hell do you think you're doing?
I ignored him.
"Marcy," I said, "why didn't you respond to Will when he tried to contact you earlier?"
"I tried," she said. "I called back as soon as I got the message, but I didn't have Will's cell number. Only Georgia's."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Um," she said, "I just got back into town. And Georgia doesn't need any stress. And he's married. I mean, you don't just go asking for a husband's phone number. You know?"
Which was reasonable, put that way. I nodded, neither approving nor disapproving.
"I left messages on the answering machine at the apartment," Marcy said. "It was all I could do."
"And I checked the messages after I'd run your errands," Will said. "I called her back and had her come over. She swept for scents, and then we came here."
"Will," I said, firmly, "please let me handle this?"
He clenched his jaw and subsided, leaning against a wall.
I turned back to where Marcy sat and continued towering over her, a posture of parental-style authority. "Tell me about your relationship to Georgia."
"We're friends," Marcy said. "Close friends, really. I think of her as a close friend, I mean. She was very kind to me when Andi broke it off with me. And we were friends for years before that."
I nodded. "Did Will explain what was going on?"
She nodded. "Georgia and Andi have been taken."
"How do you know it was Andi with Georgia?"
"Because I was there," Marcy said. "I mean, not last night, but the night before last. Will was out of town and we had a girls' night."
"Girls' night?"
"We hung out and made fondue and watched movies and lied about how we all looked better now than when we first met. Well, except that Andi actuall
y does." She shook her head. "Um, anyway, we stayed up late talking, and Andi slept in the guest bed and I slept on the couch." She glanced up at my eyes for the first time. "That was when we had the nightmares."
"Nightmares?"
She shuddered. "I… I don't want to think about it. But all three of us had an almost identical nightmare. It was the worst for Georgia. She was…" She looked at Will. "It was as if she hadn't quite woken up out of the dream. She kept jerking and twitching." She gave me a weak smile. "Took two cups of cocoa to snap her out of it."
I kept my face neutral and gave her nothing. "Go on."
"Me and Andi talked about it and decided that one of us should stay with her. We were going to trade off, like, until Will came home."
"The first night was Andi, I take it?"
Marcy nodded, biting her lip. "Yes."
"Sounds reasonable," I said. Reasonable, logical-and impossible to verify.
And the kid was shaking.
Jesus Christ, Karrin, said a gentler voice inside me. What are you doing? She's scared to death.
I tried to make my tone a little warmer. "What do you know about their abduction, specifically, Marcy? Can you tell me anything at all that might point toward the identity of the kidnappers?"
She shook her head. "I can't think of anything that I picked up beforehand. But I'm certain it was Andi and Georgia who were taken."
"How can you be sure?" I asked.
Will cleared his throat and spoke quietly. "Marcy's got a nose. She's better with scents than any of the rest of us."
I eyed Marcy. "Could you pick up their trail?"
"They were taken downstairs and loaded into the back of a car," Marcy said promptly. "An older model, burning too much oil. But I couldn't follow them after that. I think I'll be able to recognize the scent of their captors, though, if I run into it."
I nodded. She'd gotten a ton more out of the scene than Will had. Such a talent could be damn useful.
All the same, I wasn't sure. She sounded sincere to me, and I'm pretty good at knowing when someone isn't. But there's always a better liar out there. I just wasn't sure.
But… you have to trust someone, sometime. Even when it seems risky, when lives are on the line.
Maybe even especially then.
"Okay," I said calmly, and took a seat in another chair. "Will," I asked, "what did you find out?"
"There are half a dozen other folks who have gone missing in the past day and a half," Will said. "At least, that's how many Bock and McAnally know about. Word about the kidnappings is out on the Paranet, and has been spreading since yesterday morning. People are moving places in groups of three and four, at least. McAnally's is packed. The community knows something is up. They're scared."
Marcy nodded. "It isn't just Chicago. It's happening all over the country. Group leaders are keeping everyone informed, asking after their people, reporting them missing to the local cops, for whatever good that might do…" Her voice trailed off into a little squeak as she looked at me. "Um. Sorry."
I ignored her. Martian for This is easier for all of us if we just pretend I didn't hear it. "Will, did you turn up anything we can use?"
He shook his head. "No one has seen or heard anything at any of the disappearances. But there are rumors that someone found a gang of Red Court vampires torn apart in a basement across town. Maybe that has something to do with what's going on."
"It doesn't," I said, firmly. "Not directly, at least. Dresden killed the Red Court."
Will blinked. "You mean… those vampires in the basement?"
"I mean the Red Court," I said. "All of them."
Will let out a quiet whistle. "Uh. Wow. That's pretty big magic, I guess."
"Yeah," I said.
Marcy's face was twisted up in a frown of concentration. "Was… was this the night before last, by any chance?"
I glanced aside at her and nodded once.
"If there was a really big surge of magic… maybe that explains the dreams," she said. "It wasn't just the three of us. The night before last, a lot of people-Paranet people, I mean-had nightmares, too. Some of them were bad enough that people haven't slept since. A couple of folks wound up in the hospital." She blinked at Will. "That's what happened with you, Will."
"What do you mean?" Will said.
"When Georgia called you. She'd had the nightmare twice, during the day, when she tried to sleep. She must have had it again and tried to call you."
"There's no point in speculation for now." I looked at Will. "In short, more people missing, bad dreams, everyone is gathering in defensive herds. That about it?"
"More or less," Will said. "What did you get?"
"I sent an e-mail to the address Marcone gave us. Told them I had a talent in need of placement. I got a public phone location. I'm supposed to be there to answer a call at nine tonight."
Will frowned. "So they can get a look at you first, right?"
"Probably."
"You shouldn't look like you," Marcy blurted. Her face colored slightly. "I mean, like, you're the supernatural cop in Chicago. Everyone knows that. And it makes sense that anyone planning something here wouldn't have much trouble finding out who might actually get in their way."
"Unfortunately," I said, "I don't have a different look."
Will looked at Marcy, frowning, and then said, "Ah. Makeover."
"We have a little time," Marcy said, nodding.
"Hey," I said.
"She's right, Ms. Murphy," Will said. "You've been seen with Dresden a lot. And, no offense, but not many people look like you do."
"Meaning?" I asked him. I smiled.
Will's eyes might have checked the distance between himself and the door. "Meaning you're outside the norm for adult height and weight," he said. "Exceptionally so. We should do what we can to make it harder to identify you."
Will had a point, I supposed. Annoying as it might be, his logic was sound. And I was almost certainly a little sensitive where my height was concerned. I sighed. "All right. But if I hear montage music starting to play, I'm cutting it short."
Will, seeming to relax, nodded. "Cool."
Marcy nodded with him. "So what about Will and me? I mean, what do the two of us do?"
I looked at the pair of young werewolves and pursed my lips. "How do you feel about duct tape?" WHEN I ANSWERED the pay phone outside a small grocery store on Belmont, I felt like an idiot. In the windows of a darkened shop across the street, I could see my reflection.
Halloween had come early this year. I wore boots not unlike Herman Munster's, with elevator soles about three inches thick, making me look taller. My hair was dyed matte black and was slicked down to my skull. There was so much product in it, I was fairly sure it would deflect bullets. I wore some black dance tights Marcy had donated to the cause, a black T-shirt, and a black leather jacket in a youth size.
My face was the worst part of the disguise. I was all but smothered beneath the makeup. Dark tones of silver that faded to black made a mess of my eyes, altering their shape by means of suggestion, through clever application of liner. In the evening light, I might have looked Asian. My lips were darkened, too, a shade of wine red that somehow managed to complement the eye shadow. The lipstick changed the shape of my mouth slightly and made my lips look fuller.
I glowered at the reflection. This costume had exactly one thing going for it: I didn't look a thing like me.
The phone rang and I picked it up, jerking it off the base unit as if impatient. I glared around me, my eyes tracking across every spot I thought could contain an observer, and said, "Yeah?"
"The merchandise," murmured a soft, sibilant voice with an odd accent. "Describe."
There was something intrinsically unsettling about the voice. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. "One male and one female, mid- to late-twenties. Shapeshifters."
There was a rustle of static over the line, unless the speaker could make an extremely odd hissing sound. All things considered, I gave it ev
en odds.
"Ten thousand," said the voice.
I could have played it a couple of different ways. The kinds of people who get into this sort of deal come in about three general types: greedy, low-life sons of bitches; cold professionals engaged in a business transaction; and desperate amateurs who are in over their heads. I'd already decided to try to come across as the first on the list.
"Forty thousand," I shot back instantly. "Each."
There was a furious sound on the other end of the phone. It wasn't a human sound, either.
"I could pluck out your eyes and cut your tongue into slivers," hissed the voice. Something about it scared the hell out of me, touching on some instinctual level that Ray, in all his repulsive mass, had not. I felt myself shudder, despite my effort not to do so.
"Whatever," I said, trying to sound bored. "Even if you could do it, it gets you nothing. But hey, no skin off my ass either way."
There was a long silence on the other end of my phone. I thought I felt some kind of pressure building behind my eyelids. I told myself it was my imagination.
"Yo, anyone there?" I complained. "Listen. Are you up for doing some business, or did I just waste my time?"
After another pause, the voice hissed something in a bubbling, serpentine tongue. The phone rustled, as if changing hands, and a very deep male voice said, "Twenty thousand. Each."
"I'm not selling the female for less than thirty."
"Fifty total, then," rumbled the new voice. It sounded entirely human.
"Cash," I demanded.
"Done."
I kept tracking the street with my eyes, looking for their spotter, but saw no one. "How do you handle delivery?"
"There's a warehouse."
"Fat chance. I pull in there, you'll just pop me and make the body disappear along with the freaks."
"What do you suggest?" rumbled the voice.
"Buttercup Park. Thirty minutes. One carrier. Carrier hands me half the cash. Then carrier verifies the merchandise in the back of my truck. Carrier hands me the rest of the money. I hand him the keys to the vehicle carrying the merchandise. We all walk away happy."
