by Butcher, Jim
“Yeah,” I said, subdued.
“And that was her own family.” He shook his head. “Friendship means nothing to those creatures. They’re so good at the lie that sometimes maybe they even believe it themselves—but in the end, you don’t make friends with food. I been around this world a while, Hoss, and let me tell you—it’s their nature. Sooner or later it wins out.”
“Thomas is different,” I said.
He eyed me. “Oh?” He shook his head and started walking again. “Why don’t you ask your apprentice exactly what made her drop the veil and use that shield, then?”
I started walking again.
I didn’t answer.
We got back into Chicago in the witching hour.
Ancient Mai and the Wardens were waiting at the dock, to escort Ebenezar, Injun Joe, and Morgan to Edinburgh—“in case of trouble.” They left within three minutes of me tying the Water Beetle to the dock.
I watched them go, and sipped water through a straw. Listens-to-Wind had cleaned my wounds and slapped several stitches onto my face, including a couple on my lower lip. He told me that I hadn’t lost the eye, and smeared the entire thing with a paste that looked like guano and smelled like honey. Then he’d made me a shoo-in for first place in the International Walking Wounded Idiot competition, by covering that side of my face and part of my scalp with another bandage that wrapped all the way around my head. Added to the one I needed for the damn lump the skinwalker had given me, I looked like the subject of recent brain surgery, only surlier.
Will and Georgia were sleeping it off under a spread sleeping bag on an inflatable mattress on the rear deck of the Water Beetle, when I walked down the dock, over to the parking lot, and up to a parked Mercedes.
Vince rolled down his window and squinted at me. “Did you curse everyone who desecrated your tomb, or just the English-speaking guys?”
“You just lost your tip,” I told him. “Did you get it?”
He passed me a manila envelope without comment. Then he leaned over and opened his passenger door, and Mouse hopped down from the passenger seat and came eagerly around the car to greet me, wagging his tail. I knelt down and gave the big beastie a hug.
“Your dog is weird,” Vince said.
Mouse was licking my face. “Yeah. Whatcha gonna do?”
Vince grinned, and for just a second, he didn’t look at all nondescript. He had the kind of smile that could change the climate of a room. I stood up and nodded to him. “You know where to send the bill.”
“Yep,” he said, and drove away.
I went back down to the boat and poured some Coke into the now-empty water bottle. I sipped at it carefully so that I wouldn’t break open one of the cuts and bleed some more. I was too tired to clean it up.
Molly fussed around the boat for a few minutes, making sure it was tied down, and then took two sets of spare shorts and T-shirts from the cabin’s tiny closet and left them where Georgia and Will would find them. She finally wound up sitting down on the other bunk across the cabin from me.
“The shield,” I said quietly. “When did you use it?”
She swallowed. “The skinw—the creature threw Thomas into the cabin and he . . .” She shuddered. “Harry. He’d changed. It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t him.” She licked her lips. “He sat up and started sniffing the air like . . . like a hungry wolf or something. Looking around for me. And his body was . . .” She blushed. “He was hard. And he did something and all of a sudden I wanted to just rip my clothes off. And I knew he wasn’t in control. And I knew he would kill me. But . . . I wanted to anyway. It was so intense. . . .”
“So you popped the shield.”
She swallowed and nodded. “I think if I’d waited much longer . . . I wouldn’t have been able to think of it.” She looked up at me and back down. “He was changed, Harry. It wasn’t him anymore.”
I left nothing behind. You don’t have words for the things I did to him.
Thomas.
I put the drink aside and folded my arms over my stomach. “You did good, kid.”
She gave me a tired smile. An awkward silence fell. Molly seemed to search for something to say. “They’re . . . they’re going to try Morgan tomorrow,” she said quietly. “I heard Mai say so.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“They expect us to be there.”
“Oh,” I said, “we will be.”
“Harry . . . we failed,” she said. She swallowed. “An innocent man is going to die. The killer is still loose. That entire battle took place and didn’t accomplish anything.”
I looked up at her. Then, moving deliberately, I opened the manila envelope Vince had given me.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Surveillance photos,” I said quietly. “Shot through a telephoto lens from a block away.”
She blinked at me. “What?”
“I hired Vince to take some pictures,” I said. “Well, technically Murphy hired him, because I was worried about my phone being bugged. But I’m getting the bill, so really, it was me.”
“Pictures? What pictures?”
“Of the Way to Chicago from Edinburgh,” I said. “Where it opens up into that alley behind the old meatpacking factory. I had Vince take pictures of anyone coming out of it, right after I informed Edinburgh about the meeting on the island.”
Molly frowned. “But . . . why?”
“Didn’t give them time to think, kid,” I said. “I was fairly sure the killer was in Edinburgh. So I made sure he or she had to come to Chicago. I made sure he didn’t have time to get here by alternate means.”
I drew out the pictures and started flipping through them. Vince had done a crisp, professional job. You could have used them for portraits, much less identification. McCoy, Mai, Listens-to-Wind, Bjorn Bjorngunnarson , the other Wardens were all pictured, both in a wide shot, walking in a Right Stuff group, and in tight focus on each face. “And I made sure Vince and Mouse were there to watch the only fast way into town from Scotland.”
While I did that, Molly puzzled through the logic. “Then . . . that entire scenario on the island . . . the meeting, the fight . . . the entire thing was a ploy?”
“Wile E. Coyote,” I said wisely. “Suuuuuper Genius.”
Molly shook her head. “But . . . you didn’t tell anyone?”
“Nobody. Had to look good,” I said. “Didn’t know who the traitor might be, so I couldn’t afford to give anyone any warning.”
“Wow, Obi-Wan,” the grasshopper said. “I’m . . . sort of impressed.”
“The smackdown-on-the-island plan might have worked,” I said. “And I needed it to get a crack at the skinwalker on friendly ground. But lately I’ve started thinking that you don’t ever plan on a single path to victory. You set things up so that you’ve got more than one way to win.
“What I really needed was a weapon I could use against the killer.” I stared at the last photo for a moment, and then flipped it over and showed it to her. “And now,” I said, a snarl coming unbidden into my voice, “I’ve got one.”
Molly looked at the picture blankly. “Oh,” she said. “Who’s that?”
Chapter Forty-seven
Morgan’s trial was held the next day, but since Scotland was six hours ahead of Chicago, I wound up getting about three hours’ worth of sleep sitting up in a chair. My head and face hurt too much when I lay all the way down.
When I got back to the apartment with Molly, Luccio was gone.
I had been pretty sure she would be.
I got up the next morning and took stock of myself in the mirror. What wasn’t under a white bandage was mostly bruised. That was probably the concussion grenade. I was lucky. If I’d have been standing where Lara had been when Binder’s grenade went off, the overpressure would probably have killed me. I was also lucky that we’d been outdoors, where there was nothing to contain and focus the blast. I didn’t feel lucky, but I was.
It could have been a fragmentation grenade spitting out a let
hal cloud of shrapnel—though at least my duster would probably have offered me some protection from that. Against the blast wave of an explosion, it didn’t do jack. Having gained something like respect for Binder’s know-how, when it came to mayhem, I realized that he may have been thinking exactly that when he picked his gear for the evening.
I couldn’t shower without getting my stitches wet, so after changing my bandages, I took a birdbath in the sink. I wore a button-up shirt, since I would probably compress my brain if I tried to pull on a tee. I also grabbed my formal black Council robe with its blue stole and my Warden’s cape. I did my best to put my hair in order, though only about a third of it was showing. And I shaved.
“Wow,” Molly said as I emerged. “You’re taking this pretty seriously.” She was sitting in a chair near the fireplace, running her fingers lightly down Mister’s spine. She was one of the few people he deemed worthy to properly appreciate him in a tactile sense. Molly wore her brown apprentice’s robe, and if her hair was bright blue, at least she had it pulled back in a no-nonsense style. She never wore a lot of makeup, these days, but today she was wearing none at all. She had made the very wise realization that the less attention she attracted from the Council, the better off she would be.
“Yup. Cab here yet?”
She shook her head and rose, displacing Mister. He accepted the situation, despite the indignity. “Come on, Mouse,” she said. “We’ll give you a chance to go before we head out.”
The big dog happily followed her out the door.
I got on the phone and called Thomas’s apartment. There was no answer.
I tried Lara’s number, and Justine answered on the first ring. “Ms. Raith’s phone.”
“This is Harry Dresden,” I said.
“Hello, Mr. Dresden,” Justine replied, her tone businesslike and formal. She wasn’t alone. “How may I help you today?”
Now that the furor of the manhunt had blown over, my phone was probably safe to talk on. But only probably. I emulated Justine’s vocal mannerisms. “I’m calling to inquire after the condition of Thomas.”
“He’s here,” Justine said. “He’s resting comfortably, now.”
I’d seen what terrible shape Thomas was in. If he was resting comfortably, it was because he had fed, deeply and intently, with instinctive obsession.
In all probability, my brother had killed someone.
“I hope he’ll recover quickly,” I said.
“His caretaker—”
That would be Justine.
“—is concerned about complications arising from his original condition.”
I was quiet for a moment. “How bad is it?”
The businesslike meter of her voice changed, filling with raw anxiety. “He’s under sedation. There was no choice.”
My knuckles creaked as they tightened on the earpiece of the phone.
I left nothing behind. You don’t have words for the things I did to him.
“I’d like to visit, if that can be arranged.”
She recovered, shifting back into personal assistant mode. “I’ll consult Ms. Raith,” Justine said. “It may not be practical for several days.”
“I see. Could you let me know as soon as possible, please?”
“Of course.”
“My number is—”
“We have that information, Mr. Dresden. I’ll be in touch soon.”
I thanked her and hung up. I bowed my head and found myself shaking with anger. If that thing had done my brother as much harm as it sounded like, I was going to find the naagloshii and rip him to gerbil-sized pieces if I had to blow up every cave in New Mexico to do it.
Molly appeared in the doorway. “Harry? Cab’s here.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go spoil someone’s day.”
I tried not to think too hard about the fact that Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius, pretty near always took a hideous beating at the hands of his foes, and finished the day by plunging off a two-mile-high cliff.
Well, then, Harry, I thought to myself, you’ll just have to remember not to repeat Wile E.’s mistake. If he would just keep going after he runs off the cliff, rather than looking down at his feet, everything would be fine.
They held the trial in Edinburgh.
There wasn’t much choice in that. Given the recent threats to the Senior Council and the unexpected intensity of the attack at Demonreach, they wanted the most secure environment they could get. The trial was supposed to be held in closed session, according to the traditions of how such things were done, but this one was too big. Better than five hundred wizards, a sizable minority of the whole Council, would be there. Most of them would be allies of LaFortier and their supporters, who were more than eager to See Justice Done, which is a much prettier thing to do than to Take Bloodthirsty Vengeance.
Molly, Mouse, and I took the Way, just as I had before. This time, when I reached the door, there was a double-sized complement of Wardens on duty, led by the big Scandinavian, all of them from the Old Guard. I got a communal hostile glare from them as I approached, with only a desultory effort to disguise it as indifference. I ignored it. I was used to it.
We went into the complex, past the guard stations—they were all fully manned, as well—and walked toward the Speaking Room. Maybe it said something about the mind-set of wizards in general that the place was called “the Speaking Room” and not “the Listening Room” or, in the more common vernacular, “an auditorium.” It was an auditorium, though, rows of stone benches rising in a full circle around a fairly small circular stone stage, rather like the old Greek theaters. But before we got to the Speaking Room, I turned off down a side passage.
With difficulty, I got the Wardens on guard to allow me, Mouse, and Molly into the Ostentatiatory while one of them went to Ebenezar’s room and asked him if he would see me. Molly had never been into the enormous room before, and stared around it with unabashed curiosity.
“This place is amazing,” she said. “Is the food for the bigwigs only, or do you think they’d mind if I ate something?”
“Ancient Mai doesn’t weigh much more than a bird,” I said. “LaFortier’s dead, and they haven’t replaced him yet. I figure there’s extra.”
She frowned. “But is it supposed to be only for them?”
I shrugged. “You’re hungry. It’s food. What do you think?”
“I think I don’t want to make anyone angry at me. Angrier.”
The kid has better sense than I do, in some matters.
Ebenezar sent the Warden back to bring me up to his room at once, and he’d already told the man to make sure Molly was fed from the buffet table. I tried not to smile, at that. Ebenezar was of the opinion that apprentices were always hungry. Can’t imagine who had ever given him that impression.
I looked around his receiving room, which was lined with bookshelves filled to groaning. Ebenezar was an eclectic reader. King, Heinlein, and Clancy were piled up on the same shelves as Hawking and Nietzsche. Multiple variants of the great religious texts of the world were shamelessly mixed with the writings of Julius Caesar and D. H. Lawrence. Hundreds of books were handmade and handwritten, including illuminated grimoires any museum worth the name would readily steal, given the chance. Books were crammed in both vertically and horizontally, and though the spines were mostly out, it seemed clear to me that it would take the patience of Job to find anything, unless one remembered where it had been most recently placed.
Only one shelf looked neat.
It was a row of plain leather-bound journals, all obviously of the same general design, but made with subtly different leathers, and subtly different dyes that had aged independently of one another into different textures and shades. The books got older and more cracked and weathered rapidly as they moved from right to left. The leftmost pair looked like they might be in danger of falling to dust. The rightmost journal looked new, and was sitting open. A pen held the pages down, maybe thirty pages in.
I glanced at the last visible page,
where Ebenezar’s writing flowed in a strong, blocky style.
... seems clear that he had no idea of the island’s original purpose. I sometimes can’t help but think that there is such a thing as fate—or at least a higher power of some sort, attempting to arrange events in our favor despite everything we, in our ignorance, do to thwart it. The Merlin has demanded that we put the boy under surveillance at once. I think he’s a damn fool.
Rashid says that warning him about the island would be pointless. He’s a good judge of people, but I’m not so sure he’s right this time. The boy’s got a solid head on his shoulders, generally. And of all the wizards I know, he’s among the three or four I’d be willing to see take up that particular mantle. I trust his judgment.
But then again, I trusted Maggie’s, too.
Ebenezar’s voice interrupted my reading. “Hoss,” he said. “How’s your head?”
“Full of questions,” I replied. I closed the journal, and offered him the pen.
My old mentor’s smile only touched his eyes as he took the pen from me: he’d intended me to see what he’d written. “My journal,” he said. “Well. The last three are. The ones before that were from my master.”
“Master, huh?”
“Didn’t used to be a dirty word, Hoss. It meant teacher, guide, protector, professional, expert—as well as the negative things. But it’s the nature of folks to remember the bad things and forget the good, I suppose.” He tapped the three books previous to his own. “My master’s writings.” He tapped the next four. “His master’s writings, and so on, back to here.” He touched the first two books, very gently. “Can’t hardly read them no more, even if you can make it through the language.”
“Who wrote those two?”
“Merlin,” Ebenezar said simply. He reached past me to put his own journal back up in place. “One of these days, Hoss, I think I’ll need you to take care of these for me.”
