Peace Talks

by Jim Butcher

  “Rudolph and Bradley are here for me,” Murphy said. “Who are the other two?”

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek for a second, thinking. “Um. Well, I suppose I could start driving like a lunatic and find out.”

  “In this old death trap?” she asked, and shuddered. “No, thank you. Should we let them follow us?”

  “Tough to know that if we don’t know who is back there,” I said. “Rudolph I don’t much care about, but I’d rather not have Bradley stick his head into a noose. He’s just trying to do his job right.”

  “Well, you aren’t going to lose a Crown Vic in this boat.”

  “True,” I said. “So maybe we do this the other way.”

  “Magic?” she asked. “I don’t really feel like walking the rest of the way, either.”

  I shook my head. “This old death trap was manufactured damned near a century ago,” I said. “The whole point of driving it is because it can endure exposure to active magical forces and keep going vroom-vroom.” I squinted at the road. “You know. For a while.”

  Murphy sighed. “What’s your plan, Harry?”

  “We’re going to get out of sight for a second, and then I’m dropping a veil over us,” I said. I thought about it for a second. “We’ll have to stay on the highway. If we pull off to the side, there’s no way I can veil the dust and debris we’d kick up driving on the shoulder.”

  “But other cars won’t be able to see us,” Murphy said.

  “And we won’t be able to see them very well, either,” I said. “Be like driving in heavy rain.”

  She grimaced, clearly unhappy at the entire situation. “And we’re riding in a brick with no handling.”

  “A brick that’s heavier than a lot of the trucks on this highway right now,” I said, “and made from all steel. Might not handle or accelerate like a modern car, but it’s not made of drywall and cardboard, either.”

  Murphy gave me an impatient look. “Harry, do you even understand that modern engineering means that the lighter cars are actually considerably safer than cars like this one?”

  “Not when they hit cars like this one,” I noted.

  “Yes, they’re not meant to take dinosaurs into consideration,” she growled.

  “Exit coming up,” I said. “Here we go.”

  I cut into the right-hand lane and accelerated smoothly and without noticeable effort from the old car. Between my old mechanic Mike and the tinker elves Mab had on call for maintenance and repairs, the Munstermobile purred like a three-thousand-pound kitten.

  I went up the ramp with the accelerator mashed flat to the floor, and the cars following me had little choice but to emulate me. I’d timed my exit well, though. I gathered my will as I watched a couple of legitimate vehicles get in the way of my pursuers, and I reached the top of the ramp just in time for the green light. I went right through the intersection, back onto the entry ramp, and back down toward the highway, and as I went, I waved my hand in a gesture reminiscent of drawing a hood up over one’s head, and murmured, “Obscurata.”

  There was an odd sensation, like a fine cold mist drifting down over me, and the interior of the car dimmed, as though heavy clouds had suddenly obscured the light, to the point where you’d have trouble telling what time it was by looking at the position of the sun.

  Visibility dropped suddenly and dramatically. Magic is awesome, but you don’t get anything for free—mess around with how much light is going to bounce off your body, and you’re also futzing about with how much light makes it to your eyeballs, and for that matter how much light is available to do things like keep you warm. Going unseen isn’t a super complicated operation—doing it without blinding and freezing yourself is the hard part. I had settled on developing a veiling spell that would split the difference between visibility and comfort—by choice, obviously, and not because it was totally not my area of natural talent—and as a result, looking out of my veil was only a little easier than seeing into it. The world went dim, and just as it did, Murphy sat up straight, her eyes bright.

  “Hey,” she said. “Does this spell stop radar?”

  “Uh,” I said. I was already holding on to a veil and driving faster than was strictly safe, and my attention can only split so many ways. “Not mine. Molly’s will stop almost everything, but I only bother with visible light becau—”

  Murphy reached over while I was still talking and pushed down on my right knee, hard, pressing the accelerator flat again. “Faster.”

  I gave her an annoyed look and then did it. The old engine gave a game growl and we gathered speed going down the on-ramp, rapidly reaching speeds that would preclude any chance of getting off with a warning.

  I checked the rearview mirror in time to see our entourage come barreling onto the entry ramp behind us—

  —just as my more-or-less-invisible car passed a pair of highway patrol vehicles poised on the side of the ramp, watching for speeders to come sailing under the bridge.

  I had a chance to see both highway patrol officers come to attention behind the wheel, their eyes on their radar-gun readouts, then switching to the apparently empty road—and both men locked eyes on our pursuers, the only apparent visible source of the readings on their instruments.

  I flashed by them and just had time to see their bubs coming on before they vanished into the obscurement generated by my veil.

  “Oh,” I said to Murphy in admiration. “That’s just mean.”

  “Right?” she asked me, smiling. She patted my leg and said, “Good job following directions.”

  Which was another way to say, Thank you for trusting me.

  I chewed on my lip. If I drove in the right lane, I’d have to go slow to avoid problems, and I’d have to dodge anyone trying to make it over for the exits. If I drove in the far left, I’d run the risk of idiots just slamming into me from behind. I liked my chances better in a lower-speed accident, so I got behind a truck in the right-hand lane, crept up close enough that he couldn’t have seen me in his mirrors, and stayed there.

  “Aren’t you worried about people flipping out when you appear all of a sudden?” she asked.

  “Ah,” I said. “Not so much. People work really hard not to notice unusual things, generally speaking. You know the drill by now.” I shrugged. “Most people have encountered something that looks damned peculiar, that just doesn’t fit. And mostly they explain it away, no matter how thin the explanation sounds, or they just don’t think about it. Everyone says they want magic, but no one really wants to feel confused and frightened, or stay awake at night worried about dark forces they can do nothing about.”

  “And magic is that,” she said.

  “That’s some of what magic is,” I said. “It’s also a lot of good stuff. Like all power. It depends on what you do with it.”

  “And yet, like all power,” Murphy said, “it tends to corrupt.”

  Well.

  Tough to argue with that.

  The number of people capable of wielding Power, or power, responsibly was never exactly going to threaten the world food supply.

  Out of the mist of my veil’s obscurement, the Jeep that had been following us appeared. It pulled up directly behind me and then flashed its headlights in three quick signals.

  “I handled the other two,” Murphy said. “This one is yours.”

  “Yeah,” I said, peering at the rearview mirror. Then I dropped the veil abruptly, hit my right blinker, and took the next exit ramp. Murphy arched an eyebrow but looked at me. I pulled off to the side of the road, and the Jeep pulled up behind me.

  “Is that who I think it is?” Murphy asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Contracted him to help out.”

  Murphy eyed me and said, “Huh. Maybe you do learn. Eventually.”

  “Amazing, right?” I leaned back and way over and unlocked the rear passenger-side door.

  Goodman Grey got into the backseat and slouched down wearily. He was perhaps one of the most forgettable people I’d ever seen. H
e was unremarkable in every way, a man of medium height and build, blandly not-bad-looking, and if you looked real close you could see Native American background in him somewhere. He was also one of the most dangerous shapeshifters in the world, he worked for one dollar per case, and he had saved me from meeting a truly ugly end in Tartarus.

  “What the hell, man?” I asked as he settled in. “You’re supposed to be watching Justine.”

  “Me and everyone else,” he complained. “You should have asked me about my group rates. Hey, Ms. Murphy.”

  “Goodman,” Murphy replied. “Still working for these unsavory characters, I see.”

  “Risk of the trade, ma’am,” Grey replied.

  “Hold on, now,” I said. “Who else is watching Justine?”

  “Who isn’t?” Grey asked. “White Court, cops, Feds, some wackadoo who is either a perv or a nutcase, doing it all by hacking into surveillance cameras online—”

  “That sounds like it’s probably Paranoid Gary,” I said. “ He … has issues.”

  Murphy frowned and said, “Wait. How in the world did you find out all of this?”

  Grey shrugged.

  Murphy arched an eyebrow at him. “How sure are you about your information?”

  “Ms. Murphy, please.” Grey brushed imaginary lint off his shoulder and sniffed. “Like Dresden here, I do some of the work myself, and for some of it I have people.”

  “Feds, though?” she asked. “I mean, locals I could understand. But what are the Feds doing involved?”

  “We tipped off Agent Tilly, remember?” I asked.

  Grey nodded. “Isn’t Tilly, but it’s some of his guys from the local field office.”

  I grunted. “Everyone know about everyone else?” I asked.

  “They know in part and they understand in part,” Grey said, somewhat smugly. “I know about all of them.”

  “Unless you don’t,” Murphy pointed out.

  “Unless I don’t,” Grey allowed, unperturbed. “But anyone who makes a move on the girl is going to set off about three different groups of dangerous people, and I figured you needed to know what was up.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “Maybe I do.” I closed my eyes for a second, thinking.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” Grey said.

  I opened an eye and gave him an annoyed look that was, by necessity, at only half strength. It didn’t seem to damage him. Then I closed my eye again and kept thinking.

  “One of the people surveilling Justine is the person who threatened her,” Murphy said. “And they must have given Thomas an ultimatum. And because he’s an idiot like you, Harry, he didn’t tell her about it.”

  “Yeah, feels like that’s the right ballpark,” I said.

  “Oh crap,” Grey sighed. “This is about the assassination attempt?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think someone leveraged him into it by threatening the girl.”

  “Huh,” Grey said, sitting back. “Well, he’s a dead man now. Svartalves don’t kid around.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at Grey in the mirror.

  The shapeshifter shrugged and returned my gaze with a blank expression that showed neither hostility nor fear. “Oh. It’s personal. You and him, huh?”

  “He stood beside me when it was bad,” I said.

  “Ah,” Grey said, as if enlightened. “Okay.”

  I nodded, and so did Murphy.

  “So what do you want I should do?” Grey asked.

  “Nothing’s changed,” I said. “Protect Justine.”

  “Yeah,” he said, drawing the word out. “But there’s a lot of players here. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense, right?”

  I scowled. “Hey, who is putting up the money around here?”

  Grey shrugged and said to Murphy, “Do you want to explain it to him?”

  “He’s one person, Harry, as remarkable as his abilities might be,” Murphy said thoughtfully. “Given that there are multiple threats, if he isn’t standing in arm’s reach of her, there’s not much he can do if someone decides to shoot her through the window.”

  My chest panged a bit. It did that sometimes, when I imagined someone I knew getting shot. It did that every time when I imagined it being me.

  “Let me get closer and find out more,” Grey said. “More information might help a lot. And if I can’t get anything useful, or turn up the actual threat, I can vanish the girl, get her to a safe house.”

  “You have one of those?” Murphy asked.

  Grey winked at her. “Let’s just say I can borrow one.”

  I nodded, frowning. “Can you do email?”

  “Who doesn’t do email …” Grey began, but then he looked at me. “Oh. Yes.”

  “Murph, can you give him Paranoid Gary’s email?” I asked.

  “My last fresh one was before I got hurt,” she said. “He may have moved on by now.” She took a notepad out of her jacket pocket and flipped through pages. She found the one she wanted, turned to a fresh page, and started writing. Murphy hadn’t been on the force for a while, but her habits had not changed much. She tore off the page and gave it to Grey. The email address was a string of gibberish letters and numbers. “Here. Make sure you tell him who gave you the address or he’ll assume you’re one of Them.”

  He accepted the note, glanced at it once, and handed it back to her. “And why are you trusting this guy again?”

  “It’s possible that Lara is playing games with me,” I said. “So her people might be behind it. The local cops are probably in Marcone’s pocket, and I don’t trust him any further than I can kick him. I don’t know why the Feds are involved or who is pushing them, but even though I like Tilly, he’s a square and this seems like a damned odd play for him. And I’ve never really been comfortable dealing with government agents.”

  “Ah,” Grey said. “And the Internet guy is safe?”

  “Paranoid Gary is a creep and a weirdo, but he’s our creepy weirdo,” I said. “If he’s the one doing the hacking thing, he can probably assist you. If it isn’t him doing it, he can probably find out who it is.”

  “If he will,” Murphy said.

  “Sure,” Grey said, almost jovially. “Because paranoid.” He shook his head. “Well. You don’t ever bore me, Dresden.”

  “I’m good like that,” I said.

  “At least you pay well,” he said, and nodded to Murphy. “Ma’am.”

  “You’re going to need someone to relieve you eventually,” Murphy said.

  “Only if we do this for a couple of weeks,” he said. He nodded to her; then he got out of the Munstermobile and walked back to his old Jeep.

  “Useful guy,” she noted as Grey cranked up the vehicle and left, turning back toward Chicago.

  “Very.”

  “You trust him?”

  “Well. I hired him. I trust him to live up to that.”

  “So did Nicodemus,” Murphy noted. “But someone else had hired him first. So what if someone else hired him first, again?”

  I grimaced. “Thanks for bringing that up.”

  “You’re a good person, Harry. You trust people too easily.” She shifted in her seat, wincing.

  “The leg?” I asked.

  “Hip,” she said shortly. “Don’t forget your cold medicine.”

  Murphy had given me something that promised to remove mucus and sneezing and coughing and aching for eight hours at a time, about seven hours ago. I opened the little bottle and took more of it.

  “Are we getting old?” I asked her. “Is this what that’s like?”

  She smiled slightly and shook her head. “It is what it is.” She eyed me. “Do you think Lara is behind this?”

  “My instinct says no. But she’s tricky enough to try it, and it’s called treachery because you don’t see it coming,” I said. “Wow, though. She’s standing really close to Mab’s toes on this one, no matter how you look at it.”

  “How she reacts to the proposal is going to tell us a lot,” Murphy said.

 
“You ever get involved in one of my cases and find yourself drowning in an overabundance of information?” I asked.

  She snorted. “Point.”

  “It might tell us something,” I said. “Best we can hope for.”

  “We’re moving ahead blind,” she noted.

  “Maybe.” I pulled the car back onto the road and toward the highway. “But there’s no use in wasting time.”

  24

  Freydis met us at the door of Château Raith and said, “Seriously? You just drive here and walk up to the front door? Obvious much?”

  “Aw,” I said. “It’s so cute when you guys try to employ the vernacular. It’s just never quite on point. You know?”

  The ginger Valkyrie gave me a narrow-eyed look and said, “Don’t make me stop this car.”

  “Somehow worse and better at the same time,” I said approvingly.

  Freydis snorted. “Who is the mortal?”

  “Please,” Murphy said. “You know who I am, and you know what I do.”

  Freydis showed her teeth. “The Einherjaren like you, Ms. Murphy. But that doesn’t give you a pass. This is an internal matter. You aren’t coming into it.”

  “I already have,” Murphy said. “Years ago. Unless Ms. Raith would prefer me to make a non-secret of her open secret about her father.”

  “Are you threatening my employer?” Freydis asked in a very level tone.

  “I am a threat to your employer,” Murphy replied calmly. “But there’s no reason we can’t be civilized about it.”

  “I could kill you right now,” Freydis noted.

  “You could try,” Murphy answered. “But however that turned out, your boss would be working without Dresden’s help.”

  Freydis narrowed her eyes and then looked at me. “What do you say, Dresden?”

  “Good morning,” I said. “Nothing further to add.”

  “The woman speaks for you?”

  “For herself. But I don’t see the point in repeating her.”

  “Her injuries …” Freydis began.

  Murphy didn’t seem to move quickly, but everything happened with smooth precision as she stepped forward and to one side. She drove the elbow of her injured arm at Freydis’s midsection. It didn’t hit hard, but it forced the Valkyrie’s balance off, and Murphy followed up with a step into her as her cane clattered to the porch. She stepped into the Valkyrie, pinning her against the side of the doorway—and Murphy’s gun came out and nestled up under Freydis’s chin.