by Butcher, Jim
I grimaced around the cheerful room. So much for sleep.
I got up and padded back downstairs in my sock feet to raid the fridge, and while I was in the kitchen munching on an impromptu cold cuts sandwich, I saw a shadow move past the back window.
I had several options, but none of them was real appetizing. I settled for the one that might accomplish the most. I turned and padded as quickly and quietly as I could to the front door, slipped out, and snuck around the side of the house in the direction that would, I hoped, bring me up behind the intruder. A quick spat of rain had made the grass wet, and the night had grown cool enough to make my instantly soaked socks uncomfortable. I ignored them and went padding through the grass, keeping to the side of the house and watching all around me.
The backyard was empty.
I got an itchy feeling on the back of my neck and continued my circle. Had I given myself away somehow? Was the intruder even now circling just the way I was, hoping to sneak up on me? I took longer steps and stayed as quiet as I knew how—which was pretty darn quiet. I had developed my skulking to professional levels, over the years.
And as I rounded the corner, I spotted the intruder, a dark form hurrying down the sidewalk past Courtney’s house. I couldn’t follow him without being spotted pretty quickly, unless I cheated, which I promptly did. My ability to throw up a veil wasn’t anything to write home about, but it ought to be good enough to hide me from view on a dark night, on a heavily shadowed street. I focused on my surroundings, on drawing the light and shadow around me in a cloak, and watched my own vision dim and blur somewhat as I did.
I half wished I’d woken up Molly. The kid is a natural at subtle stuff like veils. She can make you as invisible as Paris Hilton’s ethical standards, and you can still see out with no more impediment than a pair of mildly tinted sunglasses. But, since it was me doing the job, I was probably just sort of indistinct and blurry, and my view of the street was like something seen through dark, thin fabric. I kept track of the pale concrete of the sidewalk and the movement of the intruder against the background of shadowy shapes and blurry bits of light, and walked softly.
The intruder crept down the street and then quickly crouched down beside my old Volkswagen, the Blue Beetle. It took him maybe five seconds to open the lock, reach into the car, and draw out the long, slender shape of a sheathed sword.
He must have come to the house first, and circled it to determine where I was. He could have spotted my staff, which I’d left resting against the wall by the front door, when he looked into the kitchen window. And I was pretty sure it was a he I was dealing with, too. The movement of his arms and legs was brusque, choppy, masculine.
I took a few steps to one side and picked up Courtney’s soccer ball. Then I approached to within a few yards and tossed it up in a high arc. It came down with a rattling thump on the Blue Beetle’s hood.
Lurky-boy twitched, twisting his upper body toward the sound and freezing, and I hit him in a diving tackle with my body as rigid as a spear, all of my weight behind one shoulder, trying to drive it right through his spine and out his chest. He was completely unprepared for it and went down hard, driven to the sidewalk with a whuff of expelled air.
I grabbed him by the hair so that I could introduce his forehead to the sidewalk, but his hair was cut nearly military-short, and I didn’t have a good grip. He twisted and got me in the floating rib with an elbow, and I wasn’t in a good enough position to keep him from getting out from under me and scrambling away, the sheathed weapon still in hand.
I focused my will, flicked a hand at him, and spat, “Forzare!” Unseen force lashed out at the backs of his knees—
And hit the mystic equivalent of a brick wall. There was a burst of twinkling, shifting lights, and he let out a croaking sound as he kept running. Something that glowed like a dying ember fell to the sidewalk.
I pushed myself up to pursue him, slipped on the wet grass next to the sidewalk, and rolled my ankle painfully. By the time I’d gotten to my feet again, he was too far away for me to catch, even if my ankle had been steady. A second later, he hopped a fence and was out of sight.
I was left there, standing beside my car on one foot, while neighborhood dogs sent up a racket. I gimped forward and looked down at the glowing embers of the thing he’d dropped. It was an amulet, its leather cord snapped in the middle. It looked as though it had been a carving of wood and ivory, but it was scorched almost completely black, so I couldn’t be certain. I picked it up, wrinkling my nose at the smell. Then I turned back to the car and closed the open door. After that, I untwisted the piece of wire that held the trunk closed, picked up a blanket-wrapped bundle, and went back to Michael’s place.
MORNING ON A school day in the Carpenter household is like Southampton, just before June 6, 1944. There’s a lot of yelling, running around, and organizing transport, and no one seems to be exactly sure what’s going on. Or maybe that was just me, because by a little before eight, all the kids were trooping out to their bus stop, led by Alicia, the senior schoolchild.
“So he grabbed the sword and ran?” Molly asked, sipping coffee. She apparently had a cold, and her nose was stuffy and bright pink. My apprentice was her mother’s daughter, tall and blond and too attractive for me ever to be entirely comfortable—even wrapped up in a pink fluffy robe and flannel pj’s, with her hair a mess.
“Give me some credit,” I said, unwrapping the blanket-wrapped bundle and producing Amoracchius. “He thought he took the sword.”
Michael frowned at me as he put margarine on his toast. “I thought you told me the sword was best hidden in plain sight.”
“I’ve been getting paranoid in my old age,” I replied, munching on a bit of sausage. I blinked at the odd taste and looked at him.
“Turkey,” Michael said mildly. “It’s better for me.”
“It’s better for everyone,” Charity said firmly. “Including you, Harry.”
“Gee,” I said. “Thanks.”
She gave me an arch look. “Can’t you just use the amulet to track him down?”
“Nope,” I said, putting some salt on the turkey “sausage.” “Tell her why not, grasshopper.”
Molly spoke through a yawn. “It caught on fire. Fire’s a purifying force. Wiped out whatever energy was on the amulet that might link back to the owner.” She blinked watery eyes. “Besides, we don’t need it.”
Michael frowned at her.
“He took the decoy,” I said, smiling. “And I know how to find that.”
“Unless he’s gotten rid of it, or taken steps to make it untraceable,” Michael said in a patient, reasonable tone. “After all, he was evidently prepared with some sort of defensive measure against your abilities.”
“Different situation entirely,” I said. “Tracking someone by using one of their personal possessions depends upon following a frequency of energy inherently unstable and transient. I actually have a piece of the decoy sword, and the link between those two objects is much more concrete. It’d take one he—uh, heck of a serious countermeasure to stop me from finding it.”
“But you didn’t trail him last night?” Charity asked.
I shook my head. “I didn’t know where I’d have been going, I wasn’t prepared, and since apparently someone is interested in the swords, I didn’t want to go off and leave …”
You.
“The sword …”
Unprotected.
“Here,” I finished.
“What about the other one?” Michael asked quietly.
Fidelacchius, brother-sword to Michael’s former blade, currently rested in a cluttered basket in my basement—next to the heavy locked gun safe that was warded with a dozen dangerous defensive spells. Hopefully, anyone looking to take it would open the safe first and get a face full of boom. My lab was behind a screen of defensive magic, which was in turn behind an outer shell of defensive magic that protected my apartment. Plus there was my dog, Mouse, two hundred pounds of fur and muscle, who didn�
�t take kindly to hostile visitors.
“It’s safe,” I told him. “After breakfast, I’ll track buzz-cut guy down, have a little chat with him, and we’ll put this whole thing to bed.”
“Sounds simple,” Michael said.
“It could happen.”
Michael smiled, his eyes twinkling.
BUZZ, AS IT turned out, wasn’t a dummy. He’d ditched the decoy sword in a Dumpster behind a fast-food joint less than four blocks from Michael’s place. Michael sat behind the wheel of his truck, watching as I stood hip-deep in trash and dug for the sword.
“You sure you don’t want to do this part?” I asked him sourly.
“I would, Harry,” he replied, smiling, “but my leg. You know.”
The bitch of it was, he was being sincere. Michael had never been afraid of work. “Why dump it here, do you think?”
I gestured at a nearby streetlight. “Dark last night, no moon. This is probably the first place he got a good look at it. Parked his car here, too, maybe.” I found the handle of the cheap replica broadsword I’d picked up at what had amounted to a martial arts trinkets shop. “Aha,” I said, and pulled it out.
There was another manila envelope duct-taped to the blade. I took the sword and the envelope back to the truck. Michael wrinkled up his nose at the smell coming up from my garbage-spattered jeans, but that expression faded when he looked at the envelope taped to the sword. He exhaled slowly.
“Well,” he said, “no use just staring at it.”
I nodded and peeled the envelope from around the blade. I opened it and looked in.
There were two more photos.
The first was of Michael, in the uniform shirt he wore when he coached his daughter’s softball team. He was leaning back on the bleachers, as he had been when I’d first walked up to speak to him.
The second picture was of a weapon—a long-barreled rifle with a massive steel snout on the end of it, and what looked like a telescope for a sight. It lay on what looked like a bed with cheap motel sheets.
“Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “What is that?”
Michael glanced at the picture. “It’s a Barrett,” he said quietly. “Fifty-caliber semiautomatic rifle. Snipers in the Middle East who use them are claiming kills at two kilometers, sometimes more. It’s one of the deadliest long-range weapons in the world.” He looked up and around him at all the buildings. “Overkill for Chicago, really,” he said with mild disapproval.
“You know what I’m thinking?” I said. “I’m thinking we shouldn’t be sitting here in your truck right next to a spot Buzz expected us to go while he and his super-rifle are out there somewhere.”
Michael looked unperturbed. “If he wanted to simply kill me here, he’s had plenty of time to make the shot.”
“Humor me,” I said.
He smiled and then nodded. “I can take you to your place. You can get some clean clothes, perhaps.”
“That hurts, man,” I said, brushing uselessly at my jeans as the truck moved out. “You know what bugs me about this situation?”
Michael glanced aside at me for a second. “I think I do. But it might be different from what you were thinking.”
I ignored him. “Why? I mean sure, we need to know who this guy is, but why is he doing this?”
“It’s a good question.”
“He sends the pictures to me, not you,” I said. I held up the new photo of the sniper rifle. “I mean, this is obviously an escalation. But if what he wanted was to kill you, why … ? Why document it for me?”
“It looks to me,” Michael said, “as if he wants you to be afraid.”
“So he threatens you?” I demanded. “That’s stupid.”
He smiled. “Do people threaten you very often?”
“Sure. All the time.”
“What happens when they do?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I say something mouthy,” I said. “Then I clean their clocks for them at the first opportunity.”
“Which is probably why our photographer here—”
“Call him Buzz,” I said. “It will make things simpler.”
“Why Buzz hasn’t bothered threatening you.”
I frowned. “So you’re saying Buzz knows me.”
“It stands to reason. It seems clear he’s trying to push you into some sort of reaction. Something he thinks you’ll do if you’re frightened.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“What do you think?” he replied.
I put my hand on the hilt of Amoracchius. The sword’s tip rested on the floorboards of the truck, between my feet.
“That would be my guess, too,” he said.
I frowned down at the blade and nodded. “Maybe Buzz figured I’d bring you the sword if you were in danger. So that …” I didn’t finish.
“So that I’d have some way of defending myself,” Michael said gently. “You can say it, Harry. You won’t hurt my feelings.”
I nodded at the true sword. “Sure you don’t want it?”
Michael shook his head. “I told you, Harry. That part of my life is over.”
“And what if Buzz makes good?” I asked quietly. “What if he kills you?”
Michael actually laughed. “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said. “But if it does …” He shrugged. “Death isn’t exactly a terrifying proposition for me, Harry. If it was, I could hardly have borne the sword for as long as I did. I know what awaits me, and I know that my family will be taken care of.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure everything will be fine if your younger kids have to grow up without a father in their lives.”
He winced, and then he pursed his lips thoughtfully for a few moments before he replied. “Other children have,” he said finally.
“And that’s it?” I asked, incredulous. “You just surrender to whatever is going to happen?”
“It isn’t what I’d want—but a lot of things happen that I don’t want. I’m just a man.”
“The last thing I would expect from you,” I said, “is fatalism.”
“Not fatalism,” he said, his voice suddenly and unexpectedly firm. “Faith, Harry. Faith. This is happening for a reason.”
I didn’t answer him. From where I was standing, it looked like it was happening because someone ruthless and fairly intelligent wanted to get his hands on one of the swords. And worse, it looked like he was probably a mortal, too. If what Charity had said was accurate, that meant Michael didn’t have a heavenly insurance policy against the threat.
It also meant I would have to pull my punches—the First Law of Magic prohibited using it to kill a human being. There was some grey area involved with it, but not much, and it was the sort of thing that one didn’t play around with. The White Council enforced the laws, and anyone who broke them faced the very real possibility of a death sentence.
“And that’s all I need,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Michael pulled the truck into the gravel parking lot of my apartment, in the basement of a big old boardinghouse. “I need to drop by a site before we go back to get your car. Is that all right?”
I took the sword with me as I got out of the truck. “Well,” I said, “as long as it’s all happening for a reason.”
MICHAEL’S SMALL COMPANY built houses. Years of vanishing at irregular intervals to battle the forces of evil had probably held him back from moving up to building the really expensive, really profitable places. So he built homes for the upper couple of layers of the middle class instead. He probably would have made more money if he cut corners, but it was Michael. I was betting that never happened.
This house was a new property, down toward Wolf Lake, and it had the depressing look of all construction sites—naked earth, trees bulldozed and piled to one side, and the standard detritus of any such endeavor: mud, wood, garbage discarded by the workers, and big old boot tracks all over the ground. Half a dozen men were at work, putting up the house’s skeleto
n.
“Shouldn’t take me long,” Michael said.
“Sure,” I said. “Go to it.”
Michael hopped down from the truck and gimped his way over to the house, moving with an energy and purpose I’d seldom seen from him. I frowned after him, and then pulled the first envelope out of my pocket and started looking at the photos inside.
The photo of Michael at a building site had been taken at this one. Buzz had been here, watching Michael.
He might still be here now.
I got out of the car and slung the sword’s belt over my shoulder, so that it hung with its hilt sticking up next to my head. Photo in hand, I started circling the site, trying to determine where Buzz had been standing when he’d taken his picture. I got some looks from the men on the job—but as I said before, I’m used to that kind of thing.
It took me only a couple of minutes to find the spot Buzz had used—a shadowed area of weeds and scrub brush behind the pile of felled trees. It was obscured enough to offer a good hiding spot, if no one was looking particularly hard, but far enough away that he had to have used a zoom lens of some kind to get those pictures. I had heard that digital cameras could zoom in to truly ridiculous levels these days.
I found footprints.
Don’t read too much into that. I’m not Ranger Rick or anything, but I had a teacher who made sure I spent my share of time hiking and camping in the rugged country of the Ozarks, and he taught me the basics—where to look, and what to look for. The showers last night had wiped away any subtle signs, but I wouldn’t have trusted my own interpretation of them in any case. I did find one clear footprint, of a man’s left boot, fairly deep, and half a dozen partials and a few broken branches in a line leading away. He’d come here, hung around for a while, then left.
Which just about anyone could have deduced from the photo, even if he hadn’t seen any tracks.