by Butcher, Jim
Billy had come to me on the down low to set up power of attorney for me, in case he should be hospitalized without Georgia being nearby to handle matters. Though neither of us said so, we both knew why he really did it. The only reason Georgia wouldn’t be there is if she was dead—and if Billy was in no shape to make decisions for himself, he didn’t want to hang around and find out what his world would be like without her in it. He wanted someone he could trust to understand that.
Billy and Georgia are solid.
I’d spent some endless hours in Stroger’s ICU waiting room, and it hadn’t changed since I’d been there last. It was empty except for Georgia. She lay on the sofa, sleeping, still wearing her glasses. A book by what was presumably a prominent psychologist lay open on her stomach. She looked exhausted.
I bypassed the waiting room and went to the nurses’ desk. A tired-looking woman in her thirties looked up at me with a frown. “Sir,” she said, “it’s well after visiting hours.”
“I know,” I said. I took my notepad out of my pocket and scribbled a quick note on it. “I’ll go back to the waiting room. The next time you go past Miss Macklin’s room, could you please give this to the gentleman sitting with her?”
The nurse relaxed a little, and gave me a tired smile. “Certainly. It will just be a few minutes.”
“Thanks.”
I went back to the waiting room and settled into a chair. I closed my eyes, leaned my head back against the wall, and drowsed until I heard footsteps on tile.
Billy entered with a rolled-up blanket under his arm, glanced around the room, and nodded to me. Then he went immediately to Georgia. He took her glasses off, very gently, and picked up the book. Georgia never stirred. He put the book on the end table, and her glasses on top of it. Then he took the blanket from under his arm and covered her up. She murmured and stirred, but Billy shushed her quietly and stroked his hand over her hair. She sighed and shifted onto her side, then snuggled down under the blanket.
I reached up a hand and flicked the light switch beside my head. It left the room dim, if not really dark.
Billy smiled his thanks to me, and nodded toward the door. I got up and we walked out into the hallway together.
“Should have tried to call you sooner,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “I know how it is, man. No apology needed.”
“Okay,” I said, without actually agreeing with him. “How is she?”
“Not good,” he replied simply. “There was internal bleeding. It took two rounds of surgery to get it stopped.” The blocky young man shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “They told us if she makes it through the night, she’ll be out of the worst of it.”
“How are you holding up?”
He shook his head again. “I don’t know, man. I called Kirby’s folks. I was his friend. I had to. The police had already contacted them, but it isn’t the same.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“They took it pretty hard. Kirby was an only child.”
I sighed. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Kirby knew the risks. He’d rather have died than stand by and do nothing.”
“Georgia?”
“I’d have lost it without her. Pillar of strength and calm,” Billy said. He glanced back toward the waiting room and a smile touched the corners of his eyes. “She’s good at setting things aside until there’s time to deal with them. Once things have settled out, she’ll be a wreck, and it’ll be my turn to hold her up.”
Like I said.
Solid.
“The thing that did Kirby took Thomas Raith,” I said.
“The vampire you work with sometimes?”
“Yeah. As soon as I work out how to find it, I’m taking it down. The vampires are probably going to help—but I might need backup I can trust.”
Billy’s eyes flickered with a sudden fire of rage and hunger. “Yeah?”
I nodded. “It’s part of something bigger. I can’t talk to you about everything that’s going on. And I know Andi needs you here. I understand if you don’t—”
Billy turned his eyes to me, those same dangerous fires smoldering. “Harry, I’m not going to move forward blind anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that for years, I’ve been willing to help you, even though you could barely ever tell me what was actually happening. You’ve played everything close to the chest. And I know you had your reasons for that.” He stopped walking and looked up at me calmly. “Kirby’s dead. Maybe Andi, too.”
My conscience wouldn’t let me meet his gaze, even for an instant. “I know.”
He nodded. “So. If I’d had this conversation with you sooner, maybe they wouldn’t be. Maybe if we’d had a better idea about what’s actually going on in the world, it would have changed how we approached things. They follow my lead, Harry. I have a responsibility to make sure that I do everything in my power to make them aware and safe.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I can see your point.”
“Then if you want my help, things are going to change. I’m not charging ahead blindfolded again. Not ever.”
“Billy,” I said quietly. “This isn’t stuff you can unlearn. Right now, you’re insulated from the worst of what goes on because you’re . . . I don’t want to be insulting, but you’re a bunch of amateurs without enough of a clue to be a real threat to anyone.”
His eyes darkened. “Insulated from the worst?” he asked in a quiet, dangerous voice. “Tell that to Kirby. Tell that to Andi.”
I took several steps away, pinched the bridge of my nose between thumb and forefinger, and closed my eyes, thinking. Billy had a point, of course. I’d been careful to control what information he and the Alphas had gotten from me, in an effort to protect them. And it had worked—for a while.
But now things were different. Kirby’s death had seen to that.
“You’re sure you don’t want to back out?” I asked. “Once you’re part of the scene, you aren’t getting out of it.” I clenched my jaw for a second. “And believe it or not, Billy, yes. You have been insulated from the worst.”
“I’m not backing off on this one, Harry. I can’t.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him fold his arms. “You’re the one who wants our help.”
I pointed a finger at him. “I don’t want it. I don’t want to drag you into what’s going on. I don’t want you walking into more danger and getting hurt.” I sighed. “But . . . there’s a lot at stake, and I think I might need you.”
“Okay, then,” Billy said. “You know what it will cost.”
He stood facing me solidly, tired eyes steady, and I realized something I hadn’t ever made into a tangible thought before: he wasn’t a kid anymore. Not because he’d graduated, and not even because of how capable he was. He’d seen the worst—death, heartless and nasty, come to lay waste to everything it could. He knew in his heart of hearts, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it could come for him, take him as easily as it had taken Kirby.
And he was making a choice to stand his ground.
Billy Borden, kid werewolf, was gone.
Will was choosing to stand with me.
I couldn’t treat him like a child anymore. Will was ignorant of the supernatural world beyond the fairly minor threats that lurked around the University of Chicago. He and the other werewolves had been kids who learned one really neat magic trick, almost ten years before. I hadn’t shared more with them, and the paranormal community in general is careful about what they say to strangers. He had, at best, only a vague idea of the scope of supernatural affairs in general, and he had not the first clue about how hot the water really was around me right now.
Will had picked his ground. I couldn’t keep him in the dark and tell myself that I was protecting him.
I nodded to a few chairs sitting along the wall at a nearby intersection of hallways. “Let’s sit down. I don’t have much time, and there’s a lot to cover. I’ll tell you everything when I g
et a chance, but for now all I can give you is a highlights reel.”
By the time I got done giving Will the CliffsNotes version of the supernatural world, I still hadn’t come up with a plan. So, working on the theory that the proper answers just needed more time to cook, and that they could do so while I was on the move, I went back to my borrowed car and drove to the next place I should have visited sooner than I had.
Murphy used to have an office at the headquarters of CPD’s Special Investigations department. Then she’d blown off her professional duty as head of the department to cover me during a furball that went bad on an epic scale. She’d nearly lost her job altogether, but Murph was a third-generation cop from a cop clan. She’d managed to gain enough support to hang on to her badge, but she had been demoted to Detective Sergeant and had her seniority revoked—a dead end for her career.
Now her old office was occupied by John Stallings, and Murphy had a desk in the large room that housed SI. It wasn’t a new desk, either. One leg was propped up with a small stack of triplicate report forms. It wasn’t unusual in that room. SI was the bottom of the chute for cops who had earned the wrath of their superiors or, worse, had taken a misstep in the cutthroat world of Chicago city politics. The desks were all battered and old. The walls and floor were worn. The room obviously housed at least twice as many work desks as it had been meant to contain.
It was late. The place was quiet and mostly empty. Whoever was on the night shift must have been out on a call of some kind. Of the three cops in the room, I only knew one of them by name—Murphy’s current partner, a blocky, mildly overweight man in his late fifties, with hair going steadily more silver in sharp contrast to the dark coffee tone of his skin.
“Rawlins,” I said.
He turned to me with a grunt and a polite nod. “Evening.”
“What are you doing here this late?”
“Giving my wife ammunition for when she drags my ass to court to divorce me,” he said cheerfully. “Glad you made it in.”
“Murph around?” I asked.
He grunted. “Interrogation room two, with the British perp. Go on down.”
“Thanks, man.”
I went down the hall and around the corner. To my left was a security gate blocking the way to the building’s holding cells. To the right was a short hallway containing four doors—two to the bathrooms, and two that led to the interrogation rooms. I went to the second room and knocked.
Murphy answered it, still wearing the same clothes she’d been in at the storage park. She looked tired and irritated. She grunted almost as well as Rawlins had, despite her complete lack of a Y-chromosome, and stepped out into the hall, shutting the door behind her.
She looked up and studied my head for a second. “What the hell, Harry?”
“Got a visit from Shagnasty the Skinwalker when I went to talk to Lara Raith. Any trouble with Binder?”
She shook her head. “I figured he’d have a hard time doing whatever he does if he can’t get out of his chair or use his hands. I’ve been sitting with him, too, in case he tried to pull something.”
I lifted an eyebrow, impressed. There hadn’t been time to advise her how to handle Binder safely, but she’d worked it out on her own. “Yeah, that’s a pretty solid method,” I said. “What’s he in for, officially?”
“Officially, I haven’t charged him yet,” she said. “If I need to stick him with something, I can cite trespassing, destruction of property, and assault on a police officer.” She shook her head. “But we can’t keep this close an eye on him forever. If I do press charges, it won’t be long before he’s under lighter security. I don’t even want to think about what could happen if he got to turn those things loose inside a precinct house or prison.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Long term, I don’t think you can hold him.”
Her mouth twisted bitterly. “Hate it when I have to let pricks like that walk.”
“Happen much?”
“All the time,” she said. “Legal loopholes, incorrect procedures, crucial evidence declared inadmissible. A lot of perps who are guilty as hell walk out without so much as a reprimand.” She sighed and twitched her shoulders into something like a shrug. “Ah, well. It’s a messed-up world. Whatcha gonna do?”
“I hear that,” I said. “Want to compare notes?”
“Sure,” she said. “What did you get?”
I gave her the rundown of what had happened since I’d last seen her.
She grunted again when I finished. “Isn’t that sort of dangerous? Involving the vampires?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But it’s Thomas. I think Lara is probably sincere about getting him back. Besides. Why worry about smoking in bed when your building is already on fire?”
“Point,” she said. “I got the photos. They don’t tell me anything new. I ran those account numbers you gave me through the system to see if anything came up. Brick wall.”
“Dammit.”
“It was a long shot anyway,” she said.
“Binder give you anything?”
Her mouth scrunched up as if she wanted to spit out something that tasted terrible. “No. He’s a hard case. Career criminal. He’s been grilled before.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And he knows that you can’t do anything but make him sit still for a little while. If he gives us anything on his employer, he’ll lose his credibility with clients—assuming that he lives that long.”
She leaned her shoulders back against the wall. “You say this Shagnasty thing has Thomas’s cell phone?”
“Yeah. Think you can track it?”
“As part of what investigation?” she asked. “I don’t have the kind of freedom to act that I used to. If I wanted to get what amounts to a wiretap, I’d have to get approval from a judge, and I don’t know any of them who would take ‘my friend the wizard’s vampire brother was kidnapped by a demonic Navajo shapeshifter’ as a valid justification for such a measure.”
“I hadn’t really thought of it like that,” I said.
She shrugged. “Honestly, I suspect Lara’s resources and contacts are better than mine, given the time constraints.”
I couldn’t quite suppress a growl of frustration. “If she learns anything. If she’s honest about what she learns.”
Murphy frowned, scrunching up her nose. “Where was Thomas taken from?”
“I’m not certain, but I think he was at the storage park. His rental van was there, and he said something about not being able to handle all of them on his own.”
“Them? The grey suits?”
I nodded. “Most likely. But since Thomas never pitched in during the fight, I figure Shagnasty probably snuck up on him and grabbed him while he was being distracted by Binder and his pets.”
“And you can’t track him down with magic.”
“No,” I growled through clenched teeth. “Shagnasty is countering it somehow.”
“How is that possible?”
I took a moment to assemble my thoughts. “Tracking spells are like any kind of targeted thaumaturgy. You create a link, a channel to the target, and then pour energy into that channel. In the case of a tracking spell, you’re basically just setting up a continuous trickle of energy, and then following it to the target—kind of like pouring water on a surface when you want to see which way is downhill.”
“Okay,” she said. “I get that, mostly.”
“The way to stymie a tracking spell is to prevent that channel from ever being formed. If it never gets created, then it doesn’t matter when the water gets poured. There’s nothing to cause it to start flowing. And the way you prevent the channel from forming is to shield the target away from whatever focus you’re using to create the link.”
“Like what?”
“Well, for example. If I had one of your hairs and wanted to use it as part of a tracking spell, you might beat it by shaving off your hair. If the hair in my spell doesn’t match up to an end somewhere on your head, no link gets created. So, unless
I had a hair that had been torn out from the roots, and fairly recently, you’d be hidden.”
“And that’s the only way to beat a tracking spell?”
“Nah,” I said. “A good circle of power could probably screen you off, if you took the time and money to give it serious juice. Theoretically, you could also cross into the Nevernever. Thaumaturgy originating on the earth doesn’t cross into the spirit world very efficiently—and before you ask, yeah, I tried it from the Nevernever side, too. It was failed spell number three.”
Murphy frowned. “What about Justine?” she asked. “Justine was able to find him once before.”
I grimaced. “She was able to give us a vague direction a few hours after Thomas had ripped most of the life out of her. It isn’t the same this time.”
“Why not?”
“Because she wasn’t sensing Thomas so much as the missing part of her own life force. They haven’t been together like that in years. Thomas—digested, I guess you could say—all of that energy a long time ago.”
Murphy sighed. “I’ve seen you do some neat stuff, Harry. But I guess magic doesn’t fix everything.”
“Magic doesn’t fix anything,” I said. “That’s what the person using it is for.” I rubbed at my tired eyes.
“Speaking of,” she said. “Any thoughts as to why these wizards didn’t seem to be using magic?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“Any thoughts as to the nature of our perpetrator?”
“A couple,” I said. “There are all these disparate elements in play—Shagnasty, Binder, Madeline Raith. There is serious money moving around. And if we don’t find this cockroach and drag him into the light, things are going to be bad for everyone. I don’t know what that tells us about him.”
“That he’s really smart,” Murphy said. “Or really desperate.”
I arched an eyebrow. “How do you figure?”