The Ultimate Dresden Omnibus, 0-15

by Butcher, Jim

  “It bugs you, doesn’t it?” Murphy said.

  We walked under a streetlight, our shadows briefly equal in length. “What?”

  “Those big things looming over you.”

  “I wouldn’t say it bothers me,” I said. “I’m just . . . aware of them.”

  She faced serenely ahead as we walked. “Welcome to my life.”

  I glanced down at her and snorted quietly.

  We entered the lobby of the hotel, a place with a lot of glass and white paint with rich red accents. Given how late it was, it was no surprise only one member of the staff was visible: a young woman who stood behind one of the glass-fronted check-in counters. One guest reading a magazine sat in a nearby chair, and even though he was the only guy in the room, it took me a second glance to realize that he was Vince.

  Vince set the magazine aside and ambled over to us. His unremarkable brown eyes scanned over Murphy. He nodded to her and offered me his hand.

  I shook it, and offered a check to him with my left as we did. He took it, glanced at it noncommittally, and put it away in a pocket. “He took an elevator to the twelfth floor,” Vince said. “He’s in room twelve thirty-three.”

  I blinked at him. “How the hell did you get that? Ride up with him?”

  “Good way for me to get hurt. I stayed down here.” He shrugged. “You said he was trouble.”

  “He is. How’d you do it?”

  He gave me a bland look. “I’m good at this. You need to know which chair he’s in, too?”

  “No. That’s close enough,” I said.

  Vince looked at Murphy again, frowned, and then frowned at me. “Jesus,” he said. “You two look pretty serious.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I told you, this guy’s dangerous. He have anyone with him?”

  “One person,” he said. “A woman, I think.”

  Murphy suddenly smiled.

  “How the hell do you know that?” I asked him.

  “Room service,” she said.

  Vince smiled in faint approval at Murphy and nodded his head. “Could have been someone else on twelve who ordered champagne and two glasses two minutes after he got off the elevator. But this late at night, I doubt it.” Vince glanced at me. “I’ll take the bill I duked the steward out of my fee.”

  “Appreciated,” I said.

  He shrugged. “That it?”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Vince.”

  “As long as the check clears,” he said, “you’re welcome.” He nodded to me, to Murphy, and walked out of the hotel.

  Murphy eyed me, after Vince left, and smiled. “The mighty Harry Dresden. Subcontracting detective work.”

  “They’re expecting me to be all magicky and stuff,” I said. “And I gave them what they expected to see. Binder wouldn’t have been looking for someone like Vince.”

  “You’re just annoyed because they pulled that trick on you,” Murphy said. “And you’re taking your vengeance.”

  I sniffed. “I like to think of it as symmetry.”

  “That does make it sound nobler,” she said. “We obviously can’t just go up there and haul them off somewhere for questioning. What’s the plan?”

  “Get more information,” I said. “I’m gonna listen in and see what they’re chatting about.”

  Murphy nodded, glancing around. “Hotel security is going to have an issue with you lurking about the hallways. I’ll go have a word with them.”

  I nodded. “I’ll be on twelve.”

  “Don’t kick down any doors without someone to watch your back,” she warned me.

  “No kicking at all,” I said. “Not until I know enough to kick them where it’s going to hurt.”

  I went up to the twelfth floor, left the elevator, and pulled a can of Silly String out of my duster pocket. I shook it up as I walked down the hallway until I found room twelve thirty-three. Then, without preamble, I blasted a bit of the Silly String at the door. It slithered cheerfully through the air and stuck.

  Then I turned and walked back down the hall until I found a door that opened onto a tiny room containing an ice dispenser and a couple of vending machines. I sat down, drew a quick circle around me on the tile floor with a dry-erase marker, and got to work.

  I closed the circle with an effort of will, and it sprang up around me in a sudden invisible screen. It wasn’t exactly a heavy-duty magical construct, but such a quick circle would still serve perfectly well to seal away external energies and allow me to gather my own and shape it for a specific purpose without interference. I took the Silly String and sprayed a bunch of it into the palm of my left hand so that it mounded up sort of like shaving cream. Then I set the can down, held the mound of Silly String out in front of me, closed my eyes, and gathered my will.

  Working magic is all about creating connections. Earlier, I’d taken Binder’s hairs to create a link back to him and used it for a tracking spell. I could have done any number of things with that connection, including some that were extremely nasty and dangerous. I’d seen it happen before, generally from the receiving end.

  This time, I was creating a link between the Silly String in my hand, and the bit stuck to the door down the hall. They’d both come from the same can, and they’d been part of one distinct amount of liquid when they’d been canned. That meant I would be able to take advantage of that sameness and create a connection between them.

  I focused my will on my desired outcome, gathered it all up together, and released it with a murmur of “Finiculus sonitus.” I reached out and smeared away a section of the circle I’d drawn, breaking it, and instantly began feeling a buzzing vibration in the palm of my left hand.

  Then I tilted my head far to my right and slapped a bunch of Silly String into my left ear.

  “Don’t try this at home folks,” I muttered. “I’m a professional.”

  The first thing I heard was hectic-sounding, hyperactive music. A singer was screaming tunelessly and drums were pounding and someone was either playing electric guitars or slowly dipping partially laryngitic cats in boiling oil. None of the supposed musicians appeared to be paying attention to anything anyone else in the band was doing.

  “Christ,” came Binder’s accented voice. “Not even you could dance to that tripe.”

  There was a low-throated female laugh, and a slurred and very happy-sounding Madeline Raith replied, “This music isn’t about skill and precision, my sweet. It’s about hunger and passion. And I could dance to it to make your eyes fall out.”

  “I am not ‘your sweet,’ ” Binder said, his voice annoyed. “I am not your anything, ducks, excepting your contracted employee.”

  “I’m not sure I’d emphasize that if I were you, Binder,” Madeline said. “Since you’ve been a crushing disappointment as a hireling.”

  “I told you when I got started that if anyone from the White Council showed up, I couldn’t make you any promises,” he shot back, his voice annoyed. “And lo and behold, what happens? That buggering lunatic Harry Dresden shows up with backup—and with the support of the local constabulary, to boot.”

  “I’m getting so sick of this,” Madeline said. “He’s only one man.”

  “One bloody member of the White bloody Council,” Binder countered. “Bear in mind that someone like him can do everything I can do and considerable besides. And even people on the bloody Council are nervous about that one.”

  “Well, I’m sick of him,” spat Madeline. “Did you find out where he’s got Morgan hidden?”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear, love, but I spent my day chained to a chair getting popped in the mouth.”

  Madeline laughed, a cold, mocking sound. “There are places you’d have to pay for that.”

  “Not bloody likely.”

  “Did you find Morgan?”

  Binder growled. “Dresden had him stashed in rental storage for a bit, but he hared off before the cops could pick him up. Probably took him into the Nevernever. They could be anywhere.”

  “Not if Dresden is back in Chicag
o,” Madeline said. “He’d never let himself be too far from Morgan.”

  “So check his bloody apartment,” Binder said.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Madeline said. “That’s the first place anyone would look. He’s not a total moron.”

  Yeah. I wasn’t. Ahem.

  Binder snickered. “You’re money, Raith. Money never really gets it.”

  Madeline’s voice turned waspish. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That not everyone has a bloody string of mansions around the world that they live in or extra cars that they never really drive or cash enough to not think twice about dropping two hundred bloody dollars on a bottle of forty-dollar room service champagne.”

  “So?”

  “So, Dresden’s a bloody kid by Council standards. Lives in that crappy little hole. And pays for an office for his business, to boot. He ain’t had a century or two of compounded interest to shore up his accounts, now, has he? And when he set himself up an emergency retreat, did he buy himself a furnished condo in another town? No. He rents out a cruddy little storage unit and stacks some camping gear inside.”

  “All right,” Madeline said, her tone impatient. “Suppose you’re right. Suppose he’s got Morgan at his apartment. He won’t have left him unprotected.”

  “Naturally not,” Binder replied. “He’ll have a bloody minefield of wards around the place. Might have some conjured guardians or some such as well.”

  “Could you get through them?”

  “Give me enough time and enough of my lads, and yeah,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be quick, quiet, or clean. There’s a simpler way.”

  “Which is?”

  “Burn the bloody place down,” Binder said promptly. “The apartment’s got one door. If Morgan comes scurrying out, we bag him. If not, we collect his bones after the ashes cool. Identify him with dental records or something and claim the reward.”

  I felt a little bit sick to my stomach. Binder was way too perceptive for my comfort level. The guy might not be overly smart, but he was more than a little cunning. His plan was pretty much exactly the best way to attack my apartment, defensive magicks notwithstanding. What’s more, I knew he was capable of actually doing it. It would kill my elderly neighbors, the other residents of the building, but that wouldn’t slow someone like Binder down for half of a second.

  “No,” Madeline said after a tense moment of silence. “I have my instructions. If we can’t take him ourselves, we at least see to it that the Wardens find him.”

  “The Wardens have found him,” Binder complained. “Dresden’s a bloody Warden. Your boss should have paid up already.”

  There was a quiet, deadly silence, and then Madeline purred, “You’ve been modestly helpful to him in the past, Binder. But don’t start thinking that you would survive telling him what he should or should not do. The moment you become more annoying than useful, you are a dead man.”

  “No sin to want money,” Binder said sullenly. “I did my part to get it.”

  “No,” Madeline said. “You lost a fight to one overgrown Boy Scout and one pint-sized mortal woman, got yourself locked up by the police, of all the ridiculous things, and missed your chance to earn the reward.” Sheets rustled, and soft footsteps whispered on the carpet. A moment later, a lighter flicked—Madeline smoked.

  Binder spoke again, in a tone of voice that indicated he was changing the topic of conversation. “You going to clean that up?”

  “That’s exactly why it’s there,” Madeline said. She took a drag and said, “Cleaning up. It’s too bad you didn’t get here five minutes sooner.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I probably would have waited to make the call.”

  I felt myself leaning forward slightly and holding my breath.

  “What call?” Binder said.

  “To the Wardens, naturally,” Madeline said. “I told them that Morgan was in town and that Dresden was sheltering him. They should be here within the hour.”

  I felt my mouth drop open and my stomach did a cartwheeling back-flip with an integrated quadruple axle.

  Oh, crap.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Murphy looked at the Rolls and said, “You’re kidding.” We’d driven down to the Sax separately, and she hadn’t seen the wheels I was using. I was parked closer to the hotel, so we were about to get into the Silver Wraith together.

  “It’s a loaner,” I said. “Get in.”

  “I am not a material girl,” she said, running a hand over the Rolls’s fender. “But . . . damn.”

  “Can we focus, here?” I said. “The world’s coming to an end.”

  Murphy shook her head and then got in the car with me. “Well. At least you’re going out in style.”

  I got the Rolls moving. It got plenty of looks, even in the dead of night, and the other motorists out so late gave it a generous amount of room, as if intimidated by the Wraith’s sheer artistry.

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m kind of finding the Rolls to be irrationally comforting.”

  Murphy glanced aside at me. “Why’s that?”

  “I know how I’m going to die, you know? One of these days, maybe real soon, I’m going to find out I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.” I swallowed. “I mean, I just can’t keep from sticking my nose in places people don’t want it. And I always figured it would be the Council who punched my ticket, regardless of who believed what about me. Because there’s a bunch of assholes there, and I just can’t let them wallow in their own bull and pretend it’s an air of nobility.”

  Murphy’s expression became more sober. She listened in silence.

  “Now the Council’s coming. And they’ve got good reason to take me out. Or it looks like it to them, which is the same thing.” I swallowed again. My mouth felt dry. “But . . . I somehow just have the feeling that when I go out . . . it isn’t going to be in style.” I gestured at the Rolls with a vague sweep of one hand. “This just isn’t the car I drive to my death. You know?”

  Murph’s mouth tucked up at one corner, though most of the smile was in her eyes. She took my hand between hers and held it. Her hands felt very warm. Maybe mine were just cold. “You’re right, of course, Harry.”

  “You think?”

  “Definitely,” she said. “This car just isn’t you. You’ll die in some badly painted, hideously recycled piece of junk that seems to keep on running despite the laws of physics that say it should be melted scrap by now.”

  “Whew,” I said. “I thought I might be the only one who thought that.”

  Her fingers tightened on mine for a moment, and I clung back.

  The Council was coming.

  And there wasn’t anything I could do to fight them.

  Oh sure, maybe I could poke someone in the nose and run. But they would catch up to me sooner or later. There would be more of them than me, some of them every bit as strong as I was, and all of them dangerous. It might take a day or a week or a couple of weeks, but I had to sleep sooner or later. They’d wear me down.

  And that pissed me off. My sheer helplessness in the face of this whole stupid mess was infuriating.

  It wasn’t as if I didn’t have options. . . . Mab still held a job offer open to me, for example. And it was more than possible that Lara Raith might have the resources to shield me, or broker me a better deal than the Council was going to offer. When I thought of how unfair the whole thing was, I had more than a passing desire to grab whatever slender threads I could reach, until I could sort things out, later.

  Put that way, it almost sounded reasonable. Noble, even. I would, after all, be protecting other wrongly persecuted victims of the Council who littered the theoretical landscape of the future. It didn’t sound nearly so much like entering bargains that went against everything I believed so that I could forcibly impose my will over those who were against me.

  I knew the truth. But just because it was true didn’t make it any less tempting.

  What the hell
was I going to do? I had a hidey-hole planned out, but it had already been compromised. There was nowhere even a little bit safe I could take Morgan but my apartment, and the Wardens were going to find him there. And on top of all that, I still had no freaking clue as to the identity of our mysterious puppet master.

  Maybe it was time to admit it.

  This one was too big for me. It had been from the very start.

  “Murph,” I said quietly. “I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this.”

  Silence filled the beautiful old car.

  “When’s the last time you slept?” Murphy asked.

  I had to take my hand back from hers to work the clutch. I gestured at my bandaged head. “I can barely remember what day of the week it is. This morning, a couple hours, I think?”

  She nodded judiciously. “You know what your problem is?”

  I eyed her and then started laughing. Or at least making an amused, wheezing sound. I couldn’t help it.

  “Problem, singular,” I choked out, finally. “No, what?”

  “You like to come off like you’re the unpredictable chaos factor in any given situation, but at the end of the day you obsess about having everything ordered the way you want it.”

  “Have you seen my lab?”

  “Again with the inappropriately timed come-ons,” Murphy said. “I’m serious, Harry.”

  “I know some people who would really disagree with you. Like what’s-his-face, Peabody.”

  “He’s Council?”

  “Yeah. Says I have no place in his bastion of order.”

  She smirked. “The problem is that your bastion of order is sort of tough to coexist with.”

  “I have no bastions. I am bastionless.”

  “Hah,” Murphy said. “You like the same car, the same apartment, the same restaurant. You like not needing to answer to anyone, and doing the jobs your conscience dictates you should do, without worrying about the broader issues they involve. You hang out, fairly happy without much in the way of material wealth and follow your instincts, and be damned to anyone who tells you otherwise. That’s your order.”

  I eyed her. “Is there some other way it should be?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I rest my case.”