by Butcher, Jim
Fitz gave a barely perceptible nod of his head. “I didn’t lead them here. They caught me while I was trying to recover the weapons. They forced me to come with them.”
“That’s not what the priest said,” Aristedes shot back.
“The father thought he was helping me,” Fitz replied. “There was no reason to hurt him.”
“No reason?” Aristedes asked. His voice was dangerous, deadly, and smooth. “That he should trespass here is reason enough. But he wanted to destroy this family. That is something I will not permit.”
“Family, right,” Fitz said. “We’re like the Simpsons around here.”
Personally, I would have gone with the Waltons, but I liked the cut of the kid’s jib.
Aristedes stared at Fitz with reptilian eyes and said, “Give me one reason why I should not kill you, here and now.”
“Because you can’t,” Fitz said in a bored tone. “You aren’t going anywhere under your own power. You’re fucked. You need help.”
The sorcerer’s voice dropped to a bare whisper. “Do I?”
“Yep,” Fitz said. “Wasn’t like it wasn’t going to happen eventually anyway, right? Sooner or later, you were gonna wind up eating applesauce with a rubber spoon somewhere. You think a bunch of kids you terrified into following you are gonna take care of Grandpa Aristedes? Come on.”
“I’ll give you one chance,” Aristedes said. “Leave. Now.”
Fitz tapped a finger on his chin thoughtfully. Then he said, “Nah. Don’t think so.”
Aristedes blinked. “What?”
“Here’s how it’s going to work,” Fitz said. “I’m going to take the priest, those two guys, and the crew away from you. I’m going to get them some help. I’m going to call an ambulance and get you some help, too. After that, we never cross paths again.”
“Are you insane?”
“I was,” Fitz said, nodding. “I think I’m coming out of it now. I know you aren’t coming back from Loopyland, though. So I’m taking the crew away from you.”
Aristedes clenched his fists and his eyes blazed—and though he probably didn’t realize it, his concentration faltered. The influence magic he held over the children wavered. “Kill him.”
The flat-eyed children looked at Fitz. Zero started taking a step toward him.
Fitz’s voice was a whip crack, sharp and loud in the echoing chamber. “Stop.”
And they did. No magic was involved. Fitz had something more powerful than that. He’d cared for those other kids. He’d thought about them, encouraged them, and led them. That was something every bit as real as mystic power and dark enchantment—and it carries a hell of a lot more weight.
Love always does.
“Zero,” Fitz said quietly. “We’re done staying with this idiot. Put down the knife and come with me.”
“Zero!” Aristedes said sharply.
I could all but see the strain in the air as the sorcerer doubled down on his influence-working, struggling to force the boy to do his will. He shouldn’t have bothered. It was over. It had been over ever since Fitz chose to walk back into that room.
Fitz walked over to Zero and put a hand on the other boy’s shoulder. “Z,” he said quietly. “I can’t make you do anything. So you tell me. Who do you want looking out for you? Me? Or him?”
Zero looked searchingly at Fitz. Then at Aristedes.
“Don’t listen to him,” Aristedes said through clenched teeth, spraying spittle. “Without me, you won’t last a day on these streets. The Fomor will take you all.”
“No, Z,” Fitz said quietly. “They won’t. It’s okay. We’ve got help.”
Zero blinked his eyes several times. He bowed his head.
The old knife in his fingers clattered to the concrete floor.
Another dozen knives and pipes fell to the floor as the other boys released them. They all went over to Fitz and gathered around him.
“I’ll kill you,” hissed Aristedes. “I’ll kill you.”
Fitz faced the crippled sorcerer and shook his head. Then he did what was possibly the cruelest thing he could have done to his former mentor.
He turned away and ignored him.
“Zero,” Fitz said, “we need an ambulance for the father now. Call nine-one-one. Don’t move him—let the ambulance guys do that.”
Zero nodded and pulled one of those cheap, prepaid cell phones out of the pocket of his oversized jacket. He ran for the door, presumably to get a better signal. Within the next few minutes, rough but serviceable medical supplies had been brought out, and Daniel’s wounds had been cleaned and bound tighter than he’d been able to manage on his own.
Aristedes tried to get a couple of the kids to pay attention to him, but they were following Fitz’s lead. They ignored him. So the sorcerer just sat and watched it all in stunned silence.
Maybe I should have felt a little bit bad for the guy. As far as his world was concerned, he had just died. Only he was still alive to see the unthinkable—a world that existed without him. He was a living, breathing ghost. Maybe I should have felt some empathy there.
But I really didn’t.
Butters stirred and sat up groggily as Fitz finished up tying a second pressure bandage to Daniel’s leg. Michael’s son let out a short grunt of pain and then breathed deeply several times. He was still shaking and pale, but his eyes were steady. He met Fitz’s gaze and said, “Thank you.”
Fitz shook his head. “I didn’t do anything. You two were the ones who beat him.”
“The father was the one who beat him,” Daniel corrected him. “He knew what would happen to him when he came here. And he knew we’d come after him.”
Butters grunted and spoke without opening his eyes. “Forthill wouldn’t have played it like that. He came here to give peace a chance.” He groaned and pressed a hand to his jaw. “Nnngh. Ow.”
Daniel frowned, thinking it over. “So . . . he didn’t want us to come after him?”
Butters snorted. “He knew we would come after him, no matter what he did. And he also knew that if the sorcerer went off on him, there would be someone to come along and do it the other way. He’s a man of peace. Doesn’t mean he’s stupid.”
“Where is he?” Daniel asked.
“By the fire,” Fitz said. “That way about thirty yards. The ambulance is on the way.”
Butters groaned and slowly pushed himself up. He rubbed at his jaw again and said, “Take me to him.”
“Wait,” Daniel said. “Fitz . . . you ran. I don’t blame you. But you came back.”
Fitz paused, pursed his lips, and said, “Yeah. I did, didn’t I?”
“Why?”
Fitz shrugged. “Dresden. He told me that if I ran now, I’d run forever. And I’m sick of that.”
“Heh,” Butters said. “Heh, heh. He totally Kenobied the day.” Dark eyes gleaming, he looked at Daniel. “Still have doubts?”
Daniel shook his head once, smiling. Then he sank down to the floor with a satisfied groan.
“The father, please,” Butters said. Fitz nodded and led Butters over toward the gang’s little camp. But not before Butters looked around and said, “Thanks, Harry. Good to know you’ve still got our backs.”
I watched them go to help Forthill quietly.
“Sure, man,” I said, though I knew no one could hear me. “Anytime.”
Emergency-service personnel arrived. By the time they got there, weapons had been hidden. Stories had been set. Concerned adults had come to discourage some local homeless youth from playing and living in a dangerous, old, ruined building. There had been an altercation with a possibly drunken vagrant that had gotten out of hand. Things had fallen down, injuring several.
It wouldn’t have taken more than half a brain to see the holes in the story, but Butters knew the med techs, no one had been killed, and no one wanted to press any charges. The techs were willing to keep their mouths shut for a couple of greenbacks. Ah, Chicago.
Forthill was in bad shape, but by the time they�
��d gotten him onto a stretcher and out to the ambulance, the angel of death was nowhere to be seen. Hah. Up yours, Reaper Girl. The father would live to not-fight another day.
Daniel went with the father. Aristedes rode in his own ambulance. He was still stunned by what had happened, or else smart enough to look disoriented and keep his mouth shut. The techs, after a few quiet words from Butters, strapped his arms and legs down for the ride. He never resisted. He never did anything. The doors of the ambulance shut on a broken man.
As for me, I couldn’t emerge from the old factory into the light. I had to stay in shadowed doorways to watch the proceedings. The afternoon must have been a warm one. The snow had visibly begun to lessen, and water ran and dripped everywhere.
When everyone with immediate medical needs had been taken care of, I went back to where I knew Butters would be. Sure enough, he came into the business entryway to recover his duffel bag and the flashlight containing Bob’s skull.
Butters slung the bag’s strap over his shoulder and pulled the little spirit radio out of it. He dropped that in his pocket and took out the flashlight housing. Then he held it up and said, “Okay, job’s done.”
Orange campfire lights shot in a stream over my right shoulder and past me into the eye sockets of the skull, where they took up their familiar glow. “See? I told you so.”
“Duly noted,” Butters said seriously.
I blinked at him and looked behind me, then back at the skull. “Bob. You were behind me that whole time?”
“Yeah,” Bob said. “The nerd had me shadow you. Sorry, Harry.”
Butters could see me, and I folded my arms and scowled at him. “You didn’t trust me.”
Butters pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Trust, but verify,” he said seriously. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Harry, but the testimony of a cat and a maybe-insane girl—wizard or not—didn’t exactly thrill all of us with its undeniable veracity.”
“Murphy told you to do it,” I said.
“Actually, Murphy didn’t want any of us to take any chances dealing with you,” he replied. “Things have used your appearance to get to her before.”
I wanted to say something heated and ferocious, but all I could have rationally responded with was something like, You’re right. And that wouldn’t have sounded very rational. So I just grunted.
Butters nodded. “And you’ve got to understand how bad the streets have been. The Fomor have no limits, Harry. They’ll use women, children, pets—anything—to get an emotional lever on you, if they can. To fight that, you’ve got to have buckets and buckets of sangfroid.”
I grunted and scowled some more. “But you bucked her orders.”
Butters scratched his nose with one finger. “Well. You know. It sounds cooler if I say I acted on my own initiative. I had a hunch.”
“Listen to Quincy here,” the skull burbled, giggling. “You had me, you dope.”
“I had you,” Butters admitted. “And I trust you.”
“And Murphy doesn’t, much,” Bob said with cheery pride, “which is probably smart. Someone else gets hold of my skull and who knows what they’d do with me? I am a loose cannon! The Wardens would waste me in a hot second!”
“Present company excluded,” I said.
“You don’t count,” the skull said stoutly. “You were drafted.”
“Granted.”
“The point being that I am an outlaw! And chicks love that!”
“Oy,” Butters said, rolling his eyes. “Enough, Bob.”
“You got it, hombre,” Bob said.
I couldn’t help laughing a little.
“You see what I’ve got to live with,” Butters said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You, uh,” he said. He rubbed at the back of his head. “You’re missed, here, Harry. A lot. After a while, most of us . . . you know. We figured you were gone. We kind of had a wake at your grave. Pizza and beer. Called it a funeral. But Murphy wouldn’t go.”
“Illegal gathering,” I said.
Butters snorted out a breath through his nose. “That was her excuse, yeah.”
“Well,” I said. “We’ll see.”
Butters paused, body motionless for a moment. “We’ll see what?”
“Whether or not this is permanent,” I said, gesturing at myself.
Butters snapped up straight. “What?”
“Bob thinks that there is hinkiness afoot with regard to my, ah, disposition.”
“You . . . you could come back?” Butters whispered.
“Or maybe I haven’t left,” I said. “I don’t know, man. I got suckered into this whole encore-appearance thing. I’m as in the dark as everyone else.”
“Wow,” Butters breathed.
I waved a hand. “Look. That will fall out where it may,” I said. “We’ve got a real problem to deal with, like, right now.”
He nodded, one sharp gesture. “Tell me.”
I told him about the Corpsetaker and her plan for Mort, and her deal with the point guy of the Fomor’s servitors. “So we’ve got to break that up right the hell now,” I concluded. “I want you to get Murphy and her Vikings and tell them to go stomp the Corpsetaker’s hideout.”
Butters sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Ugh. I know there hasn’t been time for a lot of chitchat since you, uh, became departed, but they aren’t Murphy’s Vikings.”
“Whose are they?”
“Marcone’s.”
“Oh.”
“We’ll have to talk to Childs.”
“Marcone’s new guy?”
“Yeah. Him.” Butters shivered. “Guy gives me the creeps.”
“Could be Will and company would be enough.”
Butters shook his head. “Could be Will and company have done too much already, man. Seriously.”
“Something’s got to happen. If you wait, you get a renegade wizard the White Council has nightmares about knocking on your front door. And by knocking I mean ‘converting it from matter to energy.’ ”
Butters nodded. “I’ll talk to her. We’ll figure out something.” He squinted at me. “What are you going to be doing?”
“Covering the ghosty side of things,” I said. “She and her wannabe Bob and her lemurs and all the wraiths she’s been calling up. Assuming things go well on the mortal coil, I don’t want her slipping out the back door and coming back to haunt us another day.”
He frowned. “You’re going to do all that by yourself?”
I showed him my teeth. “Not exactly. Move. There’s not much time.”
“When?” he asked.
“When else?” I answered. “Sundown.”
Chapter Forty
I vanished from inside the factory the second I felt sundown shudder through reality. The jumps were longer now, almost double what I’d managed the night before, and it took less time to orient myself between them. I guess practice makes perfect, even if you’re dead. Or whatever I was.
It took me less than two minutes to get to the burnt remains of Morty’s place.
On the way, I could see that southern winds were blowing, and they must have brought a springtime warmth with them. All of the city’s snow was melting, and the combination of the two with the oncoming night meant that a misty fog hung in the air, cutting visibility down to maybe fifty or sixty feet. Fog in Chicago isn’t terribly unusual, but never that thick. Streetlights were ringed with blurred, luminous halos. Traffic signals were soft blurs of changing color. Cars moved slowly, cautiously, and the thick mist laid a rare hush over the city, strangling its usual voice.
I stopped about a hundred yards away from Morty’s house. There I felt it: a trace of the summoning energy that had been built into his former home, drawing me forward with the same gentle beckoning as might the scent of a hot meal after a long day. It was like the Corpsetaker’s summons, but of a magic far less coarse, far more gentle. The necromancer’s magic was like the suction of a vacuum cleaner. Mort’s magic had been more like the gravity of th
e earth—less overtly powerful, but utterly pervasive.
Hell. Mort’s magic had probably had some kind of effect on me all the way over in Chicago Between. His house was the first place I’d come to, after all, and though I had a logical reason to go there, it was entirely possible that my reasoning had been influenced. It was magic, after all, intended to attract the attention of dangerous spirits.
At that very moment, in her moldy old lair, the Corpsetaker was torturing Morty and planning to murder my friends—so the remnants of the spell were definitely getting my attention.
I went closer to Morty’s house and felt that same pull get a little stronger. The spell had been broken when Mort’s house had burned down, and it was fading. The morning’s sunrise had almost wiped it away. It wouldn’t survive another dawn—but with a little help, it might serve its purpose one more time.
From the voluminous pocket of my duster, I withdrew Sir Stuart’s pistol. I fiddled with the gun until the gleaming silver sphere of the bullet rolled out into my hand, along with a sparkling cloud of flickering light. As each mote touched my skin, I heard the faint echo of a shot cracking out—the gunfire of Sir Stuart’s memory. Hundreds of shots crackled in my ears, distant and faint: the ghostly memory equivalent of gunpowder. Sir Stuart had heard a lot of it.
But what I needed wasn’t firepower, not for this. I took up the shining silver sphere, the memory of Sir Stuart’s home and family, and regarded it with my full attention. Once again the scene of the small family farm seemed to swell in my vision, until it surrounded me in a faint, translucent landscape that quivered and throbbed with power all its own. For a second, I could hear the wind rustling through the fields of grain and smell the sharp, honest scents of animals drifting to me from the barn, mixing with the aroma of fresh-baked bread coming from the house. The shouts and cries of children playing some sort of game hung in the air.
They weren’t my memories, but I felt something beneath their surface, something powerful and achingly familiar. I reached into my own thoughts and produced the memories of my own home, casting them up to merge with Sir Stuart’s cherished vision. I remembered the smell of wood and ink and paper, of all the shelves of secondhand books that had lined the walls of my old apartment, with their ramshackle double- and triple-stacked layers of paperbacks. I remembered the scent of woodsmoke from my fireplace, blending with the aroma of fresh coffee in a cup. I threw in the taste of Campbell’s chicken soup in a steaming mug on a cold day, when my clothes had been soaked with rain and snow and I had gotten out of them and huddled beneath a blanket near the fire, sipping soup and feeling the warmth sink into me.