by Jim Butcher
“And think of all the Spam you missed eating.”
Irwin snorted, closed his eyes, and said, “Tell her I’m fine. Just need to rest.” Then he apparently started doing exactly that.
Nurse Jen eased silently out of the room and herded me gently away. Then she spread her hands. “He’s been like that. Sleeping maybe twenty hours a day.”
“Is that normal for mono?” I asked.
“Not so much,” Nurse Jen said. She shook her head. “Though it’s not completely unheard of. That’s just a preliminary diagnosis based on his symptoms. He needs some lab work to be sure.”
“Fabio isn’t allowing it,” I said.
She waggled a hand. “He isn’t paying for it. The state of the economy, the school’s earnings last quarter, et cetera. And the doctor was sure it was mono.”
“You didn’t tell his mom about that?” I asked.
“I never spoke to her. Doctor Fabio handles all of the communication with the parents. Gives it that personal touch. Besides. I’m just the nurse practitioner. The official physician said mono, so behold, it is mono.”
I grunted. “Is the boy in danger?”
She shook her head. “If I thought that, to hell with Fabio and the winged monkeys. I’d drive the kid to a hospital myself. But just because he isn’t in danger now doesn’t mean he won’t be if nothing is done. It’s probably mono. But.”
“But you don’t take chances with a kid’s health,” I said.
She folded her arms. “Exactly. Especially when his mother is so far away. There’s an issue of trust, here.”
I nodded. Then I said, “How invasive are the tests?”
“Blood samples. Fairly straightforward.”
I chewed that one over for a moment. Irwin’s blood was unlikely to be exactly the same as human blood, though who knew how intensively they would have to test it to realize that. Scions of mortal and supernatural pairings had created no enormous splash in the scientific community, and they’d been around for as long as humanity itself, which suggested that any differences weren’t easy to spot. It seemed like a reasonable risk to take, all things considered, especially if River Shoulders was maybe wrong about Irwin’s immunity to disease.
And besides. I needed some time alone to work.
“Do the tests, on my authority. Assuming the kid is willing, I mean.”
Nurse Jen frowned as I began to speak, then nodded at the second sentence. “Okay.”
Nurse Jen woke up Irwin long enough to explain the tests, make sure he was okay with them, and take a couple of little vials of blood from his arm. She left to take the vials to a nearby lab and left me sitting with Irwin.
“How’s life, kid?” I asked him. “Any more bully problems?”
Irwin snorted weakly. “No, not really. Though, they don’t use their fists for that, here. And there’s a lot more of them.”
“That’s what they call civilization,” I said. “It’s still better than the other way.”
“One thing’s the same. You show them you aren’t afraid, they leave you alone.”
“They do,” I said. “Coward’s a coward, whether he’s throwing punches or words.”
Irwin smiled and closed his eyes again.
I gave the kid a few minutes to be sound asleep before I got to work.
River Shoulders hadn’t asked for my help because I was the only decent person in Chicago. The last time Irwin had problems, they’d had their roots in the supernatural side of reality. Clearly, the giant thought that this problem was similar, and he was smarter than the vast majority of human beings, including me. I’d be a fool to discount his concerns. I didn’t think there was anything more troublesome than a childhood illness at hand, but I was going to cover my bases. That’s what being professional means.
I’d brought what I needed in the pockets of my suit. I took out a small baggie of powdered quartz crystal and a piece of paper inscribed with runes written in ink infused with the same powder and folded into a fan. I stood over Irwin and took a moment to focus my thoughts, both upon the spell I was about to work and upon the physical coordination it would require.
I took a deep breath, then flicked the packet of quartz dust into the air at the same time I swept the rune-inscribed fan through a strong arc, released my will, and murmured, “Optio.”
Light kindled in the spreading cloud of fine dust, a flickering glow that spread with the cloud, sparkling through the full spectrum of visible colors in steady, pulsing waves. It was beautiful magic, which was rare for me. I mean, explosions and lightning bolts and so on were pretty standard fare. This kind of gentle, interrogative spell? It was a treat to have a reason to use it.
As the cloud of dust settled gently over the sleeping boy, the colors began to swirl as the spell interacted with his aura, the energy of life that surrounds all living things. Irwin’s aura was bloody strong, standing out several inches farther from his body than on most humans. I was a full-blown wizard, and a strong one, and my aura wasn’t any more powerful. That would be his father’s blood, then. The Forest People were in possession of potent magic, which was one reason no one ever seemed to get a decent look at one of them. Irwin had begun to develop a reservoir of energy to rival that of anyone on the White Council of wizardry.
That was likely the explanation for Irwin’s supposed immunity to disease—the aura of life around him was simply too strong to be overwhelmed by a mundane germ or virus. Supported by that kind of energy, his body’s immune system would simply whale on any invaders. It probably also explained Irwin’s size, his growing body drawing upon the raw power of his aura to optimize whatever growth potential was in his mixed genes. Thinking about it, it might even explain the length of River Shoulders’ body hair, which just goes to show that no supernatural ability is perfect.
Oh, and as the dust settled against Irwin’s body, it revealed threads of black sorcery laced throughout his aura, pulsing and throbbing with a disturbing, seething energy.
I nearly fell out of my chair in sheer surprise.
“Oh no,” I muttered. “The kid couldn’t just have gotten mono. That would be way too easy.”
I called up a short, gentle wind to scatter the quartz dust from Bigfoot Irwin’s covers and pajamas, and then sat back for a moment to think.
The kid had been hit with black magic. Not only that, but it had been done often enough that it had left track marks in his aura. Some of those threads of dark sorcery were fresh ones, probably inflicted at some point during the previous night.
Most actions of magic aren’t any more terribly mysterious or complicated than physical actions. In fact, a lot of what happens in magic can be described by basic concepts of physics. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, for example—but it can be moved. The seething aura of life around the young scion represented a significant force of energy.
A very significant source.
Someone had been siphoning energy off of Bigfoot Irwin. The incredible vital aura around the kid now was, I realized, only a fraction of what it should have been. Someone had been draining the kid of that energy and using it for something else. A vampire of some kind? Maybe. The White Court of Vampires drained the life-energy from their victims, though they mostly did it through physical contact, mostly sexual congress, and there would be really limited opportunity for that sort of thing in a strictly monitored coed boarding school. Irwin had been attacked both frequently and regularly, to have his aura be so mangled.
I could sweep the place for a vampire. Maybe. They were not easy to spot. I couldn’t discount a vamp completely, because they were definitely one of the usual suspects, but had it been one of the White Court after the kid, his aura would have been more damaged in certain areas than others. Instead, his aura had been equally diminished all around. That would indicate, if not conclusively prove, some kind of attack that was entirely nonphysical.
I settled back in my chair to wait, watching Bigfoot Irwin sleep. I’d stay alert for any further attack, at leas
t until Nurse Jen got back.
River Shoulders was right. This wasn’t illness. Someone was killing the kid very, very slowly.
I wasn’t going to leave him alone.
Nurse Jen came back in a little less than two hours. She looked at me with her eyebrows raised and said, “You’re still here.”
“Looks like,” I said. “What was I supposed to do?”
“Leave me a number to call with the results,” she said.
I winked at her. “If it makes you feel any better, I can still do that.”
“I’m taking a break from dating cartoon characters and the children who love them.” She held up the envelope and said, “It’s mono.”
I blinked. “It is?”
She nodded and sighed. “Definitely. An acute case, apparently, but it’s mono.”
I nodded slowly, thinking. It might make sense, if Irwin’s immune system had come to rely upon the energy of his aura. The attacks had diminished his aura, which had in turn diminished his body’s capacity to resist disease. Instead of fighting off an illness when exposed, his weakened condition had resulted in an infection—and it was entirely possible that his body had never had any practice in fighting off something that had taken hold.
Nurse Jen tilted her head to one side and said, “What are you thinking?”
“How bad is it?” I asked her. “Does he need to go to a hospital?”
“He’s in one,” she said. “Small, but we have everything here that you’d find at a hospital, short of a ventilator. As long as his condition doesn’t get any worse, he’ll be fine.”
Except that he wouldn’t be fine. If the drain on his life-energy kept up, he might never have the strength he’d need to fight off this disease—and every other germ that happened to wander by.
I was thinking that the boy was defenseless—and I was the only one standing between Bigfoot Irwin and whatever was killing him.
I looked at Nurse Jen and said, “I need to use a phone.”
“How serious?” Doctor Pounder asked. Her voice was scratchy. She was speaking to me over a HAM radio from somewhere in the wilds of unsettled Canada, and was shouting to make herself heard over the static and the patch between the radio and the phone.
“Potentially very serious,” I half-shouted back. “I think you need to come here immediately!”
“He’s that ill?” she asked.
“Yeah, Doc,” I replied. “There could be complications, and I don’t think he should be alone.”
“I’m on the way. There’s weather coming in. It might be tomorrow or the next day.”
“Understood,” I said. “I’ll stay with him until then.”
“You’re a good man, Dresden,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll move as fast as I can. Pounder, out.”
I hung up the phone and Nurse Jen stared at me with her mouth open. “What the hell are you doing?”
“My job,” I replied calmly.
“The boy is going to be fine,” Jen said. “He’s not feeling great, but he’ll be better soon enough. I told you, it’s mono.”
“There’s more going on than that,” I said.
“Oh?” Jen asked. “Like what?”
Explaining would just convince her I was a lunatic. “I’m not entirely at liberty to say. Doctor Pounder can explain when she arrives.”
“If there’s a health concern, I need to know about it now.” She folded her arms. “Otherwise, maybe I should let the winged monkeys know that you’re a problem.”
“I told his mother I would stay with him.”
“You told his mother a lot of things.”
“What happened to not taking chances?”
“I’m thinking I’ll start with you.”
I felt tired. I needed sleep. I inhaled and exhaled slowly.
“Nurse,” I said. “I care about the kid, too. I don’t dispute your medical knowledge or authority over him. I just want to stay close to him until his mom gets here. That’s why I was hired.”
Nurse Jen eyed me askance. “What do you mean, it’s more than mono?”
I folded my arms. “Um. Irwin is a nice guy. Would you agree with that?”
“Sure, he’s a great kid. A real sweetheart, thoughtful.”
I nodded. “And he has a tendency to attract the attention of…how do I put this?”
“Complete assholes?” Nurse Jen suggested.
“Exactly,” I said. “People who mistake kindness for weakness.”
She frowned. “Are you suggesting that his sickness is the result of a deliberate action?”
“I’m saying that I don’t know that it isn’t,” I said. “And until I know, one way or another, I’m sticking close to the kid until the Doc gets here.”
She continued looking skeptical. “You won’t if I don’t think you should. I don’t care how much paperwork you have supporting you. If I start yelling, the winged monkeys will carry you right out to the street.”
“They’d try,” I said calmly.
She blinked at me. “You’re a big guy. But you aren’t that big.”
“You might be surprised,” I said. I leaned forward and said, very quietly, “I’m not. Leaving. The kid.”
Nurse Jen’s expression changed slowly, from skepticism to something very thoughtful. “You mean that, don’t you.”
“Every word.”
She nodded. Then she called, “Steve.”
The security guard lumbered into the room from the hall outside.
“Mister Dresden will be staying with Mister Pounder for a little while. Could you please ask the cafeteria to send over two dinner plates instead of one?”
Steve frowned, maybe trying to remember how to count all the way to two. Then he glowered at me, muttered a surly affirmative, and left, speaking quietly into his radio as he went.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the food.”
“You’re lying to me,” she said levelly. “Aren’t you.”
“I’m not telling you the whole truth,” I said. “Subtle difference.”
“Semantic difference,” she said.
“But you’re letting me stay anyway,” I noted. “Why?”
She studied my face for a moment. Then she said, “I believe that you want to take care of Irwin.”
The food was very good—nothing like the school cafeterias I remembered. Of course, I went to public school. Irwin woke up long enough to devour a trayful of food, and some of mine. He went to the bathroom, walking unsteadily, and then dropped back into an exhausted slumber. Nurse Jen stayed near, checking him frequently, taking his temperature in his ear every hour so that she didn’t need to waken him.
I wanted to sleep, but I didn’t need it yet. I might not have had the greatest academic experience, in childhood, but the other things I’d been required to learn had made me more ready for the eat-or-be-eaten portions of life than just about anyone. My record for going without sleep was just under six days, but I was pretty sure I could go longer if I had to. I could have napped in my chair, but I didn’t want to take the chance that some kind of attack might happen while I was being lazy.
So I sat by Bigfoot Irwin and watched the shadows lengthen and swell into night.
The attack came just after nine o’clock.
Nurse Jen was taking Irwin’s temperature again when I felt the sudden surge of cold, somehow oily energy flood the room.
Irwin took a sudden, shallow breath, and his face became very pale. Nurse Jen frowned at the digital thermometer she had in his ear. It suddenly emitted a series of beeping, wailing noises, and she jerked it free of Irwin just as a bunch of sparks drizzled from its battery casing. She dropped it to the floor, where it lay trailing a thin wisp of smoke.
“What the hell?” Nurse Jen demanded.
I rose to my feet, looking around the room. “Use a mercury thermometer next time,” I said. I didn’t have much in the way of magical gear on me, but I wasn’t going to need any for this. I could feel the presence of the dark, dangerous magic, radiating throug
h the room like the heat from a nearby fire.
Nurse Jen had pressed a stethoscope against Irwin’s chest, listening for a moment, while I went to the opposite side of the bed and waved my hand through the air over the bed with my eyes closed, trying to orient upon the spell attacking Irwin’s aura, so that I could backtrack it to its source.
“What are you doing?” Nurse Jen demanded.
“Inexplicable stuff,” I said. “How is he?”
“Something isn’t right,” she said. “I don’t think he’s getting enough air. It’s like an asthma attack.” She put the stethoscope down and turned to a nearby closet, ripping out a small oxygen tank. She immediately began hooking up a line to it, attached to one of those nose-and-mouth-covering things, opened the valve, and pressed the cup down over Irwin’s nose and mouth.
“Excuse me,” I said, squeezing past her in order to wave my hand through the air over that side of the bed. I got a fix on the direction of the spell, and jabbed my forefinger in that direction. “What’s that way?”
She blinked and stared at me incredulously. “What?”
“That way,” I said, thrusting my finger in the indicated direction several times. “What is over that way?”
She frowned, shook her head a little, and said, “Uh, uh, the cafeteria and administration.”
“Administration, eh?” I said. “Not the dorms?”
“No. They’re the opposite way.”
“You got any lunch ladies that hate Irwin?”
Nurse Jen looked at me like I was a lunatic. “What the hell are you talking about? No, of course not!”
I grunted. This attack clearly wasn’t the work of a vampire, and the destruction of the electronic thermometer indicated the presence of mortal magic. The kids were required to be back in their dorms at this time, so it presumably wasn’t one of them. And if it wasn’t someone in the cafeteria, then it had to be someone in the administration building.
Doctor Fabio had been way too interested in making sure I wasn’t around. If it was Fabio behind the attacks on Irwin, then I could probably expect some interference to be arriving—