Side Jobs

by Jim Butcher

  Freddie reached a crescendo that told us love must die.

  Murphy sighed and called, “For the love of God, someone turn off that damn record.”

  “I’M SORRY, HARRY,” Captain Luccio said. “We don’t exactly have orbital satellites for detecting black magic.”

  I waited a second to be sure she was finished. The presence of so much magical talent on the far end of the call meant that at times the lag could stretch out between Chicago and Edinburgh, the headquarters of the White Council of Wizards. Anastasia Luccio, captain of the Wardens, my ex-girlfriend, had been readily forthcoming with the information the Council had on any shenanigans going on in Chicago—which was exactly nothing.

  “Too bad we don’t, eh?” I asked. “Unofficially—is there anyone who might know anything?”

  “The Gatekeeper, perhaps. He has a gift for sensing problem areas. But no one has seen him for weeks, which is hardly unusual. And frankly, Warden Dresden, you’re supposed to be the one giving us this kind of information.” Her voice was half teasing, half deadly serious. “What do you think is happening?”

  “Three couples, apparently lovey-dovey as hell, have committed dual suicide in the past two weeks,” I told her. “The last two were brother and sister. There were some seriously irrational components to their behavior.”

  “You suspect mental tampering,” she said. Her voice was hard.

  Luccio had been a victim, too.

  I found myself smiling somewhat bitterly at no one. She had been, among other things, mindboinked into going out with me. Which was apparently the only way anyone would date me, lately. “It seems a reasonable suspicion. I’ll let you know what I turn up.”

  “Use caution,” she said. “Don’t enter any suspect situation without backup on hand. There’s too much chance that you could be compromised.”

  “Compromised?” I asked. “Of the two people having this conversation, which one of them exposed the last guy rearranging people’s heads?”

  “Touché,” Luccio said. “But he got away with it because we were overconfident. So use caution, anyway.”

  “Planning on it,” I said.

  There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Anastasia said, “How have you been, Harry?”

  “Keeping busy,” I said. She had already apologized to me, sort of, for abruptly walking out of my personal life. She’d never intended to be there in the first place. There had been a real emotional tsunami around the events of last year, and I wasn’t the one who had gotten the most hurt by them. “You?”

  “Keeping busy.” She was quiet for a moment and then said, “I know it’s over. But I’m glad for the time we had together. It made me happy. Sometimes I—”

  Miss feeling that, I thought, completing the sentence. My throat felt tight. “Nothing wrong with happy.”

  “No, there isn’t. When it’s real.” Her voice softened. “Be careful, Harry. Please.”

  “I will,” I said.

  I STARTED COMBING the supernatural world for answers and got almost nothing. The Little Folk, who could usually be relied on to provide some kind of information, had nothing for me. Their memory for detail was very short, and the deaths had happened too long ago to get me anything but conflicting gibberish from them.

  I made several mental nighttime sweeps through the city using the scale model of Chicago in my basement, and got nothing but a headache for my trouble.

  I called around the Paranet, the organization of folk with only modest magical gifts, the kind who often found themselves being preyed upon by more powerful supernatural beings. They worked together now, sharing information, communicating successful techniques, and generally overcoming their lack of raw magical muscle with mutually supportive teamwork. They didn’t have anything for me, either.

  I hit McAnally’s, a hub of the supernatural social scene, and asked a lot of questions. No one had any answers. Then I started contacting the people I knew in the scene, starting with the ones I thought most likely to provide information. I worked my way methodically down the list, crossing out names, until I got to Ask random people on the street.

  There are days when I don’t feel like much of a wizard. Or an investigator. Or a wizard investigator.

  Ordinary PIs have a lot of days like that, where they look and look and look for information and find nothing. I get fewer of those days than most, on account of the whole wizard thing giving me a lot more options—but sometimes I come up goose eggs, anyway.

  I just hate doing it when lives may be in danger.

  FOUR DAYS LATER, all I knew was that nobody knew about any black magic happening in Chicago, and the only traces of it I did find were the minuscule amounts of residue left from black magic wrought by those without enough power to be a threat (Warden Ramirez had coined the phrase “dim magic” to describe that kind of petty, essentially harmless malice). There were also the usual traces of dim magic performed subconsciously from a bed of dark emotions, probably by someone who might not even know they had a gift.

  In other words, goose eggs.

  Fortunately, Murphy got the job done.

  Sometimes hard work is way better than magic.

  MURPHY’S SATURN HAD gotten a little blown up a couple of years back, sort of my fault, and what with her demotion and all, it would be a while before she’d be able to afford something besides her old Harley. For some reason, she didn’t want to take the motorcycle, so that left my car, the ever trusty (almost always) Blue Beetle, an old-school VW Bug that had seen me through one nasty scrape after another. More than once, it had been pounded badly, but always it had risen to do battle once more—if by battle one means driving somewhere at a sedate speed, without much acceleration and only middling gas mileage.

  Don’t start. It’s paid for.

  I stopped outside Murphy’s little white house, with its little pink rose garden, and rolled down the window on the passenger side. “Make like the Dukes of Hazzard,” I said. “Door’s stuck.”

  Murphy gave me a narrow look. Then she tried the door. It opened easily. She slid into the passenger seat with a smug smile, closed the door, and didn’t say anything.

  “Police work has made you cynical,” I said.

  “If you want to ogle my butt, you’ll just have to work for it like everyone else, Harry.”

  I snorted and put the car in gear. “Where we going?” “Nowhere until you buckle up,” she said, putting her own seat belt on.

  “It’s my car,” I said.

  “It’s the law. You want to get cited? ’Cause I can do that.”

  I debated whether or not it was worth it while she gave me her cop look—and produced a ballpoint pen.

  I buckled up.

  Murphy beamed at me. “Springfield. Head for I-55.”

  I grunted. “Kind of out of your jurisdiction.”

  “If we were investigating something,” Murphy said. “We’re not. We’re going to the fair.”

  I eyed her sidelong. “On a date?”

  “Sure, if someone asks,” she said off handedly. Then she froze for a second, and added, “It’s a reasonable cover story.”

  “Right,” I said. Her cheeks looked a little pink. Neither of us said anything for a little while.

  I merged onto the highway, always fun in a car originally designed to rocket down the Autobahn at a blistering one hundred kilometers an hour, and asked Murphy, “Springfield?”

  “State Fair,” she said. “That was the common denominator.”

  I frowned, going over the dates in my head. “State Fair only runs, what? Ten days?”

  Murphy nodded. “They shut down tonight.”

  “But the first couple died twelve days ago.”

  “They were both volunteer staff for the fair, and they were down there on the grounds setting up.” Murphy lifted a foot to rest her heel on the edge of the passenger seat, frowning out the window. “I found Skee-Ball tickets and one of those chintzy stuffed animals in the second couple’s apartment. And the Bardalackis go
t pulled over for speeding on I-55, five minutes out of Springfield and bound for Chicago.”

  “So maybe they went to the fair,” I said. “Or maybe they were just taking a road trip or something.”

  Murphy shrugged. “Possibly. But if I assume that it’s a coincidence, it doesn’t get me anywhere—and we’ve got nothing. If I assume there’s a connection, we’ve got a possible answer.”

  I beamed at her. “I thought you didn’t like reading Parker.”

  She eyed me. “That doesn’t mean his logic isn’t sound.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  She exhaled heavily. “It’s the best I’ve got. I just hope that if I get you into the general area, you can pick up on whatever is going on.”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking of walls papered in photographs. “Me, too.”

  THE SMELLS ARE what I enjoy the most about places like the State Fair. You get combinations of smells at such events like none found anywhere else. Popcorn, roast nuts, and fast food predominate, and you can get anything you want to clog your arteries or burn out your stomach lining. Chili dogs, funnel cakes, fried bread, majorly greasy pizza, candy apples, ye gods. Evil food smells amazing—which is either proof that there is a Satan or some equivalent out there, or that the Almighty doesn’t actually want everyone to eat organic tofu all the time. I can’t decide.

  Other smells are a cross section, depending on where you’re standing. Disinfectant and filth walking by the Porta-Potties, exhaust and burned oil and sun-baked asphalt and gravel in the parking lots, sunlight on warm bodies, suntan lotion, cigarette smoke and beer near some of the attendees, the pungent, honest smell of livestock near the animal shows, stock contests, or pony rides—all of it charging right up your nose. I like indulging my sense of smell.

  Smell is the hardest sense to lie to.

  Murphy and I started in midmorning and began walking around the fair in a methodical search pattern. It took us all day. The State Fair is not a rinky-dink event.

  “Dammit,” she said. “We’ve been here all day. You sure you haven’t sniffed out anything?”

  “Nothing like what we’re looking for,” I said. “I was afraid of this.”

  “Of what?”

  “A lot of times, magic like this—complex, long-lasting, subtle, dark—doesn’t thrive well in sunlight.” I glanced at the lengthening shadows. “Give it another half hour and we’ll try again.”

  Murphy frowned at me. “I thought you always said magic isn’t about good and evil.”

  “Neither is sunshine.”

  Murphy exhaled, her displeasure plain. “You might have mentioned it to me before.”

  “No way to know until we tried,” I said. “Think of it this way: Maybe we’re just looking in the exact wrong place.”

  She sighed and squinted around at the nearby food trailers and concession stands. “Ugh. Think there’s anything here that won’t make me split my jeans at the seams?”

  I beamed. “Probably not. How about dogs and a funnel cake?”

  “Bastard,” Murphy growled. Then, “Okay.”

  HALFWAY THROUGH MY second hot dog, I realized we were being followed.

  I kept myself from reacting, took another bite, and said, “Maybe this is the place after all.”

  Murphy had found a place selling turkey drumsticks. She had cut the meat from the bone and onto a paper plate, and she was eating it with a plastic fork. She didn’t stop chewing or look up. “Whatcha got?”

  “Guy in a maroon tee and tan BDU pants, about twenty feet away off your right shoulder. I’ve seen him at least two other times today.”

  “Doesn’t necessarily mean he’s following us.”

  “He’s been busy doing nothing in particular all three times.”

  Murphy nodded. “Five eight or so, long hair? Little soul tuft under his mouth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He was sitting on a bench when I came out of the Porta-Potty,” Murphy said. “Also doing nothing.” She shrugged and went back to eating.

  “How do you want to play it?”

  “We’re here with a zillion people, Harry.” She deepened her voice and blocked out any hint of a nasal tone. “You want I should whack him until he talks?”

  I grunted and finished my hot dog. “Doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe he’s got a crush on you.”

  Murphy snorted. “Maybe he’s got a crush on you.”

  I covered a respectable belch with my hand and reached for my funnel cake. “Who could blame him.” I took a bite and nodded. “All right. We’ll see what happens, then.”

  Murphy nodded and sipped at her Diet Coke. “Will says you and Anastasia broke up a while back.”

  “Will talks too much,” I said darkly.

  She glanced a little bit away. “He’s your friend. He worries about you.”

  I studied her averted face for a moment and then nodded. “Well,” I said, “tell Will he doesn’t need to worry. It sucked. It sucks less now. I’ll be fine. Fish in the sea, never meant to be, et cetera.” I paused over another bite of funnel cake and asked, “How’s Kincaid?”

  “The way he always is,” Murphy said.

  “You get to be a few centuries old, you get a little set in your ways.”

  She shook her head. “It’s his type. He’d be that way if he were twenty. He walks his own road and doesn’t let anyone make him do differently. Like ...”

  She stopped before she could say who Kincaid was like. She ate her turkey leg.

  A shiver passed over the fair, a tactile sensation to my wizard’s senses. Sundown. Twilight would go on for a while yet, but the light left in the sky would no longer hold the creatures of the night at bay.

  Murphy glanced up at me, sensing the change in my level of tension. She finished off her drink while I stuffed the last of the funnel cake into my mouth, and we stood up together.

  THE WESTERN SKY was still a little bit orange when I finally sensed magic at work.

  We were near the carnival, a section of the fair full of garishly lit rides, heavily slanted games of chance, and chintzy attractions of every kind. It was full of screaming, excited little kids, parents with frayed patience, and fashion-enslaved teenagers. Music tinkled and brayed tinny tunes. Lights flashed and danced. Barkers bleated out cajolement, encouragement, and condolences in almost-equal measures.

  We drifted through the merry chaos, our maroon-shirted tail following along ten to twenty yards behind. I walked with my eyes half closed, giving no more heed to my vision than a bloodhound on a trail. Murphy stayed beside me, her expression calm, her blue eyes alert for physical danger.

  Then I felt it—a quiver in the air, no more noticeable than the fading hum from a gently plucked guitar string. I noted its direction and walked several more paces before checking again, in an attempt to triangulate the source of the disturbance. I got a rough fix on it in under a minute and realized I had stopped and was staring.

  “Harry?” Murphy asked. “What is it?”

  “Something down there,” I said, nodding to the midway. “It’s faint. But it’s something.”

  Murph inhaled sharply. “This must be the place. There goes our tail.”

  We didn’t have to communicate the decision to each other. If the tail belonged to whoever was behind this, we couldn’t let him get away to give the culprit forewarning—and odds were excellent that the sudden rabbit impersonation by the man in maroon would result in his leading us somewhere interesting.

  We turned and gave pursuit.

  A footrace on open ground is one thing. Running through a crowded carnival is something else entirely. You can’t sprint, unless you want to wind up falling down a lot and attracting a lot of attention. You have to hurry along, hopping between clusters of people, never really getting the chance to pour on the gas. The danger in a chase like this isn’t that the quarry will outrun you, but that you’ll lose him in the crowd.

  I had a huge advantage. I’m freakishly tall. I could see over everyone and spot Mr. Maro
on bobbing and weaving his way through the crowd. I took the lead and Murphy followed.

  I got within a couple of long steps of Maroon, but was interdicted by a gaggle of seniors in Shriners caps. He caught a break at the same time, a stretch of open ground beyond the Shriners, and by the time I got through, I saw Maroon handing tickets to a carnie. He hopped up onto a platform, got into a little roller coaster-style car, and vanished into an attraction.

  “Dammit!” Murphy said, panting. “What now?”

  Behind the attraction, advertised as the Tunnel of Terror, there was an empty space, the interior of a circle of several similar rides and games. There wouldn’t be anyone to hide behind in there. “You take the back. I’ll watch the front. Whoever spots him gives a shout.”

  “Got it.” Murphy hurried off around the Tunnel of Terror. She frowned at a little plastic barrier with an AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY notice on it, then calmly ignored it and went on over.

  “Anarchist,” I muttered, and settled down to wait for Maroon to figure out he’d been treed.

  He didn’t appear.

  The dingy little roller coaster car came wheezing slowly out of the opposite side of the platform, empty. The carnie, an old fellow with a scruffy white beard, didn’t notice—he was dozing in his chair.

  Murphy returned a few seconds later. “There are two doors on the back,” she reported, “both of them chained and locked from the outside. He didn’t come out that way.”

  I inhaled and nodded at the empty car. “Not here, either. Look, we can’t just stand around. Maybe he’s running through a tunnel or something. We’ve got to know if he’s inside.”

  “I’ll go flush him out,” she said. “You pick him up when he shows.”

  “No way,” I said. “We stay with our wing”—I glanced at Murphy—“person. The power I sensed came from somewhere nearby. If we split up, we’re about a million times more vulnerable to mental manipulation. And if this guy is more than he appears, neither of us wants to take him solo.”