Side Jobs

by Jim Butcher

  Will followed Marcy in and gave me a look that meant, in Martian, What the hell do you think you’re doing?

  I ignored him.

  “Marcy,” I said, “why didn’t you respond to Will when he tried to contact you earlier?”

  “I tried,” she said. “I called back as soon as I got the message, but I didn’t have Will’s cell number. Only Georgia’s.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Um,” she said, “I just got back into town. And Georgia doesn’t need any stress. And he’s married. I mean, you don’t just go asking for a husband’s phone number. You know?”

  Which was reasonable, put that way. I nodded, neither approving nor disapproving.

  “I left messages on the answering machine at the apartment,” Marcy said. “It was all I could do.”

  “And I checked the messages after I’d run your errands,” Will said. “I called her back and had her come over. She swept for scents, and then we came here.”

  “Will,” I said, firmly, “please let me handle this?”

  He clenched his jaw and subsided, leaning against a wall.

  I turned back to where Marcy sat and continued towering over her, a posture of parental-style authority. “Tell me about your relationship to Georgia.”

  “We’re friends,” Marcy said. “Close friends, really. I think of her as a close friend, I mean. She was very kind to me when Andi broke it off with me. And we were friends for years before that.”

  I nodded. “Did Will explain what was going on?”

  She nodded. “Georgia and Andi have been taken.”

  “How do you know it was Andi with Georgia?”

  “Because I was there,” Marcy said. “I mean, not last night, but the night before last. Will was out of town and we had a girls’ night.”

  “Girls’ night?”

  “We hung out and made fondue and watched movies and lied about how we all looked better now than when we first met. Well, except that Andi actually does.” She shook her head. “Um, anyway, we stayed up late talking, and Andi slept in the guest bed and I slept on the couch.” She glanced up at my eyes for the first time. “That was when we had the nightmares.”

  “Nightmares?”

  She shuddered. “I . . . I don’t want to think about it. But all three of us had an almost identical nightmare. It was the worst for Georgia. She was . . .” She looked at Will. “It was as if she hadn’t quite woken up out of the dream. She kept jerking and twitching.” She gave me a weak smile. “Took two cups of cocoa to snap her out of it.”

  I kept my face neutral and gave her nothing. “Go on.”

  “Me and Andi talked about it and decided that one of us should stay with her. We were going to trade off, like, until Will came home.”

  “The first night was Andi, I take it?”

  Marcy nodded, biting her lip. “Yes.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” I said. Reasonable, logical—and impossible to verify.

  And the kid was shaking.

  Jesus Christ, Karrin, said a gentler voice inside me. What are you doing? She’s scared to death.

  I tried to make my tone a little warmer. “What do you know about their abduction, specifically, Marcy? Can you tell me anything at all that might point toward the identity of the kidnappers?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t think of anything that I picked up beforehand. But I’m certain it was Andi and Georgia who were taken.”

  “How can you be sure?” I asked.

  Will cleared his throat and spoke quietly. “Marcy’s got a nose. She’s better with scents than any of the rest of us.”

  I eyed Marcy. “Could you pick up their trail?”

  “They were taken downstairs and loaded into the back of a car,” Marcy said promptly. “An older model, burning too much oil. But I couldn’t follow them after that. I think I’ll be able to recognize the scent of their captors, though, if I run into it.”

  I nodded. She’d gotten a ton more out of the scene than Will had. Such a talent could be damn useful.

  All the same, I wasn’t sure. She sounded sincere to me, and I’m pretty good at knowing when someone isn’t. But there’s always a better liar out there. I just wasn’t sure.

  But . . . you have to trust someone, sometime. Even when it seems risky, when lives are on the line.

  Maybe even especially then.

  “Okay,” I said calmly, and took a seat in another chair. “Will,” I asked, “what did you find out?”

  “There are half a dozen other folks who have gone missing in the past day and a half,” Will said. “At least, that’s how many Bock and McAnally know about. Word about the kidnappings is out on the Paranet, and has been spreading since yesterday morning. People are moving places in groups of three and four, at least. McAnally’s is packed. The community knows something is up. They’re scared.”

  Marcy nodded. “It isn’t just Chicago. It’s happening all over the country. Group leaders are keeping everyone informed, asking after their people, reporting them missing to the local cops, for whatever good that might do. . . .” Her voice trailed off into a little squeak as she looked at me. “Um. Sorry.”

  I ignored her. Martian for This is easier for all of us if we just pretend I didn’t hear it. “Will, did you turn up anything we can use?”

  He shook his head. “No one has seen or heard anything at any of the disappearances. But there are rumors that someone found a gang of Red Court vampires torn apart in a basement across town. Maybe that has something to do with what’s going on.”

  “It doesn’t,” I said, firmly. “Not directly, at least. Dresden killed the Red Court.”

  Will blinked. “You mean . . . those vampires in the basement?”

  “I mean the Red Court,” I said. “All of them.”

  Will let out a quiet whistle. “Uh. Wow. That’s pretty big magic, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Marcy’s face was twisted up in a frown of concentration. “Was . . . was this the night before last, by any chance?”

  I glanced aside at her and nodded once.

  “If there was a really big surge of magic . . . maybe that explains the dreams,” she said. “It wasn’t just the three of us. The night before last, a lot of people—Paranet people, I mean—had nightmares, too. Some of them were bad enough that people haven’t slept since. A couple of folks wound up in the hospital.” She blinked at Will. “That’s what happened with you, Will.”

  “What do you mean?” Will said.

  “When Georgia called you. She’d had the nightmare twice, during the day, when she tried to sleep. She must have had it again and tried to call you.”

  “There’s no point in speculation for now.” I looked at Will. “In short, more people missing, bad dreams, everyone is gathering in defensive herds. That about it?”

  “More or less,” Will said. “What did you get?”

  “I sent an e-mail to the address Marcone gave us. Told them I had a talent in need of placement. I got a public phone location. I’m supposed to be there to answer a call at nine tonight.”

  Will frowned. “So they can get a look at you first, right?”

  “Probably.”

  “You shouldn’t look like you,” Marcy blurted. Her face colored slightly. “I mean, like, you’re the supernatural cop in Chicago. Everyone knows that. And it makes sense that anyone planning something here wouldn’t have much trouble finding out who might actually get in their way.”

  “Unfortunately,” I said, “I don’t have a different look.”

  Will looked at Marcy, frowning, and then said, “Ah. Makeover.”

  “We have a little time,” Marcy said, nodding.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “She’s right, Ms. Murphy,” Will said. “You’ve been seen with Dresden a lot. And, no offense, but not many people look like you do.”

  “Meaning?” I asked him. I smiled.

  Will’s eyes might have checked the distance between himself and the door. “Me
aning you’re outside the norm for adult height and weight,” he said. “Exceptionally so. We should do what we can to make it harder to identify you.”

  Will had a point, I supposed. Annoying as it might be, his logic was sound. And I was almost certainly a little sensitive where my height was concerned. I sighed. “All right. But if I hear montage music starting to play, I’m cutting it short.”

  Will, seeming to relax, nodded. “Cool.”

  Marcy nodded with him. “So what about Will and me? I mean, what do the two of us do?”

  I looked at the pair of young werewolves and pursed my lips. “How do you feel about duct tape?”

  WHEN I ANSWERED the pay phone outside a small grocery store on Belmont, I felt like an idiot. In the windows of a darkened shop across the street, I could see my reflection.

  Halloween had come early this year. I wore boots not unlike Herman Munster’s, with elevator soles about three inches thick, making me look taller. My hair was dyed matte black and was slicked down to my skull. There was so much product in it, I was fairly sure it would deflect bullets. I wore some black dance tights Marcy had donated to the cause, a black T-shirt, and a black leather jacket in a youth size.

  My face was the worst part of the disguise. I was all but smothered beneath the makeup. Dark tones of silver that faded to black made a mess of my eyes, altering their shape by means of suggestion, through clever application of liner. In the evening light, I might have looked Asian. My lips were darkened, too, a shade of wine red that somehow managed to complement the eye shadow. The lipstick changed the shape of my mouth slightly and made my lips look fuller.

  I glowered at the reflection. This costume had exactly one thing going for it: I didn’t look a thing like me.

  The phone rang and I picked it up, jerking it off the base unit as if impatient. I glared around me, my eyes tracking across every spot I thought could contain an observer, and said, “Yeah?”

  “The merchandise,” murmured a soft, sibilant voice with an odd accent. “Describe.”

  There was something intrinsically unsettling about the voice. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “One male and one female, mid- to late-twenties. Shapeshifters.”

  There was a rustle of static over the line, unless the speaker could make an extremely odd hissing sound. All things considered, I gave it even odds.

  “Ten thousand,” said the voice.

  I could have played it a couple of different ways. The kinds of people who get into this sort of deal come in about three general types: greedy, low-life sons of bitches; cold professionals engaged in a business transaction; and desperate amateurs who are in over their heads. I’d already decided to try to come across as the first on the list.

  “Forty thousand,” I shot back instantly. “Each.”

  There was a furious sound on the other end of the phone. It wasn’t a human sound, either.

  “I could pluck out your eyes and cut your tongue into slivers,” hissed the voice. Something about it scared the hell out of me, touching on some instinctual level that Ray, in all his repulsive mass, had not. I felt myself shudder, despite my effort not to do so.

  “Whatever,” I said, trying to sound bored. “Even if you could do it, it gets you nothing. But hey, no skin off my ass either way.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of my phone. I thought I felt some kind of pressure building behind my eyelids. I told myself it was my imagination.

  “Yo, anyone there?” I complained. “Listen. Are you up for doing some business, or did I just waste my time?”

  After another pause, the voice hissed something in a bubbling, serpentine tongue. The phone rustled, as if changing hands, and a very deep male voice said, “Twenty thousand. Each.”

  “I’m not selling the female for less than thirty.”

  “Fifty total, then,” rumbled the new voice. It sounded entirely human.

  “Cash,” I demanded.

  “Done.”

  I kept tracking the street with my eyes, looking for their spotter, but saw no one. “How do you handle delivery?”

  “There’s a warehouse.”

  “Fat chance. I pull in there, you’ll just pop me and make the body disappear along with the freaks.”

  “What do you suggest?” rumbled the voice.

  “Buttercup Park. Thirty minutes. One carrier. Carrier hands me half the cash. Then carrier verifies the merchandise in the back of my truck. Carrier hands me the rest of the money. I hand him the keys to the vehicle carrying the merchandise. We all walk away happy.”

  The deep-voiced man thought about it for a moment and then grunted. Translation: Agreed. “How will you identify me?”

  I snorted and said, “Park isn’t huge, tough guy. And it ain’t my first rodeo.”

  I hung up on him, then went back to my motorcycle and left, heading for Buttercup Park. A lighted sign hanging outside a bank told me it was a quarter after nine. The metro traffic grid was dying down for the night. I got there in a little more than fifteen minutes, parked my Harley in a garage, and made my way to where Georgia’s high-dollar SUV was waiting in the same structure. I went around to the back and opened the hatch. Will was just finishing wrapping Marcy in what appeared to be several layers of duct tape, covering her in a swath from her hips to her deltoids, trapping her arms against her sides. She was wearing a simple sundress with, I assumed, nothing underneath. I guess when you change into a wolf, you don’t take your ensemble with you—being trapped in undies made for a different species could prove awkward in a fight.

  Will looked up and gave me a quick nod of greeting. “All set?”

  “So far. You’re sure you won’t have a problem getting out?” I asked.

  Will snorted. “Claws, fangs. It’ll sting a bit, when it tears out the hair. Nothing serious.”

  “Spoken like someone who’s never had his legs waxed,” Marcy said in a nervous, forcedly jovial tone. She might have looked like a skinny little thing, but the muscles showing on her legs were lean and ropy.

  Will tore off the end of the duct tape and passed the roll to me. He sat down on the open floor in the back of the SUV, the seats of which had been folded away to make room for the “prisoners.” He stripped out of his shirt, leaving only a pair of loose sweats. I started wrapping him.

  “Tighten your muscles,” I said. “When I’m done, relax them. It should leave you enough room to maintain blood flow.”

  “Right,” Will said. “Houdini.” He contracted the muscles in his upper body and the duct tape creaked. Damn, the kid was built. Given that I was more or less leaning against his naked back to reach around him with the roll of tape, it was impossible not to notice.

  Dresden hadn’t been muscled as heavily as Will. Harry’d had a runner’s build, all lean, tight, dense muscle that . . .

  I clenched my jaw and kept wrapping tape.

  “One more time,” I said. “I meet the contact, then bring him here.” I held up the SUV’s remote control fob. “I’ll disarm the security system so you know we’re coming. If you hear me say the word red, it means things aren’t going well. Get loose and help me jump the contact. We’ll question him, find out where the other specials are being kept. Otherwise, sit tight, and make like you got hit with tranquilizer darts. I’ll shadow you back to their HQ.”

  “What then?” Marcy asked.

  “We’ll have to play that by ear,” I said. “If there aren’t many of them, we’ll hit them and get your people out. If they’ve got a lot of muscle, I’ll make a call. If I can get a large force here, they’ll run rather than fight.”

  “Can you be sure of that?” Will asked.

  “Dresden said that to the supernatural world, bringing in mortal authorities was equated with nuclear exchanges. No one wants to be the one to trigger a new Inquisition of some kind. So any group with a sense of reason will cut their losses rather than tangle with the cops.”

  “The way they didn’t tangle with FBI headquarters?” Will asked.

&nb
sp; I had sort of hoped no one would notice that flaw in my reasoning. “That was an act of war. This is some kind of profit-gaining scheme.”

  “Come on, Karrin,” Will said. “You’ve got to know better than that.”

  “This is a professional operation,” I said. “Whoever is behind it is depending on distraction and speed to enable them to get away with it. They’ll already have their escape plan ready to go. If a bunch of cars and lights come at them, I think their first instinct will be to run rather than fight.”

  “Yeah,” Marcy said, nodding. “That makes sense. You’ve always said supernatural predators don’t want a fight if they can avoid one, Will.”

  “Lone predators don’t,” Will said, “but this is an organization. And you might have noticed how a lot of supernatural types are a couple of french fries short of a Happy Meal. And I’m talking about more than here, tonight. More than Georgia and Andi. More than just Chicago.”

  I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  He leaned forward, his eyes intent. “I mean that if Dresden just blew up the Red Court . . . that means the status quo is gone. There’s a power vacuum, and every spook out there is going to try to fill it. The rules have changed. We don’t know how these people are going to react.”

  A sobering silence fell over us.

  I hadn’t followed the line of reasoning, like Will had. Or rather, I hadn’t followed it far enough. I’d only been thinking of Dresden’s cataclysm in terms of its effect on my city, upon people who were part of my life.

  But he was right. Dear God, he was right. The sudden demise of the Red Court, with consequences that would reach around the whole world, would make the fall of the Soviet Union look like a minor organizational crisis.

  “So, what?” I asked. “We back out?”

  “Are you kidding?” Will said. “They took my wife. We go get her and anyone else they’ve taken.”

  “Right,” Marcy said firmly, from where she lay on the bed of the vehicle.

  I felt a smile bare my teeth. “And if they fight?”

  Will’s face hardened. “Then we kick their fucking ass.”

  “Ass,” said Marcy, nodding.