by Jim Butcher
I’D SEEN GHOULS in all kinds of situations before—but I’d never seen them whipped into submission. Ghouls fought to the grisly, messy end. That was what they did. But River Shoulders had been more than their match. He’d left several of them alive when he could have killed them to the last, and he’d found their breaking point when Irwin had dragged Barrowill in by his hair. Ghouls could take a huge beating, but River Shoulders had given them one like I’d never seen, and when he ordered them to take their master and their dead and never to return, they’d snapped to it.
“Thanks, Connie,” I groaned, as she settled me onto a section of convenient rubble. I was freezing. The frost on my clothes was rapidly melting away, but the chill had settled inward.
The girl looked acutely embarrassed, but that wasn’t in short supply in that dorm. That hallway was empty of other students for the moment, though. We had the place to ourselves, though I judged that the authorities would arrive in some form before long.
Irwin came over with a dust-covered blanket and wrapped it around her. He’d scrounged a ragged towel for himself, though it did more to emphasize his physique than to hide it. The kid was ripped.
“Thank you, Irwin,” she said.
He grunted. Physically, he’d bounced back from the nearly lethal feeding like a rubber freaking ball. Maybe River Shoulders’s water-smoothing spell had done something to help that. Mentally, he was slowly refocusing. You could see the gleam coming back into his eyes. Until that happened, he’d listened to Connie. A guy could do worse.
“I …” Connie shook her head. “I remember all of it. But I have no idea what just happened.” She stared at River Shoulders for a moment, her expression more curious than fearful. “You … You stopped something bad from happening, I think.”
“Yeah, he did,” I confirmed.
Connie nodded toward him in a grateful little motion. “Thank you. Who are you?”
“Irwin’s dad,” I said.
Irwin blinked several times. He stared blankly at River Shoulders.
“Hello,” River rumbled. How something that large and that powerful could sit there bleeding from dozens of wounds and somehow look sheepish was beyond me. “I am very sorry we had to meet like that. I had hoped for something quieter. Maybe with music. And good food.”
“You can’t stay,” I said to River. “The authorities are on the way.”
River made a rumbling sound of agreement. “This is a disaster. What I did …” He shook his head. “This was in such awful taste.”
“Couldn’t have happened to nicer guys, though,” I said.
“Wait,” Connie said. “Wait. What the hell just happened here?”
Irwin put a hand on her shoulder and said to me, “She’s … she’s a vampire. Isn’t she?”
I blinked and nodded at him. “How did … ?”
“Paranet,” he said. “There’s a whole page.”
“Wait,” Connie said again. “A … what? Am I going to sparkle or something?”
“God, no,” said Irwin and I together.
“Connie,” I said, and she looked at me. “You’re still exactly who you were this morning. And so is Irwin. And that’s what counts. But right now, things are going to get really complicated if the cops walk in and start asking you questions. Better if they just never knew you were here.”
“This is all so …” She shook her head. Then she stared at River Shoulders. Then at me. “Who are you?”
I pointed at me and said, “Wizard.” I pointed at River. “Bigfoot.” I pointed at Irwin. “Son of Bigfoot.” I pointed at her. “Vampire. Seriously.”
“Oh,” she said faintly.
“I’ll explain it,” Irwin told her quietly. He was watching River Shoulders.
River held out his huge hands to either side and shrugged. “Hello, son.”
Irwin shook his head slowly. “I … never really …” He sucked in a deep breath, squared off against his father, and said, “Why?”
And there it was. What had to be the Big Question of Irwin’s life.
“My people,” River said. “Tradition is very important to them. If I acknowledged you, they would have insisted that certain traditions be observed. It would have consumed your life. And I didn’t want that for you. I didn’t want that for your mother. I wanted your world to be wider than mine.”
Bigfoot Irwin was silent for a long moment. Then he scratched at his head with one hand and shrugged. “Tonight … really explains a lot.” He nodded slowly. “Okay. We aren’t done talking. But okay.”
“Let’s get you out of here,” River said. “Get you both taken care of. Answer all your questions.”
“What about Harry?” Irwin said.
I couldn’t get any more involved with the evident abduction of a scion of the White Court. River’s mercy had probably kept the situation from going completely to hell, but I wasn’t going to drag the White Council’s baggage into the situation. “You guys go on,” I told them. “I do this kind of thing all the time. I’ll be fine.”
“Wow, seriously?” Irwin asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been in messier situations than this. And it’s probably better if Connie’s dad has time to cool off before you guys talk again. River Shoulders can make sure you have that time.”
Outside, a cart with flashing bulbs on it had pulled up.
“River,” I said. “Time’s up.”
River Shoulders rose and nodded deeply to me. “I’m sorry that I interfered. It seemed necessary.”
“I’m willing to overlook it,” I said. “All things considered.”
His face twisted into a very human-looking smile, and he extended his hand to Irwin. “Son.”
Irwin took his father’s hand, one arm still around Connie, and the three of them didn’t vanish so much as … just become less and less relevant to the situation. It happened over the course of two or three seconds, as that same nebulous, somehow transparent power that River had used earlier enfolded them. And then they were all gone.
Boots crunched down the hall, and a uniformed officer with a name tag reading DEAN burst in, one hand on his gun.
DEAN EYED ME, then said, “That’s all you know, huh?”
“That’s the truth,” I said. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe it. You gonna let me go now?”
“Oh, hell, no,” Dean said. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re stoned out of your mind or insane. Either way, I’m going to put you in the drunk tank until you have a chance to sleep it off.”
“You got any aspirin?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, and got up to get it.
My head ached horribly, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard the end of this, but I was clear for now. “Next time, Dresden,” I muttered to myself, “just take the gold.”
Then Officer Dean put me in a nice, quiet cell with a nice, quiet cot, and there I stayed until Wild Bill Meyers showed up the next morning and bailed me out.
This next story got written in that glorious time between the end of Changes and the beginning of Ghost Story, when fans were regularly screaming at me for answers and when I could regularly give answers that were somehow worse than the original questions. I realized, however, that I had agreed to several short stories in this same time period, when Dresden was or was not actually dead—which would make it something of a challenge to cast him as a protagonist of tales set during the same period.
The natural thing to do was to shift to the viewpoints of other characters—and to have a chance to show the impact of Dresden’s absence on some of the characters who had been closest to him. In this case, I got the chance to write about life from the point of view of his apprentice, Molly, and how Dresden’s apparent death had affected many of the people in his circle—but, more important, about how Dresden’s life had affected those same people, and how it would show in their choices.
I miss my boss.
It’s been most of a year since I helped him die, and ever since then I’ve
been the only professional wizard in the city of Chicago. Well, okay. I’m not, like, officially a wizard. I’m still sort of an apprentice. And no one really pays me, unless you count the wallets and valuables I lift from bodies sometimes, so I guess I’m more amateur than professional. And I don’t have a PI license like my boss did, or an ad in the phone book.
But I’m all there is. I’m not as strong as he was, and I’m not as good as he was. I’m just going to have to be enough.
So, anyway, there I was, washing the blood off in Waldo Butters’s shower.
I did a lot of living outdoors these days, which didn’t seem nearly as horrible during the summer and early autumn as it did during the arctic chill of the previous superwinter. It was like sleeping on a tropical beach by comparison. Still, I missed things such as regular access to plumbing, and Waldo let me clean up whenever I needed to. I had the shower heat turned all the way up, and it was heaven. It was kind of a scourgey, scoury heaven, but heaven nonetheless.
The floor of the shower turned red for a few seconds, then faded to pink for a while as I sluiced the blood off. It wasn’t mine. A gang of Fomor servitors had been carrying a fifteen-year-old boy down an alley toward Lake Michigan. If they’d gotten him there, he’d have been facing a fate worse than death. I intervened, but that bastard Listen cut his throat rather than give him up. I tried to save him while Listen and his buddies ran. I failed. And I’d been right there with him, feeling everything he did, feeling his confusion and pain and terror as he died.
Harry wouldn’t have felt that. Harry would have saved the day. He would have smashed the Fomor goons around like bowling pins, picked the kid up like some kind of serial-movie action hero, and taken him to safety.
I missed my boss.
I used a lot of soap. I probably cried. I had begun ignoring tears months ago, and at times I honestly didn’t know when they were falling. Once I was clean—physically, anyway—I just stood there soaking up the heat, letting the water course all over me. The scar on my leg where I’d been shot was still wrinkled, but the color had changed from purple and red to angry pink. Butters said it would be gone in a couple of years. I was walking normally again, unless I pushed myself too hard. But, yikes, my legs and various pieces needed to get reacquainted with a razor, even with medium-blond hair.
I was going to ignore them, but … grooming is important for keeping one’s spirits up. A well-kept body for a well-kept mind and all that. I wasn’t a fool. I knew I wasn’t exactly flying level lately. My morale needed all the boost it could get. I leaned out of the shower and swiped Andi’s pink plastic razor. I’d pay Waldo’s werewolf girlfriend back for it later.
I wrapped up about the same time as the hot water ran out, got out of the shower, and toweled off. My things were in a pile by the door—some garage-sale Birkenstocks, an old nylon hiker’s backpack, and my bloodied clothes. Another set gone. And the sandals had left partial tracks in blood at the scene, so I’d have to get rid of them, too. I was going to have to hit another thrift store at this rate. Normally, that would have cheered me up, but shopping just wasn’t what it used to be.
I was carefully going over the tub and floor for fallen hairs and so on when someone knocked. I didn’t stop scanning the floor. In my line of work, people can and will do awful things to you with discarded bits of your body. Not cleaning up after yourself is like asking for someone to boil your blood from twenty blocks away. No, thank you.
“Yes?” I called.
“Hey, Molly,” Waldo said. “There’s, uh … There’s someone here to talk to you.”
We’d prearranged a lot of things. If he’d used the word feeling at any point in his sentence, I would have known there was trouble outside the door. Not using it meant that there wasn’ t—or that he couldn’t see it. I slipped on my bracelets and my ring and set both of my wands down where I could snatch them up instantly. Only then did I start putting clothes on.
“Who?” I called.
He was working hard not to sound nervous around me. I appreciated the effort. It was sweet. “Says her name is Justine. Says you know her.”
I did know Justine. She was a thrall of the vampires of the White Court. Or at least a personal assistant to one and the girlfriend of another. Harry always thought well of her, though he was a big, goofy idiot when it came to women who might show the potential to become damsels in distress.
“But if he were here,” I muttered to myself, “he’d help her.”
I didn’t wipe the steam off the mirror before I left the bathroom. I didn’t want to look at anything in there.
Justine was a handful of years older than me, but her hair had turned pure white. She was a knockout, one of those girls all the boys assume are too pretty to approach. She had on jeans and a button-down shirt several sizes too large for her. The shirt was Thomas’s, I was certain. Her body language was poised, very neutral. Justine was as good at hiding her emotions as anyone I’d ever seen, but I could sense leashed tension and quiet fear beneath the calm surface.
I’m a wizard, or damned close to it, and I work with the mind. People don’t really get to hide things from me.
If Justine was afraid, it was because she feared for Thomas. If she’d come to me for help, it was because she couldn’t get help from the White Court. We could have had a polite conversation that led up to that revelation, but I had less and less patience for the pleasantries lately, so I cut to the chase.
“Hello, Justine. Why should I help you with Thomas when his own family won’t?”
Justine’s eyes bugged out. So did Waldo’s.
I was getting used to that reaction.
“How did you know?” Justine asked quietly.
When you’re into magic, people always assume anything you do must be connected to it. Harry always thought that was funny. To him, magic was just one more set of tools that the mind could use to solve problems. The mind was the more important part of that pairing. “Does that matter?”
She frowned and looked away from me. She shook her head. “He’s missing. I know he left on some kind of errand for Lara, but she says she doesn’t know anything about it. She’s lying.”
“She’s a vampire. And you didn’t answer my first question.” The words came out a little harsher and harder than they’d sounded in my head. I tried to relax a little. I folded my arms and leaned against a wall. “Why should I help you?”
It’s not like I wasn’t planning to help her. But I knew a secret about Harry and Thomas few others did. I had to know if Justine knew the secret, too, or if I’d have to keep it hidden around her.
Justine met my eyes with hers for a moment. The look was penetrating. “If you can’t go to family for help,” she said, “who can you turn to?”
I averted my eyes before it could turn into an actual soulgaze, but her words and the cumulative impression of her posture, her presence, her self, answered the question for me.
She knew.
Thomas and Harry were half brothers. She’d have gone to Harry for help if he were alive. I was the only thing vaguely like an heir to his power around these parts, and she hoped I would be willing to step into his shoes. His huge, stompy, terrifying shoes.
“You go to friends,” I said quietly. “I’ll need something of Thomas’s. Hair or fingernail clippings would be …”
She produced a ziplock plastic bag from the breast pocket of the shirt and offered it to me without a word. I went over and picked it up. It had a number of dark hairs in it.
“You’re sure they’re his?”
Justine gestured toward her own snow-white mane. “It’s not like they’re easy to confuse.”
I looked up to find Butters watching me silently from the other side of the room. He was a beaky little guy, wiry and quick. His hair had been electrocuted and then frozen that way. His eyes were steady and worried. He cut up corpses for the government, professionally, but he was one of the more savvy people in town when it came to the supernatural.
“What?” I
asked him.
He considered his words before he spoke—less because he was afraid of me than because he cared about not hurting my feelings. That was the reverse of most people these days. “Is this something you should get involved in, Molly?”
What he really wanted to ask me was if I was sane. If I was going to help or just make things a lot worse.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. I looked at Justine and said, “Wait here.”
Then I got my stuff, took the hairs, and left.
The first thing Harry Dresden ever taught me about magic was a tracking spell.
“It’s a simple principle, kid,” he told me. “We’re creating a link between two similar things out of energy. Then we make the energy give us an indicator of some kind, so that we can tell which way it’s flowing.”
“What are we going to find?” I asked.
He held up a rather thick grey hair and nodded back toward his dog, Mouse. He should have been named Moose. The giant, shaggy temple dog was pony-sized. “Mouse,” Harry said, “go get lost and we’ll see if we can find you.”
The big dog yawned and padded agreeably toward the door. Harry let him out and then came over to sit down next to me. We were in his living room. A couple of nights before, I had thrown myself at him. Naked. And he’d dumped a pitcher of ice water over my head. I was still mortified, but he was probably right. It was the right thing for him to do. He always did the right thing, even if it meant he lost out. I still wanted to be with him so much, but maybe the time wasn’t right yet.
That was okay. I could be patient. And I still got to be with him in a different way almost every day.
“All right,” I said when he sat back down. “What do I do?”
In the years since that day, the spell had become routine. I’d used it to find lost people, secret places, missing socks, and generally to poke my nose where it probably didn’t belong. Harry would have said that went with the territory of being a wizard. Harry was right.
I stopped in the alley outside Butters’s apartment and sketched a circle on the concrete with a small piece of pink chalk. I closed the circle with a tiny effort of will, drew out one of the hairs from the plastic bag, and held it up. I focused the energy of the spell, bringing its different elements together in my head. When we’d started, Harry had let me use four different objects, teaching me how to attach ideas to them, to represent the different pieces of the spell, but that kind of thing wasn’t necessary. Magic all happens inside the head of the wizard. You can use props to make things simpler, and in truly complex spells they make the difference between impossible and merely almost impossible. For this one, though, I didn’t need the props anymore.