by Jim Butcher
He took it, and we rose together. He pulled away from me quickly and scowled—but not precisely at me. “What do you want?”
“To talk,” I said.
“What if I don’t wanna talk to you?”
“Guess you don’t have to.”
That made him turn a shade warier. “I could just walk away?”
“Sure,” I said. From this close, I could smell the kid. He needed a shower. His clothes didn’t look like they’d been changed in a while. His shoes were too small and worn-out. I gestured toward where the demon he’d accidentally summoned had been banished. “But how’s that been working out for you so far?”
“I’m fine,” he said. His voice cracked when he said it. He looked away.
“Well. I’m not going to make you get help. You hungry?” I asked. As a conversational gambit went, it was a pretty solid one. Kids were hungry about ninety-five percent of the time.
“No,” he lied, his tone sullen.
“There’s a restaurant not two minutes from here. My daughter is there, with my dog, eating French fries. But I could just murder a burger right now. How about you?”
Hoodie didn’t say anything. People had begun to resume using the pathway, and the everyday world began to reassert itself more firmly.
“Look, I kind of am a cop,” I said, “just not for the usual stuff. For special things. Like today.”
He shifted his weight warily.
“Tell you what,” I said. “Let’s eat. Maybe talk a little. You’ve got to be tired of dealing with this stuff on your own.”
He bowed his head at that, so I couldn’t see him tear up.
“I’m Harry,” I said, and held out my hand.
He eyed my hand and then me, huffing out half of a laugh. “Wizard Harry. You’re kidding.”
“Nope,” I said. I looked at him and lifted a speculative eyebrow.
“Oh, uh. Austin,” Austin the warlock said. He might have been thirteen and a half.
“Hi, Austin,” I said, as gently as I could. “It’s nice to meet you. Hey, have you ever seen the gorillas here?”
HI. MY NAME is Maggie Dresden.
My dad is okay, I guess, but I wish he were a little more up on his monsters. It’s not his fault, I’m pretty sure, on account of he’s a grown-up, and grown-ups can be awfully dumb about some things. Mainly the creeps.
Grown-ups are about as thick as you can be when it comes to the creeps.
Normally, you didn’t see of a lot of them out on a summer day, but today they were everywhere. An elderly couple who had been taken by baglers walked by. I don’t know if that’s their actual name. Me and Mouse kind of made up our own as we went. But there were shrouds over their heads, like a couple of dirty old paper bags that you could kind of see through if you looked hard enough. Baglers weren’t really all that dangerous as creeps went. I had a theory about them, that they just fed on the brain energy of people who talked about politics too much, and made them want to talk about politics more, because that’s just about all that came out of their mouths. You just watch: First chance they get, baglered people start talking politics.
You’d think even grown-ups could be interesting with some kind of psychic monster eating their faces all the time, but you’d be wrong. So there you go.
“So, you haven’t been to the zoo before?” my dad asked.
My dad was a pretty scary-looking guy if you didn’t know him. He was bigger than anyone else I’d ever seen, with scars and dark hair and muscles. I mean, kind of long, stretchy muscles, but you could tell he was strong. Plus, he was a wizard. I mean, most people don’t believe in magic and monsters, which just shows you that most people are pretty dumb. For a grown-up, he didn’t seem too stupid. And he kind of liked me. You could tell sometimes when he talked or looked at me.
I liked that a lot.
I waited until the baglered couple were far enough away so that they wouldn’t overhear us, just on general principle, before I said, “Miss Molly tried to take me once, but there were too many people and too much sky, and I cried.”
I waited to see what he would think about that. My dad fights bad people and monsters professionally. I didn’t want him to think I was a big chicken.
I mean, we were just getting to know each other. But sometimes, things get really, really loud, or really hectic and fast moving, and I just can’t deal with anything. It helped to have Mouse with me. Mouse always understood when things were getting too big, and tried to make me feel better.
My dad seemed to think about his words for a minute before he said, “That’s okay, you know.”
“Miss Molly said that, too,” I said. With that same little pause before she said it. I really didn’t want him to think I was crazy. I wasn’t crazy. It was just that sometimes it was really, really hard to keep from screaming and crying. I slowed down a little so that I could stand in his shadow, where it was darker and cooler. Summer in Chicago is hot. “I was little then.”
“That was probably it,” he said. I liked his voice. It rumbled in his chest, and sounded really nice. When he read to me, it sounded like that voice could go on, steady, all night long. “But if you need to, we can leave whenever you like.”
I looked up at him. Did he really mean that? Because today was looking brighter and louder and shinier every minute. My ears were already itching with all the noises around us, until I wanted to just jam my fingers into them and close my eyes and shut out everything.
But today was my first day together with my dad. We’d never done that. The Carpenters had been really, really nice to me and given me a home. I loved them. But they weren’t my dad.
I’m sure he would take me somewhere else if I asked him. But I didn’t want him to think I was some little baby who couldn’t even go to the zoo.
Mouse, walking next to me like always, walked a couple of inches closer, reassuring me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his jaw drop open in an encouraging doggy smile, and his tail thwacked against my back when he wagged it.
My dad was pretty strong. Maybe I could be strong, too.
“I want to see the gorillas,” I said. “So does Mouse.”
Mouse wagged his tail even harder and smiled up at my dad.
He smiled at me. The smile really changed how he looked. It made him look more like a dad, I think. “Okay, then,” he said. “Let’s do that.”
He said it the same way that you hear soldiers say, “Begin operations,” in the movies, and his eyes flicked about, checking all around us and into the nearest trees overhead in maybe a second, as if hunting for a monster to blow up. I’m pretty sure he didn’t even realize he was doing it.
My dad has fought bad things for a long time. He’s seen bad things happen to people. Miss Molly says that that kind of thing leaves wounds, but that you can’t see them. Sort of like how grown-ups can’t see the creeps. But she said he carried them without complaining or letting it stop him from helping people. Even when it was really, really hard.
Sort of like being around me.
I try to be a nice person. But when things get too big, it’s hard to do anything very well. Other kids mostly stay away from me. Even when I can make friends, sometimes, they don’t really understand.
Maybe he wouldn’t understand, either. He already had a hard job. Maybe being my dad would be too hard.
“Are you nervous?” I heard myself ask.
He blinked at me. “Why would I be nervous?”
He was looking at me like he really liked me. I couldn’t keep looking at him when he was like that. What if he changed his mind?
Things can change. So fast.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m nervous. I haven’t ever gone to the zoo with my dad before. What if I do it wrong?”
He walked along next to me for a second, and then I felt his fingers brush against my hair gently. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t something you get right or wrong.”
Which would make sense, if I didn’t have to worry about turning into
a complete spaz if things got too big and loud. “What if … I don’t know. What if I set something on fire?”
“Maybe we’ll roast some marshmallows,” he said.
Which was the kind of goofy thing you’d expect a grown-up to say, but it was nice to hear him say it. “You’re weird.”
Mouse leaned against me with a little huff of a breath that he used when he thought something was funny. He was clearly pleased, though I thought he was a little distracted, too. Must be because Dad was here, and he really, really liked Dad. Dad saved him from a monster when he was a tiny puppy, and then Mouse grew up and helped Dad fight monsters, and then Dad gave him to me to be my protector.
Mouse was good at that. The creeps mostly didn’t bother me—and the particularly old and nasty underhide that had moved into the space beneath my bed had found out the hard way that you don’t mess around with Maggie and Mouse Dresden.
Dad was talking to me about how he had saved a gorilla once, and was leaning over me to pet Mouse when we all but walked right into an entire tribe of haunts.
These had taken a bunch of kids, and you could see it in their eyes—they were entirely black, no color, no whites, no nothing. Just these hollow, empty spaces that were full of the kind of nothing that wanted to suck you into it and watch you spin helplessly and scream. The kids walked around like well-behaved children from a boarding school—but I saw their eyes, suddenly fastening onto me, maybe a dozen sets of them. The eyes stared at me, and they had a horrible power. I suddenly remembered my last nightmare, not just the details of what happened, but the way it made me feel when I was having it, and my legs got weak.
Dad was paying attention to Mouse and vice versa, and neither of them saw the way that the haunts all stared at me for a good second as they went by. I felt each gaze and knew what was happening.
The haunts were marking me for prey.
Oh, great. This was all I needed.
I folded my arms against my stomach and took slow, deep breaths that were supposed to help me not spaz out as much. My dad couldn’t see the haunts. He couldn’t really interact with them. But they were able to hurt him, and he wouldn’t even know what was happening.
I was pretty sure that it was probably a terrible idea to go into the zoo with a bunch of hungry, hunting creeps. Haunts could be dangerous if you didn’t know how to handle them—which was bad enough, all by itself.
I glanced up at him for a second. He was watching me with that concerned look adults get before they carry me off to a dark, quiet room. All I had to do was say something, and he’d do it. I’d be safe and it would be quiet.
And then that would be the end of our first real day together.
Stupid haunts. Stupid, creeping haunts.
I wasn’t going to let them and their stupid faces ruin this for my dad.
I would deal with them myself.
BUT FIRST, I would see a bunch of superawesome animals. I mean, Mouse was cheating, which he does all the time. He’s a Foo dog, and he has a bunch of weird powers. Most of his powers generally relate to telling monsters to back off, and then they do it, but having him around makes everything a little easier. When Mouse is there, there’s always a seat in the restaurant when you’re hungry, and you get the good waiter. TV commercials always have the good movie trailers mixed in them. Cartoons show funnier episodes. If you go to a game, the people around you are always really nice. It doesn’t work at school, because Mouse won’t cheat there, but everywhere else he just makes things happen a lot nicer than they otherwise would.
Nobody seemed to notice it but me, but that was okay. Mouse was the only one to notice when I needed a big furry hug sometimes.
Mouse was using his powers to make the zoo more awesome. The animals were all being super cool. The otters were running and playing, and the monkeys were swinging and making noises, and even the lion roared for us while we were there.
If it hadn’t been for the haunts, it would have been perfect.
They were following me. I mean, they weren’t obvious about it or anything, but their group had split up into pairs and there were always a couple of them within thirty or forty yards, keeping track of me and staring.
Always, always staring.
That was what haunts did. They followed you, sometimes for days and days, and they stared and their empty eyes made you relive the bad things from your life. If they did it long enough, you’d just wind up in a ball on the ground—and when you got up, you’d have big black eyes and the haunt would be telling you what to do from then on.
I thought about telling my dad about them, but … he may have been nice and a wizard, but he was also a grown-up. If you started talking to grown-ups about things they couldn’t see, let’s just say that you didn’t get to go chase fireflies near dark very often.
Besides.
What if he thought I was, you know? Broken. What if he didn’t want a daughter who was all funny in the head?
So I kept quiet and close to Mouse. The haunts didn’t dare get very close as long as he was there. Mouse could sort of see the creeps, if they got close enough and weren’t careful to be super quiet and lowkey. Even though he’s an adult, he’s a grown-up dog, and that makes him a lot like a kid. So far, they’d kept their distance to avoid his notice, and as long as they stayed that far back, their Scare Bear Stare couldn’t do much more than make me grumpy—and the awesome factor in the zoo was kind of countering that.
Maybe today would go smoothly after all.
And then my dad’s head shot up like Mouse when he smells lighter fluid at the Carpenter’s house, and his eyes flicked around him like a big, hungry bear looking for something to tear into.
“Um. Dad?” I asked
He looked down at me, and he did not look like a dad. He looked like the hero of a revenge movie—tense and alert and maybe even a little angry.
Oh.
Oh, wow. There must have been a monster or something for him to look like that. I didn’t see anything, but it seemed like a good idea to get between Mouse and my dad before asking, “Is there something bad?”
He looked away from me and the little muscles in his jaw jumped a bunch of times. I wasn’t sure if maybe I’d made him angry. I didn’t think so. I didn’t think I’d done anything that he could get mad about.
But I didn’t always realize it when I did.
“Maybe,” he said, finally. He looked at me, and his face got softer for a minute. “Maybe nothing. I don’t know. I need to look around and see what’s going on. I need to put you in a safe spot before I do that.”
Sometimes safe spots were nice and safe, and sometimes they were a room with a locked door. Did he think I was about to have an attack or something? Or maybe he was just being careful.
Grown-ups are always being careful.
But how could I be sure which it was?
“It’s important, isn’t it?” I said.
My dad couldn’t have understood what I was asking. “Maybe,” he said. He nodded toward the café that served the zoo. “How about we go get a booth and order some food. You and Mouse sit, and I’ll go look around and be back before the food gets there.”
I needed a big furry hug, and Mouse was right there. I hugged him and thought. If he was going to stay here instead of taking me somewhere, then he probably didn’t think he had to take care of me. So, you know. That’s good, I thought.
But it would leave me on my own, with creeps all over the place.
Well. That was my problem. And I’d have Mouse with me. Mouse always helped.
I looked up at my dad and nodded. “Yeah. I guess that’s okay.”
“How about it, Mouse?” he asked. “Can you behave yourself around food?”
Mouse was staring out across the park, like he was trying to see something hidden from him. I’m sure he knew the creeps were around, though he left them alone if they left me alone. He made a noise in his chest that was part whine and part rumble.
“Trouble, boy?” my dad asked.
/> See, my dad is pretty smart. Most grown-ups try to tell you about how limited dogs are and how smart they aren’t. Mouse has been going to school with me since I was little, and he reads better than I do. If he thought there might be trouble, only a dummy would ignore him, and my dad wasn’t a dummy.
Mouse stayed staring for a minute, then exhaled slowly and looked up at my dad. His ears perked up and he wagged his tail.
My dad took that to mean that all was well. “All right,” he said, and wagged his finger at Mouse. “Be good.”
“Whuff,” Mouse said.
“He’s always good,” I said, and kissed his ear. “We’re gonna have to handle these haunts while he’s gone, Mouse,” I whispered. “Real smooth, okay? He worries enough.”
Mouse made a sound that I could feel in his neck but couldn’t hear. I hugged him a little tighter and then let go.
“Okay,” my dad said. He got us seats in the restaurant, which were miraculously open—Good boy, Mouse. He bought me some French fries and handed me a twenty-dollar bill. “To pay for the food if you need more.”
“Okay,” I said. I was pretty hungry, and the fries smelled good.
“Don’t leave until I come back for you. Okay?”
I nodded, and he strode out. He should have had his coat. It would have been all swirly, like Batman. Jeans and an old Battlestar Galactica T-shirt just didn’t make the same impression.
I’d eaten maybe three French fries when the chair across from me scraped on the floor, and the haunt sat down across from me.
It looked like a girl, maybe a year older and a lot bigger than me. She had blond hair and a nice school uniform and her eyes looked like outer space.
“No one likes you,” the haunt said. “They make people be your partner at school.”
Mouse growled, and the saltshaker on the table rattled a little.
I tried to ignore what the haunt said. They all did this. They stared at you and read all your terrible memories like they were a cartoon strip. Then they talked to you about them.