SMALL FAVOR tdf-10

by Jim Butcher

  “All right,” she said quietly. “I’m willing to hold off for now. On one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “I’m in from here on out. You obviously need someone to protect you from the big, bad billy goats.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, obviously.”

  She held up the last of her beer. I held up mine.

  We clinked them, finished them, and went back out into the winter cold together.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “A ll right,” I said. “I hearby call this war council to order.”

  We were all sitting around my tiny living room, eating Burger King. Thomas and Molly had voted for McDonald’s, but since I was paying, I sternly informed them that this was not a democracy, and Burger King it was.

  Hail to the King, baby.

  Murphy rolled her eyes over the whole thing.

  “War council?” Molly asked, wide-eyed. “Are we going to start another war?”

  “I sort of meant it as a metaphor,” I said, as I made sure the ketchup-mustard ratio on my burger was within acceptable parameters. “I need to decide on my next step, and I’ve been hit in the head a few times lately. Figured my brain could use a little help.”

  “Just now worked that out, did you?” Thomas murmured.

  “Quiet, you,” I growled. “The idea is to generate useful thoughts here.”

  “Not funny ones,” Molly said, suppressing a laugh.

  I eyed her. She ate a french fry.

  Murphy sipped at her Diet Coke. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know how much advice I can give you until I know what you’re up against.”

  “I told you in the car,” I said. “The Knights of the Blackened Denarius.”

  “Fallen angels, old tarnished coins, psychotic killers, got it,” Murphy said. “But that doesn’t tell me what their capabilities are.”

  “She’s got a point,” Thomas said quietly. “You haven’t said much about these guys.”

  I blew out a breath and took a big bite of hamburger to give me a moment to think while I chewed. “There’s a lot that these things can do,” I said afterward. “Mostly, the coins seem to allow their users to alter their physical form into something better suited for a fight than a regular human body.”

  “Battle shapeshifting,” Molly said. “Cool.”

  “It isn’t cool,” I told her. Then I paused and admitted, “Okay, maybe a little. It makes them harder to hurt. It makes them faster. It arms them with various forms of weaponry. Claws, fangs, that kind of thing. Cassius looked like he might have had a poisonous bite, for example. Ursiel’s wielder could shift into this huge bear thing with claws and fangs and horns. Another one turned her hair into about a million strips of living titanium blade, and they were whipping all over the place and shooting through walls. Stretched out like twenty or thirty feet.”

  “I have some customers like that,” Thomas quipped.

  Murphy blinked and glanced at him.

  I cleared my throat and gave Thomas another glare. “Another one of them, Nicodemus, didn’t seem to do any shapeshifting, but his freaking shadow could leap off the wall and strangle you. Creepy as hell.”

  “They don’t all have, like, a uniform or something?” Molly asked.

  “Not even close,” I replied. “Each of the Fallen seems to have its own particular preferences. And I suspect that those preferences adapt themselves differently to different holders of the coins. Quintus Cassius’s Fallen had this whole serpent motif going, and Cassius’s magic was pretty snake-intensive, too. But he was totally different from Ursiel, who was totally different from Mantis Girl from this morning, who was different from the other Denarians I’ve seen.”

  Murphy nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Goons,” I said. “More like a cult, really. Nicodemus had a number of followers whose tongues had been removed. They were fanatics, heavily armed, and crazy enough to commit suicide rather than be captured by his enemies.”

  She winced. “The airport?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That it?”

  “No,” I said. “Nicodemus also had these…call them guard dogs, I guess. Except that they weren’t dogs. I don’t know what they were, but they were ugly and ran fast and had big teeth. But all of that isn’t what makes them dangerous.”

  “No?” Thomas said. “Then what is?”

  “The Fallen,” I replied.

  The room fell silent.

  “They’re beings older than time who have spent two thousand years learning the ins and outs of the mortal world and the mortal mind,” I said quietly. “They understand things we literally could not begin to grasp. They’ve seen every trick, learned every move, and they’re riding shotgun for each coin holder-if they aren’t in the driver’s seat already. Every one of them has a perfect memory, a library of information at his immediate disposal, and a schemer that makes Cardinal Richelieu look like Mother Teresa hanging around in his brain as an adviser.”

  Thomas stared at me very hard for a moment, frowning. I tried to ignore him.

  Murphy shook her head. “Let’s sum up: an unknown number of enemies with unknown capabilities, supported by a gang of madmen, packs of attack animals, and superhumanly intelligent pocket change.” She gave me a look. “It’s sort of tough to plan for that, given how much we don’t know.”

  “Well, then that’s what we do next, isn’t it?” Molly asked tentatively. “Find out more about them?”

  Thomas flicked a glance at Molly and nodded once.

  “To do that we’d have to find them,” I said.

  “A tracking spell?” Molly suggested.

  “I don’t have any samples to work with,” I replied. “And even if I did, somebody on their team was able to obscure Mab’s divining spells. I’m nowhere close to Mab’s league. My spells wouldn’t have a prayer.”

  “If they’ve got that much of an entourage, they’re going to stick out anywhere even vaguely public,” Murphy mused. “A gang of toughs with no tongues? If the Denarians are in town, that should make them relatively easy to locate.”

  “Last time they were holed up in Undertown,” I said. “Believe me, there’s plenty of room for badness down there.”

  “What about the spirit world?” Thomas asked quietly. “Surely there’s an entity or two who could tell us something.”

  “Possibly,” I said. “I’m on speaking terms with one or two of the loa. But that kind of information is either expensive or unreliable. Sometimes both. And remember who we’re talking about. The Fallen are heavyweights in the spirit world. No one wants to cross them.”

  Molly made a frustrated sound. “If we can’t track them with magic, and we can’t find them physically, then how are we supposed to learn more about them?”

  “Exactly, kid,” I said. “Hence the whole ‘war council’ concept.”

  We ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Murphy said, “We’re coming at this from the wrong angle.”

  “Eh?” I said wittily.

  “We’re thinking like the good guys. We should be thinking like the bad guys. Figuring out what they had to face and get around.”

  I leaned forward a little and nodded at her to go on.

  “I don’t know as much about the supernatural aspects of this situation,” she said. “I don’t know much of anything about these Denarians. But I do know some things about Marcone. For example, I know that even if he has some underlings who want to take over the franchise, he’s got more who are personally loyal or who will figure that bailing him out will reap them some major profits.”

  “Yeah,” I said, tilting my head at her. “So?”

  “So wherever they took him, it has to be somewhere Marcone’s network can’t reach. We can be virtually certain that they aren’t hiding in plain sight.”

  I grunted. “Hell’s bells, yeah. Not only that, but Marcone plans ahead. He had that panic room ready to go. In fact…” My eyes widened. “The location of your secret hidey-hole ought to be awfully secret, don’t
you think?”

  “Sure,” Molly said. “What good is a hiding place if everyone knows where it is?”

  “The Denarians knew exactly where he was going,” I said. “The spell they set up to tear down that building’s defenses was no spur-of-the-moment magic-it was too complex. It had been planned out ahead of time.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Thomas swore. “Someone inside Marcone’s organization ratted him out.”

  “So if we find the rat…” Murphy said, catching on.

  “We might find a trail that leads back to the Nickelheads,” I finished with a fierce grin. “Was this war council concept a brilliant idea or what?”

  Molly tittered. “Nickelheads.”

  “I have a gift,” I said modestly. Then I added in a low voice, “And stop giggling. Wizards don’t giggle. Bad for the image.”

  Molly buried her giggle in another mouthful of fries.

  I slurped on my Coke and turned to Murphy. “So, what we need to do is figure out who’s going to backstab Marcone. Someone highly placed enough to know the location of the safehouse, and who will profit by Marcone’s absence.”

  “You’re assuming the informant was complicit,” Murphy said. “That wouldn’t necessarily be true. Someone could have inadvertently given information away, or been compelled to cooperate.”

  I paused to think about that. “True. So we’ll have to start by looking at who could have given away the safe house.”

  Murphy raked her fingers through her dark-golden hair, frowning in thought. “To be honest, SI doesn’t cross trails with the outfit all that often. I’d have to make some calls to find out.”

  Thomas drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “The FBI would have more, wouldn’t they?”

  “And you know that guy Rick, right?” Molly said. “The one who was helping that jerk interrogate me?”

  Murphy’s eyes narrowed. She made a noise that wasn’t quite an agreement, but wasn’t quite a denial, either. Murphy has issues with her ex-husband.

  It took Molly about half a second to figure out the expression on Murphy’s face. She looked around the room somewhat desperately for a moment. “Uh, so, Harry, what’s with Mister? He’s been sleeping like a log the whole time we’ve been here.”

  “Which brings us to the second part of the problem,” I said. “The hitters from the Summer Court. I think odds are good that they’ve got my place under surveillance.”

  Thomas arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t sense anything coming in.”

  “You didn’t sense anything walking through the front door of the pub, either,” Murphy said archly.

  “I was circling the block,” Thomas said crossly. “Middle of a damned blizzard and you still can’t find a parking spot. I hate this town.”

  “I’ve got warning spells spread out all around this place,” I said. “Anything gets within a block and I’ll probably know about it. And you’ve got to get up early in the morning to sneak past Mouse.”

  Mouse, who was sitting in front of Molly making soulful eyes at her chicken sandwich, glanced at me and wagged his tail.

  “If they were very close, I’d know it. They’re probably spread out in a loose ring, watching who comes and goes,” I said. “The gruffs don’t really want to kick my apartment door down-not yet, at any rate. They’d rather fight where there won’t be collateral damage. But I’ve got a feeling that they aren’t at their best in all this snow.”

  Molly frowned. “You think Mab is influencing the weather for you?”

  “Maybe the ongoing record snowfall is a coincidence,” I said. “But if so, it’s awfully convenient.”

  “Nothing’s ever convenient with you, Dresden,” Murphy said.

  “Exactly my point.” I rubbed at my jaw. I needed to shave, but my throbbing nose was bad enough without adding a couple of razor nicks to the mess. I didn’t trust my hands to be steady. There were too many scary things moving around, and if I stopped long enough to think about how far in over my head I was getting, I might just crawl into a hole and pull it in after me.

  Don’t think, Harry. You know too much about what you’re up against.

  Analyze, decide, and act.

  “Okay. We can assume that the Summer crew saw us come in. As long as we don’t leave, they’ll assume that we’re still here.”

  Molly said, “Aha. I wondered why you asked me along.”

  I winked at her. “Know thyself, grasshopper. Yeah. When we leave, I want you to make sure that the gruffs and their crew don’t notice. Hopefully that will buy us some more time while they play patient hunter and wait for me to expose myself again.”

  “Heh,” Thomas sniggered. “Expose yourself.”

  Murphy tossed an onion ring at him, which he caught and popped in his mouth.

  “Meanwhile, I’ve got a new toy for you to play with, Thomas.”

  My brother arched his eyebrows and focused his attention on me.

  I went into my tiny bedroom and came back out with a small figurine, a rough figure of clay that resembled Gumby more than anything. I lifted it to my mouth and breathed on it, then murmured a word and said, “Catch.”

  I tossed it to Thomas. My brother caught it and-

  - suddenly a tall man, too lanky to look altogether healthy and with too many rough edges to be handsome, sat in Thomas’s chair, dressed in his clothes. His hair had short waves in it, and looked perpetually rumpled. His eyes were a bit sunken in a permanent state of too little sleep, but the line of his chin, strong and clean, made him look harder and sharper than he might otherwise have appeared.

  Hell’s bells. Did I really look like that? Maybe I needed a makeover or something.

  Murphy sucked in a breath and looked back and forth between Thomas, in his new look, and me. Molly didn’t bother trying to hide her reaction, and just said, “Cool.”

  “What?” Thomas asked. Though the figure speaking looked like me, the sound of my brother’s voice was unchanged, and a spot of ketchup from his burger still speckled one side of his mouth. He looked around for a moment, then scowled, rose, and ducked into my bedroom to look at himself in the little shaving mirror in the drawer in my bathroom. “You’ve invented a doll that turns people into their ugly half brothers, eh?”

  “Get over yourself, prettyboy,” I called.

  “If you think I’m letting you break my nose to complete the look, you’re insane.”

  I grunted. “Yeah, that’s a problem. I had to set it up to look like I looked the day I finished it.”

  “It isn’t a problem,” Molly said at once. “I’ll get my makeup kit and fix up his eyes for him, at least. I don’t know what we can do for his nose, but from a distance he should look right.”

  “If he looks like you, Harry,” Murphy said, “doesn’t that mean he’s going to be attracting some sort of hostile attention?”

  Thomas snorted and appeared in the doorway to my bedroom, his face ketchup-free. “Harry walks around looking like this all the time. Now, that would be awful. I can handle it for a few hours.”

  “Don’t get cute on me,” I said. “Give us two or three hours’ lead time, and then head out. Stay on the roads and keep moving. Don’t give them a chance to surround you. You’ve got your cell phone?”

  “I suppose,” he said. “But given how much I’ve been hanging around you two and the bad weather, I’d say the odds were against its working.” I grunted and tossed him my leather duster and my staff. He caught them and frowned. “You sure you don’t want these?”

  “Just don’t lose them,” I said. “If the gruffs saw a double of me who wasn’t wearing the coat, they’d know something was up in a heartbeat. The idea is to keep them from getting suspicious in the first place. The charm should be good for another six, maybe seven hours. Once it drops, get back here.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Thomas said, sliding into my duster. The illusion magic didn’t make the thing fit him, and he had to fiddle with the sleeves, but it looked like it always did on me. “Karrin, don’t let him do
anything stupid.”

  Murphy nodded. “I’ll try. But you know how he is.” She picked up her coat and shrugged into it. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to Gard,” I said. “The Carpenter place. I’m betting Marcone left her a sample of his hair to use to track him down, for just such an occasion as this.”

  “But you said you couldn’t get through the, uh…the obscuring magic that the Nickelheads have.”

  “Probably not. But if I know Marcone, he also collected samples of hair or blood from his people. To find them if they ever needed help or…”

  Murphy grimaced. “If they rated early retirement.”

  “I’m hoping Gard can give us an inside track on finding the leak, too,” I said.

  Meanwhile, Molly hurried over to Thomas with her makeup kit and began modifying his face. Thomas’s face was about level with the chin of the illusion-me, if not a little lower, but I’d taught Molly the basics behind my illusion magic-such as it was. My skill with illusions was pretty basic, and it wouldn’t stand up to any serious examination. Molly was able to scrunch up her eyes and see past it.

  Of course, you didn’t have to make the illusion utterly convincing if you could manage to keep people from having a good reason to take a hard look at it in the first place. The illusion doesn’t have to be fancy-it’s the misdirection behind it that really matters.

  Molly had been caught in a Goth undertow of the youth culture, and it showed in her makeup. She had plenty of blues and purples and reds to darken Thomas’s eyes with, and the illusion of my face assumed an appearance fairly close to my own, sans the swollen nose.

  “It’ll do,” I said. “Murph, you’re driving. Molly, if you don’t mind.”

  My apprentice grinned as she hurriedly pulled on her coat. Then she stuck her tongue between her teeth, frowned fiercely, and waved her hand at me with a murmur. I felt the kid’s veil congeal about me like a thin layer of Jell-O, a wobbly and slippery sensation. The world went a little bit blurry, as if I were suddenly looking at everything through hazy green water, but Murphy’s face turned up into a grin.