Dead Beat df-7

by Jim Butcher

  Just for fun, I tried the phones again, dialing my contact number for the nearest outpost of the Wardens.

  So help me God, the phone rang.

  "Yes," answered a woman with a low, roughened voice.

  I fumbled my little notebook of security phrases out of my duster's pocket. "One second," I said. "I didn't think the call would go through." I flipped the little notebook open to the last page and said, "Uh, chartreuse sirocco."

  "Rabbit," answered the voice. I checked the notebook. It was the countersign.

  "This is Wizard Dresden," I said. "I have a Code Wolf situation here. Repeat, Code Wolf."

  The woman on the other end of the phone hissed. "This is Warden Luccio, wizard."

  Holy crap, the boss herself. Anastasia Luccio was one of the next in line for a seat on the Senior Council, and was the commander of the Wardens. She was one tough old bird, and she was the field commander of the Council's forces in the war with the Red Court.

  "Warden Luccio," I said respectfully-both because she probably deserved it and because I needed to get along with her as well as I possibly could.

  "What is the situation?" she asked.

  "At least three apprentices to the necromancer Kemmler are here in Chicago," I said. "They found the fourth book. They're going to use it tonight."

  There was a stunned silence from the other end of the phone.

  "Hello?" I said.

  "Are you sure?" Luccio asked. Her voice had a faint Italian accent. "How do you know who they are?"

  "All those zombies and ghosts were sort of a giveaway," I said. "I confronted them. They identified themselves as Grevane, Cowl, and Capiorcorpus, and they each had a drummer with them."

  "Dio," Luccio said. "Do you know where they are?"

  "Not yet, but I'm working on it," I said. "Can you help?"

  "Affirmative," Luccio said. "We will dispatch Wardens to Chicago immediately. They will arrive at your apartment within six hours."

  "Might not be the best place," I said. "I was attacked there last night, and my wards got torn apart. The apartment may be under surveillance."

  "Understood. Then we will rendezvous at the alternate location."

  I checked the notebook. I'd have to meet them at McAnally's. "Gotcha," I said.

  "Che cosa?" she asked.

  "Uh, understood, Warden," I said. "Six hours, alternate location. Don't skimp on the personnel, either. These folks are serious."

  "I am familiar with Kemmler's disciples," she said, though her tone was more one of agreement than reprimand. "I will lead the team myself. Six hours."

  "Right. Six hours."

  She hung up the phone.

  I settled it back onto its cradle, lips pursed in thought. Hell's bells, the war captain of the White Council herself was to take the field. That meant that this situation was being regarded as an emergency tantamount to a terrorist with an armed nuclear bomb. If the head Warden was coming out to battle, it meant that the Wardens were going to pull out all the stops.

  I was going to have a lot of help for a change. Help that held me in deadly suspicion, and who might execute me if they learned some of my secrets, but help nonetheless. I felt an odd sense of comfort. The Wardens had been one of my biggest fears practically since I had learned about their existence. There was something deeply satisfying about seeing the object of that fear take a hostile interest in Grevane and company. Like when Darth Vader turns against the emperor and throws him down the shaft. There's nothing quite so cool as seeing someone who scares the hell out of you go at an enemy.

  And then a disturbing thought occurred to me: Why in hell was the war captain of the White Council answering the freaking phones? Why wasn't a junior member of the Wardens doing the receptionist work?

  I could think of only a couple or three reasons.

  None of them were pleasant.

  My brief flash of relief and confidence melted away. Good thing it did, too. I'm sure the world would come to an end if I were allowed to feel a sense of relief and well-being for any length of time.

  I shoved my worry out of my head. It wasn't going to help anything. The only one I could count on to ride to my rescue was me. If the Wardens managed to do it anyway, it would be a nice surprise, but I had to get myself moving before the problem started looking too big. It was the same principle as cleaning a really messy room. You don't think about everything you have to do. You focus on one thing and get it done, then move on to the next.

  I needed the summons that was hidden in die Erlking. To get that, I had to talk to Shiela. Right, Harry. Get a move on. I tried the phone once more, but I guess I'd already won the functional tech lottery: All circuits were busy.

  I hadn't been sitting down very long, but it was long enough for my leg to make it clear to the rest of my body that it didn't want to be walked on any more today.

  "Get with the program," I told my leg severely. "You don't have to be happy about it, but I need you functional."

  My leg sat there in sullen silence and throbbed, which I took as assent. I reached for my keys, and then heard a soft sound at my office door.

  I whirled my staff into my hand, calling up my will, and the runes were already smoldering with sullen orange light when the door opened.

  Billy stood in the doorway, his expression frozen in surprise, his mouth open. He was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and an old leather jacket. He hadn't worn his glasses much over the past several years, but he had them on today. His hair had been mussed by the wind, which sighed against my office windows. I heard a few drops of rain begin to fall, striking with dull taps on the glass.

  "Um," he said after a minute. "Hi, Harry."

  I scowled at him and lowered the staff, letting the power ease out of it. The warmed wood felt good under my hand, and the faint scent of wood smoke lay on the air. "Bad time to be appearing suddenly in my office door," I said.

  "Next time I'll whistle or something," Billy replied.

  "How'd you find me?"

  "It's your office." He looked around the place. "You talking to someone?"

  "Not really," I said. "What do you need?"

  He opened his coat. The handle of a gun protruded from his belt- my revolver. "Artemis Bock came by my place. He said there was some trouble at his store."

  "Yeah," I said. "Bad guys were trying to rough him up. I argued with them about it."

  Billy nodded. "That's what he said. He found this in the alley outside. He said there was blood."

  "One of them clipped my leg," I said. "I got it taken care of." Billy nodded, worried. "Um. He was worried about you."

  "I'm fine." I stood up, careful about my leg. "Bock okay?"

  "Um," Billy said. He looked at me, his expression clearly concerned. "Yeah. Not hurt, I mean. Some damage to the store, which he said he didn't mind. He wanted me to thank you for him." He pulled the gun out of his belt and said, "And I thought you might need this."

  "Shouldn't carry it in your pants like that," I said. "Good way to sing soprano."

  "It's empty," he said, and offered me the handle of the gun.

  I took it, flipped the cylinder open, and checked it. The gun wasn't loaded. I slid it into the pocket of my duster, then opened the drawer of my desk and took a small box of ammunition I kept there. I put it in the pocket along with the gun. "Thanks for bringing that by," I said. "Why'd you come looking here?"

  "You didn't answer the phone at your place. I went by there. It looked like someone tried to tear the door off."

  "Someone did," I said.

  "But you're all right?" There was a little more weight on the question than I would have expected.

  "I'm fine," I said, getting impatient. "Hell's bells, Billy. If you've got something to say, go ahead and say it."

  He inhaled deeply. "Um. Well. I'm sort of afraid to."

  I arched a brow at him, and scowled again.

  "Look. You… aren't acting right, Harry."

  "Meaning?" I asked.

  "Meaning not like
yourself," Billy said. "People have been noticing."

  "People?" I asked. My leg pounded. I had no time for this kind of psychological patty-cake. "What people?"

  "People who respect you," he said carefully. "Maybe who are even a little bit afraid of you."

  I just stared at him.

  "I don't know if you know this, Harry. But you can be a really scary guy. I mean, I've seen what you can do. And even the people who haven't seen themselves have heard stories. Believe me, we're all glad you're one of the good guys, but if you weren't…"

  "What?" I said, suddenly feeling more tired. "If I wasn't, then what?"

  "You'd be scary. Really scary."

  "Get to your damned point," I said quietly.

  He nodded. "You've been talking to things."

  "Excuse me?"

  He lifted his hands. "Talking to things. I mean, you were talking to things when I was outside your door."

  "That was nothing," I said.

  "Okay," Billy said, though his tone suggested that he was placating me rather than agreeing.

  "What is this talking-to-things crap? Did Bock say I was doing that?"

  "Harry- " Billy said.

  "Because I wasn't," I said. "Good God, I do some crazy crap, but it's usually the 'this is never going to work but I have to try it' variety of crazy. I'm not insane."

  Billy folded his arms, his eyes searching my face. "See, that's the thing. If you were truly insane, would you be able to realize it?"

  I rubbed at the bridge of my nose. "So let me get this straight. Because Bock said something about me, and because you heard me talking to myself, suddenly I'm ready for the room with rubber walls."

  "No," he said. "Sort of. Harry, look, it isn't like I'm trying to accuse-"

  "That's funny, because it sounds like an accusation from this end," I said.

  "I only- "

  I slammed my staff down on the floor, and Billy flinched.

  He tried to cover it, but I had seen the motion. Billy flinched like he was genuinely afraid that I was going to hurt him.

  What the hell?

  "Billy," I said quietly. "There is some bad business going on. I don't have time for this. I don't know what Bock told you, but he's had a bad couple of days. He's rattled. I'm not going to hold anything against him."

  "All right," he said quietly.

  "I want you to go home," I told him. "And I want you to start sending out word around to the in crowd. Everyone wants to be behind a threshold tonight."

  He frowned and took off his glasses, scrubbing at them with a corner of his shirt. "Why?"

  "Because the White Council is sending a war party to town. You don't want anyone you know to get caught in the backwash."

  Billy swallowed. "This is big, then?"

  "And I have to get moving. I don't have time for distractions." I stepped forward and put my hand on his shoulder. "Hey, it's me. Harry. I'm as sane as I ever am, and I need you to trust me for a little while. Tell people to keep their heads down. Okay?"

  He took a deep breath and then nodded sharply. "I'll do it, man."

  "Good. I don't know why you're so worried about me. But we'll sit down and talk after the dust settles. Figure out what's up. Make sure I haven't stripped a gear when I wasn't looking. I promise you."

  "Right," he said, nodding. "Thank you. I'm sorry if this is… aw, hell, man."

  "Enough with sharing the emotions," I said. "We're gonna turn into women as we stand here. Get a move on."

  He chucked my arm with a mostly closed fist, and left.

  I waited for him to go. I didn't feel like riding down in the elevator with him, wondering if he was afraid of me suddenly turning on him with an ax or a butcher knife or something.

  I leaned on my staff and thought about it for a second. Billy was really worried about me. Worried enough that he was afraid that I might do something to him. What the hell had I done to set that off?

  And an even better question, which I had to ask myself, followed on the heels of that first one.

  What if he was right?

  I poked at my skull with a finger. It didn't feel soft or anything. I didn't feel insane. But if you'd really lost it, would you have enough left upstairs to know? Crazy people never thought they were crazy.

  "I've always talked to things," I said. "And to myself."

  "Good point," myself agreed with me. "Unless that means you've been nuts all along."

  "I don't need wiseass remarks," I told myself severely. "There's work to do. So shut up."

  All I could think was that it had been Georgia's idea. She was always buried to the ears in her psych textbooks. Maybe she had fallen victim to some kind of inverted psychological hypochondria or something.

  Thunder rumbled outside, and the rain started coming down harder.

  I didn't need any doubts distracting me right now. I shrugged off the whole conversation with Billy, tabling it for later. I loaded my gun, since not loading it would have been almost as good as not having it, then slipped it back into my pocket, locked up my office behind me, and headed for the car.

  I had to get to Shiela and see if her remarkable memory could call up the poems and stanzas from that stupid book. And then I had to figure out how to call up a wild and deadly lord of the darker realms of Faerie and sidetrack him so that the heirs of Kemmler couldn't use him to promote themselves to demigod status. And along the way, I had to find The Word of Kemmler and get it to Mavra, somehow, without the White Council learning what I was up to.

  Easy as breathing.

  As I rode down in the elevator, I had to admit that Billy might have a point.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The Cabrini Green tenement Shiela lived in had seen better days-but it had seen worse, too. The city had dumped a lot of money into urban renewal projects there, and it was an ongoing process. Shiela's building was still undergoing renovation, and the lobby and many of the floors were only half-finished. No workmen were in the building when I went into the lobby, but there were dozens of tarps, stacks of drywall and raw lumber, heavy tool lockers that had been bolted to the floor, and other evidence of the contractors who would doubtless have been working had the city's lights not been out.

  I walked over to the elevators and to the security panel there, and found the button of Shiela's apartment on the ninth floor. I pressed it and held it down for a minute before I realized that, duh, the power was out and I wasn't going to be able to ring her apartment.

  I grimaced and looked around for the stairs. Nine flights up on my leg wasn't going to feel nice, but it wasn't as though I had an infinite number of options.

  The door to the stairs was locked, but it was a standard fire door with a push bar on the other side. I lifted my staff, looked around the lobby to make sure no one had wandered in to see me, and then gestured with the staff and murmured, "Forzare."

  I sent a bare whisper of my power through the door and then drew it back toward me with a sharp gesture. I caught the push bar on the other side with it, and the door trembled and then swung open by an inch or two. I thrust the end of my staff into it to hold it open, then grabbed on and heaved. I stared at the stairs for a second, but they didn't get any shorter or turn into an escalator or anything, so I sighed and started painfully hauling myself up them, one step at a time.

  Nine floors and 162 steps later, I paused to catch my breath, and then opened the door to the ninth-floor hallway in the same manner I had the one in the lobby. The ninth-floor hallway was still under construction, and several of the apartments in it were missing doors, and even walls. I limped along until I found Shiela's apartment and then knocked on the door.

  I felt a tingling tension over the door as I touched it-a magical ward of some kind. It was nowhere near as strong as the ones on my apartment had been, but it was stable. That was fairly impressive. Shiela might not have a ton of inborn talent, but she evidently had enough discipline to offset the lack. I held my hand out lightly, just over the surface of the door, sendi
ng my senses running over the ward, getting more of a feel for its strength. It couldn't have stopped me if I used my power to force my way in, but it felt strong enough to give me a solid kick in the teeth if I tried it physically. It would certainly scare the hell out of a would-be burglar. Not bad.

  After a minute I heard footsteps and the door opened a little. I could see a security chain and a slender stripe of her face that included one of Shiela's dark, sparkling eyes. She let out a surprised little sound and then said, "Harry. Just a minute."

  I waited while she shut the door and took off the security chain. Then she opened the door again, smiling at me. She had an infectious smile, and I found myself answering it with one of my own.

  She was dressed in a scarlet sequined bodice that made her chest into something very difficult not to stare at, nearly translucent baggy leggings, leather sandals that wrapped around her calves, and 6.5 million pounds of bangles on her arms and ankles. Her hair had been caught up in a high ponytail fixed into place to rise over some kind of mesh headdress, and her smooth, bare shoulders looked lovely and strong.

  "Hi," she said.

  "Hi," I said back. "Is your roommate Shiela in, Genie?"

  She laughed. "You caught me in the nick of time. I was just about to leave to get together with some people I know."

  "Costume party?" I asked.

  "No, I dress like this all the time." Her eyes sparkled. "It is Halloween."

  "Even with the lights out?"

  She bobbed her brows, her smile wicked for a second. "Who knows. That might make it more fun."

  I had been right about the curves that had been hidden under her loose clothing back at Bock's. They were awfully pleasant ones. It was an effort of will to stay focused on her face-especially when she laughed. Her laugh made all sorts of interesting little quivers run over her. "Do you have a minute?" I asked.

  "Maybe even two," she said. "What did you have in mind?"

  "I need your help with something," I said. I looked up and down the hallway. As far as I knew I hadn't been followed, and I'd been watching my back-but that didn't mean that no one was there. I was pretty good at noticing such things, but there were plenty of people (and nonpeople) who were better than me. "If you don't mind, can we talk about it inside?" Her expression became a little wary, and she looked up and down the hall herself. "Are you in trouble? Is this about the people at the store?"