by Jim Butcher
“I love this part,” Bob said, just as both potions exploded into puffs of greenish smoke and began to froth up over the lips of the beakers.
I sagged onto a stool, and waited for the potions to fizz down, all the strength gone out of me, the weariness building up like a load of bricks on my shoulders. Once the frothing had settled, I leaned over and poured each potion into its own individual sports bottle with a squeeze-top, then labeled the containers with a permanent Magic Marker—very clearly. I don’t take chances in getting potions mixed up anymore, ever since the invisibility/hair tonic incident, when I was trying to grow out a decent beard.
“You won’t regret this, Harry,” Bob assured me. “That’s the best potion I’ve ever made.”
“I made it, not you,” I growled. I really was exhausted, now—way too tired to let petty concerns like possible execution keep me from bed.
“Sure, sure,” Bob agreed. “Whatever, Harry.”
I went around the room putting out all the fires and the kerosene heater, then climbed the ladder back to the basement without saying good night. Bob was chortling happily to himself as I did.
I stumbled to my bed and fell into it. Mister always climbs in and goes to sleep draped over my legs. I waited for him, and a few seconds later he showed up, settling down and purring like a miniature outboard motor.
I struggled to put together an itinerary for the next couple of days through the haze of exhaustion. Talk to the vampire. Locate missing husband. Avoid the wrath of the White Council. Find the killer.
Before he found me.
An unpleasant thought—but I decided that I wasn’t going to let that bother me, either, and curled up to go to sleep.
Chapter Nine
Friday night, I went to see Bianca, the vampiress.
I didn’t just leap out of bed and go see her, of course. You don’t go walking into the proverbial lion’s den lightly. You start with a good breakfast.
My breakfast took place around three in the afternoon, when I woke up to hear my phone ringing. I had to get out of bed and pad into the main room to answer it.
“Mmmrrmmph,” I grumbled.
“Dresden,” Murphy said, “what can you tell me?”
Murphy sounded stressed. Her voice had that distinct edge that she got whenever she was nervous, and it rankled me, like fingernails scraping on bones. The investigation into Tommy Tomm’s murder must not be going well. “Nothing yet,” I said. Then I lied to her, a little. “I was up most of the night working, but nothing to show yet.”
She answered me with a swearword. “That’s not good enough, Harry. I need answers, and I need them yesterday.”
“I’ll get to it as quick as I can.”
“Get to it faster,” she snarled. She was angry. Not that this was unusual for Murphy, but it told me that something else was going on. Some people panic when things get rough, harried. Some people fall apart. Murphy got pissed.
“Commissioner riding your back again?” City Police Commissioner Howard Fairweather used Murphy and her team as scapegoats for all sorts of unsolvable crimes that he had dumped in her lap. Fairweather was always lurking around, trying for an opportunity to make Murphy look bad, as though by doing so he could avoid being crucified himself.
“Like a winged monkey from The Wizard of Oz. Kind of makes you wonder who’s leaning on him to get things done.” Her voice was sour as ripe lemons. I heard her drop an Alka-Seltzer into a glass of liquid. “I’m serious, Harry. You get me those answers I need, and you get them to me fast. I need to know if this was sorcery, and, if so, how it was done and who could have done it. Names, places—I need to know everything.”
“It isn’t that simple, Mur—”
“Then make it simple. How long before you can tell me? I need an estimate for the Commissioner’s investigative committee in fifteen minutes or I might as well turn in my badge today.”
I grimaced. If I was able to get something out of Bianca, I might be able to help Murph on the investigation—but if it proved fruitless, I was going to have spent the entire evening doing nothing productive, and Murphy needed her answers now. Maybe I should have made a stay-awake potion. “Does the committee work weekends?”
Murphy snorted. “Are you kidding?”
“We’ll have something by Monday, then.”
“You can have it figured out by then?” she asked.
“I don’t know how much good it will do you, even if I can puzzle it out. I hope you’ve got more to go on than this.”
I heard her sigh into the phone and drink the fizzy drink. “Don’t let me down, Harry.”
Time to change the subject, before she pinned me down and smelled me lying. I had no intention of doing the forbidden research if I could find a way out of doing it. “No luck with Bianca?”
Another swearword. “That bitch won’t talk to us. Just smiles and nods and blows smoke, makes small talk, and crosses her legs. You should have seen Carmichael drooling.”
“Well. Tough to blame him, maybe. I hear she’s cute. Listen, Murph. What if I just—”
“No, Harry. Absolutely not. You will not go over to the Velvet Room, you will not talk to that woman, and you will not get involved in this.”
“Lieutenant Murphy,” I drawled. “A little jealous, are we?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. You’re a civilian, Dresden, even if you do have your investigator’s license. If you get your ass laid out in the hospital or the morgue, it’ll be me that suffers for it.”
“Murph, I’m touched.”
“I’ll touch your head to a brick wall a few times if you cross me on this, Harry.” Her voice was sharp, vehement.
“Hey, wind down, Murph. If you don’t want me to go, no problem.” Whoops. A lie. She’d be all over that like a troll on a billy goat.
“You’re a lousy liar, Harry. Godammit, I ought to take you down to lockup just to keep you from—”
“What?” I said, loudly, into the receiver. “Murph, you’re breaking up. I can’t hear you. Damn phone again. Call me back.” Then I hung up on her.
Mister padded over to me and batted at my leg. He watched me with serious green eyes as I leaned down and unplugged the phone as it started to ring again.
“Okay, Mister. You hungry?”
I got us breakfast. Leftover steak sandwich for him, SpaghettiOs heated up on the woodstove for me. I rationed out my last can of Coke, which Mister craves at least as badly as I do, and by the time I was done eating and drinking and petting, I was awake and thinking again—and getting ready for sundown.
Daylight savings time hadn’t cut in yet, and dark would fall around six. I had about two hours to get set to go.
You might think you know a thing or two about vampires. Maybe some of the stuff you’ve heard is accurate. Likely, it’s not. Either way, I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of going into Bianca’s lair to demand information from her. I was going to assume that things were going to get ugly before all was said and done, just to make sure I didn’t get caught with my staff down.
Wizardry is all about thinking ahead, about being prepared. Wizards aren’t really superhuman. We just have a leg up on seeing things more clearly than other people, and being able to use the extra information we have for our benefit. Hell, the word wizard comes from the same root as wise. We know things. We aren’t any stronger or faster than anyone else. We don’t even have all that much more going in the mental department. But we’re god-awful sneaky, and if we get the chance to get set for something, we can do some impressive things.
As a wizard, if you’re ready to address a problem, then it’s likely that you’ll be able to come up with something that will let you deal with it. So, I got together all the things I thought I might need: I made sure my cane was polished and ready. I put my silver knife in a sheath that hung just under my left arm. I put the escape potion in its plastic squeeze-bottle into my duster’s pocket. I put on my favorite talisman, a silver pentacle on a silver chain—it had been my moth
er’s. My father had passed it down to me. And I put a small, folded piece of white cloth into my pocket.
I had several enchanted items around—or half-enchanted items, anyway. Carrying out a full enchantment is expensive and time-consuming, and I just couldn’t afford to do it very much. We blue-collar wizards just have to sling a few spells out where we can and hope they don’t go stale at the wrong time. I would have been a lot more comfortable if I had been carrying my blasting rod or my staff, but that would be like showing up at Bianca’s door in a tank, walking in carrying a machine gun and a flamethrower, while announcing my intention to fight.
I had to maintain a fine balance between going in ready for trouble and going in asking for trouble.
Not that I was afraid, mind you. I didn’t think Bianca would be willing to cause problems for a mortal wizard. Bianca wouldn’t want to piss off the White Council by messing with me.
On the other hand, I wasn’t exactly the White Council’s favorite guy. They might even look the other way if Bianca decided to take me quietly out of the picture.
Careful, Harry, I warned myself. Don’t get entirely paranoid. If you get like that, you’ll be building your little apartment into a Basement of Solitude.
“What do you think?” I asked Mister, once I was decked out in what paraphernalia I was willing to carry.
Mister went to the door and batted at it insistently.
“Everyone’s a critic. Fine, fine.” I sighed. I let him out, then I went out, got into my car and drove down to the Velvet Room in its expensive lakeside location.
Bianca runs her business out of a huge old mansion from the early days of the Roaring Twenties. Rumor has it that the infamous Al Capone had it built for one of his mistresses.
There was a gate with an iron fence and a security guard. I pulled the Beetle up into the little swath of driveway that began at the street and ended at the fence. There was a hiccoughing rattle from back in the engine as I brought the machine to a halt. I rolled down the window and stuck my head out, peering back. Something went whoomph, and then black smoke poured out from the bottom of the car and scuttled down the slope of the drive and into the street.
I winced. The engine gave an almost apologetic rattle and shuddered to its death. Great. Now I had no ride home. I got out of the Beetle, and stood mourning it for a moment.
The security guard on the other side of the gate was a blocky man, not overly tall but overly muscled and hiding it under an expensive suit. He studied me with attack-dog eyes, and then said, through the gate, “Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” I told him. “But I think Bianca will want to see me.”
He looked unimpressed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Bianca is out for the evening.”
Things are never simple anymore. I shrugged at him, folded my arms, and leaned on the hood of the Beetle. “Suit yourself. I’ll just stay until a tow truck comes by, then, until I can get this thing out of the drive for you.”
He stared at me, his eyes narrowed down to tiny slits with the effort of thinking. Eventually, the thoughts got to his brain, got processed, and were sent back out with a message to “pass the buck.” “I’ll call your name in,” he said.
“Good man,” I approved. “You won’t be sorry.”
“Name,” he growled.
“Harry Dresden.”
If he recognized my name, it didn’t show on his face. He glared at me and the Beetle, then walked a few paces off, lifting a cellular phone from his pocket and to his ear.
I listened. Listening isn’t hard to do. No one has practice at it, nowadays, but you can train yourself to pay attention to your senses if you work at it long enough.
“I’ve got a guy down here says that Bianca will want to talk to him,” the guard said. “Says his name is Harry Dresden.” He was silent for a moment. I couldn’t quite make out the buzz of the other voice, other than that it was female. “Uh-huh,” he said. He glanced back at me. “Uh-huh,” he said again. “Sure. Sure, I will. Of course, ma’am.”
I reached in through the window of the Beetle and got out my cane. I rested it on the concrete beside my boots and tapped it a few times, as though impatient.
The guard turned back to me, leaned over to one side, and pushed a button somewhere. The gate buzzed and clicked open.
“Come on in, Mr. Dresden,” he said. “I can have someone come tow your car, if you like.”
“Super,” I told him. I gave him the name of the wrecker Mike has a deal with and told him to tell the guy that it was Harry’s car again. Fido the Guard dutifully noted this down, writing on a small notebook he drew from a pocket. While he did, I walked past him toward the house, clicking my cane on the concrete with every pace.
“Stop,” he told me, his voice calm and confident. People don’t speak with that kind of absolute authority unless they have a gun in their hands. I stopped.
“Put the cane down,” he told me, “and put your arms up. You are to be searched before you are allowed inside.”
I sighed, did what he said, and let him pat me down. I didn’t turn around to face him, but I could smell the metal of his gun. He found the knife and took it. His fingers brushed the nape of my neck, felt the chain there.
“What’s this?” he said.
“Pentacle,” I told him.
“Let me see it. Use one hand.”
I used my left to draw it out of my shirt and show it to him, a silver five-pointed star within a circle, all smooth geometry. He grunted, and said, “Fine.” The search went on, and he found the plastic squeeze-bottle. He took it out of my pocket, opened it, and sniffed at it.
“What’s this?”
“A health cola,” I told him.
“Smells like shit,” he said, capped it, and put it back in my pocket.
“What about my cane?”
“Returned when you leave,” he said.
Damn. My knife and my cane had been my only physical lines of defense. Anything else I did would have to rely wholly upon magic and that could be dicey on the best of days. It was enough to rattle me.
Of course, Fido the Guard had missed a couple of things. First, he’d overlooked the clean white handkerchief in my pocket. Second, he’d passed me on with my pentacle still upon my neck. He probably figured that since it wasn’t a crucifix or a cross, I couldn’t use it to keep Bianca away from me.
Which wasn’t true. Vampires (and other such creatures) don’t respond to symbols as such. They respond to the power that accompanies an act of faith. I couldn’t ward off a vampire mosquito with my faith in the Almighty—He and I have just never seemed to connect. But the pentacle was a symbol of magic itself, and I had plenty of faith in that.
And, of course, Fido had overlooked my getaway potion. Bianca really ought to trust her guards with more awareness of the supernatural and what sort of things to look for.
The house itself was elegant, very roomy, with the high ceilings and the broad floors that they just don’t make anymore. A well-groomed young woman with a short, straight haircut greeted me in the enormous entry hall. I was passing polite to her, and she showed me to a library, its walls lined with old books in leather bindings, similar to the leather-cushioned chairs around the enormous old dogfoot table in the room’s center.
I took a seat and waited. And waited. And waited. More than half an hour went by before Bianca finally arrived.
She came into the room like a candle burning with a cold, clear flame. Her hair was a burnished shade of auburn that was too dark to cast back any ruddy highlights, but did anyway. Her eyes were dark, clear, her complexion flawlessly smooth and elegantly graced with cosmetics. She was not a tall woman, but shapely, wearing a black dress with a plunging neckline and a slash in one side that showed off a generous portion of pale thigh. Black gloves covered her arms to above the elbows, and her three-hundred-dollar shoes were a study in high-heeled torture devices. She looked too good to be true.
“Mister Dresden,” she greeted me. “This is an unex
pected pleasure.”
I rose when she entered the room. “Madame Bianca,” I replied, nodding to her. “We meet at last. Hearsay neglected to mention how lovely you are.”
She laughed, lips shaping the sounds, head falling back just enough to show a flash of pale throat. “A gentleman, they said. I see that they were correct. It is a charmingly passé thing to be a gentleman in this country.”
“You and I are of another world,” I said.
She approached me and extended her hand, a motion oozing feminine grace. I bowed over her hand briefly, taking it and brushing my lips against the back of her glove. “Do you really think I’m beautiful, Mister Dresden?” she asked me.
“As lovely as a star, Madame.”
“Polite and a pretty one, too,” she murmured. Her eyes flickered over me, from head to toe, but even she avoided meeting gazes with me, whether from a desire to avoid inadvertently directing her power at me, or being on the receiving end of mine, I couldn’t tell. She continued into the room, and stopped beside one of the comfortable chairs. As a matter of course, I stepped around the table, and drew out the chair for her, seating her. She crossed her legs, in that dress, in those shoes, and made it look good. I blinked for just a moment, then returned to my own seat.
“So, Mister Dresden. What brings you to my humble house? Care for an evening of entertainment? I quite assure you that you will never have another experience like it.” She placed her hands in her lap, smiling at me.
I smiled at her, and put one hand into my pocket, onto the white handkerchief. “No, thank you. I came to talk.”
Her lips parted in a silent ah. “I see. About what, if I might ask?”
“About Jennifer Stanton. And her murder.”
I had all of a second’s warning. Bianca’s eyes narrowed, then widened, like those of a cat about to spring. Then she was coming at me over the table, faster than a breath, her arms extended toward my throat.
I toppled over backward in my chair. Even though I’d started to move first, it almost wasn’t enough to get away from her reaching nails in time. One grazed my throat with a hot sensation of pain, and she kept coming, following me down to the floor, those rich lips drawn back from sharp fangs.