by Jim Butcher
Could it be Marcone? Or could his thug be playing two sides of the street?
I decided that ultimately it didn’t matter. One thing was clear: Someone had a lock of my hair. Some wizard, somewhere, meant to kill me.
Whoever this wizard was, he wasn’t much good—I’d seen that when I’d wiped out his shadow-sending spell. He couldn’t stand up to me if I could force him into a direct confrontation—he might have a lot of moxie, and a lot of raw power, to harness the storms as he had and to slap a demon into servitude. But he was like a big, gawky teenager, new to his strength. I had more than just strength, more than just moxie. I had training, experience, and savvy on my side.
Besides. At the moment I was mad enough to chew up nails and spit out paper clips.
The Shadowman couldn’t take a shot at me yet. He didn’t have that kind of strength. He needed to wait for the storms that came each spring, and to use them to kill me. I had time. I had time to work. If I could just find out where they were, where Gimpy had taken my hair, I could go after him.
The answer came to me in a flash, and it seemed simple. If the hair could be used as a link to the rest of me, I should be able to reverse it—to create a link from me back to the hair. Hell, maybe I could just set it on fire, burn it all up from my apartment. The formula for a spell like that would be screwy as hell, though. I needed Bob. Bob could help me work out a spell, figure out a formula like that in minutes instead of hours or days.
I grimaced. Bob was gone, and would be for almost another twenty-four hours. There was no way I could work out that formula in less than ten or twelve hours by myself, and I didn’t think my brain was coherent enough to come up with solid calculations at the moment, anyway.
I could have called Murphy. Murphy would have known where Marcone was lurking, and Gimpy would probably be nearby. She could have given me an idea, at least, of how to find Gentleman Johnny, Gimpy, and the Shadowman. But she never would, now. And even if she did, she’d demand to know the whole story, and after I’d told it to her, she’d try to take me into protective custody or something ridiculous like that.
I clenched my fists, hard, and my nails dug into my palms. I should trim them sometime—
I looked down at my nails. Then hurriedly crossed the street to stand under the gas station’s lights, and stared at my hands.
There was blood under my fingernails, where they’d bitten into Gimpy’s wrists. I threw back my head and laughed. I had everything I needed.
I moved back out of the misting rain and squatted down on the concrete sidewalk. I used a bit of chalk I keep in my duster pocket to sketch out a circle on the concrete, surrounding me. Then I scraped the blood out from under my nails and put it onto the concrete between my feet. It glistened in the fine, misty fall of rain.
The next part took me a moment to figure out, but I settled for using the tracking spell I already knew rather than trying to modify it to something a little more dignified. I plucked out a couple of nose hairs and put them in the circle, too, on top of the bits of Gimpy’s skin and blood. Then I touched a finger to the chalk circle and willed energy into it, closing it off.
I gathered up my energy, from my anger, my renewed fear, my aching head and queasy stomach, and hurled it into the spell. “Segui votro testatum.”
There was a rush of energy that focused on my nostrils and made me sneeze several times in a row. And then it came to me, quite strongly, the scent of Gimpy’s cologne. I stood up, opened the circle again with a swipe of my foot, and walked out of it. I turned in a slow circle, all the way around. Gimpy’s scent came to me strongly from the southwest, out toward some of the richer suburbs of Chicago.
I started laughing again. I had the son of a bitch. I could follow him back to Marcone, or whoever he was working for, but I had to do it now. I hadn’t had enough blood to make it last long.
“Hey, buddy!” The cabby leaned out the window and glared at me, the engine running at an idle, the end of his cheroot glowing orange.
I stared at him for a second. “What?”
He scowled. “What, are you deaf? Did someone call for a cab?”
I grinned at him, still angry, still a little light-headed, still eager to go kick Gimpy and the Shadowman’s teeth in. “I did.”
“Why do I get all the nuts?” he said. “Get in.”
I did, closing the door behind me. He eyed me suspiciously in the mirror and said, “Where to?”
“Two stops,” I told him. I gave him my apartment’s address, and sat back in the seat, my head automatically drawn toward the southwest, toward where the men who wanted to kill me were.
“That’s one,” he said. “Where’s number two?”
I narrowed my eyes. I needed a few things from my apartment. My talismans, my blasting rod, my staff, a fetish that should still be vital. And after that, I was going to have a serious talk with one of Chicago’s biggest gangsters.
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
Chapter Seventeen
We ended up at the Varsity, a club Marcone owned in a Chicago suburb. It was a busy place, catering to much of the college-age crowd to be found on this side of the city, and even at one-thirty in the morning it was still fairly crowded for someplace so isolated, alone in a strip mall, the only business open at this time of the evening, the only lit windows in sight.
“Loony,” the cabby muttered as he drove away, and I had to pause for a moment and agree with him. I had directed him about in a meandering line, the spell I’d cast letting me literally follow my nose along Gimpy’s trail. The spell had begun fading almost the moment I’d cast it—I didn’t have enough blood to make a more lasting enchantment—but it had held long enough for me to zero in on the Varsity, and to identify Gimpy’s car in the parking lot. I walked past the windows and, sure enough, in a large, circular booth in the back I saw Johnny Marcone, the bull-necked Mr. Hendricks, Gimpy, and Spike, sitting together and talking. I ducked out of sight in a hurry, before one of them noticed me. Then walked back into the parking lot to consider exactly what I had at my disposal.
A bracelet on each wrist. A ring. My blasting rod. My staff.
I thought of all the subtle and devious means by which I might tilt the situation in my favor—clever illusions, convenient faltering of electricity or water, a sudden invasion of rats or cockroaches. I could have managed any of them. Not many people who use magic are that versatile, but very few have the kind of experience and training it takes to put such spells together on the fly.
I shook my head, irritated. I didn’t have time to bother with subtlety.
Power into the talismans, then. Power into the ring. I reached for the power in both the staff and rod, cool strength of wood and seething anger of fire, and stepped up to the front door of the Varsity.
Then I blew it off its hinges.
I blew it out, rather than in. Pieces flew toward me and bounced off the shield of air I held in front of me, while others rained back behind me, into the parking lot. It wouldn’t do to injure a bunch of innocent diners on the other side. You only get one chance to make a first impression.
Once the door was off, I pointed my blasting rod inside and spoke a command. The jukebox slammed back against the wall as though a cannonball had impacted it, and then melted into a puddle of liquid-plastic goo. The music squealed out the speakers and stopped. I stepped into the doorway and released a pent-up wave of energy from my ring. Starting at the door and then circling throughout the room, the lightbulbs began to explode with sharp little detonations and showers of powdered glass and glowing bits of filament. People at the bar and at all the wooden tables scattered around the room reacted as people tend to do in this sort of situation. They started screaming and shouting, rising to their feet or ducking beneath their tables in confusion. A few ducked out the fire door at the back of one side of the room. Then there was an abrupt and profound silence. Everyone stood stock-still and stared at the doorway—they stared at me.
At the back table, Joh
nny Marcone regarded the doorway with his passionless, money-colored eyes. He was not smiling. Mr. Hendricks, beside him, was glaring at me, his single eyebrow lowered far enough to threaten him with blinding. Spike was tight-lipped and pale. Gimpy stared at me in pure horror. None of them made any moves or any sound. I guess seeing a wizard cut loose can do that to you.
“Little pig, little pig, let me in,” I said, into the silence. I planted my staff on the ground and narrowed my eyes at Marcone. “I’d really like to talk to you for a minute, John.”
Marcone stared at me for a moment; then his lips twitched up at the corners. “You have a singular manner of persuasion, Mr. Dresden.” He stood up and spoke aloud to the room without ever taking his eyes off me. He must have been angry, but the icy exterior concealed it. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Varsity is closing early, it would seem. Please make an orderly exit through the door nearest you. Don’t worry about your bills. Mr. Dresden, if you would step out of the doorway and allow my customers to leave?”
I stepped out of the doorway. The place cleared out fast, customers and staff alike, leaving me alone in the room with Marcone, Hendricks, Spike, and Gimpy. None of them moved as they waited for the customers, the witnesses, to leave. Gimpy started sweating. Hendricks’s expression never changed. The big man was as patient as a mountain lion, ready to leap out on the unsuspecting deer.
“I want my hair back,” I said, as soon as the last college-age couple had hustled out the door.
“Beg pardon?” Marcone said. His head tilted to one side, and he seemed genuinely puzzled.
“You heard me,” I said. “This piece of trash of yours”—I swung my blasting rod up and pointed it at Gimpy—“just jumped me outside a gas station across town and cut off some of my hair. I want it back. I’m not going to go out like Tommy Tomm did.”
Marcone’s eyes abruptly shone with a terrible, cold, money-colored anger. He turned his head, deliberately, to Gimpy.
Gimpy’s broad face went a bit more pasty. He blinked a trickle of sweat out of his eyes. “I don’t know what he’s talking about, boss.”
Marcone’s gaze never wavered. “I presume, Mr. Dresden,” he said, “that you have some kind of proof?”
“Look at his left wrist,” I said. “He’s got several fingernail marks on his skin where I grabbed him.”
Marcone nodded, those cold, tiger’s eyes on Gimpy’s, and said, almost gently, “Well?”
“He’s lying, boss,” Gimpy protested. He licked at his lips. “Hell, I got some fingernail marks from my girl. He knew that. You know what you said, he’s for real, he knows things.”
The pieces of the puzzle fell into place. “Whoever killed Tommy Tomm knows that I’m on his trail,” I said. “Your rival, whoever it is selling the ThreeEye. Gimpy here must have gotten a sweet deal from him to turn on you. He’s been providing your rival with information all along, running errands for him.”
Gimpy couldn’t have played a game of poker to save his life. He stared at me in horror, shook his head in protest.
“There’s an easy way to settle this,” Marcone said, his voice smooth and even. “Lawrence. Show me your wrist.”
“He’s lying, boss,” Gimpy Lawrence said again, but his voice was shaking. “He’s just trying to mess with your head.”
“Lawrence,” Marcone said, his tone the gentle reproof of parent to child.
Gimpy Lawrence knew it was over. I saw the desperate decision in his face before he actually moved. “Liar!” he howled at me. He got up, lifting his hand from underneath the table. I had time to realize he held a revolver, virtually a twin to my own .38, in his fist, before he started shooting.
Several things happened at the same time. I lifted my hand, focusing my will on the bracelet of tiny medieval-style shields around my left wrist, and hardened the protective energies around me. Bullets hammered against it with whining noises, striking sparks in the near dark of the restaurant.
Spike leapt clear of the table, staying low, a small Uzi-style automatic now in his hand. Hendricks was more ruthless and direct, reacting with the mindlessly violent instincts of a savage. With one hand, the big bodyguard hauled Marcone back, putting his own bulk between the mob boss and Gimpy Lawrence. With the other hand, he produced a compact semiautomatic.
Gimpy Lawrence turned his head and saw Hendricks and his gun. He panicked, turning his own weapon toward the larger man.
Hendricks shot him with a ruthless efficiency, three sharp claps of sound, three flashes of muzzle light. The first two shots hit Gimpy in the middle of his chest, driving him back a pair of steps. The third hit him over the right eyebrow, jerked his head back, and toppled him to the ground.
Gimpy Lawrence had dark eyes, like mine. I could see them. His head turned toward me as he lay there on the floor. I saw him blink, once. Then the lights went out of them, and he was gone.
I stood there for a moment, stunned. Grand entrance or not, this wasn’t what I had wanted to happen. I didn’t want to kill anyone. Hell, I didn’t want anyone to die, not me and not them. I felt sick. It had been a sort of game, a macho contest of showmanship I had been determined to win. All of a sudden, it wasn’t a game anymore, and I just wanted to walk away from it alive.
We all stood there, no one moving. Then Marcone said, from beneath Hendricks, “I wanted him alive. He could have answered several questions, first.”
Hendricks frowned and got up off of Marcone. “Sorry, boss.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Hendricks. Better to err on the side of caution, I suppose.” Marcone stood up, straightened his tie, then went and knelt by the body. He felt the man’s throat, then wrist, and shook his head. “Lawrence, Lawrence. I would have paid you twice what they offered you, if you’d come to me with it. You never were very smart, were you?” Then, his face showing no more emotion than it had the entire evening, Marcone peeled back Gimpy Lawrence’s left sleeve, and studied the man’s wrist. He frowned, and lowered the arm again, his expression pensive.
“It would seem, Mr. Dresden,” he said, “that we have a common enemy.” He turned to focus his gaze on me. “Who is it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. If I did, I wouldn’t be here. I thought maybe it was you.”
Marcone lifted his eyebrows. “You should have known me better than that, Mr. Dresden.”
It was my turn to frown. “You’re right. I should have.” The killings had been more vicious, savage than Marcone would have cared to use. Competitors might have to be removed, but there would be no sense in making a production of it. Certainly, there was no reason to murder bystanders, like Linda, like Jennifer Stanton. It was inefficient, bad for business.
“If he has something of yours, you are welcome to take it, Mr. Dresden,” Marcone said. He looked around the room and sighed. “Better hurry. I think the Varsity has seen its last crowd. A shame.”
It was hard, but I walked over to Gimpy Lawrence’s body. I had to set aside my staff, my rod, to rifle the corpse’s pockets. I felt like a ghoul, crouched over the body of a dead man, picking what was valuable to me off of it, out of his pockets.
I didn’t find my hair anywhere. I looked up at Marcone, and he regarded me, my eyes, without any readable emotion.
“Nothing,” I told him.
“Interesting. He must have passed the material in question to someone else before he came here,” Marcone said.
“Someone after he got here, maybe?”
Marcone shook his head. “I am quite sure he did not do that. I would have noticed.”
“I believe you,” I told him, and I did. “But who?”
“Our enemy,” Marcone said. “Obviously.”
I closed my eyes, suddenly sagging with weariness. “Dammit.”
Marcone said nothing. He stood up, and issued a few quiet orders to Hendricks and Spike. Hendricks wiped down his gun with a napkin, then left it lying on the floor. Spike went over behind the bar and started to do something involving a power cord and a bottle of whiskey.
Marcone considered that, and nodded. “Yes, you do. Unfortunately, you chose a public forum for this discussion. You have set yourself up in the eyes of anyone who cared to watch as my enemy. As understandable as your reasons might have been, the fact that you have publicly defied me remains. I cannot let that go without response, regardless of my personal feelings, without inviting more of the same. I must maintain control. It isn’t personal, Mr. Dresden. It’s business.”
I tightened my jaw, and my grip on my blasting rod, and made sure my shield was still there, ready to go. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I need do nothing. Either our enemy will kill you, in which case I need not risk myself or my people in removing you, or you will find him in time and bring him down. If you do defeat him, I will let it be understood to any who ask that you did so at my behest, after which I will be inclined to forget this evening. Either way, it profits me best to wait and see.”
“If he kills me,” I pointed out, “if I’m the next one to have my heart ripped out, you still won’t know where he is. You won’t be any closer to removing him and protecting your business.”
“True,” Marcone said. Then he smiled, an expression that lasted for only a fraction of a second. “But I think you will not be such easy prey. I think that even if he kills you, he will reveal himself in some way. And since our encounter the other day, I think I have a better feel for what sorts of things to look for.”
I scowled at him and turned to go, moving briskly toward the door.
“Harry,” he said. I stopped and turned back around.