by Jim Butcher
“Thomas,” I said to his back. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
He paused.
I asked, “Why do it?”
The vampire glanced over his shoulder at me and smiled. “Life would be unbearably dull if we had answers to all our questions.” He walked out to a white sports car and slipped into it. A second later, loud, screaming metal music started from the car’s stereo, the engine roared, and Thomas drove off.
I checked my watch. Ten more minutes until Susan arrived. Shiro emerged from McAnnally’s and put on his glasses. Once he spotted me, he walked over and took the glasses off again. “Ortega refused to cancel the duel?”
“He made me an offer I couldn’t excuse,” I said.
Shiro grunted. “Duel is wills. Tomorrow, just after sundown. Wrigley Field.”
“A stadium? Why don’t we put it on pay-per-view while we’re at it.” I glowered at the street and checked my watch again. “I’m meeting someone in a minute. I’ll give you the keys to my car. I can pick it up from Michael’s tomorrow.”
“No need,” Shiro said. “Mac called me a cab.”
“Okay.” I pocketed my keys.
Shiro stood quietly for a moment, lips pursed thoughtfully, before he said, “Ortega means to kill you.”
“Yes. Yes, he does,” I said. I managed not to grind my teeth as I said it. “Everyone is saying that like I didn’t know it already.”
“But you do not know how.” I frowned and looked down at Shiro. His shaved head gleamed under a nearby streetlight. “The war is not your fault.”
“I know that,” I said, but my voice lacked conviction.
“No,” Shiro said. “It truly is not your fault.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Red Court has been quietly building its resources for years,” he said. “How else were they ready to start their attacks in Europe only days after you defeated Bianca?”
I frowned at him.
Shiro drew a cigar from inside his jacket and bit off the end. He spat it to one side. “You were not the cause of the war. You were merely the excuse. The Reds would have attacked when they were ready.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not how it is. I mean, damn near everyone I’ve spoken to on the Council—”
Shiro snorted. He struck a match and puffed on the cigar a few times while he lit it. “The Council. Arrogant. As if nothing significant could happen unless a wizard did it.”
For someone who wasn’t on the White Council, Shiro seemed to have its general attitude pretty well surrounded. “If the Red Court wanted a war, why is Ortega trying to stop it?”
“Premature,” Shiro said. “Needed more time to be completely prepared. The advantage of surprise is gone. He wishes to strike once and be certain it is a lethal stroke.”
I watched the little old man for a minute. “Everyone’s got advice tonight. Why are you giving it?”
“Because in some ways you are every bit as arrogant as the Council, though you do not realize it. You blame yourself for what happened to Susan. You want to blame yourself for more.”
“So what if I do?”
Shiro turned me and faced me squarely. I avoided meeting his eyes. “Duels are a test of fire. They are fought in the will. The heart. If you do not find your balance, Ortega will not need to kill you. You will do so for him.”
“I guess you were a psychoanalyst before you were a sword-swinging vigilante against evil.”
Shiro puffed on the cheroot. “Either way, been alive longer than you. See more than you.”
“Like what?”
“Like this vampire warlord. How he manipulates you. He is not what he seems to be.”
“Really? I’ve never seen that one before,” I said. “Someone not what they appear to be. How ever will I adjust.”
Shiro shrugged. “He is centuries old. He is not from the same world. The world Ortega lived in was savage. Brutal. Men like him destroyed entire civilizations for gold and glory. And for hundreds of years since then, he has fought rival vampires, demons, and enemies of his kind. If he approaches you through formal, civilized channels, it is because he thinks it is the best way to kill you. Regardless of what happens in the duel, he intends to see you dead by any means necessary. Maybe before. Maybe after. But dead.”
Shiro didn’t put any particular emphasis on the words. He didn’t need to. They were enough to scare me without any added dramatics. I glowered at his cigar and said, “Those things will kill you.”
The old man smiled again. “Not tonight.”
“I’d think a good Christian boy wouldn’t be puffing down the cigars.”
“Technicality,” Shiro said.
“The cigars?”
“My Christianity,” Shiro said. “When I was a boy, I liked Elvis. Had a chance to see him in concert when we moved to California. It was a big revival meeting. There was Elvis and then a speaker and my English was not so good. He invited people backstage to meet the king. Thought he meant Elvis, so I go backstage.” He sighed. “Found out later I had become a Baptist.”
I barked out a laugh. “You’re kidding.”
“No. But it was done, so I tried not to be too bad at being Baptist.” He rested a hand on the handle of his sword. “Then came into this. Made the whole thing more simple. I serve.”
“Serve who?”
“Heaven. Or the divine in nature. The memory of my fathers past. My fellow man. Myself. All pieces of the same thing. Do you know the story of the blind men and the elephant?”
“Have you heard the one about the bear that walks into a bar?” I responded.
“I think that is a no,” Shiro said. “Three blind men were shown an elephant. They touched it with their hands to determine what the creature was. The first man felt the trunk, and claimed that an elephant was like a snake. The second man touched its leg and claimed that an elephant was like a tree. The third man touched its tail, and claimed that the elephant was like a slender rope.”
I nodded. “Oh. I get it. All of them were right. All of them were wrong. They couldn’t get the whole picture.”
Shiro nodded. “Precisely. I am just another blind man. I do not get the whole picture of what transpires in all places. I am blind and limited. I would be a fool to think myself wise. And so, not knowing what the universe means, I can only try to be responsible with the knowledge, the strength, and the time given to me. I must be true to my heart.”
“Sometimes that isn’t good enough,” I said.
He tilted his head and looked up at me. “How do you know?”
A cab swerved in from the street and rattled to a stop. Shiro stepped over to it and nodded to me. “Will be at Michael’s if you need me. Be watchful.”
I nodded at him. “Thank you.”
Shiro said, “Thank me after.” Then he got into the cab and left.
Mac closed up shop a minute later, and put on a dark fedora on his way out. He nodded at me on the way to his Trans Am, and said nothing. I found a shadowy spot to linger in as Mac left, and kept an eye on the street. I’d hate for someone to drive by and shoot me with a plain old gun. Embarrassing.
A long, dark limo pulled into the parking lot. A uniformed driver got out and opened the door nearest to me. A pair of long, honey-brown legs slid out of the limo on top of black stiletto heels. Susan glided out of the car, managing grace despite the shoes, which probably qualified her for superhuman status all by itself. A sleeveless sheath of shimmering black cloth clung to her, an evening gown slit high on one side. Dark gloves covered her arms to the elbow, and her hair had been done up in a pile on top of her head, held in place with a couple of gleaming black chopsticks.
My tongue dropped out of my mouth and flopped onto my shoes. Well, not literally, but if I’d been a cartoon my eyeballs would have been about six feet long.
Susan had read my face and apparently enjoyed my reaction. “How much, good-looking?”
I looked down at my rumpled clothing. “I think I’m a tad underdressed.”
“One tuxedo, coming up,” Susan said.
The driver opened the trunk and drew out a hanger covered with a dry-cleaning bag. When he turned around with it, I realized that the driver was Martin. All he’d done to disguise himself was don an archetypical uniform and I hadn’t even recognized him until second glance. I guess sometimes it’s handy to be bland.
“Is it my size?” I asked, taking the tux when Martin passed it to me.
“I had to guess,” Susan said, lowering her eyelids in a sultry expression. “But it wasn’t like I didn’t know my way around.”
Martin’s face might have flickered with disapproval. My heart sped up a bit. “All right then,” I said. “Let’s get moving. I’ll dress on the way.”
“Do I get to look?” Susan asked.
“It’ll cost you extra,” I said. Martin opened the door for Susan and I slid in after her. I filled her in on what I’d found out about the Shroud and those after it. “I should be able to find the thing if we get close.”
“You think there will be any more of these Denarians there?”
“Probably,” I said. “If anything gets ugly, we’ll take the best part of valor, pronto. These guys play hardball.”
Susan nodded agreement. “Sounds like the thieves aren’t exactly shy about waving guns, either.”
“And we’ll have Marcone around too. Whither he goeth, there too goeth armed thugs and homicide investigations.”
Susan smiled. It was a new expression to me—a small, quiet, fierce little smile that showed her teeth. It looked natural on her. “You’re all about fun, aren’t you, Harry?”
“I am the Bruce Lee of fun,” I concurred. “Give me some space here.”
Susan slid over as far as she could to give me room to climb into the tux. I tried not to mar it too badly in the limited space. Susan glanced at me with a faint frown.
“What?” I asked her.
“You’re wrinkling it.”
“This isn’t as easy as I’m making it look,” I responded.
“If you weren’t staring at my legs, maybe it wouldn’t be such a challenge.”
“I wasn’t staring,” I lied.
Susan smiled at me as the car cruised through downtown and I did my best to dress like Roger Moore. Her expression became thoughtful after a moment, and she said, “Hey.”
“What?”
“What happened to your leather coat?”
Chapter Nineteen
The downtown Marriott was huge, brilliantly lit, and busy as an anthill. Several blue-and-whites were parked nearby, and a couple of officers were helping to direct traffic in front of the hotel. I could see maybe twenty limos on the street and pulling through the archway in front of the hotel doors, and every one of them looked bigger and nicer than ours. Valets rushed around to park the cars of guests who had driven themselves. There were a dozen men in red jackets standing around with bored expressions that some might mistake for inattention. Hotel security.
Martin pulled up to the entryway and said, “I’ll wait for you out here.” He passed a palm-sized cell phone to Susan. She slipped it into a black clutch. “If you get into trouble, speed-dial one.”
At that point, a valet opened the door on my side, and I slipped out of the car. My rental tux felt a little awkward. The shoes were long enough for me but they were an inch and a half too wide. I shrugged my jacket into place, straightened the cummerbund, and offered a hand to Susan. She slid out of the car with a brilliant smile, and straightened my tie.
“Smile,” she said quietly. “Everyone here is worried about image. If you walk in scowling like that we won’t blend in.”
I smiled in what I thought was a camouflaging manner. Susan regarded the expression critically, nodded, and slipped her arm through mine. We walked in under the cover our smiles provided. One of the security guards stopped us inside the door, and Susan presented the tickets to him. He waved us through.
“First thing to do is find some stairs,” I said from behind my smile. “The loading docks will be near the kitchens, and they’re below us. That’s where they’ll be bringing in the art stuff.”
Susan held her course toward the stairs. “Not yet,” she said. “If we snoop around the second we get in the door someone is likely to notice. We should mingle until the auction is running. People will be distracted then.”
“If we wait, the whole thing could go down while we hobnob.”
“Maybe,” Susan said. “But odds are that Anna Valmont and the buyer are both thinking the same thing.”
“When does the auction start?”
“Eleven.”
“Assuming the note means that the sale is at eleven forty-five, that doesn’t give us much time to look around. This place is huge.”
We got onto an escalator and Susan arched an eyebrow at me. “Do you have any better ideas?”
“Not yet,” I said. I caught a glimpse of myself in a polished brass column. I didn’t look half-bad. There’s a reason the tux has weathered a century virtually unchanged. You don’t fix what isn’t broken. Tuxedos make anyone look good, and I was a living testament to it. “Think they will have anything to eat? I’m starving.”
“Just keep the shirt clean,” Susan muttered.
“No problem. I can wipe my fingers on the cummerbund.”
“I can’t take you anywhere,” Susan said. She leaned a little against me, and it felt nice. I felt nice, generally speaking. I cleaned up pretty well, it would seem, and I had a lovely woman—no, I had Susan on my arm, looking lovely. It was a small silver lining compared to the troubled clouds I’d been floundering through, but it was something, and it lasted all the way up the escalator. I take the good moments wherever I can get them.
We followed the flow of formally dressed men and women up another escalator or three to a cavernous ballroom. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling and tables laden with expensive-looking snacks and ice sculptures all but overflowed onto the floor. A group of musicians played on the far side of the ballroom. They didn’t seem to be stretching themselves with some relaxed and classy jazz. Couples who also weren’t stretching themselves danced together on a floor the size of a basketball court.
The room wasn’t crammed with people, but there were a couple of hundred there already, and more coming in behind us. Polite but insincere chatter filled the space, accompanied by equally insincere smiles and laughter. There were a number of city officials whom I recognized in the immediate area, plus a couple of professional musicians and at least one motion-picture actor.
A waiter in a white jacket offered us a tray of champagne glasses, and I promptly appropriated a pair of them, passing the first to Susan. She lifted the glass to her mouth but didn’t drink. The champagne smelled good. I took a sip, and it tasted good. I’m not a terribly impressive drinker, so I stopped after the first sip. Chugging down champagne on an empty stomach would probably prove inconvenient if it turned out I needed to do any quick thinking. Or quick leaving. Or quick anything.
Susan said hello to an older couple, and stopped for introductions. I kept my duck blind of a smile in place, and mouthed appropriately polite phrases in the right spots. My cheeks had already started hurting. We repeated that for half an hour or so, while the band played a bunch of low-key dance music. Susan knew a lot of people. She’d been a reporter in Chicago for five or six years before she’d had to leave town, but she had evidently managed to ingratiate herself to more people than I would have guessed. You go, Susan.
“Food,” I said, after a stooped older man kissed Susan’s cheek and walked away. “Feed me, Seymour.”
“It’s always the brain stem with you,” she murmured. But she guided us over to the refreshment tables so that I could pick up a tiny sandwich. I didn’t wolf the thing down in one bite, which was just as well, since it had a toothpick through it to hold it together. But the sandwich didn’t last long.
“At least chew with your mouth closed,” Susan said.
I took a second sandwich. “Can’
t help it. I got all kinds of joie de vivre, baby.”
“And smile.”
“Chew and smile? At the same time? Do I look like Jackie Chan?”
She had a retort but it died after a syllable. I felt her hand tighten on my arm. I briefly debated wolfing the second sandwich, just to get it out of the way, but I took the more sophisticated option instead. I put it in my jacket pocket for later, and turned to follow Susan’s gaze.
I looked just in time to meet the gaze of Gentleman Johnny Marcone. He was a man of slightly above average height and unassuming build. He had handsome but unremarkable features. Central casting would have placed him as the genial next-door neighbor. He didn’t have the usual boater’s tan, it being February and all, but the crow’s-feet at the corners of his pale green eyes remained. He looked a lot like the fictional public image he projected—that of a normal, respectable businessman, an American tale of middle class made good.
That said, Marcone scared me more than any single human being I’d ever met. I’d seen him produce a knife from his sleeve faster than a hyperstrong psychotic could swing a tire iron at him. He’d thrown another knife through a rope while spinning in circles as he hung upside down in the dark, later the same night. Marcone may have been human, but he wasn’t normal. He’d taken control of Chicago’s organized crime during a free-for-all gang war, and he’d run it ever since despite the efforts of both everyday and supernatural threats. He’d done it by being deadlier than anything that came after him. Of all the people in the room, Marcone was the only one I could see who wasn’t wearing a fake smile. It didn’t look like he was particularly troubled by the fact, either.
“Mister Dresden,” he said. “And Miss Rodriguez, I believe. I didn’t realize you were an art collector.”
“I am the foremost collector of velvet Elvii in the city of Chicago,” I said at once.
“Elvii?” Marcone inquired.
“The plural could be Elvises, I guess,” I said. “But if I say that too often, I start muttering to myself and calling things ‘my precious,’ so I usually go with the Latin plural.”
Marcone did smile that time. It was a cool expression. Tigers with full stomachs wear smiles like Marcone’s when they’re watching baby deer play. “Ah. I hope you can find something to suit your tastes tonight.”