by Jim Butcher
Arturo waved a hand. "Tricia would not try to stop the picture."
"Why not?" I asked.
"She is the star."
Thomas made a choking sound. "Christ, Arturo."
The silver-maned man grimaced. "No choice. She had a standing contract. Could have killed me in court if I did not cast her."
"Is there an ex-wife number four?" I asked. "I can keep track of three. If there's four, I have to start writing things down."
"Not yet," Arturo muttered. "I am single. So far just the three."
"Well, that's something," I said. "Look, unless whoever is bringing this curse onto you does something right in front of me, there's not a lot I can do. We call a spell like the Evil Eye an entropy curse, and it's damned near impossible to trace any other way."
"My people must be protected from the malocchio," Arturo said. "Can you do that?"
"If I'm there when it goes down, yes."
"How much does that cost?" he asked.
"Seventy- five an hour, plus expenses. A thousand up-front."
Arturo didn't hesitate. "Done. We start shooting in the morning, nine o'clock."
"I'll have to be close. Within sight, if possible," I said. "And the less anyone knows about it, the better."
"Yeah," Thomas agreed. "He'll need a cover story. If he stands around in the open, the bad guy will just wait until he leaves or goes to the bathroom or something."
Arturo nodded. "He can boom for me."
"Boom?" I asked.
"Boom microphone," Thomas supplied.
"Oh. That isn't such a hot idea," I said. "My magic doesn't get on so well with machines and such."
Arturo's face clouded with annoyance. "Fine. Production assistant." Something in his pants made a chirping sound, and he drew a cell phone from his pocket. He held up a hand to me and stepped over to the other side of the room, speaking in low tones.
"Production assistant. What's that?" I asked.
"Gofer," Thomas said, "Errand boy." He stood up, his movements restless.
There was a knock at the door, and it opened to admit a girl who may not have reached drinking age. She had dark hair, dark eyes, and was a little taller than average. She wore a white sweater with a short black skirt that showed off a lot of leg, and even compared to the pretty people outside, she was a knockout. Of course, the last time I'd seen her she'd been naked except for a red, Christmas-present-type bow, so it was possible that I was biased.
"Justine," Thomas said, and there was the kind of relief in his voice that I would usually have associated with historical sailors shouting, "Land ho." He took a step over to the girl and pulled her to him in a kiss.
Justine's cheeks colored and she let out a breathless little laugh before her lips touched his, and then melted into the kiss like there wasn't anything else in the whole world.
The puppy in the curl of my arm vibrated, and I glanced down to see him staring at Thomas, an inaudible, disapproving growl shaking his fuzzy chest.
They didn't kiss for a long time, really, but when Thomas finally lifted his mouth from hers, she was flushed and I could see the pulse beating in her throat. Nothing remotely like thought or restraint touched her face. The heat in her eyes could have scorched me if I'd been a little closer, and for a second I thought she was about to drag Thomas to the carpet right there in front of me.
Instead Thomas turned her so that she stood with her back to his chest, and drew her against him, pinning her there with his arms. He looked paler, and his eyes had become an even fainter shade of grey. He rested his cheek on her hair for a moment, and then said, "You've met Harry."
Justine regarded me with heavy, sultry eyes and nodded. "Hello, Mister Dresden." She inhaled through her nose, and made a visible effort to draw her thoughts together. "You're cold," she said to Thomas. "What happened?"
"Nothing," Thomas said, his tone light.
Justine tilted her head and then took a tiny step away from him. Thomas blinked at her, but didn't try to keep her there. "Not nothing," she said. She touched his cheek with her fingers. "You're freezing."
"I don't want you to worry about it," Thomas told her.
Justine looked over her shoulder at me.
I checked on Arturo, who was still in his conversation on the phone, then said in a low voice, "Black Court. I think it was one of Mavra's goons."
Justine's eyes widened. "Oh, God. Was anyone hurt?"
"Only the vampire," I said. I gave the puppy, now silent, a vague wave. "The pup saw him coming."
"Thomas," Justine said, looking back at him. "You told me you didn't have to worry about Mavra."
"In the first place, we don't know it's Mavra," Thomas said. He gave me a look over Justine's head that warned me to shut the hell up. "And in the second place, they were after Dresden. He's here under my invitation, so I helped him out a little."
"Boot to the head," I agreed. "Ran him off."
"My God. I'm glad you are all right, Mister Dresden, but this shouldn't have happened. Thomas, we shouldn't even be in town. If you don't-"
Thomas put a finger under Justine's chin and drew her eyes up to his.
Justine shuddered, her lips faltering to a halt, her mouth partly open. Her pupils dilated until there was practically no color showing around them. She swayed a little on her feet.
"Relax," Thomas said. "I'll take care of things."
Her brow furrowed with a tiny line, and she stammered, "But… I don't want you to… get hurt."
Thomas's eyes glittered. Deliberately he raised one pale hand and touched a fingertip to the pulse in Justine's throat. Then he drew it down in a slow, lazy spiral that stopped half an inch under her collarbone. She shuddered again, and her eyes slipped entirely out of focus. Whatever thought had been in her head, it died a silent little death, and left her swaying on her feet making soft, mindless sounds between quick breaths.
And she loved it. From the looks of things she didn't have a choice.
The puppy's silent growl buzzed against the skin of my arm. Anger flashed through me in a wave of silent outrage.
"Stop it," I said in a quiet voice. "Get out of her head."
"This doesn't concern you," Thomas replied.
"Like hell it doesn't. Back off on the mind-mojo. Right now. Or you and I are going to have words."
Thomas's gaze moved to me. Something vicious in his eyes flashed with a cold fury and one of his hands closed into a fist. Then he shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. He spoke before they opened.
"The less she knows about the details," he said in a rough, strained voice, "the safer she's going to be."
"From who?" I demanded.
"From anyone who might not like me or my House," Thomas said. The words were laced with a hint of a feral snarl. "If she doesn't know any more than any other doe, there's no reason to target her. It's one of the only things I can do to protect her. Back off, wizard, or I'll be happy to start the conversation myself."
Just then Arturo finished his call and turned back to us. He blinked and stopped short of conversation distance. "I'm sorry. Did I miss something?"
Thomas arched an eyebrow at me.
I took a deep breath and said, "No. We just stumbled onto an uncomfortable topic. But we can put a lid on it until later."
"Good," Arturo said. "Now where were we?"
"I need to take Justine home," Thomas said. "She's had a little too much tonight. Best of luck, Arturo."
Arturo nodded to him and managed to smile. "Thank you, Tommy boy, for your help."
"It's nothing." He slipped an arm around Justine, drawing her with him, and nodded to me as he left the room. "Later, Harry."
I rose too, and asked Arturo, "Where do you want me tomorrow?"
He sat down his bottle of wine, grabbed a memo pad off the desk, and scribbled down an address. Then he withdrew a roll of money, peeled off ten bills and slapped a thousand dollars cash down on top of the address. I collected all of it.
"I do not know if I
believe in your sincerity, Mr. Dresden," Arturo said.
I waved the bills. "As long as you're paying, I don't really need you to believe in me. See you in the morning, Mr. Genosa."
Chapter Five
I shambled back to my place around late o'clock. Mister, the bobtailed grey tomcat who shares my apartment, hurled himself at my legs in a shoulder-block of greeting. Mister weighs twenty-five or thirty pounds, and I had to brace myself against his ritual affection.
Mister tilted his head at me and sniffed at the air. Then he made a low, warning sound of his imperial displeasure. As I came in, he bounded up onto the nearest bit of furniture and peered at the puppy still sleeping in my arm.
"Temporary," I assured him. I sat down on the couch. "He isn't staying."
Mister narrowed his eyes, prowled over to me, and swatted at the puppy with an indignant paw.
"Take it easy. This little lunatic is a featherweight." I murmured a minor spell and lit a few candles around my apartment with my will. I dialed the number where I had been contacting Brother Wang while he was in town, but got only a recording telling me the number had been disconnected. The phones are occasionally wacky when it's me using them, so I tried again. No success. Bah. My bones ached and I wanted to rest, safe and cozy in my lair.
Said lair was in the basement of a creaky old boardinghouse built better than a hundred years ago. It had sunken windows high up on its walls, and largely consisted of a single living area around a fireplace. I had old, comfortable furniture-a sofa, a love seat, a couple of big recliner-type chairs. They didn't match, but they looked soft and inviting. The stone floor was covered with a variety of area rugs, and I'd softened the look of the concrete walls with a number of tapestries and framed pictures.
The whole place was sparkling clean, and the air smelled of pine boughs. Even the fireplace was scoured down to a clean stone surface. You can't beat the Fair Folk as housekeepers. You also can't tell people about them, because they'll pack up and clear out. Why? I have no idea. They're faeries, and that's just how it works.
On one side of the living room there was a shallow alcove with a wood-burning stove, an old-fashioned icebox, and some cabinets that held my cooking ware and groceries. On the other, a narrow doorway led to my bedroom and bath. There was barely enough room for my twin bed and a secondhand dresser.
I pulled up the rug that covered the entrance to the subbasement, a trapdoor set into the floor. It was deep enough underground to keep a subterranean chill the year-round, so I juggled the puppy while putting on a heavy flannel robe. Then I got a candle, opened the trapdoor, and descended the folding stepladder into my laboratory.
I had forbidden the cleaning service to move around my lab, and as a result it had been slowly losing the war against entropy for a couple of years. The walls were lined with wire racks, and I'd filled them with Tupperware, boxes, bags, tubs, bottles, cups, bowls, and urns. Most of the containers had a label listing their contents, ingredients for any number of potions, spells, summonings, and magical devices I had occasion to make from time to time. A worktable ran down the middle of the room, and at its far end was a comparatively recent concrete patch that did not match the rest of the floor. The patch was surrounded by the summoning circle set into the stone. I'd splurged on replacing the old ring with a new one made of silver and I'd moved everything in the room as far from it as I could.
The thing I'd locked up under the circle had been quiet since the night I had sealed it into a spirit-prison, but when it came to entombing a fallen angel, I was pretty sure that there was no such thing as too much caution.
"Bob," I said as I lit some more candles. "Get up."
One shelf didn't match the rest of the room. Two simple metal struts held up a plain wooden plank. Mounds of old candle wax spread in multicolored lumps at either end of the board, and in the middle rested a human skull.
The skull shivered a little, teeth rattling, and then a dim glow of orange light appeared in its empty eye sockets. Bob the Skull wasn't really a skull. He was an air spirit, a being with a great deal of knowledge and centuries of magical experience. Since I'd stolen him from Justin DuMorne, my own personal childhood Darth Vader, Bob's knowledge and skills had let me save lives. Mostly my own, maybe, but a lot of other lives, too.
"How did it go?" Bob asked.
I started rummaging through the various and sundry. "Three of the little bastards slipped through that paralysis charm you were so sure of," I said. "I barely got out in one piece."
"You're so cute when you whine," Bob said. "I'd almost think that-Holy cats, Harry!"
"Eh?"
"You stole one of the temple dogs?"
I petted the puppy's fur and felt a little offended. "It wasn't anything I meant to happen. He was a stowaway."
"Wow," Bob said. "What are you going to do with him?"
"Not sure yet," I said. "Brother Wang's already gone. I tried to call his contact number just now, but it was out of service. I can't call up a messenger and send it back to the temple, because that entire area of mountains is warded, and a letter might take months to get through. If it gets through at all." I finally found a big enough box, scrounged around a bit more, and dropped a couple of old flannel bathrobes into it, followed by the exhausted puppy. "Besides, I've got better things to worry about."
"Like what?"
"Like the Black Court. Mavra and her… her… Hey, what's the term for a group of Black Court vampires? A gaggle? A passel?"
"A scourge," Bob said.
"Right. Looks like Mavra and her scourge are in town. One of them came pretty close to punching my ticket tonight."
Bob's eyelights flickered with interest. "Neat. So the usual drill? Wait for them to try again so you can backtrack the attackers to Mavra?"
"Not this time. I'm going to find them first, kick down their door, and kill them all in their sleep."
"Wow. That's an atypically vicious plan, Harry."
"Yeah. I liked it too."
I put the puppy's box on the table. "I want you to take Mister out on the town in the morning. Find wherever it is Mavra is holing up during the day, and for the love of Pete, don't step on any more warding spells."
Bob somehow gave the impression that he shivered. "Yeah. I've been a lot more careful. But the vampires aren't stupid, Harry. They know they're helpless during daylight. They'll have taken some measures to protect their refuge. They always do."
"I'll take care of it," I said.
"It might be more than you can handle alone."
"That's why I'm going Justice League on them," I said, fighting a yawn. I put the cardboard box with the puppy on the worktable, picked up my candle, and went to the stepladder.
"Hey, where do you think you're going?" Bob asked.
"Bed. Early day tomorrow. New case."
"And the temple dog is staying here why?"
"Because I don't want to leave him all by his lonesome," I said. "If I take him with me I think Mister would eat him after I went to sleep."
"Dammit, Harry, I'm a voyeur, not a veterinarian."
I scowled. "I need shut-eye."
"And I get to babysit the dog?"
"Yeah."
"My job sucks."
"Form a union," I said heartlessly.
"What's the new case?" Bob asked.
I told him.
"Arturo Genosa?" Bob asked. "The Arturo Genosa? The movie producer?"
I lifted my eyebrows. "Yeah, I guess. You've heard of him?"
"Heard of him? Heck, yeah! He's the best there is!"
My intuition piped up again, and I felt something in my insides drop. "Uh. What kind of movies?"
"Critically acclaimed erotic features!" Bob said, fairly bubbling with enthusiasm.
I blinked. "There are erotic film critics?"
"Sure!" Bob bubbled. "All kinds of periodicals."
"Like what?"
"Juggs, Hooters, Funkybuns, Busting Out-"
I rubbed at my eyes. "Bob, those are porno maga
zines, not trade journals."
"Four stars, four boners, what's the difference?" Bob asked.
I wasn't going to touch that one.
The skull sighed. "Harry, I'm not trying to call you stupid or belabor the obvious, but you did get hired by a vampire of the White Court. An incubus. What kind of job did you think this was going to be?"
I glowered at Bob. He was right. I should have known it wasn't going to be simple.
"Speaking of," I said, "how much do you know about the White Court?"
"Oh, the usual," Bob said, which meant he knew plenty.
"I saw Thomas get real weird tonight," I said. "I don't know how to describe it, exactly. But Justine was there, and she said that he was freezing and that it worried her. Then he hit her with some kind of mind-magic hypnosis whammy, and zoned her out entirely."
"He was Hungry," Bob said. "I mean, capital H kind of Hungry. The Hunger is a kind of… I don't know. Symbiotic spirit, inside a White Court vamp. They're born with it."
"Ah," I said. "That's where they get the strength and powers and stuff."
"Among them nigh-immortality," Bob said. "But it don't happen for free. That's why they do the whole feeding thing. The Hunger needs it to survive."
"I got it, I got it," I said, through a yawn. "They use their powers and it makes the spirit hungry so they have to feed." I frowned. "What happens if they don't feed?"
"Short- term? Moodiness, anger, violent behavior, paranoia. In the long term, they'll use up whatever reservoir of life energy they have. Once that happens, the Hunger pretty much takes over and makes them hunt."
"If they can't hunt?"
"They go insane."
"What about the people they feed on?" I asked.
"What about them?" Bob said. "They get little pieces of their life nibbled away. It does a form of spiritual damage, like when the Nightmare mauled Mickey Malone. It leaves them vulnerable to the Whites' mental allure and control, so it's easy for the Whites to come by for another bite."
"What happens if they keep getting fed on?"
"It's fed upon, o Bard, and if it keeps up the mortal burns out early. Sort of fades away into a kind of mindless daze. Heart attack during an intense feeding usually kills them."