by Jim Butcher
"Oh, no, I'm not!" I protested. "All I'm saying is that-"
Georgia arched an eyebrow and gave me a steady look down her aquiline nose. "You know the law, Dresden."
"He who kills the cheer springs for beer," chanted the rest of the table.
"Oh, bite me!" I muttered at them, but a grin was diluting my scowl as I dug out my wallet and tossed a twenty on the table.
"Okay," Kirby said. "Roll your fireball damage, Will."
Billy slung out a double handful of square dice and said, "Hah! One-point-two over median. Suck on that, henchmen!"
"They're all dead," Kirby confirmed. "We might as well break there until next week."
"Crap," I said. "I barely got to hit anybody."
"I only got to hit one!" Andi said.
Georgia shook her head. "I didn't even get to finish casting my spell."
"Oh, yes," Billy gloated. "Seven modules of identifying magic items and repairing things the stupid barbarian broke, but I've finally come into my own. Was it like that for you, Harry?"
"Let you know when I come into my own," I said, rising. "But my hopes are high. Why, this very morrow, I, Harry Dresden, have a day off."
"The devil you say!" Billy exclaimed, grinning at me as the group began cleaning up from the evening's gaming session.
I shrugged into my black leather duster. "No apprentice, no work, no errands for the Council, no Warden stuff, no trips out of town for Paranet business. My very own free time."
Georgia gave me a wide smile. "Tell me you aren't going to spend it puttering around that musty hole in the ground you call a lab."
"Um," I said.
"Look," Andi said. "He's blushing!"
"I am not blushing," I said. I swept up the empty bottles and pizza boxes, and headed into Billy and Georgia's little kitchen to dump them into the trash.
Georgia followed me in, reaching around me to send several pieces of paper into the trash, too. "Hot date with Stacy?" she asked, her voice pitched to keep the conversation private.
"I think if I ever called her 'Stacy,' Anastasia might beat the snot out of me for being too lazy to speak her entire name," I replied.
"You seem a little tense about it."
I shrugged a shoulder. "This is going to be the first time we spend a whole day together without something trying to rip us to pieces along the way. I… I want it to go right, you know?" I pushed my fingers back through my hair. "I mean, both of us could use a day off."
"Sure, sure," Georgia said, watching me with calm, knowing eyes. "Do you think it's going to go anywhere with her?"
I shrugged. "Don't know. She and I have very different ideas about… well, about basically everything except what to do with things that go around hurting people."
The tall, willowy Georgia glanced back toward the dining room, where her short, heavily muscled husband was putting away models. "Opposites attract. There's a song about it and everything."
"One thing at a time," I said. "Neither one of us is trying to inspire the poets for the ages. We like each other. We make each other laugh. God, that's nice, these days…" I sighed and glanced up at Georgia, a little sheepishly. "I just want to show her a nice time tomorrow."
Georgia had a gentle smile on her narrow, intelligent face. "I think that's a very healthy attitude." I WAS JUST getting into my car, a battered old Volkswagen Bug I've dubbed the Blue Beetle, when Andi came hurrying over to me.
There'd been a dozen Alphas when I'd first met them, college kids who had banded together and learned just enough magic to turn themselves into wolves. They'd spent their time as werewolves protecting and defending the town, which needed all the help it could get. The conclusion of their college educations had seen most of them move on in life, but Andi was one of the few who had stuck around.
Most of the Alphas adopted clothing that was easily discarded-the better to swiftly change into a large wolf without getting tangled up in jeans and underwear. On this particular summer evening, Andi was wearing a flirty little purple sundress and nothing else. Between her hair, her build, and her long, strong legs, Andi's picture belonged on the nose of a World War II bomber, and her hurried pace was intriguingly kinetic.
She noticed me noticing and gave me a wicked little smile and an extra jiggle the last few steps. She was the sort to appreciate being appreciated. "Harry," she said, "I know you hate to mix business with pleasure, but there's something I was hoping to talk to you about tomorrow."
"Sorry, sweetheart," I said in my best Bogey dialect. "Not tomorrow. Day off. Important things to do."
"I know," Andi said. "But I was hoping-"
"If it waited until after the Arcanos game, it can wait until after my d-day off," I said firmly.
Andi almost flinched at the tone, and nodded. "Okay."
I felt myself arch an eyebrow. I hadn't put that much harsh into it-and Andi wasn't exactly the sort to be fazed by verbal salvos, regardless of their nature or volume. Socially speaking, the woman was armored like a battleship.
"Okay," I replied. "I'll call." Kirby approached her as I got into the car, put an arm around her from behind, and tugged her backside against his front side, leaning down to sniff at her hair. She closed her eyes and pressed herself into him.
Yeah. I let myself feel a little smug as I pulled out of the lot and drove home. That one had just been a matter of time, despite everything Georgia had said. I totally called it. I PULLED INTO the gravel parking lot beside the boardinghouse where I live and knew right away I had a problem. Perhaps it was my keenly developed intuition, honed by years of investigative work as the infamous Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, shamus of the supernatural, gumshoe of the ghostly, wise guy of the weird, warning me with preternatural awareness of the shadow of Death passing nearby.
Or maybe it was the giant black van painted with flaming skulls, goat's head pentacles, and inverted crosses that was parked in front of my apartment door-six-six-six of one, half a dozen of another.
The van's doors opened as I pulled in and people in black spilled out with neither the precision of a professional team of hitters nor the calm swagger of competent thugs. They looked like I'd caught them in the middle of eating sack lunches. One of them had what looked like taco sauce spilled down the front of his frothy white lace shirt. The other four… Well, they looked like something.
They were all wearing mostly black, and mostly Gothware, which meant a lot of velvet with a little leather, rubber, and PVC to spice things up. Three women, two men, all of them fairly young. All of them carried wands and staves and crystals dangling from chains, and all of them had deadly serious expressions on their faces.
I parked the car, never looking directly at them, and then got out of it, stuck my hands in my duster pockets, and stood there waiting.
"You're Harry Dresden," said the tallest one there, a young man with long black hair and a matching goatee.
I squinted at nothing, like Clint Eastwood would do, and said nothing, like Chow Yun-Fat would do.
"You're the one who came to New Orleans last week." He said it, "Nawlins," even though the rest of his accent was Midwest standard. "You're the one who desecrated my works."
I blinked at him. "Whoa, wait a minute. There actually was a curse on that nice lady?"
He sneered at me. "She had earned my wrath."
"How about that," I said. "I figured it for some random bad feng shui."
His sneer vanished. "What?"
"To tell you the truth, it was so minor that I only did the ritual cleansing to make her feel better and show the Paranetters how to do it for themselves in the future." I shrugged. "Sorry about your wrath, there, Darth Wannabe."
He recovered his composure in seconds. "Apologies will do you no good, Wizard. Now!"
He and his posse all raised their various accoutrements, sneering malevolently. "Defend yourself!"
"Okay," I said, and pulled my.44 out of my pocket.
Darth Wannabe and his posse lost their sneers.
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"Wh-what?" said one of the girls, who had a nose ring that I was pretty sure was a clip-on. "What are you doing?"
"I'm a-fixin' to defend myself," I drawled, Texas-style. I held the gun negligently, pointing down and to one side and not right at them. I didn't want to hurt anybody. "Look, kids. You really need to work on your image."
Darth opened his mouth. It just hung that way for a minute.
"I mean, the van's a bit overdone. But hell, I can't throw stones. My VW Bug has a big '53' inside a circle spray-painted on the hood. You're sort of slipping elsewhere, though." I nodded at one of the girls, a brunette holding a wand with a crystal on the tip. "Honey, I liked the Harry Potter movies, too, but that doesn't mean I ran out and got a Dark Mark tattooed onto my left forearm like you did." I eyed the other male. "And you're wearing a freakin' Slytherin scarf. I mean, Christ. How's anyone supposed to take that seriously?"
"You would dare-" Darth Wannabe began, obviously outraged.
"One more tip, kids. If you had any real talent, the air would practically have been on fire when you got ready to throw down. But you losers don't have enough magic between you to turn cereal into breakfast."
"You would dare-"
"I can tell, because I actually am a wizard. I went to school for this stuff."
"You would-"
"I mean, I know you guys have probably thrown your talents at other people in your weight class, had your little duels, and maybe someone got a nosebleed and someone went home with a migraine and it gave your inner megalomaniac a boner. But this is different." I nodded at one of the other girls, who had shaved her head clean. "Excuse me, miss. What time is it?"
She blinked at me. "Um. It's after one…?"
"Thanks."
The Dim Lord tried for his dramatic dialogue again. "You would dare threaten us with mortal weapons?"
"It's after midnight," I told the idiot. "I'm off the clock."
That killed his momentum again. "What?"
"It's my day off, and I've got plans, so let's just skip ahead."
Darth floundered wordlessly. He was really out of his element-and he wasn't giving me anything to work with at all. If I waited around for him, this was going to take all night.
"All right, kid. You want some magic?" I pointed my gun at the van. "Howsabout I make your windows disappear."
Darth swallowed. Then he lowered his staff, a cheaply carved thing you could pick up at tourist traps in Acapulco, and said, "This is not over. We are your doom, Dresden."
"As long as you don't drag it out too much. Good night, children."
Darth sneered at me again, pulled the shreds of his dignity about him, and strode to the van. The rest of them followed him like good little darthlings. The van started up and tore away, throwing gravel spitefully into the Blue Beetle.
Could it sneer at them, the Beetle would have done so. Its dents had dents worse than what that van inflicted.
I spun the.44 once around my finger and put it back into my pocket.
Clint Yun-Fat.
As if I didn't have enough to do without worrying about Darth Wannabe and his groupies. I went inside, greeted my pets in order of seniority-Mister, my oversized cat first, then Mouse, my undersized ankylosaurus-washed up, and went to bed. THE MICKEY MOUSE alarm clock told me it was five in the morning when my apartment's front door opened. The door gets stuck, because a ham-handed amateur installed it, and it makes a racket when it's finally forced open. I came out of the bedroom in my underwear, with my blasting rod in one hand and my.44 in the other, ready to do battle with whatever had come a-calling.
"Hi, boss!" Molly chirped, giving my blasting rod and gun a passing glance but ignoring my almost-nudity.
I felt old.
My apprentice came in and set two Starbucks cups down on the coffee table, along with a bag that would be full of something expensive that Starbucks thought people should eat with coffee. Molly, who was young and tall and blond and built like a brick supermodel, offered me one of the cups. "You want to wake up now or would you rather I kept it warm for you?"
"Molly," I said, trying to be polite, "I can't stand the sight of you. Go away."
She held up a hand. "I know, I know, Captain Grumpypants. Your day off and your big date with Luccio."
"Yes," I said. I put as much hostility into it as I could.
Molly had been overexposed to my menace. It bounced right off her. "I just thought it would be a good time for me to work out some of the kinks on my invisibility potion. You've said I'm ready to use the lab alone."
"I said unsupervised. That isn't quite the same thing as alone." My glower deepened. "Much like having an apprentice puttering around the basement is not quite the same thing as being alone with Anastasia."
"You're going horseback riding," Molly said in a reasonable tone of voice. "You won't be here, and I'll be gone by the time you get back. And besides, I can make sure Mouse gets a walk or two while you're gone, so you won't have to come rushing back early. Isn't that thoughtful of me?"
Mouse's huge grey doggy head came up off the floor, and his tail twitched as she said, "Walk." He looked at me hopefully.
"Oh, for crying out-" I shook my head wearily. "Lock up behind you before you go downstairs."
She turned back to the front door and started pushing. "You got it, boss."
I staggered back to my bed to get whatever rest I could before my apprentice died in a fit of sleep-deprivation-induced psychotic mania. FOR THE FIRST time ever, Mickey Mouse let me down.
Granted, being a wizard means that technology and I don't get along very well. Things tend to break down a lot faster in the presence of mortal magic than they would otherwise-but that's mostly electronics. My windup Mickey Mouse clock was pure springs and gears, and it had given me years and years of loyal service. It never went off, and when I woke up, Mickey was cheerfully indicating that I had less than half an hour before Anastasia was supposed to arrive.
I got up and threw myself into the shower, bringing my razor with me. I was only partway through shaving when the explosion rattled the apartment, hard enough to make a film of water droplets leap up off the shower floor.
I stumbled out, wrapped a towel around my waist, seized my blasting rod-just in case what was needed was more explosions-and went running into the living room. The trapdoor leading down to the lab in my subbasement was open, and pink and blue smoke was roiling up out of it in a thick, noxious plume.
"Hell's bells," I choked out, coughing. "Molly!?"
"Here," she called back through her own thick coughing. "I'm fine, I'm fine."
I opened a couple of the sunken windows, on opposite sides of the room, and the breeze began to thin out the smoke. "What about my lab?"
"I had it contained when it blew," she responded more clearly now. "Um. Just… just let me clean up a bit."
I eyed the trapdoor. "Molly," I said warningly.
"Don't come down!" she said, her voice near panic. "I'll have it cleaned up in a second. Okay?"
I thought about storming down there with a good hard lecture about the importance of not busting up your mentor's irreplaceable collection of gear, but I took a deep breath instead. If anything had been destroyed, the lecture wouldn't fix it. And I had only fifteen minutes to make myself look like a human being and find some way to get rid of the smell of Molly's alchemical misadventure. So I decided to go finish shaving.
Am I easygoing or what?
No sooner had I gotten bits of paper stuck to the spots on my face where I'd been in a hurry than someone began hammering on the front door.
"For crying out loud," I muttered. "It's my day off." I stomped out to the living room and found the smoke mostly gone, if not the smell. Mouse paced along beside me on the way to the door. I unlocked it and wrenched it open, careful to open it only an inch or three, then peered outside.
Andi and Kirby crouched on the other side of my door. Both of them were dirty, haggard, and entirely covered with scratches. I could tell, because
both were also entirely naked.
Kirby lowered his arm and stared warily at me. Then he let out a low growling sound, which I realized a second later had been meant to be my name. "Harry."
"You have got to be kidding me," I said. "Today?"
"Harry," Andi said, her eyes brimming. "Please. I don't know who else we can turn to."
"Dammit!" I snarled. "Dammit, dammit, dammit!" I wrenched the door the rest of the way open and muttered my wards down. "Come in. Hurry up, before someone sees you."
Kirby's nostrils flared as he entered, and his face twisted up in revulsion.
"Oh," Andi said as I shut the door. "That smells terrible."
"Tell me about it," I said. "You two look…" Well, I would have used different adjectives for Kirby than for Andi. "A little thrashed. What's up? You two get in a fight with a barbed wire golem or something?"
"N-no," Andi said. "Nothing like that. We've had… Kirby and I have… fleas."
I blinked.
Kirby nodded somber agreement and growled something unintelligible.
I checked the fireplace, which Molly had lit and which was crackling quietly. My coffeepot hung on a swinging arm near the fire, close enough to stay warm without boiling. I went to the pot and checked. She'd put my cup of expensive Starbucks elixir in there to stay warm. If I'd been preparing to murder her, that single act of compassion would have been reason enough to spare her life.
I poured the coffee into the mug Molly had left on the mantel and slugged some of it back. "Okay, okay," I said. "Start from the top. Fleas?"
"I don't know what else to call them," Andi said. "When we shift, they're there, in our fur. Biting and itching. It was just annoying at first, but now… it's just awful." She shuddered and began running her fingertips over her shoulders and ribs. "I can feel them right now. Chewing at me. Biting and digging into me." She shook her head and, with an almost visible effort, forced her hands to be still. "It's getting hard to th-think straight. To talk. Every time we ch-change, it gets worse."
I gulped down a bit of coffee, frowning. That did sound serious. I glanced down at the towel around my waist, and noted, idly, that I was the most heavily clothed person in the room. "All right, let me get dressed," I said. "I guess at least one of us should have clothes on."