by Jim Butcher
“Plus Elvis,” she assured me. “Don’t forget the King. And I’m syndicated now. Publications of questionable reputation all over the world carry my column.”
I laughed. “How are you today?”
Susan’s voice turned wry. “Well, my boyfriend stood me up last night, but other than that . . .”
I winced a little. “Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. Look, Bob found a tip for me that just couldn’t wait.”
“Ahem,” she said, in her polite, professional voice. “I’m not calling you to talk about my personal life, Mr. Dresden. This is a business call.”
I felt my smile returning. Susan was absolutely one in a million, to put up with me. “Oh, beg pardon, Miss Rodriguez. Pray continue.”
“Well. I was thinking that there were rumors of some more ghostly activity in the old town last night. I thought you might be willing to share a few details with the Arcane.”
“Mmmm. That might not be wholly professional of me. I keep my business confidential.”
“Mr. Dresden,” she said. “I would as soon not resort to desperate measures.”
“Why, Miss Rodriguez.” I grinned. “Are you a desperate woman?”
I could almost see the way she arched one eyebrow. “Mr. Dresden. I don’t want to threaten you. But you must understand that I am well acquainted with a certain young lady of your company—and that I could see to it that things became very awkward between you.”
“I see. But if I shared the story with you—”
“Gave me an exclusive, Mr. Dresden.”
“An exclusive,” I amended, “then you might see your way clear to avoiding causing problems for me?”
“I’d even put in a good word with her,” Susan said, her voice cheerful, then dropping into a lower, smokier register. “Who knows. You might get lucky.”
I thought about it for a minute. The ghost Michael and I had nailed last night had been a big, bestial thing lurking in the basement of the University of Chicago library. I didn’t have to mention the names of any people involved, and while the university wouldn’t like it, I doubted it would be seriously hurt by appearing in a magazine that most people bought along with every other tabloid in the supermarket checkout lines. Besides which, just the thought of Susan’s caramel skin and soft, dark hair under my hands . . . Yum. “That’s an offer I can hardly refuse,” I told her. “Do you have a pen?”
She did, and I spent the next ten minutes telling her the details. She took them down with a number of sharp, concise questions, and had the whole story out of me in less time than I would have believed. She really was a good reporter, I thought. It was almost a shame that she was spending her time reporting the supernatural, which people had been refusing to believe in for centuries.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Dresden,” she said, after she squeezed the last drops of information out of me. “I hope things go well between you and the young lady tonight. At your place. At nine.”
“Maybe the young lady would like to discuss the possibilities with me,” I drawled.
She let out a throaty laugh. “Maybe she would,” Susan agreed. “But this is a business call.”
I laughed. “You’re terrible, Susan. You never give up, do you?”
“Never, ever,” she said.
“Would you really have been mad at me if I hadn’t told you?”
“Harry,” she said. “You stood me up last night without a word. I don’t usually stand for that kind of treatment from any man. If you hadn’t had a good story for me, I was going to think that you were out horsing around with your friends.”
“Yeah, that Michael.” I chuckled. “He’s a real party animal.”
“You’re going to have to give me the story on him sometime. Have you come any closer to working out what’s going on with the ghosts? Did you look into the seasonal angle?”
I sighed, closing my eyes. “No, and yes. I still can’t figure why the ghosts seem to be freaking out all at once—and we haven’t been able to get any of them to hold still long enough for me to get a good look at them. I’ve got a new recipe to try out tonight—maybe that will do it. But Bob is sure it isn’t a Halloweeny kind of problem. I mean, we didn’t have any ghosts last year.”
“No. We had werewolves.”
“Different situation entirely,” I said. “I’ve got Bob working overtime to keep an eye on the spirit world for any more activity. If anything else is about to jump, we’ll know it.”
“All right,” she said. She hesitated for a moment and then said, “Harry. I—”
I waited, but when she stalled I asked, “What?”
“I, uh . . . I just want to be sure that you’re all right.”
I had the distinct impression that she had been going to say something else, but I didn’t push. “Tired,” I said. “A couple of bruises from slipping on some ectoplasm and falling into a card catalog. But I’m fine.”
She laughed. “That creates a certain image. Tonight then?”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
She made a pleased little sound with more than a hint of sexuality in it, and let that be her goodbye.
The day went fairly quickly, with a bunch of the usual business. I whipped up a spell to find a lost wedding ring, and turned down a customer who wanted me to put a love spell on his mistress. (My ad in the Yellow Pages specifically reads “No love potions,” but for some reason people always think that their case is special.) I went to the bank, referred a caller to a private detective I knew, and met with a fledgling pyromancer in an attempt to teach him to stop igniting his cat accidentally.
I was just closing down the office when I heard someone come out of the elevator and start walking down the hallway toward me. The steps were heavy, as though from boots, and rushed.
“Mr. Dresden?” asked a young woman’s voice. “Are you Harry Dresden?”
“Yes,” I said, locking the office door. “But I’m just leaving. Maybe we can set up an appointment for tomorrow.”
The footsteps stopped a few feet away from me. “Please, Mr. Dresden. I’ve got to talk to you. Only you can help me.”
I sighed, without looking at her. She’d said the exact words she needed to in order to kick off my protective streak. But I could still walk away. Lots of people got to thinking that magic could dig them out of their troubles, once they realized they couldn’t escape. “I’ll be glad to, Ma’am. First thing in the morning.” I locked the door and started to turn away.
“Wait,” she said. I felt her step closer to me, and she grabbed my hand.
A tingling, writhing sensation shot up my wrist and over my elbow. My reaction was immediate and instinctive. I threw up a mental shield against the sensation, jerked my hand clear of her fingers, and took several steps back and away from the young woman.
My hand and arm still tingled from brushing against the energy of her aura. She was a slight girl in a black knit dress, black combat boots, and hair dyed to a flat, black matte. The lines of her face were soft and sweet, and her skin was pale as chalk around eyes that were sunken, shadowed, and glittering with alley-cat wariness.
I flexed my fingers and avoided meeting the girl’s eyes for more than a fraction of a second. “You’re a practitioner,” I said, quietly.
She bit her lip and looked away, nodding. “And I need your help. They said that you would help me.”
“I give lessons to people who want to avoid hurting themselves with uncontrolled talent,” I said. “Is that what you’re after?”
“No, Mr. Dresden,” the girl said. “Not exactly.”
“Why me, then? What do you want?”
“I want your protection.” She lifted a shaking hand, fidgeting with her dark hair. “And if I don’t have it . . . I’m not sure I’ll live through the night.”
Chapter Four
I let us both back into the office, and flicked on the lights. The bulb blew out. It does that a lot. I sighed, and shut the door behind us, leaving stripes of golden autumn light pouring th
rough the blinds, interweaving with shadows on the floor and walls.
I drew out a seat in front of my desk for the young woman. She blinked at me in confusion for a second before she said, “Oh,” and sat. I walked around the desk, leaving my duster on, and sat down.
“All right,” I said. “If you want my protection, I want a few things from you first.”
She pushed back her asphalt-colored hair with one hand and gave me a look of pure calculation. Then she simply crossed her legs, so that the cut of her dress left one pale leg bare to midthigh. A subtle motion of her back thrust out her young, firm breasts, so that their tips pressed visibly against the fabric. “Of course, Mr. Dresden. I’m sure we can do business.” The look she gave me was direct, sensual, and willing.
Nipple erection on command—now that’s method acting. Oh, she was pretty enough, I suppose. Any adolescent male would have been drooling and hurling himself at her, but I’d seen acts a lot better. I rolled my eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”
Her sex-kitten look faltered. “It . . . it isn’t?” She frowned at me, eyes scanning me again, reassessing me. “Is it . . . are you . . . ?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not gay. But I’m not buying what you’re selling. You haven’t even told me your name, but you’re willing to spread your legs for me? No, thanks. Hell’s bells, haven’t you ever heard of AIDS? Herpes?”
Her face went white, and she pressed her lips together until they were white, too. “All right, then,” she said. “What do you want from me?”
“Answers,” I told her, jabbing a finger at her. “And don’t try lying to me. It won’t do you any good.” Which was only a marginal lie, in itself. Being a wizard doesn’t make you a walking lie detector, and I wasn’t going to try a soulgaze on her to find out if she was sincere—it wasn’t worth it. But another great thing about being a wizard is that people attribute just about anything you do to your vast and unknowable powers. Granted, it only works with those who know enough to believe in wizards, but not enough to understand our limits—the rest of the world, the regular people who think magic is just a joke, just look at you like someone is going to stuff you into a little white coat any second now.
She licked her lips, a nervous gesture, not a sexy one. “All right,” she said. “What do you want to know?”
“Your name, for starters.”
She let out a harsh laugh. “You think I’m going to give you that, wizard?”
Point. Serious spell-slingers like me could do an awful lot with a person’s name, given by their own lips. “All right, then. What do I call you?”
She didn’t bother to cover her leg again. A rather pretty leg, actually, with a tattoo of some kind encircling her ankle. I tried not to notice. “Lydia,” she said. “Call me Lydia.”
“Okay, Lydia. You’re a practitioner of the Art. Tell me about that.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with what I want from you, Mr. Dresden,” she said. She swallowed, her anger fading. “Please. I need your help.”
“All right, all right,” I said. “What kind of help do you need? If you’re into some kind of gang-related trouble, I’m going to recommend that you head for the police. I’m not a bodyguard.”
She shivered, and hugged herself with her arms. “No, nothing like that. It’s not my body I’m worried about.”
That made me frown.
She closed her eyes and drew in a breath. “I need a talisman,” she said. “Something to protect me from a hostile spirit.”
That made me sit up and take notice, metaphorically speaking. With the city flying into spiritual chaos as it was, I had no trouble believing that a girl gifted with magical talent might be experiencing some bad phenomena. Ghosts and spooks are drawn to the magically gifted. “What kind of spirit?”
Her eyes shifted left and right, never looking at me. “I can’t really say, Mr. Dresden. It’s powerful and it wants to hurt me. They . . . they told me you could make something that would keep me safe.”
True, in point of fact. Around my left wrist at that very moment was a talisman made from a dead man’s shroud, blessed silver, and a number of other, more difficult to come by ingredients. “Maybe,” I told her. “That depends on why you’re in danger, and why you feel you need protection.”
“I c-can’t tell you that,” she said. Her pale face pinched into an expression of worry—real worry, the kind that makes you look older, uglier. The way she hugged herself made her look smaller, more frail. “Please, I just need your help.”
I sighed, and rubbed at one eyebrow with my thumb. My first rampant instincts were to give her a cup of hot chocolate, put a blanket around her shoulders, tell her everything would be all right and strap my talisman onto her wrist. I tried to rein those in, though. Down, Quixote. I still knew nothing about her situation, or what she needed protection from—for all I knew, she was trying to stave off an avenging angel coming after her in retribution for some act so vile that it stirred the Powers that be to take immediate action. Even vanilla ghosts sometimes come back to haunt someone for a darned good reason.
“Look, Lydia. I don’t like to get involved in anything without knowing something about what’s going on.” Which hadn’t slowed me down before, I noted. “Unless you can tell me a little bit about your situation, convince me that you are in legitimate need of protection, I won’t be able to help you.”
She bowed her head, her asphalt hair falling across her face for a long minute. Then she drew in a breath and asked, “Do you know what Cassandra’s Tears is, Mr. Dresden?”
“Prophetic condition,” I said. “The person in question has random seizures—visions of the future, but they’re always couched in terms of conditions that make explanation of the dreams seem unbelievable. Doctors mistake it for epilepsy in children, sometimes, and prescribe a bunch of different drugs for it. Pretty accurate prophecy, as it goes, but no one ever buys into it. Some people call it a gift.”
“I’m not one of them,” she whispered. “You don’t know how horrible it is. To see something about to happen and to try to change it, only to have no one believe you.”
I studied her for a minute in silence, listening to the clock on my wall count down the seconds. “All right,” I said. “You say that you have this gift. I guess you want me to believe that one of your visions warned you about an evil spirit coming after you?”
“Not one,” she said. “Three. Three, Mr. Dresden. I only got one vision when they tried to kill the President. I got two for that disaster at NASA, and for the earthquake in Laos. I’ve never had three before. Never had something appear so clearly . . .”
I closed my eyes to think about this. Again, my instincts told me to help the girl, smash the bad ghost or whatever, and walk off into the sunset. If she was indeed afflicted with Cassandra’s Tears, my actions could do more than save her life. My faith could change it for the better.
On the other hand, I’d been played for a sucker before. The girl was obviously a competent actress. She had shifted smoothly to the role of willing seductress, when she thought I had been asking for sex in payment. That she would immediately make that conclusion based on my own fairly neutral statement said something about her, all by itself. This wasn’t a girl who was used to playing things fair and square. Unless I was grossly misreading her, she had bartered sex for goods and services before—and she was awfully young to be so jaded about the entire matter.
The entire Cassandra’s Tears angle was a perfect scam, and people had used it before, among the circles of the magically endowed. The story required no proof, no performance on the part of the person running the scam. All she would need would be a smidgen of talent to give her the right aura, maybe enough kinetomancy to tilt the dice a little on their way down. Then she could make up whatever story she wanted about her supposed prophetic gifts, put on a little-girl-lost act, and head straight for the local dummy, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden.
I opened my eyes to find her watching me. “Of course,
” she said. “I could be lying. Cassandra’s Tears can’t be analyzed or observed. I could be using it as an excuse to provide a reasonable explanation why you should help a lady in distress.”
“That’s pretty much what’s going through my mind, Lydia, yeah. You could just be a small-time witch who stirred up the wrong demon and is looking for a way out.”
She spread her hands. “All I can tell you is that I’m not. I know that something’s coming. I don’t know what, and I don’t know why or how. I just know what I see.”
“Which is?”
“Fire,” she whispered. “Wind. I see dark things and a dark war. I see my death coming for me, out of the spirit world. And I see you at the middle of it all. You’re the beginning, the end of it. You’re the one who can make the path go different ways.”
“That’s your vision? Iowa has less corn.”
She turned her face away. “I see what I see.”
Standard carny procedure. Flatter the ego of the mark, draw him in, get him good and hooked, and fleece him for everything he’s got. Sheesh, I thought, someone else trying to get something out of me. My reputation must be growing.
Still, there was no sense in being rude. “Look, Lydia. I think maybe you’re just overreacting, here. Why don’t we meet again in a couple of days, and we’ll see if you still think you need my help.”
She didn’t answer me. Her shoulders just slumped forward and her face went slack with defeat. She closed her eyes, and I felt a nagging sensation of doubt tug at me. I had the uncomfortable impression that she wasn’t acting.
“All right,” she said, softly. “I’m sorry to have kept you late.” She got up and started walking toward the door of my office.
My better judgment propelled me up out of my chair and across the room. We reached the door at the same time.
“Wait a minute,” I said. I unbound the talisman from my arm, feeling the silent pop of energy as the knot came undone. Then I took her left wrist and turned her hand over to tie the talisman onto her. There were pale scars on her arm—the vertical kind that run along the big veins. The ones you get when you’re really serious about killing yourself. They were old and faded. She must have gotten them when she was . . . what? Ten years old? Younger?