by Jim Butcher
“What is Thomas doing, in a group, in a closed mall, on Valentine’s Day night?” Her tone rose at the end, questioning.
“Good; the date might have some significance,” I said. “But the real question is this: Is it a coincidence that the exterior security camera facing that door is broken?”
Molly blinked at me, then frowned, looking around.
I pointed a finger up. “Remember to look in all three dimensions. Human instincts don’t tend toward checking above us or directly at our feet, in general. You have to make yourself pick up the habit.”
Molly frowned and then leaned over, peering up through the Beetle’s window to the tall streetlamp pole above us.
Maybe ten feet up, there was the square, black metal housing of a security camera. Several bare wires dangled beneath it, their ends connected to nothing. I’d seen it as I pulled the car in.
My apprentice drew in a nervous breath. “You think something is happening?”
“I think we don’t have enough information to make any assumptions,” I said. “It’s probably nothing. But let’s keep our eyes open.”
No sooner had the words left my mouth than two figures stepped out of the night, walking briskly down the sidewalk outside the mall toward the lighted entrance.
They both wore long black capes with hoods.
Not your standard wear for Chicago shoppers.
Molly opened her mouth to stammer something.
“Quiet,” I hissed. “Do not move.”
The two figures went by only thirty or forty feet away. I caught a glimpse of a very, very pale face within one of the figure’s hoods, eyes sunken into the skull-like pits. They both turned to the door without so much as glancing at us, opened it as though they expected it to be unlocked, and proceeded inside.
“All right,” I said quietly. “It might be something.”
“Um,” Molly said. “W-were those v-vampires?”
“Deep breaths, kid,” I told her. “Fear isn’t stupid, but don’t let it control you. I have no idea what they were.” I made sure my old fleece-lined heavy denim coat was buttoned up, and I got out of the car.
“Uh. Then where are you going?” she asked.
“Inside,” I said, walking around to the Beetle’s trunk. I unwrapped the wire that had held it closed ever since a dozen vehicular mishaps ago. “Whatever they are, Thomas doesn’t know about them. He’d have said something.”
I couldn’t see her through the lifted hood, but Molly rolled down the window enough to talk to me. “B-but you don’t have your staff or blasting rod or coat or anything. They’re all back at your apartment.”
I opened the case that held my .44 revolver and the box that held my ammunition, slipped shells into the weapon, and put it in my coat pocket. I dropped some extra rounds into the front pocket of my jeans and shut the hood. “They’re only toys, Padawan.” Familiar, capable, proven toys that I felt naked without, but a true wizard shouldn’t absolutely rely on them—or teach his apprentice to do so. “Stay here, start up the car, and be ready to roll if we need to leave in a hurry.”
“Right,” she said, and wriggled over into the driver’s seat. To give Molly credit, she might have been nervous, but she had learned the job of wheelman—sorry, political correctioners, wheelperson—fairly well.
I kept my right hand in my coat pocket, on the handle of my gun, hunched my shoulders against a small breath of frozen wind, and hurried to the mall entrance, my shoes crunching and squeaking on the little coating of snow. I walked toward the doors as if I owned them, shoved them open like any shopper, and got a quick look around.
The mall was dark, except for the entrance and that single open shop—a little bistro with tinted windows that would have been dimly lit even when all the lights were on. I could see figures seated at tables inside and at a long dining counter and bar. They wore lots of black, and none of them looked much older than Molly, though the dim lights revealed few details.
I narrowed my eyes a bit, debating. Vampires gave off a certain amount of energy that someone like me could sense, but depending on which breed you were talking about, that energy could vary. Sometimes my sense of an approaching vampire was as overtly creepy as a child’s giggle coming from an open grave. Other times there was barely anything at all, and it registered on my senses as something as subtle as simple, instinctive dislike for the creature in question. For White Court vamps like my half brother, there was nothing at all, unless they were doing something overtly vampiric. From outside the shop, I couldn’t tell anything.
This was assuming they were vampires at all—which was a fairly large assumption. They didn’t meet up in the open like this.
Vampires didn’t apologize to the normal world for existing, but they didn’t exactly run around auditioning for the latest reality TV shows, either.
There was one way to find out. I opened the door to the bistro, hand on my gun, took a step inside, holding the door open in case I needed to flee, and peered around warily at the occupants. The nearest was a pair of young men, speaking earnestly at a table over two cups of what looked like coffee and . . .
And they had acne—not like disfiguring acne or anything, just a few zits.
In case no one’s told you, here’s a monster-hunting tip for free: Vampires have little to no need for Clearasil.
Seen in that light, the two young men’s costumes looked like exactly that—costumes. They had two big cloaks, dripping a little melt-water, hung over the backs of their chairs, and I caught the distinctive aroma of weed coming from their general direction. Two kids slipping out from the gathering to toke up and then come back inside. One of them produced a candy bar from a pocket and tore into it, to the reassurance of the people who make Clearasil, I’m sure.
I looked around the room. There were more people; mostly young, mostly with the thinness that goes with youth, as opposed to the leanly cadaverous kind that goes with being a bloodsucking fiend. They were mostly dressed in similar costume-style clothing, unless there had been a big sale at Goths-R-Us.
I felt my shoulders sag in relief, and I slipped my hand out of my pocket. Anytime one of my bouts of constructive paranoia didn’t pan out was a good time.
“Sir,” said a gruff voice from behind me. “The mall is closed. You want to tell me what you’re doing here?”
I turned to face a squat, blocky man with watery blue eyes and no chin. He’d grown a thick brown-gold walrus mustache that emphasized rather than distracted from the lack. He had a high hairline, a brown uniform, and what looked like a cop’s weapon belt until you saw that he had a walkie-talkie where the sidearm would be, next to a tiny can of Mace. His name tag read RAYMOND.
“Observing suspicious activity, Raymond,” I said, and hooked my chin vaguely back at the bistro. “See that? People hanging around in the mall after hours. Weird.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Wait. Don’t I know you?”
I pursed my lips and thought. “Oh, right. Six, seven years ago, at Shoegasm.”
He grunted in recognition. “The phony psychic.”
“Consultant,” I responded. “And from what I hear, their inventory stopped shrinking. Which hadn’t happened before I showed up.”
Raymond gave me a look that would have cowed lesser men. Much, much lesser men. Like maybe fourth graders. “If you aren’t with the group, you’re gone. You want to leave, or would you rather I took care of it for you?”
“Stop,” I said. “You’re scaring me.”
Raymond’s mustache quivered. He apparently wasn’t used to people who didn’t take him seriously. Plus, I was much, much bigger than he was.
“’Allo, ’Ah-ree,” came my brother’s voice from behind me.
I turned to find Thomas there, dressed in tight black pants and a blousy red silk shirt. His shoulder-length hair was tied back in a tail with a matching red ribbon. His face didn’t look much like mine, except around the eyes and maybe the chin. Thomas was good-looking the way Mozart was talented. There were
people on the covers of magazines and on television and on movie screens who despaired of ever looking as good as Thomas.
On his arm was a slim young girl, quite pretty and wholesome-looking, wearing leather pants that rode low on her hips and a red bikini top, her silky brown hair artfully mussed. I recognized her from Thomas’s shop, a young woman named Sarah.
“Harry!” she said. “Oh, it’s nice to see you again.” She nudged Thomas with her hip. “Isn’t it?”
“Always,” Thomas, smiling, said in his French accent.
“Hello, Mr. Raymond!” Sarah said, brightly.
Raymond scowled at me and asked Sarah, “He with you?”
“But of course,” Thomas said in that annoying French way, giving Raymond his most brilliant smile.
Raymond grunted and took his hand away from the radio. Lucky me. I had evidently been dismissed from Raymond’s world. “I was going to tell you I’m going to be in the parking lot, replacing a camera we’ve got down, if you need me.”
“Merci,” Thomas said, still smiling.
Raymond grunted. He gave me a sour look, picked up a toolbox from where he’d set it aside, along with his coat and a stepladder, and headed out to the parking lot.
“’Ah-ree, you know Say-rah,” Thomas said.
“Never had the pleasure of an introduction,” I said, and offered Sarah my hand.
She took it, smiling. “I take it you aren’t here to play Evernight?”
I looked from her to the costumed people. “Oh,” I said. “Oh, it’s a . . . game of some kind, I take it?”
“A LARP,” she said.
I looked blank for a second. “Is that like a lark?”
She grinned. “LARP,” she repeated. “Live action role-playing.”
“Live action . . . vampire role-playing, I guess,” I said. I looked at Thomas. “And this is why you are here?”
Thomas gave me a sunny smile and nodded. “She asked me to pretend to be a vampire, just for tonight,” he said. “And straight.”
No wonder he was having a good time.
Sarah beamed at me. “Thomas never talks about his, ah, personal life. So you’re quite the man of mystery at the shop. We all speculate about you, all the time.”
I’ll just bet they did. There were times when my brother’s cover as a flamingly gay hairdresser really grated. And it wasn’t as though I could go around telling people we were related—not with the White Council of Wizards at war with the Vampire Courts.
“How nice,” I told Sarah. I was never getting out of the role people had assumed for me around Thomas. “Thomas, can we talk for a moment?”
“Mais oui,” he said. He smiled at Sarah, took her hand, and gave her a little bow over it. She beamed fondly at him, and then hurried back inside.
I watched her go, in her tight pants and skimpy top, and sighed. She had an awfully appealing curve of back and hip, and just enough bounce to make the motion pleasant, and there was no way I could ever even think about flirting with her.
“Roll your tongue back up into your mouth before someone notices,” Thomas said, sotto voce. “I’ve got a cover to keep.”
“Tell them I’m larping like I’m straight,” I said, and we turned to walk down the entry hall, a little away from the bistro. “Pretending to be a vampire, huh?”
“It’s fun,” Thomas said. “I’m like a guest star on the season finale.”
I eyed him. “Vampires aren’t fun and games.”
“I know that,” Thomas said. “You know that. But they don’t know that.”
“You aren’t doing them any favors,” I said.
“Lighten up,” Thomas said. The words were teasing, but there were serious undertones to his voice. “They’re having fun, and I’m helping. I don’t get a chance to do that very often.”
“By making light of something that is a very real danger.”
He stopped and faced me. “They’re innocent, Harry. They don’t know any better. They’ve never been hurt by a vampire or lost loved ones to a vampire.” He lifted his eyebrows. “I thought that was what your people were fighting for in the first place.”
I gave him a sour look. “If you weren’t my brother, I’d probably tell you that you have some awfully nerdy hobbies.”
We reached the front doors. Thomas studied himself in the glass and struck a pose. “True, but I look gorgeous doing them. Besides, Sarah worked eleven Fridays to Mondays in a row without a complaint. She earned a favor.”
Outside, the snow was thickening. Raymond was atop his ladder, fiddling with the camera. Molly was watching him. I waved until I got her attention, then made a little outline figure of a box with my fingers, and beckoned her. She nodded and killed the engine.
“I came in here expecting trouble. We’re lucky I didn’t bounce a few of these kids off the ceiling before I realized they weren’t something from the dark side.”
“Bah,” Thomas said. “Never happen. You’re careful.”
I snorted. “I hope you won’t mind if I just give you your present and run.”
“Wow,” Thomas said. “Gracious much?”
“Up yours,” I said as Molly grabbed the present and hurried in through the cold, shivering all the way. “And happy birthday.”
He turned to me and gave me a small, genuinely pleased smile. “Thank you.”
There was a click of high heels in the hall behind us, and a young woman appeared. She was pretty enough, I suspected, but in the tight black dress, black hose, and with her hair slicked back like that, she came off sort of threatening. She gave me a slow, cold look and said, “So. I see you’re keeping low company after all, Ravenius.”
Ever suave, I replied, “Uh. What?”
“’Ah-ree,” Thomas said.
I glanced at him.
He put his hand flat on the top of his head and said, “Do this.”
I peered at him.
He gave me a look.
I sighed and put my hand on the top of my head.
The girl in the black dress promptly did the same thing and gave me a smile. “Oh, right, sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“I will be back in one moment,” Thomas said, his accent back. “Personal business.”
“Right,” she said, “sorry. I figured Ennui had stumbled onto a subplot.” She smiled again, then took her hand off the top of her head, reassumed that cold, haughty expression, and stalked clickety-clack back to the bistro.
I watched her go, turned to my brother while we both stood there with our hands flat on top of our heads, elbows sticking out like chicken wings, and said, “What does this mean?”
“We’re out of character,” Thomas said.
“Oh,” I said. “And not a subplot.”
“If we had our hands crossed over our chests,” Thomas said, “we’d be invisible.”
“I missed dinner,” I said. I put my other hand on my stomach. Then, just to prove that I could, I patted my head and rubbed my stomach. “Now I’m out of character—and hungry.”
“You’re always hungry. How is that out of character?”
“True,” I said. I frowned, then looked back. “What’s taking Molly—”
My apprentice stood facing away from me, her back pressed to the glass doors. She stood rigid, one hand pressed to her mouth. Thomas’s birthday present, in its pink and red Valentine’s Day wrapping paper, lay on its side among grains of snowmelt on the sidewalk. Molly trembled violently.
Thomas was a beat slow to catch on to what was happening. “Isn’t that skirt a little light for the weather? Look, she’s freezing.”
Before he got to “skirt,” I was out the door. I seized Molly and dragged her inside, eyes on the parking lot. I noticed two things.
First, that Raymond’s ladder was tipped over and lay on its side in the parking lot. Flakes of snow were already gathering upon it. In fact, the snow was coming down more and more heavily, despite the weather forecast that had called for clearing skies.
Second, there were droplets
of blood on my car and the cars immediately around it, the ones closest to Raymond’s ladder. They were rapidly freezing and they glittered under the parking lot’s lamps like tiny brilliant rubies.
“What?” Thomas asked as I brought Molly back in. “What is—” He stared out the windows for a second and answered the question for himself. “Crap.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Molly?”
She gave me a wild-eyed glance, shook her head once, then bowed it and closed her eyes, speaking in a low, repetitive whisper.
“What the hell?” Thomas said.
“She’s in psychic shock,” I said quietly.
“Never seen you in psychic shock,” my brother said.
“Different talents. I blow things up. Molly’s a sensitive, and getting more so,” I told him. “She’ll snap herself out of it, but she needs a minute.”
“Uh-huh,” Thomas said quietly. He stared intently at the shuddering young woman, his eyes shifting colors slightly, from deep grey to something paler.
“Hey,” I said to him. “Focus.”
He gave his head a little shake, his eyes gradually darkening again. “Right. Come on. Let’s get her a chair and some coffee and stop standing around in front of big glass windows making targets of ourselves.”
We did, dragging her into the bistro and to the table nearest the door, where Thomas could stand watching the darkness while I grabbed the girl some coffee from a dispenser, holding my hand on top of my silly head the whole while.
Molly got her act together within a couple of minutes after I sat down. It surprised me: Despite my casual words to Thomas, I hadn’t seen her that badly shaken up before. She grabbed at the coffee, shaking, and slurped some.
“Okay, grasshopper,” I said. “What happened?”
“I was on the way in,” she replied, her voice distant and oddly flat. “The security man. S-something killed him.” A hint of something desperate crept into her voice. “I f-felt him die. It was horrible.”
“What?” I asked her. “Give me some details to work with.”
Molly shook her head rapidly. “D-didn’t see. It was too fast. I sensed something moving behind me—m-maybe a footstep. Then there was a quiet sound and h-he died. . . .” Her breaths started coming rapidly again.