by Jim Butcher
“This is good stuff, Harry. None of that funny stuff in it that we get sometimes.”
“Preservatives,” I said.
“Whatever.” Toot drank down the milk, too, in a long pull, then promptly fell down on his back, patting at his rounded tummy. “All right,” he said. “Now, let me out.”
“Not yet, Toot. I need something first.”
Toot scowled up at me. “You wizards. Always needing something. I really could do the thing with the dung, you know.” He stood up and folded his arms haughtily over his chest, looking up at me as though I weren’t a dozen times taller than he. “Very well,” he said, his tone lofty. “I have deigned to grant you a single request of some small nature, for the generous gift of your cuisine.”
I worked to keep a straight face. “That’s very kind of you.”
Toot sniffed and somehow managed to look down his little pug nose at me. “It is my nature to be both benevolent and wise.”
I nodded, as though this were a very great wisdom. “Uh-huh. Look, Toot. I need to know if you were around this place for the past few nights, or know someone who was. I’m looking for someone, and maybe he came here.”
“And if I tell you,” Toot said, “I take it you will disassemble this circle which has, by some odd coincidence no doubt, made its way around me?”
“It would be only reasonable,” I said, all seriousness.
Toot seemed to consider it, as though he might be inclined not to cooperate, then nodded. “Very well. You will have the information you wish. Release me.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you sure? Do you promise?”
Toot stamped his foot again, scattering more silver dust motes. “Harry! You’re ruining the drama!”
I folded my arms. “I want to hear you promise.”
Toot threw up his hands. “Fine, fine, fine! I promise, I promise, I promise! I’ll dig up what you want to know!” He started to buzz about the circle in great agitation, wings lifting him easily into the air. “Let me out! Let me out!”
A promise thrice made is as close to absolute truth as you can get from a faery. I went quickly to the circle and scuffed over the line drawn in the dirt with my foot, willing the circle to part. It did, with a little hiss of released energy.
Toot streaked out over Lake Michigan’s waters again, a miniature silver comet, and vanished in a twinkling, just like Santa Claus. Though I should say that Santa is a much bigger and more powerful faery than Toot, and I don’t know his true name anyway. You’d never see me trying to nab Saint Nick in a magic circle, even if I did. I don’t think anyone has stones that big.
I waited around, walking about to keep from falling asleep. If I did that, Toot would be perfectly within his rights as a faery to fulfill his promise by telling me the information while I was sleeping. And, given that I had just now captured and humiliated him, he’d probably do something to even the scales—two weeks from now he wouldn’t even remember it, but if I let him have a free shot at me tonight, I might wake up with an ass’s head, and I didn’t think that would be good for business.
So I paced, and I waited. Toot usually took about half an hour to round up whatever it was I wanted to know.
Sure enough, half an hour later he came sparkling back in and buzzed around my head, drizzling faery dust from his blurring wings at my eyes. “Hah, Harry!” he said. “I did it!”
“What did you find out, Toot?”
“Guess!”
I snorted. “No.”
“Aw, come on. Just a little guess?”
I scowled, tired and irritated, but tried not to let it show. Toot couldn’t help being what he was. “Toot, it’s late. You promised to tell me.”
“No fun at all,” he complained. “No wonder you can’t get a date unless someone wants to know something from you.”
I blinked at him, and he chortled in glee. “Hah! I love it! We’re watching you, Harry Dresden!”
Now that was disconcerting. I had a sudden image of a dozen faery voyeurs lingering around my apartment’s windows and peering inside. I’d have to take precautions to make sure they couldn’t do that. Not that I was afraid of them, or anything. Just in case.
“Just tell me, Toot,” I sighed.
“Incoming!” he shrilled, and I held out my hand, fingers flat and palm up. He alighted in the center of my palm. I could barely feel his weight, but the sense, the aura of him ran through my skin like a tiny electric current. He stared fearlessly at my eyes—the fae have no souls to gaze upon, and they could not fathom a mortal’s soul, even if they could see it.
“Okay!” Toot said. “I talked to Blueblossom, who talked to Rednose, who talked to Meg O’ Aspens, who said that Goldeneyes said that he was riding the pizza car when it came here last night!” Toot thrust out his chest proudly.
“Pizza car?” I asked, bewildered.
“Pizza!” Toot cried, jubilant. “Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!” His wings fluttered again, and I tried to blink the damned faery dust out of my eyes before I started sneezing.
“Faeries like pizza?” I asked.
“Oh, Harry,” Toot said breathlessly. “Haven’t you ever had pizza before?”
“Of course I have,” I said.
Toot looked wounded. “And you didn’t share?”
I sighed. “Look. Maybe I can bring you guys some pizza sometime soon, to thank you for your help.”
Toot leapt about in glee, hopping from one fingertip to the other. “Yes! Yes! Wait until I tell them! We’ll see who laughs at Toot-toot next time!”
“Toot,” I said, trying to calm him, “did he see anything else?”
Toot tittered, his expression sly and suggestive. “He said that there were mortals sporting and that they needed pizza to regain their strength!”
“Which delivery place, Toot?”
The faery blinked and stared at me as though I were hopelessly stupid. “Harry. The pizza truck.” And then he darted off skyward, vanishing into the trees above.
I sighed and nodded. Toot wouldn’t know the difference between Domino’s and Pizza Hut. He had no frame of reference, and couldn’t read—most faeries were studiously averse to print.
So, I had two pieces of information. One, someone had ordered a pizza to be delivered here. That meant two things. First, that someone was here last night. Second, that someone had seen them and talked to them. Maybe I could track down the pizza driver, and ask if he had seen Victor Sells.
The second piece of information had been Toot’s reference to sporting. Faeries didn’t think too much of mortals’ idea of “sporting” unless there was a lot of nudity and lust involved. They had a penchant for shadowing necking teenagers and playing tricks on them. So Victor had been here with a lover of some kind, for there to be any “sport” going on.
I was beginning to think that Monica Sells was in denial. Her husband wasn’t wandering around learning to be a sorcerer, spooky scorpion talismans notwithstanding. He was lurking about his love nest with a girlfriend, like any other husband bored with a timid and domestic wife might do under pressure. It wasn’t admirable, but I guess I could understand the motivations that could cause it.
The only problem was going to be telling Monica. I had a feeling that she wasn’t going to want to listen to what I had found out.
I picked up the little plate and bowl and cup and put them back into my black nylon backpack, along with the silver knife. My legs ached from too much walking and standing about. I was looking forward to getting home and getting some sleep.
The man with the naked sword in his hands appeared out of the darkness without a warning rustle of sound or whiff of magic to announce his presence. He was tall, like me, but broad and heavy-chested, and he carried his weight with a ponderous sort of dignity. Perhaps fifty years old, his listless brown hair going grey in uneven patches, he wore a long, black coat, a lot like mine but without the mantle, and his jacket and pants, too, were done in dark colors—charcoal and a deep blue. His shirt was crisp, pure white, the color t
hat you usually only see with tuxedos. His eyes were grey, touched with crow’s-feet at the corners, and dangerous. Moonlight glinted off those eyes in the same shade it did from the brighter silver of the sword’s blade. He began to walk deliberately toward me, speaking in a quiet voice as he did.
“Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Irresponsible use of true names for summoning and binding others to your will violates the Fourth Law of Magic,” the man intoned. “I remind you that you are under the Doom of Damocles. No further violations of the Laws will be tolerated. The sentence for further violation is death, by the sword, to be carried out at once.”
Chapter
Seven
Have you ever been approached by a grim-looking man, carrying a naked sword with a blade about ten miles long in his hand, in the middle of the night, beneath the stars on the shores of Lake Michigan? If you have, seek professional help. If you have not, then believe you me, it can scare the bejeezus out of you.
I took in a quick breath, and had to work not to put it into a quasi-Latin phrase on the exhale, one that would set the man’s body on fire and reduce him to a mound of ashes. I react badly to fear. I don’t usually have the good sense to run, or hide—I just try to smash whatever it is that is making me afraid. It’s a primitive sort of thing, and one I don’t question too much.
But reflex-based murder seemed a tad extreme, so rather than setting him on fire, I nodded instead. “Evening, Morgan. You know as well as I do that those laws apply to mortals. Not faeries. Especially for something as trivial as I just did. And I didn’t break the Fourth Law. He had the choice whether to take my deal or not.”
Morgan’s sour, leathery face turned a bit more sour, the lines at the corners of his mouth stretching and becoming deeper. “That’s a technicality, Dresden. A pair of them.” His hands, broad and strong, resettled their grip upon the sword he held. His unevenly greying hair was tied into a ponytail in the back, like Sean Connery’s in some of his movies, except that Morgan’s face was too pinched and thin to pull off the look.
“Your point being?” I did my best to keep from looking nervous or impressed. Truth be told, I was both. Morgan was my Warden, assigned to me by the White Council to make sure I didn’t bend or break any of the Laws of Magic. He hung about and spied on me, mostly, and usually came sniffing around after I’d cast a spell of some kind. I would be damned if I was going to let the White Council’s guard dog see any fear out of me. Besides, he would take it as a sign of guilt, in the true spirit of paranoid fanatics everywhere. So, all I had to do was keep a straight face and get out before my weariness made me slip up and do or say something he could use against me.
Morgan was one of the deadliest evocators in the world. He wasn’t bright enough to question his loyalties to the Council, and he could do quick-and-dirty magic like few others could.
Quick and dirty enough to rip the hearts out of Tommy Tomm and Jennifer Stanton’s chests, in fact, if he wanted to.
“My point,” he said, scowling, “is that it is my assigned duty to monitor your use of your power, and to see to it that you do not abuse it.”
“I’m on a missing-persons case,” I said. “All I did was call up a dewdrop faery to get some information. Come on, Morgan. Everybody calls up faeries now and then. There’s no harm in it. It’s not as though I’m mind-controlling the things. Just leaning on them a little.”
“Technicality,” Morgan growled.
I stuck out my chin at him belligerently. We were of a height, though he outweighed me by about a hundred pounds. I could pick better people to antagonize, but he’d really gotten under my skin. “A technicality I’m prepared to hide wildly behind. So, unless you want to convene a meeting of the Council to call me on it, we can just drop the discussion right here. I’m pretty sure it will only take them about two days to cancel all their plans, make travel arrangements, and then get here. I can put you up until then. I mean, you’d be dragging a bunch of really crotchety old men away from their experiments and things for nothing, but if you really think it’s necessary…”
Morgan scowled at me. “No. It isn’t worth it.” He opened his dark trench coat and slid the sword away into its scabbard. I relaxed a little. The sword wasn’t the most dangerous thing about him, not by a long shot, but it was his symbol of the authority given to him by the White Council, and if rumors were true, it was enchanted to cut through the magical spells of anyone resisting him. I didn’t want things ever to go far enough for me to find out if the rumors were true.
“I’m glad we agree about something,” I said. “Nice seeing you again.” I started to walk past him.
Morgan put one of those big hands on my arm as I went by, and his fingers closed around it. “I’m not finished with you, Dresden.”
I didn’t dare mess around with Morgan when he was acting in his role as a Warden of the White Council. But he wasn’t wearing that hat, now. Once he’d put the sword away, he was acting on his own, without any more official authority than any other man—or at least, that was the technical truth. Morgan was big on technicalities. He had scared the heck out of me and annoyed the heck out of me, in rapid succession. Now he was trying to bully me. I hate bullies.
So I took a calculated risk, used my free hand, and hit him as hard as I could in the mouth.
I think the blow startled him more than anything. He took a step back, letting go of my arm in surprise, and just blinked at me. He put one hand to his mouth, and when he drew his fingers away, there was blood on them.
I planted my feet and faced him, without meeting his eyes. “Don’t touch me.”
Morgan continued to stare at me. And then I saw anger creep over his face, set his jaw, make the veins at his temple stand out.
“How dare you?” he said. “How dare you strike me?”
“It wasn’t so hard,” I said. “If you’ve got Council business with me, I’m willing to give you whatever respect is your due. When you come on strong to me on personal business, I don’t have to put up with it.”
I saw the steam coming out of his ears as he mulled it over. He looked for a reason to come after me, and realized that he didn’t have one, according to the Laws. He wasn’t too bright—did I mention that already?—and he was a big one for following the Laws. “You’re a fool, Dresden,” he sputtered finally. “An arrogant little fool.”
“Probably,” I told him. I tensed myself to move quickly if necessary. I may not like to run away from what scares me, but I try not to fight hopeless battles, either, and Morgan had me by years of experience and a hundred pounds, at least. There was no Law of Magic that protected me from him and his fists, either, and if that occurred to him, he might decide to do something about it. That punch I’d landed had been lucky, coming out of the blue. I wouldn’t get away with it again.
“Someone killed two people with sorcery last night, Dresden. I think it was you. And when I find how you did it and can trace it back to you, don’t think you’re going to live long enough to cast the same spell at me.” Morgan swiped at the blood with one big fist.
It was my turn to blink. I tried to shift mental gears, to keep up with the change in subject. Morgan thought I was the killer. And since Morgan didn’t do too much of his own thinking, that meant that the White Council thought I was the killer. Holy shit.
Of course, it made sense, from Morgan’s narrow and single-minded point of view. A wizard had killed someone. I was a wizard who had already been convicted of killing another with magic, even if the self-defense clause had kept me from being executed. Cops looked for people who had already committed crimes before they started looking for other culprits. Morgan was just another kind of cop, as far as I was concerned.
And, as far as he was concerned, I was just one more dangerous con.
“You’re not serious,” I told him. “You think I did it?”
He sneered at me. His voice was contemptuous, confident, and seething with absolute conviction. “Don’t try to hide it, Dresden. I’m sure you think yo
u’re clever enough to come up with something innovative that we hidebound old men won’t be able to trace. But you’re wrong. We’ll determine how you did it, and we’ll follow it back to you. And when we do, I’ll be there to make sure you never hurt anyone again.”
“Knock yourself out,” I told him. It was hard, really hard, to keep my voice as blithe as I wanted it to sound. “I didn’t do it. But I’m helping the police find the man who did.”
“The police?” Morgan asked. He narrowed his eyes, as though gauging my expression. “As if they could have any authority on this matter. They won’t do you any good. Even if you do set someone up to take the fall for you under mortal law, the White Council will still see that justice is done.” His eyes glittered, fanatic-bright underneath the stars.
“Whatever. Look, if you find something out about the killer, anything that could help the cops out, would you give me a call?”
Morgan looked at me with profound distaste. “You ask me to warn you when we are closing in on you, Dresden? You are young, but I never thought you stupid.”
I bit back the obvious comment that leapt to mind. Morgan was on the edge of outrage already. If I’d realized how rabid he was to catch me slipping, I wouldn’t have added more fuel to his fire by hitting him in the mouth.
Okay. I probably still would have hit him in the mouth. But I wouldn’t have done it quite so hard.
“Good night, Morgan,” I told him. I started to walk away again, before I could let my mouth get me into more trouble.
He moved faster than I would have given a man his age credit for. His fist went across my jaw at approximately a million miles an hour, and I spun down to the dirt like a string-cut puppet. For several long moments, I was unable to do anything at all, even breathe. Morgan loomed over me.
“We’ll be watching you, Dresden.” He turned and started walking away, the shadows of the evening quickly swallowing up his black coat. His voice drifted back to me. “We’ll find out what really happened.”