Jim Butcher - Dresden Files Omnibus

by Jim Butcher

  “I know you’ve got a gun in that drawer,” I told her. “Don’t try it.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she said.

  “Because I’m not going to give you to Marcone.”

  “What do you want from me?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I might ask you for information sometimes. If you could help me without endangering yourself, I’d appreciate it. Either way, it doesn’t affect whether or not I talk to Marcone.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

  “Maybe I want to see him go down someday,” I said. “But mostly because it’s none of my damned business. I just wanted you to know that I’d seen you. This time maybe he won’t put it all together. He’s got more likely suspects than you inside his organization—and I’d be shocked if you hadn’t already realized what a great patsy Torelli is going to make.”

  Demeter gave me a wintry smile.

  “But don’t get overconfident. If you make another move that obvious, he’ll figure it out. And you’ll disappear.”

  Demeter let out a bare laugh and shut the filing cabinet. “I disappeared years ago.” She gave me a steady look. “Are you here to do business, Mister Dresden?”

  Granted, there was a building full of very…fit girls who would be happy to, ah, work on my tone. And my tone was letting me know that it would be happy to be worked on. The rest of my body, however, thought that a big meal and about two weeks of sleep was a much better idea. And once you got up to my neck, the rest of me thought that this whole place was looking prettier and hollower every time I visited.

  “It’s done,” I said, and left.

  At home, I couldn’t sleep.

  Finally I had enough spare time to worry about what the hell was wrong with my right hand.

  I wound up in my lab, dangling the packet of stale catnip for Mister and filling Bob in on the events of the past few days.

  “Wow,” Bob said. “Soulfire. Are you sure he said soulfire?”

  “Yeah,” I said wearily. “Why?”

  “Well,” the skull said. “Soulfire is…well. It’s Hellfire, essentially. Only from the other place.”

  “Heavenfire?”

  “Well…” Bob said, “yes. And no. Hellfire is something you use to destroy things. Soulfire is used the opposite way—to create stuff. Look, basically what you do is, you take a portion of your soul and you use it as a matrix for your magic.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “It’s sort of like using rebar inside concrete,” Bob said. “You put a matrix of rebar in, then pour concrete around it, and the strength of the entire thing together is a great deal higher than either one would be separately. You could do things that way that you could never do with either the rebar or the concrete alone.”

  “But I’m doing that with my soul?” I demanded.

  “Oh, come on, Harry. All you mortals get all hung up over your precious souls. You’ve never seen your soul, never touched it, never done anything with it. What’s all the to-do?”

  “So what you’re saying is that this hand construct was made out of my soul,” I said.

  “Your soul and your magic fused together, yeah,” Bob said. “Your soul converted into energy. Soulfire. In this case, the spirit energy drawn from your aura right around your right hand, because it fit the construct so well, it being a big version of your right hand and all. Your standard force-projection spell formed around the matrix of soulfire, and what had been an instantaneous exertion of force became a long-term entity capable of manipulation and exertion to the same degree. Not really more powerful than just the force spell, as much as it was more than simply the force spell.”

  I wiggled my tingling fingers. “Oh. But my soul’s going to get better, right?”

  “Oh, sure,” Bob said. “Few days, a week or two at most, it’ll grow back in. Go out and have a good time, enjoy yourself, do some things that uplift the human spirit or whatever, and it’ll come back even faster.”

  I grunted. “So what you’re saying is that soulfire doesn’t let me do anything new. It just makes me more of what I already am.”

  “A lot more,” Bob said, nodding cheerfully from his shelf. “It’s how angels do all of their stuff. Though admittedly, they’ve got a lot more in the way of soul to draw upon than you do.”

  “I thought angels didn’t have souls,” I said.

  “Like I said, people get all excited and twitchy when that word gets used,” Bob said. “Angels don’t have anything else.”

  “Oh. What happens if I, uh, you know. Use too much of it?”

  “What’s five minus five, Harry?”

  “Zero.”

  “Right. Think about that for a minute. I’m sure you’ll come to the right conclusion.”

  “It’s bad?”

  “See? You’re not totally hopeless,” Bob said. “And hey, you got a new magic sword to custodianize, too? Merlin, eat your heart out; he only got to look after one! And working a case with Uriel! You’re hitting the big-time, Harry!”

  “I haven’t really heard much about Uriel,” I said. “I mean I know he’s an archangel, but…”

  “He’s…sort of Old Testament,” Bob said. “You know the guy who killed the firstborn children of Egypt? Him. Other than that, well. There’s only suspicions. And he isn’t the sort to brag. It’s always the quiet ones, you know?”

  “Heaven has a spook,” I said. “And Mab likes his style.”

  “And he did you a favor!” Bob said brightly. “You just know that can’t be good!”

  I put my head down on the table and sighed.

  But after that I was able to go upstairs and get some real sleep.

  I always like the onion-volcano thing they do at the Japanese steak houses. Me and the other seven-year-olds at the table. I got to catch the shrimp in my mouth, too, when the chef flicked them up into a high arc with his knife. I did so well he hit me with two, one from a knife in either hand, and I got them both, to a round of applause from the table, and a genuine laugh from Anastasia.

  We had a delicious meal, and the two of us lingered after everyone else at our little table-grill had left.

  “Can I get your take on something?” I asked her.

  “Certainly.”

  I told her about my experience on the island, and the eerie sense of familiarity that had come with it.

  “Oh, that,” Anastasia said. “Your Sight’s coming in. That’s all.”

  I blinked at her. “Uh. What?”

  “The Sight,” she replied calmly. “Every wizard develops some measure of precognizance as he matures. It sounds to me as if yours has begun to stir, and has recognized a place that may be of significance to you in the future.”

  “This happens to everyone?” I said, incredulous.

  “To every wizard,” she said, smiling. “Yes.”

  “Then why have I never heard about it?” I demanded.

  “Because young wizards who are anticipating the arrival of their Sight have an appalling tendency to ignore uncomfortable truths by labeling more appealing fantasies revelations of their Sight. Everything they care about turns into a prophecy. It’s vastly irritating, and the best way to avoid it is to keep it quiet until a young wizard finds out about it for himself.”

  I mulled over that idea for a few moments. “Significant to my future, eh?”

  “Potentially,” she replied quietly, nodding. “One must proceed with extreme caution when acting upon any kind of precognizant information, of course—but in this case, it seems clear that there is more to that island than meets the eye. If it were me, I’d look into it—cautiously.”

  “Thank you,” I told her seriously. “For the advice, I mean.”

  “It cost me little enough,” she said, smiling. “May I get your take on something?”

  “Seems only fair.”

  “I’m surprised at you, Harry. I always thought that you had an interest in Karrin.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Timing, maybe. It’s never seemed to be the r
ight time for us.”

  “But you do care for her,” she said.

  “Of course,” I said. “She’s gone with me into too many bad places for anything else.”

  “That,” Anastasia said, her eyes steady, “I can understand.”

  I tilted my head and studied her face. “Why ask about another woman?”

  She smiled. “I wanted to understand why you were here.”

  I leaned over to her, touching her chin lightly with the fingertips of my right hand, and kissed her very gently. She returned it, slowly, savoring the touch of my mouth on hers.

  I broke off the kiss several moments after it had become inappropriate for a public venue and said, “Because it’s good for the soul.”

  “An excellent answer,” she murmured, her dark eyes huge. “One that should, perhaps, be further explored.”

  I rose and held out her chair for her, and helped her into her coat.

  As it turned out, the rest of the night was good for the soul, too.

  Day Off

  Harry

  The thief was examining another trapped doorway when I heard something—the tromp of approaching feet. The holy woman was in the middle of another sermon, about attentiveness or was in the middle of another sermon, about attentiveness or something, but I held up my hand for silence and she obliged. I could hear twenty sets of feet, maybe more.

  I let out a low growl and reached for my sword. “Company.”

  “Easy, my son,” the holy woman said. “We don’t even know who it is yet.”

  The ruined mausoleum was far enough off the beaten path to make it unlikely that anyone had just wandered in on us. The holy woman was dreaming if she thought the company might be friendly. A moment later they appeared—the local magistrate and two dozen of his thugs.

  “Always with the corrupt government officials,” muttered the wizard from behind me. I glanced back at him and then looked for the thief. The nimble little minx was nowhere to be seen.

  “You are trespassing!” boomed the magistrate. He had a big boomy voice. “Leave this place immediately on pain of punishment by the Crown’s law!”

  “Sir!” replied the holy woman. “Our mission here is of paramount importance. The writ we bear from your own liege requires you to render aid and assistance in this matter.”

  “But not to violate the graves of my subjects!” he boomed some more. “Begone! Before I unleash the nine fires of Atarak upon—”

  “Enough talk!” I growled, and threw my heavy dagger at his chest.

  Propelled by my massive thews, the dagger hit him two inches below his left nipple—a perfect heart shot. It struck with enough force to hurl him from his feet. His men howled with surprised fury.

  I drew the huge sword from my back, let out a leonine roar, and charged the two dozen thugs.

  “Enough talk!” I bellowed, and whipped the twenty-pound greatsword at the nearest target as if it were a wooden yardstick. He went down in a heap.

  “Enough talk!” I howled, and kept swinging. I smashed through the next several thugs as if they were made of soft wax. Off to my left, the thief came out of nowhere and neatly sliced the Achilles tendons of another thug. The holy woman took a ready stance with her quarterstaff and chanted out a prayer to her deities at the top of her lungs.

  The wizard shrieked, and a fireball whipped over my head, exploding twenty-one feet in front of me, then spread out in a perfect circle, like the shock wave of a nuke, burning and roasting thugs as it went and stopping a bare twelve inches shy of my nose.

  “Oh, come on!” I said. “It doesn’t work like that!”

  “What?” demanded the wizard.

  “It doesn’t work like that!” I insisted. “Even if you call up fire with magic, it’s still fire. It acts like fire. It expands in a sphere. And under a ceiling, that means it goes rushing much farther down hallways and tunnels. It doesn’t just go twenty feet and then stop.”

  “Fireballs used to work like that.” The wizard sighed. “But do you know what a chore it is to calculate exactly how far those things will spread? I mean, it slows everything down.”

  “It’s simple math,” I said. “And it’s way better than the fire just spreading twenty feet regardless of what’s around it. What, do fireballs carry tape measures or something?”

  Billy the Werewolf sighed and put down his character sheet and his dice. “Harry,” he protested gently, “repeat after me: It’s only a game.”

  I folded my arms and frowned at him across his dining room table. It was littered with snacks, empty cans of pop, pieces of paper, and tiny model monsters and adventurers (including a massively thewed barbarian model for my character). Georgia, Billy’s willowy brunette wife, sat at the table with us, as did the redheaded bombshell Andi, while lanky Kirby lurked behind several folding screens covered with fantasy art at the head of the table.

  “I’m just saying,” I said, “there’s no reason the magic can’t be portrayed at least a little more accurately, is there?”

  “Again with this discussion.” Andi sighed. “I mean, I know he’s the actual wizard and all, but Christ.”

  Kirby nodded glumly. “It’s like taking a physicist to a Star Trek movie.”

  “Harry,” Georgia said firmly, “you’re doing it again.”

  “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 he
r?”

  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.