Jim Butcher - Dresden Files Omnibus

by Jim Butcher

  “Morning is when the sun comes up!” the little skull said. “It ends at noon!”

  Bonea was full of points of information that didn’t connect to anything else. She could tell you the particulars of all sorts of secrets of the universe, but she’d have no idea what kind of an effect those secrets could have on the actual world. Which made her … someone to be carefully managed. “Correct again,” I said. “Good morning, Maggie.”

  “Hi, Dad,” Maggie said. “I am making us all pancakes for breakfast.”

  “Which is awesome,” Thomas said, nudging me in the small of the back.

  Maggie threw him a swift glance and a shy smile.

  I didn’t have to look to know he winked back at her.

  I lifted my eyebrows. “Yeah. Pancakes. That’s new.”

  “Molly says you have to be brave and try new things to grow,” my daughter said seriously. “And Thomas says everyone likes pancakes.”

  “Everyone likes pancakes,” Thomas said.

  I gave him a narrow-eyed look over my shoulder to tell him to stop helping me. He returned it with a guileless smile.

  “Well. They’re not wrong,” I said seriously. “Do you want any help?”

  “I can do it by myself,” she said. “I know how to work the stove and Bonnie knows the recipe.”

  “I know two hundred and twenty-seven individual pancake recipes!” Bonnie said. “Sixteen can be made with the current inventory of the kitchen!”

  “We’re using number seven,” Maggie said seriously. “From scratch is best.”

  That sounded like the makings of a huge mess to me. Mouse gave me what I swear was a smug look and licked his chops. It would be extra work to clean up afterward—but it would probably be good for Maggie to try it. So I leaned down and kissed her on the head and said, “Be careful of the stove. And let me know if you need help with anything, punkin.”

  “See there, Miss Maggie?” Thomas said. “I told you so.”

  I stopped and eyed him. “Did you set all this up so you could get pancakes?”

  Thomas put on a serious expression and widened his eyes a little at Maggie. “I’m not saying that I didn’t.”

  I rolled my eyes at him.

  My daughter giggled. “Mister Thomas is okay, Dad.”

  “You are very young. Tell you what. You let me deal with him,” I said. “You keep your mind on what you’re doing, okay? Be safe.”

  “ ’Kay,” she said. She turned back to the task, and though her eyes were still puffy with sleep, she focused on the work with the instant morning energy that can be possessed only by someone who has not yet discovered the immutable necessity of coffee.

  I settled down on the couch, nearby. The apartment was basically a single large room, sharing the kitchen, the dining room, and a living room with no walls between. There were two doors to the two bedrooms—Molly’s and mine. Well, technically the room was Molly’s. As far as I knew, she hadn’t actually been in it since I’d moved in, except for a couple of times she’d breezed through, petted Mouse, tickled Maggie, shared some sunny chat with me, and departed again.

  It had been a while since we’d really talked.

  The apartment reminded me of my old place in the basement of Mrs. Spunkelcrief’s boardinghouse. Only there was no musty, moldy smell of old basement. And it was bigger. And it was more brightly lit. And newer. And quite a bit cleaner. And it just didn’t feel right.

  As dumpy as it had been, that grotty little apartment had been my home. Damn the vampires, for burning it down. Damn Marcone, for buying the property and putting up his new headquarters on the ground where home used to be.

  I missed it.

  Ah, well. There was no sense in brooding over it. Life never stays the same. There’s always some kind of curveball coming at you. Nothing to do but swing away.

  Thomas picked a spot of wall to lean against where he could see the kitchen and sipped his coffee. His eyes were focused on Maggie with thoughtful intensity. “Living dangerously, eh?”

  “Mouse will let me know if there’s a problem,” I said.

  “Good dog, there,” Thomas said.

  “You want,” I said, “I could write to Brother Wang. Tell him you want a puppy.”

  “You already stole that one from him.” Thomas snorted.

  “Accidentally,” I said. “Plus I think the furball stowed away on purpose. Even if Brother Wang doesn’t like it, I figure he won’t gainsay the dog.”

  “Well,” Thomas mused, “he is a pretty good dog.”

  “Damned right he is,” I said.

  “Let me think about it,” Thomas said. “There’s a lot going on.”

  He still hadn’t taken his eyes off Maggie.

  “Hey, man,” I said. “You okay?”

  He glanced aside at me and offered me a faint smile. “ Just … thinking real hard about the future.”

  “Well,” I said. “That’s understandable.” I closed my eyes and felt my limbs aching in dull, steady throbs that kept time with my heartbeat. Suddenly, I sneezed, hard.

  “God bless you,” Maggie said promptly from the kitchen.

  “Nnngh,” I called. “Thank you.” The sneeze had sent a surge of aching sensation through my limbs that took several seconds to fade. I opened one eye. That wasn’t right.

  The mantle of power of the Winter Knight was what let me keep pace with my brother the vampire while running in sand and wearing two hundred pounds of extra weight. One of the things the mantle did was to dull pain, to the point where I experienced it only as a kind of tense, silvery sensation. Broken bones were sort of annoying. A bleeding wound was something of a distraction—but I didn’t ever, ever just ache.

  Except now I was.

  Stupid Winter mantle. It kept up a constant assault of primal, feral emotions and desires that were like supercharged versions of my own instincts. I didn’t go out for intense exercise every morning because I enjoyed it. I did it because discipline and routine helped me keep the more primal instincts in check. Daily intense exercise forced the mantle to expend energy in keeping my body going—on my schedule, at my will—and as a result reduced the amount of pressure it could apply to my conscious thoughts. And while it did make me able to ignore pain and to push my body well beyond the normal limits of human endurance, the mantle’s influence was a steady nuisance that required constant effort to keep buttoned up.

  “Whoa,” Thomas said. “You okay there, nerd?”

  “That was weird,” I said.

  Mister prowled up onto the couch and settled on my lap, thrusting his head beneath my hand. I petted him automatically, and his body rumbled with a purr that sounded like a pot of boiling water.

  A second or two after that thought, I sneezed again, harder, and this time the aching surge sent a wave of exhaustion flooding through me, so hard that I nearly fell over onto my side.

  Also, there was a clang and a splashing sound. Mister leapt out of my lap and bolted. It took me a couple of tries to get my eyes to focus, but when I did, I saw that a metal pot with a black plastic handle was lying on its side on the carpet in front of me. Little wisps of steam rose from the soaking carpet next to the pot.

  I blinked up at Thomas and traded a look with him. His face told me that he had no idea what had just happened. We both looked back at the pot.

  I frowned and leaned down to touch it. It wasn’t quite hot enough to burn me, but it was close. I blinked at it and reached for the handle. I picked up the pot. The handle felt oddly squishy for a couple of seconds—and then suddenly, plastic and metal and water alike shuddered and melted into a clear gelatinous fluid that fell out of my fingers to splat on the carpet. Ectoplasm, the raw matter of the spirit world.

  What the hell?

  Ectoplasm was a strange substance. It could be shaped by magic and fed energy, and as long as the energy kept pouring in, it would hold its form. Spirits from the Nevernever could forge bodies to be used in the material world and run around in them like their own version of going o
n a spacewalk. But once the energy stopped pouring in, the construct body would revert to its original form—mucus-like ectoplasm, which would itself sublimate from the material world and back to the Nevernever within moments.

  So where the hell had the pot come from?

  The Guard? The little faeries who loitered about my home certainly had a mischievous streak a mile wide. Could one of them have played a prank on me?

  Maybe. But if so, how had the prankster known what I was thinking about?

  It was damned peculiar.

  “Harry?” Thomas asked.

  “Damned peculiar,” I said, and swiped at my nose, which was suddenly all but overflowing. “Even for me.”

  “Dad?” Maggie called.

  “Hmmm?”

  “I’m not supposed to flip the pancake until it’s golden brown, Bonnie says. But I can’t see the cooked part. How do I know?”

  I pushed myself up off the couch, grabbed a handful of tissues, and headed for the kitchen. “It’s a little tricky,” I said. “You can tell from what the batter on the uncooked side looks like. I’ll show you.”

  “Okay.”

  I started instructing my daughter in the fine art of pancake flipping. We had just gotten the second one started when a tiny bell began to ring very rapidly from somewhere in one of the walls—the apartment’s security alarm.

  Mouse whipped his head around to the source of the sound and let out a low growl. Maggie blinked and then looked at me uncertainly.

  Thomas came off the wall in a tense little bound of tightly leashed energy. He glanced at me and then went to the kitchen and took one of the big chef knives from the block.

  “Someone’s coming,” I said. “Let’s see what’s happening first. Now, just like we practiced. Take Bonnie, go to my room, and put her in her box. Stay in there with her, stay low to the ground, and keep quiet. Okay?”

  Maggie looked uncertain but she nodded. “Okay.”

  “Go on.”

  I shut the bedroom door behind her and picked up my wizard’s staff from its spot near the fireplace. I suddenly wished that I’d found a way to spend more hours on my personal magical arsenal. I hadn’t, because I’d been busy being a father, which took up way more time than I had believed possible. There’d been very little time to actively work on my gear—a very wizard-hours-intensive endeavor. All I had was the staff I’d carved out on the lost island of Demonreach in the middle of Lake Michigan, my blasting rod, and a slapdash version of my old shield bracelet—but they would have to do.

  Whatever had set off the alarm, it seemed unlikely that it could march all the way through the svartalves’ security—but if it hadn’t done so, then why was my security alarm ringing?

  “What do you think?” Thomas asked.

  “I think anything that goes through svartalf security to get here has me a little edgy,” I said.

  “Oh, so it’s not just me. That’s nice.”

  A few seconds later, a heavy hand rapped hard on the door to the apartment.

  I checked to make absolutely sure that the door to the room with my daughter inside was firmly shut. And then, gripping my staff much like a rifle, I paced silently forward to answer the door, my brother falling into step beside me.

  Chapter

  Three

  I summoned my will and channeled power into my staff. The runes spiraling along its length smoldered with emerald fire, and tiny wisps of smoke rose from it. The clean, smoky scent of fresh-scorched wood laced the air. Runes and sigils of green light spangled the walls.

  A wizard’s staff is a versatile tool. I could use one to project any number of forces or effects as the need arose, and I made sure mine was ready to wreak havoc or reflect energy as needed. Thomas moved in utter silence to the wall beside the door, where he would be within arm’s reach of anyone who came through it. He gripped the knife low along his leg and nodded to me when he was ready.

  And I calmly opened the apartment’s front door.

  An old man stood there. He was a couple of inches shorter than average, and stout. Like me, he carried a staff, though his was a good deal shorter and, like him, stouter than my own. Some wisps of white and silver hair drifted around his otherwise shining head, though there seemed to be more liver spots on the skin than I remembered from the last time I’d seen him. His dark eyes were bright, though, behind his spectacles, and he wore a plain white cotton T-shirt with his blue overalls and steel-toed work boots. He was my mentor, Ebenezar McCoy, senior member of the White Council of Wizardry.

  He was also my grandfather.

  The old man eyed me, his brow furrowing in thought, studying me as I stood there, and then my green-glowing staff.

  “New work,” he noted. “Dense, though. Maybe a little rough.”

  “All I had was a pocketknife,” I said. “No sandpaper. Had to use rocks.”

  “Ah,” he said. “May I come in?”

  I looked past Ebenezar to where Austri stood in the hall, one hand inside his suit, a couple of fingers pressed to one ear. His lips were moving, though I couldn’t hear what he was saying. “Austri? What’s with the alarm?”

  Austri apparently listened to something coming into his ear that only he could hear and nodded. He didn’t take his hand out of his coat when he answered me. “This person is known to the svartalves,” he said. “He is an enforcer for the White Council of Wizardry and is known to be extremely dangerous. He did not follow security protocols.”

  “I don’t have forty-eight hours to wait for DNA tests to come back, even if I’d give you any,” Ebenezar growled. “I told you. Etri knows me. He’ll vouch for me.”

  There was an odd, almost rippling sound, and suddenly a dozen more svartalves like Austri just slid up out of the floor as if it had been made of water. They were grasping a number of weapons, both modern and ancient—but they didn’t move to attack. Impulsive responses were not a part of their nature. Their expressions were unreadable, but definitely not friendly.

  Austri eyed Ebenezar and then looked to me. “Wizard Dresden? Is this person to be considered a guest of Miss Carpenter?”

  “That would be simplest for all involved, I think,” I said.

  “Simple?” Austri asked. “It is irrelevant how simple or how complicated it may be. Is he Miss Carpenter’s guest or not?”

  “He is,” I said. “Let him come in. I’ll take responsibility for his conduct while he is here.”

  Austri frowned for a long moment, his expression taking on several nuanced shades of doubt. But he only lowered his hand from his jacket and nodded to me. At a gesture, he and the rest of the svartalf security team filed down the hallway and out of sight.

  “Sticklers, aren’t they?” I said.

  “Goes a great deal deeper than that,” Ebenezar said.

  “You pushed their buttons on purpose,” I said.

  “Not at first. But one of them got snotty with me.”

  “So you just started walking over them?”

  Something mischievous sparkled in the back of his eyes. “It’s good for them, from time to time, for someone to remind them that they can’t exercise control over everything, and that a member of the Senior Council can walk where he chooses to walk.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “That last guy really got to me.”

  “Gedwig,” I said. “The grouchy. He’s always extra paranoid.” I let the power ease out of my staff, and the runes stopped glowing, the light dying away. I made a gesture toward Thomas with one hand, and my brother eased away from the door. Then I stood aside and opened the door wider for my grandfather. “Come in.”

  The old man didn’t miss much. He came in with the calm, wary look of a man who isn’t focused on one thing because he’s taking in everything—and immediately spun his staff to point squarely at Thomas.

  “What is that thing doing here?” Ebenezar demanded.

  Thomas lifted his eyebrows. “Thing? Pretty bold assertion of righteousness from the White Council’s hatchetman.”

  As far as
I knew, my grandfather didn’t know that Thomas and I shared a mother, his daughter. He didn’t know he had another grandson. Ebenezar had … kind of a thing about White Court vampires.

  (The Paranet called them “whampires,” but I refused to cave in to such silliness, unless it became entirely convenient.)

  “Vampire,” my grandfather growled, “you’ve been a useful ally to young Dresden up until now. Don’t go ruining things by getting my attention.”

  Thomas’s eyes glittered a shade brighter, and he put on the smile he wore when he was exceptionally furious. “I’m hearing a lot of loud talk from a guy who let himself get this close to someone like me without having a shield already up.”

  “Why, you slick little punk,” my grandfather began.

  The stench of burning batter filled the air, and I stalked over to the stove, where I flipped the pancake, which had burned during the altercation. Then I slapped the spatula back down onto the counter with unnecessary force and said, words sizzling with vitriol, “Gentlemen, I should not need to remind either of you that you are guests in my home.”

  And that hit them both like a bucket of cold water.

  In our world, maybe the closest thing to inviolable laws are the ancient traditions of guest-right and host-right. In them, guests are to be honored and treated as members of the host’s own family. And they, in turn, are expected to behave as respectful members of the host’s own family.

  And in this case we all were actual family, only my grandfather didn’t know it.

  But Thomas backed off a bit more, his tense frame easing out of its predatory stance, and my grandfather lowered his staff and turned until he was partially facing away from Thomas.

  “Sorry, Harry,” Thomas said. “Won’t happen again.”

  I nodded at him and glanced at the old man.

  “I owe you an apology,” my grandfather said to me, with heavy emphasis on the pronouns. “Shouldn’t have behaved like that in your home. I’m sorry.”