EVEN HAND

By JIM BUTCHER

A successful murder is like a successful restaurant: ninety percent of it is about location,location, location.

Three men in black hoods knelt on the waterfront warehouse floor, their wrists and anklestrussed with heavy plastic quick-ties. There were few lights. They knelt over a large, faded stainon the concrete floor, left behind by the hypocritically-named White Council of Wizards duringtheir last execution.

I nodded to Hendricks, who took the hood off the first man, then stood clear. The man wasyoung and good-looking. He wore an expensive yet ill-fitting suit and even more expensive yettasteless jewelry.

“Where are you from?” I asked him.

He sneered at me. “What’s it to y-“

I shot him in the head as soon as I heard the bravado in his voice. The body fell heavily to thefloor.

The other two jumped and cursed, their voices angry and terrified.

I took the hood off the second man. His suit was a close cousin of the dead man’s, and I thoughtI recognized its cut. “Boston?” I asked him.

“You can’t do this to us,” he said, more angry than frightened. “Do you know who we are?”

Once I heard the nasal quality of the word “are,” I shot him.

I took off the third man’s hood. He screamed and fell away from me. “Boston,” I said, nodding,and put the barrel of my .45 against the third man’s forehead. He stared at me, showing thewhites of his eyes. “You know who I am. I run drugs in Chicago. I run the numbers, the books. Irun the whores. It’s my town. Do you understand?”

His body jittered in what might have been a nod. His lips formed the word “yes,” though nosound came out.

“I’m glad you can answer a simple question,” I told him, and lowered the gun. “I want you totell Mr. Morelli that I won’t be this lenient the next time his people try to clip the edges of myterritory.” I looked at Hendricks. “Put the three of them in a sealed trailer and rail-freight themback to Boston, care of Mr. Morelli.”

Hendricks was a large, trustworthy man, his red hair cropped in a crew cut. He twitched his chinin the slight motion that he used for a nod when he disapproved of my actions but intended toobey me anyway.

Hendricks and the cleaners on my staff would handle the matter from here.

I passed him the gun and the gloves on my hands. Both would see the bottom of Lake Michiganbefore I was halfway home, along with the two slugs the cleaners would remove from the site.When they were done, there would be nothing left of the two dead men but a slight variationon the outline of the stain in the old warehouse floor, where no one would look twice in anycase.

Location, location, location.

Obviously, I am not Harry Dresden. My name is something I rarely trouble to remember, but formost of my adult life, I have been called John Marcone.

I am a professional monster.

It sounds pretentious. After all, I’m not a flesh-devouring ghoul, hiding behind a human maskuntil it is time to gorge. I’m no vampire, to drain the blood or soul from my victim, no ogre, nodemon, no cursed beast from the spirit world dwelling amid the unsuspecting sheep of

humanity. I’m not even possessed of the mystic abilities of a mortal wizard.

But they will never be what I am. One and all, those beings were born to be what they are.

I made a choice.

I walked outside of the warehouse and was met by my consultant, Gard – a tall blond womanwithout any makeup whose eyes continually swept her surroundings. She fell into step besideme as we walked to the car. “Two?”

“They couldn’t be bothered to answer a question in a civil manner.”

She opened the back door for me and I got in. I picked up my personal weapon and slipped itinto the holster beneath my left arm while she settled down behind the wheel. She starteddriving and then said, “No. That wasn’t it.”

“It was business.”

“And the fact that one of them was pushing heroin to thirteen-year-old girls and the other waspimping them out had nothing to do with it,” Gard said.

“It was business,” I said, enunciating. “Morelli can find pushers and pimps anywhere. A decentaccountant is invaluable. I sent his bookkeeper back as a gesture of respect.”

“You don’t respect Morelli.”

I almost smiled. “Perhaps not.”

“Then why?”

I did not answer. She didn’t push the issue, and we rode in silence back to the office. As she putthe car in park, I said, “They were in my territory. They broke my rule.”

“No children,” she said.

“No children,” I said. “I do not tolerate challenges, Ms. Gard. They’re bad for business.”

She looked at me in the mirror, her blue eyes oddly intent, and nodded.

There was a knock at my office door, and Gard thrust her head in, her phone’s earpiececonspicuous. “There’s a problem.”

Hendricks frowned from his seat at a nearby desk. He was hunched over a laptop that lookedtoo small for him, plugging away at his thesis. “What kind of problem?”

“An Accords matter,” Gard said.

Hendricks sat up straight and looked at me.

I didn’t look up from one of my lawyer’s letters, which I receive too frequently to let slide.“Well,” I said, “we knew it would happen eventually. Bring the car.”

“I don’t have to,” Gard said. “The situation came to us.”

I set aside the finished letter and looked up, resting my fingertips together. “Interesting.”

Gard brought the problem in. The problem was young and attractive. In my experience, the

latter two frequently lead to the former. In this particular case, it was a young woman holding achild. She was remarkable – thick, rich, silver white hair, dark eyes, pale skin. She had very littlemakeup, which was fortunate in her case, since she looked as if she had recently beendrenched. She wore what was left of a gray business skirt-suit, had a towel from one of myhealth clubs wrapped around her shoulders, and was shivering.

The child she held was too young to be in school and was also appealing, with rosy features,white blond hair, and blue eyes. Male or female, it hardly mattered at that age. They’re allbeautiful. The child clung to the girl as if it would not be separated, and was also wrapped in atowel.

The girl’s body language was definitely protective. She had the kind of beauty that lookednatural and… true. Her features and her bearing both spoke of gentleness and kindness.

I felt an immediate instinct to protect and comfort her.

I quashed it thoroughly.

I am not made of stone, but I have found it is generally best to behave as if I am.

I looked across the desk at her and said, “My people tell me you have asked for sanctuary underthe terms of the Unseelie Accords, but that you have not identified yourself.”

“I apologize, sir,” she answered. “I was already being indiscreet enough just by coming here.”

“Indeed,” I said calmly. “I make it a point not to advertise the location of my businessheadquarters.”

“I didn’t want to add names to the issue,” she said, casting her eyes down in a gesture ofsubmission that did not entirely convince me. “I wasn’t sure how many of your people werepermitted access to this sort of information.”

I glanced past the young woman to Gard, who gave me a slow, cautious nod. Had the girl or thechild been other than they appeared, Gard would have indicated in the negative. Gard costs mea fortune and is worth every penny.

Even so, I didn’t signal either her or Hendricks to stand down. Both of them watched the girl,ready to kill her if she made an aggressive move. Trust, but verify – that the person beingtrusted will be dead if she attempts betrayal.

“That was most considerate of you, Justine.”

The girl blinked at me several times. “Y-you know me.”

“You are a sometimes associate of Harry Dresden,” I said. “Given his proclivities about those heconsiders to be held under his aegis, it is sensible to identify as many of them as possible. Forthe sake of my insurance rates, if nothing else. Gard.”

“Justine, no last name you’ll admit to,” Gard said calmly. “Currently employed as Lara Raith’ssecretary and personal aide. You are the sometimes lover of Thomas Raith, a frequent ally ofDresden’s.”

I spread my hands slightly. “I assume the ‘j’ notation at the bottom of Ms. Raith’s typedcorrespondence refers to you.”

“Yes,” Justine said. She had regained her composure quickly – not something I would haveexpected of the servitor of a vampire of the White Court. Many of the… people, I suppose, I’dseen there had made lotus-eaters look self-motivated. “Yes, exactly.”

I nodded. “Given your patron, one is curious as to why you have come to me seekingprotection.”

“Time, sir,” she replied quietly. “I lacked any other alternative.”

Someone screamed at the front of the building.

My headquarters shifts position irregularly, as I acquire new buildings. Much of myconsiderable wealth is invested in real estate. I own more of the town than any other singleinvestor. In Chicago, there is always money to be had by purchasing and renovating agingbuildings. I do much of my day-to-day work out of one of my most recent renovation projects,once they have been modified to be suitable places to welcome guests. Then, renovation of thebuilding begins, and the place is generally crowded with contractors who have proven theirability to see and hear nothing.

Gard’s head snapped up. She shook it as if to rid herself of a buzzing fly and said, “A presence. Astrong one.” Her blue eyes snapped to Justine. “Who?”

The young woman shuddered and wrapped the towel more tightly about herself. “Mag. Acantrev lord of the fomor.”

Gard spat something in a Scandinavian tongue that was probably a curse.

“Precis, please,” I said.

“The fomor are an ancient folk,” she said. “Water dwellers, cousins of the jotuns. Extremelyformidable. Sorcerers, shape changers, seers.”

“And signatories,” I noted.

“Yes,” she said. She crossed to the other side of the room, opened a closet, and withdrew anathletic bag. She produced a simple, rather crude-looking broadsword from it and tossed ittoward Hendricks. The big man caught it by the handle and took his gun into his left hand. Gardtook a broad-bladed axe out of the bag and shouldered the weapon. “But rarely involved inmortal affairs.”

“Ms. Raith sent me to the fomor king with documents,” Justine said, her voice coming outquietly and rapidly. Her shivering had increased. “Mag made me his prisoner. I escaped with thechild. There wasn’t time to reach one of my lady’s strongholds. I came to you, sir. I beg yourprotection, as a favor to Ms. Raith.”

“I don’t grant favors,” I said calmly.

Mag entered in the manner so many of these self-absorbed supernatural cretins seem to adore.He blasted the door into a cloud of flying splinters with what I presumed was magic.

For God’s sake.

At least the vampires would call for an appointment.

The blast amounted to little debris. After a few visits from Dresden and his ilk, I had invested in

cheap, light doors at dramatic (as opposed to tactical) entry points.

The fomor was a pale, repellent humanoid. Seven feet tall, give or take, and distinctly froglike inappearance. He had a bloated belly, legs several inches too long to be proportionately human,and huge feet and hands. He wore a tunic of something that resembled seaweed beneath along, flapping blue robe covered in the most intricate embroidery I had ever seem. A coronet ofcoral was bound about his head. His right hand was extended dramatically. He carried a twistedlength of wood in his left.

His eyes bulged, jaundice yellow around septic green, and his teeth were rotted and filthy. “Youcannot run from me,” he said. His wide mouth made the words seem somehow slurred. “Youare mine.”

Justine looked up at me, evidently too frightened to turn her head, her eyes wide with fear. Asharper contrast would have been hard to manage. “Sir. Please.”

I touched a button on the undersurface of my desk, a motion of less than two inches, and thenmade a steeple of my hands again as I eyed Mag and said, “Excuse me, sir. This is a privateoffice.”

Mag surged forward half a step, his eyes focused on the girl. “Hold your tongue, mortal, if youwould keep it.”

I narrowed my eyes.

Is it so much to ask for civility?

“Justine,” I said calmly, “if you would stand aside, please.”

Justine quickly, silently, moved out from between us.

I focused on Mag and said, “They are under my protection.”

Mag gave me a contemptuous look and raised the staff. Darkness lashed at me, as if he hadsimply reached into the floorboards and cracks in the wall and drawn it into a sizzling spherethe size of a bowling ball.

It flickered away to nothingness about a foot in front of my steepled hands.

I lifted a finger and Hendricks shot Mag in the back. Repeatedly.

The fomor went down with a sound like a bubbling teakettle, whipped onto his back as if thebullets had been a minor inconvenience, and raised the stick to point at Hendricks.

Gard’s axe smashed it out of his grip, swooped back up to guard, and began to descend again.

“Stop,” I said.

Gard’s muscles froze just before she would have brought down the axe onto Mag’s head. Maghad one hand uplifted, surrounded in a kind of negative haze, his long fingers crooked at oddangles – presumably some kind of mystic defense.

“As a freeholding lord of the Unseelie Accords,” I said, “it would be considered an act of war if Ikilled you out of hand, despite your militant intrusion into my territory.” I narrowed my eyes.“However, your behavior gives me ample latitude to invoke the defense of property and self

clause. I will leave the decision to you. Continue this asinine behavior, and I will kill you andoffer a weregild to your lord, King Corb, in accordance with the conflict resolution guidelines ofsection two, paragraph four.”

As I told you, my lawyers send me endless letters. I speak their language.

Mag seemed to take that in for a moment. He looked at me, then Gard. His eyes narrowed.They tracked back to Hendricks, his head hardly moving, and he seemed to freeze when he sawthe sword in Hendricks’ hand.

His eyes flicked to Justine and the child and burned for a moment – not with adoration or evensimple lust. There was a pure and possessive hunger there, coupled with a need to destroy thatwhich he desired. I have spent my entire life around hard men. I know that form of madnesswhen I see it.

“So,” Mag said. His eyes traveled back to me and were suddenly heavy-lidded and calculating.“You are the new mortal lord. We half believed that you must be imaginary. That no one couldbe as foolish as that.”

“You are incorrect,” I said. “Moreover, you can’t have them. Get out.”

Mag stood up. The movement was slow, liquid. His limbs didn’t seem to bend the proper way.“Lord Marcone,” he said, “this affair is no concern of yours. I only wish to take the slaves.”

“You can’t have them. Get out.”

“I warn you,” Mag said. There was an ugly tone in his voice. “If you make me return for her – forthem – you will not enjoy what follows.”

“I do not require enjoyment to thrive. Leave my domain. I won’t ask again.”

Hendricks shuffled his feet a little, setting his balance.

Mag gathered himself up slowly. He extended his hand, and the twisted stick leapt from thefloor and into his fingers. He gave Gard a slow and well-practiced sneer and said, “Anon, mortallordling. It is time you learned the truth of the world. It will please me to be your instructor.”Then he turned, slow and haughty, and walked out, his shoulders hunching in an odd,unsettling motion as he moved.

“Make sure he leaves,” I said quietly.

Gard and Hendricks followed Mag from the room.

I turned my eyes to Justine and the child.

“Mag,” I said, “is not the sort of man who is used to disappointment.”

Justine looked after the vanished fomor and then back at me, confusion in her eyes. “That wassorcery. How did you…?”

I stood up from behind my desk and stepped out of the copper circle set into the floor aroundmy chair. It was powered by the sorcerous equivalent of a nine-volt battery, connected to thecontrol on the underside of my desk. Basic magical defense, Gard said. It had seemed likenonsense to me – it clearly was not.

I took my gun from its holster and set it on my desk.

Justine took note of my reply.

Of course, I wouldn’t give the personal aide of the most dangerous woman in Chicagoinformation about my magical defenses.

There was something hard and not at all submissive in her eyes. “Thank you, sir, for…”

“For what?” I said very calmly. “You understand, do you not, what you have done by asking formy help under the Accords?”

“Sir?”

“The Accords govern relations between supernatural powers,” I said. “The signatories of theAccords and their named vassals are granted certain rights and obligations – such as offering awarning to a signatory who has trespassed upon another’s territory unwittingly before killinghim.”

“I know, sir,” Justine said.

“Then you should also know that you are most definitely not a signatory of the Accords. At best,you qualify in the category of ‘servitors and chattel.’ At worst, you are considered to be a foodanimal.

She drew in a sharp breath, her eyes widening – not in any sense of outrage or offense, but inrealization. Good. She grasped the realities of the situation.

“In either case,” I continued, “you are property. You have no rights in the current situation, inthe eyes of the Accords – and more to the point, I have no right to withhold another’s rightfulproperty. Mag’s behavior provided me with an excuse to kill him if he did not depart. He willnot give me such an opening a second time.”

Justine swallowed and stared at me for a moment. Then she glanced down at the child in herarms. The child clung harder to her and seemed to lean somewhat away from me.

One must admire such acute instincts.

“You have drawn me into a conflict which has nothing to do with me,” I said quietly. “I suggestcandor. Otherwise, I will have Mr. Hendricks and Ms. Gard show you to the door.”

“You can’t…,” she began, but her voice trailed off.

“I can,” I said. “I am not a humanitarian. When I offer charity it is for tax purposes.”

The room became silent. I was content with that. The child began to whimper quietly.

“I was delivering documents to the court of King Corb on behalf of my lady,” Justine said. Shestroked the child’s hair absently. “It’s in the sea. There’s a gate there in Lake Michigan, not farfrom here.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “You swam?”

“I was under the protection of their courier, going there,” Justine said. “It’s like walking in abubble of air.” She hitched the child up a little higher on her hip. “Mag saw me. He drove the

courier away as I was leaving and took me to his home. There were many other prisonersthere.”

“Including the child,” I guessed. Though it probably didn’t sound that way.

Justine nodded. “I… arranged for several prisoners to flee Mag’s home. I took the child when Ileft. I swam out.”

“So you are, in effect, stolen property in possession of stolen property,” I said. “Novel.”

Gard and Hendricks came back into the office.

I looked at Hendricks. “My people?”

“Tulane’s got a broken arm,” he said. “Standing in that asshole’s way. He’s on his way to thedoc.”

“Thank you. Ms. Gard?”

“Mag is off the property,” she said. “He didn’t go far. He’s summoning support now.”

“How much of a threat is he?” I asked. The question was legitimate. Gard and Hendricks hadblindsided the inhuman while he was focused upon Justine and the child and while he wastedhis leading magical strike against my protective circle. A head-on confrontation against aprepared foe could be a totally different proposition.

Gard tested the edge of her axe with her thumb and drew a smooth stone from her pocket.“Mag is a fomor sorcerer lord of the first rank. He’s deadly – and connected. The fomor couldcrush you without a serious loss of resources. Confrontation would be unwise.”

The stone made a steely, slithery sound as it glided over the axe’s blade.

“There seems little profit to be had, then,” I said. “It’s nothing personal, Justine. Merelybusiness. I am obliged to return stolen property to signatory members of the Accords.”

Hendricks looked at me sharply. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I already knew thetone of whatever he would say. Are there no prisons, perhaps. Or, No man is an island, entireof itself. It tolls for thee. On and on.

Hendricks has no head for business.

Gard watched me, waiting.

“Sir,” Justine said, her tone measured and oddly formal. “May I speak?”

I nodded.

“She isn’t property,” Justine said, and her voice was low and intense, her eyes direct. “She wastrapped in a den of living nightmares, and there was no one to come save her. She would havedied there. And I am not letting anyone take her back to that hellhole. I will die first.” Theyoung woman set her jaw. “She is not property, Mr. Marcone. She’s a child.”

I met Justine’s eyes for a long moment.

I glanced aside at Hendricks. He waited for my decision.

Gard watched me. As ever, Gard watched me.

I looked down at my hands, my fingertips resting together with my elbows propped on thedesk.

Business came first. Always.

But I have rules.

I looked up at Justine.

“She’s a child,” I said quietly.

The air in the room snapped tight with tension.

“Ms. Gard,” I said, “please dismiss the contractors for the day, at pay. Then raise the defenses.”

She pocketed the whetstone and strode quickly out, her teeth showing, a bounce in her step.

“Mr. Hendricks, please scramble our troubleshooters. They’re to take positions across thestreet. Suppressed weapons only. I don’t need patrolmen stumbling around in this. Then readythe panic room.”

Hendricks nodded and got out his cell phone as he left. His huge, stubby fingers flew over itstouchscreen as he sent the activation text message. Looking at him, one would not think himcapable of such a thing. But that is Hendricks, generally.

I looked at Justine as I rose and walked to my closet. “You will go to the child into the panicroom. It is, with the possible exception of Dresden’s home, the most secure location in thecity.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

I took off my coat and hung it up in the closet. I took off my tie and slipped it over the samehanger. I put my cuff links in my coat pocket, rolled up my sleeves, and skinned out of my gun’sholster. Then I slipped on the armored vest made of heavy scales of composite materials joinedto sleeves of quite old-fashioned mail. I pulled an old field jacket, olive drab, over the armor,belted it, holstered my sidearm at my side, opposite a combat knife, and took a military-gradeassault shotgun – a weapon every bit as illegal as my pistol in the city of Chicago – from its rack.

“I am not doing it for you, young lady,” I said. “Nor am I doing it for the child.”

“Then why are you doing it?” she asked.

“Because I have rules,” I said.

She shook her head gently. “But you’re a criminal. Criminals don’t have rules. They breakthem.”

I stopped and looked at her.

Justine blanched and slid a step farther away from me, along the wall. The child made a soft,distressed sound. I beckoned curtly for her to follow me as I walked past her. It took her amoment to do so.

Honestly.

Someone in the service of a vampire ought to have a bit more fortitude.

This panic room looked like every other one I’ve had built: fluorescent lights, plain tile floor,plain drywall. Two double bunks occupied one end of the room. A business desk and severalchairs took up the rest. A miniature kitchen nestled into one corner, opposite the miniaturemedical station in another. There was a door to a half-bath and a bank of security monitors onthe wall between them. I flicked one switch that activated the entire bank, displaying a dozenviews from hidden security cameras.

I gestured for Justine to enter the room. She came in and immediately took a seat on the lowerbunk of the nearest bed, still holding the child.

“Mag can find her,” Gard told me when we all rendezvoused outside the panic room. “Oncehe’s inside the building and gets past the forward area, he’ll be able to track her. He’ll headstraight for her.”

“Then we know which way he’ll be moving,” I said. “What did you find out about his support?”

“They’re creatures,” Gard said, “actual mortal beings, though like none you’ve seen before. Thefomor twist flesh to their liking and sell the results for favors and influence. It was probably thefomor who created those cat-things the Knights of the Blackened Denarius used.”

I twisted my mouth in displeasure at the name. “If they’re mortal, we can kill them.”

“They’ll die hard,” Gard warned me.

“What doesn’t?” I looked up and down the hallway outside the panic room. “I think the primarydefense plan will do.”

Gard nodded. She had attired herself in an armored vest not unlike my own over a long mailshirt. Medieval looking, but then modern armorers haven’t aimed their craft at stopping clawsof late. Hendricks, standing watch at the end of the hall, had on an armored vest but wasotherwise covered in modified motorcyclist’s armor. He carried an assault shotgun like mine,several hand grenades, and that same broadsword.

“Stay here,” I said to Justine. “Watch the door. If anyone but one of us comes down the stairs,shut it.”

She nodded.

I turned and started walking toward the stairway. I glanced at Gard. “What can we expect fromMag?”

“Pain.”

Hendricks grunted. Skeptically.

“He’s ancient, devious, and wicked,” Gard clarified. “There is an effectively unlimited spectrumof ways in which he might do harm.”

I nodded. “Can you offer any specific knowledge?”

“He won’t be easy to get to,” she said. “The fomor practice entropy magic. They make theantitechnology effect Dresden puts off look like mild sunspot activity. Modern systems aregoing to experience problems near him.”

We started up the stairs. “How long before he arrives?”

From upstairs, there was the crash of breaking plate glass. No alarm went off, but there was abuzzing, sizzling sound and a scream – Gard’s outer defenses. Hendricks hit a button on his cellphone and then came with me as I rushed up the remaining stairs to the ground floor.

The lights went out as we went, and Hendricks’s phone sputtered out a few sparks. Battery-powered emergency lights flicked on an instant later. Only about half of them functioned, andmost of those were behind us.

Mag had waited for nightfall to begin his attack and then crippled our lights. Quite possibly heassumed that the darkness would give him an overwhelming advantage.

The hubris of some members of the supernatural community is astonishing.

The nightvision scopes mounted on my weapon and Hendricks’s had been custom-made, basedoff of designs dating back to World War II, before nightvision devices had married themselvesto the electronics revolution. They were heavy and far inferior to modern systems – but theywould function in situations where electronic goggles would be rendered into useless junk.

We raised the weapons to our shoulders, lined an eye up with the scopes, and kept moving. Wereached the first defensive position, folded out the reinforced composite barriers mountedthere, and knelt behind them. The ambient light from the city outside and the emergency lightsbelow us was enough for the scopes to do their jobs. I could make out the outline of thehallway and the room beyond. Sounds of quiet movement came closer.

My heart rate had gone up, but not alarmingly so. My hands were steady. My mouth felt dry,and my body’s reaction to the prospect of mortal danger sent ripples of sensation up and downmy spine. I embraced the fear and waited.

The fomor’s creatures exploded into the hallway on a storm of frenzied roars. I couldn’t makeout many details. They seemed to have been put together on the chassis of a gorilla. Theirheads were squashed, ugly-looking things, with wide-gaping mouths full of sharklike teeth. Thesounds they made were deep, with a frenzied edge of madness, and they piled into the corridorin a wave of massive muscle.

“Steady,” I murmured.

The creatures lurched as they moved, like cheap toys that had not been assembled properly,but they were fast for all of that. More and more of them flooded into the hallway, and theircharge was gaining momentum.

“Steady,” I murmured.

Hendricks grunted. There were no words in it, but he meant, I know.

The wave of fomorian beings got close enough that I could see the patches of mold clumpingtheir fur and tendrils of mildew growing upon their exposed skin.

“Fire,” I said.

Hendricks and I opened up.

The new military AA-12 automatic shotguns are not the hunting weapons I first handled in my

patriotically delusional youth. They are fully automatic weapons with large circular drums thatrather resembled the old tommy guns made iconic by my business predecessors in Chicago.One pulls the trigger and shell after shell slams through the weapon. A steel target hit by burstsfrom an AA-12 rapidly comes to resemble a screen door.

And we had two of them.

The slaughter was indescribable. It swept like a great broom down that hallway, tearing andshredding flesh, splattering blood on the walls and painting them most of the way to theceiling. Behind me, Gard stood ready with a heavy-caliber big-game rifle, calmly gunning downany creature that seemed to be reluctant to die before it could reach our defensive point. Wepiled the bodies so deep that the corpses formed a barrier to our weapons.

“Hendricks,” I said.

The big man was already reaching for the grenades on his belt. He took one, pulled the pin,cooked it for a slow two count, and then flung it down the hall. We all crouched behind thebarriers as the grenade went off with a deafening crunch of shock-wave-driven air.

Hendricks threw another one. He might disapprove of killing, but he did it thoroughly.

When the ringing began to fade from my ears, I heard a sound like raindrops. It wasn’t raining,of course – the gunmen in the building across the street had opened fire with silencedweaponry. Bullets whispered in through the windows and hit the floor and walls of theheadquarters will innocuous-sounding thumps. Evidently Mag’s servitors had been routed andwere trying to flee.

An object the size of Hendricks’ fist appeared from nowhere and arced cleanly through the air.It landed on the floor precisely between the two sheltering panels, a lump of pink-and-graycoral.

Gard hit me with a shoulder and drove me to the ground even as she shouted, “Down!”

The piece of coral didn’t explode. There was a whispering sound, and hundreds of tiny holesappeared in the bloodstained walls and ceiling. Gard let out a pained grunt. My left calf jerkedas something pierced it and burned as though the wound had been filled with salt.

I checked Hendricks. One side of his face was covered in a sheet of blood. Small tears werevisible in his leathers, and he was beginning to bleed through the holes.

“Get him,” I said to Gard, rising, as another coral spheroid rose into the air.

Before it could get close enough to be a threat, I blew it to powder with my shotgun. And thenext and the next, while Gard dropped her rifle, got a shoulder under one of Hendricks’s, andhelped him to his feet as if he’d been her weight instead of two hundred and seventy pounds ofmuscle. She started down the stairs.

A fourth sphere came accompanied by mocking laughter, and when I pulled the trigger again,the weapon didn’t function. Empty. I slapped the coral device out of the air with the shotgun’sbarrel and flung myself backward, hoping to clear the level of the floor on the stairwell beforethe pseudo-grenade detonated. I did not quite make it. Several objects struck my chest andarms, and a hot blade slipped across my unscarred ear, but the armor turned the trulydangerous projectiles.

I broke my arm tumbling backward down the stairs.

More laughter followed me down, but at least the fomor wasn’t spouting some kind ofridiculous monologue.

“I did my best,” came Mag’s voice. “I gave you a chance to return what was mine. But no. Youcouldn’t keep yourself from interfering in my affairs, from stealing my property. And so nowyou will reap the consequences of your foolishness, little mortal…”

There was more, but there is hardly a need to go into details. Given a choice between thategocentric drivel and a broken arm, I prefer the latter. It’s considerably less excruciating.

Gard hauled me to my feet by my coat with her spare hand. I got under the stunned Hendricks’sother arm and helped them both down the rest of the stairs. Justine stood in the doorway ofthe safe room, at the end of the hallway of flickering lights, her face white-lipped but calm.

Gard helped me get Hendricks to the door of the room and turned around. “Close the door. Imay be able to discourage him out here.”

“Your home office would be annoyed with me if I wasted your life on such a low-percentageproposition,” I said. “We stick to the plan.”

The valkyrie eyed me. “Your arm is broken.”

“I was aware, thank you,” I said. “Is there any reason the countermeasure shouldn’t work?”

Mag was going on about something, coming down the steps one at a time, making a productionout of every footfall. I ignored the ass.

“None that I know of,” Gard admitted. “Which is not the same answer as ‘no.’”

“Sir,” Justine said.

“We planned for this – or something very like it. We don’t split up now. End of discussion. Helpme with Hendricks.”

“Sir,” Justine said.

I looked up to see Mag standing on the landing, cloaked in random shadows, smiling. Theemergency lights on the stairwell blew out with a melodramatic shower of dying sparks.

“Ah,” I said. I reached inside the safe-room door, found the purely mechanical pull-cordwrapped unobtrusively around a nail head on the wall, and gave it a sharp jerk.

It set off the antipersonnel mines built into the wall of the landing.

There were four of them, which meant that a wash of fire and just under three-thousand-roundshot acquainted themselves with the immediate vicinity of the landing and with Mag. A cloud offlame and flying steel enveloped the fomor, but at the last minute the swirling blacknessaround him rose up like a living thing, forming a shield between Mag and the oncoming flood ofdestruction.

The sound of the explosions was so loud that it demolished my hearing for a moment. It beganto return to me as the cloud of smoke and dust on the landing began to clear. I could hear a firealarm going off.

Mag, smudged and blackened with residue but otherwise untouched, made an irritatedgesture, and the fire alarm sparked and fizzled – but not before setting off the automaticsprinklers. Water began pouring down from spigots in the ceiling.

Mag looked up at the water and then down at me, and his too-wide smile widened even more.“Really?” he asked. “Water? Did you actually think water would be a barrier to the magic of afomor lord?”

Running water was highly detrimental to mortal magic, or so Gard informed me, whether it wasnaturally occurring or not. The important element was quantity. Enough water would groundmagic just as it could conduct electricity and short-circuit electronics. Evidently Mag played bydifferent rules.

Mag made a point to continue down the stairs at exactly the same pace. He was somewhathampered in that several of the stairs had been torn up rather badly in the explosion, but hemade it to the hallway. Gard took up a position in the middle of the hallway, her axe heldstraight up beside her in both arms like a baseball player’s bat.

I helped Hendricks into the safe room and dumped him on a bunk, out of any line of fire fromthe hallway. Justine took one look at his face and hurried over to the medical station, whereshe grabbed a first-aid kit. She rushed back to Hendricks’s side. She broke open the kit andstarted laying out the proper gear for getting a clear look at a bloody wound and getting thebleeding stopped. Her hands flew with precise speed. She’d had some form of training.

From the opposite bunk, the child watched Justine with wide blue eyes. She was naked and hadbeen crying. The tears were still on her little cheeks. Even now, her lower lip had begun totremble.

But so far as anyone else knew, I was made of stone.

I turned and crossed the room. I sat down at the desk, a copy of the one in my main office. I putmy handgun squarely in front of me. The desk was positioned directly in line with the door tothe panic room. From behind the desk, I could see the entire hallway clearly.

Mag stepped forward and moved a hand as though throwing something. I saw nothing, butGard raised her axe in a blocking movement, and there was a flash of light, and the image of aNorse rune, or something like it, was burned onto my retina. The outer edge of Gard’s mailsleeve on her right arm abruptly turned black and fell to dust, so that the sleeve split anddangled open.

Gard took a grim step back as Mag narrowed his jaundiced eyes and lifted the crooked stick.Something that looked like the blend of a lightning bolt and an eel lashed through the airtoward Gard, but she caught it on the broad blade of her axe, and there was another flash oflight, another eye-searing rune. I heard her cry out, though, and saw that the edges of herfingernails had been burned black.

Step by step she fell back, while Mag hammered at her with things that made no sense, manyof which I could not even see. Each time, the rune-magic of that axe defeated the attack – andeach time, it seemed to cost her something. A lightly singed face here. A long, shallow cut uponher newly bared arm there. And the runes, I saw, were each in different places on the axe,being burned out one by one. Gard had a finite number of them.

As Gard’s heels touched the threshold of the safe room, Mag let out a howl and threw both

hands out ahead of him. An unseen force lifted Gard from her feet and flung her violentlyacross the room, over my desk, and into the wall. She hit with bone-crushing force and sliddown limply.

I faced the inhuman sorcerer alone.

Mag walked slowly and confidently into my safe room and stared at me across my desk. He wasbreathing heavily, from exertion or excitement or both. He smiled, slowly, and waved his handagain. An unpleasant shimmer went through the air, and I glanced down to see rust forming onthe exposed metal of my gun, while cracking began to spread through the plastic grip.

“Go ahead, mortal,” Mag said, drawing out the words. “Pick up the gun. Try it. The crafting ofthe weapon is fine, mortal, but you are not the masters of the world that you believeyourselves to be. Even today’s cleverest smiths are no match for the magic of the fomor.”

I inclined my head in agreement. “Then I suppose,” I said, “that we’ll just have to do this oldschool.”

I drew the eighteenth-century German dragoon pistol from the open drawer beside my lefthand, aimed, and fired. The ancient flintlock snapped forward, ignited the powder in the pan,and roared, a wash of unnatural blue white fire blazing forth from the antique weapon. I almostfancied that I could see the bullet, spinning and tumbling, blazing with its own tiny rune.

Though Mag’s shadows leapt up to defend him, he had expended enormous energy movingthrough the building, hurling attack after attack at us. More energy had to be used to overcomethe tremendous force of the claymores that had exploded virtually in his face. Perhaps, at hisfull strength, at the height of his endurance, his powers would have been enough to turn eventhe single, potent attack that had been designed to defeat them.

From the beginning, the plan had been to wear him down.

The blue bolt of lead and power from the heavy old flintlock pierced Mag’s defenses and bodyin the same instant and with the same contemptuous energy.

Mag blinked at me, then lowered his head to goggle at the smoking hole in his chest as wide asmy thumb. His mouth moved as he tried to gabble something, but no sound came out.

“Idiot,” I said coldly. “It will be well worth the weregild to be rid of you.”

Mag lurched toward me for a moment, intent upon saying something, but the fates spared mefrom having to endure any more of him. He collapsed to the floor before he could finishspeaking.

I eyed my modern pistol, crusted with rust and residue, and decided not to try it. I kept a spare.45 in the downstairs desk in any case. I took it from another drawer, checked it awkwardlyone-handed, and then emptied the weapon into Mag’s head and chest.

I am the one who taught Hendricks to be thorough.

I looked up from Mag’s ruined form to find Justine staring at me, frozen in the middle ofwrapping a bandage around my second’s head.

“How is he?” I asked calmly.

Justine swallowed. She said, “He m-may need stitches for this scalp wound. I think he has aconcussion. The other wounds aren’t bad. His armor stopped most of the fragments from goingin.

“Gard?” I asked without looking over my shoulder. The valkyrie had an incredible ability toresist and recover from injury.

“Be sore for a while,” she said, the words slurred. “Give me a few minutes.”

“Justine, perhaps you will set my arm and splint it,” I said. “We will need to abandon thisrenovation, I’m afraid, Gard. Where’s the thermite?”

“In your upstairs office closet, right where you left it,” she said in a very slightly aggrievedtone.

“Be a dear and burn down the building,” I said.

She appeared beside my desk, looking bruised, exhausted, and functional. She lifted botheyebrows. “Was that a joke?”

“Apparently,” I said. “Doubtless the result of triumph and adrenaline.”

“My word,” she said. She looked startled.

“Get moving,” I told her. “Make the fire look accidental. I need to contact the young lady’spatron so that she can be delivered safely back into her hands. Call Dr. Schulman as well. Tellhim that Mr. Hendricks and I will be visiting him shortly.” I pursed my lips. “And steal, I think. Icould use a good steak. The Pump Room should do for the three of us, eh? Ask them to stayopen an extra half an hour.”

Gard showed me her teeth in a flash. “Well,” she said, “it’s no mead hall. But it will do.”

I put my house in order. In the end, it took less than half an hour. The troubleshooters madesure the fomorian creatures were dragged inside, then vanished. Mag’s body had been baggedand transferred, to be returned to his watery kin, along with approximately a quarter of amillion dollars in bullion, the price required in the Accords for the weregild of a person of Mag’sstature.

Justine was ready to meet a car that was coming to pick her up, and Hendricks was already onthe way to Schulman’s attentions. He’d seemed fine by the time he left, growling at Gard as shefussed over him.

I looked around the office and nodded. “We know the defense plan has some merit,” I said. Ihefted the dragoon pistol. “I’ll need more of those bullets.”

“I was unconscious for three weeks after scribing the rune for that one,” Gard replied. “To saynothing of the fact that the bullets themselves are rare. That one killed a man named Nelson atTrafalgar.”

“How do you know?”

“I took it out of him,” she said. “Men of his caliber are few and far between. I’ll see what I cando.” She glanced at Justine. “Sir?”

“Not just yet,” I said. “I will speak with her alone for a moment, please.”

She nodded, giving Justine a look that was equal parts curiosity and warning. Then shedeparted.

I got up and walked over to the girl. She was holding the child against her again. The little girlhad dropped into an exhausted sleep.

“So,” I said quietly. “Lara Raith sent you to Mag’s people. He happened to abduct you. Youhappened to escape from him – despite the fact that he seemed to be holding other prisonersperfectly adequately – and you left carrying the child. And, upon emerging from Lake Michigan,you happened to be nearby, so you came straight here.”

“Yes,” Justine said quietly.

“Coincidences, coincidences,” I said. “Put the child down.”

Her eyes widened in alarm.

I stared at her until she obeyed.

My right arm was splinted and in a sling. With my left hand, I reached out and flipped open hersuit jacket, over her left hip, where she’d been clutching the child all evening.

There was an envelope in a plastic bag protruding from the jacket’s interior pocket. I took it.

She made a small sound of protest and aborted it partway.

I opened the bag and the envelope and scanned over the paper inside.

“These are account numbers,” I said quietly. “Security passwords. Stolen from Mag’s home, Isuppose?”

She stared at me with very wide eyes.

“Dear child,” I said, “I am a criminal. One very good way to cover up one crime is to commitanother, more obvious one.” I glanced down at the sleeping child again. “Using a child to coveryour part of the scheme. Quite cold-blooded, Justine.”

“I freed all of Mag’s prisoners to cover up the theft of his records at my lady’s bidding,” she saidquietly. “The child was… not part of the plan.”

“Children frequently aren’t,” I said.

“I took her out on my own,” she said. “She’s free of that place. She will stay that way.”

“To be raised among the vampires?” I asked. “Such a lovely child will surely go far.”

Justine grimaced and looked away. “She was too small to swim out on her own. I couldn’t leaveher.”

I stared at the young woman for a long moment. Then I said, “You might consider speaking toFather Forthill at St. Mary of the Angels. The Church appears to have some sort of program toplace those endangered by the supernatural into hiding. I do not recommend you mention myname as a reference, but perhaps he could be convinced to help the child.”

She blinked at me, several times. Then she said quietly, “You, sir, are not very much like Ithought you were.”

“Nor are you, Agent Justine.” I took a deep breath and regarded the child again. “At least weaccomplished something today.” I smiled at Justine. “Your ride should be here by now. You maygo.”

She opened her mouth and reached for the envelope.

I slipped it into my pocket. “Do give Lara my regards. And tell her that the next time she sendsyou out to steal honey, she should find someone else to kill the bees.” I gave her a faint smile.“That will be all.”

Justine looked at me. Then her lips quivered up into a tiny, amused smile. She bowed her headto me, collected the child, and walked out, her steps light.

I debated putting a bullet in her head but decided against it. She had information about mydefenses that could leave them vulnerable – and more to the point, she knew that they wereeffective. If she should speak of today’s events to Dresden…

Well. The wizard would immediately recognize that the claymores, the running water, and themagic-defense-piercing bullet had not been put into place to counter Mag or his odd folk at all.

They were there to kill Harry Dresden.

And they worked. Mag had proven that. An eventual confrontation with Dresden was inevitable– but murdering Justine would guarantee it happened immediately, and I wasn’t ready for that,not until I had rebuilt the defenses in the new location.

Besides, the young woman had rules of her own. I could respect that.

I would test myself against Dresden in earnest one day – or he against me. Until then, I had togather as many resources to myself as possible. And when the day of reckoning came, I had tomake sure it happened in a place where, despite his powers, he would no longer have theupper hand.

Like everything else.

Location, location, location.

LOVE HURTS

—from Songs of Love and Death, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

Takes place between Turn Coat and Changes

Gardner Dozois has a bunch of awards for his anthologies because he’s good at them, and Ileapt at his invitation to contribute to the anthology he was working on with George R. R.Martin, originally titled Star-Crossed Lovers. Despite my enthusiasm, finding a starting point fora Dresden story was sort of a puzzler for me, since Harry Dresden might be in the top threeStar-Influence-Free lovers in the whole contemporary-fantasy genre. How was I going to bringhim into a story with a theme like that?

Answer: Get him into the thick of things next to Murphy when seemingly random love spells arerunning amok through the city. After that, all I had to do was apply his usual streak of luck andcackle madly to myself while typing.

The title of the anthology changed to Songs of Love and Death after I had written the story,which is probably a good thing. Otherwise, I may have tried to find a way to fit a death-metalbattle of the bands into the margins somewhere. No one deserves that.

• • •

Murphy gestured at the bodies and said, “Love hurts.” I ducked under the crime scene tape andentered the Wrigleyville apartment. The smell of blood and death was thick. It made gallowshumor inevitable.

Murphy stood there looking at me. She wasn’t offering explanations. That meant she wantedan unbiased opinion from CPD’s Special Investigations consultant—who is me, Harry Dresden.As far as I know, I am the only wizard on the planet earning a significant portion of his incomeworking for a law enforcement agency.

I stopped and looked around, taking inventory.

Two bodies, naked, male and female, still intertwined in the act. One little pistol, illegal inChicago, lying upon the limp fingers of the woman. Two gunshot wounds to the temples, oneeach. There were two overlapping fan-shaped splatters of blood, and more had soaked into thecarpet. The bodies stank like hell. Some very unromantic things had happened to them afterdeath.

I walked a little farther into the room and looked around. Somewhere in the apartment, an oldvinyl was playing Queen. Freddie wondered who wanted to live forever. As I listened, the songended and began again a few seconds later, popping and scratching nostalgically.

The walls were covered in photographs.

I don’t mean there were a lot of pictures on the wall, like at Greatgrandma’s house. I meancovered in photographs. Entirely. Completely papered.

I glanced up. So was the ceiling.

I took a moment to walk slowly around, looking at pictures. All of them, every single one of

them, featured the two dead people together, posed somewhere and looking deliriously happy.I walked and peered. Plenty of the pictures were near-duplicates in most details, except thatthe subjects wore different sets of clothing—generally cutesy matching T-shirts. Most of thesites were tourist spots within Chicago.

It was as if the couple had gone on the same vacation tour every day, over and over again,collecting the same general batch of pictures each time.

“Matching T-shirts,” I said. “Creepy.”

Murphy’s smile was unpleasant. She was a tiny, compactly muscular woman with blond hairand a button nose. I’d say she was so cute, I just wanted to put her in my pocket, but if I tried todo it, she’d break my arm. Murph knows martial arts.

She waited and said nothing.

“Another suicide pact. That’s the third one this month.” I gestured at the pictures. “Though theothers weren’t quite so cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Or, ah, in medias res.” I shrugged and gesturedat the obsessive photographs. “This is just crazy.”

Murphy lifted one pale eyebrow ever so slightly. “Remind me—how much do we pay you togive us advice, Sherlock?”

I grimaced. “Yeah, yeah. I know.” I was quiet for a while and then said, “What were theirnames?”

“Greg and Cindy Bardalacki,” Murphy said.

“Seemingly unconnected dead people, but they share similar patterns of death. Now we’reupgrading to irrational and obsessive behavior as a precursor. ...” I frowned. I checked severalof the pictures and went over to eye the bodies. “Oh,” I said. “Oh, hell’s bells.”

Murphy arched an eyebrow.

“No wedding rings any where,” I said. “No wedding pictures. And ...” I finally found a framedfamily picture, which looked to have been there for a while, among all the snapshots. Greg andCindy were both in it, along with an older couple and a younger man.

“Jesus, Murph,” I said. “They weren’t a married couple. They were brother and sister.”

Murphy eyed the intertwined bodies. There were no signs of struggle. Clothes, champagneflutes, and an empty bubbly bottle lay scattered. “Married, no,” she said. “Couple, yes.” Shewas unruffled. She’d already worked that out for herself.

“Ick,” I said. “But that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“These two. They were together—and they went insane doing it. This has the earmarks ofsomeone tampering with their minds.”

Murphy squinted at me. “Why?”

I spread my hands. “Let’s say Greg and Cindy bump into Bad Guy X. Bad Guy X gets into theirheads and makes them fall wildly in love and lust with each other. There’s nothing they can do

about the feelings—which seem perfectly natural—but on some level they’re aware that whatthey’re doing is not what they want, and dementedly wrong besides. Their compromisedconscious minds clash with their subconscious”—I gestured at the pictures—“and it escalatesuntil they can’t handle it anymore, and bang.” I shot Murphy with my thumb and forefinger.

“If you’re right, they aren’t the deceased,” Murphy said. “They’re the victims. Big difference.Which is it?”

“Wish I could say,” I said. “But the only evidence that could prove it one way or another isleaking out onto the floor. If we get a survivor, maybe I could take a peek and see, but barringthat, we’re stuck with legwork.”

Murphy sighed and looked down. “Two suicide pacts could—technically—be a coincidence.Three of them, no way it’s natural. This feels more like something’s MO. Could it be anotherone of those Skavis vampires?”

“They gun for loners,” I said, shaking my head. “These deaths don’t fit their profile.”

“So you’re telling me we need to turn up a common denominator to link the victims? Gosh, Iwish I could have thought of that on my own.”

I winced. “Yeah.” I glanced over at a couple of other SI detectives in the room, taking pictures ofthe bodies and documenting the walls and so on. Forensics wasn’t on-site. They don’t like towaste their time on the suicides of the emotionally disturbed, regardless of how bizarre theymight be. That was crap work, and as such had been dutifully passed to SI.

I lowered my voice. “If someone is playing mind games, the Council might know something. I’lltry to pick up the trail on that end. You start from here. Hopefully, I’ll earn my pay and we’llmeet in the middle.”

“Right.” Murph stared at the bodies, and her eyes were haunted. She knew what it was like tobe the victim of mental manipulation. I didn’t reach out to support her. She hated showingvulnerability, and I didn’t want to point out to her that I’d noticed.

Freddie reached a crescendo that told us love must die.

Murphy sighed and called, “For the love of God, someone turn off that damn record.”

“I’M SORRY, HARRY,” Captain Luccio said. “We don’t exactly have orbital satellites for detectingblack magic.”

I waited a second to be sure she was finished. The presence of so much magical talent on thefar end of the call meant that at times the lag could stretch out between Chicago andEdinburgh, the headquarters of the White Council of Wizards. Anastasia Luccio, captain of theWardens, my ex-girlfriend, had been readily forthcoming with the information the Council hadon any shenanigans going on in Chicago—which was exactly nothing.

“Too bad we don’t, eh?” I asked. “Unofficially—is there anyone who might know anything?”

“The Gatekeeper, perhaps. He has a gift for sensing problem areas. But no one has seen him forweeks, which is hardly unusual. And frankly, Warden Dresden, you’re supposed to be the onegiving us this kind of information.” Her voice was half teasing, half deadly serious. “What doyou think is happening?”

“Three couples, apparently lovey-dovey as hell, have committed dual suicide in the past twoweeks,” I told her. “The last two were brother and sister. There were some seriously irrationalcomponents to their behavior.”

“You suspect mental tampering,” she said. Her voice was hard.

Luccio had been a victim, too.

I found myself smiling somewhat bitterly at no one. She had been, among other things,mindboinked into going out with me. Which was apparently the only way anyone would dateme, lately. “It seems a reasonable suspicion. I’ll let you know what I turn up.”

“Use caution,” she said. “Don’t enter any suspect situation without backup on hand. There’stoo much chance that you could be compromised.”

“Compromised?” I asked. “Of the two people having this conversation, which one of themexposed the last guy rearranging people’s heads?”

“Touché,” Luccio said. “But he got away with it because we were overconfident. So use caution,anyway.”

“Planning on it,” I said.

There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Anastasia said, “How have you been,Harry?”

“Keeping busy,” I said. She had already apologized to me, sort of, for abruptly walking out of mypersonal life. She’d never intended to be there in the first place. There had been a realemotional tsunami around the events of last year, and I wasn’t the one who had gotten themost hurt by them. “You?”

“Keeping busy.” She was quiet for a moment and then said, “I know it’s over. But I’m glad forthe time we had together. It made me happy. Sometimes I—”

Miss feeling that, I thought, completing the sentence. My throat felt tight. “Nothing wrong withhappy.”

“No, there isn’t. When it’s real.” Her voice softened. “Be careful, Harry. Please.”

“I will,” I said.

I STARTED COMBING the supernatural world for answers and got almost nothing. The LittleFolk, who could usually be relied on to provide some kind of information, had nothing for me.Their memory for detail was very short, and the deaths had happened too long ago to get meanything but conflicting gibberish from them.

I made several mental nighttime sweeps through the city using the scale model of Chicago inmy basement, and got nothing but a headache for my trouble.

I called around the Paranet, the organization of folk with only modest magical gifts, the kindwho often found themselves being preyed upon by more powerful supernatural beings. Theyworked together now, sharing information, communicating successful techniques, andgenerally overcoming their lack of raw magical muscle with mutually supportive teamwork.They didn’t have anything for me, either.

I hit McAnally’s, a hub of the supernatural social scene, and asked a lot of questions. No onehad any answers. Then I started contacting the people I knew in the scene, starting with theones I thought most likely to provide information. I worked my way methodically down the list,crossing out names, until I got to Ask random people on the street.

There are days when I don’t feel like much of a wizard. Or an investigator. Or a wizardinvestigator.

Ordinary PIs have a lot of days like that, where they look and look and look for information andfind nothing. I get fewer of those days than most, on account of the whole wizard thing givingme a lot more options—but sometimes I come up goose eggs, anyway.

I just hate doing it when lives may be in danger.

FOUR DAYS LATER, all I knew was that nobody knew about any black magic happening inChicago, and the only traces of it I did find were the minuscule amounts of residue left fromblack magic wrought by those without enough power to be a threat (Warden Ramirez hadcoined the phrase “dim magic” to describe that kind of petty, essentially harmless malice).There were also the usual traces of dim magic performed subconsciously from a bed of darkemotions, probably by someone who might not even know they had a gift.

In other words, goose eggs.

Fortunately, Murphy got the job done.

Sometimes hard work is way better than magic.

MURPHY’S SATURN HAD gotten a little blown up a couple of years back, sort of my fault, andwhat with her demotion and all, it would be a while before she’d be able to afford somethingbesides her old Harley. For some reason, she didn’t want to take the motorcycle, so that left mycar, the ever trusty (almost always) Blue Beetle, an old-school VW Bug that had seen methrough one nasty scrape after another. More than once, it had been pounded badly, butalways it had risen to do battle once more—if by battle one means driving somewhere at asedate speed, without much acceleration and only middling gas mileage.

Don’t start. It’s paid for.

I stopped outside Murphy’s little white house, with its little pink rose garden, and rolled downthe window on the passenger side. “Make like the Dukes of Hazzard,” I said. “Door’s stuck.”

Murphy gave me a narrow look. Then she tried the door. It opened easily. She slid into thepassenger seat with a smug smile, closed the door, and didn’t say anything.

“Police work has made you cynical,” I said.

“If you want to ogle my butt, you’ll just have to work for it like everyone else, Harry.”

I snorted and put the car in gear. “Where we going?” “Nowhere until you buckle up,” she said,putting her own seat belt on.

“It’s my car,” I said.

“It’s the law. You want to get cited? ’Cause I can do that.”

I debated whether or not it was worth it while she gave me her cop look—and produced a

ballpoint pen.

I buckled up.

Murphy beamed at me. “Springfield. Head for I-55.”

I grunted. “Kind of out of your jurisdiction.”

“If we were investigating something,” Murphy said. “We’re not. We’re going to the fair.”

I eyed her sidelong. “On a date?”

“Sure, if someone asks,” she said off handedly. Then she froze for a second, and added, “It’s areasonable cover story.”

“Right,” I said. Her cheeks looked a little pink. Neither of us said anything for a little while.

I merged onto the highway, always fun in a car originally designed to rocket down theAutobahn at a blistering one hundred kilometers an hour, and asked Murphy, “Springfield?”

“State Fair,” she said. “That was the common denominator.”

I frowned, going over the dates in my head. “State Fair only runs, what? Ten days?”

Murphy nodded. “They shut down tonight.”

“But the first couple died twelve days ago.”

“They were both volunteer staff for the fair, and they were down there on the grounds settingup.” Murphy lifted a foot to rest her heel on the edge of the passenger seat, frowning out thewindow. “I found Skee-Ball tickets and one of those chintzy stuffed animals in the secondcouple’s apartment. And the Bardalackis got pulled over for speeding on I-55, five minutes outof Springfield and bound for Chicago.”

“So maybe they went to the fair,” I said. “Or maybe they were just taking a road trip orsomething.”

Murphy shrugged. “Possibly. But if I assume that it’s a coincidence, it doesn’t get meanywhere—and we’ve got nothing. If I assume there’s a connection, we’ve got a possibleanswer.”

I beamed at her. “I thought you didn’t like reading Parker.”

She eyed me. “That doesn’t mean his logic isn’t sound.”

“Oh. Right.”

She exhaled heavily. “It’s the best I’ve got. I just hope that if I get you into the general area, youcan pick up on whatever is going on.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking of walls papered in photographs. “Me, too.”

THE SMELLS ARE what I enjoy the most about places like the State Fair. You get combinations ofsmells at such events like none found anywhere else. Popcorn, roast nuts, and fast foodpredominate, and you can get anything you want to clog your arteries or burn out yourstomach lining. Chili dogs, funnel cakes, fried bread, majorly greasy pizza, candy apples, ye

gods. Evil food smells amazing—which is either proof that there is a Satan or some equivalentout there, or that the Almighty doesn’t actually want everyone to eat organic tofu all the time. Ican’t decide.

Other smells are a cross section, depending on where you’re standing. Disinfectant and filthwalking by the Porta-Potties, exhaust and burned oil and sun-baked asphalt and gravel in theparking lots, sunlight on warm bodies, suntan lotion, cigarette smoke and beer near some ofthe attendees, the pungent, honest smell of livestock near the animal shows, stock contests, orpony rides—all of it charging right up your nose. I like indulging my sense of smell.

Smell is the hardest sense to lie to.

Murphy and I started in midmorning and began walking around the fair in a methodical searchpattern. It took us all day. The State Fair is not a rinky-dink event.

“Dammit,” she said. “We’ve been here all day. You sure you haven’t sniffed out anything?”

“Nothing like what we’re looking for,” I said. “I was afraid of this.”

“Of what?”

“A lot of times, magic like this—complex, long-lasting, subtle, dark—doesn’t thrive well insunlight.” I glanced at the lengthening shadows. “Give it another half hour and we’ll try again.”

Murphy frowned at me. “I thought you always said magic isn’t about good and evil.”

“Neither is sunshine.”

Murphy exhaled, her displeasure plain. “You might have mentioned it to me before.”

“No way to know until we tried,” I said. “Think of it this way: Maybe we’re just looking in theexact wrong place.”

She sighed and squinted around at the nearby food trailers and concession stands. “Ugh. Thinkthere’s anything here that won’t make me split my jeans at the seams?”

I beamed. “Probably not. How about dogs and a funnel cake?”

“Bastard,” Murphy growled. Then, “Okay.”

HALFWAY THROUGH MY second hot dog, I realized we were being followed.

I kept myself from reacting, took another bite, and said, “Maybe this is the place after all.”

Murphy had found a place selling turkey drumsticks. She had cut the meat from the bone andonto a paper plate, and she was eating it with a plastic fork. She didn’t stop chewing or look up.“Whatcha got?”

“Guy in a maroon tee and tan BDU pants, about twenty feet away off your right shoulder. I’veseen him at least two other times today.”

“Doesn’t necessarily mean he’s following us.”

“He’s been busy doing nothing in particular all three times.”

Murphy nodded. “Five eight or so, long hair? Little soul tuft under his mouth?”

“Yeah.”

“He was sitting on a bench when I came out of the Porta-Potty,” Murphy said. “Also doingnothing.” She shrugged and went back to eating.

“How do you want to play it?”

“We’re here with a zillion people, Harry.” She deepened her voice and blocked out any hint of anasal tone. “You want I should whack him until he talks?”

I grunted and finished my hot dog. “Doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe he’s got a crushon you.”

Murphy snorted. “Maybe he’s got a crush on you.”

I covered a respectable belch with my hand and reached for my funnel cake. “Who could blamehim.” I took a bite and nodded. “All right. We’ll see what happens, then.”

Murphy nodded and sipped at her Diet Coke. “Will says you and Anastasia broke up a whileback.”

“Will talks too much,” I said darkly.

She glanced a little bit away. “He’s your friend. He worries about you.”

I studied her averted face for a moment and then nodded. “Well,” I said, “tell Will he doesn’tneed to worry. It sucked. It sucks less now. I’ll be fine. Fish in the sea, never meant to be, etcetera.” I paused over another bite of funnel cake and asked, “How’s Kincaid?”

“The way he always is,” Murphy said.

“You get to be a few centuries old, you get a little set in your ways.”

She shook her head. “It’s his type. He’d be that way if he were twenty. He walks his own roadand doesn’t let anyone make him do differently. Like ...”

She stopped before she could say who Kincaid was like. She ate her turkey leg.

A shiver passed over the fair, a tactile sensation to my wizard’s senses. Sundown. Twilightwould go on for a while yet, but the light left in the sky would no longer hold the creatures ofthe night at bay.

Murphy glanced up at me, sensing the change in my level of tension. She finished off her drinkwhile I stuffed the last of the funnel cake into my mouth, and we stood up together.

THE WESTERN SKY was still a little bit orange when I finally sensed magic at work.

We were near the carnival, a section of the fair full of garishly lit rides, heavily slanted games ofchance, and chintzy attractions of every kind. It was full of screaming, excited little kids, parentswith frayed patience, and fashion-enslaved teenagers. Music tinkled and brayed tinny tunes.Lights flashed and danced. Barkers bleated out cajolement, encouragement, and condolencesin almost-equal measures.

We drifted through the merry chaos, our maroon-shirted tail following along ten to twentyyards behind. I walked with my eyes half closed, giving no more heed to my vision than a

bloodhound on a trail. Murphy stayed beside me, her expression calm, her blue eyes alert forphysical danger.

Then I felt it—a quiver in the air, no more noticeable than the fading hum from a gently pluckedguitar string. I noted its direction and walked several more paces before checking again, in anattempt to triangulate the source of the disturbance. I got a rough fix on it in under a minuteand realized I had stopped and was staring.

“Harry?” Murphy asked. “What is it?”

“Something down there,” I said, nodding to the midway. “It’s faint. But it’s something.”

Murph inhaled sharply. “This must be the place. There goes our tail.”

We didn’t have to communicate the decision to each other. If the tail belonged to whoever wasbehind this, we couldn’t let him get away to give the culprit forewarning—and odds wereexcellent that the sudden rabbit impersonation by the man in maroon would result in hisleading us somewhere interesting.

We turned and gave pursuit.

A footrace on open ground is one thing. Running through a crowded carnival is something elseentirely. You can’t sprint, unless you want to wind up falling down a lot and attracting a lot ofattention. You have to hurry along, hopping between clusters of people, never really getting thechance to pour on the gas. The danger in a chase like this isn’t that the quarry will outrun you,but that you’ll lose him in the crowd.

I had a huge advantage. I’m freakishly tall. I could see over everyone and spot Mr. Maroonbobbing and weaving his way through the crowd. I took the lead and Murphy followed.

I got within a couple of long steps of Maroon, but was interdicted by a gaggle of seniors inShriners caps. He caught a break at the same time, a stretch of open ground beyond theShriners, and by the time I got through, I saw Maroon handing tickets to a carnie. He hopped uponto a platform, got into a little roller coaster-style car, and vanished into an attraction.

“Dammit!” Murphy said, panting. “What now?”

Behind the attraction, advertised as the Tunnel of Terror, there was an empty space, theinterior of a circle of several similar rides and games. There wouldn’t be anyone to hide behindin there. “You take the back. I’ll watch the front. Whoever spots him gives a shout.”

“Got it.” Murphy hurried off around the Tunnel of Terror. She frowned at a little plastic barrierwith an AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY notice on it, then calmly ignored it and went on over.

“Anarchist,” I muttered, and settled down to wait for Maroon to figure out he’d been treed.

He didn’t appear.

The dingy little roller coaster car came wheezing slowly out of the opposite side of theplatform, empty. The carnie, an old fellow with a scruffy white beard, didn’t notice—he wasdozing in his chair.

Murphy returned a few seconds later. “There are two doors on the back,” she reported, “bothof them chained and locked from the outside. He didn’t come out that way.”

I inhaled and nodded at the empty car. “Not here, either. Look, we can’t just stand around.Maybe he’s running through a tunnel or something. We’ve got to know if he’s inside.”

“I’ll go flush him out,” she said. “You pick him up when he shows.”

“No way,” I said. “We stay with our wing”—I glanced at Murphy—“person. The power I sensedcame from somewhere nearby. If we split up, we’re about a million times more vulnerable tomental manipulation. And if this guy is more than he appears, neither of us wants to take himsolo.”

She grimaced, nodded, and we started toward the Tunnel of Terror together.

The old carnie woke up as we came up the ramp, let out a wheezing cough, and pointed to asign that required us to give him three tickets each for the ride. I hadn’t bought any, and theticket counter was more than far enough away for Maroon to scamper if we stopped to followthe rules.

“Sir,” Murphy said, “a man we’re looking for just went into your attraction, but he didn’t comeout again. We need to go in and look for him.”

He blinked gummy eyes at Murphy and said, “Three tickets.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “A fugitive may be hiding inside the Tunnel of Terror. Weneed to check and see if he’s there.”

The carnie snorted. “Three tickets, missy. Though it ain’t the nicest room you two could rent.”

Murphy’s jaw muscles flexed.

I stepped forward. “Hey, man,” I said. “Harry Dresden, PI. If you wouldn’t mind, all we need todo is get inside for five minutes.”

He eyed me. “PI, huh?”

I produced my license and showed it to him. He eyed it and then me. “You don’t look like noprivate investigator I ever saw. Where’s your hat?”

“In the shop,” I said. “Transmission gave out.” I winked at him and held up a folded twentybetween my first and second fingers. “Five minutes?”

He yawned. “Naw. Can’t let nobody run around loose in there.” He reached out and took thetwenty. “Then again, what you and your lady friend mutually consent to do once you’re insideain’t my affair.” He rose, pulled a lever, and gestured at the car. “Mount up,” he leered. “Andkeep your, ah, extremities inside the car at all times.”

We got in, and I was nearly scalded by the steam coming out of Murphy’s ears. “You just had toplay along with that one.”

“We needed to get inside,” I said. “Just doing my job, Sergeant.”

She snorted.

“Hey, Murph, look,” I said, holding up a strap of old, worn leather. “Seat belts.”

She gave me a look that could have scoured steel. Then, with a stubborn set of her jaw, secured

the flimsy thing. Her expression dared me to object.

I grinned and relaxed. It isn’t easy to really get Murph’s goat and get away with it.

On the other side of the platform, the carnie pulled another lever, and a moment later the littlecart started rolling forward at the blazing speed of one, maybe even two miles an hour. A darkcurtain parted ahead of us, and we rolled into the Tunnel of Terror.

Murphy promptly drew her gun—it was dark, but I heard the scratch of its barrel on plastic asshe drew it from its holder. She snapped a small LED flashlight into its holder beneath the gunbarrel and flicked it on. We were in a cramped little tunnel, every surface painted black, andthere was absolutely nowhere for Maroon to be hiding.

I shook out the charm bracelet on my left wrist, preparing defensive energies in case they wereneeded. Murph and I had been working together long enough to know our roles. If troublecame, I would defend us. Murphy and her Sig would reply.

A door opened at the end of the little hallway, and we rolled forward into an open set dressedto look like a rustic farmhouse, with a lot of subtle details meant to be scary—severed fingers atthe base of the chicken-chopping stump, just below the bloody ax, glowing eyes appearing in anupstairs window of the farmhouse, that kind of thing. There was no sign of Maroon andprecious little place for him to hide.

“Better get that seat belt off,” I told her. “We want to be able to move fast if it comes to that.”

“Yeah,” she said, and reached down, just as something huge and terrifying dropped onto thecar from the shadows above us, screaming.

Adrenaline hit my system like a runaway bus, and I looked up to see a decidedly demonicscarecrow hanging a few feet above our heads, bouncing on its wires, and playing a recordingof cackling, mad laughter.

“Jesus Christ,” Murphy breathed, lowering her gun. She was a little white around the eyes.

We looked at each other and both burst into high, nervous laughs.

“Tunnel of Terror,” Murphy said. “We are so cool.”

“Total badasses,” I said, grinning.

The car continued its slow grind forward, and Murphy unfastened the seat belt. We moved intothe next area, meant to be a zombie-infested hospital. It had a zombie mannequin, which burstout of a closet near the track, and plenty of gore. We got out of the car and scouted a couple ofspots where he might have been but wasn’t. Then we hopped into the car again before it couldleave the set.

So it went, on through a ghoulish graveyard, a troglodyte-teaming cavern, and a literal OldWest ghost town. We came up with nothing, but we moved well as a team, better than I couldremember doing with anyone before. Everything felt as smooth and natural as if we’d beenmoving together our whole lives. We did it in total silence, too, divining what each other woulddo through pure instinct.

Even great teams lose a game here or there, though. We came up with diddly and emergedfrom the Tunnel of Terror with neither Maroon nor any idea where he’d gone.

“Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “This week has been an investigative suckfest for me.”

Murphy tittered again. “You said suck.”

I grinned at her and looked around. “Well,” I said, “we don’t know where Maroon went. If theyhadn’t made us already, they have now.”

“Can you pick up on the signal-whatsit again?”

“Energy signature,” I said. “Maybe. It’s pretty vague, though. I’m not sure how much moreprecise I can get.”

“Let’s find out,” she said.

I nodded. “Right, then.” We started around the suspect circle of attractions, moving slowly andtrying to blend into the crowds. When a couple of rowdy kids went by, one chasing the other, Iput an arm around her shoulders and drew her into the shelter of my body so she wouldn’t getbowled over.

She exhaled slowly and did not step away from me.

My heart started beating faster.

“Harry,” she said quietly.

“Yeah?”

“You and me . . . Why haven’t we ever ...” She looked up at me. “Why not?”

“The usual, I guess,” I said quietly. “Trouble. Duty. Other people involved.”

She shook her head. “Why not?” she repeated, her eyes direct. “All these years have gone by.And something could have happened, but it never did. Why not?”

I licked my lips. “Just like that? We just decide to be together?”

Her eyelids lowered. “Why not?”

My heart did the drum solo from “Wipeout.”

Why not?

I bent my head down to her mouth and kissed her, very gently.

She turned into the kiss, pressing her body against mine. It was a little bit awkward. I was mostof two feet taller than she was. We made up for grace with enthusiasm, her arms twiningaround my neck as she kissed me, hungry and deep.

“Whoa,” I said, drawing back a moment later. “Work. Right?”

She looked at me for a moment, her cheeks pink, her lips a little swollen from the kiss, and said,“Right.” She closed her eyes and nodded. “Right. Work first.”

“Then dinner?” I asked.

“Dinner. My place. We can order in.”

My belly trembled in sudden excitement at that proposition. “Right.” I looked around. “So let’sfind this thing and get it over with.”

We started moving again. A circuit around the attractions got me no closer to the source of theenergy I’d sensed earlier.

“Dammit,” I said, frustrated, when we’d completed the pattern.

“Hey,” Murphy said. “Don’t beat yourself up about it, Harry.” Her hand slipped into mine, ourfingers intertwining. “I’ve been a cop a long time. You don’t always get the bad guy. And if yougo around blaming yourself for it, you wind up crawling into a bottle or eating your own gun.”

“Thank you,” I said quietly. “But . . .”

“Heh,” Murphy said. “You said but.”

We both grinned like fools. I looked down at our entwined hands. “I like this.”

“So do I,” Murphy said. “Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?”

“Beats me.”

“Are we just that stupid?” she asked. “I mean, people, in general. Are we really so blind that wemiss what’s right there in front of us?”

“As a species, we’re essentially insane,” I said. “So, yeah, probably.” I lifted our hands andkissed her fingertips. “I’m not missing it now, though.”

Her smile lit up several thousand square feet of the midway. “Good.”

The echo of a thought rattled around in my head: Insane . . .

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, hell’s bells.”

She frowned at me. “What?”

“Murph . . . I think we got whammied.”

She blinked at me. “What? No, we didn’t.”

“I think we did.”

“I didn’t see anything or feel anything. I mean, nothing, Harry. I’ve felt magic like that before.”

“Look at us,” I said, waving our joined hands.

“We’ve been friends a long time, Harry,” she said. “And we’ve had a couple of near missesbefore. This time we just didn’t screw it up. That’s all that’s happening here.”

“What about Kincaid?” I asked her.

She mulled over that one for a second. Then she said, “I doubt he’ll even notice I’m gone.” Shefrowned at me. “Harry, I haven’t been this happy in . . . I never thought I could feel this wayagain. About anyone.”

My heart continued to go pitty-pat. “I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “I feel the sameway.”

Her smile warmed even more. “Then what’s the problem? Isn’t that what love is supposed tobe like? Effortless?”

I had to think about that one for a second. And then I said, carefully and slowly, “Murph, thinkabout it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know how good this is?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“How right it feels?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“How easy it was?”

She nodded energetically, her eyes bright.

I leaned down toward her for emphasis. “It just isn’t fucked-up enough to really be you andme.”

Her smile faltered.

“My God,” she said, her eyes widening. “We got whammied.”

WE RETURNED TO the Tunnel of Terror.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “I don’t . . . I didn’t feel anything happen. I don’t feel any differentnow. I thought being aware of this kind of thing made it go away.”

“No,” I said. “But it helps sometimes.”

“Do you still . . . ?”

I squeezed her hand once more before letting go. “Yeah,” I said. “I still feel it.”

“Is it . . . Is it going to go away?”

I didn’t answer her. I didn’t know. Or maybe I didn’t want to know.

The old carnie saw us coming, and his face flickered with apprehension as soon as he looked atus. He stood up and looked from the control board for the ride to the entranceway to theinterior.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Sneaky bastard. You just try it.”

He flicked one of the switches and shambled toward the tunnel’s entrance.

I made a quick effort of will, raised a hand, and swept it in a horizontal arc, snarling, “Forzare!”Unseen force knocked his legs out from beneath him and tossed him into an involuntarypratfall.

Murphy and I hurried up onto the platform before he could get to his feet and run. We needn’thave bothered. The carnie was apparently a genuine old guy, not some supernatural being indisguise. He lay on the platform moaning in pain. I felt kind of bad for beating up a senior

citizen.

But hey. On the other hand, he did swindle me out of twenty bucks.

Murphy stood over him, her blue eyes cold, and said, “Where’s the bolt-hole?”

The carnie blinked at her. “Wha?”

“The trapdoor,” she snapped. “The secret cabinet. Where is he?”

I frowned and walked toward the entranceway.

“Please,” the carnie said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“The hell you don’t,” Murphy said. She leaned down and grabbed the man by the shirt withboth hands and leaned closer, a snarl lifting her lip. The carnie blanched.

Murph could be pretty badass for such a tiny thing. I loved that about her.

“I can’t,” the carnie said. “I can’t. I get paid not to see anything. She’ll kill me. She’ll kill me.”

I parted the heavy curtain leading into the entry tunnel and spotted it at once—a circular holein the floor about two feet across, the top end of a ladder just visible. A round lid lay rotated toone side, painted as flat black as the rest of the hall. “Here,” I said to Murph. “That’s why wedidn’t spot anything. By the time you had your light on, it was already behind us.”

Murphy scowled down at the carnie and said, “Give me twenty bucks.”

The man licked his lips. Then he fished my folded twenty out of his shirt pocket and passed it toMurphy.

She nodded and flashed her badge. “Get out of here before I realize I witnessed you taking abribe and endangering lives by letting customers use the attraction in an unsafe manner.”

The carnie bolted.

Murphy handed me the twenty. I pocketed it, and we climbed down the ladder.

WE REACHED THE bottom and went silent again. Murphy’s body language isn’t exactlysubtle—it can’t be, when you’re her size and working law enforcement. But she could move asquietly as smoke when she needed to. I’m gangly. It was more of an effort for me.

The ladder took us down to what looked like the interior of a buried railroad car. There wereelectrical conduits running along the walls. Light came from a doorway at the far end of the car.I moved forward first, shield bracelet at the ready, and Murphy walked a pace behind me andto my right, her Sig held ready.

The doorway at the end of the railroad car led us into a large workroom, teeming withcomputers, file cabinets, microscopes, and at least one deluxe chemistry set.

Maroon sat at one of the computers, his profile in view. “Dammit, Stu,” he snarled. “I told youthat you can’t keep coming down here to use the john. You’ll just have to walk to one of the—”He glanced up at us and froze in midsentence, his eyes wide and locked on Murphy’s leveledgun.

“Stu took the rest of the night off,” I said amiably. “Where’s your boss?”

A door opened at the far end of the workroom and a young woman of medium heightappeared. She wore glasses and a lab coat, and neither of them did anything to make her lookless than gorgeous. She looked at us and then at Maroon and said, in a precise, British accent,“You idiot.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Good help is hard to find.”

The woman in the lab coat looked at me with dark, intense eyes, and I sensed what felt like aphantom pressure against my temples, as if wriggling tadpoles were slithering along the surfaceof my skin. It was a straightforward attempt at mental invasion, but I’d been practicing mydefenses for a while now, and I wasn’t falling for something that obvious. I pushed the invasivethoughts away with an effort of will and said, “Don’t meet her eyes, Murph. She’s a vampire.Red Court.”

“Got it,” she said, her gun never moving from Maroon.

The vampire looked at us both for a moment. Then she said, “You need no introduction, Mr.Dresden. I am Baroness LeBlanc. And our nations are not, at the moment, in a state of war.”

“I’ve always been a little fuzzy on legal niceties,” I said. I had several devices with me that Icould use to defend myself. I was ready to use any of them. A vampire in close quarters isnothing to laugh at. LeBlanc could tear off three or four of my limbs in the time it takes to drawand fire a gun. I watched her closely, ready to act at the slightest semblance of an attack. “Weboth know the war is going to start up again eventually.”

“You are out of anything reasonably like your territory,” she said, “and you are trespassingupon mine. I would be well within my rights under the Accords to kill you and bury your torsoand limbs in individual graves.”

“That’s the problem with this ride,” I complained to Murphy. “There’s nothing that’s actuallyscary in the Tunnel of Terror.”

“You did get your money back,” she pointed out.

“Ah, true.” I smiled faintly at LeBlanc. “Look, Baroness. You know who I am. You’re doingsomething to people’s minds, and I want it stopped.”

“If you do not leave,” she said, “I will consider it an act of war.”

“Hooray,” I said in a Ben Stein monotone, spinning one forefinger in the air like a New Year’snoisemaker. “I’ve already kicked off one war with the Red Court, and I will cheerfully do it againif that is what is necessary to protect people from you.”

“That’s irrational,” LeBlanc said. “Completely irrational.”

“Tell her, Murph.”

“He’s completely irrational,” Murphy said, her tone wry.

LeBlanc regarded me impassively for a moment. Then she smiled faintly and said, “Perhaps aphysical confrontation is an inappropriate solution.”

I frowned. “Really?”

She shrugged. “Not all of the Red Court are battle-hungry blood addicts, Dresden. My work

here has no malevolent designs. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

I tilted my head. “That’s funny. All the corpses piled up say differently.”

“The process does have its side effects,” she admitted. “But the lessons garnered from themserve only to improve my work and make it safer and more effective. Honestly, you should besupporting me, Dresden, not trying to shut me down.”

“Supporting you?” I smiled a little. “Just what is it you think you’re doing that’s so darnedwonderful?”

“I am creating love.”

I barked out a laugh.

LeBlanc’s face remained steady, serious.

“You think that this, this warping people into feeling something they don’t want to feel islove?”

“What is love,” LeBlanc said, “if not a series of electrochemical signals in the brain? Signals thatcan be duplicated, like any other sensation.”

“Love is more than that,” I said.

“Do you love this woman?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But that isn’t anything new.”

LeBlanc showed her teeth. “But your current feelings of longing and desire are new, are theynot? New and entirely indistinguishable from your genuine emotions? Wouldn’t you say,Sergeant Murphy?”

Murphy swallowed but didn’t look at the vampire. LeBlanc’s uncomplicated mental attackmight be simple for a wizard to defeat, but any normal human being would probably be gonebefore they realized their minds were under attack. Instead of answering, she asked a questionof her own. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do this? Why experiment with making people fall in love?”

LeBlanc arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t it obvious?”

I sucked in a short breath, realizing what was happening. “The White Court,” I said.

The Whites were a different breed of vampire from the Reds, feeding on the life essence oftheir victims, generally through seduction. Genuine love and genuine tokens of love were theirkryptonite, their holy water. The love of another human being in an intimate relationship sortof rubbed off on you, making the very touch of your skin an anathema to the White Court.

LeBlanc smiled at me. “Granted, there are some aberrant effects from time to time. But so far,that’s been a very small percentage of the test pool. And the survivors are, as you yourself haveexperienced, perfectly happy. They have a love that most of your kind seldom find and evenmore infrequently keep. There are no victims here, Wizard.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right. Except for the victims.”

LeBlanc exhaled. “Mortals are like mayflies, Wizard. They live a brief time, and then they aregone. And those who have died because of my work at least died after days or weeks of perfectbliss. There are many who ended a much longer life with less. What I’m doing here has thepotential to protect mortalkind from the White Court forever.”

“It isn’t genuine love if it’s forced upon someone,” Murphy said, her tone harsh.

“No,” LeBlanc said. “But I believe the real thing will very easily grow from such a foundation ofcompanionship and happiness.”

“Gosh, you’re noble,” I said.

LeBlanc’s eyes sparkled with something ugly.

“You’re doing this to get rid of competition,” I said. “And, hell, maybe to try to increase theworld’s population. Make more food.”

The vampire regarded me levelly. “There are multiple motivations behind the work,” she said.“Many of my Court agreed to the logic you cite when they would never have supported theidea of strengthening and defending mortals.”

“Ohhhhh,” I said, drawing the word out. “You’re the vampire with a heart of gold. FlorenceNightingale with fangs. I guess that makes it okay, then.”

LeBlanc stared at me. Then her eyes flicked to Murphy and back. She smiled thinly. “There is aspecial cage reserved for you at the Red Court, Dresden. Its bars are lined with blades andspikes, so that if you fall asleep, they will cut and gouge you awake.”

“Shut up,” Murphy said.

LeBlanc continued in a calmly amused tone. “The bottom is a closed bowl nearly a foot deep, sothat you will stand in your own waste. And there are three spears with needle-sized tips waitingin a rack beneath the cage, so that any who pass you can pause and take a few moments toparticipate in your punishment.”

“Shut up,” Murphy growled.

“Eventually,” LeBlanc purred, “your guts will be torn out and left in a pile at your feet. Andwhen you are dead, your skin will be flayed from your body, tanned, and made into upholsteryfor one of the chairs in the Red Temple.”

“Shut up!” snarled Murphy, and her voice was savage. Her gun whipped over to cover LeBlanc.“Shut your mouth, bitch!”

I realized the danger an instant too late. It was exactly the reaction LeBlanc had intended toprovoke. “Murph! No!”

Once Murphy’s Sig was pointing elsewhere, Maroon produced a gun from beneath his desk andraised it. He was pulling the trigger even before he could level it for a shot, blazing away as fastas he could move his finger. He wasn’t quite fifteen feet away from Murphy, but the first fiveshots missed her as I spun and brought the invisible power of my shield bracelet down betweenthe two of them. Bullets hit the shield with flashes of light and sent little concentric blue rings

rippling through the air from the point of impact.

Murphy, meanwhile, had opened up on LeBlanc. Murph fired almost as quickly as Maroon, butshe had the training and discipline necessary for combat. Her bullets smacked into thevampire’s torso, tearing through pale flesh and drawing gouts of red-black blood. LeBlancstaggered to one side—she wouldn’t be dead, but the shots had probably rung her bell for asecond or two.

I lowered the shield as Maroon’s gun clicked on empty, lifted my right fist, and triggered thebraided energy ring on my index finger with a short, uplifting motion. The ring saved back alittle energy every time I moved my arm, storing it so that I could unleash it at need. Unseenforce flew out from the ring, plucked Maroon out of his chair, and slammed him into the ceiling.He dropped back down, hit his back on the edge of the desk, and fell into a senseless sprawl onthe floor. The gun flew from his fingers.

“I’m out!” Murphy screamed.

I whirled back to find LeBlanc pushing herself off the wall, regaining her balance. She gaveMurphy a look of flat hatred, and her eyes flushed pure black, iris and sclera alike. She openedher mouth in an inhuman scream, and then the vampire hiding beneath LeBlanc’s seeminglyhuman form exploded outward like a racehorse emerging from its gate, leaving shreds of pale,bloodless skin in its wake.

It was a hideous thing—black and flabby and slimy looking, with a flaccid belly, a batlike face,and long, spindly limbs. LeBlanc’s eyes bulged hideously as she flew toward me.

I brought my shield up in time to intercept her, and she rebounded from it, to fall back to thesection of floor already stained with her blood.

“Down!” Murphy shouted.

I dropped down onto my heels and lowered the shield.

LeBlanc rose up again, even as I heard Murphy take a deep breath, exhale halfway, and hold it.Her gun barked once.

The vampire lost about a fifth of her head as the bullet tore into her skull. She staggered backagainst the wall, limbs thrashing, but she still wasn’t dead. She began to claw her way to herfeet again.

Murphy squeezed off six more shots, methodically. None of them missed. LeBlanc fell to thefloor. Murphy took a step closer, aimed, and put another ten or twelve rounds into the fallenvampire’s head. By the time she was done, the vampire’s skull looked like a smashed gourd.

A few seconds later, LeBlanc stopped moving.

Murphy reloaded again and kept the gun trained on the corpse.

“Nice shootin’, Tex,” I said. I checked out Maroon. He was still breathing.

“So,” Murphy said, “problem solved?”

“Not really,” I said. “LeBlanc was no practitioner. She can’t be the one who was working thewhammy.”

Murphy frowned and eyed Maroon for a second.

I went over to the downed man and touched my fingers lightly to his brow. There was notelltale energy signature of a practitioner. “Nope.”

“Who, then?”

I shook my head. “This is delicate, difficult magic. There might not be three people on the entireWhite Council who could pull it off. So . . . it’s most likely a focus artifact of some kind.”

“A what?”

“An item that has a routine built into it,” I said. “You pour energy in one end, and you getresults on the other.”

Murphy scrunched up her nose. “Like those wolf belts the FBI had?”

“Yeah, just like that.” I blinked and snapped my fingers. “Just like that!”

I hurried out of the little complex and up the ladder. I went to the tunnel car and took the oldleather seat belt out of it. I turned it over and found the back inscribed with nearly invisiblesigils and signs. Now that I was looking for it, I could feel the tingle of energy moving within it.“Hah,” I said. “Got it.”

Murphy frowned back at the entry to the Tunnel of Terror. “What do we do about Billy theKid?”

“Not much we can do,” I said. “You want to try to explain what happened here to theSpringfield cops?”

She shook her head.

“Me, either,” I said. “The kid was LeBlanc’s thrall. I doubt he’s a danger to anyone without avampire to push him into it.” Besides, the Reds would probably kill him on general principles,anyway, once they found out about LeBlanc’s death.

We were silent for a moment, then stepped in close to each other and hugged gently. Murphyshivered.

“You okay?” I asked quietly.

She leaned her head against my chest. “How do we help all the people she screwed with?”

“Burn the belt,” I said, and stroked her hair with one hand. “That should purify everyone it’slinked to.”

“Everyone,” she said slowly.

I blinked twice. “Yeah.”

“So once you do it . . . we’ll see what a bad idea this is. And remember that we both have verygood reasons to not get together.”

“Yeah.”

“And . . . we won’t be feeling this anymore. This . . . happy. This complete.”

“No. We won’t.”

Her voice cracked. “Dammit.”

I hugged her tight. “Yeah.”

“I want to tell you to wait awhile,” she said. “I want us to be all noble and virtuous for keeping itintact. I want to tell you that if we destroy the belt, we’ll be destroying the happiness of Godknows how many people.”

“Junkies are happy when they’re high,” I said quietly, “but they don’t need to be happy. Theyneed to be free.”

I put the belt back into the car, turned my right hand palm up, and murmured a word. A sphereof white-hot fire gathered over my fingers. I flicked a hand, and the sphere arched gently downinto the car and began charring the belt to ashes. I felt sick.

I didn’t watch. I turned to Karrin and kissed her again, hot and urgent, and she returned the kissfrantically. It was as though we thought we might keep something from escaping our mouths ifthey were sealed together in a kiss.

I felt it when it went away.

We both stiffened slightly. We both remembered that we had decided the two of us couldn’twork out. We both remembered that Murphy was already involved with someone else and thatit wasn’t in her nature to stray.

She stepped back from me, her arms folded across her stomach.

“Ready?” I asked her quietly.

She nodded, and we started walking. Neither of us said anything until we reached the BlueBeetle.

“You know what, Harry?” she said quietly from the other side of the car.

“I know,” I told her. “Like you said, love hurts.”

We got into the Beetle and headed back to Chicago.