"The place looks so nice," she said. "And your clothes smell like fabric softener. You've never used fabric softener in your life."
"Oh. That." You can't tell people about it when faeries are doing your housework, or they get ticked off and leave. "I sort of have a cleaning service."
"I hear you've been too busy to clean up," Susan said.
"Just making a living."
Susan smiled. "I heard you saved the world from some kind of doom. Is it true?"
I fiddled with my drink. "Sort of."
Susan laughed. "How do you sort of save the world?"
"I only saved it in a Greenpeace kind of way. If I'd blown it, there might have been a historically bad storm, but I don't think anyone would have noticed the real damage for thirty or forty years-climate change takes time."
"Sounds scary," Susan said.
I shrugged. "Mostly I was just trying to save my own ass. The world was a twofer. Maybe I'm getting cynical. I suspect the only thing I accomplished was to keep the faeries from screwing up the place so that we could screw it up ourselves."
I sat down on the chair again, and we opened the Cokes and drank in silence for a bit. My heart eventually stopped pounding quite so loudly.
"I miss you," I said finally. "So does your editor. She called me a couple of weeks ago. Said your articles had quit coming in."
Susan nodded. "That's one reason I'm here. I owe her more than a letter or a phone call."
"You're quitting?" I asked.
She nodded.
"You find something else?"
"Sort of," she said. She brushed her hair back from her face with one hand. "I can't tell you everything right now."
I frowned. For as long as I'd known her, Susan had been driven by a passion for discovering the truth and sharing it with other people. Her work at the Arcane Arcane had arisen from her stubborn refusal to deny things she saw as the truth, even if they had seemed insane. She was one of the rare people who stopped and thought about things, even weird and supernatural things, instead of dismissing them out of hand. That's how she'd begun work at the had arisen from her stubborn refusal to deny things she saw as the truth, even if they had seemed insane. She was one of the rare people who stopped and thought about things, even weird and supernatural things, instead of dismissing them out of hand. That's how she'd begun work at the Arcane Arcane. That was how she had originally met me.
"Are you all right?" I asked. "Are you in trouble?"
"Relatively speaking, no," she said. "But you are. That's why I'm here, Harry."
"What do you mean?"
"I came to warn you. The Red Court-"
"Sent Paolo Ortega to call me out. I know."
She sighed. "But you don't know what you're getting into. Harry, Ortega is one of the most dangerous nobles of their Court. He's a warlord. He's killed half a dozen of the White Council's Wardens in South America since the war started, and he's the one who planned and executed the attack on Archangel last year."
I sat straight up at that, the blood draining from my face. "How do you know about that?"
"I'm an investigative reporter, Harry. I investigated."
I toyed with the Coke can, frowning down at it. "All the same. He came here asking for a duel. A fair fight. If he's serious, I'll take him on."
"There's more that you need to know," Susan said.
"Like what?"
"Ortega's opinion on the war is not the popular one within the Red Court. A few of the upper crust of the vampires support his way of thinking. But most of them like the idea of a lot of constant bloodshed. They also like the idea of a war to wipe out the White Council. They figure that if they get rid of the wizards once and for all, they won't have to worry about keeping a low profile in the future."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"Think about it," Susan said. "Harry, the White Council is fighting this war reluctantly. If they had a decent excuse, they'd end it. That's Ortega's whole plan. He fights you, kills you, and then the White Council sues for peace. They'll pay some kind of concession that doesn't involve the death of one of their members, and that will be that. War over."
I blinked. "How did you find out-"
"Hello, Earth to Harry. I told you, I investigated."
I frowned until the lines between my eyebrows ached. "Right, right. Well, as plans go, I guess it sounds good," I said. "Except for that middle part where I die."
She gave me a small smile. "Much of the rest of the Red Court would rather you kept on breathing. As long as you're alive, they have a reason to keep the war going."
"Swell," I said.
"They'll try to interfere with any duel. I just thought you should know."
I nodded. "Thanks," I said. "I'll-"
Just then, someone knocked firmly at my door. Susan stiffened and rose, poker in hand. I got up a lot more slowly, opened a drawer in the night table beside the chair, and drew out the gun I kept at home, a great big old Dirty Harry Callahan number that weighed about seventy-five thousand pounds. I also took out a length of silk rope about a yard long, and draped it over my neck so that I could get it off in a hurry if need be.
I took the gun in both hands, pointed it at the floor, drew back the hammer, and asked the door, "Who is it?"
There was a moment's silence and then a calm, male voice asked, "Is Susan Rodriguez there?"
I glanced at Susan. She straightened more, her eyes flashing with anger, but she put the poker back in its stand beside the fireplace. Then she motioned to me and said, "Put it away. I know him."
I uncocked the revolver, but I didn't put it away as Susan crossed to the door and opened it.
The most bland-looking human being I had ever seen stood on the other side. He was maybe five nine, maybe one seventy-five. He had hair of medium brown, and eyes of the same ambiguous shade. He wore jeans, a medium-weight brown jacket, and worn tennis shoes. His face was unmemorable, neither appealing nor ugly. He didn't look particularly strong, or craven, or smart, or particularly anything else.
"What are you doing here?" he asked Susan without preamble. His voice was like the rest of him-about as exciting as a W-2.
Susan said, "I told you I was going to talk to him."
"You could have used the phone," the man pointed out. "There's no point to this."
"Hi," I said in a loud voice, and stepped up to my door. I towered over Blandman. And I had a great big gun in my hand, even if I did keep it pointed down at the floor. "I'm Harry Dresden."
He looked me up and down and then looked at Susan.
Susan sighed. "Harry, this is Martin."
"Hi, Martin," I said. I switched my sidearm to my other hand and thrust mine at him. "Nice to meet you."
Martin regarded my hand and then said, "I don't shake hands." That was evidently all the verbal interaction I merited, because he looked back at Susan and said, "We have to be up early."
We? We? We?
I looked at Susan, who flushed with embarrassment. She glared at Martin and then said to me, "I need to go, Harry. I wish I could have stayed longer."
"Wait," I said.
"I wish I could," she said. "I'll try to call you before we go."
There was that we we again. "Go? Susan-" again. "Go? Susan-"
"I'm sorry." She stood up on tiptoe and kissed my cheek, her too-warm lips soft. Then she left, brushing past Martin just hard enough to jostle him into taking a little step to keep his balance.
Martin nodded to me and walked out too. After a minute I followed them, long enough to see them getting into a cab on the street outside.
We.
"Hell's bells," I muttered, and stalked back inside my house. I slammed the door behind me, lit a candle, stomped into my little bathroom, and turned on the shower. The water was only a couple degrees short of becoming sleet, but I stripped and got in anyway, simmering with several varieties of frustration.
We.
We, we, we. Which implied she and someone else together. Someone who was not me. Was she? Susan, with the Pedantic Avenger there? That didn't track. I mean, hell's bells, the guy was just so dull. Boring. Blase.
And maybe stable.
Face it, Harry. Interesting you might be. Exciting you might be. Stable you ain't.
I pushed my head under the freezing water and left it there. Susan hadn't said they were together. Neither had he. I mean, that wouldn't be why she had broken off the kiss. She had a really good reason to do that, after all.
But then again, it wasn't like we were together. She'd been gone for better than a year.
A lot can change in a year.
Her mouth hadn't. Or her hands. Or the curve of her body. Or the smoldering sensuality of her eyes. Or the soft sounds she made as she arched against me, her body begging me to- I looked down at myself, sighed, and turned the water to its coldest setting.
I came out of the shower shriveled and turning blue, dried off, and got into bed.
I had just managed to get the covers warm so that I could stop shivering when my phone rang.
I swore sulfurously, got out of bed into the freezing air, snatched up the phone, and growled, "What." Then, on the off chance it was Susan, I forced some calm into my voice and said, "I mean, hello?"
"Sorry to wake you, Harry," said Karrin Murphy, the head of Chicago PD's Special Investigations division. SI routinely handled any crime that fell between the cracks of the other departments, as well as being handed the really smelly cases no one else wanted. As a result, they wound up looking into all kinds of things that weren't easily explained. Their job was to make sure that things were taken care of, and that everything typed up neatly into the final report.
Murphy called me in as a consultant from time to time, when she had something weird that she didn't know how to handle. We'd been working together for a while, and Murphy had gotten to where she and SI could handle your average, everyday supernatural riffraff. But from time to time, she ran into something that stumped her. My phone number is on her quick dial.
"Murph," I said. "What's up?"
"Unofficial business," she said. "I'd like your take on something."
"Unofficial means not paid, I guess," I said.
"You up for any pro bono work?" She paused and then said, "This could be important to me."
What the hell. My night had pretty much been shot anyway. "Where do you want me?"
"Cook County Morgue," Murphy said. "I want to show you a corpse."
Chapter Five They don't make morgues with windows. In fact, if the geography allows for it, they hardly ever make morgues above the ground. I guess it's partly because it must be easier to refrigerate a bunch of coffin-sized chambers in a room insulated by the earth. But that can't be all there is to it. Under the earth means a lot more than relative altitude. It's where dead things fit. Graves are under the earth. So are Hell, Gehenna, Hades, and a dozen other reported afterlives.
Maybe it says something about people. Maybe for us, under the earth is a subtle and profound statement. Maybe ground level provides us with a kind of symbolic boundary marker, an artificial construct that helps us remember that we are alive. Maybe it helps us push death's shadow back from our lives.
I live in a basement apartment and like it. What does that say about me?
Probably that I overanalyze things.
"You look pensive," Murphy said. We walked down an empty hospital corridor toward the Cook County Morgue. We'd had to go the long way around so that I could avoid any areas with important medical equipment. My leather duster whispered around my legs as I walked. My blasting rod thumped against my leg rhythmically, where I'd tied it to the inside of the duster. I'd traded in my slacks for blue jeans and my dress shoes for hiking boots.
Murphy didn't look like a monster-hunting Val-kyrie. Murphy looked like someone's kid sister. She was five nothing, a hundred and nothing, and was built like an athlete, all springy muscle. Her blond hair hung down over her blue eyes, and was cut close in back. She wore nicer clothes than usual-a maroon blouse with a grey pantsuit-and she had on more makeup than was her habit. She looked every inch the professional businesswoman.
That said, Murphy was a monster-hunting Valkyrie. She was the only person I'd ever heard of who had killed one with a chainsaw.
"I said you look pensive, Harry," she repeated, a little louder.
I shook my head and told Murphy, "I don't like hospitals."
She nodded. "Morgues spook me. Morgues and dogs."
"Dogs?" I asked.
"Not like beagles or cocker spaniels or anything. Just big dogs."
I nodded. "I like dogs. They give Mister something to snack on."
Murphy gave me a smile. "I've seen you spooked. It doesn't make you look like that."
"What do I look like?" I asked.
Murphy pursed her lips, as though considering her words. "You look worried. And frustrated. And guilty. You know, romance things."
I gave her a wry glance, and then nodded. "Susan's in town."
Murphy whistled. "Wow. She's...okay?"