"In time to behold her in her full, springy, nubile, youthful glory! By the time you let me talk to her, she'll have started to droop!"
"I'm almost certain you'll survive the trauma," I said.
"Life is about more than just survival, Harry."
"True," I said. "There's also work."
Bob rolled his eyelights in the skull's empty sockets. "Brother. You're keeping her cloistered and working me like a dog, too. That's not fair."
I started getting out the stuff I'd need to fire up Little Chicago. "Dog, right. Something odd happened tonight." I told Bob about Mouse and his barking. "What do you know about Temple Dogs?"
"More than you," Bob said. "But not much. Most of what I got is collected hearsay and folklore."
"Any of it likely true?"
"A bit," he said. "There are a few points of confluence where multiple sources agree."
"Hit me."
"Well, they're not entirely mortal," Bob said. "They're the scions of a celestial being called a Foo Dog and a mortal canine. They're very intelligent, very loyal, tough, and can seriously kick ass if they need to do it. But mostly, they're sentinels. They keep an eye out for dark spirits or dark energy, guard the people or places they're supposed to guard, and alert others to the presence of danger."
"Explains why Ancient Mai made those Temple Dog statues to assist the Wardens in maintaining security, I suppose." I got out a short-handled duster made of a rowan wand and a bundle of owl feathers, and began to carefully clean the dust from the model city. "What about the barking thing?"
"Their bark has some kind of spiritual power," Bob said. "A lot of stories say that they can make themselves be heard from fifty or sixty miles away. It isn't just a physical thing, either. It carries over into the Nevernever, and can be heard clearly by noncorporeal entities. It startles them, drives most of them away-and if any of them stick around, Mouse could take his teeth to them, even though they're spirits. I figure that this alarm-clock bark he did was a part of that protective power, alerting others to danger."
I grunted. "Superdog."
"But not bulletproof. They can be killed just like anything else."
There was a thought. I wondered if I could find someone to make Mouse a Kevlar vest. "Okay, Bob," I said. "Get it fired up and give it a once-over."
"Right, boss. I hope you will note that I am doing this without once complaining how unfair it is that you've seen the cupcake nekkid and I haven't."
"So noted." I picked up the skull and set it down on the sheet of translucent, rubbery blue plastic that represented Lake Michigan. "Check it out while I get my spell face on."
The skull spun around to face the city while I settled down on the floor, legs crossed, hands resting lightly on my knees, and closed my eyes, focusing on drawing my thoughts to stillness, my heart to a slow, slow beat. I breathed slowly, deeply, systematically walling out worries, emotions, everything but purpose.
One time, when we'd been discussing martial arts, Murphy told me that eventually, no one can teach you anything more about them. Once you reach that state of knowledge, the only way to keep learning and increasing your own skill is to teach what you know to others. That's why she teaches a children's class and a rape-defense course every spring and fall at one of her neighborhood's community centers.
It sounded kind of flaky-Zen to me at the time, but Hell's bells, she'd been right. Once upon a time, it would have taken me an hour, if not more, to attain the proper frame of mind. In the course of teaching Molly to meditate, though, I had found myself going over the basics again for the first time in years, and understanding them with a deeper and richer perspective than I'd had when I was her age. I'd been getting almost as much insight and new understanding of my knowledge from teaching Molly as she'd been learning from me.
It took me ten minutes, twelve at the most, to prepare my thoughts and will. By the time I stood up again, there was nothing left in the whole world but me, Little Chicago, and my need to find a murderer.
"Bob?" I whispered.
"Everything's nominal. We're in the green, Captain," he said, affecting a Scottish accent.
I nodded without speaking. Then I drew in my will, and the skull's eyelights dwindled to the size of pinpricks. So did all the candles. Newborn black shadows began stretching between the pewter buildings, overlaying the model streets. The temperature in the lab dropped another degree or two as I pulled in energy from all around me, and my skin flushed as my body temperature went up a couple of degrees. When I slowly exhaled, my heated breath formed vapor that drifted around my nose and mouth.
I moved slowly, precisely, and picked up the matchbox. Then I opened it and exposed the fleck of paint inside, and leaned over to carefully place the paint down on the tiny model of my apartment building. I stood over the table, my hand touching the paint and the map, and released my will with a repeated murmur of, "Reperios. Invenios." "Reperios. Invenios."
I felt my senses blur for a moment, and then Little Chicago rushed toward me, its buildings growing, until I stood upon the street outside the now life-sized pewter replica of my apartment building.
I took a moment to look around. It looked like Chicago. Flickers of motion surrounded me. Faint outlines of leaves stirred in the pewter trees, ghostly images of the real-world leaves on the trees of the actual Chicago. Faint lights emanated from blank pewter windowpanes. Ghostly cars whispered by on the streets. I could hear the muted sounds of the city, catch the barest hints of scents on the air.
Unnervingly, I could look up and see...myself, my actual, physical body, towering over the model city like Godzilla's hyperthyroid cousin. The sky over Little Chicago held twinkling lights-the dim glows of the lab's candles and Bob's eyelights, all too large to be stars, the way the sun is supposed to look from the outer planets.
I held up the matchbox, my will surging down my arm. It touched on the little flake of paint, which erupted into viridian light and rose into the air above my hand, hovered for a moment, and then streaked off to the north like a miniature comet.
"Maybe you got away with this crap in other towns, Grey Cloak," I muttered. "But Chicago's mine."
My own flesh dissolved into flickering silver light, and I felt myself rush after the energy of the seeking spell, streaking through the ghostly images of Chicago's nightlife in the model all around me, one more insubstantial shade among thousands.
The seeking spell came to rest a block and a half south of Goudy Square Park, a little slice of green the city managed to squeeze in amidst a bunch of architecture. The brilliant mote of light settled onto a ghostly image of a moving car and the image suddenly became solid and visible.
"Gotcha," I growled under my breath, and drifted close to the car, hovering right over its rear bumper, and focused on the driver.
The ghost image remained hazy, dammit. My magic had latched onto the car, and it wasn't going to be easy to get a better look at the driver than I already had. I might be able to pour more energy into the spell, attain greater clarity, but I wanted to save that as a last resort. Too much could cause the whole thing to blow-and it would certainly leave me too exhausted to maintain the connection. Better to hover now, and listen. Sound would be easier to pick up, resonating against the car, against the surrounding city I had modeled for the spell.
The car stopped a stone's throw from the park. It's a bifurcated little place, simultaneously trying to contain a designer garden and a children's playground, and every time I'd look at it, it seemed to me that the kids were winning. Good for them. Nobody who is four, or six, or eight years old needs to feel conflicted about their play area impeding the Italian Renaissance sensibilities of a landscape artist. Heck, I was probably at least that mature, and I was pretty sure I didn't need it, either.
I focused on the spell, and the sounds of the city night came to life around me, growing in volume, rising from a distant, ghostly murmur to simple ambience, as if I'd been standing there. Traffic sounds. A distant siren. The almost subliminal sound of wheels rushing by on the highway a mile off. The cricketlike chirrup of a car alarm. To me, it was the orchestra tuning and warming up before the overture.
Footsteps, swift and confident, coming closer. The curtain was going up.
The passenger door of the green car opened, and a second shadowy figure joined the first. The door closed, harder than it needed to.
"Are you insane," the passenger asked, "meeting here?"
"What's wrong with here?" Grey Cloak asked. His voice was a light tenor, though it sounded distant, hazy, like a partially obscured radio transmission. An accent? Something from Eastern Europe, maybe. It was hard to make out the particulars.
"It's a bloody upper-class WASP neighborhood," the passenger snarled. His voice was deeper, similarly obscured, and bore no trace of foreign accent. He sounded like a newscaster, standard Midwestern American. "There's private security here. Police. If anyone raises any kind of alarm, it's going to attract a great deal of attention in short order."
Grey Cloak let out a low laugh. "Which is why we are safe. It's late at night. All the little dears are sleeping the sleep of the fat and happy. No one is awake to see us here."
The other said something rude. There was a flicker of light in the passenger seat, and it took me a second to work out that he'd just lit a cigarette. "Well?"
"No."
"No?" the passenger said. "No kine? No wizard? What do you mean, no?"
"Both," Grey Cloak said. His tone turned cold. "You told me he was afraid of fire."
"He is," the passenger said. "You should see his fucking hand."
I felt my left hand clench tight, and the crackle of popping knuckles in my very real laboratory drifted through the magical simulation of the city.
Grey Cloak's head whipped around.
"What?" the passenger asked.
"Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"Something..." Grey Cloak said.
I felt myself holding my breath, willing my fingers to unclench.
The passenger looked around for a moment, then snorted. "You're nervous about him him. That's all. You missed him and you're nervous."
"Not nervous," Grey Cloak said. "Understandably cautious. He has more resources and more versatility than your people realize. It's quite possible that he's keeping track of me in some way."
"I doubt that. It would take a subtle worker of the Art to manage that. He isn't one."
"No?" Grey Cloak asked. "He managed to sense the fire before it could cut him off, to somehow waken the entire building from sound sleep all at the same time, and to track me after I departed."
The passenger tensed. "You came here with him behind you?"
"No. I lost him before he could do so. But that does not preclude the use of more subtle means to engage in pursuit."
"He's a thug," the passenger said. "Plain and simple. His talents make him good at destruction and little else. He's a beast to be prodded and directed."
There was silence for a moment. "It amazes me," Grey Cloak said then, "that an idiot such as you survived crossing the wizard once."
Aha. Interesting. The passenger, at least, was someone I'd seen before. He'd walked away from it, too. Most of the individuals I'd faced hadn't done that-which bothered me a hell of a lot, at times-but even so, there'd been more than a couple, and the passenger could be any number of them. That did narrow it down considerably from the several billion possibilities I'd had a moment before, though.
And I felt something of a chill at Grey Cloak's words. He was more aware of his surroundings than anyone running on five simple senses should be, and he was a thinker. That's never a good quality in an enemy. A smart foe doesn't have to be stronger than you, doesn't have to be faster, and doesn't even really have to be there there to be a lethal threat. Hell, if that car bomb hadn't been set off early, he'd have cooked Murphy and me both, and I would have died without even knowing he existed. to be a lethal threat. Hell, if that car bomb hadn't been set off early, he'd have cooked Murphy and me both, and I would have died without even knowing he existed.
"To be honest, I'm surprised the wizard lived the night," the passenger said. "It doesn't matter, either way. If we'd killed him, we could have claimed credit for his demise and it would have served our purpose. Now we let him rampage over the Skavis, and it does nothing but help."
"Unless," Grey Cloak said sourly, "he happens to rampage over us as well."
They were both quiet for a moment. Then the passenger said, "At least one thing is accomplished. He's interested in stopping the culling."
"Oh, yes," Grey Cloak said. "You've gotten his attention. The question, of course, is whether or not he will be as cooperative as you seem to believe."
"With a gathering of female wizardlings at risk? Oh, yes. He won't be able to help himself. Now that he knows what the Skavis is up to, Dresden will be falling all over himself to protect them."
Aha. The The Skavis Skavis. And they were maneuvering me to kick his ass.
Finally, something useful.
"Will he strike at the kine soon?" Grey Cloak asked, referring to the Skavis, I presumed.
"Not yet. It isn't his style. He'll wait a day or two before moving again. He wants them to suffer, waiting for him."
"Mmmm," Grey Cloak said. "I normally think the Skavis's tastes repulsive, but in this particular instance, I suspect his might intersect with my own. Anticipation makes them taste sweeter."
"Oh, of course, by all means," the passenger said sourly. "Throw away everything we might achieve in order to indulge your sweet tooth."
Grey Cloak let out a low chuckle. "Alas, not yet. I hardly think the Circle would react well to such a course. Speaking of which, how does your own endeavor fare?"
"Less than well," the passenger said. "He isn't talking to me."
"Did you really expect him to?"
The passenger shrugged. "He is is family. But that's of no matter. I'll find them in time, whether he cooperates or not." family. But that's of no matter. I'll find them in time, whether he cooperates or not."
"For your sake, I hope so," Grey Cloak said. "The Circle has asked me for a progress report."
The passenger shifted uneasily. "Have they. What are you going to tell them?"
"The truth."
"You can't be serious."
"On the contrary," Grey Cloak said.
"They react badly to incompetence," the passenger said.
"And murderously to deception."
The passenger took another long drag on his cigarette and cursed again. Then he said, "No help for it, then."
"There is no need to soil yourself. We are not yet past our deadline, and they do not destroy tools that may still be of use."
The passenger let out a nasty laugh. "They're hard but fair?"
"They're hard," Grey Cloak replied.
"If necessary," the passenger said, "we can remove him. We have the resources for it. I could always-"
"I believe it premature unless he proves more threatening than he has been thus far," Grey Cloak said. "I expect the Circle would agree."
"When do I meet them?" the passenger asked. "Face-to-face."
"That is not my decision. I am a liaison. Nothing more." He shrugged. "But, should this project proceed, I suspect they will desire an interview."
"I'll succeed," the passenger said darkly. "He can't have taken them far."
"Then I suggest you get moving," Grey Cloak said. "Before the Skavis beats you to the prize."
"Beats us, us," the passenger said.
I could hear a faint smile touch Grey Cloak's voice. "Of course."
There was a smoldering silence, and then the passenger shoved the door open, exited the car, and left without a further word.