He took a deep breath and then nodded sharply. "I'll do it, man."
"Good. I don't know why you're so worried about me. But we'll sit down and talk after the dust settles. Figure out what's up. Make sure I haven't stripped a gear when I wasn't looking. I promise you."
"Right," he said, nodding. "Thank you. I'm sorry if this is...aw, hell, man."
"Enough with sharing the emotions," I said. "We're gonna turn into women as we stand here. Get a move on."
He chucked my arm with a mostly closed fist, and left.
I waited for him to go. I didn't feel like riding down in the elevator with him, wondering if he was afraid of me suddenly turning on him with an ax or a butcher knife or something.
I leaned on my staff and thought about it for a second. Billy was really worried about me. Worried enough that he was afraid that I might do something to him. What the hell had I done to set that off?
And an even better question, which I had to ask myself, followed on the heels of that first one.
What if he was right?
I poked at my skull with a finger. It didn't feel feel soft or anything. I didn't feel insane. But if you'd really lost it, would you have enough left upstairs to know? Crazy people never soft or anything. I didn't feel insane. But if you'd really lost it, would you have enough left upstairs to know? Crazy people never thought thought they were crazy. they were crazy.
"I've always talked to things," I said. "And to myself."
"Good point," myself agreed with me. "Unless that means you've been nuts all along."
"I don't need wiseass remarks," I told myself severely. "There's work to do. So shut up."
All I could think was that it had been Georgia's idea. She was always buried to the ears in her psych textbooks. Maybe she had fallen victim to some kind of inverted psychological hypochondria or something.
Thunder rumbled outside, and the rain started coming down harder.
I didn't need any doubts distracting me right now. I shrugged off the whole conversation with Billy, tabling it for later. I loaded my gun, since not loading it would have been almost as good as not having it, then slipped it back into my pocket, locked up my office behind me, and headed for the car.
I had to get to Shiela and see if her remarkable memory could call up the poems and stanzas from that stupid book. And then I had to figure out how to call up a wild and deadly lord of the darker realms of Faerie and sidetrack him so that the heirs of Kemmler couldn't use him to promote themselves to demigod status. And along the way, I had to find The Word of Kemmler The Word of Kemmler and get it to Mavra, somehow, without the White Council learning what I was up to. and get it to Mavra, somehow, without the White Council learning what I was up to.
Easy as breathing.
As I rode down in the elevator, I had to admit that Billy might have a point.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The Cabrini-Green tenement Shiela lived in had seen better days-but it had seen worse, too. The city had dumped a lot of money into urban renewal projects there, and it was an ongoing process. Shiela's building was still undergoing renovation, and the lobby and many of the floors were only half-finished. No workmen were in the building when I went into the lobby, but there were dozens of tarps, stacks of drywall and raw lumber, heavy tool lockers that had been bolted to the floor, and other evidence of the contractors who would doubtless have been working had the city's lights not been out.
I walked over to the elevators and to the security panel there, and found the button of Shiela's apartment on the ninth floor. I pressed it and held it down for a minute before I realized that, duh, the power was out and I wasn't going to be able to ring her apartment.
I grimaced and looked around for the stairs. Nine flights up on my leg wasn't going to feel nice, but it wasn't as though I had an infinite number of options.
The door to the stairs was locked, but it was a standard fire door with a push bar on the other side. I lifted my staff, looked around the lobby to make sure no one had wandered in to see me, and then gestured with the staff and murmured, "Forzare." "Forzare."
I sent a bare whisper of my power through the door and then drew it back toward me with a sharp gesture. I caught the push bar on the other side with it, and the door trembled and then swung open by an inch or two. I thrust the end of my staff into it to hold it open, then grabbed on and heaved. I stared at the stairs for a second, but they didn't get any shorter or turn into an escalator or anything, so I sighed and started painfully hauling myself up them, one step at a time.
Nine floors and 162 steps later, I paused to catch my breath, and then opened the door to the ninth-floor hallway in the same manner I had the one in the lobby. The ninth-floor hallway was still under construction, and several of the apartments in it were missing doors, and even walls. I limped along until I found Shiela's apartment and then knocked on the door.
I felt a tingling tension over the door as I touched it-a magical ward of some kind. It was nowhere near as strong as the ones on my apartment had been, but it was stable. That was fairly impressive. Shiela might not have a ton of inborn talent, but she evidently had enough discipline to offset the lack. I held my hand out lightly, just over the surface of the door, sending my senses running over the ward, getting more of a feel for its strength. It couldn't have stopped me if I used my power to force my way in, but it felt strong enough to give me a solid kick in the teeth if I tried it physically. It would certainly scare the hell out of a would-be burglar. Not bad.
After a minute I heard footsteps and the door opened a little. I could see a security chain and a slender stripe of her face that included one of Shiela's dark, sparkling eyes. She let out a surprised little sound and then said, "Harry. Just a minute."
I waited while she shut the door and took off the security chain. Then she opened the door again, smiling at me. She had an infectious smile, and I found myself answering it with one of my own.
She was dressed in a scarlet sequined bodice that made her chest into something very difficult not to stare at, nearly translucent baggy leggings, leather sandals that wrapped around her calves, and 6.5 million pounds of bangles on her arms and ankles. Her hair had been caught up in a high ponytail fixed into place to rise over some kind of mesh headdress, and her smooth, bare shoulders looked lovely and strong.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," I said back. "Is your roommate Shiela in, Genie?"
She laughed. "You caught me in the nick of time. I was just about to leave to get together with some people I know."
"Costume party?" I asked.
"No, I dress like this all the time." Her eyes sparkled. "It is is Halloween." Halloween."
"Even with the lights out?"
She bobbed her brows, her smile wicked for a second. "Who knows. That might make it more fun."
I had been right about the curves that had been hidden under her loose clothing back at Bock's. They were awfully pleasant ones. It was an effort of will to stay focused on her face-especially when she laughed. Her laugh made all sorts of interesting little quivers run over her. "Do you have a minute?" I asked.
"Maybe even two," she said. "What did you have in mind?"
"I need your help with something," I said. I looked up and down the hallway. As far as I knew I hadn't been followed, and I'd been watching my back-but that didn't mean that no one was there. I was pretty good at noticing such things, but there were plenty of people (and nonpeople) who were better than me. "If you don't mind, can we talk about it inside?"
Her expression became a little wary, and she looked up and down the hall herself. "Are you in trouble? Is this about the people at the store?"
"Pretty much," I said. "May I come in?"
"Of course, of course," she said, and stepped back inside, holding the door open for me. I limped in. "Oh, my God," she said, staring at me as I came in. "What happened?"
"A ghoul threw a knife into my leg," I told her.
She blinked at me. "You mean...a real ghoul? An actual ghoul?"
"Yeah."
Her face twisted up with dismay. "Oh. Wow. I've heard stories, but I never thought...you know. It's hard to believe they're really out there. Does that make me an idiot?"
"No," I said. "It makes you lucky. If I never see another ghoul, it will be too soon."
Her apartment was pretty typical of the kind: small, worn, rundown, but clean. She had mostly secondhand furniture, an ancient old fridge, mismatched bookshelves that overflowed with paperbacks and textbooks, and a tiny, aged television that looked as if it didn't get much use.
"Sit down," she said, picking up a couple of blankets and a throw pillow from the couch, clearing off a space for me. I tottered over to the couch and sat, which felt entirely too good. I grunted and got my leg elevated onto the coffee table, and it felt even better.
"Thanks," I said.
She shook her head, staring at me. "You look frightful."
"Been a tough couple of days."
She studied me with serious eyes. "I suppose it must have been. What are you doing here?"
"The book," I said. "The one on the Erlking that I got from Bock."
"I remember," she said.
"Exactly."
"Um. What?"
"That's why I'm here," I said. "You remember but I don't, and the bad guys stole my copy. I need you to remember it for me."
She frowned. "The whole thing?"
"I don't think so," I said. "There were several poems and stanzas in there. I think what I need is in one of them."
"What do you need?" she said.
I stared at her for a second. Then I said, "It might be better if you don't know."
She lifted her chin and regarded me for a moment, as if I'd just said something bad about her mother. "Excuse me?"
"This is some bad business," I said. "It might be safer for you if I don't tell you much about it."
"Well," she said. "That's quite patronizing of you, Harry. Thank you."
I held up a hand. "It isn't like that."
"Yes," she said. "It is. You want me to give you information, but you won't tell me why or what you are going to do with it."
"It's for your own protection," I said.
"Perhaps," she replied. "But if I give you this information, I'm going to bear some responsibility for what you do with it. We don't know each other very well. What if you took the information I gave you and used it to hurt someone?"
"I won't."
"And maybe that's true," she said. "But maybe it isn't. Don't you see? I have an obligation in this matter," she said, "to use my talent responsibly. That means not using it blindly or recklessly. Can you understand that?"
"Actually," I said, "I can."
She pursed her lips and then nodded. "Then if you want me to help you, tell me why you need it."
"You could be put at risk if you become involved in this," I said. "It could be very dangerous." I left a clear silence between the last two words for emphasis.
"I understand," she said. "I accept that. So tell me."
I stared at her for a second, and then sighed, a little frustrated. She had a point, after all. But dammit, I didn't want to see anyone else get hurt because of Kemmler's disciples. Particularly not anyone with such lovely breasts.
I jerked my eyes away from them and said, "The people you've seen around the store are going to use the book to call up the Erlking."
She frowned. "But...he's an extremely powerful faerie, yes? Can they do that?"
"Do you mean is it possible?" I asked. "Sure. I whistled up Queen Mab a few hours ago, myself." Which was technically the truth.
"Oh," she said, her tone mild. "Why?"
"Because I needed information," I said.
"No, not that. Why are these people calling up the Erlking?"
"They're going to use his presence on Halloween night to call up an extra-large helping of ancient spirits. Then they're going to bind and devour those spirits in order to give themselves a Valhalla-sized portion of supernatural power."
She stared at me, her mouth opening a little. "It's...a rite of ascension?" she whispered. "A real one?"
"Yeah," I said.
"But that's...that's insane."
"So are these people," I said. "What you tell me could stop it from happening. It could save a lot of lives-not least of which is my own."
She folded her arms over her stomach as if chilled. Her face looked pale and worried. "I need the poems because I'm going to summon the Erlking before they can do it and to make sure that I sidetrack him long enough to ruin their plans."
"Isn't that dangerous?" she asked.
"Not as dangerous as doing nothing," I said. "So now you know why. Will you help me?"
She fretted her lower lip, as though mulling it over, but her eyes were sparkling. "Say please."
"Please," I said.
Her smile widened. "Pretty please?"
"Don't push me," I half growled, but I doubt it came out very intimidating.
She smiled at me. "It might take me few minutes. I haven't looked at that book in some time. I'll have to prepare. Meditate."