"What about the other one?" Michael asked quietly.
Fidelacchius, brother-sword to Michael's former blade, currently rested in a cluttered basket in my basement-next to the heavy locked gun safe that was warded with a dozen dangerous defensive spells. Hopefully, anyone looking to take it would open the safe first and get a face full of boom. My lab was behind a screen of defensive magic, which was in turn behind an outer shell of defensive magic that protected my apartment. Plus there was my dog, Mouse, two hundred pounds of fur and muscle, who didn't take kindly to hostile visitors.
"It's safe," I told him. "After breakfast, I'll track buzz-cut guy down, have a little chat with him, and we'll put this whole thing to bed."
"Sounds simple," Michael said.
"It could happen."
Michael smiled, his eyes twinkling.
BUZZ, AS IT turned out, wasn't a dummy. He'd ditched the decoy sword in a Dumpster behind a fast-food joint less than four blocks from Michael's place. Michael sat behind the wheel of his truck, watching as I stood hip-deep in trash and dug for the sword.
"You sure you don't want to do this part?" I asked him sourly.
"I would, Harry," he replied, smiling, "but my leg. You know."
The bitch of it was, he was being sincere. Michael had never been afraid of work. "Why dump it here, do you think?"
I gestured at a nearby streetlight. "Dark last night, no moon. This is probably the first place he got a good look at it. Parked his car here, too, maybe." I found the handle of the cheap replica broadsword I'd picked up at what had amounted to a martial arts trinkets shop. "Aha," I said, and pulled it out.
There was another manila envelope duct-taped to the blade. I took the sword and the envelope back to the truck. Michael wrinkled up his nose at the smell coming up from my garbage-spattered jeans, but that expression faded when he looked at the envelope taped to the sword. He exhaled slowly.
"Well," he said, "no use just staring at it."
I nodded and peeled the envelope from around the blade. I opened it and looked in.
There were two more photos.
The first was of Michael, in the uniform shirt he wore when he coached his daughter's softball team. He was leaning back on the bleachers, as he had been when I'd first walked up to speak to him.
The second picture was of a weapon-a long-barreled rifle with a massive steel snout on the end of it, and what looked like a telescope for a sight. It lay on what looked like a bed with cheap motel sheets.
"Hell's bells," I muttered. "What is that?"
Michael glanced at the picture. "It's a Barrett," he said quietly. "Fifty-caliber semiautomatic rifle. Snipers in the Middle East who use them are claiming kills at two kilometers, sometimes more. It's one of the deadliest long-range weapons in the world." He looked up and around him at all the buildings. "Overkill for Chicago, really," he said with mild disapproval.
"You know what I'm thinking?" I said. "I'm thinking we shouldn't be sitting here in your truck right next to a spot Buzz expected us to go while he and his super-rifle are out there somewhere."
Michael looked unperturbed. "If he wanted to simply kill me here, he's had plenty of time to make the shot."
"Humor me," I said.
He smiled and then nodded. "I can take you to your place. You can get some clean clothes, perhaps."
"That hurts, man," I said, brushing uselessly at my jeans as the truck moved out. "You know what bugs me about this situation?"
Michael glanced aside at me for a second. "I think I do. But it might be different from what you were thinking."
I ignored him. "Why? I mean sure, we need to know who this guy is, but why why is he doing this?" is he doing this?"
"It's a good question."
"He sends the pictures to me, not you," I said. I held up the new photo of the sniper rifle. "I mean, this is obviously an escalation. But if what he wanted was to kill you, why ... ? Why document it for me?"
"It looks to me," Michael said, "as if he wants you to be afraid."
"So he threatens you you?" I demanded. "That's stupid."
He smiled. "Do people threaten you very often?"
"Sure. All the time."
"What happens when they do?" he asked.
I shrugged. "I say something mouthy," I said. "Then I clean their clocks for them at the first opportunity."
"Which is probably why our photographer here-"
"Call him Buzz," I said. "It will make things simpler."
"Why Buzz hasn't bothered threatening you."
I frowned. "So you're saying Buzz knows me."
"It stands to reason. It seems clear he's trying to push you into some sort of reaction. Something he thinks you'll do if you're frightened."
"Like what?" I asked.
"What do you think?" he replied.
I put my hand on the hilt of Amoracchius Amoracchius. The sword's tip rested on the floorboards of the truck, between my feet.
"That would be my guess, too," he said.
I frowned down at the blade and nodded. "Maybe Buzz figured I'd bring you the sword if you were in danger. So that ..." I didn't finish.
"So that I'd have some way of defending myself," Michael said gently. "You can say it, Harry. You won't hurt my feelings."
I nodded at the true sword. "Sure you don't want it?"
Michael shook his head. "I told you, Harry. That part of my life is over."
"And what if Buzz makes good?" I asked quietly. "What if he kills you?"
Michael actually laughed. "I don't think that's going to happen," he said. "But if it does ..." He shrugged. "Death isn't exactly a terrifying proposition for me, Harry. If it was, I could hardly have borne the sword for as long as I did. I know what awaits me, and I know that my family will be taken care of."
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure everything will be fine if your younger kids have to grow up without a father in their lives."
He winced, and then he pursed his lips thoughtfully for a few moments before he replied. "Other children have," he said finally.
"And that's it?" I asked, incredulous. "You just surrender to whatever is going to happen?"
"It isn't what I'd want-but a lot of things happen that I don't want. I'm just a man."
"The last thing I would expect from you," I said, "is fatalism."
"Not fatalism," he said, his voice suddenly and unexpectedly firm. "Faith, Harry. Faith. This is happening for a reason."
I didn't answer him. From where I was standing, it looked like it was happening because someone ruthless and fairly intelligent wanted to get his hands on one of the swords. And worse, it looked like he was probably a mortal, too. If what Charity had said was accurate, that meant Michael didn't have a heavenly insurance policy against the threat.
It also meant I would have to pull my punches-the First Law of Magic prohibited using it to kill a human being. There was some grey area involved with it, but not much, and it was the sort of thing that one didn't play around with. The White Council enforced the laws, and anyone who broke them faced the very real possibility of a death sentence.
"And that's all I need," I muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Michael pulled the truck into the gravel parking lot of my apartment, in the basement of a big old boardinghouse. "I need to drop by a site before we go back to get your car. Is that all right?"
I took the sword with me as I got out of the truck. "Well," I said, "as long as it's all happening for a reason."
MICHAEL'S SMALL COMPANY built houses. Years of vanishing at irregular intervals to battle the forces of evil had probably held him back from moving up to building the really expensive, really profitable places. So he built homes for the upper couple of layers of the middle class instead. He probably would have made more money if he cut corners, but it was Michael. I was betting that never happened.
This house was a new property, down toward Wolf Lake, and it had the depressing look of all construction sites-naked earth, trees bulldozed and piled to one side, and the standard detritus of any such endeavor: mud, wood, garbage discarded by the workers, and big old boot tracks all over the ground. Half a dozen men were at work, putting up the house's skeleton.
"Shouldn't take me long," Michael said.
"Sure," I said. "Go to it."
Michael hopped down from the truck and gimped his way over to the house, moving with an energy and purpose I'd seldom seen from him. I frowned after him, and then pulled the first envelope out of my pocket and started looking at the photos inside.
The photo of Michael at a building site had been taken at this one. Buzz had been here, watching Michael.
He might still be here now.
I got out of the car and slung the sword's belt over my shoulder, so that it hung with its hilt sticking up next to my head. Photo in hand, I started circling the site, trying to determine where Buzz had been standing when he'd taken his picture. I got some looks from the men on the job-but as I said before, I'm used to that kind of thing.
It took me only a couple of minutes to find the spot Buzz had used-a shadowed area of weeds and scrub brush behind the pile of felled trees. It was obscured enough to offer a good hiding spot, if no one was looking particularly hard, but far enough away that he had to have used a zoom lens of some kind to get those pictures. I had heard that digital cameras could zoom in to truly ridiculous levels these days.
I found footprints.
Don't read too much into that. I'm not Ranger Rick or anything, but I had a teacher who made sure I spent my share of time hiking and camping in the rugged country of the Ozarks, and he taught me the basics-where to look, and what to look for. The showers last night had wiped away any subtle signs, but I wouldn't have trusted my own interpretation of them in any case. I did find one clear footprint, of a man's left boot, fairly deep, and half a dozen partials and a few broken branches in a line leading away. He'd come here, hung around for a while, then left.
Which just about anyone could have deduced from the photo, even if he hadn't seen any tracks.
I had this guy practically captured already.
There weren't any bubble-gum wrappers, discarded cigarettes, or fortuitously misplaced business cards that would reveal Buzz's identity. I hadn't really thought there would be, but you always look.
I slogged across the muddy ground back toward the truck, when the door of one of the contractors' vans opened, and a prematurely balding thin guy with a tool belt and a two-foot reel of electrician's wire staggered out. He had a shirt with a name tag that read CHUCK. Chuck wobbled to one side, dragging the handles of some tools along the side panel of Michael's truck, leaving some marks.
I glanced into the van. There was an empty bottle of Jim Beam inside, with a little still dribbling out the mouth.
"Hey, Chuck," I said. "Give you a hand with that?"
He gave me a bleary glance that didn't seem to pick up on anything out of the ordinary about me or the big old sword hanging over my shoulder. "Nah. I got it."
"It's cool," I said. "I'm going that way anyhow. And those things are heavy." I went over to him and seized one end of the reel, taking some of the weight.
The electrician's breath was practically explosive. He nodded a couple of times and shifted his grip on the reel. "Okay, buddy. Thanks."
We carried the heavy reel of wire over to the house. I had to adjust my steps several times, to keep up with the occasional drunken lurch from Chuck. We took the wire to the poured-concrete slab that was going to be the garage at some point, it looked like, and dropped it off.
"Thanks, man," Chuck said, his sibilants all mushy.
"Sure," I said. "Look, uh. Do you really think you should be working with electricity right now, Chuck?"
He gave me an indignant, drunken glare. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, you just, uh, look a little sick, that's all."
"I'm just fine," Chuck slurred, scowling. "I got a job to do."
"Yeah," I said. "Kind of a dangerous job. In a big pile of kindling."
He peered at me. "What?" It came out more like "Wha?"
"I've been in some burning buildings, man, and take it from me, this this place ..." I looked around at the wooden framework. "Fwoosh. I'm just saying. Fwoosh." place ..." I looked around at the wooden framework. "Fwoosh. I'm just saying. Fwoosh."
He worked on that one for a moment, and then his face darkened into a scowl again. He turned and picked up a wrench from a nearby toolbox. "Buzz off, freak. Before I get upset."
I wasn't going to do anyone any favors by getting into half of a drunken brawl with one of Michael's subcontractors. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but they were all at other parts of the house, I guessed. So I just held up one hand in front of me and said, mildly, "Okay. I'm going."
Chuck watched me as I walked out of the garage. I looked around until I spotted the power lines running into the house, and then I followed the trench they were buried in back to the street until I got to the transformer. I looked up at it, glanced around a little guiltily, and sighed. Then I waved my hand at the thing, exerted my will, and muttered, "Hexus."
Wizards and technology don't get along. At all. Prolonged exposure to an active wizard has really detrimental effects on just about anything manufactured after World War II or so, especially anything involving electricity. My car breaks down every couple of weeks, and that's when I'm not even trying. When I'm making an effort?
The transformer exploded in a humming shower of blue-white sparks, and the sound of an electric saw, somewhere on the site, died down to nothing.
I went back to the truck and sat quietly until Michael returned.
He gave me a steady look.
"It was in the name of good," I said. "Your electrician was snockered. By the time the city gets by to repair it, he'll have sobered up."
"Ah," Michael said. "Chuck. He's having trouble at home."