Jim Butcher - Side Jobs

They both wore long black capes with hoods.

Not your standard wear for Chicago shoppers.

Molly opened her mouth to stammer something.

“Quiet,” I hissed. “Do not move.”

The two figures went by only thirty or forty feet away. I caught a glimpse of a very, very pale face within one of the figure’s hoods, eyes sunken into the skull-like pits. They both turned to the door without so much as glancing at us, opened it as though they expected it to be unlocked, and proceeded inside.

“All right,” I said quietly. “It might be something.”

“Um,” Molly said. “W-were those v-vampires?”

“Deep breaths, kid,” I told her. “Fear isn’t stupid, but don’t let it control you. I have no idea what they were.” I made sure my old fleece-lined heavy denim coat was buttoned up, and I got out of the car.

“Uh. Then where are you going?” she asked.

“Inside,” I said, walking around to the Beetle’s trunk. I unwrapped the wire that had held it closed ever since a dozen vehicular mishaps ago. “Whatever they are, Thomas doesn’t know about them. He’d have said something.”

I couldn’t see her through the lifted hood, but Molly rolled down the window enough to talk to me. “B-but you don’t have your staff or blasting rod or coat or anything. They’re all back at your apartment.”

I opened the case that held my .44 revolver and the box that held my ammunition, slipped shells into the weapon, and put it in my coat pocket. I dropped some extra rounds into the front pocket of my jeans and shut the hood. “They’re only toys, Padawan.” Familiar, capable, proven toys that I felt naked without, but a true wizard shouldn’t absolutely rely on them—or teach his apprentice to do so. “Stay here, start up the car, and be ready to roll if we need to leave in a hurry.”

“Right,” she said, and wriggled over into the driver’s seat. To give Molly credit, she might have been nervous, but she had learned the job of wheelman—sorry, political correctioners, wheel person —fairly well.

I kept my right hand in my coat pocket, on the handle of my gun, hunched my shoulders against a small breath of frozen wind, and hurried to the mall entrance, my shoes crunching and squeaking on the little coating of snow. I walked toward the doors as if I owned them, shoved them open like any shopper, and got a quick look around.

The mall was dark, except for the entrance and that single open shop—a little bistro with tinted windows that would have been dimly lit even when all the lights were on. I could see figures seated at tables inside and at a long dining counter and bar. They wore lots of black, and none of them looked much older than Molly, though the dim lights revealed few details.

I narrowed my eyes a bit, debating. Vampires gave off a certain amount of energy that someone like me could sense, but depending on which breed you were talking about, that energy could vary. Sometimes my sense of an approaching vampire was as overtly creepy as a child’s giggle coming from an open grave. Other times there was barely anything at all, and it registered on my senses as something as subtle as simple, instinctive dislike for the creature in question. For White Court vamps like my half brother, there was nothing at all, unless they were doing something overtly vampiric. From outside the shop, I couldn’t tell anything.

This was assuming they were vampires at all—which was a fairly large assumption. They didn’t meet up in the open like this.

Vampires didn’t apologize to the normal world for existing, but they didn’t exactly run around auditioning for the latest reality TV shows, either.

There was one way to find out. I opened the door to the bistro, hand on my gun, took a step inside, holding the door open in case I needed to flee, and peered around warily at the occupants. The nearest was a pair of young men, speaking earnestly at a table over two cups of what looked like coffee and . . .

And they had acne—not like disfiguring acne or anything, just a few zits.

In case no one’s told you, here’s a monster-hunting tip for free: Vampires have little to no need for Clearasil.

Seen in that light, the two young men’s costumes looked like exactly that—costumes. They had two big cloaks, dripping a little melt-water, hung over the backs of their chairs, and I caught the distinctive aroma of weed coming from their general direction. Two kids slipping out from the gathering to toke up and then come back inside. One of them produced a candy bar from a pocket and tore into it, to the reassurance of the people who make Clearasil, I’m sure.

I looked around the room. There were more people; mostly young, mostly with the thinness that goes with youth, as opposed to the leanly cadaverous kind that goes with being a bloodsucking fiend. They were mostly dressed in similar costume-style clothing, unless there had been a big sale at Goths-R-Us.

I felt my shoulders sag in relief, and I slipped my hand out of my pocket. Anytime one of my bouts of constructive paranoia didn’t pan out was a good time.

“Sir,” said a gruff voice from behind me. “The mall is closed. You want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

I turned to face a squat, blocky man with watery blue eyes and no chin. He’d grown a thick brown-gold walrus mustache that emphasized rather than distracted from the lack. He had a high hairline, a brown uniform, and what looked like a cop’s weapon belt until you saw that he had a walkie-talkie where the sidearm would be, next to a tiny can of Mace. His name tag read RAYMOND.

“Observing suspicious activity, Raymond,” I said, and hooked my chin vaguely back at the bistro. “See that? People hanging around in the mall after hours. Weird.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Wait. Don’t I know you?”

I pursed my lips and thought. “Oh, right. Six, seven years ago, at Shoegasm.”

He grunted in recognition. “The phony psychic.”

“Consultant,” I responded. “And from what I hear, their inventory stopped shrinking. Which hadn’t happened before I showed up.”

Raymond gave me a look that would have cowed lesser men. Much, much lesser men. Like maybe fourth graders. “If you aren’t with the group, you’re gone. You want to leave, or would you rather I took care of it for you?”

“Stop,” I said. “You’re scaring me.”

Raymond’s mustache quivered. He apparently wasn’t used to people who didn’t take him seriously. Plus, I was much, much bigger than he was.

“’Allo, ’Ah-ree,” came my brother’s voice from behind me.

I turned to find Thomas there, dressed in tight black pants and a blousy red silk shirt. His shoulder-length hair was tied back in a tail with a matching red ribbon. His face didn’t look much like mine, except around the eyes and maybe the chin. Thomas was good-looking the way Mozart was talented. There were people on the covers of magazines and on television and on movie screens who despaired of ever looking as good as Thomas.

On his arm was a slim young girl, quite pretty and wholesome-looking, wearing leather pants that rode low on her hips and a red bikini top, her silky brown hair artfully mussed. I recognized her from Thomas’s shop, a young woman named Sarah.

“Harry!” she said. “Oh, it’s nice to see you again.” She nudged Thomas with her hip. “Isn’t it?”

“Always,” Thomas, smiling, said in his French accent.

“Hello, Mr. Raymond!” Sarah said, brightly.

Raymond scowled at me and asked Sarah, “He with you?”

“But of course,” Thomas said in that annoying French way, giving Raymond his most brilliant smile.

Raymond grunted and took his hand away from the radio. Lucky me. I had evidently been dismissed from Raymond’s world. “I was going to tell you I’m going to be in the parking lot, replacing a camera we’ve got down, if you need me.”