Jim Butcher - Side Jobs

I didn’t speak. I raised one finger to my lips with as much physical emphasis as I could manage. Sarah, trembling violently, nodded at me. I turned to give the same signal to Molly, who looked pale but in control of herself. She nodded as well, and we turned and slipped away from that arm of the mall.

I listened as hard as I could, which was actually quite hard. It’s a talent I seem to have developed, maybe because I’m a wizard, and maybe just because some people can hear really well. It was difficult to make out anything at all, much less any kind of detail, but I was sure I heard one thing—footsteps, coming in the crushed door of the mall, crunching on broken glass and debris.

Something fast enough to snap a man’s neck with the whiplash of its passage and strong enough to throw that car through a wall of glass had just walked into the mall behind us. I figured it was a very, very good idea not to let it know we were there and sneaking away.

We got away with it, walking slowly and silently out through the mall, which yawned all around us, three levels of darkened stores, deserted shops, and closed metal grates and doors. I stopped a dozen shops later, after we’d gone past the central plaza of the mall and were far enough away for the space to swallow up quiet conversation.

“Oh my God,” Sarah whimpered, her voice a strangled little whisper. “Oh my God. What is happening? Is it terrorists?”

I probably would have had a more suave answer if she hadn’t been pressed up against my side, mostly naked from the hips up, warm and lithe and trembling. The adrenaline rush that had hit me when the car nearly smashed us caught up to me, and I suddenly found it difficult to keep from shivering, myself. I had a sudden, insanely intense need to rip off the strings on that red bikini top and kiss her, purely for the sake of how good it would feel. All things considered, though, it would have been less than appropriate. “Uh,” I mumbled, forcing myself to look back the way we’d come. “They’re . . . bad guys of some kind, yeah. Are you hurt?”

“No,” Sarah said.

“Molly?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” my apprentice answered.

“The security office,” I said.

Sarah stared at me for a second, her eyes intense. “But . . . but I don’t understand why—”

I put my hand firmly over her mouth. “Sarah,” I said, meeting her eyes for as long as I dared, “I’ve been in trouble before, and I know what I’m doing. I need you to trust me. All right?”

Her eyes widened for a second. She reached up to lightly touch my wrist, and I let her push my hand gently away from her mouth. She swallowed and nodded once.

“There’s no time. We have to find the security office now.”

“A-all right,” she said. “This way.”

She led us off and we followed her, creeping through the cavernous dimness of the unlit mall. Molly leaned in close to me to whisper. “Even if we get the security guards, what are they going to do against something that can do that ?”

“They’ll have radios,” I whispered back. “Cell phones. They’ll know all the ways out. If we can’t call in help, they’ll give us the best shot of getting these people out of here in one—”

Lights began flickering on and off—not blinking, not starting up and shutting down in rhythm, but irregularly. First they came on over a section of the third floor for a few seconds. Then they went out. A few seconds later, it was a far section of the second floor. Then they went out. Then light shone from one of the distant wings for a moment and vanished again. It was like watching a child experiment with the switches.

Then the PA system let out a crackle and a little squeal of feedback. It shut off again and came back on. “Testing,” said a dry, rasping voice over the speakers. “Testing one, two, three.”

Sarah froze in place, and then backed up warily, looking at me. I stepped up next to her, and she pressed in close to me, shivering.

“There,” said the voice. It was a horrible thing to listen to—like Linda Blair’s impression of a demon-possessed victim, only less melodious. “I’m sure you all can hear me now.”

And I’d heard such a voice before. “Oh, hell,” I breathed.

“This is Constance,” continued the voice. “Constance Bushnell. I’m sure you all remember me.”

I glanced at Molly, who shook her head. Sarah looked frightened and confused, but when she caught my look, she shook her head, too.

“You might also remember me,” she continued, “as Drulinda.” And then the voice started singing “Happy Birthday.” The tune wasn’t even vaguely close to the actual song, but the “Happy birthday to me” lyrics were unmistakable.

Sarah’s eyes had widened. “Drulinda?”

“Who the hell is Drulinda?” I asked.

Sarah shook her head. “One of our characters. But her player ran away from home or something.”

“And you didn’t recognize her actual name?”

Sarah gave me a slightly guilty glance. “Well, I never played with her much. She wasn’t really very, you know—popular.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Tell me whatever you can about her.”

She shook her head. “Um. About five four, sort of . . . plain. You know, not ugly or anything, but not really pretty. Maybe a little heavy.”

“Not that.” I sighed. “Tell me something important about her. People make fun of her?”

“Some did,” she said. “I never liked it, but ...”

“Crap.” I looked at Molly and said, “Code Carrie. We’re in trouble.”

The horrible, dusty song came to an end. “It’s been a year since I left you,” Drulinda’s voice said. “A year since I found what all you whining losers were looking for. And I decided to give myself a present.” There was a horrible pause, and then the voice said, “You. All of you.”

“Code what?” Molly asked me.

I shook my head. “Sarah, do you know where the announcement system is?”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “Administration. Right by—”

“The security office.” I sighed.

Drulinda’s voice continued. “The entrances are closed and watched. But you should feel free to run for them. You all taste so much better when you’ve had time to be properly terrified. I’ve so been looking forward to seeing your reaction to the new me.”

With that, the PA system shut off, but a second later, it started playing music—“Only You,” by the Platters.

“Molly,” I hissed, suddenly realizing the danger. “Veil us, now .”

She blinked at me, then nodded, bowing her head with a frown of concentration and folding her arms across her chest. I felt her gather up her will and release it with a word and a surge of energy that made the air sparkle like diamond dust for a half second.

Inside the veil, the air suddenly turned a few degrees cooler, and the area outside it seemed to become even dimmer than it had been a second before. I could sense the delicate tracery of the veil’s magic in the air around us, though I knew that, from the other side, none of that would be detectable—assuming Molly had done it correctly, of course. Veils were one of her strongest areas, and I was gambling our lives that she had gotten it right.

Not more than a breath or two later, there was a swift pattering sound and a dim blur in the shadows, which ceased moving abruptly maybe twenty feet away and revealed the presence of a vampire of the Black Court.

Drulinda, or so I presumed her to be, was dressed in dark jeans, a red knit sweater, and a long black leather coat. If she’d been heavy in life, death had taken care of that problem for her. She was sunken and shriveled, as bony and dried up as the year-old corpse she now was. Unlike the older vamps of her breed, she still had most of her hair, though it had clearly not been washed or styled. Most of the Black Court I’d run into had never been terribly body conscious. I suppose once you’d seen it rot, there just wasn’t much more that could happen to sway your opinion of it, either way.