Jim Butcher - Side Jobs

Hell’s bells, what a ridiculously tiny problem. But it was obvious that it was real to Kelly, and that it meant the world to her. She was just a kid. It probably looked like a much larger issue from where she was standing.

“Pressure,” I said. “Yeah, I get that.”

She peered at me. “Do you?”

“Sure,” I said. “You feel like people’s lives depend on you, and that if you do the wrong thing, they’re going to be horribly hurt—and it will be your fault.”

“Yes,” she said, sniffling. “And I’ve been trying so hard, but I just can’t.”

“Be perfect?” I asked. “No, of course not. But what choice do you have?”

She looked at me uncertainly.

“Anything you do, you risk screwing up. You could do a bad job of crossing the street one day and get hit by a car.”

“I probably could,” she said darkly.

I held up my hand. “My point,” I told her, “is that if you want to play it safe, you can stay at home and wrap yourself up in Bubble Wrap and never do anything.”

“Maybe I should.”

I snorted. “They still make you read Dickens in school? Great Expectations ?”

“Yeah.”

“You can stay at home and hide if you want—and wind up like Miss Havisham,” I said. “Watching life through a window and obsessed with how things might have been.”

“Dear God,” she said. “You’ve just made Dickens relevant to my life.”

“Weird, right?” I asked her, nodding.

Kelly let out a choking little laugh.

I pushed myself up and nodded to her. “I never saw you hiding over here, okay? I’m just gonna go do what I gotta do, and leave you to make the choice.”

“Choice?”

“Sure. Do you want to put your cap back on and play? Or do you want to wind up an old maid wandering around your house in the rotting remains of a wedding dress and thirty yards of Bubble Wrap, plotting heartlessly against some kid named Pip?” I regarded her soberly. “There’s really no middle ground.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not right,” she said.

“See there? I’m not much good at offering wise counsel, but that didn’t stop me from trying.” I winked at her and walked on, around behind the backstop to where Michael sat on the bleachers on the far side of the field.

Molly sat on a blanket underneath a tree maybe ten yards away, with earbuds trailing wires down into her shirt’s front pocket, as if she were listening to a digital music player. It was an effort to blend into the background, I supposed, since she couldn’t have been listening to one of those gizmos any more than I could have. She was wearing sunglasses, too, so I couldn’t tell where her focus was, but I was sure she was being alert. She gave me the barest trace of a nod as I approached her father.

I sat down next to him and waited for it.

“Harry,” Michael said, “you look awful.”

“Yes, I do,” I said. I told him about the attempted assassination and about my discussion with Forthill.

Michael frowned at the children practicing, his expression quietly disturbed. “The Church wouldn’t do something like that, Harry. It isn’t how they operate.”

“People are people, Michael,” I said. “People do things. They make mistakes.”

“But it isn’t the Church,” he said. “If this person is part of the Church, he isn’t acting with their blessing or under their instructions.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think they were too happy with me when I was a couple of days late turning over the Shroud.”

“But you did return it, safe and sound,” Michael said.

“How many people know about the swords? How many knew that I had Amoracchius ?”

He shook his head. “I’m not certain. Given the sorts of foes they contend with, the knowledgeable people within the Church are more than mildly secretive and security conscious.”

I gestured around us. “Ballpark it for me.”

He blew out a breath. “Honestly, I just don’t know. I’ve personally met perhaps two hundred priests who understood our mission, but it wouldn’t shock me if there were as many as six or seven hundred, worldwide. But among them, that kind of important information would be closely kept. Four or five, at most. Plus the Holy Father.”

“I’m going to assume that il Papa didn’t personally attempt to blow me away,” I said gravely. “How do I find out about the others?”

“You might talk to Father For—”

“Been there, done that. He isn’t a fountain of exposition.”

Michael grimaced. “I see.”

“So, other than him—”

He spread his hands. “I don’t know, Harry. Forthill was my primary temporal contact.”

I blinked. “He never talked to you about your support structure in the Church?”

“He was sworn to secrecy,” Michael said. “I just had to trust him. Excuse me.” He stood up and called to the softball team, “Thank you, ladies! Two laps of the park and we’ll call it a day!”

The team began discarding gloves and such, and fell into a line to begin jogging around the exterior of the park, in no great hurry, talking and laughing as they went. I noticed that Kelly was among them and felt a little less like a complete incompetent.

“I’d really like to keep my brains on the inside of my skull,” I told him when he sat down again. “And if one of the Church’s top guys is leaking information or has sprung a gear, they need to know it.”

“Yes.”

I stared out at the now-empty softball diamond for a minute. Then I said, “I don’t want to kill anybody. But Buzz is playing for keeps. I’m not going to pull any punches.”

Michael frowned down at his hands. “Harry, you’re talking about murder.”

“What a shock,” I said, “after taking one of those monster rounds in the back.”

“There must be some way to end this without bloodsh—”

Over his shoulder, I saw Molly abruptly spring to her feet and whip off her sunglasses, staring across the park with a puzzled frown on her face. Then the girls from the team appeared from the direction in which Molly had been staring. The girls were running as fast as they could, screaming as they came.

“Coach!” screamed Kelly. “Coach! The man took her!”

“Easy, easy,” Michael said, rising. He put his hands on Kelly’s shoulders as Molly came hurrying over. “Easy. What are you talking about?”

“He came out of the van with one of those electric stunner things,” Kelly babbled, through her panting. “He zapped her, and then he put her in the van and drove away.”

Molly drew in a sudden breath and almost seemed to turn green.

Michael stared at the girl for a second, and then glanced at me. His eyes widened in horror. “Alicia!” he called, stepping past Kelly and looking wildly around the park. “Alicia!”

“He took her!” sobbed Kelly, her tears making her face blotchy. “He took her!”

“Kelly,” I said, to get her attention. “What did he look like?”

She shook her head. “I don’t—I can’t . . . White, not really tall. His hair was cut really short. Like army haircuts.”

Buzz.

He’d threatened Michael to get me to bring a sword out in the open, where it was vulnerable. Then he’d tried to kill me before I locked it away again. And when that failed, he tried something else.

“Molly,” Michael said quietly. “Take the truck. Drive Sandra and Donna home. Call your mother on the way and tell her what’s happened. Stay at the house.”

“But—” Molly began.

Michael turned hard eyes to her and said, “Now.”

“Yes, sir,” Molly said instantly.

Michael tossed her the keys to the truck. Then he turned to a nearby equipment bag and smoothly withdrew an aluminum bat. He whipped it around in a flowing rondello motion, nodded as if satisfied, and turned to me. “Let’s go. You’re driving.”