Jim Butcher: Side Jobs

Inane trivia: While I was in school writing the first three books of the Dresden Files, my wife, Shannon, watched Ally McBeal in the evenings, often while I was plunking away at a keyboard. I didn’t pay too much attention to the show, and it took me years to realize I had unconsciously named Billy and Georgia after those characters in Ally McBeal .

Who knew? TV really does rot your brain!

Steel pierced my leg and my body went rigid with pain, but I could not allow myself to move. “Billy,” I growled through my teeth, “kill him.”

Billy the Werewolf squinted up at me from his seat and said, “That might be a little extreme.”

“This is torture,” I said.

“Oh, for crying out loud, Dresden,” Billy said, his tone amused. “He’s just fitting the tux.”

Yanof the tailor, a squat, sturdy little guy who had recently immigrated to Chicago from Outer Sloboviakastan or somewhere, glared up at me, with another dozen pins clutched between his lips and resentment in his eyes. I’m better than six and a half feet tall. It can’t be fun to be told you’ve got to fit a tux to someone my height only a few hours before the wedding.

“It ought to be Kirby standing here,” I said.

“Yeah. But it would be harder to fit the tux around the body cast and all those traction cables.”

“I keep telling you guys,” I said. “Werewolves or not, you’ve got to be more careful.”

Ordinarily, I would not have mentioned Billy’s talent for shapeshifting into a wolf in front of a stranger, but Yanof didn’t speak a word of English. Evidently, his skills with needle and thread were such that he had no pressing need to learn. As Chicago’s resident wizard, I’d worked with Billy on several occasions, and we were friends.

His bachelor party the night before had gotten interesting on the walk back to Billy’s place, when we happened across a ghoul terrorizing an old woman in a parking lot.

It hadn’t been a pretty fight. Mostly because we’d all had too many stripper-induced Jell-O shots.

Billy’s injuries had all been bruises and all to the body. They wouldn’t spoil the wedding. Alex had a nasty set of gashes on his throat from the ghoul’s clawlike nails, but he could probably pass them off as particularly enthusiastic hickeys. Mitchell had broken two teeth when he’d charged the ghoul but hit a wall instead. He was going to be a dedicated disciple of Anbesol until he got to the dentist.

All I had to remember the evening by was a splitting headache, and not from the fight. Jell-O shots are far more dangerous, if you ask me.

Billy’s best man, Kirby, had gotten unlucky. The ghoul slammed him into a brick wall so hard that it broke both his legs and cracked a vertebra.

“We handled him, didn’t we?” Billy asked.

“Let’s ask Kirby,” I said. “Look, there isn’t always going to be a broken metal fence post sticking up out of the ground like that, Billy. We got lucky.”

Billy’s eyes went flat and he abruptly stood up. “All right,” he said, his voice hard. “I’ve had just about enough of you telling me what I should and should not do, Harry. You aren’t my father.”

“No,” I said, “but—”

“In fact,” he continued, “if I remember correctly, the other Alphas and I have saved your life twice now.”

“Yes,” I said. “But—”

His face turned red with anger. Billy wasn’t tall, but he was built like an armored truck. “But what ? You don’t want to share the spotlight with any of us mere one-trick wonders? Don’t you dare belittle what Kirby did, what the others have done and sacrificed.”

I am a trained investigator. Instincts honed by years of observation warned me that Billy might be angry. “Great hostility I sense in you,” I said in a Muppety voice.

Billy’s steady glower continued for a few more seconds, and then it broke. He shook his head and looked away. “I’m sorry. For my tone.”

Yanof jabbed me again, but I ignored it. “You didn’t sleep last night.”

He shook his head again. “No excuse. But between the fight and Kirby and”—he waved a vague hand—“today. I mean, today. ”

“Ah,” I said. “Cold feet?”

Billy took a deep breath. “Well, it’s a big step, isn’t it?” He shook his head. “And after next year, most of the Alphas are going to be done with school. Getting jobs.” He paused. “Splitting up.”

“And that’s where you met Georgia,” I said.

“Yeah.” He shook his head again. “What if we don’t have anything else in common? I mean, good grief. Have you seen her family’s place? And I’m going to be in debt for seven or eight years just paying off the student loans. How do you know if you’re ready to get married?”

Yanof stood up, gestured at my pants, and said something that sounded like, “Hahklha ah lafala krepata khem.”

“I’m not seeing people right now,” I told him as I took off the pants and passed them over. “Or else you’d have a shot, you charmer.”

Yanof sniffed, muttered something else, and toddled back into the shop.

“Billy,” I said, “you think Georgia would have fought that thing last night?”

“Yes,” he said without a second’s hesitation.

“She going to be upset that you did it?”

“No.”

“Even though some folks got hurt?”

He blinked at me. “No.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because”—he shook his head—“because she won’t. I know her. Upset by the injuries, yes, but not by the fight.” He shifted to a tone he probably didn’t realize was an imitation of Georgia’s voice. “People get hurt in fights. That’s why they’re called fights.”

“You know her well enough to answer serious questions for her when she isn’t even in the room, man,” I said quietly. “You’re ready. Keep the big picture in mind. You and her.”

He looked at me for a second and then said, “I thought you’d say something about love.”

I sighed. “Billy. You knob. If you didn’t love her, you wouldn’t be stressed about losing what you have with her, would you.”

“Good point,” he said.

“Remember the important thing. You and her.”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah,” he said. “Georgia and me. The rest doesn’t matter.”

I was going to mumble something vaguely supportive, when the door to the fitting room opened and an absolutely ravishing raven-haired woman in an expensive lavender silk skirt-suit came in. She might have been my age, and she had a lot of gold and diamonds, a lot of perfect white teeth, and the kind of curves that come only from surgery. Her shoes and purse together probably cost more than my car.

“Well,” she snapped, and put a fist on her hip, glaring first at Billy and then at me. “I see you are already doing your best to disrupt the ceremony.”

“Eve,” Billy said in a kind of stilted, formally polite voice. “Um. What are you talking about?”

“For one thing, this,” she said, flicking a hand at me. Then she gave me a second, more evaluative look.

I tried to look casual and confident, there in my Spider-Man T-shirt and black briefs. I managed to keep myself from diving toward my jeans. I turned aside to put them on, maintaining my dignity.

“Your underwear has a hole,” Eve said sweetly.

I jerked my jeans on, blushing. Stupid dignity.

“Bad enough that you insist on this . . . petty criminal taking part in a ceremony before polite society. Yanof is beside himself,” Eve continued, speaking to Billy. “He threatened to quit.”

“Wow,” I said. “You speak Sloboviakstanese?”

She blinked at me. “What?”

“Because Yanof doesn’t speak any English. So how did you know he threatened to quit?” I smiled sweetly at her.