Jim Butcher - Side Jobs

So why only two now?

I walked down to the far end of the counter, a nagging thought dancing around the back of my mind, where I couldn’t see it. Mac kept a small office in the back corner, consisting of a table for his desk, a wooden chair, and a couple of filing cabinets. His food service and liquor permits were on display on the wall above it.

I sat down at the desk and opened the filing cabinets. I started going through Mac’s records and books. Intrusive as hell, I know, but I had to figure out what was going on before matters got worse.

And that was when it hit me—matters getting worse. I could see a mortal wizard, motivated by petty spite, greed, or some other mundane motivation, wrecking Mac’s bar. People can be amazingly petty. But nonhumans, now—that was a different story.

The fact that this Bassarid chick had a credit card meant she was methodical. I mean, you can’t just conjure one out of thin air. She’d taken the time to create an identity for herself. That kind of forethought indicated a scheme, a plan, a goal. Untidying a Chicago bar, neutral ground or not, was not by any means the kind of goal that things from the Nevernever set for themselves when they went undercover into mortal society.

Something bigger was going on, then. Mac’s place must have been a side item for Bassarid.

Or maybe a stepping-stone.

Mac was no wizard, but he was savvy. It would take more than cheap tricks to get to his beer with him here, and I was betting he had worked out more than one way to realize it if someone had intruded on his place when he was gone. So, if someone wanted to get to the beer, they’d need a distraction.

Like maybe Caine.

Caine made a deal with Bassarid, evidently—I assumed he gave her the bloodstone in exchange for being a pain to Mac. So, she ruins Mac’s day, gets the bloodstone in exchange, end of story—nice and neat.

Except that it didn’t make a lot of sense. Bloodstone isn’t exactly impossible to come by. Why would someone with serious magical juice do a favor for Caine to get some?

Because maybe Caine was a stooge, a distraction for anyone trying to follow Bassarid’s trail. What if Bassarid had picked someone who had a history with Mac, so that I could chase after him while she . . . did whatever she planned to do with the rest of Mac’s beer?

Wherever the hell that was.

It took me an hour and a half to find anything in Mac’s files—the first thing was a book. A really old book, bound in undyed leather. It was a journal, apparently, and written in some kind of cipher.

Also interesting, but probably not germane.

The second thing I found was a receipt, for a whole hell of a lot of money, along with an itemized list of what had been sold—beer, representing all of Mac’s various heavenly brews. Someone at Worldclass Limited had paid him an awful lot of money for his current stock.

I got on the phone and called Murphy.

“Who bought the evil beer?” Murphy asked.

“The beer isn’t evil. It’s a victim. And I don’t recognize the name of the company. Worldclass Limited.”

Keys clicked in the background as Murphy hit the Internet. “Caterers,” Murphy said a moment later. “High end.”

I thought of the havoc that might be about to ensue at some wedding or bar mitzvah and shuddered. “Hell’s bells,” I breathed. “We’ve got to find out where they went.”

“Egad, Holmes,” Murphy said in the same tone I would have said, “Duh.”

“Yeah. Sorry. What did you get on Bassarid?”

“Next to nothing,” Murphy said. “It’ll take me a few more hours to get the information behind her credit card.”

“No time,” I said. “She isn’t worried about the cops. Whoever she is, she planned this whole thing to keep her tracks covered from the likes of me.”

“Aren’t we full of ourselves?” Murphy grumped. “Call you right back.”

She did.

“The caterers aren’t available,” she said. “They’re working the private boxes at the Bulls game.”

I RUSHED TO the United Center.

Murphy could have blown the whistle and called in the artillery, but she hadn’t. Uniformed cops already at the arena would have been the first to intervene, and if they did, they were likely to cross Bassarid. Whatever she was, she would be more than they could handle.

She’d scamper or, worse, one of the cops could get killed. So Murphy and I both rushed to get there and find the bad guy before she could pull the trigger, so to speak, on the Chicago PD.

It was half an hour before the game, and the streets were packed. I parked in front of a hydrant and ran half a mile to the United Center, where thousands of people were packing themselves into the building for the game. I picked up a ticket from a scalper for a ridiculous amount of money on the way, emptying my pockets, and earned about a million glares from Bulls fans as I juked and ducked through the crowd to get through the entrances as quickly as I possibly could.

Once inside, I ran for the lowest level, the bottommost ring of concession stands and restrooms circling entrances to the arena—the most crowded level, currently—where the entrances to the most expensive ring of private boxes were. I started at the first box I came to, knocking on the locked doors. No one answered at the first several, and at the next, the door was opened by a blonde who, in an expensive business outfit showing a lot of décolletage, had clearly been expecting someone else.

“Who are you?” she stammered.

I flashed her my laminated consultant’s ID, too quickly to be seen. “Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, ma’am,” I said in my official’s voice, which is like my voice only deeper and more pompous. I’ve heard it from all kinds of government types. “We’ve had a report of tainted beer. I need to check your bar, see if the bad batch is in there.”

“Oh,” she said, backing up, her body language immediately cooperative. I pegged her as somebody’s receptionist, maybe. “Of course.”

I padded into the room and went to the bar, rifling bottles and opening cabinets until I found eleven dark brown bottles with a simple cap with an M stamped into the metal—Mac’s mark.

I turned to find the blonde holding out the half-empty bottle number twelve in a shaking hand. Her eyes were a little wide. “Um. Am I in trouble?”

I might be. I took the beer bottle from her, moving gingerly, and set it down with the others. “Have you been feeling, uh, sick or anything?” I asked as I edged toward the door, just in case she came at me with a baseball bat.

She shook her head, breathing more heavily. Her manicured fingernails trailed along the V-neck of her blouse. “I . . . I mean, you know.” Her face flushed. “Just looking forward to . . . the game.”

“Uh-huh,” I said warily.

Her eyes suddenly became warmer and very direct. I don’t know what it was exactly, but she was suddenly filled with that energy women have that has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with creating it. The temperature in the room felt as if it went up about ten degrees. “Maybe you should examine me, sir.”

I suddenly had a very different idea of what Mac had been defending himself from with that baseball bat.

And it had turned ugly on him.

Hell’s bells, I thought I knew what we were dealing with.

“Fantastic idea,” I told her. “You stay right here and get comfortable. I’m going to grab something sweet. I’ll be back in two shakes.”

“All right,” she cooed. Her suit jacket slid off her shoulders to the floor. “Don’t be long.”

I smiled at her in what I hoped was a suitably sultry fashion and backed out. Then I shut the door, checked its frame, and focused my will into the palm of my right hand. I directed my attention to one edge of the door and whispered, “ Forzare.”