Jim Butcher - Side Jobs

“You knew her years ago,” I corrected him with gentle emphasis.

Marcy rubbed one foot against the other calf, and stood looking down, her eyes on her feet. It looked like a habitual stance, social camouflage. “She’s right, Will,” she said in a quiet voice.

Will frowned at her. “How?”

“She should be suspicious of me, given the circumstances. I’ve been back in town for what? Two weeks? And something like this happens? I’d be worried, too.” She looked up at me, her expression uncertain. “I want to help, Sergeant Murphy,” she said. “What do we do?”

I stared at them both, thinking. Dammit, this was another one of those Dresden things. He could have pinched his nose for a second, then swept his gaze over them and reported whether or not they were who they said they were. Supernatural creatures are big on shapeshifting. They use it to get in close to their prey. In an attack like that, a mortal has the next-best thing to zero probability of escaping.

I knew. It had been done to me. The sense of chagrin and helplessness is terrible.

“To start with,” I said, “let me see if you can come in.”

Marcy frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that if you’re a shapeshifter or something, you might not have an easy time coming over the threshold.”

“Christ, Sergeant,” Will began. “Of course she’s a shapeshifter. So am I.”

I glowered at them both. “If she’s who she says she is, she won’t have a problem,” I said.

Will sighed and looked at Marcy. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine,” the young woman said. “It’s smart to be careful.”

Marcy held her hands out to her sides, in plain sight, and stepped

into the house. “Good enough?”

Houses are surrounded by a barrier of energy. Dresden always called it the threshold. It’s all murky magic stuff to me, but the general guideline is that anything that’s too hideously supernatural can’t come in without being invited. A threshold will stop spirits, ghosts, some vampires (but not others), and will generally ward away things that intend to eat your face.

Not everything. Not hardly. But a lot of things.

“No,” I said, and put my gun away. “But it’s a start.” I nodded to a chair in the living room. “Sit down.”

She did, and she sat looking down at her hands, which were folded in her lap.

Will followed Marcy in and gave me a look that meant, in Martian, What the hell do you think you’re doing?

I ignored him.

“Marcy,” I said, “why didn’t you respond to Will when he tried to contact you earlier?”

“I tried,” she said. “I called back as soon as I got the message, but I didn’t have Will’s cell number. Only Georgia’s.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Um,” she said, “I just got back into town. And Georgia doesn’t need any stress. And he’s married. I mean, you don’t just go asking for a husband’s phone number. You know?”

Which was reasonable, put that way. I nodded, neither approving nor disapproving.

“I left messages on the answering machine at the apartment,” Marcy said. “It was all I could do.”

“And I checked the messages after I’d run your errands,” Will said. “I called her back and had her come over. She swept for scents, and then we came here.”

“Will,” I said, firmly, “please let me handle this?”

He clenched his jaw and subsided, leaning against a wall.

I turned back to where Marcy sat and continued towering over her, a posture of parental-style authority. “Tell me about your relationship to Georgia.”

“We’re friends,” Marcy said. “Close friends, really. I think of her as a close friend, I mean. She was very kind to me when Andi broke it off with me. And we were friends for years before that.”

I nodded. “Did Will explain what was going on?”

She nodded. “Georgia and Andi have been taken.”

“How do you know it was Andi with Georgia?”

“Because I was there,” Marcy said. “I mean, not last night, but the night before last. Will was out of town and we had a girls’ night.”

“Girls’ night?”

“We hung out and made fondue and watched movies and lied about how we all looked better now than when we first met. Well, except that Andi actually does.” She shook her head. “Um, anyway, we stayed up late talking, and Andi slept in the guest bed and I slept on the couch.” She glanced up at my eyes for the first time. “That was when we had the nightmares.”

“Nightmares?”

She shuddered. “I . . . I don’t want to think about it. But all three of us had an almost identical nightmare. It was the worst for Georgia. She was . . .” She looked at Will. “It was as if she hadn’t quite woken up out of the dream. She kept jerking and twitching.” She gave me a weak smile. “Took two cups of cocoa to snap her out of it.”

I kept my face neutral and gave her nothing. “Go on.”

“Me and Andi talked about it and decided that one of us should stay with her. We were going to trade off, like, until Will came home.”

“The first night was Andi, I take it?”

Marcy nodded, biting her lip. “Yes.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said. Reasonable, logical—and impossible to verify.

And the kid was shaking.

Jesus Christ, Karrin , said a gentler voice inside me. What are you doing? She’s scared to death .

I tried to make my tone a little warmer. “What do you know about their abduction, specifically, Marcy? Can you tell me anything at all that might point toward the identity of the kidnappers?”

She shook her head. “I can’t think of anything that I picked up beforehand. But I’m certain it was Andi and Georgia who were taken.”

“How can you be sure?” I asked.

Will cleared his throat and spoke quietly. “Marcy’s got a nose. She’s better with scents than any of the rest of us.”

I eyed Marcy. “Could you pick up their trail?”

“They were taken downstairs and loaded into the back of a car,” Marcy said promptly. “An older model, burning too much oil. But I couldn’t follow them after that. I think I’ll be able to recognize the scent of their captors, though, if I run into it.”

I nodded. She’d gotten a ton more out of the scene than Will had. Such a talent could be damn useful.

All the same, I wasn’t sure. She sounded sincere to me, and I’m pretty good at knowing when someone isn’t. But there’s always a better liar out there. I just wasn’t sure.

But . . . you have to trust someone, sometime. Even when it seems risky, when lives are on the line.

Maybe even especially then.

“Okay,” I said calmly, and took a seat in another chair. “Will,” I asked, “what did you find out?”

“There are half a dozen other folks who have gone missing in the past day and a half,” Will said. “At least, that’s how many Bock and McAnally know about. Word about the kidnappings is out on the Paranet, and has been spreading since yesterday morning. People are moving places in groups of three and four, at least. McAnally’s is packed. The community knows something is up. They’re scared.”

Marcy nodded. “It isn’t just Chicago. It’s happening all over the country. Group leaders are keeping everyone informed, asking after their people, reporting them missing to the local cops, for whatever good that might do. . . .” Her voice trailed off into a little squeak as she looked at me. “Um. Sorry.”

I ignored her. Martian for This is easier for all of us if we just pretend I didn’t hear it . “Will, did you turn up anything we can use?”

He shook his head. “No one has seen or heard anything at any of the disappearances. But there are rumors that someone found a gang of Red Court vampires torn apart in a basement across town. Maybe that has something to do with what’s going on.”