Jim Butcher: Odd jobs

“Second A,” I said to the Wardenlets, writing on the chalkboard as I did. “Analysis.”

“How do you get an ogre to lay down on the couch, Harry?” called a young man with the rounded vowels of a northern accent in his speech. The room quivered with the laughter of young people.

“That’s enough out of you, there, McKenzie, you hoser,” I shot back, in a parody of the same accent. “Give me a break here, eh?”

I got a bigger laugh than the heckler. Which is how you make sure the heckler doesn’t steal the show from you.

“Pipe down,” I said, and waited for them to settle. “Thank you. Your second step is always analysis. Even when you know what you’re dealing with, you’ve got to know why it’s happening. If you’ve got an angry ghost, it’s generally angry for a reason. If a new pack of ghouls has moved in down the block, they’ve generally picked their spot for a reason.”

Ilyana raised her hand again and I pointed at her.

“What does it matter?” she asked. “Ghost or ghoul is causing problem, still we are dealing with them, yes?” She pointed her finger like a gun and dropped her thumb like the weapon’s hammer on the word “dealing.”

“If you’re stupid, yeah,” I said.

She didn’t look pleased at my response.

“I used to have a similar attitude,” I said. I held up my left hand. It was a mass of old scars, and not the pretty kind. It had been burned, and badly, several years before. Wizards heal up better than regular folks, over the long term. I could move it again, and I had feeling back in parts of all the fingers. But it still wasn’t a pretty picture. “An hour or two of work would have told me enough about the situation I was walking into to let me avoid this,” I told them. It was the truth. Pretty much. “Learn everything you possibly can.”

Ilyana frowned at me.

McKenzie raised his hand, frowning soberly, and I nodded at him.

“Learn more. Okay. How?”

I spread my hands. “Never let yourself think you know all the ways to learn,” I said. “Expand your own knowledge base. Read. Talk to other wizards. Hell, you might even go to school.”

That got me another laugh. I went on before it gathered much momentum.

“Warden Canuck there was onto something earlier, too. People are people. Learn about what makes them tick. Monsters are the same way. Find ways to emulate their thinking,”-I wasn’t even going to try a phrase like Get into their heads, thank you-“and you’ll have insight into their actions and their probable intentions.

“Information-gathering spells can be darned handy,” I continued, “but if you’ll forgive the expression, they aren’t magic. The information you get from them can be easily misread, and it will almost never let you see past one of your own blind spots. You can seek answers from other planes, but if you go bargaining with supernatural beings for knowledge, things can get dangerous, fast. Sometimes what you get from them is invaluable. Most of the time, it could be had another way. Approach that particular well with extreme caution.”

To emphasize those last two words, I stared slowly around the room in pure challenge, daring anyone to disagree with me. The young people dropped their eyes from mine. Eye contact with a wizard is tricky-it can trigger a soulgaze, and that isn’t the kind of thing you want happening to you casually.

“Honestly,” I said into the silence, letting my voice become gentler, more conversational, “the best thing you can do is communicate. Talk to the people involved. Your victims, if they can speak to you. Their family. Witnesses. Friends. Most of the time, everything you need is something they already know. Most of the time, that’s the fastest, safest, easiest way to get it.”

McKenzie raised his hand again, and I nodded.

“Most of the time?” he asked.

“That’s the thing about people,” I said, quietly, so they would pay attention. “Whether it’s to you or to everyone or just to themselves-people lie.”

Megan Yardly was a single mother of three. She was in her early thirties and looked it, had gorgeous red hair and bright green eyes. She and her children lived in a suburb that was more “sub” than “urb,” southeast of KC, named Peculiar.

Peculiar, Missouri. You can’t make these things up.

Megan opened the door, nodded to her brother, looked up at me and said, “You’re him. You’re the wizard.” Her eyes narrowed. “Your… your car broke down. And you think the name of our town is a bad joke…” She nodded, like a musician who has picked up on a beat and a chord progression. “And you think this probably isn’t a supernatural problem.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “You’re one hell of a sensitive.”

She nodded. “You were expecting someone who was good at cold reading.”

“A lot of professional psychics are,” I said. I smiled. “So are you.”

She arched an eyebrow at me.

“There’s at least a fair chance that if someone is late to what is perceived as an important appointment that car trouble is to blame, particularly if they show up in a rental car. Most people who hadn’t grown up around a town named Peculiar would think the name was odd.” I grinned at her. “And gosh. A lot of professional investigators are just a tad cynical.”

Her expression broke and she laughed. “Apparently.” She turned from me and kissed her brother on the cheek. “Ben.”

“Meg.”

“Child services was here again today,” she said, her tone neutral.

“Dammit,” Yardly said. “How’s Kat?”

She waggled a hand in the air, but her face suddenly aged ten years. “The same.”

“Meg, the doctors-”

“Not again, Ben,” she said, closing her eyes briefly. She shook her head once, and Yardly shut his jaws with an audible click. Megan looked down at the ground for a moment and then up at me. “So. Harry Dresden. High Mucketymuck of the White Council.”

“Actually,” I said, “I’m a fairly low mucketymuck. Or maybe a mucketymuck militant. High mucketymucks-”

“Wouldn’t come to Peculiar?”

“You’re really into interruption, aren’t you?” I said, smiling. “I was going to say, they wouldn’t have a problem with their car.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “I think I like you.”

“Give it time,” I said.

She nodded, slowly. Then she said, with gentle emphasis, “Please, come into my home.”

She stepped back, and I came into the little house, crossing over the threshold, the curtain of gentle, powerful energy that surrounds every home. Her invitation meant that the curtain parted for me, letting me bring my power with me. I exhaled, slowly, tightening my metaphysical muscles and feeling my power put a silent, invisible strain on the air around me.

Megan inhaled suddenly, sharply, and took a step back from me.

“Ah,” I said. “You are a sensitive.”

She shook her head once, and then held up her hand to forestall her brother. “Ben, it’s fine. He’s…” She looked at me again, her expression pensive, fragile. “He’s the real deal.”

We sat down in the little living room. It was littered with children’s toys. The place didn’t look like an animal pit-just busy and well-loved. I sat in a comfy chair. Megan sat perched at the edge of her couch. Yardly hovered, evidently unable to bring himself to sit.

“So,” I said quietly. “You think something is tormenting your daughters.”

She nodded.

“How old are they?”

“Kat is twelve. Tamara is four.”

“Uh huh,” I said. “Tell me about what happens.”

Sometimes I seem to have the damnedest sense of timing. No sooner had I asked the question than a high-pitched scream cut the air, joined an instant later by another one.