Jim Butcher: Songs of Love & Death

I stepped forward. “Hey, man,” I said. “Harry Dresden, PI. If you wouldn’t mind, all we need to do is get inside for five minutes.”

He eyed me. “PI, huh?”

I produced my license and showed it to him. He eyed it and then me. “You don’t look like no private investigator I ever saw. Where’s your hat?”

“In the shop,” I said. “Transmission gave out.” I winked at him and held up a folded twenty between my first and second finger. “Five minutes?”

He yawned. “Naw. Can’t let nobody run around loose in there.” He reached out and took the twenty. “Then again, what you and your lady friend mutually consent to do once you’re inside ain’t my affair.” He rose, pulled a lever, and gestured at the car. “Mount up,” he leered. “And keep your, ah, extremities inside the car at all times.”

We got in, and I was nearly scalded by the steam coming out of Murphy’s ears. “You just had to play along with that one.”

“We needed to get inside,” I said. “Just doing my job, Sergeant.”

She snorted.

“Hey, Murph, look,” I said, holding up a strap of old, worn leather. “Seat belts.”

She gave me a look that could have scoured steel. Then, with a stubborn set of her jaw, secured the flimsy thing. Her expression dared me to object.

I grinned and relaxed. It isn’t easy to really get Murph’s goat and get away with it.

On the other side of the platform, the carnie pulled another lever, and a moment later the little cart started rolling forward at the blazing speed of one, maybe even two miles an hour. A dark curtain parted ahead of us and we rolled into the Tunnel of Terror.

Murphy promptly drew her gun—it was dark, but I heard the scratch of its barrel on plastic as she drew it from its holster. She snapped a small LED flashlight into its holster beneath the gun barrel and flicked it on. We were in a cramped little tunnel, every surface painted black, and there was absolutely nowhere for Maroon to be hiding.

I shook out the charm bracelet on my left wrist, preparing defensive energies in case they were needed. Murph and I had been working together long enough to know our roles. If trouble came, I would defend us. Murphy and her Sig would reply.

A door opened at the end of the little hallway and we rolled forward into an open set dressed to look like a rustic farmhouse, with a lot of subtle details meant to be scary—severed fingers at the base of the chicken-chopping stump, just below the bloody ax, glowing eyes appearing in an upstairs window of the farmhouse, that kind of thing. There was no sign of Maroon and precious little place for him to hide.

“Better get that seat belt off,” I told her. “We want to be able to move fast if it comes to that.”

“Yeah,” she said, and reached down, just as something huge and terrifying dropped onto the car from the shadows above us, screaming.

Adrenaline hit my system like a runaway bus, and I looked up to see a decidedly demonic scarecrow hanging a few feet above our heads, bouncing on its wires and playing a recording of cackling, mad laughter.

“Jesus Christ,” Murphy breathed, lowering her gun. She was a little white around the eyes.

We looked at each other and both burst into high, nervous laughs.

“Tunnel of Terror,” Murphy said. “We are so cool.”

“Total badasses,” I said, grinning.

The car continued its slow grind forward and Murphy unfastened the seat belt. We moved into the next area, meant to be a zombie-infested hospital. It had a zombie mannequin, which burst out of a closet near the track, and plenty of gore. We got out of the car and scouted a couple of spots where he might have been but wasn’t. Then we hopped into the car again before it could leave the set.

So it went, on through a ghoulish graveyard, a troglodyte-teaming cavern, and a literal Old West ghost town. We came up with nothing, but we moved well as a team, better than I could remember doing with anyone before. Everything felt as smooth and natural as if we’d been moving together our whole lives. We did it in total silence, too, divining what each other would do through pure instinct.

Even great teams lose a game here or there, though. We came up with diddly, and emerged from the Tunnel of Terror with neither Maroon nor any idea where he’d gone.

“Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “This week has been an investigative suckfest for me.”

Murphy tittered again. “You said ‘suck.’”

I grinned at her and looked around. “Well,” I said. “We don’t know where Maroon went. If they hadn’t made us already, they have now.”

“Can you pick up on the signal-whatsit again?”

“Energy signature,” I said. “Maybe. It’s pretty vague though. I’m not sure how much more precise I can get.”

“Let’s find out,” she said.

I nodded. “Right, then.” We started around the suspect circle of attractions, moving slowly and trying to blend into the crowds. When a couple of rowdy kids went by, one chasing the other, I put an arm around her shoulders and drew her into the shelter of my body so that she wouldn’t get bowled over.

She exhaled slowly and did not step away from me.

My heart started beating faster.

“Harry,” she said quietly.

“Yeah?”

“You and me… why haven’t we ever…” She looked up at me. “Why not?”

“The usual, I guess,” I said quietly. “Trouble. Duty. Other people involved.”

She shook her head. “Why not?” she repeated, her eyes direct. “All these years have gone by. And something could have happened, but it never did. Why not?”

I licked my lips. “Just like that? We just decide to be together?”

Her eyelids lowered. “Why not?”

My heart did the drum solo from “Wipe Out.”

Why not?

I bent my head down to her mouth, and kissed her, very gently.

She turned into the kiss, pressing her body against mine. It was a little bit awkward. I was most of two feet taller than she was. We made up for grace with enthusiasm, her arms twining around my neck as she kissed me, hungry and deep.

“Whoa,” I said, drawing back a moment later. “Work. Right?”

She looked at me for a moment, her cheeks pink, her lips a little swollen from the kiss, and said, “Right.” She closed her eyes and nodded. “Right. Work first.”

“Then dinner?” I asked.

“Dinner. My place. We can order in.”

My belly trembled in sudden excitement at that proposition. “Right.” I looked around. “So let’s find this thing and get it over with.”

We started moving again. A circuit around the attractions got me no closer to the source of the energy I’d sensed earlier.

“Dammit,” I said when we’d completed the pattern, frustrated.

“Hey,” Murphy said. “Don’t beat yourself up about it, Harry.” Her hand slipped into mine, our fingers intertwining. “I’ve been a cop a long time. You don’t always get the bad guy. And if you go around blaming yourself for it, you wind up crawling into a bottle or eating your own gun.”

“Thank you,” I said quietly. “But…”

“Heh,” Murphy said. “You said, ‘but.’”

We both grinned like fools. I looked down at our twined hands. “I like this.”

“So do I,” Murphy said. “Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?”

“Beats me.”

“Are we just that stupid?” she asked. “I mean, people, in general. Are we really so blind that we miss what’s right there in front of us?”

“As a species, we’re essentially insane,” I said. “So, yeah, probably.” I lifted our hands and kissed her fingertips. “I’m not missing it now, though.”

Her smile lit up several thousand square feet of the midway. “Good.”