Jim Butcher - Changes

Murphy nodded slowly, then sighed like someone setting down an unpleasant burden. “So. Chichén Itzá.”

“Looks like.”

“Cool. When do we hit them?”

I shook my head. “We can’t go all Wild Bunch on these people. They’ll flatten us.”

She frowned. “But the White Council . . .”

“Won’t be joining us,” I said. I couldn’t keep a bit of the snarl out of my voice. “And to answer your question . . . we’re not sure when the ritual is supposed to take place. I’ve got to come up with more information.”

“Rudolph,” Murphy said thoughtfully.

“Rudolph. Someone who is a part of this, probably someone from the Red Court, is leaning on him. I plan on finding that someone and then poking him in the nose until he coughs up something I can use.”

“I think I’d like to talk to Rudolph, too. We’ll start from our ends and work toward the middle again, then?”

“Sounds like a plan.” I waved at Mac and pantomimed holding a sandwich in front of me and taking a bite. He nodded, and glanced at Murphy. “You want a steak sandwich, too?”

“I thought you didn’t have time to be sane.”

“I don’t,” I said. “I don’t have time to be hungry, either.”

“How does a police detective afford a place like this?” Molly asked.

We were sitting in the Blue Beetle on a quiet residential street in Crestwood. It was late afternoon, with a heavy overcast. The houses on the street were large ones. Rudolph’s place, whose address I’d gotten from Murphy, was the smallest house on the block—but it was on the block. It backed right up to the Cook County Forest Preserve, too, and between the old forest and the mature trees it gave the whole area a sheltered, pastoral quality.

“He doesn’t,” I said quietly.

“You mean he’s dirty?” Molly asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe his family has money. Or maybe he managed to mortgage himself to the eyeballs. People get real stupid when it comes to buying homes. Pay an extra quarter of a million dollars for a place because it’s in the right neighborhood. Buy houses they damned well know they can’t afford to make the payments on.” I shook my head. “They should make you take some kind of iota-of-common-sense quiz before you make an offer.”

“Maybe it isn’t stupid,” Molly said. “Everybody wants home to mean something. Maybe the extra money they pay creates that additional meaning for them.”

I grimaced. “I’d rather have my extra meaning come from the ancient burial ground under the swimming pool or from knowing that I built it with my own hands or something.”

“Not everyone puts as low a value on the material as you do, boss,” Molly said. “For them, maybe the extra material value represented by a higher price tag is significant.”

I grunted. “It’s still stupid.”

“From your perspective,” Molly said. “It’s really all about perspective, isn’t it.”

“And from the perspective of those in need, that extra quarter of a million bucks your material person spent on the prestige addition for his house looks like an awful lot of lifesaving food and medicine that could have existed if the jerk with the big house in the suburbs hadn’t blown it all to artificially inflate his sociogeographic penis.”

“Heh,” Molly said. “And their house is much nicer than your house.”

“And that,” I said.

Mouse grumbled quietly in his sleep from the backseat, and I turned to reach back and rub his ears until he settled down again.

Molly sat quietly for almost a minute before she said, “What else do we do?”

“Other than sit tight and watch?” I asked. “This is a stakeout, Molly. It’s what you do on a stakeout.”

“Stakeouts suck,” Molly said, puffing out a breath that blew a few strands of hair out of her eyes. “How come Murphy isn’t doing this part? How come we aren’t doing magic stuff?”

“Murphy is keeping track of Rudolph at work,” I said. “I’m watching his home. If his handler wanted him dead, this would be a logical place to bushwhack him.”

“And we’re not doing magic because . . . ?”

“What do you suggest we do?”

“Tracking spells for Rudolph and Maggie,” she said promptly.

“You got any of Rudolph’s blood? Hair? Fingernail clippings?”

“No,” she said.

“So, no tracking spell for him,” I said.

“But what about Maggie?” she said. “I know you don’t have any hair or anything from her, but you pulled a tracking spell for me using my mother’s blood, right? Couldn’t you use your blood for that?”

I kept my breathing steady, and prevented the flash of frustration I felt from coming out in my voice. “First thing I tried. Right after I got off the phone with Susan when this all started.”

Molly frowned. “Why didn’t it work?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it’s because there’s something more than simple blood relation involved. Maybe there has to be a bond, a sense of family between the parent and child, that the tracking spell uses to amplify its effects. Maybe the Red Court is using some kind of magic that conceals or jams tracking spells—God knows, they would have been forced to come up with some kind of countermeasure during the war.” I shook my head wearily. “Or maybe it was simple distance. I’ve never tracked anything more than a couple of hundred linear miles away. I’ve heard of tracking spells that worked over a couple of thousand miles, but not from anyone who had actually done it. Gimme some credit, grasshopper. Of course I tried that. I wouldn’t have spent half a day summoning my contacts if I hadn’t.”

“Oh,” Molly said. She looked troubled. “Yeah. Sorry.”

I sighed and tipped my head back and closed my eyes. “No problem. Sorry, kid. I’m just tense.”

“Just a little,” she said. “Um. Should we be sitting out here in broad daylight? I mean, we’re not hiding the car or anything.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We want to be visible.”

“Why?”

“I’m gonna close my eyes,” I told her. “Just for a bit. Stay alert, okay?”

She gave me a look, but said, “Okay.”

I closed my eyes, but about half a second after I had, Molly nudged me and said, “Wake up, Harry. We have company.”

I opened them again and found that the grey late afternoon had settled into the murk of early evening. I looked up into the rearview mirror and spotted a white sports car coming to a halt as it parked on the street behind us. The running lights went off as the driver got out.

“Took him long enough,” I muttered.

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

“Asked him to meet me here. Didn’t know where to find him.”

Molly peered through the back window, and even Mouse lifted his head to look around. “Oh,” Molly said, understanding, as Mouse’s tail thumped hesitantly against the back of my seat.

I got out of the car and walked to meet my half brother, the vampire.

Thomas and I were a study in contrasts. I was better than six and a half feet tall and built lean. He was a hair under six feet, and looked like a fitness model. My hair was a muddy brown color, generally cut very short on the sides and in back, a little longer on top. It tended to stick up any which way within a few minutes of being ordered by a comb. Thomas’s hair was black, naturally wavy, and fell to touch his shoulders. I wore jeans, a T-shirt, and my big black leather duster. Thomas was wearing custom-fitted pants made from white leather, a white silk shirt, and a coarser silk jacket, also in white, decorated with elaborate brocade. He had the kind of face that belonged on billboards. Mine belonged on wanted posters.