Jim Butcher - White Night

"My host—" Lasciel began.

I held up a hand for silence. "Not yet. Let me look at it unprejudiced first. Then you tell me what you think."

"As you wish."

I went over the stuff there for an hour or so, frowning. I had to go check a calendar a couple of times. I got out a notebook and scribbled things down as I worked them out. "All right," I said quietly, settling back down on the sofa. "Thomas was following several people. The dead women and at least a dozen more, in different parts of the city. He had a running surveillance on them. I think he probably hired a private detective or two to cover some of the observation—keeping tabs on where people were going, figuring out the recurring events in their schedules." I held up the notebook. "These are the names of the folks he was"—I shrugged—"stalking, I suppose. My guess is that the other people on this list are among the missing folk the ladies of the Ordo Lebes told us about."

"Think you Thomas preyed upon them?" Lasciel asked.

I started to deny it, instantly and firmly, but stopped.

Reason. Judgment. Rational thought.

"He could have," I said quietly. "But my instincts say it isn't him."

"Why would it not be?" Lasciel asked me. "Upon what do you base your reasoning?"

"Upon Thomas," I said. "It isn't him. To engage in wholesaled murder and abduction? No way. Maybe he fell off the incubus wagon, sure, but he wouldn't inflict any more harm than he had to. it isn't his way."

"Not his way by choice," Lasciel said. "Though I feel I must point out that—"

I cut her off, waving a hand. "I know. His sister could have gotten involved. She already ate Lord Raith's free will. She could have monkeyed around with Thomas's mind, too. And if not Lara, then there are plenty of others who might have done it. Thomas could be doing these things against his will. Hell, he might not even remember he's doing them."

"Or he might be acting of his own volition. He has another point of weakness," Lasciel said.

"Eh?"

"Lara Raith holds Justine."

A point I hadn't yet considered. Justine was my brother's… well, I don't know if there's a word for what she was to him. But he loved her, and she him. It wasn't their fault that she was slightly insane and he was a life force-devouring creature of the night.

They'd been willing to give up their lives for each other in the midst of a crisis, and the love confirmed by doing so had rendered Justine deadly to my brother, poisonous to him. Love is like that to the White Court, an intolerable agony to them, the way holy water is to other breeds. Someone touched by pure and honest love cannot be fed upon—which had more or less put an end to Thomas's ability to be near Justine.

It was probably just as well. That last time they'd been together had all but killed Justine. The last time I'd seen her, she'd been a wasted, frail, white-haired thing barely capable of stringing sentences together. It had torn my brother apart to see what he had done to her. To my knowledge he hadn't even tried to be a part of her life again. I couldn't blame him.

Lara watched over Justine now, though she could not feed upon the girl any more than Thomas could.

But Lara could cut her throat, if it came to that.

My brother might very well be capable of some unpleasant things in the interests of protecting Justine. Strike that. He was capable of anything where the girl was concerned.

Means. Motive. Opportunity. The equation of murder was balanced.

I looked back at the illusory wall, where the pictures, maps, and notes grouped together in a broad band near the top, then descended into fewer notes on the next strip down, and so on, forming a vague V-shape. At the top of the V rested a single, square yellow sticky note.

That note read, in a heavy hand, Ordo Lebes? Find them.

"Dammit, Thomas," I murmured quietly. I addressed Lasciel. "Get rid of it."

Lasciel nodded and the illusion disappeared. "There is something else you should know, my host."

I eyed her. "What's that?"

"It may concern your safety and the course of your investigation. May I show you?"

The word no came strongly to mind, but I was already in for a penny, so to speak. Lasciel's wealth of intelligence and experience made her an extremely capable adviser. "Briefly."

She nodded, rose, and suddenly I was standing in Anna Ash's apartment, as I had been that afternoon.

"My host," Lasciel said, "Remember you how many women you observed entering the building?"

I frowned. "Sure. As many as half a dozen had the right look, though anyone who arrived before Murphy and I got there could have already been inside."

"Precisely," Lasciel said. "Here."

She waved a hand, and an image of me appeared in the apartment's entry, Murphy at my side.

"Anna Ash," Lasciel said. She nodded toward me, and Anna's image appeared, facing me. "Can you describe the others in attendance?"

"Helen Beckitt," I said. "Looking leaner and more weathered than the last time I saw her."

Beckitt's image appeared where she had been standing by the window.

I pointed at the wooden rocking chair. "Abby and Toto were there." The plump blond woman and her dog appeared. I rubbed at my forehead. "Uh, two on the sofa and one on the love seat."

Three shadowy forms appeared in the named places.

I pointed at the sofa. "The pretty one, in the dance leotard, the one worried about time." She appeared. I pointed at the shadowed figure next to her. "Bitter, suspicious Priscilla who was not being polite." The shadowy figure became Priscilla's image.

"And there you go," I said.

Lasciel shook her head, waved her hand, and the people images all vanished.

All except the shadowy figure sitting on the love seat.

I blinked.

"What can you remember about this one?" Lasciel asked me.

I racked my brain. It's usually good for this kind of thing. "Nothing," I said after a moment. "Not one damned detail. Nothing." I added two and two together and got trouble. "Someone was under a veil. Someone good enough to make it subtle. Hard to tell it was there at all. Not invisible so much as extremely boring and unremarkable."

"In your favor," Lasciel said, "I should point out that you had crossed the threshold uninvited, and thus were deprived of much of your power. In such a circumstance it would be most difficult for you to sense a veil at all, much less to pierce it."

I nodded, frowning at the shadowy figure. "It was deliberate," I said. "Anna goaded me into walking over the threshold on purpose. She was hiding Miss Mystery from me."

"Entirely possible," Lasciel concurred. "Or…"

"Or they didn't know someone was there, either," I said. "And if that's the case…" I tossed the notebook aside with a growl and rose.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

I got my staff and coat, and got Mouse ready to go. "If the mystery guest was news to the Ordo, she's right in among them and they could be in danger. If the Ordo knew about her, then they played me and lied to me." I ripped open the door with more than my usual effort. "Either way, I'm going over there to straighten some things out."

I swept the Beetle for bombs again and got the impression that I was going to get heartily sick of the chore, fast. It was clean, and off we went.

I parked illegally on a street about a block from Anna Ash's apartment, and walked the rest of the way in. I rang buzzers more or less at random until someone buzzed me in, and headed back up the stairs to Anna's apartment.

This time, though, I went in armed for bear. As I rode up in the elevator, I got out my jar of unguent, a dark brown concoction that stained the skin for a couple of days. I dabbed a finger in it and smeared it lightly onto my eyelids and at the base of my eyes. It was an ointment originally intended to counter faerie glamour, allowing those who had it to see through illusion to reality. It wasn't quite right for seeing through a veil wrought with mortal magic, but it should be strong enough to show me something of whatever the veil was hiding. I should be able to glimpse any motion, and that would at least give me an idea of which way to face if things got dicey.