Jim Butcher - White Night

"Happened," I said. "It's done. Besides, it worked out. I don't know if I could have read anything at all from that victim, the way you did today."

She looked hopeful. "Yeah?"

I nodded. "What you found might be a big help. You did good. Thanks."

She practically glowed. Once or twice, after a compliment, she'd literally glowed, but we'd gotten that under control within a month or two. She gave me a smile that made her look even younger than she was, and then pelted up the front steps and into the house.

That left me there alone with pages and pages of dead women. I wanted to know more about them almost as much as I wanted to shove my manly parts into a radioactive wood chipper.

I sighed. I had to get closer to this, but I could at least do it with a drink in my hand.

So I went to McAnally's.

Mac's pub—and make no mistake, it was a pub, not a bar—was one of those few places in Chicago frequented almost entirely by the supernatural scene. It didn't have a sign outside. I had to walk down a flight of stairs to get to the unmarked front door. Inside, it's all low ceilings, a crooked bar, and irregularly spaced, hand-carved wooden columns. Mac manages to keep electricity moving through the bar despite all the magical types wandering through—partly because it's rare for anything but a full-blown wizard, like me, to cause the inevitable failure of any nearby technology, and partly because he does a ton of preventive maintenance. He still didn't bother with electric lights—it costs too much to keep replacing bulbs—but he was able to keep a bunch of ceiling fans whirling and maintain a functional telephone.

On the wall beside the door was a wooden sign that stated, simply, ACCORDED neutral ground. That meant that Mac had declared the place a nonpartisan location, according to the terms set up by the Unseelie Accords—sort of the Geneva Convention of the supernatural world. It meant that any member of the signatory nations was free to enter peaceably, and remain unmolested by any other member. The neutral ground had to be respected by all parties, who were obligated to take outside any fight that might begin and respect the pub's neutral status. Oaths and the rights and obligations of hospitality were very nearly a force of nature in the supernatural world. It meant that, in Chicago, there was always a place'to set up a meeting with a reasonable expectation of a civilized outcome.

All the same, it also meant that you might find yourself in bad company when you went to Mac's place.

I always sit with my back to a smoke-stained wall.

It was late afternoon and the place was busier than it should have been. Of the thirteen tables, only two were open, and I took the one farther away from the rest of the room, tossing the papers and my coat on it.

I went to the bar, suppressing an instinct to duck every time I walked under one of the too-low-for-towering-wizards ceiling fans. I nodded to Mac. He's a spare man, a little taller than average, his head shaved bald. He could be anywhere between thirty and fifty. He wore jeans, a white shirt, and a white apron, and despite the fact that his wood-fueled grill was up and running, there wasn't a spot or stain anywhere on his clothes. "Mac," I said, "beer me."

Mac slid over a dark brown bottle of his home brew. I opened it, chugged it, and passed him a twenty with the empty. "Keep 'em coming."

Mac let out a grunt of surprise, and his eyebrows went up.

"Don't ask," I told him.

He folded his arms and nodded. "Keys."

I glared at him for a second, but I was halfhearted about it. I tossed the keys to the Blue Beetle onto the bar.

Mac gave me another beer, and I went to the table, drinking on the way. By the time I'd circled the carved column shaped like one enormous, ugly giant, except for the carved figures of faerie knights attacking its ankles, and sat down at my table, the beer was mostly gone.

I don't usually go through them like that. I should have been more cautious, but I really, really didn't want to dig into that material sober. I figured that if my brain was mushy enough, maybe all the bad I was about to drag through it wouldn't leave as deep an impression.

I settled down and read through the information Butters had given me on the dead women, pausing every so often for more beer. I read the words, but there was an odd sense of blankness inside. I read them, I understood them, but they somehow didn't seem relevant, vanishing like pebbles dropped in a well—there was a little ripple, then nothing.

I thought I recognized two of the victims, though not by name. I'd probably seen them around, maybe even there at McAnally's. I didn't recognize the others, but it wasn't like I knew every face in the community.

I stopped reading for a few minutes, and drank some more. I didn't want to keep going. I didn't want to see any of this. I didn't want to get involved. I'd seen more than enough of people being hurt and killed. I'd seen too many dead women. I wanted to burn the papers, walk out the door, and just keep walking.

Instead, I went back to reading.

By the time I finished, I had found no obvious connection between the victims, I was emptying my fifth bottle, and it was dark outside. The bar had grown quiet.

I looked up to see that, except for Mac, I had the place entirely to myself.

That was odd. Mac's place isn't usually packed, but it's busy in the evening. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen it empty around dinnertime.

Mac came over to me with another bottle, putting it down just as I finished the previous. He glanced from the fresh bottle to all the empties, standing in a row.

"I use up my twenty?" I asked him.

He nodded.

I grunted, got out my wallet, and put another twenty on the table.

He frowned at it, then at me.

"I know," I said. "I don't usually drink this much."

He snorted quietly. Mac isn't big on verbalization.

I waved a hand vaguely at the papers. "Hate seeing women get hurt. I should hate seeing anyone get hurt, but it's worse with women. Or kids." I glared down at the paperwork, then around at the now-empty bar, adding two and two. "Get another," I told him. "Sit down."

Mac's eyebrows went up. Then he went over to the bar, got himself a beer, and came over to sit down with me. He casually opened both bottles with a deft twist of his hand and no bottle opener. Mac is a professional. He pushed my bottle over to me and lifted his own.

I nodded at him. We clinked bottles and drank.

"So," I said quietly. "What gives?"

Mac set his beer down and surveyed the empty pub.

"I know," I said. "Where'd everyone go?"

"Away," Mac said.

If Scrooge had hoarded words instead of money, Mac would have made him look like Monty Hall. Mac didn't use rhetorical phrasing.

"Away," I said. "Away from me, you mean."

He nodded.

"They're scared. Why?"

"Grey cloak."

I exhaled slowly. I'd been a Warden of the White Council for nearly two years. Wardens were the armed forces of the White Council, men and women who were accustomed to violence and conflict. Normally, Wardens existed to police wizards, to make sure that they didn't use their power against the rest of humanity in violation of the Laws of Magic. Things weren't normal. For years, the Council had been engaged in a war against the Vampire Courts. Most of the Wardens had been killed in battle, and they'd gotten desperate for new wizards to take up the grey cloak of their office—desperate enough to ask me to join them, despite my checkered past.

Plenty of people in the world had talent of one kind or another. Very few had the kind of power and talent it took to be recognized as a member of the White Council. For the others, contact with the Council's Wardens was mostly limited to one of them showing up to deliver a warning about any potential abuse of magic.