Jim Butcher - Proven Guilty

“Yes,” I said. “The feather was just a symbol-but it was an important symbol.”

I gestured with the can. “So I use blue, because I don’t have to do too much introspection, and I don’t introduce new doubts in a crisis situation. And because it was cheap at Wal-Mart.”

Murphy laughed. “Wal-Mart, huh?”

“Wizarding doesn’t pay much,” I said. “You’d be surprised how much stuff I get from Wal-Mart.” I checked a clock on the wall. “We’ve got about two hours before the first movie starts showing.”

She nodded. “What do you need?”

“A quiet space to work in,” I told her. “At least six or seven feet across. The more private and secure, the better. I’ve got to assume that the bad guy knows I’m around here somewhere. I don’t want to get a machete in the back when I’m busy running the spell.”

“How long do you need to set it up?”

I shrugged. “Twenty minutes, give or take. What I’m really concerned about is-”

“Mister Dresden!” called a voice from across the crowded convention hallway. I looked up to see Sandra Marling hurrying through the crowd toward me. The convention’s chairwoman looked exhausted and too nervous to be awake, much less standing, much less politely pushing her way through a crowd, but she did it anyway. She still wore the same black T-shirt with the red SplatterCon!!! logo on it, presumably the same I’d seen her in the night before.

“Ms. Marling,” I said, nodding to her as she approached. “Good afternoon.”

She shook her head wearily. “I’m such… this is such an enormous amount of… but I don’t know who else I can turn to about this.” Her words failed her, and she started trembling with nerves and weariness.

I traded a frown with Murphy. “Sandra. What’s wrong?”

“It’s Molly,” she said.

I frowned. “What about her?”

“She came here from the hospital a couple of hours ago. The police came to talk to her and I don’t think she’s come out since then, and none of the officers I’ve spoken to know where she is. I think-”

“Sandra.” I told her, “Take a breath. Slow down. Do you know where Molly is?”

The woman closed her eyes and shook her head, bringing herself under control, lowering her voice several pitches. “They’re still… interrogating her, I think? Isn’t that what they say? When they try to scare you and ask questions?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Yeah,” I said. “Was she arrested?”

Sandra shook her head jerkily. “I don’t think so. They didn’t handcuff her or read from that little card or anything. Can they do that? Just drag her into a room?”

“We’ll see,” I said. “Which room?”

“Other wing, second door on the right,” she said.

I nodded, slung my pack off my back, and took out a small notebook. I scribbled some phone numbers and names on a page, and gave it to Sandra. “Call both of these people.”

She blinked at the paper. “What do I tell them?”

“The truth. Tell them what’s going on and that Harry Dresden said they need to get down here immediately.”

Sandra blinked down at the page. “What are you going to do?”

“Oh, you know. The usual,” I said. “Get to that phone.”

“I’ll catch up in a minute,” Murphy said.

I nodded, slung the pack back on, jerked my head at Mouse, and started walking with purposeful strides toward the knot of reporters that had begun to dissolve at the conclusion of the official statements to the press. My dog fell in to pace at my side until I spotted Lydia Stern at the rear of the crowd.

Lydia Stern was a formidable woman, a reporter for the Midwestern Arcane , a yellow journal based out of Chicago that did its best to report on the supernatural. Sometimes they managed to get close to the truth, but more often they ran stories that had headlines like Lizard Baby Born in Trailer Park, or maybe Bigfoot and the Chupacabra, the Unholy Alliance. By and large, the stories were amusing and fairly harmless, but once in a while someone stumbled into something strange and it made it into the paper. Susan Rodriguez had been a lead reporter for the Arcane , until she’d run into exactly the wrong story. Now she lived her life somewhere in South America, fighting off the infection in her soul that wanted to turn her into one of the Red Court while she and her half-vampire buddies campaigned against their would-be recruiters.

When Lydia Stern took over Susan’s old job a couple of years back, her reporting had taken a different angle. She’d investigated strange events and then demanded to know why the appropriate institutions had been ignoring them. The woman had a scathing intellect and penetrating wit, and she employed both liberally and with considerable panache in her writing. She was unafraid to challenge anyone in her articles, from some smalltown animal control unit to the FBI.

It was a shame she was working at a rag like the Arcane instead of at a reputable paper in DC or New York. She’d have been a Pulitzer nominee inside of five years. City officials who had to deal with the cases I’d brushed up against had developed a nearly supernatural ability to vanish whenever she was around. None of them wanted to be the next person Lydia Stern eviscerated in print. She had a growing reputation as an investigative terror.

“Ms. Stern,” I said in a low, grave voice, extra emphasis on the “z” in “Ms.”

“I wonder if you might have a few moments.”

The terror of the Midwest Arcane whirled to face me, and her face broke into a cherubic grin. She was a little over five feet tall, pleasantly plump, and of Asian ancestry. She had a sparkling smile, thick glasses, curly black hair, and was wearing a pair of denim overalls over an old Queensryche T-shirt. Her tennis shoes had bright pink laces on them. “Harry Dresden,” she said. She had a sort of breathless, bubbling voice, the kind that seemed like it could barely contain laughter beneath almost every word. “Hah. I knew this one smelled right.”

“Could be,” I said. I hadn’t been real forthcoming with Lydia. It hadn’t worked out well with reporters in the past. Whenever I spoke to her, little daggers of guilt stabbed at me, reminders that I could not afford to let careless words get her into too much trouble. Despite that, we’d gotten along, and I’d never lied to her. I hadn’t bothered to try. “You busy?”

She gestured at the bag whose strap hung over her shoulder. “I’ve got recordings, and I’ll want to jot down some notes shortly.” She tilted her head to one side. “Why do you ask?”

“I need a thug to scare some guys for me,” I said.

The dimples in her cheeks deepened. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Do this for me. I’ll give you ten minutes on this.” I waved my hand vaguely at the hotel around us. “As soon as I have some time free.”

Her eyes brightened. “Done,” she said. “What do I do?”

“Hang around outside a doorway and…” I grinned. “Just be yourself.”

“Good. I can do that.” She nodded once, curls bouncing, and followed me to the room where they were grilling my friend’s daughter.

I opened the door like I owned the place and walked in.

The room wasn’t a big one-maybe the size of a large elementary-school classroom. There was a raised platform about a foot high at one end, with chairs on it behind a long table. More chairs faced it in rows. A sign, now discarded on the floor behind the door, declared that the room was scheduled for something called “Filking” between noon and five o’clock today. “Filking” sounded suspiciously like it might be an activity somehow related to spawning salmon, or maybe some kind of bizarre mammalian discussion. I decided that it was probably one of those things I was happier not knowing.