Jim Butcher - Dead Beat

"Maybe," he said. "But I don't see how things that hunt and kill human beings could be there among us without our knowing."

"How big was your graduating class in high school?"

Butters blinked. "What?"

"Just answer me."

"Uh, about eight hundred."

"All right," I said. "Last year in the U.S. alone more than nine hundred thousand people were reported missing and not found."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah," I said. "You can check with the FBI. That's out of about three hundred million, total population. That breaks down to about one person in three hundred and twenty-five vanishing. Every year. It's been almost twenty years since you graduated? So that would mean that between forty and fifty people in your class are gone. Just gone. No one knows where they are."

Butters shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "So?"

I arched an eyebrow at him. "So they're missing. Where did they go?"

"Well. They're missing. If they're missing, then nobody knows."

"Exactly," I said.

He didn't say anything back.

I let the silence stretch for a minute, just to make the point. Then I started up again. "Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's almost the same loss ratio experienced by herd animals on the African savannah to large predators."

Butters drew his knees up to his chest, huddling further under the blanket. "Really?"

"Yeah," I said. "Nobody talks about this kind of thing. But all those people are still gone. Maybe a lot of them just cut their ties and left their old lives behind. Maybe some were in accidents of some kind, with the body never found. The point is, people don't know . But because it's an extremely scary thing to think about, and because it's a lot easier to just get back to their lives they tend to dismiss it. Ignore it. It's easier."

Butters shook his head. "It just sounds so insane. I mean, they'd believe it if they saw it. If someone went on television and-"

"Did what?" I asked. "Bent spoons? Maybe made the Statue of Liberty disappear? Turned a lady into a white tiger? Hell, I've done magic on television, and everyone not screaming that it was a hoax was complaining that the special effects looked cheap."

"You mean that clip that WGN news was showing a few years back? With you and Murphy and the big dog and that insane guy with a club?"

"It wasn't a dog," I said, and shivered a little myself at the memory. "It was a loup-garou. Kind of a superwerewolf. I killed him with a spell and a silver amulet, right on the screen."

"Yeah. Everyone was talking about it for a couple of days, but I heard that they found out it was a fake or something."

"No. Someone disappeared the tape."

"Oh."

I stopped at a light and stared at Butters for a second. "When you saw that tape, did you believe it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

He took a breath. "Well, because the picture quality wasn't very good. I mean, it was really dark-"

"Where most scary supernatural stuff tends to happen," I said.

"And the picture was all jumpy-"

"The woman with the camera was terrified. Also pretty common."

Butters made a frustrated sound. "And there was an awful lot of static on the tape, which made it look like someone had messed with it."

"Sort of like someone messed with almost all of my X-rays?" I shook my head, smiling. "And there's one more reason you didn't believe it, man. It's okay; you can say it."

He sighed. "There's no such things as monsters."

"Bingo," I said, and got the car moving again. "Look, Butters. You are your own ideal example. You've seen things you can't explain away. You've suffered for trying to tell people that you have seen them. For God's sake, twenty minutes ago you got attacked by the walking dead. And you're still arguing with me about whether or not magic is real."

Seconds ticked by.

"Because I don't want to believe it," he said in a quiet, numb voice.

I exhaled slowly. "Yeah."

Dead silence.

"Drink some coffee," I told him.

He did.

"Scared?"

"Yeah."

"Good," I said. "That's smart."

"Well, then," he murmured. "I m-must be the smartest guy in the whole world."

"I know how you feel," I said. "You run into something you totally don't get, and it's scary as hell. But once you learn something about it, it gets easier to handle. Knowledge counters fear. It always has."

"What do I do?" Butters asked me.

"I'm taking you somewhere you'll be safe. Once I get you there, I'll figure out my next move. For now, ask me questions. I'll answer them."

Butters took a slower sip of his coffee and nodded. His hands looked steadier. "Who was that man?"

"He goes by Grevane, but I doubt that's his real name. He's a necromancer."

"What's a necromancer?"

I rolled a shoulder in a shrug. "Necromancy is the practice of using magic to muck around with dead things. Necromancers can animate and control corpses, manipulate ghosts, access the knowledge stored in dead brains-"

Butters blurted out, "That's impos-" Then he stopped himself and coughed. "Oh. Right. Sorry."

"They can also do a lot of really freaky things involving the soul," I said. "Even in the weird circles, it isn't the kind of thing you talk about casually. But I've heard stories that they can inhabit corpses with their consciousness, possess others. I've even heard that they can bring people back from the dead."

"Jesus," Butters swore.

"I kinda doubt they had anything to do with that one."

"No, no, I meant-"

"I know what you meant. It was a joke, Butters."

"Oh. Right. Sorry." He swigged more coffee, and started looking around at the streets again. "But bringing the dead to life? That doesn't sound so bad."

"You're assuming that what the necromancer brings them back to is better than death. From what I've heard, they don't generally do it for humanitarian reasons. But that might be a load of crap. Like I said, no one talks about it."

"Why not?" Butters asked.

"Because it's forbidden," I told him. "The practice of necromancy violates one of the Laws of Magic laid down by the White Council. Capital punishment is the only sentence, and no one wants to even come close to being suspected by the Council."

"Why? Who are they?"

"They're me," I said. "Sort of. The White Council is a… well, most people would call it a governing body for wizards all over the world, but it's really more like a Masonic lodge. Or maybe a frat."

"I've never heard of a fraternity handing out a death sentence."

"Yeah. Well the Council has only seven laws, but if you break them…" I drew my thumb across my neck. "By the way, they aren't fond of regular folks knowing about them. So don't talk about them to anyone else."

Butters swallowed and touched the fingers of one hand to his throat. "Oh. So this guy, Grevane. He was like you?"

"He's not like me," I said, and it came out in a snarl that surprised even me. Butters twitched violently. I sighed and made an effort to lower my voice again. "But he's probably a wizard, yeah."

"Who is he? What does he want?"

I blew out a breath. "He's most likely a student of this badass black magic messiah named Kemmler. The Council burned Kemmler down a while back, but several of his disciples may have escaped. I think Grevane is looking for a book his teacher hid before he died."

"A magic book?"

I snorted. "Nah. Trinkets aren't too hard to come by. If my guess is correct, this book contains more of the knowledge and theory Kemmler used in his most powerful magics."

Butters nodded. "So… if Grevane gets hold of the book and learns, he gets to be the next Kemmler?"

"Yeah. And he mentioned that there were others involved in this business too. I think word of the presence of Kemmler's book came up, and his surviving students are showing up to grab it before their fellow necromancers do. For that matter, just about anyone involved in black magic might want to get their hands on it."