JIM BUTCHER - SMALL FAVOR

I felt my eyebrows rising. The corners of my mouth went along for the ride. I leaned in a little to Kincaid and murmured, “You tell her.”

His gaze went from Murphy to me. A less charitable man than I might have called his expression sour. He drummed one thumb on the handle of a sidearm and asked, “She threaten to call in the constabulary?”

“She’s got this funny thing where she takes her oath to protect the city and citizens of Chicago seriously. It’s as if her promises mean something to her.”

Kincaid grimaced. “I’ll have to clear it with the Archive.”

“No Murphy, no meeting,” I said. “Tell her I said that.”

The assassin grunted. “You can tell her yourself.”

He led me through the halls of the Shedd, to the Oceanarium. It was probably the most popular exhibit there-a great big old semicircular building containing the largest indoor aquatic exhibits in the world. Its outer ring of exhibits sported a number of absolutely huge pools containing millions of gallons of water and a number of dolphins and those little white whales whose names I can never remember. The same as the caviar. Beluga, beluga whales. There were rocks and trees built up around the outsides of the pools, complete with moss and plants and everything, to make it look like the Pacific Northwest. Although I was fairly sure that the bleacher seats, where the audience could marvel at whales and dolphins who would show up and do their usual daily health inspections for their trainers to the sound of applause, weren’t indigenous to the Pacific Northwest. I think those were actually Floridian in origin.

A pair of dolphins swept by us in the water, flicking their heads out to get a look at us as they went. One of them made a chittering sound that wasn’t very melodic. The other twitched its tail and splashed a little water our way, all in good fun. They weren’t the attractive Flipper kind of dolphins. They were regular dolphins that aren’t as pretty and don’t get cast on television. Maybe they just refused to sell out and see a plastic surgeon. I held up a fist to them. Represent.

Kincaid scanned the bleachers, frowning. “She’s supposed to be sitting here. Dammit.”

I sighed and circled back toward the stairs to the lower level. “She might be the Archive but she’s still a kid, Kincaid.”

He frowned and looked at me. “So?”

“So? Kids like cute.”

He blinked at me. “Cute?”

“Come on.”

I led him downstairs.

On the lower level of the Oceanarium there’s an inner ring of exhibits, too, containing both penguins and-wait for it-sea otters.

I mean, come on, sea otters. They open abalone with rocks while floating on their backs. How much cuter does it get than small, fuzzy, floating, playful tool users with big, soft brown eyes?

We found Ivy standing in front of one of the sea otter habitats, dressed much more warmly and practically this time, and carrying a small backpack. She was watching two otters chase each other around the habitat, and smiling.

Kincaid stopped in his tracks when he saw that. Just to see what he’d do, I tried to step past him. He shot me a look like he’d murder me if I tried to interrupt her, and my opinion of him went up a notch. I eased back and waited. No skin off my teeth to let the girl watch the otters for a minute.

It had been hard sometimes, when I was a kid, after my magic had started coming in. I’d felt weird and different-alone. It had gradually distanced me from the other kids. But Ivy had never had the luxury of belonging, even temporarily. From what I understood, she’d been the Archive since she was born, fully aware and stuffed full of knowledge from the time she’d opened her eyes. I couldn’t even imagine how hideous that would be.

Hell, the more I learned as I got older, the more I wished I were ignorant again. Well. Innocent, anyway. I remembered what it was like, at least.

Ivy had never been innocent.

I could let her smile at sea otters. You bet.

A shadow moved behind me, and I willed myself not to be creeped out. I turned and saw the two dolphins from the tank above cruise by, observing us again. The huge tanks contained observation windows running the whole length of the second-level gallery, so you could see the cute things on one side, and ogle the homely dolphins and the caviar whales on the other.

From down here you could also see the far wall of the big tank, which was a curved wall of glass that faced the open waters of Lake Michigan. That always seemed a little sadistic to me. I mean, here were animals whom nature had equipped to roam the open vastness of the deep blue sea, being kept in a mere three million gallons or so of water. Bad enough to do that to them without giving them a window seat onto all that open water too.

Or maybe it wasn’t. I hear it kind of sucks to be a whale or a dolphin in the open ocean these days, given the state of the fishing industry.

“I guess they’re looking at a can one way or another,” I muttered.

“Hmmm?” Kincaid said.

“Nothing.”

Ivy let out her breath in a satisfied sigh a moment later as the otters vanished into their den. Then she turned toward us and blinked. “Oh,” she said. Her cheeks colored slightly, and for a moment she looked very much like a young girl. “Oh.” She smoothed wrinkles that didn’t exist in her trousers, nodded at Kincaid, and said, “Yes?”

Kincaid nodded toward me. “Local law enforcement wants a representative present to observe. Dresden’s supporting it.”

She took that in for a moment. “Sergeant Murphy?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I see.” She frowned. When she spoke, her tone was careful, as if she was considering each word before she spoke it. “Speaking as arbiter, I have no objection, provided both parties involved in the parley give their assent.”

“Right,” Kincaid said. He turned and started walking.

I nodded to Ivy, who returned the gesture. Then I turned and hurried to catch up to Kincaid. “So?” I asked him as we climbed the stairs.

“So,” he said, “let’s go talk to Nicodemus.”

Kincaid led me down the way from the Oceanarium and out to the main entry hall. It’s another grandiose collection of shining stone floor and towering Corinthian columns, arranged around a huge tank the size of a roller rink. It’s full of salt water and coral and seaweed and all kinds of tropical fish. Sometimes there’s a diver with a microphone built into his or her mask feeding the little sharks and fish and talking to gawking tourists. Diffused light floods in through an enormous, triangular-paneled cupola overhead.

The recent snow had blackened the panes of the cupola and drifted up over most of the glass front doors, so the only light in the room came from the little colored lights in the huge tank. Fish glided through the tank like wraiths, the odd light casting sinister shades over their scales, and their shadows drifted disembodied over the walls of the room, magnified by the distance and the glass walls of the aquarium.

It was eerie as hell.

One of the shadows drew my attention as some instinct picked out a strong, subtle sense of menace about it. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that this particular shadow disturbed me because it was human, and moving in a perfect, gliding pace around the wall, behind the shadow of one of the tank’s small but genuine sharks-even though the man who cast the shadow was standing perfectly still.

Nicodemus turned from contemplating the fish swimming in the tank so that I could see the outline of his profile against the softly colored lights. His teeth gleamed orange-red in the light of the nearest underwater lamp.

I stopped myself from taking an involuntary step back, but just barely.