JIM BUTCHER: SMALL FAVOR

Murphy frowned and squinted at the simple diagram. “The center of that shape couldn’t have covered the whole building.”

“No,” I said. “I’d need a good map to be sure, but I think the center of the pentagram must have been about twenty feet back from the front door. Which is why only the front half of the building collapsed.”

“The explosion came from inside this pentagon thing? Magical TNT?”

I shrugged. “The explosion came from inside the pentagram’s center, but not necessarily from the pentagram. I mean, it could have been a normal device of some kind.”

“Square in the middle of the giant, scary pentagram?” Murphy asked.

“Maybe,” I said, nodding. “It depends on what the pentagram was being employed for. And to know that, I’d have to know which way was its north.” I circled the topmost point of the chalk pentacle. “The direction of the first line, I mean.”

“Does it make a difference?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Most everybody draws those stars just like I did. Bottom left to the topmost point as the first stroke. That’s how you draw it when you want to defend something, ward something away from a location, or banish a spiritual entity.”

“So this could have been a banishing spell?” Murphy asked.

“It’s possible. But you can do a lot of other things with it, if you draw it differently.”

“Like build a cage for things,” Murphy said.

“Yeah.” I frowned, troubled. “Or open a doorway for something.”

“Which, judging by your face, would be bad.”

“I…” I shook my head. I didn’t even want to know what kind of terror would need a pentagram that huge in order to squeeze into our world. “I think if something sized to fit this pentagram had come through it, there would probably be more than one building on fire.”

“Oh,” Murphy said quietly.

“Look, until I know what the pentagram’s purpose was, all I can do is speculate. And there’s something else weird here, too.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s not a trace of residual magic, and there should be. Hell, with this much power being tossed around, the whole area should practically be glowing. It isn’t.”

Murphy nodded slowly. “You’re saying they wiped their prints.”

I grimaced. “Exactly, and I have no idea how to do it. Hell’s bells, I didn’t know it was possible .”

I sipped at my coffee in the silence and pretended the shiver that went down my spine was from the cold. I passed the cup to Murphy, who took a sip from the opposite side and passed it back to me.

“So,” she said, “we’re left with questions. What is a major-league supernatural hitter doing placing a huge pentagram under an empty apartment building? What was his goal in creating it?”

“And why blow up the building afterward?” I frowned and thought of an even better question. “Why this building?” I turned to Murphy. “Who owns it?”

“Lake Michigan Ventures,” Murphy replied, “a subsidiary of Mitigation Unlimited, whose CEO is-”

“Triple crap,” I spat. “Gentleman Johnnie Marcone.”

I tried to collect some of the blood in the reflective symbols and use it in a tracking spell to follow it back to its original owner, but it was a bust. Either the blood was already too dry to use or else the person who had donated it was dead. I had a bad feeling it wasn’t the winter air that made the spell fail.

Typical. Nothing was ever simple when Marcone was involved.

Gentleman Johnnie Marcone was the robber baron of the streets of Chicago, and the undisputed lord of its criminal underworld. Though he’d long been under legal siege, the bastions of paperwork defended by legions of lawyers had never been conquered, and his power base had grown steadily and quietly. They probably could have tried harder to take him down, but the heartless fact of the matter was that Marcone’s management style was a better alternative than most. He’d put the civil back in civil offender , harshly cutting down on violence against civilians and law enforcement alike. It didn’t make his business any less ugly, just tidier, but it could have been worse, as far as the city’s authorities were concerned.

Of course, the authorities didn’t know that it was worse. Marcone had begun expanding his power base into the supernatural world as well, signing on to the Unseelie Accords as a freeholding lord. It made him, in the eyes of the authorities of the supernatural world, a kind of small, neutral state, a recognizable power, and I had no doubt that he’d begun using that new power to do what he always did-create more of the same.

All of which had been made possible by Harry Dresden. And the truly galling thing about the entire situation was that it had been the least evil of the options that had been available to me at the time.

I looked up from the circle I’d chalked on the concrete beneath a sheltered overhang in the alley and shook my head. “Sorry. Can’t get anything. Maybe the blood is too dry. Maybe the donor is dead.”

Murphy nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on the morgues, then.”

I broke the circle with a swipe of my hand and rose from my knees.

“Can I ask you something?” Murphy said.

“Sure.”

“Why don’t you ever use pentagrams? All I ever see you draw is circles.”

I shrugged. “PR mostly. Run around making lots of five-pointed stars in this country and people start screaming about Satan. Including the satanists. I’ve got enough problems. If I need a pentagram, I usually just imagine it.”

“You can do that?”

“Magic’s in your head, mostly. Building an image in your mind and holding it there. Theoretically you could do everything without any chalk or symbols or anything else.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because it’s a pointlessly difficult effort for identical results.” I squinted up at the still-falling snow. “You’re a cop. I need a doughnut.”

She snorted as we left the alley. “Stereotype much, Dresden?”

“Cops do a lot of running around in their cars, and they don’t always get to control their hours, Murph. Lots of times they can’t leave a crime scene to hit a drive-through. So they need food that can sit in a car for hours and hours without tasting foul or giving them food poisoning. Doughnuts are good for that.”

“So are granola bars.”

“Is Rawlins a masochist, too?”

Murphy casually bumped her shoulder against my arm when I was between steps, making me wobble, and I grinned. We emerged onto the mostly empty street. The firemen had been wrapping up their job when I arrived, and every truck but one had departed. Once the flames were out the show was over, and there were no rubberneckers anymore. Only a few cops were in sight, most of them in their cars.

“So what happened to your face?” Murphy asked.

I told her.

She concealed a smile. “‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff ’?”

“Hey. They’re tough, all right? They kill trolls.”

“I saw you do that once. How hard could it be?”

I found myself grinning. “I had a little help.”

Murphy matched my smile. “One more short joke and I’m taking a kneecap.”

“Murphy,” I chided, “petty violence is beneath you. Which is saying something.”

“Keep it up, wise guy. I’m always going to be taller than you once you’re lying unconscious on the ground.”

“You’re right. That was a low blow. I’ll try to rise above it.”

She showed me a clenched fist. “Pow, Dresden. Right to the moon.”

We reached Murphy’s car. Rawlins was in the passenger seat, pretending to snore. He wasn’t the sort to just fall asleep.