(Another Endless) Author's Note: Sorry about the cliffhanger, guys. Had to be done; this is the Dresdenverse, after all. This installment is set before Storm Front, so we're not quite at the inevitable reunion, that comes next. For some reason I'm always nervous about posting, IDEK. And I meant to have this posted last Saturday, but along came some annoying medical stuff and...yeah.
I hope this chapter is satisfactory, I'm trying to work on thematic stuff and the pacing of character development and whatnot. I'm planning on having at least six chapters in this story, and there's a poll on my profile about it, so please check that out if you have the time and/or inclination. It would be greatly appreciated.
In this chapter there's a mention of a favorite Christopher Moore character, who for purposes known only to himself, was in Chicago.
Many thanks to everyone who has reviewed. Keep 'em coming!
Straight up, what did you hope to learn about here?
If I was someone else, would this all fall apart?
Strange, where were you when we started this gig?
I wish the real world would just stop hassling me
—'Real World,' Matchbox 20
Karrin stared at the name on the opaque glass and sighed. She could have just called, but the address was on her way back downtown and she wanted this day to be over as soon as possible.
It was dark out, even though it was only late afternoon. The fluorescent lighting in the corridor struggled against the oppressive gloom of an October rainstorm. The heater kicked on in some distant part of the office building with a dull hum and the whisper of air through the grates.
She frowned at the address on the index card in her hand before tucking it in a pocket of her trench coat.
Her recent 'promotion' to Special Investigations had, at first, just been a major pain in the ass. She had to wear pantsuits every day, which was almost as bad as the unending paperwork and the crappy offices. Not to mention it was like being stuck on the Island of Misfit Cops – almost everyone there had been exiled for one reason or another. And it turned out 'Special' really meant 'weird as hell,' and 'Investigations' translated as 'let's make up some bullshit stories to cover our collective butts, because honestly, we have no clue.'
Some of the things she'd seen so far could have been passed off as hallucinations, tricks of the light, or worse; people in monster costumes, like an episode of Scooby freaking Doo. Hoaxes. Elaborate pranks.
But some of them had been downright bloodcurdling. And the worst part was she knew she'd been outmatched – random acts of violence were one thing, but this was an entirely different game. It's hard to serve and protect when more often than not, you don't know what the hell you're up against.
Between the mystifying cases she'd had to deal with lately and the legal labyrinth that was divorcing Rick, it was almost enough to drive her to drink. It was enough to drive her here, to the office of Chicago's only professional wizard. His ad in the phonebook had been bafflingly terse compared to the colorful, heavy-handed pages of fortune tellers and New Age stores.
No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties or other Entertainment.
Murphy looked both ways down the hall, as if to make sure no one was watching, and reached for the door, which swung inward a few inches as soon as she touched it.
Odd.
She steeled her resolve and pushed the door all the way open, looking around. At the far end of the room was a battered wooden desk and a few chairs. A young man sat behind it, his cowboy boots on the desk, ankles crossed. He was holding a carton of takeout in one hand and chopsticks in the other, with the handset of a phone between his shoulder and chin. He looked vaguely familiar; dark hair, dark, intense eyes and stark features that softened a little when he looked up and saw her and smiled.
He waved her in and put a hand over the receiver. "It'll be just a sec."
The door clicked shut behind her and she stilled the twitch of her fingers, fixing a neutral expression as she cast her eyes around the room. The man behind the desk kept talking.
"And it's in your…refrigerator, you said? No, generally speaking, you don't see that kind of behavior in a—did you try unplugging it? Didn't work. Huh." He pulled his feet off the desk and jabbed the chopsticks into the box, which he set aside, then scribbled something on a legal pad.
Murphy looked around. This was not at all what she had expected. The last six places she'd visited had been consistently decorated in crushed velvet, dragon figurines and enough incense to choke a horse. This was just an office, and a spartan one at that. In fact, it was a lot like her own office — dim, smelling of coffee and furniture polish and faintly of Hoppe's No. 9. The ceiling fan whirred softly and through dusty blinds she could see the slow, drizzling rain and the neon sign of a bar down the street.
The weirdest things in the room were the pamphlets on the card table near the door, Xeroxed on paper in a few different colors with titles like 'Voodoos and Don'ts,' 'The Many Uses of Magical Foci,' 'Ogres and You,' and her favorite, 'Vampires; A Real Pain in the Neck."
There were a half-dozen yellow pencils stuck in the tiles of the suspended ceiling above the desk and the self-proclaimed 'wizard' frowned as he tapped the eraser end of one against his nose. He was a lot younger than she had guessed, in his twenties and cute in a cheap-haircut, probably-shops-at-the-Salvation Army kind of way.
Not exactly Gandalf the White. And definitely not the middle-aged basement-dweller her imagination (and a day's worth of empirical evidence) had conjured up on the drive across town.
"A Ouija board?" He sat up abruptly and almost dropped the phone. "Not a good idea. Uh, for starters, it probably wouldn't work. No, I don't recommend that. Even if you do think it's your grandpa. Tell you what, why don't you hold off on that and I'll come by tonight and check it out? Howsabout six-thirtyish?" He scribbled down another note. "Yeah. Okay, see you then."
He hung up the phone and stood as she approached the desk. He shook her hand and she literally had to stare up at him – he was better than six feet tall, in faded jeans and a black t-shirt that read Lost in Thought, Please Send Search Party.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. I'm Harry."
"Lieutenant Murphy, CPD." Karrin produced her badge with her free hand and he tensed. She was used to it – nobody likes cops until they need one.
"It wasn't me, I swear," he said, and when she didn't laugh, nodded toward one of the chairs. "Coffee?"
"No thanks." She sat down. He ambled over to the coffee maker, which made a weak little sputtering noise as he poured a cup. Then he sat down behind the desk, sized her up for a moment and decided he wasn't in trouble.
"So. Officer. How can I help you?"
"Your ad says you do paranormal investigations." No reason to draw this out – she'd dealt with enough loonies for one day. "Do you have any sort of license for that, Mr. Dresden?"
"Sure do," he said, took out his wallet and held out a laminated card. Murphy looked it over – a legitimate private investigator's license. This was promising.
And probably too good to be true.
She studied the card. It had been issued within the last few months. The poor guy had a hell of a name, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, it barely fit in the deisgnated name spot. His birthday, she realized at a second glance, was on Halloween, and the lopsided smile in the blurry photo was absolutely identical to the one on his face. Murphy handed the ID back to him.
"The 'wizard' thing. Is that a metaphor or something?"
"Or something," he said brightly, and took a long pull from the coffee mug.
There was a beat of silence before she blurted, "You don't look like a wizard."
"My robe and pointy hat are at the cleaners."
The guy wouldn't have looked so freaking smug if he'd met the Tarot reader she'd interviewed earlier; a fat bald man called Madame Natasha, who wore a purple kimono with silver stars on it, had a pentagram tattooed on his scalp, read her palm and told Karrin in no uncertain terms that she was 'fucked.'
She gave Harry the Wizard a level stare. "I'm with the S—"
"Special Investigations?"
"How did—"
"Says so on your badge. You're looking for a consultant, right?"
"How do you kn—"
"Educated guess."
He may not have looked like a wizard, but he apparently took a sort of sadistic glee in being enigmatic. Or annoying. Either way.
"What?" she snapped, before he could interrupt again, "You see it in a crystal ball or something?"
"Those are for amateurs," he said, completely unfazed by her comment. Maybe even a little amused. "I have this thing called a 'phone.' Know how to use it, too – an associate passed along some intelligence this morning, said a tiny blonde lady cop was hitting up the fringe establishments around town."
Karrin briefly considered kicking his ass and decided to err on the side of not getting sued for police brutality. She glared.
"His words, not mine." Harry the Wizard held up a placating hand. He looked like he was trying not to grin. "You don't remember me, do you?"
She pressed her lips together and stared at him for a second – he didn't quite meet her eyes but didn't look away, either. There was a long, awkward pause before she gave up trying to place him and asked;
"…Have I arrested you before?"
"Not exactly. We met a few months ago. North Avenue. The Astor 'kidnapping.'"
Her mouth fell open. The Astor case. The reason she had been given the job at SI. Karrin could still remember everything about that night, despite having tried to erase it with a bottle of scotch. The memory came back in high-definition flashes – a bridge, the damp, muddy smell of the river. The rumble of traffic on asphalt.
A dark-haired man in a long black coat, a little girl and a monster.
A real monster. As if pedophiles and serial killers weren't bad enough. As if this city wasn't sufficiently dangerous. And it had been hell writing a report about what had happened that night while simultaneously trying to avoid being sent in for a full psychological review.
Oddly enough, it hadn't been the monster that had gotten her sent to SI, but the fact that she'd pushed the issue when the higher-ups had edited her report. The little girl had admitted to running away but her effluent family had bought someone off and on the record the case remained a kidnapping. And Karrin had found out that questioning the integrity of someone with more influence than you is always a risky move.
Even if it's a move that has to be made for the sake of your conscience.
"That was a weird night."
"Weird is kind of my thing."
"So I've noticed," she said, and he laughed.
"You don't pull any punches."
"Not if I don't have to. I thought you worked for Ragged Angel?"
"I did, until I finished my apprenticeship," he said, and didn't elaborate.
"That's a tough business," she said, and he nodded. The agency he had previously worked for specialized in finding lost children. It wasn't an easy job. The majority of cases involving missing kids didn't have the neat and tidy happily-ever-after ending of little girls being delivered to safety by friendly police officers...and monster-slaying wizards.
For a moment Karrin wondered if she didn't need that psychological review after all.
"Yeah. So, Special Investigations, huh?"
"I was promoted," she said with a tight smile.
"Ouch," he winced, obviously aware of her department's reputation for collecting officers that asked too many questions or did their jobs too well. "And they sent you out to look for help? SI has never bothered with that before."
"SI happens to be under new management," she said, unenthusiastically.
Dresden raised an eyebrow. She pointed at herself.
"You're kidding me. That's a hell of a promotion to be out doing your own legwork, Lieutenant."
"If you want something done right," she shrugged. "Whoever I hire is going to be working directly with me, so I might as well handle it myself."
"I take it you haven't had much luck."
She shook her head. "I tried the university first. A few churches. Nobody wants to get involved. Today was kind of a last-ditch effort to find anyone who could shed some light on this..."
"Weirdness?"
"That doesn't even begin to cover it. We've had some cases lately that defy all logical explanation. The evidence is almost always inconclusive. The MEs and forensic teams are going out of their minds. We've had abductions, strange disappearances, sightings, hauntings, spontaneous combustions, you name it."
"Gotcha. Nine kinds of crazy."
"Yeah. And I don't know anything about this X-Files crap," she said, running a hand back through her hair. "I majored in Criminal Justice."
"Hence, a consultant."
"Exactly."
"Well." He leaned forward on the desk, arms folded. "What do you want to know?"
"It's more of an ongoing gig, actually. We get a case, I call you, we go check out the crime scene. Say we get another ritual murder, you could explain the details, right? Like what the symbols painted on the wall mean or why the perp used a certain type of knife or killed the victim at a particular time of day? Because I know those things are important to the case, I just have no idea what they mean. And any amount of information can bring us that much closer to solving these cases."
"I could try," he said, thoughtfully. "You're not worried about catching flak for hiring a paranormal investigator?"
"Honestly? I don't give a flying fuck. I'm not out to impress the brass, and if I wanted to climb ladders and kiss ass all day, I'd be a politician. And when it comes down to it, SI is my department. My responsibility. I know there's something dark going on in this town. We've both seen it. And if I don't start closing cases soon, I'll end up without a job and SI gets passed along to the next jerk-off who doesn't care—"
She stopped, mid-rant. He was staring intently at her, but when she met his eyes, he looked away and studied the contents of his coffee mug for a moment. His fingers drummed against the desk and she bit her lip, and then they both spoke at once.
"Listen, I can't really blame you if you don't—"
"Well, I guess I could give it a shot—"
"What?"
"I'll give it a shot," he repeated with a shrug. "Sounds interesting. And I could use the money."
Murphy sat back in the wooden chair and blinked. "Really?"
"Why not?"
"Okay," she said, trying not to look too relieved. She took a pen and one of her cards from a pocket. "You'll need to come downtown for a background check and fingerprinting, and we'll talk about compensation, police procedure, all that fun stuff. Tomorrow afternoon sometime?"
"Sure."
"Two-thirty okay for you, Mr. Dresden?"
"Yeah." He took her card with the time and her new extension number scrawled across the back. "You can call me Harry. Mister is my cat."
When she stood, he offered his hand again, and she shook it. Karrin didn't know if she trusted him, but then again, she didn't trust most people. And she still wasn't sure she believed any of it. She wasn't sure she wanted to know what lurked in the dark.
But god, she hated feeling helpless.
"It's good seeing you again, Lieutenant," he said, as he pulled on that black coat that looked like he might have stolen it from the set of Lonesome Dove, then grabbed a tall stick, not unlike a bō staff, from the corner behind the coat rack. "I'll walk you out, I've got an appointment."
"Appointment?" she asked, as they walked toward the door. He locked it behind them.
"Gotta see a man about a ghost," he said, pocketing his keys as they walked down the dim hall. She hit the button to call the elevator and watched as he pulled the silver chain of a necklace from beneath his t-shirt. The pendant of the necklace was a pentagram — no, a pentacle, like on one of the cards the Tarot reader had dealt, neatly laid out in a row on a black velvet tablecloth.
Justice. Ace of Pentacles. The Magician. The Queen of Swords. Death, reversed.
Karrin shook her head and followed Harry the Wizard into the elevator as the doors chimed open.
"A ghost," she said. "You're serious."
Dresden gave her a sideways glance as he hit the button for the first floor, and grinned.
"Dead serious, Murph."
to be continued...