Exchange Fic #24: En Fuego (1/3)
The actual identity of the writer will remain secret until all the submissions are in and posted.
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Title: En Fuego, Part One
Author: dmacabre
Recipient: rikkitsune
Prompt: Jareth abdicates the Goblin Throne and chooses a normal mortal life with Sarah, Aboveground. Unfortunately, the bored and lonely Labyrinth has other plans for the power couple...
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Broke and desperate for work, Chicago's only professional wizard is hot on the trail of a stolen relic from the Oriental Institute when he unexpectedly lands not one, but two additional cases. Turns out that nothing livens up a slow work week like a little demon trouble, a pair of star-crossed royal lovers, and a bored faerie kingdom who wants her king and queen back at all costs.
Author's Notes: I had major plot bunnies for all of your prompts, but in the end I decided to attempt a Labyrinth/Dresden Files crossover. It, uh... sort of got out of hand. The story's set pretty early on in the Dresdenverse, roughly between Storm Front and Fool Moon.
It was a cool autumn night with fog rolling in off the lake, and the Chicago skyline was lit up like Christmas. Blinking the sweat from my eyes, I could just make out the shadowy figure flitting across the rooftop ahead of me. The roof of the Congress Plaza hotel was a maze of heating ducts and electrical systems, perfect for a hiding place... or an ambush. Retreating footsteps crunched on the gravel. Moving as quietly as I could, I ducked down a side path and was rewarded with a glimpse of sequined evening gown disappearing around a corner. My target ran surprisingly fast for a lady in four inch heels toting a 1,400 year old relic under one arm.
Then again, she was a demon.
I'd chased her up ten flights of stairs, no easy feat for a guy whose diet consists mostly of Coke and food covered in melted cheese. My lungs burned with the stench of roofing tar and my side ached as though my spleen had declared war on my pancreas, but what I lack in athletic prowess, I make up for in a masochistic reluctance to admit defeat. Blasting rod in hand, I circled round-- this was a big hotel, but it wasn't the Ritz and we were quickly running out of rooftop. I matched my footsteps to that of my quarry, and at last I was rewarded: we'd reached a dead end, and there was nowhere to go but down.
Countess Lilith von Amsberg stood silhouetted against the skyline, heels planted mere inches from the edge of the roof. An icy updraft tangled her long, dark hair and molded the her evening gown to a figure that would make men weep-- especially since it contained a soul-devouring demon spirit bent upon the destruction of humanity.
"Give it up, Countess," I called out, trying not to wheeze in an undignified fashion, "You're out of options."
With a hum of warning, a salad fork flew out of the darkness, burying itself three inches deep into the concrete by my left ear where it quivered ominously, the metal handle glowing red hot . I ducked behind a wall, back pressed against the brick. Two thoughts came to me in quick succession. One, I was forced to admire her opportunistic use of silverware as weaponry. And two, where the hell was my back-up? I gulped in the cold night air and tried to focus.
Calm yourself, Harry. Never let the perp see you sweat.
"You'll regret refusing my offer, Mr. Dresden. We could've had so much fun together."
"I may be desperate, lady, but not desperate enough to spend all of eternity letting you use my libido as a scratching post. Tell you what, hand over the bowl and we can forget about this whole international incident."
The Countess' response was a sibilant snarl. "I prefer death, wizard. Your death."
I knew she'd say that. Ordinarily, this is the moment when a demon breaks out the big guns: morphing into a scaly eldritch hell-beast with a dozen tentacles attached to every limb, for example, or maybe revealing that beneath its deceptively human skin seethes an angry colony of flesh-eating cockroaches that disperse and consume upon demand, etc. etc. It's not personal, it's just what they do.
Raising my blasting rod, I gathered my Will and braced for it. There are only two options when you're faced with the temptation of limitless power, eternal life and all the hedonistic funtimes that undoubtedly pave the road to damnation. You can give in and let a beautiful demoness make your body her playground while simultaneously devouring the shreds of your immortal soul...
Or you can kill it with fire.
***
Wait, I'm probably getting ahead of myself. Begin at the beginning, that's what my dad always said.
My name is Harry Dresden, and I'm a professional wizard. I'm not the only wizard in Chicago-- there are more of us than you'd think. I'm just the only one dumb enough to try and make a living at it. You know that saying about how crime doesn't pay? That's not true. It pays plenty, that's why people do it in the first place. It's crimefighting that pays peanuts. I'm pretty sure Gandalf the Grey's never had to wade hip-deep through the city sewers armed only with a pocketful of enchanted sugarcubes in search of a rampaging kelpie.
Work had been slow over the summer, which was good for catching up on my reading but bad for business. By fall, my bank account was about as empty as my pantry and rent was a week overdue. I needed a job. Any job. That's why I was sitting in a cluttered basement office at the Oriental Institute on a brisk Friday afternoon in October, studying a photograph of a lopsided clay bowl while the soundtrack from Cats played softly in the background.
The bowl was a deep gold-brown color, broad at the base with gently sloping sides. At the bottom was a crude, but clear drawing of an ourobouros, a serpent swallowing its tail. Dark, angular script spiraled out from the center, winding evenly around toward the heavy rim. I flipped the photo over. A ballpoint scrawl on the back read: Seleucia-on-Tigris, 6th century A.D. I didn't know where Seleucia-on-Tigris was, but it sounded like a fatal disease of the lower intestine.
I glanced up at my client. "I'd appreciate any background you could give me. Archaeology isn't exactly my area of expertise."
Professor Charlie Bronson was the chair of the Near Eastern Studies department, a tall, lanky, man with tightly curled dark hair threaded with silver. His office was crammed with overflowing filing cabinets and stacks of books along with an eclectic collection of pottery, photographs of archaeological digs in Turkey and Lebanon, and no fewer than three Phantom of the Opera posters. He had three passions in life: fly-fishing, the musical oeuvre of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and discovering the whereabouts of his ancient Mesopotamian artifact that had been stolen from the museum's collection two nights ago.
“I know it doesn’t look like much." The Professor laid out more photographs."To be honest, it's not even the best example of a Babylonian incantation bowl I've seen-- the British Museum has at least half a dozen better specimens. Last summer, the Institute embarked on a joint excavation with Salahaddin University on the west bank of the Tigris river. This was one of the pieces uncovered in the dig. It's a fine example of its kind, but not exceptional."
Professor Bronson's crash course in mythology was brief, but informative. An incantation bowl was a preventative measure. Each one bore the inscription for a protective spell, and the bowl was placed in the doorway or in the corners of a house, anywhere demons might seek to enter. If one ventured near it, the spell would activate and trap the demon inside like a game of ancient Mesopotamian Mousetrap.
"Doesn't that seem a little primitive? This stuff makes Wile E. Coyote look positively Machiavellian."
Professor Bronson snorted in amusement. "Nothing wrong with simple and to the point, Mr. Dresden. The inscription is often very specific, invoking protection over a particular person or a household. However, there are many instances where the inscription is gibberish, just meaningless scribbles meant to mimic words. The ancient Babylonians believed that the spell's intent was protection enough."
The ancients were absolutely right. I examined the inscription with renewed interest. Even a novice like me knew there's a thriving black market for stolen antiquities. For magical relics, the going price could easily be double or triple, especially to a desperate buyer. My client was less than impressed upon hearing this. He stabbed a button on his boombox and silenced the music.
"You can't be serious."
"Serious as a heart attack, Professor. You ever had a demon that needed trapping? You'll try anything once."
A long silence fell, in which Professor Bronson fixed me with a hard stare. "I was given to understand that you were a reputable private investigator, Mr. Dresden. This is no joking matter."
Ah, I thought. An unbeliever. Skeptics were common in my line of work. It was almost as if they doubted that a wizard private eye listed in the Yellow Pages could possibly be legit.
I smiled and tried to look reasonably sane. "Please tell me everything that happened up until the theft."
"Hmmph. Well. The incantation bowl has been on display in the Mesopotamian gallery-- that's the one on your left as you enter the lobby-- for less than a month. We've never had any trouble before."
According to the Professor, there'd been no recent break-ins or suspicious activity. The Institute's collection is open to the public six days a week. On most days they close at six in the evening, though on Tuesdays the galleries remain open until eight thirty. The building is usually quiet after hours, except for the occasional faculty member or student in the research library. Like many smaller museums, there was little to no security-- very basic alarms on the main entrances only, no night watchmen. It helped that their most valuable pieces were things you'd need a forklift to steal, like the massive limestone bull's head sculpture in the Persian gallery that was nearly the size of my car.
"No lectures are scheduled on Wednesday nights, so the outer entrances are locked by eight sharp. The robbery took place at approximately a quarter after nine."
I raised an eyebrow. "You're sure of the exact time?"
"Reasonably sure. To my knowledge, only three people including myself were in the building that night. I was here in my office, on a conference call with some colleagues on the west coast. The night janitor was upstairs and heard nothing. But there was a witness."
A note of uncertainty had entered Professor Bronson's voice, and I pounced on it. "I'd like to talk to this person as soon as possible."
"Of course. Her name is Sarah Williams, she's a grad student in the Near Eastern Studies program. I've asked her to assist you in any way possible. But if I might ask a favor, Mr. Dresden, please go easy on her. This past year has been very difficult for Sarah, and a frightening experience like this..."
I assured him I'd handle the matter with utmost delicacy. No need to tell the client that in most peoples' estimation, I had only a nodding acquaintance with concepts like "sensitivity" and "discretion".
"I appreciate it." Professor Bronson relaxed visibly. "I'd vouch for her honesty without a doubt, but as I said, it's been a difficult year. Her academic advisor took an indefinite leave of absence last winter, and Sarah's been under a great deal of stress. Whatever she thinks she saw... well. She's a good student, responsible to a fault. I believe that she's telling the truth as she sees it."
As a private investigator, I've found there comes a moment in every good case where the mask of the mundane slips to reveal the bizarro world beneath. This, I sensed, was that moment.
"Can you recall exactly what she told you?"
"I think it's best if you heard it in her own words, Mr. Dresden."
"Believe me, I plan to. But it's helpful to know what observations or reactions she had while the crime was still fresh. Almost two days have passed and that's more than enough time to forget the little details." Or to make up a plausible story, I thought.
The Professor hemmed and hawed for a few more minutes, but bit by bit, the story trickled out. Sarah Williams had been given special permission to remain in the gallery after closing. At nine o'clock, she'd been in the east wing, sketching a few pieces from the museum's collection of ivories. A little after nine, she heard what sounded like breaking glass coming from the direction of the Mesopotamian gallery. She went to investigate, but before she reached the spot, she saw a shadowy figure dart across the doorway. The display case for the bowl was empty, shards of broken glass strewn across the gallery floor. The thief was nowhere to be seen.
It was my turn to be skeptical. "That must've been a very quick getaway,"
The Professor dug out a museum brochure with a simple map on the back. "There are only two entrance/exit points in the Mesopotamian gallery," he said, marking them both with a red pen, "One is to the east wing, where Sarah was working. The other is back toward the main entrance. You'll see it for yourself later-- it's a long gallery with many display cases, but there's nowhere to hide. Sarah walked from one end of the gallery to the other, and she saw no one. The main doors were still locked. You need a key to get in and out."
"And there's absolutely no security footage? How about outside the museum on the street?"
After a short pause, the Professor reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a manilla envelope. "A fishing buddy works in security at the School of Business just east of here. They had some problems with bicycle thefts a couple months ago, so they installed a security camera on the corner of E. 58th and Woodlawn, near the bus stop."
I started to open the envelope, but Professor Bronson gave a cautionary shake of his head.
"Plenty of time for that later. And if anyone asks," he added sternly, "You didn't get that from me. This is where it gets tricky, Mr. Dresden. First, I'd appreciate it if your interview with Miss Williams is kept strictly confidential. She's an excellent researcher with a promising career ahead of her, and I won't see her academic reputation tarnished. Whatever she tells you stays between the three of us and goes no further."
"That goes without saying." I squared my shoulders and looked him in the eye. Not a soul-gaze, but close enough.
Professor Bronson grunted in approval. "Good man. The police haven't seen the contents of this envelope, and the University prefers to keep it that way unless there's no other choice. The repercussions could be complicated."
I tucked the envelope in an inner pocket of my canvas duster. Call me immature, but this cloak and dagger stuff never gets old. "Gotcha. I'd like to take a look around the gallery myself and talk to Miss Williams, if that's possible."
"You can do both at the same time. Once the police cleared the crime scene, she went back to work." Professor Bronson dug around in the pocket of his baggy wool blazer and handed me a slip of paper, "My address and home number, should you need to reach me. Mr. Dresden, this is a sensitive matter, and not just for my student. The University is hosting a conference next week featuring exhibitions from the expedition, and there'll be a lot of heavy hitters present: alumni, museum donors at the highest levels, people with academic and political connections... people with diplomatic immunity. The Chicago PD won't be able to take this investigation as far as you will-- that's why we hired you."
"I take it that retrieval is a higher priority than getting evidence or nabbing the perpetrator, then."
"Precisely. We're not interested in prosecution, Mr. Dresden. We just want our property back."
As I rose to go, something else occurred to me. I studied the photograph of the artifact again, noting the evenness of the script. Centuries ago, someone had written this long, complex spell with a steady hand, never wavering from beginning to end. Someone had believed.
"Just one more thing... Do you maybe have a translation of the inscription that I could borrow?"
The professor shuffled the pile of photographs and documents with the skill of a blackjack dealer, thin brown fingers deftly plucking out the one he needed. "Here. You can keep this copy if it'll help."
It was a sheet of yellow legal pad that read:
You are bound and sealed, all you demons and devils and lilitu
By that which is mighty and powerful
The evil one who causes the hearts of men to go astray
And appears in the dream of the night and in the vision of the day
Who burns in the nightmares of children
She is conquered and sealed away from the house
Of Bahram-Gushnasp son of Ishtar-Nahid
By the talisman of Metatron, the great prince and Healer of Mercy
Who vanquishes demons and devils, black arts and mighty spells
And keeps them away from the house and threshold of Bahram- Gushnap, son of Ishtar-Nahid. Amen, Amen, Selah.
It wasn't like any spell I'd ever read, but it had a ring to it.
"Thanks. By the way, could I ask where you heard of my services? I'm usually hired by individuals, not academic institutions."
Professor Bronson looked up from his papers in surprise. "Didn't you know? The referral came from Miss Williams herself."
***
By five o'clock, the museum was empty and I was free to explore on my own. I'm not really a museum kind of guy, but I have to admit I was pretty impressed. The Mesopotamian gallery was a long, wide corridor lined with display cases, the old-fashioned wood and glass kind like in the Field Museum. One side overlooked an enclosed courtyard with a few gnarled crabapple trees. On the other side, a row of tall windows faced out onto University Avenue and a quiet, tree-lined sidewalk. I took my time examining the doors for signs of tampering, but found nothing. The windows didn't even open. Professor Bronson was right on the money-- the gallery had only two possible exits and nowhere to hide.
I made my way past displays of old pots, dozens of carved stone seals and a black stele with the Code of Hammurabi inscribed upon it. Clusters of temple figurines dedicated to various ancient gods and goddess stood like witnesses in a jury box. But the most imposing display of all was at the far end of the gallery: the figure of a human-headed winged bull, sixteen feet high and solid stone. According to the plaque, it had formerly graced the palace of King Sargon II of Assyria. I bet he was pissed when he found it gone. Lost in thought, I missed the light step behind me, and the palpable shift in the air as someone moved closer.
"A lamassu," said a voice in my ear, "It's a protective spirit that stood guard at the gates of a city. Or in this case, the throne room."
It's not often that people get the drop on me-- acute wizardly hearing is convenient like that-- so it took me a half second to relax my grip on the .38 revolver in my duster pocket.
Sarah Williams was very pretty, with long dark hair knotted in a loose bun and fastened with a pencil. She looked like any other student wandering the halls: worn jeans and a faded tee, dark green flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. She studied me in turn, a strained smile betraying her nerves.
"You must be Mr. Dresden," Nervous or not, she had a firm, no-nonsense handshake, palm lightly callused. "I'm Sarah. Pleased to meet you."
"Likewise. Please call me Harry," I nodded at the messenger bag slung over her shoulder, "Am I interrupting your work?"
"Not at all. I was getting ready to head home, but Professor Bronson said you might want to talk to me. I can walk you through what happened, if you like."
Experience has taught me to be wary of people who volunteered information so readily, but Sarah's story matched up with the Professor's account. The museum's collection was housed in four galleries, each forming a square around an inaccessible central courtyard: Mesopotamia at the north, Assyria at the east, and to the south and west, the Egyptian, Nubian and Persian galleries. On the night of the robbery, Sarah had been working in the far end of the Assyrian hall, near a prominent case full of ivory carvings.
"You weren't nervous to be alone in the museum at night?"
Sarah shrugged. "I'm used to it. The janitor had left the lights on for me in this wing, but he'd dimmed the overheads in the other galleries. It's a little spooky, but it's not pitch-black or anything."
There weren't any benches, so she'd taken a seat cross-legged on the floor, wedged between two display cases with her back against the wall. From this vantage point, Sarah had a mostly unobstructed hundred and eighty degree view, including the doors leading to the back stairs and the entrance that led to the Egyptian gallery in the southern wing.
This, I thought, was a woman used to mapping out an exit strategy. Interesting.
What she didn't have, unfortunately, was a direct line of sight toward the scene of the crime. The arrangement of the collection was more densely clustered in this hall, and a maze of display cases lay between her and the Mesopotamian gallery. Yet I could easily believe that she'd heard the sound of breaking glass at this distance-- sound carried surprisingly far here, though the thick walls of the building muffled the hum of traffic outside.
"I was close to packing up for the night when I heard the noise. At first, I thought it might be the janitor, or Professor Bronson coming to check on me. He sometimes does that before he heads home."
But you knew that couldn't be it. "Go on," I said quietly.
We'd begun retracing our steps back to where we started. The entryway to the Mesopotamian hall had been left clear, an open area right in front of the winged bull statue, with a good view of where the demon bowl had been. Sarah paused by a display of fragments from the Dead Sea scrolls, her eyes distant and her brow furrowed in thought.
"I was here when I saw... I'm not sure what I saw. A shadow. A person, maybe."
"Man or woman?"
"I don't know. It happened so fast, I couldn't really tell. I'd been sketching for a couple hours, my eyes were tired. It could've been the lights flickering overhead, or anything really..." She trailed off uneasily.
"You thought it was worth mentioning to Professor Bronson."
She allowed herself a tired smile. "He doesn't miss much, and whatever you don't tell him, he'll get out of you eventually. When I got closer, I couldn't see anything. Not at first, anyway. It wasn't until I stepped on the broken glass that I realized something was wrong. The overhead lights were dim, and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. When I saw that the display case was empty, I... I didn't know what to think."
Sarah's anxiety was real enough-- several times, she'd unconsciously wiped the palms of her hands on the front of her jeans, and I could see by the ragged edge of her thumbnail that she was a nail-biter. I'd given her a chance and heard her out like I promised Professor Bronson, but all of her hedging was getting us nowhere. I made up my mind. It was time to play Good Wizard, Bad Wizard.
I gave Sarah the once-over, and I wasn't at all subtle. "So you charged down the corridor, looking for the bad guy? Forgive me, but you don't look exactly look like the feisty heroine type."
Eyebrow raised, Sarah returned the once-over. It took her a little longer because I'm a lot taller, but she didn't seem too impressed. Maybe I should've tried harder to find matching socks this morning.
"You don't exactly look like the powerful wizard type." All the uncertainty had vanished, replaced with sarcasm. "Fine. I guess I panicked, but it's not like I had much of a choice. The other end of the gallery is the closest exit. Seeing as how the museum had just been ripped off, I was kind of in a hurry?"
"Fair enough, I had to ask. You have to admit, it looks a little hinky. You working alone here at night, the bowl goes missing and you're the only witness..."
"I know. It looks like an inside job. Even the police think so," Sarah frowned, chewing on her lower lip, "They wanted to turn my life upside down and give it a good shake to see what comes out, but Professor Bronson told them to back off."
"He thinks a lot of you."
"The feeling is mutual. I don't want to let him down, not after everything he's done for me."
For a few minutes, Sarah chatted about inconsequential things, more relaxed now than she'd been before. She hadn't been part of the expedition that uncovered the bowl, she explained, but her former advisor had. Professor Hamideh Talebi was well-respected in the department, an enthusiastic mentor. Sarah missed her very much.
"Is there any way I can talk to her? It's a long shot, but maybe she knows something that might be a clue about who'd want to take it."
Sarah's eyes shadowed. "I don't think so. Or at least, she won't talk to me, so I'd be surprised if she talked to you."
Professor Talebi departed abruptly at the end of January, leaving only a terse note about overwork and needing time off. Calls to her home had gone unanswered. When a concerned colleague finally got through, the housekeeper revealed that the Professor had packed up and gone back to Michigan, where her two daughters lived. Weeks passed with no further message. That had surprised Sarah most of all.
"Hamideh... Professor Talebi, I mean, she loved what she did, and she threw herself into the work. It didn't matter if it was digging latrine trenches at camp or cataloging pottery shards, all the grunt work that's usually left to grad students and interns. She wouldn't leave like that without a good reason."
Nodding at the empty display case, I took a stab at diplomacy with my usual success. "Maybe she had one."
"Absolutely not," Sarah's eyes were suspiciously wet, but she blinked back the tears fiercely. "She's not a thief. She had plenty of opportunity to take the bowl if she'd wanted to."
This piqued my interest. "Go on."
"Professor Talebi oversaw the shipping and unloading of everything they brought back. There wasn't much. Middle Eastern governments no longer allow foreign expeditions to divvy up antiquities like they did before the 1930s. Technically, the incantation bowl is on loan. We catalog it, photograph and scan it, then ship it back to Salahaddin University."
"So it'd be a pretty big scandal if something happened to it on the Institute's watch." No wonder Professor Bronson is so eager to keep this under wraps.
Sarah agreed gloomily. "Not just big, huge. Professor Talebi would never risk the Institute's reputation like that, never mind her own."
I made a neutral noise that could be construed as agreement. Sarah's devotion to her former advisor was touching, but at this stage, Professor Talebi looked like a promising suspect.
"How did she behave in the weeks before she left? Anything unusual?"
Sarah eyed me warily, not at all deceived by my casual tone of voice. "Between teaching, writing up the expedition findings and final exams, she had a lot on her mind."
"I'm sure she did. But she was your advisor, and you saw her regularly. Did anything seem out of the ordinary?"
"She seemed tired," Sarah said at last, "I know that doesn't sound like much, but having a full schedule usually energized her. We usually go out for coffee once a week. Hamideh was preoccupied all the time, even in one-on-one meetings. It was common for her to stay late in the research library, but sometimes she'd be there all night..."
"And...?" I prompted gently.
"Only she wasn't getting work done. I'd come in the next day, and there'd be nothing filed and only a scattering of notes. Yet she never left the office before midnight. The last time I spoke with her, she said she hadn't been sleeping well."
Sarah had tried to talk to her advisor, but Professor Talebi was evasive and vague, not at all like her usual forthright manner. Field notes went missing-- misplaced in another filing cabinet, said the Professor. Sarah was certain her advisor was lying. Two weeks later, Professor Talebi was gone. When fall classes started up and there was no sign of her return, the department discussed a possible dismissal.
"Professor Bronson would have none of it. He said that the Institute was lucky to have a dedicated field researcher like Professor Talebi, and that she'd have as long of a sabbatical as she needed." Sarah choked a bit at the last part. "The police have no leads. They think it was a crime of opportunity-- that either I left the gallery door unlocked on purpose or by accident, and someone just did a quick smash-and-grab."
"But that's not what you think." Now more than ever, Professor Bronson's security cam photos were burning a hole in my pocket, and I itched to open them.
"Of course not, because that doesn't make any sense," Sarah gestured angrily around us. "If it was an inside job, the person could've stolen something without all this fuss. The museum's full of smaller, more valuable pieces, but nothing else was disturbed. They only wanted the bowl. And--"
She bit off the sentence with an awkward gulp. I pretended not to notice.
"And that's why you called me."
"I know you handle... unusual cases. I thought you'd have a better chance at figuring out what happened."
"I might," I said nonchalantly, "If you told me what makes this case so unusual that you're absolutely sure it wasn't a petty thief who just grabbed the first thing he saw."
Sarah's gaze was heavily guarded again, and she clutched the strap of her messenger bag like it was a life preserver. I planted my feet and waited. There are a few advantages to being six foot and then some-- you don't have to exert yourself much to look intimidating.
She drew a deep sigh. "All right. I'm sure Professor Bronson suspects I'm holding something back, but I couldn't tell him everything. He already thinks I'm working too hard. If he thought I was hallucinating due to stress... After I saw the shadow, I walked down the gallery and called out to see if anyone was there."
In the distance, a door slammed and Sarah flinched. It took her a moment to recover, and when she spoke, her voice was low and terse.
"Somebody answered me, Harry. Someone called me by name."
***
Outside, the streetlights cast yellow pools of light over the sidewalk. Sarah and I stood on the steps, both of us stalling a few more minutes so we wouldn't have to step into the murky darkness beyond.
She dug around in her bag. "I don't suppose you've got a cigarette?"
I shook my head. "Sorry."
"Never mind. It's a bad habit, anyway." She unwrapped a stick of gum and popped it in her mouth, chewing furiously. "This is the kind of thing that makes people question their sanity, but I know what I heard. Whatever it was, it knew my name. It laughed, like it wanted to frighten me."
A woman's laugh, she'd said. Low and husky, but unmistakably feminine, laughter that faded like smoke in the breeze. It could be any number of things, but none of the possible culprits were good. I didn't bother telling Sarah that; I could tell she already knew.
"You see why I couldn't tell the Professor, he'd freak out and I'd be on mandatory vacation leave in the blink of an eye. But that's why I suggested he contact you."
"People usually have to be pretty desperate to call a wizard. Hell, most people don't even believe it's a realistic option."
Sarah rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Let's just say I've had a minor brush with magic users before. It's... complicated."
"Ah. Didn't end well, then?"
"Depends on how you look at it."
Sarah wrote down her contact information for me and made me promise to call if I found anything. I watched her go, resolute figure quickly disappearing into the foggy night. Then I sat down on the steps and tore open the envelope Professor Bronson had given me. Security camera footage tend to be pretty low quality, despite what television tells you. You can't magnify them ten thousand times or reverse the polarity of the warp drive to boost the pixel count or whatever it is they claim to do. That would be magic.
Behind the Oriental Institute building was a stretch of lawn criss-crossed with walkways, with Woodlawn Avenue running north and south. The three photos in the envelope were grainy black and white, centered upon the bike rack next across the street from the bus stop. The timestamp of the first photo was at 21:18:26 on the night of the robbery, showing an empty street with no cars in sight. I stared at it, puzzled. What was I meant to see? Then I caught it-- a blurry, indistinct shape rounding the corner of the building, barely visible through the trees.
The second photo was 21:18:29. It showed a tall, slender figure wrapped in a long cloak standing on the sidewalk, face partly obscured in a hood. I could make out what looked like a delicate angle of cheekbone and a pointed chin. Possibly female, but I couldn't be sure. Tucked closed to its body was something large and roundish... I squinted. Could be the demon bowl. Then again, it could also be a Tupperware bowl from this distance.
I flipped to the third and final photo, and my wizard sense began to tingle, because at 21:18:31, the figure was gone. From the back of the building to the street covered a range of one hundred feet, one fifty, tops. Could a human being cover that distance in less than five seconds? Somehow, I didn't think so.
The Blue Beetle was parked one block over, and I hunched low into the collar of my duster as I walked, trying to keep out the chilly night air. The Blue Beetle is an old Volkswagon Bug that I optimistically call my car. It's no longer blue since the paint's peeling and a lot of the outer shell's been replaced by spare parts over the years, but it still gets me where I need to go. Mostly.
I slid into the driver's seat and sat there, hands on the wheel. This case was turning out to be far more than a simple robbery, and I had a lot to think about. First, the identity of the person in the photograph. Second, the whereabouts of Professor Hamideh Talebi. Two leads were better than none, but both of them looked vague and unpromising from my end. If I wanted rent and pizza money, I'd really have to hustle.
Leaning over to stuff the photographs in the glove compartment, I frowned. Sitting on the passenger seat was a round glass sphere, like a fortune-teller's crystal ball. I would've sworn it hadn't been there a second ago. A scan of the surrounding streets revealed nothing, but my wizard senses were tingling again, this time in alarm. This is Chicago, after all. People don't usually leave you presents in your car, unless they're the kind of gifts that go boom when you turn the key in the ignition. With that in mind, I approached the sphere with a caution that was entirely appropriate for a highly trained practitioner of the magical arts.
I poked it with my finger.
From somewhere inside the glass sphere came a muffled whirr and a soft click, and a narrow beam of light shot out of it. Projected onto the dashboard of the Blue Beetle in perfect miniature was the figure of a woman in white. The hologram flickered in and out, her gaze fixed upon the middle distance.
"What the..."
The woman held out her hand. "Help me, Harry Dresden," she said earnestly, "You're my only hope."
"You can't be serious," I said aloud, looking this way and that for the hidden camera. I grabbed the sphere and the transmission cut off abruptly. "Is this someone's idea of a joke? Because I don't think it's very--"
The sphere shattered in my hand, filling the interior of the Blue Beetle with a cloud of glittering dust. Blinded and teary-eyed, I couldn't help myself; I inhaled sharply and at once the whole car rattled on its frame like the millennium Falcon kicking into hyperspace. The last thing I heard sounded remarkably like the screech of an anguished Wookie.
I think it was me.
***
There's a big difference between regular hangovers and magical hangovers. With regular hangovers, at least you've had the satisfaction of earning it with a booze-filled night of debauchery. The throbbing disco ball of pain currently rotating in my head, however, was something entirely different.
I drifted back to reluctant consciousness and found myself lying not on cold asphalt, but warm grass still damp with morning dew. Blearily, I rolled over onto my back. The leafy branches of a large apple tree stretched overhead, heavy with pink and white blossoms. As I stared in disbelief, a breeze stirred the branches and sent a shower of sweetly-scented petals raining down on my prostrate form. I felt like Sleeping Beauty, if Sleepy Beauty were a cranky wizard with a migraine whose mouth tasted like dead cat.
"Hello there," piped a high, lilting greeting.
Oh great, voices, I thought groggily. Forget migraine, maybe I'd had a stroke. More apple blossom petals fell on my head, along with a few leaves.
"I said, hello."
I looked up. Perched on a branch was a pixie, dressed in a scarlet maple leaf. On her head was an acorn cap, tilted rakishly to one side. I could tell this wasn't the NeverNever, or she probably would've killed me and taken my eyeballs for a trophy by now.
Drifting gracefully from her perch to the grass beside me, she scowled quizzically. "You're him? You don't look like a wizard."
I sat up with a groan. While undeniably picturesque, sleeping under apple trees was less comfortable than it looked. I was pretty sure my spine would never be the same.
"You're the second person to say that to me today. Now if you could tell me where I am...?"
The pixie took flight again, hopping to a branch directly over my head. "You're down in the Underground, O Wizardly One. A much nicer place to be than up there, if you ask me," Her tiny nose wrinkled in disgust. "All that noise and dirt. All that nasty iron."
My present surroundings were certainly nothing like Chicago. It was still spring here, and the apple tree was all that shaded me from the late morning sun. It stood at the center of a large courtyard, surrounded by mossy stone walls. Yellow roses climbed up and over the top, but I doubt I could. Very idyllic, but a little too claustrophobic for me. It hadn't escaped my notice that the courtyard didn't have a door, and wizardly intuition suggested that I'd be better off making myself scarce before whoever it was that put me here came back. I turned back to my new pixie best friend.
"Nice place you've got here. I'd love to stay longer, but I have a busy week ahead of me. If you could just point out the exit..."
The pixie seated herself delicately on a twig, swaying back and forth in the breeze. "There is no exit, wizard. You have to wait until the Lady comes."
I squelched the clammy dread that roiled my stomach like a double jalapeno chili-cheeseburger. "... And which lady would this be, then?"
Please not Mab, I thought desperately. And not my faerie godmother, either. Kidnapping me to a flowery paradise didn't seem quite like Leanansidhe's style, but I wouldn't put it past her. My staff was currently sitting in the backseat of the Blue Beetle and the last thing I needed was a run-in with either the Summer or Winter Courts.
"The Lady," repeated the pixie with undisguised annoyance. "There's only one here now. She wants to talk to you, so you'll have to wait here until she comes."
I thought fast. Well, as fast as a brainpan full of gristly, sloshing pain would allow. "I'm really looking forward to that. But after I talk with the Lady, I'm going to need to know the way back."
"Oh, that's easy. Sometimes the way forward is the way back." The pixie nodded sagely.
Gritting my teeth, I resisted the urge to smoosh her between my palms like a mosquito. "I hate riddles."
"It's not a riddle, silly wizard. It just is."
I was losing patience fast. "Look, quit playing around and just tell me, or I'll..." I felt in the pocket of my duster, but the .38 was gone. Maybe that was just as well. I'd probably lose major karma points if I gave an unarmed pixie a faceful of hot lead.
"Or what?" she asked smugly, hands on hips.
I gave her my best glare. "I don't believe in faeries."
"Ack!"
Toppling off her twiggy perch, the pixie grabbed her throat with both hands, wings beating frantically as she fluttered to the ground. Her tiny legs twitched for a second or two before she sprawled facedown in the grass and lay still.
"Well, I'll be damned. It really does work." I was torn between a mixture of guilt and morbid fascination.
The pixie raised her head and shot me a pitying look. "Mortals. You're all so gullible." She sprang up, dusted herself off and horked a surprisingly large wad of faerie-phlegm at my shoe before zooming off, her mocking laughter trailing into the distance. "Find your own way home, wizard!"
I knew I should've stomped on her when I had the chance.
Finding my own way home was easier said than done. The courtyard walls were easily twice my height, slippery with moss and uniformly smooth except for the profusion of climbing roses. The vines were very old, some of them as thick as my wrist and probably sturdy enough to bear the weight of a well-fed wizard. But before I could touch a single vine, a faint whisper of magic rippled through the air and they parted like stage curtains. The woman who emerged from the roses was tall and slender as a birch tree, and her skin was the deep tawny color of the stone itself. She smoothed her white gown and held out a hand in greeting.
"I do apologize. They don't have the best manners, as I'm sure you know."
I couldn't help but gawk. Instead of hair, she had long green willow fronds that swayed unnervingly in the breeze, and her eyes were black and pupil-less, like drops of ink.
"Is this not right?" she asked with a sly smile, "Ah. One moment..." Her willow-frond hair twined up and wound themselves sinuously round to form two rather large buns on the side of her head. "Better?"
I pointedly ignored her outstretched hand. "Not exactly. A kidnapping is a kidnapping, no matter what costume you wear. You're the Lady, I take it."
The woman didn't flinch at my rudeness. "I apologize for that as well, Mr. Dresden. It was discourteous of me to bring you here so abruptly. I'm hoping you'll hear me out, for I do have need of your services. That was the truth."
"You could've dropped by my office during business hours, you know."
The Lady sighed. "Would that I could, but I'm afraid that's quite impossible. Look at me, Mr. Dresden. What do you see?"
"A creature of faerie."
"I am that," agreed the Lady, "But look deeper, wizard."
A soulgaze was out of the question, even if I could look into those depthless black eyes without shuddering. Instead, I took a deep breath and looked upon her with the Sight. For wizards, the Sight is like opening a third eye. It allows us to see things hidden to normal perception, an unveiling of the ordinary that reveals the supernatural truth. It's not without its risks, however. Whatever you observe with it will never be forgotten, and its memory will remain with you forever. Relying on it too much can drive a wizard mad.
What I saw when I looked at my gracious hostess was not a woman, but a place. To human eyes, she tread upon the grass lightly as a shadow, but using the Sight she was the grass, and the earth and rock beneath it. She carried the Underground with her like a snail carries a shell upon its back; corridors stretched out endlessly in the whorled patterns of her fingertips, the rise and fall of her breath was the wind as it swept through the treetops. And yet there was still more-- thousands of mirrors that reflected thousands of other worlds in miniature, each one inextricably bound to her like the glistening threads of a spider's web. Looking at her was like gazing into infinity, and I couldn't stop. It was the Lady who stopped me, the gentle pressure of her hand upon my chest and a voice that sounded like the slow, inexorable splintering of rock as it formed mountains.
Enough.
I released the Sight and staggered, almost falling. The Lady caught me and lowered me to the ground as easily as if were a child.
"Have you seen all you needed to see?"
I passed my hand over my eyes. "And then some. But I'm not sure why someone like you would need my services."
She seated herself gracefully to the grass beside me. "It's complicated. The title of 'Lady' is mine to hold for the time being, but you may call me 'Labyrinth'. It's who-- and what-- I am. This form is merely a convenience, though it does have a certain novelty."
"Yeah," I said sourly, "It's a barrel of laughs." Using the Sight had doubled the rhythmic throbbing in my temples and it felt like my skull would split in two like a Cadbury egg at any moment.
The Labyrinth tutted in sympathy. "Let me make you a peace offering before I lay out my proposition."
With a gesture of her hand, a low stone table rose out of the grass before us, and on it were two glass goblets. Each one was full to the brim with a clear, pale green liquid.
The Labyrinth held one out to me. "It will help. No tricks, Mr. Dresden. You have my word."
Cautiously, I sniffed the goblet's contents. It had a sweet, herbal scent, like tea. What the hell, I thought with a shrug. I tossed the whole goblet back in one gulp.
"If this is poison or some faerie enchantment, I'm-- ARGHHHHH!"
The faerie draught hit me with the intensity of supernova in my sinus cavity, a crackling lightning bolt of unadulterated euphoria blazing its way to my brain and making uninhibited monkey love to my all-too-willing frontal lobe. Strangely enough, it tasted a little like grape bubblegum.
"Good, isn't it?" The Labyrinth reclined upon the grass, legs crossed demurely at the ankles.
It was true that my headache was gone. In fact, everything south of my eyebrows was sort of tingly and numb, too.
"Right," I managed to wheeze, "Can we get down to business? I'm sort of in a hurry."
"As you wish. It's my understanding that you find lost property."
"From time to time." I set down the goblet with a faint sense of regret.
"I am lost property," said the Labyrinth bitterly, "And I want that to change. What you see here is only one tiny corner of a large kingdom, Mr. Dresden. We're not of the Summer or Winter courts, and that's how we like it. But the Underground needs power to retain that autonomy, wizard."
As she spoke, the Labyrinth gently combed her fingers through the grass, sand fine and bright as gold dust spilling in their wake. Beneath the touch of her hand rose a miniature city with turrets and towers, girded round by a golden wall that gleamed in the sun. She continued, the words a soporific murmur in the background.
"A powerful dreamer can shape this land to her will. She can rule it, raise it up from the rubble, and open its gateways to a thousand kingdoms more. All this, the dreamer can do. But without her," The Labyrinth snapped her fingers and the city crumbled back into dust. "It is nothing like it ought to be, and I feel the loss of that potential very keenly. Do you understand, Mr. Dresden?"
The pile of glittering dust shrank until all that remained was no bigger than an anthill. She scooped it up and let it trickle from one hand to the other, watching me intently.
"I think so. I'm just not sure what you want with me."
I try very hard not to dream, and it's been that way ever since I was a kid. When you wake up and find that everyone you ever cared about or trusted is dead, you don't want to remember the things you see after you close your eyes at night.
The Labyrinth allowed herself a melancholy smile. "You have nothing to fear from me, wizard-- a land shaped by your dreams would be beautiful, but bleak."
She passed her hand over the grass again, but instead of gleaming gold walls there rose a city of ice and snow. Jagged icicles formed the battlements of a miniature keep, and steep walls rimed with frost rose high above a foggy, frozen sea.
"Just what I always wanted, my very own Fortress of Solitude," I joked, but to be honest, I was taken aback. Those were my dreams? I'd never envisioned them being so desolate.
The structure lasted only moments before melting in the heat of the afternoon sun, leaving no trace upon the ground. When I looked up, the Labyrinth met my gaze, sympathy written in her dark eyes.
"Dreams can change, Mr. Dresden, that is their nature. Perhaps I don't need your dreams, but I still have need of your services. You can leave this place, I cannot. Find my dreamers and convince them to return to me."
I cleared my throat. "Well, my rates are usually reasonable, but I'm already working one tough case, so I can't promise--"
"Whatever you require, I can pay. A kingdom needs a king... and a queen. Mine have left this world for yours. I want them back."
A runaway king and queen, that was a new one. I sighed in resignation. "Any idea of where I should start, last known whereabouts, that kind of thing?"
"Even better, wizard. I have their address," The Labyrinth laughed quietly. "They will at least hear you out on the matter, so you won't be facing a hostile party. Triple your usual rate, plus travel expenses-- all for a job that's a piece of cake. Do we have a deal?"
My better judgment would ordinarily take one look at this scenario and say no. A powerful creature of faerie who spoke in riddles and vagaries, who needed help tracking down some royals on the lam? Then again, my better judgment had stopped listening to reason after hearing "triple your usual rate". A hundred and fifty bucks an hour would go a very long way toward rent payments, tidying up a few outstanding bills and clearing my bar tab at McAnally's.
"Deal," I replied at last. I usually ask for a retainer's fee, but this time I figured I'd settle for being returned to my car, safe and sound with all my physical and mental faculties intact.
"You won't regret it, Mr. Dresden," A crystal sphere materialized in her cupped hands, glowing softly white. "If you're ready, I will send you back. You must begin immediately."
"Hold on. What if I can't convince them to come back? What happens then?"
The Labyrinth shrugged, the long green willow strands of her hair falling forward until only the glint of her eyes shone through the leaves.
"Do or do not," she said serenely, "There is no try."
The crystal shattered with a hollow pop, sending up a spray of silvery dust. Lips pursed, she blew it in my direction. All at once the ground vanished from beneath my feet and I was falling, my duster flapping like a cheap parachute. The cold rush of air stung my eyelids and stole the breath from my lungs. I gritted my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut.
Stars and stones. I'd been Yoda-ed by the anthropological embodiment of a magical faerie realm. It was going to be a long week.
Part Two
Part Three
****
Title: En Fuego, Part One
Author: dmacabre
Recipient: rikkitsune
Prompt: Jareth abdicates the Goblin Throne and chooses a normal mortal life with Sarah, Aboveground. Unfortunately, the bored and lonely Labyrinth has other plans for the power couple...
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Broke and desperate for work, Chicago's only professional wizard is hot on the trail of a stolen relic from the Oriental Institute when he unexpectedly lands not one, but two additional cases. Turns out that nothing livens up a slow work week like a little demon trouble, a pair of star-crossed royal lovers, and a bored faerie kingdom who wants her king and queen back at all costs.
Author's Notes: I had major plot bunnies for all of your prompts, but in the end I decided to attempt a Labyrinth/Dresden Files crossover. It, uh... sort of got out of hand. The story's set pretty early on in the Dresdenverse, roughly between Storm Front and Fool Moon.
It was a cool autumn night with fog rolling in off the lake, and the Chicago skyline was lit up like Christmas. Blinking the sweat from my eyes, I could just make out the shadowy figure flitting across the rooftop ahead of me. The roof of the Congress Plaza hotel was a maze of heating ducts and electrical systems, perfect for a hiding place... or an ambush. Retreating footsteps crunched on the gravel. Moving as quietly as I could, I ducked down a side path and was rewarded with a glimpse of sequined evening gown disappearing around a corner. My target ran surprisingly fast for a lady in four inch heels toting a 1,400 year old relic under one arm.
Then again, she was a demon.
I'd chased her up ten flights of stairs, no easy feat for a guy whose diet consists mostly of Coke and food covered in melted cheese. My lungs burned with the stench of roofing tar and my side ached as though my spleen had declared war on my pancreas, but what I lack in athletic prowess, I make up for in a masochistic reluctance to admit defeat. Blasting rod in hand, I circled round-- this was a big hotel, but it wasn't the Ritz and we were quickly running out of rooftop. I matched my footsteps to that of my quarry, and at last I was rewarded: we'd reached a dead end, and there was nowhere to go but down.
Countess Lilith von Amsberg stood silhouetted against the skyline, heels planted mere inches from the edge of the roof. An icy updraft tangled her long, dark hair and molded the her evening gown to a figure that would make men weep-- especially since it contained a soul-devouring demon spirit bent upon the destruction of humanity.
"Give it up, Countess," I called out, trying not to wheeze in an undignified fashion, "You're out of options."
With a hum of warning, a salad fork flew out of the darkness, burying itself three inches deep into the concrete by my left ear where it quivered ominously, the metal handle glowing red hot . I ducked behind a wall, back pressed against the brick. Two thoughts came to me in quick succession. One, I was forced to admire her opportunistic use of silverware as weaponry. And two, where the hell was my back-up? I gulped in the cold night air and tried to focus.
Calm yourself, Harry. Never let the perp see you sweat.
"You'll regret refusing my offer, Mr. Dresden. We could've had so much fun together."
"I may be desperate, lady, but not desperate enough to spend all of eternity letting you use my libido as a scratching post. Tell you what, hand over the bowl and we can forget about this whole international incident."
The Countess' response was a sibilant snarl. "I prefer death, wizard. Your death."
I knew she'd say that. Ordinarily, this is the moment when a demon breaks out the big guns: morphing into a scaly eldritch hell-beast with a dozen tentacles attached to every limb, for example, or maybe revealing that beneath its deceptively human skin seethes an angry colony of flesh-eating cockroaches that disperse and consume upon demand, etc. etc. It's not personal, it's just what they do.
Raising my blasting rod, I gathered my Will and braced for it. There are only two options when you're faced with the temptation of limitless power, eternal life and all the hedonistic funtimes that undoubtedly pave the road to damnation. You can give in and let a beautiful demoness make your body her playground while simultaneously devouring the shreds of your immortal soul...
Or you can kill it with fire.
***
Wait, I'm probably getting ahead of myself. Begin at the beginning, that's what my dad always said.
My name is Harry Dresden, and I'm a professional wizard. I'm not the only wizard in Chicago-- there are more of us than you'd think. I'm just the only one dumb enough to try and make a living at it. You know that saying about how crime doesn't pay? That's not true. It pays plenty, that's why people do it in the first place. It's crimefighting that pays peanuts. I'm pretty sure Gandalf the Grey's never had to wade hip-deep through the city sewers armed only with a pocketful of enchanted sugarcubes in search of a rampaging kelpie.
Work had been slow over the summer, which was good for catching up on my reading but bad for business. By fall, my bank account was about as empty as my pantry and rent was a week overdue. I needed a job. Any job. That's why I was sitting in a cluttered basement office at the Oriental Institute on a brisk Friday afternoon in October, studying a photograph of a lopsided clay bowl while the soundtrack from Cats played softly in the background.
The bowl was a deep gold-brown color, broad at the base with gently sloping sides. At the bottom was a crude, but clear drawing of an ourobouros, a serpent swallowing its tail. Dark, angular script spiraled out from the center, winding evenly around toward the heavy rim. I flipped the photo over. A ballpoint scrawl on the back read: Seleucia-on-Tigris, 6th century A.D. I didn't know where Seleucia-on-Tigris was, but it sounded like a fatal disease of the lower intestine.
I glanced up at my client. "I'd appreciate any background you could give me. Archaeology isn't exactly my area of expertise."
Professor Charlie Bronson was the chair of the Near Eastern Studies department, a tall, lanky, man with tightly curled dark hair threaded with silver. His office was crammed with overflowing filing cabinets and stacks of books along with an eclectic collection of pottery, photographs of archaeological digs in Turkey and Lebanon, and no fewer than three Phantom of the Opera posters. He had three passions in life: fly-fishing, the musical oeuvre of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and discovering the whereabouts of his ancient Mesopotamian artifact that had been stolen from the museum's collection two nights ago.
“I know it doesn’t look like much." The Professor laid out more photographs."To be honest, it's not even the best example of a Babylonian incantation bowl I've seen-- the British Museum has at least half a dozen better specimens. Last summer, the Institute embarked on a joint excavation with Salahaddin University on the west bank of the Tigris river. This was one of the pieces uncovered in the dig. It's a fine example of its kind, but not exceptional."
Professor Bronson's crash course in mythology was brief, but informative. An incantation bowl was a preventative measure. Each one bore the inscription for a protective spell, and the bowl was placed in the doorway or in the corners of a house, anywhere demons might seek to enter. If one ventured near it, the spell would activate and trap the demon inside like a game of ancient Mesopotamian Mousetrap.
"Doesn't that seem a little primitive? This stuff makes Wile E. Coyote look positively Machiavellian."
Professor Bronson snorted in amusement. "Nothing wrong with simple and to the point, Mr. Dresden. The inscription is often very specific, invoking protection over a particular person or a household. However, there are many instances where the inscription is gibberish, just meaningless scribbles meant to mimic words. The ancient Babylonians believed that the spell's intent was protection enough."
The ancients were absolutely right. I examined the inscription with renewed interest. Even a novice like me knew there's a thriving black market for stolen antiquities. For magical relics, the going price could easily be double or triple, especially to a desperate buyer. My client was less than impressed upon hearing this. He stabbed a button on his boombox and silenced the music.
"You can't be serious."
"Serious as a heart attack, Professor. You ever had a demon that needed trapping? You'll try anything once."
A long silence fell, in which Professor Bronson fixed me with a hard stare. "I was given to understand that you were a reputable private investigator, Mr. Dresden. This is no joking matter."
Ah, I thought. An unbeliever. Skeptics were common in my line of work. It was almost as if they doubted that a wizard private eye listed in the Yellow Pages could possibly be legit.
I smiled and tried to look reasonably sane. "Please tell me everything that happened up until the theft."
"Hmmph. Well. The incantation bowl has been on display in the Mesopotamian gallery-- that's the one on your left as you enter the lobby-- for less than a month. We've never had any trouble before."
According to the Professor, there'd been no recent break-ins or suspicious activity. The Institute's collection is open to the public six days a week. On most days they close at six in the evening, though on Tuesdays the galleries remain open until eight thirty. The building is usually quiet after hours, except for the occasional faculty member or student in the research library. Like many smaller museums, there was little to no security-- very basic alarms on the main entrances only, no night watchmen. It helped that their most valuable pieces were things you'd need a forklift to steal, like the massive limestone bull's head sculpture in the Persian gallery that was nearly the size of my car.
"No lectures are scheduled on Wednesday nights, so the outer entrances are locked by eight sharp. The robbery took place at approximately a quarter after nine."
I raised an eyebrow. "You're sure of the exact time?"
"Reasonably sure. To my knowledge, only three people including myself were in the building that night. I was here in my office, on a conference call with some colleagues on the west coast. The night janitor was upstairs and heard nothing. But there was a witness."
A note of uncertainty had entered Professor Bronson's voice, and I pounced on it. "I'd like to talk to this person as soon as possible."
"Of course. Her name is Sarah Williams, she's a grad student in the Near Eastern Studies program. I've asked her to assist you in any way possible. But if I might ask a favor, Mr. Dresden, please go easy on her. This past year has been very difficult for Sarah, and a frightening experience like this..."
I assured him I'd handle the matter with utmost delicacy. No need to tell the client that in most peoples' estimation, I had only a nodding acquaintance with concepts like "sensitivity" and "discretion".
"I appreciate it." Professor Bronson relaxed visibly. "I'd vouch for her honesty without a doubt, but as I said, it's been a difficult year. Her academic advisor took an indefinite leave of absence last winter, and Sarah's been under a great deal of stress. Whatever she thinks she saw... well. She's a good student, responsible to a fault. I believe that she's telling the truth as she sees it."
As a private investigator, I've found there comes a moment in every good case where the mask of the mundane slips to reveal the bizarro world beneath. This, I sensed, was that moment.
"Can you recall exactly what she told you?"
"I think it's best if you heard it in her own words, Mr. Dresden."
"Believe me, I plan to. But it's helpful to know what observations or reactions she had while the crime was still fresh. Almost two days have passed and that's more than enough time to forget the little details." Or to make up a plausible story, I thought.
The Professor hemmed and hawed for a few more minutes, but bit by bit, the story trickled out. Sarah Williams had been given special permission to remain in the gallery after closing. At nine o'clock, she'd been in the east wing, sketching a few pieces from the museum's collection of ivories. A little after nine, she heard what sounded like breaking glass coming from the direction of the Mesopotamian gallery. She went to investigate, but before she reached the spot, she saw a shadowy figure dart across the doorway. The display case for the bowl was empty, shards of broken glass strewn across the gallery floor. The thief was nowhere to be seen.
It was my turn to be skeptical. "That must've been a very quick getaway,"
The Professor dug out a museum brochure with a simple map on the back. "There are only two entrance/exit points in the Mesopotamian gallery," he said, marking them both with a red pen, "One is to the east wing, where Sarah was working. The other is back toward the main entrance. You'll see it for yourself later-- it's a long gallery with many display cases, but there's nowhere to hide. Sarah walked from one end of the gallery to the other, and she saw no one. The main doors were still locked. You need a key to get in and out."
"And there's absolutely no security footage? How about outside the museum on the street?"
After a short pause, the Professor reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a manilla envelope. "A fishing buddy works in security at the School of Business just east of here. They had some problems with bicycle thefts a couple months ago, so they installed a security camera on the corner of E. 58th and Woodlawn, near the bus stop."
I started to open the envelope, but Professor Bronson gave a cautionary shake of his head.
"Plenty of time for that later. And if anyone asks," he added sternly, "You didn't get that from me. This is where it gets tricky, Mr. Dresden. First, I'd appreciate it if your interview with Miss Williams is kept strictly confidential. She's an excellent researcher with a promising career ahead of her, and I won't see her academic reputation tarnished. Whatever she tells you stays between the three of us and goes no further."
"That goes without saying." I squared my shoulders and looked him in the eye. Not a soul-gaze, but close enough.
Professor Bronson grunted in approval. "Good man. The police haven't seen the contents of this envelope, and the University prefers to keep it that way unless there's no other choice. The repercussions could be complicated."
I tucked the envelope in an inner pocket of my canvas duster. Call me immature, but this cloak and dagger stuff never gets old. "Gotcha. I'd like to take a look around the gallery myself and talk to Miss Williams, if that's possible."
"You can do both at the same time. Once the police cleared the crime scene, she went back to work." Professor Bronson dug around in the pocket of his baggy wool blazer and handed me a slip of paper, "My address and home number, should you need to reach me. Mr. Dresden, this is a sensitive matter, and not just for my student. The University is hosting a conference next week featuring exhibitions from the expedition, and there'll be a lot of heavy hitters present: alumni, museum donors at the highest levels, people with academic and political connections... people with diplomatic immunity. The Chicago PD won't be able to take this investigation as far as you will-- that's why we hired you."
"I take it that retrieval is a higher priority than getting evidence or nabbing the perpetrator, then."
"Precisely. We're not interested in prosecution, Mr. Dresden. We just want our property back."
As I rose to go, something else occurred to me. I studied the photograph of the artifact again, noting the evenness of the script. Centuries ago, someone had written this long, complex spell with a steady hand, never wavering from beginning to end. Someone had believed.
"Just one more thing... Do you maybe have a translation of the inscription that I could borrow?"
The professor shuffled the pile of photographs and documents with the skill of a blackjack dealer, thin brown fingers deftly plucking out the one he needed. "Here. You can keep this copy if it'll help."
It was a sheet of yellow legal pad that read:
You are bound and sealed, all you demons and devils and lilitu
By that which is mighty and powerful
The evil one who causes the hearts of men to go astray
And appears in the dream of the night and in the vision of the day
Who burns in the nightmares of children
She is conquered and sealed away from the house
Of Bahram-Gushnasp son of Ishtar-Nahid
By the talisman of Metatron, the great prince and Healer of Mercy
Who vanquishes demons and devils, black arts and mighty spells
And keeps them away from the house and threshold of Bahram- Gushnap, son of Ishtar-Nahid. Amen, Amen, Selah.
It wasn't like any spell I'd ever read, but it had a ring to it.
"Thanks. By the way, could I ask where you heard of my services? I'm usually hired by individuals, not academic institutions."
Professor Bronson looked up from his papers in surprise. "Didn't you know? The referral came from Miss Williams herself."
***
By five o'clock, the museum was empty and I was free to explore on my own. I'm not really a museum kind of guy, but I have to admit I was pretty impressed. The Mesopotamian gallery was a long, wide corridor lined with display cases, the old-fashioned wood and glass kind like in the Field Museum. One side overlooked an enclosed courtyard with a few gnarled crabapple trees. On the other side, a row of tall windows faced out onto University Avenue and a quiet, tree-lined sidewalk. I took my time examining the doors for signs of tampering, but found nothing. The windows didn't even open. Professor Bronson was right on the money-- the gallery had only two possible exits and nowhere to hide.
I made my way past displays of old pots, dozens of carved stone seals and a black stele with the Code of Hammurabi inscribed upon it. Clusters of temple figurines dedicated to various ancient gods and goddess stood like witnesses in a jury box. But the most imposing display of all was at the far end of the gallery: the figure of a human-headed winged bull, sixteen feet high and solid stone. According to the plaque, it had formerly graced the palace of King Sargon II of Assyria. I bet he was pissed when he found it gone. Lost in thought, I missed the light step behind me, and the palpable shift in the air as someone moved closer.
"A lamassu," said a voice in my ear, "It's a protective spirit that stood guard at the gates of a city. Or in this case, the throne room."
It's not often that people get the drop on me-- acute wizardly hearing is convenient like that-- so it took me a half second to relax my grip on the .38 revolver in my duster pocket.
Sarah Williams was very pretty, with long dark hair knotted in a loose bun and fastened with a pencil. She looked like any other student wandering the halls: worn jeans and a faded tee, dark green flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. She studied me in turn, a strained smile betraying her nerves.
"You must be Mr. Dresden," Nervous or not, she had a firm, no-nonsense handshake, palm lightly callused. "I'm Sarah. Pleased to meet you."
"Likewise. Please call me Harry," I nodded at the messenger bag slung over her shoulder, "Am I interrupting your work?"
"Not at all. I was getting ready to head home, but Professor Bronson said you might want to talk to me. I can walk you through what happened, if you like."
Experience has taught me to be wary of people who volunteered information so readily, but Sarah's story matched up with the Professor's account. The museum's collection was housed in four galleries, each forming a square around an inaccessible central courtyard: Mesopotamia at the north, Assyria at the east, and to the south and west, the Egyptian, Nubian and Persian galleries. On the night of the robbery, Sarah had been working in the far end of the Assyrian hall, near a prominent case full of ivory carvings.
"You weren't nervous to be alone in the museum at night?"
Sarah shrugged. "I'm used to it. The janitor had left the lights on for me in this wing, but he'd dimmed the overheads in the other galleries. It's a little spooky, but it's not pitch-black or anything."
There weren't any benches, so she'd taken a seat cross-legged on the floor, wedged between two display cases with her back against the wall. From this vantage point, Sarah had a mostly unobstructed hundred and eighty degree view, including the doors leading to the back stairs and the entrance that led to the Egyptian gallery in the southern wing.
This, I thought, was a woman used to mapping out an exit strategy. Interesting.
What she didn't have, unfortunately, was a direct line of sight toward the scene of the crime. The arrangement of the collection was more densely clustered in this hall, and a maze of display cases lay between her and the Mesopotamian gallery. Yet I could easily believe that she'd heard the sound of breaking glass at this distance-- sound carried surprisingly far here, though the thick walls of the building muffled the hum of traffic outside.
"I was close to packing up for the night when I heard the noise. At first, I thought it might be the janitor, or Professor Bronson coming to check on me. He sometimes does that before he heads home."
But you knew that couldn't be it. "Go on," I said quietly.
We'd begun retracing our steps back to where we started. The entryway to the Mesopotamian hall had been left clear, an open area right in front of the winged bull statue, with a good view of where the demon bowl had been. Sarah paused by a display of fragments from the Dead Sea scrolls, her eyes distant and her brow furrowed in thought.
"I was here when I saw... I'm not sure what I saw. A shadow. A person, maybe."
"Man or woman?"
"I don't know. It happened so fast, I couldn't really tell. I'd been sketching for a couple hours, my eyes were tired. It could've been the lights flickering overhead, or anything really..." She trailed off uneasily.
"You thought it was worth mentioning to Professor Bronson."
She allowed herself a tired smile. "He doesn't miss much, and whatever you don't tell him, he'll get out of you eventually. When I got closer, I couldn't see anything. Not at first, anyway. It wasn't until I stepped on the broken glass that I realized something was wrong. The overhead lights were dim, and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. When I saw that the display case was empty, I... I didn't know what to think."
Sarah's anxiety was real enough-- several times, she'd unconsciously wiped the palms of her hands on the front of her jeans, and I could see by the ragged edge of her thumbnail that she was a nail-biter. I'd given her a chance and heard her out like I promised Professor Bronson, but all of her hedging was getting us nowhere. I made up my mind. It was time to play Good Wizard, Bad Wizard.
I gave Sarah the once-over, and I wasn't at all subtle. "So you charged down the corridor, looking for the bad guy? Forgive me, but you don't look exactly look like the feisty heroine type."
Eyebrow raised, Sarah returned the once-over. It took her a little longer because I'm a lot taller, but she didn't seem too impressed. Maybe I should've tried harder to find matching socks this morning.
"You don't exactly look like the powerful wizard type." All the uncertainty had vanished, replaced with sarcasm. "Fine. I guess I panicked, but it's not like I had much of a choice. The other end of the gallery is the closest exit. Seeing as how the museum had just been ripped off, I was kind of in a hurry?"
"Fair enough, I had to ask. You have to admit, it looks a little hinky. You working alone here at night, the bowl goes missing and you're the only witness..."
"I know. It looks like an inside job. Even the police think so," Sarah frowned, chewing on her lower lip, "They wanted to turn my life upside down and give it a good shake to see what comes out, but Professor Bronson told them to back off."
"He thinks a lot of you."
"The feeling is mutual. I don't want to let him down, not after everything he's done for me."
For a few minutes, Sarah chatted about inconsequential things, more relaxed now than she'd been before. She hadn't been part of the expedition that uncovered the bowl, she explained, but her former advisor had. Professor Hamideh Talebi was well-respected in the department, an enthusiastic mentor. Sarah missed her very much.
"Is there any way I can talk to her? It's a long shot, but maybe she knows something that might be a clue about who'd want to take it."
Sarah's eyes shadowed. "I don't think so. Or at least, she won't talk to me, so I'd be surprised if she talked to you."
Professor Talebi departed abruptly at the end of January, leaving only a terse note about overwork and needing time off. Calls to her home had gone unanswered. When a concerned colleague finally got through, the housekeeper revealed that the Professor had packed up and gone back to Michigan, where her two daughters lived. Weeks passed with no further message. That had surprised Sarah most of all.
"Hamideh... Professor Talebi, I mean, she loved what she did, and she threw herself into the work. It didn't matter if it was digging latrine trenches at camp or cataloging pottery shards, all the grunt work that's usually left to grad students and interns. She wouldn't leave like that without a good reason."
Nodding at the empty display case, I took a stab at diplomacy with my usual success. "Maybe she had one."
"Absolutely not," Sarah's eyes were suspiciously wet, but she blinked back the tears fiercely. "She's not a thief. She had plenty of opportunity to take the bowl if she'd wanted to."
This piqued my interest. "Go on."
"Professor Talebi oversaw the shipping and unloading of everything they brought back. There wasn't much. Middle Eastern governments no longer allow foreign expeditions to divvy up antiquities like they did before the 1930s. Technically, the incantation bowl is on loan. We catalog it, photograph and scan it, then ship it back to Salahaddin University."
"So it'd be a pretty big scandal if something happened to it on the Institute's watch." No wonder Professor Bronson is so eager to keep this under wraps.
Sarah agreed gloomily. "Not just big, huge. Professor Talebi would never risk the Institute's reputation like that, never mind her own."
I made a neutral noise that could be construed as agreement. Sarah's devotion to her former advisor was touching, but at this stage, Professor Talebi looked like a promising suspect.
"How did she behave in the weeks before she left? Anything unusual?"
Sarah eyed me warily, not at all deceived by my casual tone of voice. "Between teaching, writing up the expedition findings and final exams, she had a lot on her mind."
"I'm sure she did. But she was your advisor, and you saw her regularly. Did anything seem out of the ordinary?"
"She seemed tired," Sarah said at last, "I know that doesn't sound like much, but having a full schedule usually energized her. We usually go out for coffee once a week. Hamideh was preoccupied all the time, even in one-on-one meetings. It was common for her to stay late in the research library, but sometimes she'd be there all night..."
"And...?" I prompted gently.
"Only she wasn't getting work done. I'd come in the next day, and there'd be nothing filed and only a scattering of notes. Yet she never left the office before midnight. The last time I spoke with her, she said she hadn't been sleeping well."
Sarah had tried to talk to her advisor, but Professor Talebi was evasive and vague, not at all like her usual forthright manner. Field notes went missing-- misplaced in another filing cabinet, said the Professor. Sarah was certain her advisor was lying. Two weeks later, Professor Talebi was gone. When fall classes started up and there was no sign of her return, the department discussed a possible dismissal.
"Professor Bronson would have none of it. He said that the Institute was lucky to have a dedicated field researcher like Professor Talebi, and that she'd have as long of a sabbatical as she needed." Sarah choked a bit at the last part. "The police have no leads. They think it was a crime of opportunity-- that either I left the gallery door unlocked on purpose or by accident, and someone just did a quick smash-and-grab."
"But that's not what you think." Now more than ever, Professor Bronson's security cam photos were burning a hole in my pocket, and I itched to open them.
"Of course not, because that doesn't make any sense," Sarah gestured angrily around us. "If it was an inside job, the person could've stolen something without all this fuss. The museum's full of smaller, more valuable pieces, but nothing else was disturbed. They only wanted the bowl. And--"
She bit off the sentence with an awkward gulp. I pretended not to notice.
"And that's why you called me."
"I know you handle... unusual cases. I thought you'd have a better chance at figuring out what happened."
"I might," I said nonchalantly, "If you told me what makes this case so unusual that you're absolutely sure it wasn't a petty thief who just grabbed the first thing he saw."
Sarah's gaze was heavily guarded again, and she clutched the strap of her messenger bag like it was a life preserver. I planted my feet and waited. There are a few advantages to being six foot and then some-- you don't have to exert yourself much to look intimidating.
She drew a deep sigh. "All right. I'm sure Professor Bronson suspects I'm holding something back, but I couldn't tell him everything. He already thinks I'm working too hard. If he thought I was hallucinating due to stress... After I saw the shadow, I walked down the gallery and called out to see if anyone was there."
In the distance, a door slammed and Sarah flinched. It took her a moment to recover, and when she spoke, her voice was low and terse.
"Somebody answered me, Harry. Someone called me by name."
***
Outside, the streetlights cast yellow pools of light over the sidewalk. Sarah and I stood on the steps, both of us stalling a few more minutes so we wouldn't have to step into the murky darkness beyond.
She dug around in her bag. "I don't suppose you've got a cigarette?"
I shook my head. "Sorry."
"Never mind. It's a bad habit, anyway." She unwrapped a stick of gum and popped it in her mouth, chewing furiously. "This is the kind of thing that makes people question their sanity, but I know what I heard. Whatever it was, it knew my name. It laughed, like it wanted to frighten me."
A woman's laugh, she'd said. Low and husky, but unmistakably feminine, laughter that faded like smoke in the breeze. It could be any number of things, but none of the possible culprits were good. I didn't bother telling Sarah that; I could tell she already knew.
"You see why I couldn't tell the Professor, he'd freak out and I'd be on mandatory vacation leave in the blink of an eye. But that's why I suggested he contact you."
"People usually have to be pretty desperate to call a wizard. Hell, most people don't even believe it's a realistic option."
Sarah rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Let's just say I've had a minor brush with magic users before. It's... complicated."
"Ah. Didn't end well, then?"
"Depends on how you look at it."
Sarah wrote down her contact information for me and made me promise to call if I found anything. I watched her go, resolute figure quickly disappearing into the foggy night. Then I sat down on the steps and tore open the envelope Professor Bronson had given me. Security camera footage tend to be pretty low quality, despite what television tells you. You can't magnify them ten thousand times or reverse the polarity of the warp drive to boost the pixel count or whatever it is they claim to do. That would be magic.
Behind the Oriental Institute building was a stretch of lawn criss-crossed with walkways, with Woodlawn Avenue running north and south. The three photos in the envelope were grainy black and white, centered upon the bike rack next across the street from the bus stop. The timestamp of the first photo was at 21:18:26 on the night of the robbery, showing an empty street with no cars in sight. I stared at it, puzzled. What was I meant to see? Then I caught it-- a blurry, indistinct shape rounding the corner of the building, barely visible through the trees.
The second photo was 21:18:29. It showed a tall, slender figure wrapped in a long cloak standing on the sidewalk, face partly obscured in a hood. I could make out what looked like a delicate angle of cheekbone and a pointed chin. Possibly female, but I couldn't be sure. Tucked closed to its body was something large and roundish... I squinted. Could be the demon bowl. Then again, it could also be a Tupperware bowl from this distance.
I flipped to the third and final photo, and my wizard sense began to tingle, because at 21:18:31, the figure was gone. From the back of the building to the street covered a range of one hundred feet, one fifty, tops. Could a human being cover that distance in less than five seconds? Somehow, I didn't think so.
The Blue Beetle was parked one block over, and I hunched low into the collar of my duster as I walked, trying to keep out the chilly night air. The Blue Beetle is an old Volkswagon Bug that I optimistically call my car. It's no longer blue since the paint's peeling and a lot of the outer shell's been replaced by spare parts over the years, but it still gets me where I need to go. Mostly.
I slid into the driver's seat and sat there, hands on the wheel. This case was turning out to be far more than a simple robbery, and I had a lot to think about. First, the identity of the person in the photograph. Second, the whereabouts of Professor Hamideh Talebi. Two leads were better than none, but both of them looked vague and unpromising from my end. If I wanted rent and pizza money, I'd really have to hustle.
Leaning over to stuff the photographs in the glove compartment, I frowned. Sitting on the passenger seat was a round glass sphere, like a fortune-teller's crystal ball. I would've sworn it hadn't been there a second ago. A scan of the surrounding streets revealed nothing, but my wizard senses were tingling again, this time in alarm. This is Chicago, after all. People don't usually leave you presents in your car, unless they're the kind of gifts that go boom when you turn the key in the ignition. With that in mind, I approached the sphere with a caution that was entirely appropriate for a highly trained practitioner of the magical arts.
I poked it with my finger.
From somewhere inside the glass sphere came a muffled whirr and a soft click, and a narrow beam of light shot out of it. Projected onto the dashboard of the Blue Beetle in perfect miniature was the figure of a woman in white. The hologram flickered in and out, her gaze fixed upon the middle distance.
"What the..."
The woman held out her hand. "Help me, Harry Dresden," she said earnestly, "You're my only hope."
"You can't be serious," I said aloud, looking this way and that for the hidden camera. I grabbed the sphere and the transmission cut off abruptly. "Is this someone's idea of a joke? Because I don't think it's very--"
The sphere shattered in my hand, filling the interior of the Blue Beetle with a cloud of glittering dust. Blinded and teary-eyed, I couldn't help myself; I inhaled sharply and at once the whole car rattled on its frame like the millennium Falcon kicking into hyperspace. The last thing I heard sounded remarkably like the screech of an anguished Wookie.
I think it was me.
***
There's a big difference between regular hangovers and magical hangovers. With regular hangovers, at least you've had the satisfaction of earning it with a booze-filled night of debauchery. The throbbing disco ball of pain currently rotating in my head, however, was something entirely different.
I drifted back to reluctant consciousness and found myself lying not on cold asphalt, but warm grass still damp with morning dew. Blearily, I rolled over onto my back. The leafy branches of a large apple tree stretched overhead, heavy with pink and white blossoms. As I stared in disbelief, a breeze stirred the branches and sent a shower of sweetly-scented petals raining down on my prostrate form. I felt like Sleeping Beauty, if Sleepy Beauty were a cranky wizard with a migraine whose mouth tasted like dead cat.
"Hello there," piped a high, lilting greeting.
Oh great, voices, I thought groggily. Forget migraine, maybe I'd had a stroke. More apple blossom petals fell on my head, along with a few leaves.
"I said, hello."
I looked up. Perched on a branch was a pixie, dressed in a scarlet maple leaf. On her head was an acorn cap, tilted rakishly to one side. I could tell this wasn't the NeverNever, or she probably would've killed me and taken my eyeballs for a trophy by now.
Drifting gracefully from her perch to the grass beside me, she scowled quizzically. "You're him? You don't look like a wizard."
I sat up with a groan. While undeniably picturesque, sleeping under apple trees was less comfortable than it looked. I was pretty sure my spine would never be the same.
"You're the second person to say that to me today. Now if you could tell me where I am...?"
The pixie took flight again, hopping to a branch directly over my head. "You're down in the Underground, O Wizardly One. A much nicer place to be than up there, if you ask me," Her tiny nose wrinkled in disgust. "All that noise and dirt. All that nasty iron."
My present surroundings were certainly nothing like Chicago. It was still spring here, and the apple tree was all that shaded me from the late morning sun. It stood at the center of a large courtyard, surrounded by mossy stone walls. Yellow roses climbed up and over the top, but I doubt I could. Very idyllic, but a little too claustrophobic for me. It hadn't escaped my notice that the courtyard didn't have a door, and wizardly intuition suggested that I'd be better off making myself scarce before whoever it was that put me here came back. I turned back to my new pixie best friend.
"Nice place you've got here. I'd love to stay longer, but I have a busy week ahead of me. If you could just point out the exit..."
The pixie seated herself delicately on a twig, swaying back and forth in the breeze. "There is no exit, wizard. You have to wait until the Lady comes."
I squelched the clammy dread that roiled my stomach like a double jalapeno chili-cheeseburger. "... And which lady would this be, then?"
Please not Mab, I thought desperately. And not my faerie godmother, either. Kidnapping me to a flowery paradise didn't seem quite like Leanansidhe's style, but I wouldn't put it past her. My staff was currently sitting in the backseat of the Blue Beetle and the last thing I needed was a run-in with either the Summer or Winter Courts.
"The Lady," repeated the pixie with undisguised annoyance. "There's only one here now. She wants to talk to you, so you'll have to wait here until she comes."
I thought fast. Well, as fast as a brainpan full of gristly, sloshing pain would allow. "I'm really looking forward to that. But after I talk with the Lady, I'm going to need to know the way back."
"Oh, that's easy. Sometimes the way forward is the way back." The pixie nodded sagely.
Gritting my teeth, I resisted the urge to smoosh her between my palms like a mosquito. "I hate riddles."
"It's not a riddle, silly wizard. It just is."
I was losing patience fast. "Look, quit playing around and just tell me, or I'll..." I felt in the pocket of my duster, but the .38 was gone. Maybe that was just as well. I'd probably lose major karma points if I gave an unarmed pixie a faceful of hot lead.
"Or what?" she asked smugly, hands on hips.
I gave her my best glare. "I don't believe in faeries."
"Ack!"
Toppling off her twiggy perch, the pixie grabbed her throat with both hands, wings beating frantically as she fluttered to the ground. Her tiny legs twitched for a second or two before she sprawled facedown in the grass and lay still.
"Well, I'll be damned. It really does work." I was torn between a mixture of guilt and morbid fascination.
The pixie raised her head and shot me a pitying look. "Mortals. You're all so gullible." She sprang up, dusted herself off and horked a surprisingly large wad of faerie-phlegm at my shoe before zooming off, her mocking laughter trailing into the distance. "Find your own way home, wizard!"
I knew I should've stomped on her when I had the chance.
Finding my own way home was easier said than done. The courtyard walls were easily twice my height, slippery with moss and uniformly smooth except for the profusion of climbing roses. The vines were very old, some of them as thick as my wrist and probably sturdy enough to bear the weight of a well-fed wizard. But before I could touch a single vine, a faint whisper of magic rippled through the air and they parted like stage curtains. The woman who emerged from the roses was tall and slender as a birch tree, and her skin was the deep tawny color of the stone itself. She smoothed her white gown and held out a hand in greeting.
"I do apologize. They don't have the best manners, as I'm sure you know."
I couldn't help but gawk. Instead of hair, she had long green willow fronds that swayed unnervingly in the breeze, and her eyes were black and pupil-less, like drops of ink.
"Is this not right?" she asked with a sly smile, "Ah. One moment..." Her willow-frond hair twined up and wound themselves sinuously round to form two rather large buns on the side of her head. "Better?"
I pointedly ignored her outstretched hand. "Not exactly. A kidnapping is a kidnapping, no matter what costume you wear. You're the Lady, I take it."
The woman didn't flinch at my rudeness. "I apologize for that as well, Mr. Dresden. It was discourteous of me to bring you here so abruptly. I'm hoping you'll hear me out, for I do have need of your services. That was the truth."
"You could've dropped by my office during business hours, you know."
The Lady sighed. "Would that I could, but I'm afraid that's quite impossible. Look at me, Mr. Dresden. What do you see?"
"A creature of faerie."
"I am that," agreed the Lady, "But look deeper, wizard."
A soulgaze was out of the question, even if I could look into those depthless black eyes without shuddering. Instead, I took a deep breath and looked upon her with the Sight. For wizards, the Sight is like opening a third eye. It allows us to see things hidden to normal perception, an unveiling of the ordinary that reveals the supernatural truth. It's not without its risks, however. Whatever you observe with it will never be forgotten, and its memory will remain with you forever. Relying on it too much can drive a wizard mad.
What I saw when I looked at my gracious hostess was not a woman, but a place. To human eyes, she tread upon the grass lightly as a shadow, but using the Sight she was the grass, and the earth and rock beneath it. She carried the Underground with her like a snail carries a shell upon its back; corridors stretched out endlessly in the whorled patterns of her fingertips, the rise and fall of her breath was the wind as it swept through the treetops. And yet there was still more-- thousands of mirrors that reflected thousands of other worlds in miniature, each one inextricably bound to her like the glistening threads of a spider's web. Looking at her was like gazing into infinity, and I couldn't stop. It was the Lady who stopped me, the gentle pressure of her hand upon my chest and a voice that sounded like the slow, inexorable splintering of rock as it formed mountains.
Enough.
I released the Sight and staggered, almost falling. The Lady caught me and lowered me to the ground as easily as if were a child.
"Have you seen all you needed to see?"
I passed my hand over my eyes. "And then some. But I'm not sure why someone like you would need my services."
She seated herself gracefully to the grass beside me. "It's complicated. The title of 'Lady' is mine to hold for the time being, but you may call me 'Labyrinth'. It's who-- and what-- I am. This form is merely a convenience, though it does have a certain novelty."
"Yeah," I said sourly, "It's a barrel of laughs." Using the Sight had doubled the rhythmic throbbing in my temples and it felt like my skull would split in two like a Cadbury egg at any moment.
The Labyrinth tutted in sympathy. "Let me make you a peace offering before I lay out my proposition."
With a gesture of her hand, a low stone table rose out of the grass before us, and on it were two glass goblets. Each one was full to the brim with a clear, pale green liquid.
The Labyrinth held one out to me. "It will help. No tricks, Mr. Dresden. You have my word."
Cautiously, I sniffed the goblet's contents. It had a sweet, herbal scent, like tea. What the hell, I thought with a shrug. I tossed the whole goblet back in one gulp.
"If this is poison or some faerie enchantment, I'm-- ARGHHHHH!"
The faerie draught hit me with the intensity of supernova in my sinus cavity, a crackling lightning bolt of unadulterated euphoria blazing its way to my brain and making uninhibited monkey love to my all-too-willing frontal lobe. Strangely enough, it tasted a little like grape bubblegum.
"Good, isn't it?" The Labyrinth reclined upon the grass, legs crossed demurely at the ankles.
It was true that my headache was gone. In fact, everything south of my eyebrows was sort of tingly and numb, too.
"Right," I managed to wheeze, "Can we get down to business? I'm sort of in a hurry."
"As you wish. It's my understanding that you find lost property."
"From time to time." I set down the goblet with a faint sense of regret.
"I am lost property," said the Labyrinth bitterly, "And I want that to change. What you see here is only one tiny corner of a large kingdom, Mr. Dresden. We're not of the Summer or Winter courts, and that's how we like it. But the Underground needs power to retain that autonomy, wizard."
As she spoke, the Labyrinth gently combed her fingers through the grass, sand fine and bright as gold dust spilling in their wake. Beneath the touch of her hand rose a miniature city with turrets and towers, girded round by a golden wall that gleamed in the sun. She continued, the words a soporific murmur in the background.
"A powerful dreamer can shape this land to her will. She can rule it, raise it up from the rubble, and open its gateways to a thousand kingdoms more. All this, the dreamer can do. But without her," The Labyrinth snapped her fingers and the city crumbled back into dust. "It is nothing like it ought to be, and I feel the loss of that potential very keenly. Do you understand, Mr. Dresden?"
The pile of glittering dust shrank until all that remained was no bigger than an anthill. She scooped it up and let it trickle from one hand to the other, watching me intently.
"I think so. I'm just not sure what you want with me."
I try very hard not to dream, and it's been that way ever since I was a kid. When you wake up and find that everyone you ever cared about or trusted is dead, you don't want to remember the things you see after you close your eyes at night.
The Labyrinth allowed herself a melancholy smile. "You have nothing to fear from me, wizard-- a land shaped by your dreams would be beautiful, but bleak."
She passed her hand over the grass again, but instead of gleaming gold walls there rose a city of ice and snow. Jagged icicles formed the battlements of a miniature keep, and steep walls rimed with frost rose high above a foggy, frozen sea.
"Just what I always wanted, my very own Fortress of Solitude," I joked, but to be honest, I was taken aback. Those were my dreams? I'd never envisioned them being so desolate.
The structure lasted only moments before melting in the heat of the afternoon sun, leaving no trace upon the ground. When I looked up, the Labyrinth met my gaze, sympathy written in her dark eyes.
"Dreams can change, Mr. Dresden, that is their nature. Perhaps I don't need your dreams, but I still have need of your services. You can leave this place, I cannot. Find my dreamers and convince them to return to me."
I cleared my throat. "Well, my rates are usually reasonable, but I'm already working one tough case, so I can't promise--"
"Whatever you require, I can pay. A kingdom needs a king... and a queen. Mine have left this world for yours. I want them back."
A runaway king and queen, that was a new one. I sighed in resignation. "Any idea of where I should start, last known whereabouts, that kind of thing?"
"Even better, wizard. I have their address," The Labyrinth laughed quietly. "They will at least hear you out on the matter, so you won't be facing a hostile party. Triple your usual rate, plus travel expenses-- all for a job that's a piece of cake. Do we have a deal?"
My better judgment would ordinarily take one look at this scenario and say no. A powerful creature of faerie who spoke in riddles and vagaries, who needed help tracking down some royals on the lam? Then again, my better judgment had stopped listening to reason after hearing "triple your usual rate". A hundred and fifty bucks an hour would go a very long way toward rent payments, tidying up a few outstanding bills and clearing my bar tab at McAnally's.
"Deal," I replied at last. I usually ask for a retainer's fee, but this time I figured I'd settle for being returned to my car, safe and sound with all my physical and mental faculties intact.
"You won't regret it, Mr. Dresden," A crystal sphere materialized in her cupped hands, glowing softly white. "If you're ready, I will send you back. You must begin immediately."
"Hold on. What if I can't convince them to come back? What happens then?"
The Labyrinth shrugged, the long green willow strands of her hair falling forward until only the glint of her eyes shone through the leaves.
"Do or do not," she said serenely, "There is no try."
The crystal shattered with a hollow pop, sending up a spray of silvery dust. Lips pursed, she blew it in my direction. All at once the ground vanished from beneath my feet and I was falling, my duster flapping like a cheap parachute. The cold rush of air stung my eyelids and stole the breath from my lungs. I gritted my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut.
Stars and stones. I'd been Yoda-ed by the anthropological embodiment of a magical faerie realm. It was going to be a long week.
Part Two
Part Three