“Then I suggest you alter your hairstyle to complete baldness,” I replied. “Or else learn to accept your receding hairline for what it is: the natural progression of your life. You will discontinue all use of magic from this point forward. And I do mean all. If I catch you with so much as a Ouija board or a deck of tarot cards, I’m going to make you disappear. Do you get me?”
It was a hollow threat. The guy hadn’t broken any of the Laws, technically speaking, since Irwin hadn’t died. And I had no intention of turning anyone over to the tender mercies of the Wardens if I could possibly avoid it. But this guy clearly had problems recognizing priorities. If he kept going the way he was, he might slide down into true practice of the black arts. Best to scare him away from that right now.
“I understand,” he said in a very meek voice.
“Now,” I said. “I’m going to go watch over Irwin. You aren’t going to interfere. I’ll be staying until his mother arrives.”
“Are … are you going to tell her what I’ve done?”
“You bet your ass I am,” I said. “And God have mercy on your soul.”
IRWIN WAS AWAKE when I got back to the infirmary, and Nurse Jen had just finished stitching closed a cut on the wounded guard’s scalp. She’d shaved a big, irregularly shaped section of his hair off to get it done, too, and he looked utterly ridiculous—even more so when she wrapped his entire cranium in bandages to keep the stitches covered.
I went into Irwin’s room and said, “How you feeling?”
“Tired,” he said. “But better than earlier today.”
“Irwin,” Nurse Jen said firmly.
“Yes, ma’am,” Irwin said, and meekly placed the breathing mask over his nose and mouth.
“Your mom’s coming to see you,” I said.
The kid brightened. “She is? Oh, uh. That’s fantastic!” He frowned. “It’s not … because of my being sick? Her work is very important.”
“Maybe a little,” I said. “But mostly I figure it’s because she loves you.”
Irwin rolled his eyes but he smiled. “Yeah, well. I guess she’s okay. Hey, is there anything else to eat?”
LATER, AFTER IRWIN had eaten (again), he slept.
“His temperature’s back down, and his breathing is clear,” Nurse Jen said, shaking her head. “I could have sworn we were going to have to get him to an ICU a few hours ago.”
“Kids,” I said. “They bounce back fast.”
She frowned at Irwin and then at me. Then she said, “It was Fabio, wasn’t it? He was doing something.”
“Something like what?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know it … feels like something that’s true. He’s the one who didn’t want you here. He’s the one who sent security to run you out just as Irwin got worse.”
“You might be right,” I said. “And you don’t have to worry about it happening again.”
She studied me for a moment. Then she said simply, “Good.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “That’s one hell of a good sense of intuition you have, Nurse.”
She snorted. “I’m still not going out with you.”
“Story of my life,” I said, smiling.
Then I stretched out my legs, settled into my chair, and joined Bigfoot Irwin in dreamland.
One of the most frequent requests I heard from fans who lived in Chicagoland and loved their Cubbies: What about the Billy Goat Curse in the world of the Dresden Files?
This is the story I wrote to answer that question—and because I honestly wanted to know myself, and sometimes writing the story is the only way for me to get it.
It is set between the events of Small Favor and Turn Coat.
Most of my cases are pretty tame. Someone loses a piece of jewelry with a lot of sentimental value, or someone comes to me because they’ve just moved into a new house and it’s a little more haunted than the seller’s disclosure indicated. Nothing Chicago’s only professional wizard can’t handle, but the cases don’t usually rake in much money, either.
So when a man in a two-thousand-dollar suit opened my office door and came inside, he had my complete attention.
I mean, I didn’t take my feet down off my desk or anything. But I paid attention.
He looked my office up and down and frowned, as though he didn’t much approve of what he saw. Then he looked at me and said, “Excuse me, is this the office of—”
“Dolce,” I said.
He blinked. “Excuse me.”
“Your suit,” I said. “Dolce and Gabbana. Silk. Very nice. You might want to consider an overcoat, though, now that it’s cooling off. Paper says we’re in for some rain.”
He studied me intently for a moment. He was a man in his late prime. His hair was dyed too dark, and the suit looked like it probably hid a few pounds. “You must be Harry Dresden.”
I inclined my head toward him. “Agent or attorney?”
“A little of both,” he said, looking around my office again. “I represent a professional entertainment corporation, which wishes to remain anonymous for the time being. My name is Donovan. My sources tell me that you’re the man who might be able to help us.”
My office isn’t anything to write home about. It’s on a corner, with windows on two walls, but it’s furnished for function, not style—scuffed-up wooden desks, a couple of comfortable chairs, some old metal filing cabinets, a used wooden table, and a coffeepot that is old enough to have belonged to Neanderthals. I figured Donovan was worried that he’d exposed his suit to unsavory elements, and resisted an irrational impulse to spill my half cup of cooling coffee on it.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“What you need and whether you can afford me.”
Donovan fixed me with a stern look. I bore up under it as best I could. “Do you intend to gouge me for a fee, Mr. Dresden?”
“For every penny I reasonably can,” I told him.
He blinked at me. “You … You’re quite up front about it, aren’t you?”
“Saves time,” I said.
“What makes you think I would tolerate such a thing?”
“People don’t come to me until they’re pretty desperate, Mr. Donovan,” I said. “Especially rich people, and hardly ever corporations. Besides, you come in here all intriguey and coy, not wanting to reveal who your employer is. That means that in addition to whatever else you want from me, you want my discretion, too.”
“So your increased fee is a polite form of blackmail?”
“Cost of doing business. If you want this done on the down low, you make my job more difficult. You should expect to pay a little more than a conventional customer when you’re asking for more than they are.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “How much are you going to cost me?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Let’s find out. What do you want me to do?”
He stood up and turned to walk to the door. He stopped before he reached it, read the words HARRY DRESDEN, WIZARD backward in the frosted glass, and eyed me over his shoulder. “I assume that you have heard of any number of curses in local folklore.”
“Sure,” I said.
“I suppose you’ll expect me to believe in their existence.”
I shrugged. “They’ll exist or not exist regardless of what you believe, Mr. Donovan.” I paused. “Well. Apart from the ones that don’t exist except in someone’s mind. They’re only real because somebody believes. But that edges from the paranormal over toward psychology. I’m not licensed for that.”
He grimaced and nodded. “In that case …”
I felt a little slow off the mark as I realized what we were talking about. “A cursed local entertainment corporation,” I said. “Like maybe a sports team.”
He kept a poker face on, and it was a pretty good one.
“You’re talking about the Billy Goat Curse,” I said.
Donovan arched an eyebrow and then gave me an almost imperceptible nod as he turned around to face me again. “What do you know about it?”
I blew out my breath and ran my fingers back through my hair. “Uh, back in 1945 or so, a tavern owner named Sianis was asked to leave a World Series game at Wrigley. Seems his pet goat was getting rained on and it smelled bad. Some of the fans were complaining. Outraged at their lack of social élan, Sianis pronounced a curse on the stadium, stating that never again would a World Series game be played there. Well, actually he said something like, ‘Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more,’ but the World Series thing is the general interpretation.”
“And?” Donovan asked.