“After Irwin dragged their boss up to the fight, the ghouls quit when they saw him. River Shoulders told them all to get out of his sight and take their dead with them. They did.”
Dean squinted and consulted a list. “Pounder is gone. So is Connie Barrowill. Not officially missing or nothing. Not yet. But where are they?”
I looked at Dean and shrugged.
I’D SEEN GHOULS in all kinds of situations before—but I’d never seen them whipped into submission. Ghouls fought to the grisly, messy end. That was what they did. But River Shoulders had been more than their match. He’d left several of them alive when he could have killed them to the last, and he’d found their breaking point when Irwin had dragged Barrowill in by his hair. Ghouls could take a huge beating, but River Shoulders had given them one like I’d never seen, and when he ordered them to take their master and their dead and never to return, they’d snapped to it.
“Thanks, Connie,” I groaned, as she settled me onto a section of convenient rubble. I was freezing. The frost on my clothes was rapidly melting away, but the chill had settled inward.
The girl looked acutely embarrassed, but that wasn’t in short supply in that dorm. That hallway was empty of other students for the moment, though. We had the place to ourselves, though I judged that the authorities would arrive in some form before long.
Irwin came over with a dust-covered blanket and wrapped it around her. He’d scrounged a ragged towel for himself, though it did more to emphasize his physique than to hide it. The kid was ripped.
“Thank you, Irwin,” she said.
He grunted. Physically, he’d bounced back from the nearly lethal feeding like a rubber freaking ball. Maybe River Shoulders’s water-smoothing spell had done something to help that. Mentally, he was slowly refocusing. You could see the gleam coming back into his eyes. Until that happened, he’d listened to Connie. A guy could do worse.
“I …” Connie shook her head. “I remember all of it. But I have no idea what just happened.” She stared at River Shoulders for a moment, her expression more curious than fearful. “You … You stopped something bad from happening, I think.”
“Yeah, he did,” I confirmed.
Connie nodded toward him in a grateful little motion. “Thank you. Who are you?”
“Irwin’s dad,” I said.
Irwin blinked several times. He stared blankly at River Shoulders.
“Hello,” River rumbled. How something that large and that powerful could sit there bleeding from dozens of wounds and somehow look sheepish was beyond me. “I am very sorry we had to meet like that. I had hoped for something quieter. Maybe with music. And good food.”
“You can’t stay,” I said to River. “The authorities are on the way.”
River made a rumbling sound of agreement. “This is a disaster. What I did …” He shook his head. “This was in such awful taste.”
“Couldn’t have happened to nicer guys, though,” I said.
“Wait,” Connie said. “Wait. What the hell just happened here?”
Irwin put a hand on her shoulder and said to me, “She’s … she’s a vampire. Isn’t she?”
I blinked and nodded at him. “How did … ?”
“Paranet,” he said. “There’s a whole page.”
“Wait,” Connie said again. “A … what? Am I going to sparkle or something?”
“God, no,” said Irwin and I together.
“Connie,” I said, and she looked at me. “You’re still exactly who you were this morning. And so is Irwin. And that’s what counts. But right now, things are going to get really complicated if the cops walk in and start asking you questions. Better if they just never knew you were here.”
“This is all so …” She shook her head. Then she stared at River Shoulders. Then at me. “Who are you?”
I pointed at me and said, “Wizard.” I pointed at River. “Bigfoot.” I pointed at Irwin. “Son of Bigfoot.” I pointed at her. “Vampire. Seriously.”
“Oh,” she said faintly.
“I’ll explain it,” Irwin told her quietly. He was watching River Shoulders.
River held out his huge hands to either side and shrugged. “Hello, son.”
Irwin shook his head slowly. “I … never really …” He sucked in a deep breath, squared off against his father, and said, “Why?”
And there it was. What had to be the Big Question of Irwin’s life.
“My people,” River said. “Tradition is very important to them. If I acknowledged you, they would have insisted that certain traditions be observed. It would have consumed your life. And I didn’t want that for you. I didn’t want that for your mother. I wanted your world to be wider than mine.”
Bigfoot Irwin was silent for a long moment. Then he scratched at his head with one hand and shrugged. “Tonight … really explains a lot.” He nodded slowly. “Okay. We aren’t done talking. But okay.”
“Let’s get you out of here,” River said. “Get you both taken care of. Answer all your questions.”
“What about Harry?” Irwin said.
I couldn’t get any more involved with the evident abduction of a scion of the White Court. River’s mercy had probably kept the situation from going completely to hell, but I wasn’t going to drag the White Council’s baggage into the situation. “You guys go on,” I told them. “I do this kind of thing all the time. I’ll be fine.”
“Wow, seriously?” Irwin asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been in messier situations than this. And it’s probably better if Connie’s dad has time to cool off before you guys talk again. River Shoulders can make sure you have that time.”
Outside, a cart with flashing bulbs on it had pulled up.
“River,” I said. “Time’s up.”
River Shoulders rose and nodded deeply to me. “I’m sorry that I interfered. It seemed necessary.”
“I’m willing to overlook it,” I said. “All things considered.”
His face twisted into a very human-looking smile, and he extended his hand to Irwin. “Son.”
Irwin took his father’s hand, one arm still around Connie, and the three of them didn’t vanish so much as … just become less and less relevant to the situation. It happened over the course of two or three seconds, as that same nebulous, somehow transparent power that River had used earlier enfolded them. And then they were all gone.
Boots crunched down the hall, and a uniformed officer with a name tag reading DEAN burst in, one hand on his gun.
DEAN EYED ME, then said, “That’s all you know, huh?”
“That’s the truth,” I said. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe it. You gonna let me go now?”
“Oh, hell, no,” Dean said. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re stoned out of your mind or insane. Either way, I’m going to put you in the drunk tank until you have a chance to sleep it off.”
“You got any aspirin?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, and got up to get it.
My head ached horribly, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard the end of this, but I was clear for now. “Next time, Dresden,” I muttered to myself, “just take the gold.”
Then Officer Dean put me in a nice, quiet cell with a nice, quiet cot, and there I stayed until Wild Bill Meyers showed up the next morning and bailed me out.
This next story got written in that glorious time between the end of Changes and the beginning of Ghost Story, when fans were regularly screaming at me for answers and when I could regularly give answers that were somehow worse than the original questions. I realized, however, that I had agreed to several short stories in this same time period, when Dresden was or was not actually dead—which would make it something of a challenge to cast him as a protagonist of tales set during the same period.
The natural thing to do was to shift to the viewpoints of other characters—and to have a chance to show the impact of Dresden’s absence on some of the characters who had been closest to him. In this case, I got the chance to write about life from the point of view of his apprentice, Molly, and how Dresden’s apparent death had affected many of the people in his circle—but, more important, about how Dresden’s life had affected those same people, and how it would show in their choices.