“We have a deal, wizard,” I whispered. Then I shivered and rose, stepping away from him before my mouth decided it needed to taste his again. “Let us begin.”
I FOCUSED MY will, quietly murmured, “Kakusu,” and brought up the best veil I could manage—which is to say, world-class. It was one of the first things I learned to do, and I was good at it. The light around us dimmed very slightly, and we vanished from the view of anyone who wasn’t going to extreme supernatural measures to spot us. The mix of sleet and rain could be problematic, since anyone who looked closely enough would see it bouncing off an empty hole in the air. But nothing is perfect, is it?
I nodded to Carlos, and we padded quietly across the street to circle the Elbow Room. A building that spends half the year mostly buried in snow doesn’t go in for a lot of windows. The only two in the place were side by side, deeply recessed, and high up on the wall, to let in light.
We both reached up and got a grip on the slippery sills, and then quietly pulled ourselves up to peer into the bar.
The fishermen were standing facing the bar in two neat lines. Their scrawny leader in the captain’s hat was staring at the bartender, who stood behind the bar, gripping a cloth like some kind of useless talisman. Her face had gone pale and was covered in beads of sweat. She trembled so violently that it threatened her balance, and she just kept repeating the same phrase, loudly enough to be heard through the window, over the sleet: “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Captain Fisherman took a step forward, toward her, and the strain on her face immediately increased, along with the volume and desperation of her voice. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!”
“Psychic interrogation,” I noted. Invading a human being’s mind was a monstrous act. It inflicted untold amounts of horrible damage, not to their brain but to their mind. The sensations it could cause were technically known as pain, but the word really doesn’t do them justice. If someone went digging in your head long enough, they’d leave you a mindless vegetable, or hopelessly insane.
I knew, because I’d done it. I’d had the noblest intentions in the world, but I’d been younger, dumber, and a lot surer of myself, and people had been hurt.
Carlos let out a growl beneath his breath. “And we have a Third Law violation. And there’s no way that’s an accident or even badly misguided benevolence.”
“Assuming he’s mortal,” I whispered. “If he isn’t, then the laws don’t apply to him.”
“Either way, his head is coming off.”
“Cool,” I said. “Who is he?”
“Who cares?”
“What’s he doing here?”
“Breaking the Laws.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “I wonder how many friends he has.”
In my peripheral vision, I could see the muscles along Carlos’s jaw contract and then relax again. I glanced aside and saw him visibly force down his anger and shake his head a little. “I’m taking him down. Just as soon as I find out exactly who he is, how many buddies he has, and what designs he has on this town.”
“Oh,” I said innocently. “Is that not what you meant the first time?”
He started to mutter an answer when his fingers slipped on the slickened windowsill and he fell.
He didn’t make much noise—a little scrape on the wall and a thump as he hit the ground—but the captain’s head whipped around in a turn at least forty-five degrees too great to take place on a human neck, his eyes narrowed. He paused for about two seconds, and then spun on a heel and started walking for the door.
“Company,” I hissed to Carlos. I dropped down quietly from the window. My feet did not slip on the ice, because, hey, Queen of Winter over here. I moved quickly and crouched over him, putting my hands lightly on his chest. “Stay flat and stay still. I’ll keep you covered.”
He looked down at my hands and gave me a quick glance; then his expression went focused and stoic and he lay back on the sleet-covered ground.
I did everything I could to shore up the veil covering us both. The captain stepped out of the Elbow Room and looked around, and I got a close look at the man for the first time.
There was visibly something wrong with him. At a casual glance, it might have looked like he’d simply been exposed to a little too much cold and ultraviolet radiation and freezing salt water. But the cracks in his skin were a little too sharp edged, the reddened portions a little too brightly colored for that. I got the slow and horrible impression that his skin was trying to contain too much mass, like an overstuffed sausage. There were what looked like the beginnings of cataracts in his eyes—only their edges quivered and wobbled, like living things.
That was pretty weird, even by my standards.
It got absolutely hentai-level weird when the man opened his mouth and then opened it a little wider, and then opened it until his jaw visibly unhinged and a writhing tangle of purplish red tentacles emerged and thrashed wildly at the air, as if grasping for scents.
I felt my mouth stretch into a widening grin. A sleet storm was a terrible place for scent hunting. I couldn’t tell you how I knew that, but I knew it as certainly as I knew that he hadn’t noticed the flaws in my veil. This was not the territory of this creature, whatever it was. It was mine.
The tentacles withdrew with a whipping motion, like a frog recovering its tongue. The captain swayed from foot to foot, looking around the night for a moment, and then turned and paced back into the bar. A moment later, the whole weirdly silent column of fisherman freaks, including Clint, marched out of the bar and back down the hill toward the harbor. Clint was walking on his broken knee as if it didn’t particularly bother him that it was bent inward like that.
“What the hell?” Carlos breathed as they walked away. “What was that?”
“Right?” I asked him. An absolutely mad giggle came wriggling up out of my belly. “That was the most messed-up thing I have ever seen from that close.” I looked down at him, put my hand up to my mouth, and made gargling sounds while wiggling my fingers like tentacles.
And suddenly I realized that I was straddling Carlos Ramirez. And that he was staring at me with dark eyes that I felt like I could look at for a good, long while.
“Do you know what I want to do?” I asked him.
He licked his lips and then glanced at the retreating group. “Follow them?”
“Yes, all right,” I said, and swallowed. “Follow them. We can also do that.” I rose and helped him up.
“Wait. What?”
“I’m flirting with you, dummy,” I said, and smiled at him. “What, you can’t work and banter at the same time? After all your big talk?”
He lifted a hand, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment. “Dios. This … is very much not what I was expecting for this evening. And hang on.” He ducked back around the corner of the Elbow Room, and a moment later emerged with a small bundle of gear. In a few seconds, he was donning the grey cloak of the Wardens of the White Council and buckling on a weapons belt that bore a sword on one side and a large pistol on the other.
“Swords and guns,” I said. “Hot.” I picked up a corner of the cloak and wrinkled my nose. “This, though … Not.”
“Wardens do a lot of good,” he said quietly. “It isn’t always pretty, what we do, but it needs to be done.” He nodded toward the retreating backs of the captain and his crew. “Like those … things. Someone has to do something.” He smiled faintly as he started walking in their wake. “You and Dresden can’t be everywhere.”
I watched him for a moment, taking in details. “You’re limping,” I noted. It was a weakness, and it stood out to me. It might not have before.
“Should have seen me a month ago,” he said. “Could barely get out of my chair. Chupacabra kicked me in the back. Come on.”