After a few seconds, the shadows seemed less thick, and the sun emerged from behind the clouds, sending golden shafts streaming onto the path.
Hoodie lay on the ground where he’d fallen, staring up at me in silence, his mouth open.
I walked over to him and dropped down to squat on my heels, resting my hands on my knees. “As I was saying,” I said. “You don’t get it, kid. I’m the guy who is ready for it. I’m a wizard.” I offered him my hand.
He took it, and we rose together. He pulled away from me quickly and scowled—but not precisely at me. “What do you want?”
“To talk,” I said.
“What if I don’t wanna talk to you?”
“Guess you don’t have to.”
That made him turn a shade warier. “I could just walk away?”
“Sure,” I said. From this close, I could smell the kid. He needed a shower. His clothes didn’t look like they’d been changed in a while. His shoes were too small and worn-out. I gestured toward where the demon he’d accidentally summoned had been banished. “But how’s that been working out for you so far?”
“I’m fine,” he said. His voice cracked when he said it. He looked away.
“Well. I’m not going to make you get help. You hungry?” I asked. As a conversational gambit went, it was a pretty solid one. Kids were hungry about ninety-five percent of the time.
“No,” he lied, his tone sullen.
“There’s a restaurant not two minutes from here. My daughter is there, with my dog, eating French fries. But I could just murder a burger right now. How about you?”
Hoodie didn’t say anything. People had begun to resume using the pathway, and the everyday world began to reassert itself more firmly.
“Look, I kind of am a cop,” I said, “just not for the usual stuff. For special things. Like today.”
He shifted his weight warily.
“Tell you what,” I said. “Let’s eat. Maybe talk a little. You’ve got to be tired of dealing with this stuff on your own.”
He bowed his head at that, so I couldn’t see him tear up.
“I’m Harry,” I said, and held out my hand.
He eyed my hand and then me, huffing out half of a laugh. “Wizard Harry. You’re kidding.”
“Nope,” I said. I looked at him and lifted a speculative eyebrow.
“Oh, uh. Austin,” Austin the warlock said. He might have been thirteen and a half.
“Hi, Austin,” I said, as gently as I could. “It’s nice to meet you. Hey, have you ever seen the gorillas here?”
HI. MY NAME is Maggie Dresden.
My dad is okay, I guess, but I wish he were a little more up on his monsters. It’s not his fault, I’m pretty sure, on account of he’s a grown-up, and grown-ups can be awfully dumb about some things. Mainly the creeps.
Grown-ups are about as thick as you can be when it comes to the creeps.
Normally, you didn’t see of a lot of them out on a summer day, but today they were everywhere. An elderly couple who had been taken by baglers walked by. I don’t know if that’s their actual name. Me and Mouse kind of made up our own as we went. But there were shrouds over their heads, like a couple of dirty old paper bags that you could kind of see through if you looked hard enough. Baglers weren’t really all that dangerous as creeps went. I had a theory about them, that they just fed on the brain energy of people who talked about politics too much, and made them want to talk about politics more, because that’s just about all that came out of their mouths. You just watch: First chance they get, baglered people start talking politics.
You’d think even grown-ups could be interesting with some kind of psychic monster eating their faces all the time, but you’d be wrong. So there you go.
“So, you haven’t been to the zoo before?” my dad asked.
My dad was a pretty scary-looking guy if you didn’t know him. He was bigger than anyone else I’d ever seen, with scars and dark hair and muscles. I mean, kind of long, stretchy muscles, but you could tell he was strong. Plus, he was a wizard. I mean, most people don’t believe in magic and monsters, which just shows you that most people are pretty dumb. For a grown-up, he didn’t seem too stupid. And he kind of liked me. You could tell sometimes when he talked or looked at me.
I liked that a lot.
I waited until the baglered couple were far enough away so that they wouldn’t overhear us, just on general principle, before I said, “Miss Molly tried to take me once, but there were too many people and too much sky, and I cried.”
I waited to see what he would think about that. My dad fights bad people and monsters professionally. I didn’t want him to think I was a big chicken.
I mean, we were just getting to know each other. But sometimes, things get really, really loud, or really hectic and fast moving, and I just can’t deal with anything. It helped to have Mouse with me. Mouse always understood when things were getting too big, and tried to make me feel better.
My dad seemed to think about his words for a minute before he said, “That’s okay, you know.”
“Miss Molly said that, too,” I said. With that same little pause before she said it. I really didn’t want him to think I was crazy. I wasn’t crazy. It was just that sometimes it was really, really hard to keep from screaming and crying. I slowed down a little so that I could stand in his shadow, where it was darker and cooler. Summer in Chicago is hot. “I was little then.”
“That was probably it,” he said. I liked his voice. It rumbled in his chest, and sounded really nice. When he read to me, it sounded like that voice could go on, steady, all night long. “But if you need to, we can leave whenever you like.”
I looked up at him. Did he really mean that? Because today was looking brighter and louder and shinier every minute. My ears were already itching with all the noises around us, until I wanted to just jam my fingers into them and close my eyes and shut out everything.
But today was my first day together with my dad. We’d never done that. The Carpenters had been really, really nice to me and given me a home. I loved them. But they weren’t my dad.
I’m sure he would take me somewhere else if I asked him. But I didn’t want him to think I was some little baby who couldn’t even go to the zoo.
Mouse, walking next to me like always, walked a couple of inches closer, reassuring me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his jaw drop open in an encouraging doggy smile, and his tail thwacked against my back when he wagged it.
My dad was pretty strong. Maybe I could be strong, too.
“I want to see the gorillas,” I said. “So does Mouse.”
Mouse wagged his tail even harder and smiled up at my dad.
He smiled at me. The smile really changed how he looked. It made him look more like a dad, I think. “Okay, then,” he said. “Let’s do that.”
He said it the same way that you hear soldiers say, “Begin operations,” in the movies, and his eyes flicked about, checking all around us and into the nearest trees overhead in maybe a second, as if hunting for a monster to blow up. I’m pretty sure he didn’t even realize he was doing it.
My dad has fought bad things for a long time. He’s seen bad things happen to people. Miss Molly says that that kind of thing leaves wounds, but that you can’t see them. Sort of like how grown-ups can’t see the creeps. But she said he carried them without complaining or letting it stop him from helping people. Even when it was really, really hard.
Sort of like being around me.
I try to be a nice person. But when things get too big, it’s hard to do anything very well. Other kids mostly stay away from me. Even when I can make friends, sometimes, they don’t really understand.
Maybe he wouldn’t understand, either. He already had a hard job. Maybe being my dad would be too hard.
“Are you nervous?” I heard myself ask.
He blinked at me. “Why would I be nervous?”
He was looking at me like he really liked me. I couldn’t keep looking at him when he was like that. What if he changed his mind?
Things can change. So fast.