Ascher had a plate covered in the remnants of doughnuts that she was apparently struggling to redeem from the hellfire even now. She had changed back into her jeans-and-sweater look, and bound up her hair. A few ringlets escaped here and there and bounced slightly as she spoke. She gave me a small nod as I went by, which I returned.
Seated at the table a little apart from everyone else was an unremarkable-looking man who hadn’t been there yesterday. Late thirties, if I had to guess, medium height, solid-seeming, as if he had more muscle to him than was readily apparent beneath jeans and a loose-fitting designer athletic jacket. His features were clean-cut, pleasant without being particularly handsome. He had a slightly dark complexion, and the right bone structure to pass for a resident just about anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, and in chunks of the rest of the world. His dark hair had a few threads of grey in it.
One thing about him wasn’t average—his eyes. They were kind of golden brown with flecks of bronze in them, but that wasn’t the strange part. There was a sheen to them, almost like a trick of the light, a semi-metallic refraction from their surface, there for a second and then gone again. They weren’t human eyes. They looked human in every specification, but something about them was just off.
Something else about him bothered me, too . . .
He was entirely relaxed.
Nobody in that damned building was relaxed. It was an inherently disturbing place, riddled with dark energy. It was filled with dangerous beings. I know I looked tense. Karrin was walled up behind her poker face, but you knew she was an instant away from violence. Binder looked like he was trying to watch everyone at once, the better to know when to beat a prudent retreat, and Ascher’s gaze kept hunting for targets. Nicodemus and his daughter sat with a kind of studied air of disinterest, feigning confidence and relaxation, but they were the paranoid type by nature. When I looked at them, I knew they were ready to throw down at a moment’s notice. Even Valmont looked like she was ready to dart suddenly in any direction necessary, like a rat daring a trip across open floor for something it wanted to eat.
Every one of us was exuding body language that warned the others that we were potentially violent or at least hyperalert.
Not the new guy.
He sat slouched in his chair with his eyes half-closed as though he could barely keep them open. There was a half-empty Styrofoam cup of coffee in front of him. He’d drawn hash marks in it with his thumb and played a few rounds of tic-tac-toe with himself in a gesture of pure boredom. There was no sense of violence or alertness in him, no wariness, no caution. None at all.
Now, that made the hairs on my neck stand up.
Either this guy was stupid or insane, or he was dangerous enough that he genuinely was not bothered by this roomful of people—and Nicodemus did not seem the type to recruit the stupid or insane for a job like this one.
I secured a doughnut and coffee. I checked with Karrin and Valmont. Neither wanted to save the doughnuts from Nicodemus’s corruptive influence. Not everyone can be a crusader like me.
“I was pleased to hear that you were successful last night,” Nicodemus said. “Welcome to our enterprise, Miss Valmont.”
“Thank you,” Valmont said, her tone carefully neutral. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am to have this opportunity.”
That brought a knife-edged smile to Nicodemus’s face. “Are you?”
She smiled back, a pretty and empty expression. Then as I sat, she settled into the chair next to me, making it a statement to the room. Karrin took up her stance behind me, as before.
“You have the files, I trust?” Nicodemus asked.
I reached into my duster and paused with my hand there for a moment too long before beginning to draw the file out again, a shade too quickly.
Everyone jumped, or performed some vague equivalent of the gesture. Binder flinched. Nicodemus’s fingers tightened slightly on the tabletop. Deirdre’s hair twitched, as though thinking about becoming animate and edged. Ascher’s shoulder rolled in a tiny back-and-forth motion, as though she’d stopped herself from lifting a hand in a defensive gesture.
The new guy remained lazily confident. He might have smiled, very slightly.
I put the file on the tabletop, tilted my head at the new guy, and asked, “Who’s he?”
Nicodemus stared at me for a moment before answering. “Everyone, please meet Goodman Grey. Mr. Grey has kindly consented to assist us in our endeavor. I’ve already briefed him on each of you.”
Grey looked up and swept those odd eyes up and down the table.
They stopped and locked on Karrin.
“Not everyone,” he said. His voice was a resonant baritone, with a very gentle accent on it that might have been from somewhere deep in the American South. “I don’t believe you mentioned this woman, Nicodemus.”
“This is Karrin Murphy,” Nicodemus replied. “Formerly of the Chicago Police Department.”
Grey stared at her for a long time and then said, “The loup-garou videotape. You were in it with Dresden.”
“Set the Wayback Machine for a damned long time ago,” I said. “That tape went missing.”
“Yes,” Grey said, not quite amicably. “And I wasn’t actually talking to you, wizard, was I now?”
That made everyone at the table notice. It got quiet and they got still, waiting to see what would happen next.
One thing you learn hanging out with people like Mab—you don’t show weakness to predators. Especially not to the really confident ones.
“Not yet. I should ask you,” I replied, “how thick do you think that wall behind you might be? When you go flying through it a few seconds from now, do you think you’ll knock out a whole section, or just a little chunk the size of your head and shoulders?”
Grey blinked at that, and then turned a wide smile on me. “Seriously? You want to whip them out already? You’ve been here for about two minutes.”
I took a bite of my doughnut, swallowed it (heavenly), and said, “You’re not the toughest thing I’ve ever seen. You’re not even close.”
“Oh,” Grey said. “You don’t say.”
Though he didn’t rise or stir, the air got thick.
Karrin broke the silent tension by putting a small, restraining hand on my shoulder. “That was me in the video,” she said.
Grey’s eyes went back to her. “You took a shot right past this idiot’s ear to take out that guy behind him. That takes some resolve. Good for you.”
“I’m a better shot now,” she said.
Grey lifted an eyebrow. “Damn, threats from both of you?” He turned his gaze on Valmont. “How about you, sister? Want to jump on this train?”
Valmont didn’t meet his gaze. “I don’t know you,” she said.
Grey snorted. He considered me for a moment. Then he said, “Nicodemus?”
“Hmmm?”
“Do you need the wizard for the rest of the plan?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“What about Murphy?”
“Not particularly.”
Grey exhaled through his nose, his eyes glittering. “I see.” Then he nodded and said, “Shall we put a pin in this, Dresden, until later?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Nicodemus?”
This time Nick’s reply was warier. “Yes?”
“What is this jerk good for?”
“I’m the only person in the world who can get you where you want to go,” Grey drawled.
“Yeah?” I asked. “Why? What do you do?”
Grey smiled. “Anything. This week, I’m opening doors.”
“You’ve already opened the one that said AN ASS KICKING,” I assured him. “We’ll get to it eventually.”
Grey regarded me levelly. Then he got up, moving lazily, and settled down in the chair next to Deirdre and Nicodemus, another statement. He took a slow sip of his coffee and studied Karrin the way a recently fed mountain lion might watch a baby mountain goat taking its first steps: with calm, patient interest.
“Thank you, gentlemen, for putting that aside for the nonce,” Nicodemus said smoothly. He did not seem displeased either by Grey’s choice of seats or by the focal point of his attention. “Dresden, may I assume you are ready to get to work?”
“When you assume,” I said, “you make an ass out of you.” I took another bite of doughnut and said, “Yeah, fine.”
“The file, please.”