Twenty-two
We gathered at the conference table again, and Anna Valmont slid into the seat beside me.
“Hey,” I said. “How goes the grease job?”
She eyed me and smiled faintly. “I am, in this crew, what is known as a grease man. A grease man is the person who can get you into someplace you otherwise couldn’t get into by yourself.” Her voice turned wry. “A grease job is something else.”
“Right,” I said, narrowing my eyes, nodding. “Got it. So how goes the man greasing?”
Valmont let out a shallow chuckle. “Got to admit, I wouldn’t mind being the first to take on one of those Fernucci monsters and win.”
“Can you?”
She nodded slowly. “I think it’s possible.”
Grey sauntered in, looking exactly as he had that morning, and sat down at the table.
“Order, please,” Nicodemus said, as Grey sat down next to Deirdre. “We’ll make this quick and then break for a meal, if that’s all right with everyone.”
“All right with me,” Ascher drawled. She looked sweatier and more smudged than she had a few hours before, but her expression was unmistakably smug. “I’m ravenous.”
“I know just what you mean,” Nicodemus said. “Deirdre?”
Once more, Deirdre circled the table with folders that were labeled simply GOAL.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said. “Does this master plan of yours come with health coverage?”
“Dresden,” Nicodemus said.
“Because that kind of thing is getting to be more and more important. I mean, I know the government probably means well and all, but those people, honestly.”
Nicodemus eyed me.
“Life insurance seems like something that would be worthwhile, too.” I looked up at Ascher and winked. “Maybe we should strike until we get a whole-life policy.”
Ascher flashed me a quick grin and said, “I’ve always thought that insurance was more or less betting against myself.”
“Nah,” Binder said. “In my experience, you’re just playing the odds.”
“Children,” Nicodemus said with a sigh, “shall we focus on the matter at hand?”
“But I haven’t even had the chance to dip Deirdre’s pigtails in my inkwell,” I said.
Deirdre glowered at me, her eyes glinting.
“Fine,” I said, and subsided.
“Each of you,” Nicodemus said, “brings something to the table that we need in order to reach our final destination. The manor of the Lord of the Underworld, Vault Seven.”
“You mean Ha—”
“Shall we not speak his name for the next twenty-four hours or so, please, Mr. Dresden?” Nicodemus said in a pained tone. “Unless you prefer him to be ready and waiting for all of us, including yourself? Granted, the likelihood of him taking notice of any one of us, in particular, is vanishing small, but it seems prudent to take a few simple steps.”
“Whatever,” I said. I thought he was being pretty fussy. What with books and movies using him as a character, and mythology courses being taught all over the world, I figured Hades got to hear his name spoken in one form or another tens if not hundreds of thousands of times every day.
Each utterance of a powerful supernatural being’s name is . . . kind of like sending him a page, a ping for his attention. If I could have a phone that survived longer than an hour, and it tried to get my attention ten thousand times a day, I’d throw the damned thing into a hole. The big supernatural beings, especially the very humanlike Greek gods, probably reacted in much the same way. Odds were good that I could sit chatting for an hour or two and mention his name several times, yet he wouldn’t even notice my relative handful of pings among all the others. It took a deliberate and rhythmic repetition, usually at least three times, to really get a signal through the noise.
But on the other hand . . . there was always the chance that Hades just might feel my utterance of his name and randomly decide to take a moment to pay attention. That probably wouldn’t be good. So despite giving Nicodemus lip, I shut up.
“Once we gain entry to the Underworld vault . . . ,” Nicodemus began.
I held up my hand and said, “Question?”
Nicodemus’s left eye began to twitch.
I didn’t wait for him to respond. “You’re planning on just jumping straight to the vault? Hell, not even Hercules could do that. It was kind of a journey to get in. There was a bit with a dog and everything. Do you really think we’re going to just hop right past all of the defenses around the realm of the king of the Underworld?”
That got everyone’s attention, even Grey’s. They all looked at Nicodemus, interested in the answer.
“Yes,” Nicodemus said in a flat tone.
“Oh,” I said. “Just like that, eh?”
“Once we’re inside the vault,” Nicodemus said, as if my question was not interesting enough to waste more time on, “there will be three gates between us and our goal. The Gate of Fire, the Gate of Ice, and the Gate of Blood.”
“Fun,” I said.
“Obviously,” Nicodemus said, “Ascher was chosen for her capability with fire. As the Winter Knight, you, Dresden, will obviously handle the Gate of Ice.”
“Right,” I said. “Obviously. What about the Gate of Blood?”
Nicodemus smiled pleasantly.
Of course. Old Nick had probably spilled more blood than the rest of us in the room together, if you didn’t count Deirdre. “Exactly what does each of these gates entail?”
“If I knew that,” Nicodemus said, “I’d not have bothered recruiting experts. Each of us will take point on our specific gate, with the rest of the team backing whatever play they decide is important. Once we’re through, we’ll be in the vault. It’s quite large. You’ll have a few minutes to gather whatever it is you feel you need to take with you. After that time, I’m leaving. Anyone who lags behind is on his or her own.”
I held up my hand again, and didn’t bother waiting for a response. “What are you after?”
“Excuse me?” Nicodemus asked.
“You,” I said. “Vault Seven is awfully specific. And you don’t care much about money. So I have to wonder what’s in there that you are so interested in.”
“That’s hardly your concern,” Nicodemus said.
I snorted. “The hell it isn’t. We’re all sticking our necks out—and if things don’t go well, we might have an angry god on our tails. I want to know what’s worth that, other than the twenty million. After all, a lot of things could go wrong. Maybe you wind up dead, purely by someone else’s hand on the way in—maybe I want to grab that whatsit for myself.”
There was a mutter of agreement from Binder, and nods from Karrin and Valmont. Even Ascher looked curious. Grey pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“Should I fall, the rest of you will already be dead,” Nicodemus said calmly.
“Indulge me,” I said. “This deal is already starting to stink. A reasonable person might walk based purely on what happened today.”
That brought a low round of mutters, and Valmont asked, “What happened today?”
I told her about Tessa and her ghouls and Deirdre and Harvey. That made Valmont’s lips compress into a line. She knew better than most what was left when a Denarian tore into a mortal, and two out of three possible suspects were Knights of the Coin.
“That has no bearing on our mission,” Nicodemus said.
“The hell it doesn’t,” I said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but the last thing we need is his crazy ex jumping into things on some kind of vengeance kick.”
“It’s not about that,” Nicodemus said.
“Then what is it about?” I asked. “I dealt with the White Council my whole life, so I’m used to being treated like a mushroom—”