Future Group, actually, for the initialism, but I got voted down.”
“Hell’s bells,” I said. I did some math. To build on the ruins of the boardinghouse, construction would have had to start practically the same day that I died. Actual stone is expensive to build with because it’s difficult and time-consuming. This place was as big as a small castle. It should have taken months and months and months to build. It had gone up in six. Probably significantly less, given the weather. “This place cost a damned fortune.”
“Meh,” Butters said, and walked to the front door. “Hang around a bit and you’ll take it for granted like the rest of us.” He entered a sequence of numbers on the keypad beside the door. They made a little mechanical clicking sound that reminded me of a manual typewriter. He put his hands back into his pockets and waited.
A moment later, a heavily accented basso voice emerged from a crackling speaker box. “Who goes there?”
“Butters,” he said. “With Dresden’s shade. Hi, Sven.”
The speaker made a rumbling sound. “Waldo,” it said, pronouncing it Valdo. “The night is dangerous. One day you will stumble across a fox and it will eat you.”
Roars of laughter erupted from the speakers—evidently, several other men were with the door guard.
Butters didn’t laugh, but he did grin. “I’ll just get stuck in his throat until you can haul your walrus ass over to him and save me, Sven.”
Louder laughter erupted from the speaker, and a voice half-choked with it said something in a language that had come from somewhere in northern Europe. There was a click, and Butters opened the door. I started to follow him in—and remembered, in time, to put my hand out and check the doorway first. My hand moved smoothly past the twelve inches of stone, but then hit something as solid as a brick wall where the doorway opened up into the entry hall.
“Uh, Butters,” I said.
He smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Right, sorry. Please come in.”
The invisible wall vanished, and I shook my head. “It’s got a threshold. People live here?”
“Bunch of ’em,” Butters confirmed, and we went inside. “Lot of Paranetters come through for a little while when they don’t have a safe place to sleep. Uh, visiting Netters who are passing through town. Venatori, when they meet with us. That kind of thing.”
I felt anger stirring in me, irrational but no less real. “My home . . . is a supernatural flophouse?”
“And armory! And jail!” Bob said enthusiastically.
Ghosts can sputter in outrage. “Jail?”
“And day care!” Bob continued.
I stopped in my tracks and threw my hands up. “Day care?
“People have kids, man. And they have jobs,” Butters said in a gentle voice. “The Fomor aren’t above using children to get what they want. High-risk kids come here on workdays. Now, shut up, Bob. And get off your high horse, Harry. People need this place.”
I turned my gaze to Butters and studied him for a minute. The little guy had come a long way from the somewhat timid, insecure man I’d first met years before. That Butters would never have said anything like that to me.
Or maybe he was the same guy. Butters went right to the wall for the sake of the truth, even when it cost him his job and got him locked up in a nuthouse. He was a man of principles.
And he was probably right. This wasn’t my home anymore.
We passed the guard station after we got buzzed through a security gate. Four of the biggest, toughest- looking men I’d ever seen were stationed there. They wore biker leathers—and swords. Their muscles swelled tight against their skin, their beards bristled, and their uniformly pale eyes watched us pass with calm attention.
“Einherjaren,” Butters said quietly. “Soldiers of Valhalla, if they’re telling the truth.”
“They are,” I replied just as quietly. “Where did we get them?”
“Marcone. They aren’t cheap.”
“Him again.”
Butters shrugged. “I don’t like the guy, either, Harry. But he’s smart enough to realize that if the Fomor take control of the streets, they’re going to get rid of him as a matter of course.”
“Too simple,” I said. “Too easy. He’s running some kind of game on you.”
We went through another door and then up some stairs, which opened onto the second floor.
The place was one enormous chamber almost entirely free of interior walls. There was a small gym, complete with shower rooms and a boxing ring. Inside the ring, Murphy, wearing her street clothes, stood facing a man who had inherited a portion of his DNA from a rhinoceros—and not many generations ago. He was huge and heavily muscled, his dark hair and beard in long braids. He wore an old pair of jeans and nothing else. His upper body was coated with more dark hair.
(Not like a werewolf or circus freak or anything. Just at the top end of the hirsute bell curve. A real hair ball.)
Butters froze in place, waiting.
Murphy stared steadily at the big man for several moments, her body relaxed, her eyes never blinking. He returned a blank stare of his own. Then they both moved.
I couldn’t tell who went first, but Murphy’s fist streaked toward the big guy’s groin. He twisted his hip, deflecting the blow, and when he returned it to balance, his leg scythed up in an arc that clipped the tip of Murphy’s chin. She spun away and went down.
Hair Ball did not hesitate for so much as a second. He moved toward her, fast for someone so large, and stomped his heel down toward her head.
Murphy rolled and dodged the blow, but he followed up and she had to keep rolling to stay ahead of his sledgehammer heels. She hit the edge of the boxing ring, then abruptly reversed her roll, moving toward him instead of away.
She slipped the next stomp, scissored his knee with her legs, twisted her whole body, and brought him down. Hair Ball fell like a tree, huge and slow. The boxing ring ropes shook when he landed.
Murphy came up onto all fours, scrambled a bit to one side, and then swept her foot at Hair Ball’s head. He dodged, but her kick shifted direction, her leg moving up, then straight down, bringing her heel down like a hatchet onto the hand Hair Ball was using to support his weight. Bones snapped.
Hair Ball howled, scrambled to his feet, and started swinging wildly at her. Murphy dodged and slipped one blow after another, and at one point abruptly turned and drove her heel into Hair Ball’s solar plexus.
The blow rocked him back a step, but Murphy followed it too closely, too recklessly. Hair Ball recovered from the kick almost instantly, slapped a blow aside, and seized her arm. He turned and flung her, one-handed, over the top rope of the ring and into the nearest wall. She hit it with a yell and bounced off onto the floor.
“Harry, wait,” Butters hissed. “It’s okay.”
Murphy picked herself up from the floor, moving slowly. As she did, the giant Hair Ball came over to the nearest side of the ring, holding his right hand in his left. Murphy brushed some dust from her clothing and turned to face him. Her blue eyes were steady and cold, her mouth set in a small smile. Her teeth were white, and rich red blood quivered on her lower lip where the impact had split it open. She wiped the blood off on her sleeve without looking away from Hair Ball. “Three?” she asked.
“Broke all four,” he said, moving his right hand a little by way of demonstration. “Took out my best sword hand. Good. If you hadn’t gotten greedy for the kill, maybe you’d have taken this round.”
Murphy snorted. “You’ve been drinking bad mead, Skaldi Skjeldson.”
That made Hair Ball smile. “Sword tomorrow?”
Murphy nodded. The two of them stared at each other for a moment, as if each expected the other to suddenly charge the second the other turned his back. Then, with no detectable signal passing between them, they simultaneously nodded again and turned away from each other, relaxing.
“Butters,” rumbled Skaldi Hair Ball. If he really had broken fingers, it didn’t look like they were bothering him much. “When are you going to get in this ring and train like a man?”
“About five minutes after I get a functional lightsaber,” Butters replied easily, much to Hair Ball’s amusement.
