“Not interested,” I said. “I will never work for you.”
“Never is a very long time, Ms. Murphy.” Marcone blinked slowly and then sighed. “Clearly, the atmosphere has become unproductive,” he said. “Ms. Gard, please escort them both from the premises. Give them the information they want.“
“Yes, sir,” Gard said. She lowered the shotgun slowly. Then she returned it to its place behind the desk, picked up a file folder from it, and walked out to Will and me. I stooped and picked up the dropped, bloodstained knife before she could reach it. Then I wiped it clean on a pocket handkerchief, taking the blood from it, before offering the handle to Ms. Gard. I was more or less ignorant about magic, but I knew that Gard knew more about it than I, and that blood could be used in spells or incantations or whatever, to the great detriment of the bleeder. By wiping the blood from the blade, I’d prevented them from having an easy way to get to Will.
Gard smiled at me very slightly and nodded her head in what looked like approval. She took the knife, slipped it into a pocket, and then said, “This way, please.”
We followed her back out of the room. Will walked with his left hand pressed to his right biceps, his expression furious. There was blood, but not much of it. His shirt was soaking it up, and he’d clamped his hand hard over the wound. The knife hadn’t hit any major blood vessels, or he’d have been on the floor by now. We’d clean it up once we were out of here.
“You may know,” Ms. Gard said, as we walked, “that Mr. Marcone’s business interests are varied. Some of them have fierce competitors.”
“Drugs,” I said. “Extortion. Prostitution. Those are the money-makers. There’s always competition for territory.”
Gard continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “Competition has increased rather dramatically of late, and it has consisted of increasingly competent personnel. We’ve also had a number of issues with involuntary employee dereliction.”
Will let out a snort. “Does she mean what I think she means?”
“Hitters,” I said quietly. “Marcone’s been losing people.” I frowned. “But there hasn’t been any particular increase in the number of homicides.”
“They haven’t been killed,” Gard said, frowning. “They’ve vanished. Quickly. Quietly. Sometimes with minimal signs of a struggle.”
Will inhaled sharply. “Georgia.”
Gard passed me the folder. I opened it and found a simple printout of a Web browser document. “‘Craigslist,’” I read, for Will’s benefit. “‘Talent search, Chicago. Standard compensation for new talent. Contact for delivery dates.’ And there’s an e-mail address.”
“I know some of the business Dresden was involved in yesterday,” she said quietly. “In the past twenty-four hours, announcements like this have appeared in London, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome, Berlin. . . .”
“I get the point,” I said. “Something big is happening.”
“Exactly,” Gard said. She glanced at Will and said, “Someone is rounding up those mortals possessed of modest supernatural gifts.”
“Talent search,” I said.
“Yes,” Gard said. “I don’t know who or what is behind it. We haven’t been able to get close. Whoever they are, they’re quite well-informed, and they know our personnel.”
“Why was Hendricks at my apartment?” Will asked.
“Maria saw someone force your wife and another young woman out of the building and into a car. We know about your gifts, obviously. Marcone sent Hendricks to case the scene to look for any evidence of our opponent’s identity. He found nothing.” She shook her head. “From here on, I have only conjecture,” Gard said. “I’ll give it to you if you want it.”
“You don’t need to,” I told her. “Someone started picking on the little guys in town within a few hours of Dresden’s shooting. He never would have stood for something like that. So whoever is responsible for these disappearances might well be behind the shooting, too.”
“Excellent,” Gard said, nodding in approval. “We don’t really specialize in finding people.” She glanced down at me. “But you do.”
“I am not doing this for Marcone,” I snarled.
We reached the building’s entrance, and Ms. Gard looked at me thoughtfully. “A word of advice: Be cautious what official channels you use for assistance. We aren’t the only ones who have compromised the local authorities.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know how it works.”
Gard frowned at me and then nodded her head a little more deeply than was usual. “Of course. My apologies.”
I frowned at her, trying to figure out what she meant. There wasn’t any trace of sarcasm or irony in her words or her body language. Damn. I wasn’t used to confronting non-Martians. “Nothing to apologize for,” I said, after a hesitation. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
She studied me for a moment. “I can’t tell if what I’m seeing in you is courage or despair. I’d ask, but I’m almost sure you wouldn’t know the answer.”
“Excuse me?”
Gard nodded. “Exactly.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. About Dresden. He was a brave man.”
I suddenly felt furious that she had spoken of Harry in the past tense. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t done in my thoughts—but I hadn’t spoken the words aloud, either. “They haven’t found a body,” I told her, and I heard a fierceness in my voice I had not intended. “Don’t write him off just yet.”
The Valkyrie gave me a smile that bared her canine teeth. “Good hunting,” she bade us, and then went back inside the building.
I turned to Will and said, “Let’s take care of your arm.”
“It’s fine,” Will said.
“Don’t play tough guy with me,” I said. “Let me see.”
Will sighed. Then he took his hand away from the wound. There was a slit in his shirtsleeve, where the knife had gone in. It was too high up on his arm to make rolling the sleeve up practical, so I tore it a little wider and examined the wound.
It wasn’t bleeding. There was an angry, swollen purple line over the puncture mark. It wasn’t a scab, either. It was just . . . healing, albeit into a damn ugly scar.
I whistled softly. “How?”
“We’ve been experimenting,” Will said quietly. “Closing an injury isn’t really much different from shifting back into human form. My arm still hurts like hell, but I can stop bleeding—probably. If it isn’t too bad. We’re not sure about the limits. Leaves a hell of a mark, though.” His stomach gurgled. “And the energy for it has to come from somewhere. I’m starving.”
“Neat trick.”
“I thought so.” Will kept pace beside me as we headed back to the car. “What do we do next?”
“Food,” I said. “Then we contact the bad guys.”
He frowned. “Won’t that just, you know . . . warn them that we’re on to them?”
“No,” I said. “They’ll want to meet me.”
“Why?”
I looked up at him. “Because I’m going to be selling them some new talent.”
WE WENT TO my place.
There wasn’t much point in setting the dogs on the owner of the e-mail address. It would prove to be anonymous, and given what I had for hard evidence, even if I could get someone to pay attention to me, by the time it went through channels and peeled away all the red tape and got a judge somewhere to move, I was sure the address would be old news, and anyone connected to it would long since have departed.
I might have gotten some help from a friend at the Bureau, except that in the wake of the Red Court attack on their headquarters building, they would be going crazy looking for the “terrorists” responsible. They, too, were long since departed. Dresden had seen to that.
The TV news was all about the bombing, the attack, while everyone speculated about who had done what
