Side Jobs

“Why wouldn’t she be?” Billy said. Someone started shrieking in the background. “Crap, this battery’s dying. Problem solved; come on up. I brought your tux.”

“Billy, wait.”

He hung up.

I called him back and got nothing but voice mail.

“Aha!” Bob said. “Someone used that wolf spell the naked chick taught to Billy and the Werewolves, back over there by the bedroom,” he reported. “And there were faeries here.”

I frowned. “Faeries. You sure?”

“One hundred percent, boss. They tried to cover their tracks, but the threshold must have taken the zing out of their illusion.”

I nodded and exhaled. “Dammit.” Then I strode into the bathroom and hunkered down, pawing through the rubble.

“What are you doing?” Murphy asked.

“Looking for Georgia,” I said. I found a plastic brush full of long strands the color of Georgia’s hair and took several of them in hand.

I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of my tracking spell, refining it over the years. I stepped out into the hall and drew a circle on the floor around me with a piece of chalk. Then I took Georgia’s hairs and pressed them against my forehead, summoning up my focus and will. I shaped the magic I wanted to create, focused on the hairs, and released my will as I murmured, “Interessari, interressarium.”

Magic surged out of me, into the hairs and back. I broke the circle with my foot, and the spell flowed into action, creating a faint sense of pressure against the back of my head. I turned, and the sensation flowed over my skull in response, over my ear, then over my cheekbone, and finally came to rest directly between my eyes.

“She’s this way,” I said. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh?”

“I’m facing south,” I said.

“Which is a problem?”

“Billy says she’s at the wedding. Twenty miles north of here.”

Murphy’s eyes widened in comprehension. “A faerie has taken her place.”

“Yeah.”

“Why? Are they trying to place a spy?”

“No,” I said quietly. “This is malicious. Probably because Billy and company backed me up during the battle when the last Summer Knight was murdered.”

“That was years ago.”

“Faeries are patient,” I said, “and they don’t forget. Billy’s in danger.”

“I’d say Georgia was the one in danger,” Murphy said.

“I mean that Billy’s in danger, too,” I said.

“How so?”

“This isn’t happening on their wedding day by chance. The faeries want to use it against them.”

Murphy frowned. “What?”

“A wedding isn’t just a ceremony,” I said. “There’s power in it. A pledging of one to another, a blending of energies. There’s magic all through it.”

“If you say so,” she said, her tone wry. “What happens to him if he marries a faerie?”

“Conservatives get real upset,” I said absently. “But I’m not sure, magically speaking. Bob?”

“Oh,” Bob said. “Um. Well, if we assume this is one of the Winter Sidhe, then he’s going to be lucky to survive the honeymoon. If he does, well, she’ll be able to influence him, long term. He’ll be bound to her, the way the Winter Knights are bound to the Winter Queens. She’ll be able to impose her will over his. Change the way he thinks and feels about things.”

I ground my teeth. “And if she changes him enough, it will drive him insane.”

“Usually, yup,” Bob said. His voice brightened. “But don’t worry, boss. Odds are he’ll be dead before sunrise tomorrow. He might even die happy.”

“That isn’t going to happen,” I said. I checked my watch. “The wedding is in three hours. Georgia might need help now.” I looked back at Murphy. “You carrying?”

“Two on me. More in the car.”

“Now, there’s a girl who knows how to party!” Bob said.

I popped the skull back into my backpack harder than I strictly had to and zipped it shut. “Feel like saving the day?”

Her eyes sparkled, but she kept her tone bored. “On the weekend? Sounds too much like work.”

We started from the apartment together. “I’ll pay you in doughnuts.”

“Dresden, you pig. That cop-doughnut thing is a vicious stereotype.”

“Doughnuts with little pink sprinkles,” I said.

“Professional profiling is just as bad as racial profiling.”

I nodded. “Yeah. But I know you want the little pink sprinkles.”

“That isn’t the point,” she said loftily, and we got into her car.

We buckled in, and I said more quietly, “You don’t have to come with me, Karrin.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

I nodded and focused on the tracking spell, turning my head south. “Thataway.”

THE WORST THING about being a wizard is all the presumption; people’s expectations. Pretty much everyone expects me to be some kind of con artist, since it is a well-known fact that there is no such thing as magic. Of those who know better, most of them think I can just snap my fingers, poof, and have whatever I want. Dirty dishes? Snap my fingers and they wash themselves, like in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Need to talk to a friend? Poof, teleport them in from wherever they are, because the magic knows where to find them, all by itself.

Magic ain’t like that. Or I sure as hell wouldn’t drive a beat-up old Volkswagen.

It’s powerful, true, and useful, and enormously advantageous, but ultimately it is an art, a science, a craft, a tool. It doesn’t go out and do things by itself. It doesn’t create something from nothing. Using it takes talent and discipline and practice and a lot of work, and none of it comes free.

Which was why my spell led us to downtown Chicago and suddenly became less useful.

“We’ve circled this block three times,” Murphy told me. “Can’t you get a more precise fix on it?”

“Do I look like one of those GPS thingies?” I sighed.

“Define thingie,” Murphy said.

“It’s my spell,” I said. “It’s oriented to the points of the compass. I didn’t really have the z-axis in mind when I designed it, and it only works for that when I’m right on top of the target. I keep meaning to go back and fix that, but there’s never time.”

“I had a marriage like that,” Murphy said. She stopped at a light and stared up. The block held six buildings—three apartments, two office buildings, and an old church. “In there. Somewhere. It could take a lot of time to search that.”

“So call in all the king’s horses and all the king’s men,” I said.

She shook her head. “I might be able to get a couple, but since Rudolph moved to Internal Affairs, I’ve been flagged. If I start calling in people left and right without a damn good logical, rational, wholly normal reason . . .”

I grunted. “I get it. We need to get closer. The closer I get to Georgia, the more precise the tracking spell will be.”

Murphy nodded once and pulled over in front of a fire hydrant, parking the car. “Let’s be smart about this. Six buildings. Where would a faerie take her?”

“Not the church. Holy ground is uncomfortable for them.” I shook my head. “Not the apartments. Too many people there. Too easy for someone to hear or see something.”

“Office buildings on a weekend,” Murphy said. “Empty as you can find in Chicago. Which one?”

“Let’s take a look. Maybe the spell can give me an idea.”

It took ten minutes to walk around the outsides of both buildings. The spell remained wonderfully