The grasshopper got my brother’s boat into dock with only a mildly violent impact. I secured lines quickly, and Will and Georgia jumped on. Almost before Will’s feet were on the deck, I was already untying the lines and following them onto the boat. Molly, for her part, already had the engine in reverse.
“Now what?” she called down to me from the wheel atop the cabin.
“Use the compass on the dashboard. One to two degrees south of due east, and call me when you spot the island.”
“Aye aye!”
Will squinted at Molly and then at me. “ ‘Aye aye’?”
I shook my head sadly. “Landlubbers. I’m going to go shiver timbers or something. I haven’t slept in a while.”
“Go ahead, Harry,” Georgia said. “We’ll wake you if anything happens.”
I nodded, shambled down to the second bunk, and passed out immediately.
Someone shook me two seconds later and I said, “Go away.”
“Sorry, Harry,” Will said. “We’re here.”
I said several uncouth and thoughtless things, then manned up and opened my eyes, always the hardest part of waking up. I sat up, and Will retreated from the cramped cabin with a glance at Morgan’s unconscious form. I sat there with my mouth feeling like it had been coated in Turtle Wax. It took me a second to identify a new sound.
Rain.
Raindrops pattered onto the deck of the boat and the roof of the cabin.
I shambled out onto the deck, unconcerned about the rain ruining my leather duster. One handy side effect of going through the painfully precise ritual of enchanting it to withstand physical force as if it had been plate steel was that the thing was rendered waterproof and stainproof as well-yet it still breathed. Let’s see Berman’s or Wilson’s do that.
Sufficiently advanced technology, my ass.
I climbed up to the bridge, keeping an eye on the sky as I did. Lowering clouds of dark grey had covered the sky, and the rain looked to be a long, steady soaker-a rarity in a Chicago summer, which usually went for rough- and-tumble thunderstorms. The heat hadn’t let up much, and as a result the air was thick and heavy enough to swim through.
I took the wheel from Molly, oriented myself by use of the compass and the island, now only a few minutes away, and yawned loudly. “Well. This makes things less pleasant.”
“The rain?” Molly asked. She passed me my pentacle.
I slipped it back over my head and nodded. “I’d planned on lying off the island until closer to dark.”
“Why?”
“Mostly because I just challenged the Senior Council to a brawl there at sundown,” I said.
Molly choked on her gum.
I ignored her. “I didn’t want to make it easy for them to slip up on me. Oh, and I’ve arranged to trade Thomas for Morgan with Shagnasty. He won’t get word of where to go until later, though. I think otherwise he’d cheat and show up early. He looks like a shifty character.”
The pun went past Molly, or maybe she was just that good at ignoring it. “You’re trading Morgan for Thomas?”
“Nah. I just want to get Shagnasty out here with Thomas in one piece so that the White Court can take him down.”
Molly stared at me. “The White Court, too?”
I nodded happily. “They’ve got a stake in this as well.”
“Um,” she said. “Why do you think the Senior Council will take you up on your challenge?”
“Because I told them I was going to be producing an informant who would give testimony about who really killed LaFortier.”
“Do you have someone like that?” Molly asked.
I beamed at her. “No.”
She stared at me for a moment, clearly thinking. Then she said, “But the killer doesn’t know that.”
My smile widened. “Why, no, Miss Carpenter. He doesn’t. I made sure word got around headquarters of my challenge to the Senior Council. He’s got no choice but to show up here if there’s any chance at all that I might actually have found an informant ready to blow his identity-which, by the way, would also provide substantial proof of the existence of the Black Council.”
Her golden brows knitted. “What if there’s no chance of such an informant existing?”
I snorted. “Kid, groups like these guys, the ones who maim and kill and scheme and betray-they do what they do because they love power. And when you get people who love power together, they’re all holding out a gift in one hand while hiding a dagger behind their back in the other. They regard an exposed back as a justifiable provocation to stick the knife in. The chances that this group has no one in it who might believably have second thoughts and try to back out by bargaining with the Council for a personal profit are less than zero.”
Molly shook her head. “So… he or she will call in the Black Council to help?”
I shook my head. “I think this is happening because the killer slipped up and exposed himself to LaFortier. He had to take LaFortier out, but with all the security at Edinburgh, there was every chance something could go wrong and it did. Everything else he’s done has smacked of desperation. I think that if the Black Council finds out that their mole has screwed up this thoroughly, they’d kill him themselves to keep the trail from leading back to them.” I stared at the glowering mass of Demonreach. “His only chance is to tie off any loose ends that might lead back to him. He’ll be here tonight, Molly. And he’s got to win. He has nothing to lose.”
“But you’re putting everyone together in a confined space, Harry,” Molly said. “This is going to be a huge mess.”
“Pressure cooker, padawan,” I said, nodding. “The perp is already desperate enough to be acting hastily and making mistakes. Especially the mistake of taking things a step too far and trying to incriminate the White Court in LaFortier’s death as well.”
Molly stared out at the water thoughtfully. “So you put him together in a confined space with two major groups of power who will want to kill him. His worst nightmare has got to be the wizards and the White Court being drawn into a closer alliance because of what he’s done. And with as much power as they have, there’s no way he’s going to be able to fight them all.”
I smiled at her. “Yeah. It sucks to feel helpless,” I said. “Especially for a wizard, because we usually aren’t. Or at least, we’re usually able to convince ourselves that we aren’t.”
“You think he’ll crack,” she said.
“I think he’ll be there. I think that with enough pressure, something is going to pop loose, somewhere. I think he’ll try something stupid. Maybe a preemptive spell, something to take everyone down before they know a fight is on.”
“A sneak attack,” Molly said. “Which won’t be a sneak attack if you know where he is and what he’s doing. Intellectus!”
I tapped my temple with a finger. “Capital thinking, grasshopper.”
Thunder rumbled far away.
I sighed. “Thomas can sail in bad weather, but I don’t know how to do it intelligently. Something like this could turn ugly, fast. We’re going to have to head into the dock and take our chances.”
I navigated. Sheesh, listen to me, “navigated.” The boat had a steering wheel and a lever to make it go faster. It was about as complicated to make move as a bumper car. Granted, simple isn’t the same thing as easy, but even so. The actual process of pointing the boat and making it go is not complicated enough to deserve to be called navigation.
I drove the Water Beetle around to the safe passage through the reef, and pulled her into the dock, much more smoothly this time. Will was waiting by the rail and ready. He hopped onto the dock and Georgia threw him the mooring lines.
“Don’t step onto the land until I get a chance to get there, first!” I called to them. “I want to, ah, sort of introduce you.”
Billy gave me an oblique look. “Um. Okay, Harry.”
