Jury Duty

“I don’t believe it. They found me,” I muttered grimly. I looked left and right, checking around me for lurking threats. “I don’t know how, but they did it. I’ve been back in the world for less than a month, and they found me.”

Will Borden, engineer and werewolf, set down a heavy box of books on the kitchen table and looked at me with concern. Then he came over and looked down at the letter in my hands before snorting. “Such a drama queen.”

“I’m serious!” I said and shook the letter. “I’m being hunted! By my own government!”

“It’s a summons to jury duty, Harry,” Will said. He opened the fridge and helped himself to a bottle of Mac’s ale. He had to navigate around a few boxes to do it. I didn’t think I’d had much out on the island, but it’s amazing how many boxes it takes to hold not much. It had taken most of a day to ferry it all from the island into Molly’s apartment in town. She rarely used the place these days and had given it to me to live in until I found my own digs.

“I don’t like it,” I said.

“Too bad,” Will said. “You got it. Look, you probably won’t be selected anyway.”

“Summons,” I said, glowering. “It’s a freaking command. They want to see what a real summoning is, I could show them.”

Will laughed at me. He was younger than me, shorter than average, and built like a linebacker. “How dare they intrude upon the solitude of the mighty wizard Dresden.”

“Nngh,” I said, and tossed the paper onto the top of a box of unopened envelopes—my mail, which had accumulated for more than a year, most of it junk. Some of it had been at the post office. More had been set aside by the new owner of my old address, formerly Mrs. Spunkelcrief’s boarding house, and now the Better Future Society. I hadn’t been able to stomach asking the new owner for my mail, but Butters had gotten it for me.

“Maybe I won’t show up,” I said. I paused. “What happens if I don’t show up?”

“You can be held in contempt of court or fined or jailed or something,” Will said. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Now that I think about it, they actually leave it kind of vague, what’s going to happen.”

“Good threats are like that. More scary when you can use your imagination.”

“They aren’t the mob, Harry.”

“Aren’t they?” I asked. “Pay them money every year to protect you, and God help you if you don’t.”

Will rolled his eyes and got another bottle from the fridge. He opened it for me and passed it over. “Mac would kill you for drinking this cold, et cetera and so on.”

“It’s hot out,” I said, and took a long pull. “Especially for this early in the year. And he would just give me that disappointed grunting sound. Damned government. Not like I don’t have things to do.”

“Is justice worth having?” Will asked.

I eyed him.

“Is it?”

“Mostly,” I said. Warily.

“Well, that’s why there’s a legal system.”

“What does justice have to do with the legal system?”

“Do you really want to tear it all apart and start over from 1776?” Will asked.

“Not particularly. I have books to read.”

He spread his hands. “The courts aren’t perfect,” Will said, “but they can do okay a lot of the time.” He reached into the box and picked up the summons. “And if you really think the courts aren’t working, maybe you should do something about it. If only there was some way you could directly participate . . .”

I snatched the letter back from him with a scowl. “Think you’re smart, huh.”

“You’re kind of a solitary hunter by nature, Harry,” Will said. “I’m more of a pack creature. We’re smart about different things, that’s all.”

I read a little more. “There’s a dress code too?” I demanded.

Will covered up his mouth with his hand and coughed, but I could see that he was laughing at me.

“Well,” I said firmly, “I am not wearing a tie.”

Will lowered his hand, his expression carefully locked into sober agreement. “Viva la revolution.”

So I went to court.

It meant a trek downtown to the Richard J. Daley Center Courthouse, whose name did little to inspire confidence in me that justice might indeed be done. Ah well. I wasn’t here to create disorder. I was here to preserve disorder.

I went up to the seventeenth floor, turned in my card along with about a gazillion other people, none of whom seemed at all enthusiastic about being there. I got a cup of bad coffee and grimaced at it while waiting around for a while. Then a guy in a black muumuu showed up and recounted the plot of My Cousin Vinny.

Okay, it was a robe, and the guy was a judge, and he gave us a brief outline of the format of the trial system, but it’s not nearly as entertaining to say it that way.

Then they started calling names. They said they only needed about half of us, and when they had been going for a while, I thought I was about to get lucky and get sent home, but then some clerk called my name, and I had to shuffle forward to join a file of other jurors.

There were lines and questions and a lot of waiting around. Long story short: I wound up sitting in the box seats in a Cook County courtroom as the wheels of justice started to grind for a guy named Hamilton Luther.

The case was being handled by one of the new ADAs. I used to keep track of those people pretty closely, but then I was mostly dead for a while, and then living in exile and my priorities shifted. When you live in a city with a reputation for political corruption as pervasive as Chicago’s, and work in a business that sometimes treads close to the limit of the law (or twenty miles past it), it’s wise to keep an eye on the public servants. Most of them were decent enough, I guess, by which I mean they’re your basic politician—they had just enough integrity to keep up appearances and appease political sponsors and at the end of the day they had an agenda to pursue.

Once in a while, though, you got one who was thoroughly in someone’s pocket. The outfit owned some of those types. The unions owned some others. The corporations had the rest.

The new kid was in his late twenties, clean-cut, thoroughly shaven, and looked a little distracted as he assembled notes and folders around him with the help of an attractive female assistant. His gray suit was tailored to him, maybe a little too well tailored for someone just out of law school, and his maroon tie was made of expensive silk that matched the kerchief tucked into his breast pocket. He had big ears and a large Adam’s apple, and his expression was painfully earnest.

On the other side of the aisle, at the defendant’s table, sat a study in contrast. He was a man in his fifties, and if he’d ever been in college it had been on a wrestling scholarship. He had shoulders like a bull moose, hunched with muscle, and his arms ended in fists the size of sledgehammer heads. The dark skin on his knuckles was white and lumpy with old scars, the kind you get in back-alley fistfights, not in a boxing ring. He had shaven his head. There was stubble around the edges but the top was shiny. He had a heavy brow, a nose that had been broken on a biannual basis, and his suit was cheap and ill-fitting. He had a couple of folders on the table with him, along with a pair of thick books. The man looked bleakly uneasy and kept flicking nervous glances across the aisle.

If that guy was a lawyer, I was an Ewok. But he sat alone.

So where was his public defender?

“All rise!” a large man in a uniform said in a voice pitched to carry. “Court is now in session, the Honorable Mavis Jefferson presiding.”

Everyone stood up. After a second, so did I.

I guess you could say I’m not really a joiner.

The judge came in and settled down at her bench, and the rest of us sat too. She was a blocky woman in her early sixties, with skin the color of coffee grounds and bags under her eyes that made me think of Spike the bulldog in those old cartoons. If you didn’t look closely, you’d think she was bored out of her mind. She sat without moving much, her eyes half closed, scanning over a document on her own desk through a pair of reading glasses. There was something serpentine about her eyes, a suggestion of formidable, remorseless rationality. This was a woman who had seen a great deal, had been amused by very little of it, and who would not be easily made a fool. She finished scanning the document and glanced up at the defendant.

“Mister Luther?” she said.

The bruiser in the bad suit rose. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I see that you have taken it upon yourself to serve as your own defender,” she said. Her tone was bored, entirely neutral. “While this is your right under the law, I strongly advise you to reconsider. Given the severity of the charges against you, I would think that a professional attorney would offer you a much more comprehensive and capable legal defense.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Luther said. “I thought that too. But all the public defender wanted to do was plea bargain, ma’am. And I want to have my say.”

“That too is your right,” the Judge said. For a second, I thought I saw a flicker of something like regret on her face, but it vanished into neutrality again almost instantly. Her tone took on the measured cadence of a cop reading formal Miranda rights. “If you go through with this, you will not be able to move for a mistrial based on the fact that you do not have adequate representation. This trial will proceed and its outcome will be binding. Do you understand this warning as I have stated it to you?”

“Yes ma’am,” Luther said. “Ain’t no take-backsies. I want to represent myself, ma’am.”

The Judge nodded. “Then you may be seated.” Luther sat. The Judge turned toward the prosecutor and nodded to him. “Counselor.” There was a pause about a second and a half long, and then she repeated, in a mildly annoyed tone, “Counselor?” Another impatient pause. “Counselor Tremont, am I interrupting you?”

The young ADA in the fine suit blinked, looked up from his notes, and hastily rose. “No, your Honor, please excuse me. I’m ready to begin.”

“Thank goodness,” the Judge said in a dry tone. “My granddaughter graduates from high school in three weeks. You may proceed.”

Tremont flushed. “Um, yes. Thank you, your Honor.” The young man cleared his throat, adjusted his suit jacket, and walked over to face the jury box. He held up a glossy professional headshot of a handsome man in his thirties and showed it to us.

“Meet Curtis Black,” Tremont said. “He was a stock broker. He liked to go rock climbing on the weekends. He volunteered in a soup kitchen three weekends a month, and he once won an all-expenses-paid vacation to Florida by making a half-court shot during halftime at a Bull’s game. He was well liked by his professional associates and had an extensive family and was owned by an Abyssinian cat named Purrple.

“You have doubtless noted my use of the past tense. Was. Liked. Volunteered. But I have to use the past tense, because one year ago, Curtis Black was brutally murdered in an alley in Wrigleyville near the corner of Southport and Grace. Mr. Black was bludgeoned to death with a bowling pin. His skull was smashed flat in the back, and the autopsy showed that it had been shattered into a dozen pieces, like plate glass.”

Tremont took a moment to let the graphic description sink in. The room was very still.

“The state intends to prove,” he said, “that the defendant, Hamilton Luther, murdered Mr. Black in cold blood. That he followed him into the alley, seized the bowling pin from a refuse bin, and struck him from behind, causing him to fall to the ground. That he then proceeded to continue beating Mr. Black’s skull with twelve to fifteen heavy blows while Mr. Black lay stunned and helpless beneath him.

“This is a serious crime,” Tremont continued. “But Mr. Luther has a long history of violent offenses. Forensic evidence will prove that Mr. Luther was at the crime scene, that he left his fingerprints on the weapon, and that the forensic profile of the attack matches his height and build closely. Eyewitnesses and security cameras witnessed him fleeing the alley shortly after Mr. Black entered it, the victim’s blood literally upon his hands. The evidence will prove Mr. Luther’s guilt beyond any reasonable doubt and, in the end, you must find him guilty of this horrible crime. Thank you.”

“Thank you, counselor,” the Judge said, as Tremont returned to his seat. “Mr. Luther, you may present your opening statement.”

Luther rose slowly. He glanced around the jury box, licked his lip nervously and approached the jury.

“Ladies and . . . and gentlemen,” he said, stammering a little. “I know I got a past. I did a dime in Stateville for putting a guy in the hospital. But that was my past. I ain’t that man no more.” He swallowed and gestured vaguely over his shoulder, toward Tremont. “This guy is going to tell you about all this CSI stuff that says I did it. But all those reports and pictures don’t tell the whole story. They leave a lot of stuff out. I ain’t a lawyer. But I’m gonna tell you the whole story. And then . . . then I’ll see what you think about it, I guess.” He hovered for a moment longer, awkwardly, then nodded and said, “Okay. I’m done.”

“Thank you, Mr. Luther,” the Judge said. “You may return to your seat.”

“Yes ma’am,” Luther said, and did so.

“Mr. Luther, you are charged with first degree murder,” the Judge said, still in her rote-memory voice, “how do you plead?”

“I . . .” Luther looked down at some notes in front of him and then up again. “Not guilty, ma’am.”

Hell’s bells.

The full legal might of the state of Illinois was being thrown at Luther. The man seemed sincere enough. But apparently the only defense he had to offer was a story. A story from an ex-con, no less.

I wanted to hear him out. I knew all about being judged for things that were out of my control. But I was pretty sure Luther was going back to jail.

“Mr. Tremont,” the Judge said. “Is the prosecution ready to begin?”

“Yes, your Honor,” Tremont said.

“Very well,” she said. “You may call your first witness.”

Tremont spent the afternoon driving nails into Luther’s coffin, thoroughly, methodically, and one at a time.

He did exactly what he said he would do. He brought out each case of physical evidence, point by point, and linked Luther undeniably to the scene of the crime. Luther had been photographed by a grainy black-and-white security camera coming out of the alley’s far side, spattered in blood. His fingerprints were on the murder weapon, in the blood of the victim. The officer who arrested him had taken blood samples from his skin and clothing matching those of the victim. He additionally gave testimony of Luther’s past criminal record, which had landed him in jail as young man.

When given a chance to cross-examine, Luther shook his head, until he got to the testimony of the arresting officer, a black man in his late forties named Dwayne. He rose and asked the officer, “When you brung me in, was I injured?”

Officer Dwayne nodded. “You were banged up pretty good. Especially your head.”

“Where at?” Luther asked.

Dwayne grunted. “Back of your head.”

“Any other injuries on me?”

“You were one big bruise,” Dwayne said.

“How big was the victim,” Luther asked.

“About five-four, maybe one-fifty.”

“Weightlifter or something?”

“Not so you’d notice,” Dwayne said.

Luther nodded. “You known me a while. How come?”

“I was the one who arrested you the first damn time.”

“Officer,” the Judge said.

“Beg pardon, your Honor,” Dwayne said hurriedly.

“I remember that too,” Luther said. “In your experience, a businessman like that handle a guy like me?”

“Unless he’s armed, or got a lot of training, no.”

“One more question,” Luther said. He squinted at the officer and said, “You in my neighborhood ever since I got out. You ever think I’d be trouble again?”

“Objection,” Tremont said. “He’s asking for pure conjecture.”

Luther frowned and said, “Beat cops deal with ex-cons on a regular basis professionally, ma’am. Figure that qualifies him as an expert opinion on potential, uh . . .” He consulted his notes and spoke in a careful, clear tone. “Recidivism.”

The judge eyed Luther and said, toward Tremont, “Overruled. You may answer the question, Officer.”

“No,” Dwayne said. “I’ve seen you with your kids. I wouldn’t have called you for it.”

“In the arrest report,” Luther said, “does it say what I kept asking the officers?”

Dwayne cleared his throat and looked down at a notepad in front of him. “Yeah. The suspect kept asking ‘Where is she?’ and ‘Is she all right?’”

“Who was I talking about?”

Officer Dwayne turned a page and cleared his throat. “The suspect claimed that he only began the confrontation with the deceased after witnessing the man drag a female child, Latino, around the age of ten, into the alley,” he read. “Subsequent investigation could not confirm the presence of any such person.”

“How hard did they look?” Luther asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard me,” Luther said. “In your opinion, how hard did the investigating detectives look for a little girl who might clear an ex-con from being guilty of a murder of a big-shot businessman?”

“Objection.”

“Overruled.”

“I’m not a detective,” Officer Dwayne said. “I can’t speak to that. But I’m sure they followed departmental guidelines.”

My finely honed crapometer, garnered during my days as a legitimate, licensed private investigator went off. Cops were as thorough as they could be, but that wasn’t always supremely thorough—that was why private investigators could stay in business in the first place. It was understandable: a city the size of Chicago has an enormous caseload, detectives are always buried in work, and the investigations get triaged pretty severely. The preponderance of evidence, absence of witnesses, and Luther’s status as an ex-con would have made this case a slam dunk, a low priority—and most of the time, the cops would have been right. Once the evidence was all taken and dissected and duly reported upon, as far as the police were concerned, they had their man. And there was already a mountain of fresh justice waiting to be pursued on behalf of new victims. Even the most dedicated and sincere police detective could understandably have dropped the ball here.

“Sure,” Luther said. He sat back down again and said, “I’m done.”

The judge looked at the clock and asked, “Mister Tremont, do you have any further witnesses?”

Tremont listened to something his assistant whispered and rose. “Your Honor, the prosecution rests.”

“Then so will we,” she said. “Mister Luther, the defense can begin its case in the morning. I remind the jury that the details of this case are confidential and not to be discussed or disclosed. We will reconvene here at 9 a.m.”

“All rise,” the bailiff said, and we did as the judge left the room.

I frowned as Luther was escorted out.

Something did not add up here.

If Luther had been a professional tough, a little guy like Curtis Black wouldn’t have a prayer against him. I had been around enough tough guys to size Luther up. I wouldn’t want to take him on in muscle-powered combat if I could avoid it, not even now with all the extra physical stuff the Winter Knight’s mantle had given me. Doesn’t matter how much you bench press, some people are damned dangerous in a fight, and you’re a fool to take unnecessary chances against them. Luther struck me as one of those men.

Also, Tremont was way too young a kid to be pulling a high profile murder case like this one. This was the kind of flashy prosecution DAs loved to showboat. Killers brought to justice, the system working, that kind of thing. They certainly didn’t hand the case off to some kid straight out of law school. Which meant that the old hands in Chicago thought that something about this case stunk to high Heaven as well.

I didn’t know the law really well, but I have a doctorate in the parts of Chicago that never showed up on the evening news. If Luther was telling the truth, then Curtis Black couldn’t have been human.

Problem was, most humans didn’t know that. Even if Luther was telling the truth about Black, he wasn’t going to get a fair shake from Chicago’s justice system. Hell’s bells, the cop acquainted with him wasn’t even giving him much. Nobody was going to go to bat for him.

Unless I did it.

He was a father. For his kids’ sake, I wanted answers.

I glanced at the clock as I filed out with the rest of the jury. Nine tomorrow morning. That gave me just under sixteen hours to do what wizards do best.

I left, and began meddling.

“Well?” I asked the rather large wolf after he had been casting around the alley for a while.

He gave me an irritated look. He sat, and after a few seconds, shimmered and resumed the form of Will Borden, crouched naked on the dirty concrete. “Harry, you are not helping.”

“Did you find anything or not?” I asked.

“This isn’t as easy as it looks,” he said. “Look, man, when I’m wolf, I’ve got a wolf’s sense of smell—but I don’t have a wolf’s freaking brain. I’ve been learning how to sort out signals from the noise, but it’s freaking hard. I’ve been doing this since my freshman year, and I could follow a hot trail, but you’re asking me to sift background. I don’t even know if a real wolf could do it.”

I looked around the alley where Luther had beaten Black to death with a bowling pin. It had been nearly a year to the day since the murder. There was nothing dramatic to suggest a man had died here, and the bloodstains had long since faded into unrecognizability with the rest of the grunge. We were far enough down the alley to be out of sight of the street except for a slim column of space that cars crossed in under a second. “Yeah, that was a long shot anyway.”

“You going to wizard up some information?”

“After this long, there’s nothing left,” I said. “Too many rains, too many sunrises. Not even Molly could get much.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

“Get furry again. We might be here a while.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“I think the girl might come by in the next few hours.”

“Why?”

I shrugged a shoulder. “Let’s assume Luther’s telling the truth.”

“Sure.”

“This little guy grabs a little girl and drags her into the alley. Luther jumps him from behind and gets thrown into a wall. Fights him, hard, and beats him to death with a bowling pin. What can we deduce?”

“That Black was stronger than normal and tougher than normal,” Will said. “Some kind of supernatural.”

I nodded. “A predator. Maybe a ghoul or something.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So a predator, operating in the middle of a town? They don’t tend to openly grab little girls off the street, because someone might see it happen.”

“Like Luther.”

“Like Luther. But this guy did. He didn’t go after a transient sleeping in an abandoned building, or someone wandering down a dark alley to buy some drugs, a prostitute, any of the usual targets. He went with something dicier. He’s going to do that, he’s going to cut down on every random factor he can.”

“You think he stalked her.”

I nodded. “Stalked her, learned her pattern, and was waiting for her.”

Will squinted up and down the alley. “Why do you think that?”

“It’s how something from Winter would do it,” I said. “How I would take someone in a busy part of town, if I had to.”

“Well. That’s not creepy or anything, Harry.”

I showed my teeth. “Not much difference between wolves and sheepdogs, Will. You should know.”

He nodded. “So we wait here and see if she’s still going by?”

“Figure if she still goes by here, she’ll do it fast and she’ll be worried. Should make her stand out.”

“You know what else stands out on a busy Chicago street? A timber wolf.”

“Thought of that,” I said, and produced a roll of fabric from my duster’s large pockets.

“You’re kidding,” Will said.

I smiled.

“And what’s in the guitar case?”

I smiled wider.

A few minutes later, I was sitting on the sidewalk with my back against a building, with an old secondhand guitar in my lap, the case open beside me with a handful of a change and an old wadded dollar bill in it. Will settled down beside me, wearing a service dog’s jacket, resting his chin on his front paws. He made a little groaning sound.

“It’ll be fine, boy.”

Will narrowed his eyes.

“Just keep your nose open,” I said, and started playing.

I started with the Johnny Cash version of “Hurt,” which was pretty simple. I sang along with it. I’m not good, but I can hit the notes and keep the rhythm going, so it more or less worked out. I followed it up with “Behind Blue Eyes,” which gets a little harder, and then “Only Happy When It Rains.” Then I followed it up with “House of the Rising Sun,” and completely mangled “Stairway to Heaven.”

There wasn’t a ton of foot traffic on a weekday evening on this street, not in a fairly brisk late March, but nobody really looked at me twice. I made about two and a half bucks in change the first hour. The life of a musician is not easy. A patrol car went by, and a cop gave me the stink-eye, but he didn’t stop and roust me. Maybe he had things to do.

The light started fading from the sky, and I was repeating my limited set for the fifth or sixth time when I started to think about giving up. The girl, if she was still following the same pattern, definitely wouldn’t be running around town alone after it became fully dark.

I was singing about how you’d get the message by the time I’m through when Will suddenly lifted his head, his eyes focused.

I followed the direction of his gaze and spotted a girl of about the right age getting off of a bus. She started walking right away, down the street, though she stayed on the other side, directly toward the El station a block away.

“There we go,” I said. “Kid walking a regular route alone gets jumped in Chicago, kid’s probably using public transit, running on a schedule. Makes her real predictable. Perfect mark for a predator.”

Will made a low growling sound.

“I think I’m kinda smart, yeah,” I said to him. “Get her scent?”

Will nudged me with his shoulder and growled again.

I frowned and looked around until I spotted a rather large and rough looking man descending from the bus at the last second before it left for the next stop. He started down the sidewalk, in pursuit of the girl. He wasn’t maniacally focused on her or anything, but he wasn’t moving like someone coming home tired after a day of work, either. I recognized his pace, his stance, his tension, just as Will had. He was a predator in covert pursuit of his prey.

Worse, he had a smart phone. His thumbs were rapping over it as he walked after the girl.

“Damn,” I said. “Whoever Black was, he was connected. I’m on the creep. You stick with the girl.”

Will gave me one brief, incredulous look.

“I’m six-nine and scarred, you’re furry and cute. She’s eleven, she’s going to like you.”

Will gave me a flat look, his gold eyes utterly unamused. On a wolf, that’s unsettling.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Wag your tail and paw your nose or something. Go!”

I’ll give Will this much, he knows when actions matter more than questions. He took off at once, vanishing into the oncoming evening.

Meanwhile, I put my guitar in the case, set it back into the alley, rose, and focused my will and my attention on the thug. Wizards and modern technology don’t get on well, and nothing dies as fast as cell phones when a wizard means to shut them down. I gathered up enough power to get the job done without taking out the lights on the whole block, flicked a finger at the man pacing the girl, and murmured, “Hexus.”

A wave of disruptive energy washed out across the street and over the man and his smart phone. There was a little flash of light and a shower of sparks from the phone, and the man flinched and dropped the device. Most people would have stared at it or looked wildly around. This guy did neither. He sank into a defensive crouch and started scanning his surroundings with wide eyes.

He knew he was being threatened, which meant he had some kind of idea that a wizard might be about. That meant he was no mere thug. He was clued in enough to the supernatural world to know the players and how they might operate. That meant he was elite muscle, and there were only so many players who he might be working for.

I checked the street, hurried through an opening in traffic, and went straight for him. He spotted me in under a second and ran without hesitation, both of which impressed me with his judgment—but he took off after the girl, which meant that he wasn’t giving up, either. I swerved to pursue him, leaped and pulled my knees up to my chin in the air, hitting the hood of a blue Buick with my hands as I flew over it, and came down still running.

We rounded a corner, and I understood what was happening.

The thug I was pursuing wasn’t the grabber. He was just riding drag, making sure the girl didn’t bolt back the way she came. I saw the girl ahead, being hurried into a doorway by three more men, and my guy poured it on when he saw them.

I slowed down a little, taking stock. The goons ahead had seen me coming behind their buddy, and hands were going into coats. I flung myself into the doorway of an office supply store, now closed for the evening, and the thugs all hustled through their own door, without producing guns on the street.

Suited me. I had been hoping to get them somewhere out of the way anyhow.

I waited until they were inside, gave them a five count, and then paced down the street. The door they’d gone through belonged to a small nightclub. A sign, hanging up on the door, read “Closed for Remodeling.”

The door was locked.

It was also made of glass.

I smiled.

I huffed and I puffed and I blew the door in with a pretty standard blast of telekinetic force. I tugged my sleeve up to reveal the shield bracelet I’d thrown together out of a strip of craft copper and carefully covered with the appropriate defensive runes and sigils. I channeled some of my will down into the bracelet, and the runes hissed to life, spilling out green-gold energy and the occasional random spark.

“All right, people!” I called into the club as I stepped through the door. “You know who I am. I’m here for the girl. Let her go, or so help me God I will bring this building down around your ears.” I wouldn’t, not while the girl was still in here, but they didn’t know that.

There was silence for a long moment. And then music started playing from deeper inside the club. “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga.

“Okay,” I muttered. “Have it your way.”

I advanced into the darkened club, my shield bracelet throwing out a faint haze of light from the runes—just enough to keep me from bumping into walls. I went through the entry hall, past a collection window where I supposed cover fees would be paid, to double doors that opened onto the bar and dance floor.

I raised my left arm as if wielding an actual shield, the bracelet glowing, and stepped forward into the club.

The little girl was sitting in a booth against the far wall. The four thugs were fanned out on either side of her, guns in hand but pointing at the floor. Sitting with the little girl in the booth was the ADA’s pretty assistant. When I came through the door, she lifted a hand, clicked a remote, and Lady Gaga’s voice cut off in the midst of wanting my bad romance.

“Far enough,” the woman said. “It would be a shame if someone panicked and this situation devolved. Innocents could be hurt.”

I stopped. “Who are you?” I asked.

“Tania Raith,” she replied, and gave me a rather dizzying smile.

House Raith was the foremost house of the White Court of Vampires. They were seducers, energy drainers, and occasionally a giant pain in the ass. The White Court was headed up by Lara Raith, the uncrowned queen of vampires, and one of the more dangerous persons I’d ever met. She wielded enormous influence in Chicago, maybe as much as the head of the Chicago outfit, Gentleman Johnnie Marcone, gangster lord of the mean streets.

I made damned sure to keep track of the thugs and precisely what they were doing with their hands as I spoke. “You know who I am. You know what I can do. Let her go.”

She rolled her eyes, and spun a finger through fine, straight black hair. “Why should I?”

“Because you know what happened the last time some vampires abducted a little girl and I decided to take her back.”

Her smile faltered slightly. As it should have. When bloodsucking Red Court had taken my daughter, I took her back—and murdered every single one of them in the process. The entire species.

I’m not a halfway kind of person.

“Lara likes you,” Tania said. “So I’m going to give you a chance to walk out of here peacefully. This is a White Court matter.”

I grunted. “Black was one of yours?”

“Gregor Malvora,” she confirmed. “He was Malvora scum, but he was our scum. Lara can’t allow the mortal buck who did it to go unpunished. Appearances. You understand.”

“I understand that Gregor abducted a child. He did everything he could to frighten her, and then fed on her fear. If Luther hadn’t killed him, what would he have done to the little girl?”

“Oh, I shudder to think,” Tania replied. “But that is, after all, what they do.”

“Not in my town,” I said.

She lifted her eyebrows. “I believe Baron Marcone has a recognized claim on this city. Or am I mistaken?”

“I’ve got enough of a claim to make me tickled to dump you and your brute squad into the deepest part of Lake Michigan if you don’t give me back the girl.”

“I think I’ll keep her for a day or two. Just until the trial is over. That will be best for everyone involved.”

“You’ll give her to me. Now.”

“So that she can testify and exonerate Mister Luther?” Tania asked. “I think not. I have no desire to harm this child, Dresden. But if you try to take her from me, I will reluctantly be forced to kill her.”

The girl’s lower lip trembled, and tears started rolling down her face. She didn’t sob. She did it all in silence, as if desperate to draw no attention to herself.

Yeah, okay.

I wasn’t going to stand here and leave a little kid to a vampire’s tender mercies.

“Chicago is a mortal town,” I said. “And mortal justice is going to be served.”

“Oh my God,” Tania said, rolling her eyes. “Did you really just say that out loud? You sound like a comic book.”

“Comic book,” I said. “Let’s see. Do I go for ‘Hulk smash,’ or ‘It’s clobberin’ time . . .’”

Tania tensed, though she tried to hide it, and her voice came out in a rush. “Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think, that Chicago’s only professional wizard wound up on that jury?”

I tilted my head and frowned. She was right. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more this felt like a turf war. “Oh. Oh, I get it. Luther was one of Marcone’s soldiers.”

“So loyal he went to prison for ten years rather than inform on Marcone,” Tania confirmed. “Or maybe just smart enough to know what would happen to him if he did. He went straight after he got out, but . . .”

“When he got in trouble, Marcone stood up for one of his own,” I said. “He pulled strings to get me on the jury.”

“Luther was getting nailed to a wall,” Tania said. “Marcone controls crime, but Lara has a lot of say over the law, these days. I suppose he thought someone like you might be the only chance Luther had. Gutsy of him, to try to make a catspaw of Harry Dresden. I hear you don’t like that.”

Dammit. Marcone had put me where there’d been a guy getting fast-tracked to an unjust sentence and known damned well how I would react. He could have asked me for help, but I’d have told him to take a flying . . . leap. And he’d have known that. So he set it up without me knowing.

Or hell. He and Mab had been in cahoots lately. Maybe he’d asked her to arrange it. This had her fingerprints all over it.

“Tania,” I said. “It’s hard for me to tell with vampires, but I’m guessing you’re pretty new to this work.”

She winked at me. “Let’s just say that I’m old enough to know better and young enough not to care.” She picked up a drink from the table. “This one is over, Dresden. You can’t do anything here. You can’t produce evidence in the trial—not as a juror. You can’t get to Luther to tell him you found the little girl—and even if you could, you aren’t taking her away from us. Not until it’s too late. The girl is the only evidence that Black wasn’t a poor victim, and I have her. This one is done. Marcone lost the round. I win.” She winked at me. “What does Marcone mean to you? You don’t owe him anything. Why not sit down, have a drink, help me celebrate?”

I stared at Tania for a minute. “No,” I said quietly. “You just don’t get it. This isn’t about Lara and Marcone anymore. It’s not even really about Luther.” Then I looked at the little girl. “Honey,” I asked, making sure my voice was a lot gentler. “Do you want to go home?”

She looked at me. She was cute enough, for a kid her age, with caramel skin and big green eyes. She nodded, very hesitantly, flinching as if she thought Tania might hit her.

“Okay,” I said.

Tania was staring at me as though she couldn’t quite grasp what was happening. But her voice was harder when she said, “Gentlemen? The wizard doesn’t like the carrots. It’s time for the stick.”

To my right, from behind the bar, another four men rose. They were holding short-barreled shotguns. To my left, from the bathrooms, another four thugs appeared, clutching various long guns.

“I’ll count to three,” Tania said. “Boys, when I get to three, kill him.”

Crap. They were flanking me. My shield was excellent, but it was not omni-directional. No matter which way I turned it, one or more groups of thugs would have a shot at my unprotected back.

“One,” Tania said, smiling. “Two.”

“Comic book, huh?” I said. “Have it your way.”

“Three,” she chirped.

Guns swiveled to me. A dozen men took aim.

“Hexus!” I snarled, unleashing a wave of disruptive energy.

And every light in the place blew out in a shower of sparks, plunging the club into darkness.

Guns started going off, but only from the most confident or stupid gunmen, so I wasn’t cut to ribbons. I was already moving. Hitting a moving target isn’t easy, not even when it’s fairly close. Hitting one in the dark is even harder. Hitting one moving in sporadic flashes of light is harder yet.

I got lucky, or none of them did, however you want to think of it, and I got to the thugs to one side of Tania in one piece.

One of them got off a shot at the sound, but I caught the round on my shield, and the resulting shower of sparks showed the men on my flanks that I was among their compatriots, and no one shot at my back. I knew Lara hired almost exclusively from former military, mostly Marines. Men like that don’t shoot their buddies.

I dropped the shield and threw a punch at the guy in front of me. Ever since I’d started working for the Queen of Air and Darkness, I’d been stronger than the average wizard. Or the average champion weightlifter, for that matter—and I knew how to throw a punch. I connected with the man’s jaw, hard, and shouted, “BAM!” as I did.

The thug reeled back, his legs going wobbly and useless as he rag-dolled to the floor. I threw a stomping kick toward the belly of the guy next to him, shouting, “POW!” I hit him in the dark, somewhere more or less near his belly. His gun went off randomly as he was lifted off the floor and thrown ten feet back into a wall. He was trying to scream, breathlessly. I winced. I hadn’t meant to hit him there, but those are the breaks.

I raised my shield again and dropped, just as the bad guys with shotguns realized that I didn’t have any of their buddies standing near me. I trusted the shield and turned my face away from the blinding shower of green-gold sparks it sent flying up as buckshot hammered into it. The copper band got hot on my wrist, even as I flung my right hand out toward the group of goons by the bathroom and shouted, “Forzare!”

Raw telekinetic force hit three of them—one was the guy from the street, who again impressed me with his smarts by diving to one side, out of the wave of energy. As shotguns pounded my shield, he slid to a stop with an automatic braced in both hands, took a breath, and aimed carefully, only moving his finger to the trigger after he had his sights lined up on me.

Crap. To steal from Brust, no matter how turbo-charged the wizard, someone with brains, guts, and a .45 can seriously cramp his style.

Fortunately, I wasn’t in this fight alone.

I’d been counting on Will to join in at the right moment, and he didn’t let me down. Two hundred pounds of gray-brown timber wolf (wearing a service dog cape) hit the Smart Gunman at a full sprint, bowling him over. A flash of white fangs sent the gun flying.

Total elapsed time since I’d killed the lights? Maybe three and a half seconds.

Will threw himself into the guys I’d knocked around by the bathrooms, and I turned to discover that I’d been right about Tania. She was new to this kind of game. She’d been sitting there with a stunned look on her face at the abruptness of the violence.

I flung myself into the booth with her, getting as close as I could, wrapping my left arm around her neck hard enough to pull her head in against my body and still have my shield ready to stop more gunfire—but the Smart Gunman screamed, “Check fire, check fire!” the second I did.

The shooting stopped. There was an abrupt silence in the club, which was filled with the sharp scent of gunpowder.

For a second, I felt a cool, sweet sensation flooding into me. I realized that Tania had slipped a hand beneath my shirt and was running her fingertips over my stomach.

If anyone ever tells you that being fed on by a vampire of the White Court is not a big deal, they’re lying. It’s ecstasy and heroin and sex and chocolate all rolled into one, and that’s just the foreplay.

So I stopped her by tightening my grip on her until it threatened to break her neck. Tania let out a little yelp and whipped her hand away from my skin.

I met the wide eyes of the little girl and said, “Hold on, honey. I’m going to take you home in just a second.”

“You can’t!” Tania said.

I scowled and flicked her skull with the forefinger of my free hand in annoyance. “Wow, you’re new at this,” I said, panting. Five seconds of combat is enough cardio to last a while. “How old are you, kid?”

“I’m twenty,” she said, her teeth clenched with discomfort, “and I am not a child.”

“Twenty,” I said. “No wonder Lara sent a babysitter along with you.”

Just then, the room flooded with green chemical light. I eyed the Smart Gunman, who had just fired up a chemical glowstick from a pocket. I nodded my head at him, holding it a moment, and said, “I’m Dresden.”

He pushed himself up from the floor with his left arm, holding his right in close to his side. It bore long lacerations, and the blood looked black in the green light. He nodded back to me and said, warily, “Riley.”

I twisted my upper body just enough to drag Tania around a little. She let out a squeaking sound. “Can you see the score here, Riley?”

He studied the room, wincing, and said, “Yeah. How you want to play it?”

“Guns down,” I said. “Me, the wolf, the girl, and Miss Raith here will walk out. No one comes after us. Once we’re on the street, I’ll let her go.”

He stared at me, and I could see the wheels turning. I didn’t like that. The guy had been too capable to give him time to work something out.

“You boys just gave me a twenty-one gun salute, and the front door to the club was broken open, Riley,” I said. “Police response time around here is about four minutes. How long do you think it will take someone to call it in?”

Riley grimaced. “Give me your word.”

“You have it,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. He looked around the room and said, “Stand down. We’re going to let them leave.”

“Damn you, Riley!” Tania snarled.

I pressed the still uncomfortably hot copper bracelet against her ear, and she yipped. “Come on, Miss Raith,” I said. I stood up, keeping her head locked in my arm. She could have made a fight of it. White Court vampires can be unbelievably strong, if only in bursts. She didn’t seem up for a physical fight, but I wasn’t taking chances. I moved carefully and kept my balance, ready to move instantly if she tried anything.

“Come on honey,” I said to the little girl. I extended my free hand to her. “I’m going to take you home.”

She stood up and reluctantly took my hand.

Will padded out of the shadows to walk on the other side of the girl, his teeth bared. On a wolf, that is an absolutely terrifying expression.

As I went by Riley, I asked, “Lara giving Tania here a lesson?”

“Something like that,” he said. “You hurt her, things will have to get ugly.”

“I get it,” I said. “You’d have had me if I hadn’t cheated.”

“You aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying hard enough,” he replied. “Another time, maybe.”

“I hope not,” I told him, sincerely.

And I walked out with a vampire in a headlock and a little girl overlapped in the protective shadows of a wizard and a werewolf, while Lara Raith’s soldiers looked on.

“Your Honor,” the foreman of the jury said to the judge. She paused to turn to me and give me a deadly glare, “After two days of deliberation, the jury has been unable to reach a unanimous verdict in the case.”

Luther, lonely at his table, blinked and sat up straighter, his eyes opening wider.

The assistant DA made an almost identical expression. Beside him, Tania sat staring stonily forward, with her hair combed over her singed ear.

The judge eyed the jury box with weary resignation, and her gaze settled on me.

“What?” I said, and folded my arms. “I believed him.”

She rubbed at her eyes with one hand and said something beneath her breath. I listened closely, which is much closer than most people can, and thought I heard her mutter, “. . . goddamned supernatural assholes . . .”

She lifted her eyes again and spoke in that rote-repetition voice. “That being the case, I have no choice but to find a mistrial. Mister Tremont, the prosecution’s office will need to notify me about whether or not the people mean to continue pursuing this case against the defendant.”

I eyed Tania, smiling.

If the White Court tried to push this trial again, I could produce the girl, Maria, as a witness. Maria was currently being watched by a number of werewolves and wasn’t going to go anywhere. If they continued pushing Luther, I could drag their ugliness out into the light—and if there was anything the White Court hated, it was looking ugly.

Tania gave me a sulking glance. Then she muttered something to Tremont, who blinked at her. They had a brief, heated discussion conducted entirely in whispers. Then Tremont looked back up at them. “Ah, your Honor. The state would like to drop all charges.”

“It would?” the judge asked. Then she rolled her eyes and said, “Of course it would. All right people, justice is served, court is adjourned.” She banged her gavel down half-heartedly and rose. We all stood up as she left the courtroom, and then we began filing out.

Luther sat there dazed as the bailiff approached and removed his handcuffs. Then he was buried by a pair of quietly squealing children who piled onto him, and were shortly joined by a woman with tears in her eyes. I heard him start laughing as he hugged them.

I left, because there was something in my eyes.

Outside, in the parking lot, someone approached me and I felt a tug at my sleeve. It took me a second to recognize the judge in her civilian clothes—a plain pair of slacks and a white shirt.

“Let me guess,” she said. “Someone found the girl.”

“The girl from what’s-his-name’s testimony?” I asked, guilelessly.

“And if the girl had gotten up in front of everyone and answered questions, it would have made things awkward for whoever was behind Black. Am I right?”

I scratched at my nose with one finger and said, “Maybe.”

She snorted and turned to walk away. “Worst jurist ever.”

“Thanks,” I said.

She stopped and looked at me over her shoulder with a faint smile. “You’re welcome.”

I hung around long enough to see Luther leaving the building with his family, a free man.

Maybe Will had been right.

Justice served.