Skin Game

Seven

We got out of Karrin’s little SUV and headed toward the creepy old slaughterhouse full of dangerous beings. Which. . pretty much tells you what kind of day I was having, right there.

You know, sometimes it feels like I don’t have any other kind of day.

Like, ever.

On the other hand, I’m not sure what I would really do with any other kind of day. I mean, at some point in my life, I had to face it-I was pretty much equipped, by experience and inclination, for mayhem.

“Too bad,” Karrin mused.

“Too bad what?”

“We didn’t have time to get you an actual haircut,” she said. “Seriously, did you do it yourself? Maybe without a mirror?”

I put a hand up to my head self-consciously and said, “I had some help from the General. And, hey, I didn’t say anything about your man-shoes.”

“They’re steel-toed,” she said calmly. “In case I need to plant them in anyone’s ass as a result of him calling them man-shoes. And seriously, you let Toot help you with your hair?”

“Sure as hell wasn’t going to let Alfred try it. He’d probably scrape it off with a glacier or something.”

“Alfred?”

“Demonreach.”

Karrin shuddered. “That thing.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said. “Not exactly charming company, but not bad.”

“It’s a demon that drove an entire town full of people insane to keep them away.”

“And it could have done much, much worse,” I said. “It’s a big, ugly dog. A cop should know about those.”

“You’re glad it’s there when someone breaks into your house,” she said, “because then it can drive them so freaking crazy that the city erases all record of the incident.”

“Exactly. And then no one remembers your ugly man-shoes.”

By then, we’d reached the door. Both of us knew why we were giving each other a hard time. There was nothing mean-spirited in it.

We were both scared.

I would go through the door first. My spell-wrought black leather duster was better armor than the vest Karrin would be wearing beneath her coat. I gripped my new staff and readied my mind to throw up a shield if I needed one. We’d done this dance before: If something was ready to come at us, I’d hold it off, and she would start putting bullets in it.

Karrin folded her arms over her chest, which happened to put her hand near the butt of her gun, and nodded at me. I nodded back, made sure my duster was closed across my front, and opened the door.

Nothing came screaming out of the shadows at us. Nobody started shooting at us. So far, so good.

The door opened onto a long hallway with light at the far end, enough to let us walk by. The interior walls of the building were old and cracked and covered in decades of graffiti. The night had brought a cold wind off the lake and the building creaked and groaned. The air smelled like mildew and something else, something almost beneath the threshold of perception that set my teeth on edge-old, old death.

“These evil freaks,” Karrin said. “They always pick the most charming places to hang out.”

“Dark energy here,” I said. “Keeps people from wandering in and randomly interfering. And it feels homey.”

“I know you haven’t burned down any buildings in a while,” she said, “but if you start feeling the need. .”

When we reached the end of the hallway, it turned into a flight of stairs. We followed those up, silently, and at the top of them a door opened onto a balcony over a large factory floor two stories high, running three or four hundred feet down the length of the building. The remains of an overhead conveyor line were still there; it had probably once carried sides of beef from the slaughter pen to various processing stations, but the machinery that had been there was all gone. All that was left were the heavy metal frames, empty now, which had once held the machines in place, and a few rusted, lonely old transport dollies that must once have been loaded up with packaged ribs and steaks and ground beef.

In the middle of the floor were a dozen brand-new work lights, blazing away, and an enormous wooden conference table complete with big leather chairs, brightly illuminated in the glow of the lamps. There was a second table loaded with what looked like a catered dinner, covered with dishes, drinks, and a fancy coffee machine. A few feet away from that was a small pen of wire mesh, and inside it were a dozen restless brown-and-tan goats.

Goats. Huh.

Nicodemus was sitting with one hip on the conference table, a Styrofoam coffee cup in his hands, smiling genially. Ascher was just being seated in a chair, which one of Nicodemus’s guards held out for her solicitously. Binder sat down in the chair beside her, nodded to Nicodemus, and folded his arms with the air of a man prepared to be patient. Deirdre approached the table in her girl disguise, holding a cup of coffee in each hand, offering them to the new arrivals, smiling pleasantly.

There were half a dozen of Nicodemus’s tongueless guards in sight on catwalks above the floor, and Squire Jordan, now all cleaned up, was waiting for us at the far end of the balcony. He had a sidearm, but it was holstered.

“Hi, Jordan,” I said. “What’s with the goats?”

He gave me a level look and said nothing.

“I don’t like having guns above us and all around us,” Karrin said. “Screw that.”

“Yep,” I said. “Go tell your boss we’ll come down there when the flunkies go find something else to do.”

Jordan looked like he might take umbrage at the remark.

“I don’t care what you think, Jordan,” I said. “Go tell him what I said, or I walk. Good luck explaining to him how you lost him a vital asset.”

Jordan’s jaw clenched. But he spun stiffly on one heel, descended an old metal stairway to the floor, and crossed to Nicodemus. He wrote something on a small notepad and passed it to his boss.

Nicodemus looked up at me and smiled. Then he handed the notepad back to Jordan, nodded, and said something.

Jordan pursed his lips and let out three piercing whistles, which got the instant attention of the guards. Then he waved a finger over his head in a circular motion, and they all descended from the catwalks to join him. They headed out, toward the far end of the floor.

Ascher and Binder turned to regard me as this happened, the former bright-eyed and interested, the latter justifiably apprehensive. Once the guards were out of sight, I started down the stairs, with Karrin walking a step behind me and slightly to one side.

“You’ve grown more suspicious, Mr. Dresden,” Nicodemus said as I approached.

“There’s no such thing as too suspicious with you, Nicky,” I said.

Nicodemus didn’t like the familiar nickname. Irritation flickered over his face and was gone. “I suppose I can’t blame you. We’ve always been adversaries in our previous encounters. We’ve never worked together as associates.”

“That’s because you’re an asshole,” I said. I picked the chair two down from Binder and sat. I gave him a steady look and then said to Nicodemus, “We’ve already got a conflict of interest going.”

“Oh?”

I jerked a thumb at Binder. “This guy. I said the next time he operated in Chicago, we were going to have a problem.”

“Christ,” Binder said. He said it in Cockney. It came out “kroist.” He looked at Nicodemus and said, “I told you this was an issue.”

“Whatever problem you have with Mr. Tinwhistle is your personal problem, Dresden,” Nicodemus said. “Until such time as the job is over, I expect you to treat him as a professional peer and an ally. If you fail to do so, I will regard it as a failure to repay Mab’s debt to me and, regrettably, will be forced to make such an unfortunate fact public knowledge.”

Translation: Mab’s name would get dragged through the mud. I knew who she would take it out on, too.

I glanced back over my shoulder at Karrin, who had taken up a stance behind me and to one side, her expression distant, dispassionate, her eyes focused on nothing in particular. She gave a slight shrug of her shoulders.

“Okay,” I said, turning back to Nicodemus. I eyed Binder. “I’m giving you a three-day pass, Binder. But bear in mind that I’m going to hold you responsible for what you do in my town at the end of it. I’d be cautious if I were you.”

Binder swallowed.

At that, Ascher stood up. “Hi,” she said, smiling brightly. “You don’t know me. I’m Hannah. Back off my partner before you get hurt.”

“I know who you are, hot stuff,” I drawled, not standing. I set my staff down across the table. “And I already backed off your partner. You can tell from how there aren’t any splatter marks. Play nice, Ascher.”

Her smile vanished at my response, and her dark eyes narrowed. She drummed her nails on the tabletop exactly once, slowly, as if contemplating a decision. A smirk touched her mouth. “So you’re the infamous Dresden.” Her eyes went past me, to Karrin. Ascher was a foot taller than she was. “And this is your bodyguard? Seriously? Aren’t they supposed to be a little bigger?”

“She represents the Lollipop Guild,” I replied. “She’ll represent them right through the front and out the back of your skull if you don’t show a little respect.”

“I’d like to see her try,” Ascher said.

“You won’t see it,” Karrin said softly.

The room got quiet and intent for a moment, though I never heard Karrin move. I knew she’d be standing there, not looking directly at anyone, watching everyone. That’s a scary look, if you know what really dangerous people look like. Ascher did. I saw the tension start at her neck and shoulders, and make her clench her jaw.

“Easy, Hannah,” Binder said, his tone soothing. He knew what Karrin could do on a fast draw. She’d dispatched some of his minions for him the last time he’d been in town. “Dresden’s given a truce. We’re all professionals here, right? Easy.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Nicodemus said in a patiently strained paternal tone. He went to the head of the table, of course, and seated himself. “Can we please settle down and get to work?”

“Fine with me,” I said, not looking away from Ascher and Binder, until Ascher finally sniffed and returned to her seat.

“Would you care to sit, Miss Murphy?” Nicodemus asked.

“I’m fine,” Karrin said.

“As you wish,” he said easily. “Deirdre?”

Deirdre picked up an armful of folders and came around the table, passing them out to everyone seated. She rather pointedly skipped Karrin, who ignored her. I opened my rather thin folder, and found a cover page that read: DAY ONE.

“Everyone here knows the general objective,” Nicodemus said, “though I’m going to be leaving specific details vague, for the time being. I trust that I need not emphasize the need for secrecy to anyone here. Our target has a great many ways of gathering information, and if he gets wind of our venture from any of them, it will certainly come to an abrupt and terminal conclusion for all of us.”

“Keep your mouth shut,” I said, loudly enough to be a little annoying. “Got it.”

Nicodemus gave me that not-smile again. “In order to make clear to you all the potential gains to be had in this enterprise, you shall each be paid two million dollars upon our successful removal of my particular goal, guaranteed.”

Karrin’s breath stopped for a second. My stomach did an odd thing.

Man. Two million dollars.

I mean, I wasn’t gonna take Nicodemus’s money. I wasn’t doing this for the money. Neither was she. But neither of us had ever been exactly wealthy, and there were always bills to pay. I mean, stars and stones. Two million bucks would buy you a lot of ramen.

“In addition,” Nicodemus continued, “you are welcome to whatever you can carry away from the target. There is an unfathomable amount of wealth there-more than we could take away with a locomotive, much less on foot.”

“What kind of wealth?” Binder asked. “Cash, you mean?”

“For what that is worth,” Nicodemus said, an edge of contempt in his voice. “But that is collected more as a curiosity than anything else, I suspect. The real trove contains gold. Jewels. Art. Priceless artifacts of history. Virtually every rare and valuable thing to have gone mysteriously missing over the past two thousand years has wound up there. I would suggest that perhaps filling a few packs with precious gemstones might be the most profitable and least traceable course of action for each of you, but if you simply must have something more distinctive, you are welcome to take it if you can carry it and if it does not slow down our egress. I think it easily possible for each of you to beat the cash payment by an order of magnitude.”

So, not two million each.

Twenty-two million each.

That was so much money, it almost didn’t have a real meaning. . which was a real meaning all by itself.

“And what are you after?” Ascher asked, openly suspicious. “If you’re willing to dish out two million to each of us, you certainly aren’t hurting for money. You don’t need a backpack of diamonds.”

Her reasoning made me like her a little more. Her tone doubled it.

Nicodemus smiled. “I’ll make that clear to you before we go in. For now, suffice to say that it is a single, small article of relatively little monetary value.”

Liar, I thought.

“As I said to Dresden before, he has known me only as an adversary. Much of my reputation has been made from those who have opposed me-those who survived the experience, that is.” He smiled and took a sip of coffee. “There is another side to that coin. One does not operate for as many years as I have by betraying allies. It simply isn’t practical. Certainly, one uses every weapon one has when dealing with foes-but when I work with associates, I do not turn aside or leave them behind. It is not from any sense of sentiment. It is because I do business with many people over the course of centuries, and treachery is a bad long-term investment. It simply isn’t good business.”

Liar, I thought. But maybe a little less emphatically than I had before. What he was saying made sense. In the supernatural world, there were plenty of people and things that counted their life spans in centuries. Wrong a wizard when he’s young, for example, and you could wait three hundred years to find out he was never able to put it behind him-and has been working to gain the clout he needs to make it clear to you that your actions were unacceptable. Cross a vampire, and it could haunt you for millennia.

A certain degree of cutthroat pragmatism was what made any kind of alliance between various supernatural entities possible. I’d seen it between my grandfather and a professional assassin called the Hellhound. I’d seen it when squaring off against various bad guys, over the years, most of whom were willing to make a deal of some kind. Hell, I’d done it, with Mab, and she was doing it again with Nicodemus by sticking me here.

So it was entirely possible that he was on the up-and-up. Or at least that he was as sincere as I was about following through on the whole alliance thing. We had to get his McGuffin and get out again. Until then, I was betting, he might be good to his word.

And after that, everything would be up in the air.

On the other hand, Nicodemus had gone out of his way to remove as much memory of himself as possible from the human race, by destroying records of his deeds over the centuries. Guys who are on the up-and-up don’t go to those lengths to hide what they’ve done.

Not that it mattered. Mab had given her word. I had to play nice until we had grabbed the loot from Hades, or until Nicodemus tried to stick a knife in my back.

Fun, fun, fun.

I flipped to the second page of the folder and found a photo of a woman I knew, and hadn’t seen in. . Hell’s bells, had it been almost ten years? She hadn’t changed much in that time, except for maybe looking leaner and harder. I wasn’t sure she’d be at all happy to see me, and I knew for damned sure what she would think of Nicodemus.

And since when had I become the guy that things happened to ten years ago?

Nicodemus continued in his lecture voice. “Entry to the target in the Nevernever requires us to find a matching site here in the mortal world. That means breaking into a high-security facility in the real world before we can even get started in the Nevernever.”

I raised my hand.

“Pursuant to that,” Nicodemus said, and then paused. He sighed. “Yes, Mr. Dresden?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “She’s never going to work with you.”

“Probably not,” Nicodemus agreed. “She may, however, work with you. We need an expert in security systems with a working knowledge of the supernatural world. The pool of such individuals is rather small. I’ve arranged a meeting with her at a local event in approximately ninety minutes. You and Miss Ascher will make contact and convince her to join our cause.”

“Suppose she won’t?” I asked.

“Be more convincing,” he said. “We need her in order to proceed.”

I clenched my teeth, and then nodded once. Hell, if he needed her to make it happen, then by screwing this up, maybe I could make sure it didn’t. “Fine. But it’s me and Murphy.”

“No,” Ascher said. “It’s me and Binder.”

“I’m afraid the event is a formal one,” Nicodemus said. “I’ve taken the liberty of securing appropriate attire and identities for Dresden and Miss Ascher, neither of which would be compatible with Miss Murphy or Binder. Perhaps Miss Murphy could serve as your driver. She has the shoes for it.”

I couldn’t actually hear Karrin grind her teeth, but I knew she had.

“Binder,” Nicodemus said, “I have another errand for you. You’ll need to pick up the fourth-pardon, Miss Murphy, the fifth-member of the team at the train station. He’s stated that he’ll only meet someone he knows.”

Binder nodded once. “Who is it?”

“Goodman Grey.”

Binder’s face went pale. “Ah. Yes, I’ve worked with the gent.”

“Who is he?” Ascher asked.

“He’s. . not a man to cross,” Binder said. “But a pro. I’ll pick him up. Smoother that way.”

Ascher pressed her lips together, as if she didn’t like it, but nodded. “Fine, then.” She looked down the table at me and smiled. “Well, Dresden, it looks like it’s time to put on our party dress.”

“Gee,” I said. “What fun.”

And I closed the folder on the picture of Anna Valmont.