darktrent182 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
darktrent182) wrote2008-10-02 02:40 am
darktrent182) wrote2008-10-02 02:40 am
Entry tags:
FIC: Finders Keepers (2/2) [The Dresden Files]
When I opened my eyes, I found myself inside my own mind. It hadn't changed much since the last time I was there. It still had the circle of light, with someone prowling just outside the edge of it. Off in the distance, I could see the hole that a demon had dug into my head weeks before. It wasn't closed entirely, but it was a bit more filled in than before.
I zeroed in on the figure just outside of the circle, and then suddenly, my subconscious closed the distance between us and looked me in the eye. He looked as well groomed and evil-me as ever, his goatee trimmed, his hair brushed. He was wearing all black, of course, with a black leather duster that billowed dramatically behind him. "We need him safe."
He was talking about Bob, and for once, I didn't bother arguing with him. "I know."
"No, I don't think you do," he snapped. "You already figured out that we've got a bit of Bob's energy mixed with ours."
"And a bit of Justin's too," I added. "And?"
"And if she finds that out, we could be in serious trouble," he half-growled at me. Suddenly, he grabbed the front of my shirt and jerked me forward until we were almost nose to nose. "You don't have time to sleep."
"She?" I frowned. "She who?"
He glared at me. "The she who took Bob, you idiot. The she who could really care less about whether or not we're alive at the end of the day."
"I still don't know who you're talking about, and if you dragged me here just to tell me this, mind if I say it's been a waste of time?"
He gritted his teeth. "You've got to be kidding. You know that Mai likes wearing robes and dresses--"
"That was Mai?" I spluttered, staring at my double incredulously. The only thing that stopped me from starting to gibber was that I was too shocked to do more than just stand there looking like an idiot.
Subconscious Harry sighed heavily, letting me go to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Yes. It was Mai. You already knew whoever took Bob wasn't human."
"But how the hell did she know I was there?" I demanded.
My double rolled his eyes. "I don't know. We're the same person, remember?"
"Maybe she followed us?" I guessed.
He shook his head. "You would've heard the footsteps." He paused before adding, "That, or Bob would've heard her."
"So, that would mean she was already down there," I said, frowning. "Could she have been down there to get rid of the snake, like we were?"
"Why don't you use your tracking crystal and go ask her?" my subconscious asked. "I'm sure she'd love to tell you all about her plan to bring sunlight and sweetness to the world, one ball of dragon's breath at a time."
I glared at him. "Was there anything else you needed to tell me, or can I wake up now?"
Evil Harry shook his head. "Listen to me. That sword Mai was carrying is important. Remember how familiar it felt? It could mean one of two things."
"Either it was something that Justin made before he died, and Mai just ended up with it somehow," I offered.
"Or it's something with Bob's magic in it," my double finished. "Bob would've been a force to be reckoned with when he was alive. If he made that--"
"--And if he made it during his necromancer days, I could be in trouble." I stopped for a second. "But why would he enchant a sword when he was a necromancer? He wanted to bring Winifred back."
"And how do you get more victims to come with you so that you can drain them dry?" my double asked dryly.
"Oh." Trying to imagine Bob with a sword in hand was surprisingly harder than I thought it would be. I wasn't sure just how I imagined Bob finding people to use to bring Winifred back to life, but my own ideas had leaned more toward what had happened when Bob had brought my uncle back to life. He'd use a small spell to knock them out, and then drag them over to where he'd been keeping Winifred's body, or something similar.
Subconscious Me nodded. "It's something to keep in mind."
"But why would Mai want to take Bob?" I asked. "She wasn't down there, lying in wait for us. At least, I don't think so."
"Crime of opportunity," my double pointed out. "She could've used Council channels in order to do it, but you were down in the sewers, you had Bob out of your house, and you couldn't make a positive ID on Mai."
"Then how do you know it was her?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at my subconscious.
He sighed. "I'm your instinct, remember? I clued you in that she didn't have human reflexes. It's her, trust me. And if you're going to go toe-to-toe with her, you'd better bring Murphy along."
"Are you insane?" I demanded. "This is Mai we're talking about, right?"
He nodded, looking like he was a few steps away from grabbing my neck with both hands and throttling me. "If you don't run to the Council, Mai's going to know something's up. If she thinks you know she stole Bob, she's going to get ready to take you on. Murphy would be the wild card that might just give you a leg up on Mai."
I frowned. "Murph's also likely to get the cops involved."
"Were you listening to her? She knows what she's getting into. She's a big girl, and if I keep talking, we're going to rehash the coach-versus-protector conversation, and right now, you don't have time. Wake up, get Murphy to take us to Burger King, and let's go beat up a dragon to get our boyfriend back."
I blushed. "Bob's not our boyfriend."
"He's not?" he asked innocently.
The last thing I saw before I woke up was my subconscious smirking at me.
The jerk.
I felt a little better after having slept, and when I made sure that the tracking crystal was still attuned, I headed downstairs to see Murphy leaning against the backdoor, her arms folded across her chest. I stopped and blinked at her.
"You didn't think you were going to be leaving without me, were you?" she asked, smiling a little.
I blinked at her again, surprised by how closely her words mirrored the ones that Bob had said to me before we'd set out for the sewers and Undertown the day before. "Um, no."
She blinked back at me, and then shot me a grin. "Good. Where's the crystal say to go?" She glanced at it curiously.
"Burger King first," I declared. "But I've got a phone call to make first."
Murphy raised an eyebrow at me. "Who're you calling?"
"A friend," I said, picking up the phone in the kitchen and dialing.
A few rings later, Ebenezar McCoy answered. "Hello?"
"Hi, Ebenezar," I said. "Ancient Mai stole Bob."
There was a startled pause, and Murphy shot me a curious look. I shook my head at her as Ebenezar said, "What?"
"Mai stole Bob from me. I was out working a case when she showed up, knocked me out, and took Bob," I explained. "I don't have time to run to the Council to complain about it, because this is Ancient Mai, and I'd rather not wait around to see why she stole him."
Ebenezar grunted into the phone. "I'll let 'em know what's going on. What're you going to do in the meantime?"
"Get a Whopper, and get my friend back," I answered. "Preferably in that order. How long will it take for you to get in touch with the Council?"
"Not long," Ebenezar replied. "I know a few people on the Senior Council. Be careful, Hoss. Mai's a nasty customer on a good day."
I glanced at Murphy and smiled a little to myself. "It's okay, sir. Let's just say I have an ace in the hole."
I heard a heavy sigh, and then, "All right. Hang up, Hoss."
I did, and Murphy stared at me.
I blinked. "What?"
"There's someone you call 'sir'?" she asked, looking a bit startled.
"Yeah." I shrugged before shooting her a hopeful look. "Burger King?"
"You want food before we go find Bob?"
"You're objecting?" I asked curiously. "We can eat on the way there, unless your car's too sacred for food."
Murphy snorted. "You never suggest stopping for food," she remarked. With that, we got in her unmarked, hit the nearest drive-thru, and headed out to face a dragon.
It took an hour of city traffic before we were headed to the outskirts of town, toward the more expensive houses that almost resembled castles from a distance. I realized about a few miles out from Chicago proper that we were close to my uncle's house, but when the crystal pointed firmly away from the road leading up to the estate, aiming steadily toward the homes around Lake Michigan, I kept a sigh of relief to myself.
It took another half an hour to find a sprawling estate protected from the road by a row of tall, old trees, and about a mile from the entrance to the grounds to the house itself. If I had thought that Justin's place was huge when I was a kid, I would've been amazed to see a house of this magnitude existing in the United States. Bay windows overlooked most of the grounds, with brick and buttresses and lots of other architectural terms I didn't know creating something that looked almost organic.
Considering how much power I was sure Mai had to be packing, I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd grown the freaking place from scratch.
Murphy pulled into the expansive driveway, the sedan almost dwarfed by its surroundings. It looked a hell of a lot shabbier than anything else that was there. And that's when I noticed there weren't any cars.
Maybe Mai was out for the day.
Yeah, and maybe some of her cousins would suddenly fly out of my butt.
Murphy and I got out of her car, and looked around. She circled around to join me, and we both looked at the crystal, which had started a lazy circuit on the string I'd tied it with.
"What's that mean?" she asked.
"I didn't design these things with a Z axis," I grumbled. "So, it's possible that either Bob is above us or below us."
Murphy looked pointedly at the house, and then at the crystal. "Wonderful." She turned, and headed for what we could only guess was the front door.
"Murph!" I yelped. "What are you doing?"
"What's it look like I'm doing?" she asked. "I'm going to the front door."
"Are you crazy?" I protested, my heart threatening to leap out of my chest. "We should be trying to find an open window or something, not knocking and asking if Mai's found Jesus."
Murphy gave me an unamused look. "Is Mai going to be expecting you to come in through her front door?"
That stopped me. "Um, no."
"Then the front door it is," she said firmly, turning back around and mounting the steps to a porch that probably had its own zip code. "I swear, Harry, you're never going to make it as a PI if you don't try to anticipate their next move."
"You know me, Murph," I said cheerfully, "We wizards never plan ahead or anything."
"Could've fooled me," she snorted, and then she pulled her gun.
"Um, Murph? What're you doing?" I asked, looking from her to her gun and back.
"What's it look like I'm doing?" she asked evenly. "Whoever this is, she's a thief and possibly a murderer."
"Y'know, we could find an open window, not make a mess of things," I suggested helpfully.
Murphy frowned at me. "All right, what's making you twitch now?"
"I'm not twitching," I objected.
"Yes, you are." Her eyes narrowed. "You weren't exactly all that specific about who 'she' is, Harry. What am I walking into?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I said seriously.
She glared at me. "Harry," she growled.
"She's a dragon," I said.
She paused before nodding. "You're right. I don't believe you." That was when she turned, picked up one foot, and slammed it against the very nice wooden door. There was a very loud cracking, crunching sound, and then the door swung inwards on silent hinges. Murphy walked right in as if she owned the place, and when I didn't immediately follow, she turned around and raised an eyebrow at me.
I eyed the threshold before gritting my teeth and stepping over it. As I suspected, Mai hadn't done anything to weaken her threshold, like say for instance, run an occult consulting agency out of the front half of the building. When I put my foot down inside the house, I could feel my magic being pulled out of me, like using a strainer to drain cooked pasta, and I resisted the urge to look behind me to see if it was just hovering on the doorstep. I got my other foot in and inhaled slowly.
"Harry," Murphy said, frowning, "are you okay?"
"Not really, no," I admitted. "The sooner we get Bob's skull, the sooner we can get out of here."
She kept frowning, but after I nodded, she turned away from me to look at the foyer we'd stepped into. It was big, looked like it cost more than I'd ever hope to see in about a hundred years, and it even smelled nice. As I followed Murphy inside, the wards hit me about six inches later, hard enough to feel like a brick wall. Guess Mai hadn't skimped on the personal defenses.
"Harry?"
I hadn't realized I'd closed my eyes until I opened them and looked at Murphy, who'd made it halfway down a hall with framed photographs and hideously expensive walls before she'd turned to look at me. "Hang on a sec, Murph."
I closed my eyes again and concentrated, opening my wizard's Sight. It's hard to describe what you see with your Third Eye. Not only do you see things more clearly, see what they really are, but all of your senses are opened. It's as though a thick veil is lifted away, and you see the world around you, unfiltered. Magic is just as tangible and real to the your senses when you use the Sight too. Sometimes the things you see with the Third Sight are very beautiful, sometimes they're not. And the thing about the Third Sight is that you'll never be able to forget it. You can try to ignore it, but when you think about what happened, what you saw with your Sight, it comes rushing back as if you'd just seen it a few moments ago. Wizards learn to how to close their Third Eye very quickly, and they keep it closed unless there's an emergency.
I opened my eyes carefully, but instead of seeing the ornate walls, I could see solid rock that looked like it had been ripped into shape. Blues of different shades swirled around my eyes, the wards Mai had put into place resembling shields of different sizes and makes. The walls around Murphy and I smelled of something primal and ancient, the dark scent of old caverns and a time when Man knew that they weren't at the top of the food chain. I could hear wisps of things, barely large enough to call themselves spirits, hovering around the house, attached to the walls, the floor, the ceiling and feeding off of the energies. Unlike Victor Sells' lake house, these spirits weren't malevolent things feeding off of death and evil. They were just spirits, leeching off the excess magic that lingered on the walls.
This wasn't just some house I was looking at. This was Mai's demesne, her den, her little slice of sanctuary in Illinois.
Stars and stones, this was just getting better and better.
Murphy stood, looking like an avenging angel amidst the rock, her physical beauty almost breathtaking. The .44 in her hand looked like a sword now, and she still looked at me impatiently.
I cleared my throat, and then closed my eyes again. When I opened them, it was back to the freaking expensive walls and floors, and Murphy looked less angelic.
"Are you finished?" Murphy asked.
I took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah."
"Any ideas on where Bob might be?" she asked. "What's the crystal..." Her voice trailed off, and I looked down at the crystal.
It had stopped in mid-swing. I frowned at it, and when I headed in the direction it indicated, it suddenly did a 270, and aimed very determinedly at a wall. A second later, it started spinning around until it was a blur of purple. Suddenly, the string snapped, and the crystal shattered when it smacked into the very nice-looking tile.
"Shit," I muttered.
"That happen to you a lot?" Murphy asked, trying to cover how worried she looked by sounding curious. It didn't help too much.
"Not really," I admitted. "Okay, let's try to go down as much as possible."
"Down?" she asked skeptically.
I nodded. "You know how Smaug kept his lair underground?"
Murphy's eyes narrowed at me. "Did you just mention Tolkien while we're in a perp's house?"
"Yes, I did," I said as patiently as possible. "Now, trust me. We want to go down. If you can find any doors that lead to a basement level of some kind, we'll have a good place to start."
"And if this woman and Bob aren't down there?" Murphy asked.
"Then we go up." I said. At her unimpressed look, I shrugged. "It's either that, or we do a room by room search of the house, and I forgot to pack my signal flares."
Murphy snorted. "Fine, let's go."
It took about twenty minutes before we finally lucked out. As we made our way down, with Murphy in front since she had the gun, I could dimly hear voices. Murphy stopped when she heard them, and she glanced up at me. I nodded, and then she stepped off the last stair, heading down the hallway, toward an open door, light spilling on the floor from where it had been left open.
"So we're agreed?" I heard Mai purr, and part of me wanted to pull a Murphy and then throw her across the room.
I saw Murphy glance at me, and I nodded, mouthing, "That's her."
Murphy nodded, her face set in concentration as she braced her feet and readjusted her grip on the gun.
"We are," Bob said, and I had to fight not to heave a relieved sigh. I hadn't realized just how much I'd missed Bob's voice until I heard him practically sneer at Ancient Mai.
"Excellent," Mai purred again, and then I heard the loud hum that I'd first heard back in the sewers connected to Undertown. I gasped.
"The sword," I whispered to Murphy.
"You don't know how long I've waited to do this, warlock," Mai sneered.
Murphy nodded sharply. And then she raised her foot and kicked the door in.
The door slammed open with surprising speed, revealing a room lit by hundreds of tiny candles, the lights reflected off of coin-sized mirrors that hung from the wall I could see in an asymmetric pattern. Mai was dressed in a dark yellow and black dress, her features cold and beautiful. She was holding the sword she'd been using in the sewers, but now it was starting to shake in her hand. She looked down at the blade, ignoring me, and just as I watched, the shining silver metal started to crack down the center.
Mai's head jerked up to Bob, who was actually smiling at her. "What the hell did you do?"
Bob's smile didn't waver, despite the fact that he had a very pissed off dragon staring at him. "It was never meant to be used against its maker, Ancient Mai. If you still wish to continue with the bargain, you should do it quickly."
I rubbernecked between the two of them, and then as Mai let out a low growl, I couldn't stop myself from watching the sword that she lifted with both hands. More cracks spiderwebbed across its surface, and as it got closer and closer to Bob, large shards broke off, bouncing off the floor in a shower of metal, each piece sounding like a miniature church bell as it rang against the floor.
Then the sword, looking like a shadow of its former self with a long sliver of metal still attached to the hilt, slid into Bob's chest cleanly, right through his nonexistent ribs, and slamming home into his heart.
The remnants of the sword suddenly glowed like white fire, forcing me to cover my eyes. I heard Murphy grunt, and Mai let out a piercing shriek of pain before the light winked out. I opened my eyes just in time to see Bob, his eyes wide and staring, sink to his knees, and then collapse on the floor with a thump.
I stared at Bob, and then up at Mai, who seemed to have recovered from the blinding white flash. She screamed, sounding all too inhuman in her fury, and fell on Bob.
Or, at least she tried to. I took my hockey stick, and slammed the blade into her face just before she reached him.
She recoiled in shock, but before she could turn on me, Murphy shouted, "Freeze!"
Mai stopped for a moment, allowing me to see that not only had her mask slipped, Murphy was now getting her first look at a real, live dragon. One whose face had apparently been flash-fried by the sudden burst of light seconds before.
Mai's jaws opened, and she hissed angrily before her reason returned, and she sank back into the shadows. I knelt down next to Bob and reached out a hand to touch him.
His jacket felt like it was made out of something expensive.
"Stars and sky," I breathed, surging forward to touch his face, check his pulse. It was fast as hell, but I couldn't stop myself from touching him, cupping warm skin with my hands. "Bob?" I said, not really believing what my hands were telling me. I licked my lips and tried again. "Bob?"
Blue-green eyes fluttered open, and our eyes met for a split second before we both averted our gazes at the same time. I couldn't stop a smile, and I leaned down to lightly rest my forehead against his. "Bob..." I whispered.
"Hello, Harry," Bob rasped, and then he cleared his throat. "As much as I would like to reacquaint myself with certain aspects of living, this floor is hurting my back. Would you be so kind as to help me up?"
I took the hand he held toward me and pulled him up, grunting at the effort. Bob was a bit heavier than I'd expected.
When Bob looked around, he blinked when he saw Murphy, who'd been keeping her gun trained on Ancient Mai. "Lieutenant Murphy?" he asked, sounding as surprised as he looked.
"Hi, Bob," Murphy said in her clipped, I'm-busy-keeping-a-gun-aimed-on-a-dragon voice.
Bob glanced at me curiously. "I don't suppose you brought anyone else along with you?"
I glanced at the shadows where Mai was still putting herself back together, or so I guessed. "We might have."
"You didn't," Mai said from behind me. I may have jumped about a foot, but no matter what Bob says, I didn't squeal like a little girl.
The three of us turned to face her, and she was back to her normal self. Or as normal as she usually appeared, in any case. "Hi, Ancient Mai," I said, grinning at her. "How's it going? That dress looks nice on you."
Mai's eyes narrowed, and for a second, they flashed red. "You're already intruding on my domain, Dresden. Be lucky I'm letting you live long enough to explain why you are here."
"Hold it right there, lady," Murphy said in a low, dangerous tone of her own. Her gun was aimed at Ancient Mai's chest. "I've already got you on theft and attempted murder."
Mai's eyes flashed again as she took in Murphy. "A mortal police officer, Dresden? You have sunk low, haven't you?"
Murphy narrowed her eyes at Ancient Mai. "I've seen you at Harry's place."
"And as soon as I'm finished with you, you'll swear you never grew past the age of ten," Mai sneered.
"I wouldn't do that, Madam," Bob said mildly. I glanced at him curiously. "It wouldn't do to break one of the laws of magic in front of two witnesses."
Mai's eyes narrowed. "Who said anything about witnesses, warlock?"
I gritted my teeth and stepped in front of Bob. "If you think you're going to touch any of us, you'd better think again," I snarled.
"Please, Harry," Bob said, and then I felt his hand rest on my shoulder, squeezing it once. I got distracted by how strong it felt, but I told myself to focus on the dragon that wanted to kill us, not on the hand that was resting on my shoulder. "Let's not be hasty. I'm sure that Mai would be more than willing to be hospitable." His emphasis on the last word threw me for a second, but Mai's expression went from disdainful to really annoyed.
As I watched, she set her teeth, and turned to go up the flight of stairs Murphy and I had come down on. "To my sitting room, then," she said through gritted teeth.
Bob nodded regally. "Thank you, madam."
Murphy and I glanced at each other before Murphy followed her up the stairs. I pulled back, went inside the room, and found Bob's skull. Scooping it up, I found the drawstring bag laying on a nearby table. Depositing the skull back in the bag, I slipped the drawstring over my shoulder and jogged to catch up with the others.
Mai's sitting room was about as comfortable as being inside a museum. The couch where I sat in the middle, with Bob on my right side and Murphy on my left felt like it had been starched within an inch of its life. Everything in the room was immaculate, and I had to resist the urge to grind my dirty shoes into the carpet, just to be rude.
Mai sat across from us in a chair that looked more like a throne. "Shall I offer you refreshment?" she asked, her tone ice cold.
Bob smiled, showing a flash of crooked teeth. "I wouldn't dream of imposing, madam. All I wish is for Harry, Lieutenant Murphy, and myself to be allowed on our way, unharmed and unmolested for the entirety of the trip. In return, I will honor our agreement as originally stated."
"Bob--" I started, frowning at Mai.
"Not now, Harry," Bob said, looking over and deliberately taking my hand in his, his skin surprisingly warm against mine. "I'll explain later. Are we agreed, madam?"
Mai's eyes narrowed, and then she looked at me. "He doesn't know, does he?"
This time, Bob's expression went glacial, and he arched one grey eyebrow. "That is no business of yours," he murmured, his voice low and dangerous. It almost felt like a freaking hand pressing against my crotch. I quickly thought about what I'd stepped in while we were in the sewers, cleaning out Mister's litter box, anything unappealing.
"Are we agreed?" Bob asked again, his eyes on Mai.
"Give me your word that you'll honor your end of the bargain, warlock," Mai ordered.
Bob's eyes narrowed. "I gave it before."
"That was before the blade you said was safe struck me," Mai hissed. "Give me your word."
"I merely said that the blade you were holding could be dangerous if improperly used," Bob corrected her mildly, his lips pursing.
No, Harry. Mister's litter box.
Mai sneered. "You will give me your word, warlock, or you will be removed from Dresden's guardianship."
I finally had enough. "All right, Mai," I snapped, "for one thing, Bob's actually alive now, so I'm not his guardian anymore. For another, we don't have to do anything you say."
"You do if you want to keep Hrothbert of Bainbridge alive," Mai said, dismissing me to look back at Bob. "Give me your word."
He narrowed his eyes at her, and then after a long moment, he nodded once. "You have it."
She nodded sharply, and stood. "Our business is concluded. Allow me to show you out."
I blinked, but Bob and Murphy both stood up, so I joined them. Mai took us straight to the front door, and in five minutes, we were standing on her porch again.
"What the hell just happened?" I demanded, watching Bob gingerly walk down the stairs.
"I just got Ancient Mai to let me go willingly," he said, smiling up at me.
"Harry means what the hell just happened in general," Murphy said. "We showed up just in time to hear her talk about how long she's wanted to run you through with a sword."
Bob blinked. "I see. Well, I'll have to explain when we return to the house." He looked around curiously. "Where's your Jeep?"
"Left it where I parked before we went into Undertown," I said. "We're taking Murphy's car." I pointed at the car in question, and then Bob stared at it.
"Is it going to last the trip home?" he asked Murphy. "If you think Harry by himself is anathema to machinery, you'll find the two of us together are doubly so."
Murphy shrugged. "It made it here okay."
Bob nodded, looking hesitant, but he climbed into the passenger-side of the backseat. I helped him figure out the buckle, and after we got ourselves situated, Murphy started the car and we headed home.
After an uneventful drive back into Chicago where I watched the scenery, petted Bob's skull where it sat in my lap, and tried to look at Bob's reflection in the side windows, Murphy pulled up at my place, and the three of us headed inside. Bob paused for a moment before stepping across the threshold and shooting me a startled look.
"Harry, what happened to the wards?" he asked sharply.
"What do you mean, what happened to them?" I asked defensively. "They're right there."
Bob frowned, and after an intense look of concentration, he blinked. "Those are the wards?"
I scowled at him and folded my arms over my chest. "Yes. They are. Yeah, I know they're crappy. No, I haven't been able to strengthen them. Between the demon that got in here and all of the cops swarming the place, they've gotten weak."
"They're absolutely nonexistent," Bob hissed. "Had I known--" He stopped himself with visible effort, and closed his eyes to boot. After a minute, he opened them again, and turned to Murphy. "While I'm not the master of the household, I'm sure Harry would offer you some refreshment?" He glanced at me inquiringly.
I blinked. "Um, sure."
Murphy raised an eyebrow at this. "I'm fine, Bob. Now, you said you were going to explain what just happened at that woman's house?"
Bob nodded. "The woman is Ancient Mai. She's a wizard, like Harry and myself."
"I kind of gathered that," Murphy said dryly. "How about you start from the top? What happened after your skull was snatched? I tried to follow you, but the snake got between me and the tunnel Mai went down."
Bob licked his lips. I sat down on the corner of my desk, trying to think of Mister's litter box while also trying not to look Bob up and down.
"Mai took me to her home, and at first, she kept me inside my own skull," Bob began. I winced at that. I had learned the hard way that putting Bob in his skull and keeping him trapped there without the freedom to come out on his own was torture for him. He didn't have a physical body at the time, but being locked in his skull reminded him of the fact that he wasn't alive anymore, and that his soul could have been bent and twisted into something no living person could duplicate. "She put a rather elaborate warding circle around my skull, but other than that, she left me be."
"And then?" Murphy prompted.
"She summoned me, and showed me the Wyrmgastbona."
"Wyrmgast-what?" I asked.
Bob sighed patiently. "Wyrmgastbona, Harry. It is--" He stopped himself, and then said, "--was the name of the blade she was wielding."
Murphy frowned and shook her head. "What's so important about it?"
"It had a rather small reputation as a dragon-slayer," Bob replied, but the way he spoke made me think he knew more than he was telling us. "I aided in its construction before my... enforced retirement." He smiled apologetically at Murphy. "So, it resonated with some of my magic. She offered me a deal. I would be returned to mortality, and in exchange, I would aid in the construction of a similar weapon for her personal use."
"What's the catch?" Murphy asked.
Bob's smile was more like a smirk. "I think I've overcome it, actually. While your arrival was unexpected, it was quite fortuitous. Otherwise, Mai would have been free to lock me in a dungeon somewhere until I did the work she requested, and then she would have been able to keep me in her pocket, if you will. Though..." his voice trailed off, and he looked thoughtful. "Mai isn't foolish enough to think in the short term." He glanced at me. "She'll have something else planned."
"If she tries anything, call me," Murphy said. "I could have her tied up in police tape for a while. She gave Harry a concussion when she took your skull. I could say that was attempted murder, especially since she knew that leaving him in that room with the snake would've contributed to his death."
Bob shook his head. "You've involved yourself enough on my account, milady. I thank you for the offer, but I must respectfully decline. The fewer people Mai can target, the better. Does that explanation suffice?"
Murphy narrowed her eyes. "Not by a long shot, but--" She stopped, and took her phone out of her pocket. She frowned at it when the ringer started to warp like a stretched cassette tape. "Damn it. Mind if I use your phone?"
"Go ahead," I said, reaching over and picking it up before offering it to her. She took the phone off the jack and started spinning the rotary dial.
I glanced at Bob just in time to see him close his eyes and roll his shoulders backwards, taking his time with the movement. If he'd been shirtless, I was sure I would've been able to see the muscles bunch and flex. Instead, I took a deep breath, looked away, and debated checking to make sure Mister's litter box was clean.
Murphy hung up the phone a minute later. "It was the station. They need me back." She tucked her cell phone back in her pocket, and then looked a question at me. "Want me to give you a lift back to your Jeep?"
I should've said yes, because I'd need it if I was going to do any running around tomorrow, and I didn't have enough cash on me to take a cab over there to pick up my car.
But I saw Bob, and I shook my head. "No, thanks. I'll pick it up tomorrow."
Murphy shot me a puzzled frown, but when she looked at Bob, realization dawned. What kind of realization it was, I wasn't sure, but I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Later, Harry," Murphy said.
I nodded. "Drive safe, Murph."
Murphy left, closing the door gently behind her.
I looked at Bob. He looked back.
"There's got to be more to the story than that," I said.
He nodded. "There is."
"And?" I asked, my voice gentler than I expected it to be.
"And," Bob answered slowly, "For the first time in nearly nine hundred years, I'm dreadfully tired."
Guilt grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and gave me a good, hard shake. "Oh," I said, a bit embarrassed I hadn't realized it sooner. "Well, you know where my bed is."
He frowned. "Where are you going to sleep?"
"Living room couch," I said with a shrug. "I've slept on it before."
Bob gave me a tired version of his fondly exasperated look. "Harry, you don't have to give up your bed for me."
"I want to," I said firmly. "And I'm not taking no for an answer. Besides," I said with a smile, "you've never felt flannel before, have you? It'll be a good experience."
Bob looked like he really wanted to argue, but he looked wiped out, and his eyelids were sliding to half-mast, making him adorable in a tired kitten kind of way.
"C'mon, Bob," I said. And for the first time in my life, I guided Bob up the stairs to my loft bedroom, made him sit down on the bed, helped him take off his socks and shoes. I watched him wrestle out of his jacket, shirt, waistcoat and ascot half-heartedly, a lump in my throat. He looked like he needed someone to take care of him, especially when he mashed his cheek against my pillow, blinked, and snuggled into it, a smile spreading across his lips.
I resisted the urge to stare at the lines and muscles in his back, reminding me of drawings from Grey's Anatomy. Instead, I grabbed my bunched-up sheets, carefully undid them, and snapped them out, letting them fall gently on top of Bob's sleeping form. When they'd settled, revealing the vague outline of Bob's long-limbed frame, I couldn't resist reaching out and gently touching Bob's hair. When I was fifteen, I'd wondered what it would feel like to touch it, or run my fingers through it.
His hair was very soft, reminding me of one time when someone I met in Ottawa had been raising three ducklings. They'd been tiny, and the smallest one fit in the palm of my hand, but what had stuck in my mind was how soft their down feathers had felt.
"Sleep well," I murmured.
Bob made some kind of sleepy noise, and I knew that I should've gone downstairs and puttered around, figured out what I had to make for dinner, since we'd gotten back around sunset. But I couldn't.
Bob was sacked out on my bed, and he was alive. Before I passed out this morning, I'd been worried about someone using him to do something, like try to take over the High Council, or maybe even come after me. I'd been worried that Bob would've come out of his skull and return to the kind of slavery he'd hated, the servant of yet another master who didn't give a damn about him.
But instead, I had watched Ancient Mai, of all people, use some weird, humming sword to bring Bob back to life. Was that how it had been when my uncle's copy had brought him back to life? He'd been stolen, and then had an arrow stabbed into his chest? Bob had been sketchy with the details about his first return to mortality, but I'd put together some clues on my own.
Emotions tumbled through me. Shock was taking center stage, but it was the kind of numb shock that you feel when you see someone die right in front of you, and you have no way of stopping it. Just on its heels was wild joy because Bob was alive. I wasn't sure how it'd happened, but I wasn't about to question it. Bob was alive, and he was okay, and he wasn't in danger of using his life force in order to kill someone who was going to kill me. We were both safe, and he was sleeping, and things were all right.
Fear was tapping on joy's shoulder, reminding me of the fact that Ancient Mai didn't do things out of the goodness of her heart. There was a reason she'd brought Bob back, and from that strange conversation in Mai's sitting room, I could guess it was for something extremely dangerous. Bob had apparently been involved in enchanting swords back in the day, and that's what Mai wanted him for, but I was sure there had been things he wasn't telling me and Murphy. Curiosity was trying to shove fear out of the way, though -- what was Bob going to do for Mai? He'd mentioned that Mai probably wanted to keep him exclusively in her pocket somehow. How would that have worked? If I'd gone to the High Council and protested the theft of Bob's skull, they would've either remembered the crystal tracking skull that I'd destroyed while making the tracking spell to find Bob, or they would've seen it as gross negligence, and as soon as the skull was recovered, they would've given Bob over to a more "deserving" master, no matter how much of an asshole they were.
I don't know when I'd sat down on the edge of the bed, but I knew I had to get up. As nice and warm as my bed was, it was going to be Bob's bed until we figured out something. I tried to push away the thought that the arrangement might be temporary, and that Bob might end up leaving after he got his feet under him, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I still wasn't sure if it had really been Bob telling me that he would've wanted to get away from it all and be able to live as a hermit, or if that had been the demon talking, but it made sense. A guy who'd been bound to his skull for the past eight or nine hundred years would want to be able to make his own decisions about how he lived his life. He'd lived as a hermit before, when he had finished his training. He might want to live alone again, not have to deal with people.
And like I'd thought about when he'd first mentioned the idea, right in the middle of dealing with the head-hopping demon, living with the most recent guardian of his skull might just remind him of a time when he wasn't able to make decisions about how he wanted to live his life that were outside the limits of his curse.
I shook my head and got up. Bob needed to sleep, and I needed to think about what to eat. I wasn't sure how long Bob was going to be asleep, but it wouldn't hurt to make a little extra.
After finding some spaghetti in the cabinet, I started making dinner for two, and tried not to think about a future without Bob in it.
END
***
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Back to Part One.
This way to the prequel, Missing Persons.
This way to the sequel, Seeing Things.
And if you're just plain lost, this way to the table of contents.
I zeroed in on the figure just outside of the circle, and then suddenly, my subconscious closed the distance between us and looked me in the eye. He looked as well groomed and evil-me as ever, his goatee trimmed, his hair brushed. He was wearing all black, of course, with a black leather duster that billowed dramatically behind him. "We need him safe."
He was talking about Bob, and for once, I didn't bother arguing with him. "I know."
"No, I don't think you do," he snapped. "You already figured out that we've got a bit of Bob's energy mixed with ours."
"And a bit of Justin's too," I added. "And?"
"And if she finds that out, we could be in serious trouble," he half-growled at me. Suddenly, he grabbed the front of my shirt and jerked me forward until we were almost nose to nose. "You don't have time to sleep."
"She?" I frowned. "She who?"
He glared at me. "The she who took Bob, you idiot. The she who could really care less about whether or not we're alive at the end of the day."
"I still don't know who you're talking about, and if you dragged me here just to tell me this, mind if I say it's been a waste of time?"
He gritted his teeth. "You've got to be kidding. You know that Mai likes wearing robes and dresses--"
"That was Mai?" I spluttered, staring at my double incredulously. The only thing that stopped me from starting to gibber was that I was too shocked to do more than just stand there looking like an idiot.
Subconscious Harry sighed heavily, letting me go to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Yes. It was Mai. You already knew whoever took Bob wasn't human."
"But how the hell did she know I was there?" I demanded.
My double rolled his eyes. "I don't know. We're the same person, remember?"
"Maybe she followed us?" I guessed.
He shook his head. "You would've heard the footsteps." He paused before adding, "That, or Bob would've heard her."
"So, that would mean she was already down there," I said, frowning. "Could she have been down there to get rid of the snake, like we were?"
"Why don't you use your tracking crystal and go ask her?" my subconscious asked. "I'm sure she'd love to tell you all about her plan to bring sunlight and sweetness to the world, one ball of dragon's breath at a time."
I glared at him. "Was there anything else you needed to tell me, or can I wake up now?"
Evil Harry shook his head. "Listen to me. That sword Mai was carrying is important. Remember how familiar it felt? It could mean one of two things."
"Either it was something that Justin made before he died, and Mai just ended up with it somehow," I offered.
"Or it's something with Bob's magic in it," my double finished. "Bob would've been a force to be reckoned with when he was alive. If he made that--"
"--And if he made it during his necromancer days, I could be in trouble." I stopped for a second. "But why would he enchant a sword when he was a necromancer? He wanted to bring Winifred back."
"And how do you get more victims to come with you so that you can drain them dry?" my double asked dryly.
"Oh." Trying to imagine Bob with a sword in hand was surprisingly harder than I thought it would be. I wasn't sure just how I imagined Bob finding people to use to bring Winifred back to life, but my own ideas had leaned more toward what had happened when Bob had brought my uncle back to life. He'd use a small spell to knock them out, and then drag them over to where he'd been keeping Winifred's body, or something similar.
Subconscious Me nodded. "It's something to keep in mind."
"But why would Mai want to take Bob?" I asked. "She wasn't down there, lying in wait for us. At least, I don't think so."
"Crime of opportunity," my double pointed out. "She could've used Council channels in order to do it, but you were down in the sewers, you had Bob out of your house, and you couldn't make a positive ID on Mai."
"Then how do you know it was her?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at my subconscious.
He sighed. "I'm your instinct, remember? I clued you in that she didn't have human reflexes. It's her, trust me. And if you're going to go toe-to-toe with her, you'd better bring Murphy along."
"Are you insane?" I demanded. "This is Mai we're talking about, right?"
He nodded, looking like he was a few steps away from grabbing my neck with both hands and throttling me. "If you don't run to the Council, Mai's going to know something's up. If she thinks you know she stole Bob, she's going to get ready to take you on. Murphy would be the wild card that might just give you a leg up on Mai."
I frowned. "Murph's also likely to get the cops involved."
"Were you listening to her? She knows what she's getting into. She's a big girl, and if I keep talking, we're going to rehash the coach-versus-protector conversation, and right now, you don't have time. Wake up, get Murphy to take us to Burger King, and let's go beat up a dragon to get our boyfriend back."
I blushed. "Bob's not our boyfriend."
"He's not?" he asked innocently.
The last thing I saw before I woke up was my subconscious smirking at me.
The jerk.
I felt a little better after having slept, and when I made sure that the tracking crystal was still attuned, I headed downstairs to see Murphy leaning against the backdoor, her arms folded across her chest. I stopped and blinked at her.
"You didn't think you were going to be leaving without me, were you?" she asked, smiling a little.
I blinked at her again, surprised by how closely her words mirrored the ones that Bob had said to me before we'd set out for the sewers and Undertown the day before. "Um, no."
She blinked back at me, and then shot me a grin. "Good. Where's the crystal say to go?" She glanced at it curiously.
"Burger King first," I declared. "But I've got a phone call to make first."
Murphy raised an eyebrow at me. "Who're you calling?"
"A friend," I said, picking up the phone in the kitchen and dialing.
A few rings later, Ebenezar McCoy answered. "Hello?"
"Hi, Ebenezar," I said. "Ancient Mai stole Bob."
There was a startled pause, and Murphy shot me a curious look. I shook my head at her as Ebenezar said, "What?"
"Mai stole Bob from me. I was out working a case when she showed up, knocked me out, and took Bob," I explained. "I don't have time to run to the Council to complain about it, because this is Ancient Mai, and I'd rather not wait around to see why she stole him."
Ebenezar grunted into the phone. "I'll let 'em know what's going on. What're you going to do in the meantime?"
"Get a Whopper, and get my friend back," I answered. "Preferably in that order. How long will it take for you to get in touch with the Council?"
"Not long," Ebenezar replied. "I know a few people on the Senior Council. Be careful, Hoss. Mai's a nasty customer on a good day."
I glanced at Murphy and smiled a little to myself. "It's okay, sir. Let's just say I have an ace in the hole."
I heard a heavy sigh, and then, "All right. Hang up, Hoss."
I did, and Murphy stared at me.
I blinked. "What?"
"There's someone you call 'sir'?" she asked, looking a bit startled.
"Yeah." I shrugged before shooting her a hopeful look. "Burger King?"
"You want food before we go find Bob?"
"You're objecting?" I asked curiously. "We can eat on the way there, unless your car's too sacred for food."
Murphy snorted. "You never suggest stopping for food," she remarked. With that, we got in her unmarked, hit the nearest drive-thru, and headed out to face a dragon.
It took an hour of city traffic before we were headed to the outskirts of town, toward the more expensive houses that almost resembled castles from a distance. I realized about a few miles out from Chicago proper that we were close to my uncle's house, but when the crystal pointed firmly away from the road leading up to the estate, aiming steadily toward the homes around Lake Michigan, I kept a sigh of relief to myself.
It took another half an hour to find a sprawling estate protected from the road by a row of tall, old trees, and about a mile from the entrance to the grounds to the house itself. If I had thought that Justin's place was huge when I was a kid, I would've been amazed to see a house of this magnitude existing in the United States. Bay windows overlooked most of the grounds, with brick and buttresses and lots of other architectural terms I didn't know creating something that looked almost organic.
Considering how much power I was sure Mai had to be packing, I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd grown the freaking place from scratch.
Murphy pulled into the expansive driveway, the sedan almost dwarfed by its surroundings. It looked a hell of a lot shabbier than anything else that was there. And that's when I noticed there weren't any cars.
Maybe Mai was out for the day.
Yeah, and maybe some of her cousins would suddenly fly out of my butt.
Murphy and I got out of her car, and looked around. She circled around to join me, and we both looked at the crystal, which had started a lazy circuit on the string I'd tied it with.
"What's that mean?" she asked.
"I didn't design these things with a Z axis," I grumbled. "So, it's possible that either Bob is above us or below us."
Murphy looked pointedly at the house, and then at the crystal. "Wonderful." She turned, and headed for what we could only guess was the front door.
"Murph!" I yelped. "What are you doing?"
"What's it look like I'm doing?" she asked. "I'm going to the front door."
"Are you crazy?" I protested, my heart threatening to leap out of my chest. "We should be trying to find an open window or something, not knocking and asking if Mai's found Jesus."
Murphy gave me an unamused look. "Is Mai going to be expecting you to come in through her front door?"
That stopped me. "Um, no."
"Then the front door it is," she said firmly, turning back around and mounting the steps to a porch that probably had its own zip code. "I swear, Harry, you're never going to make it as a PI if you don't try to anticipate their next move."
"You know me, Murph," I said cheerfully, "We wizards never plan ahead or anything."
"Could've fooled me," she snorted, and then she pulled her gun.
"Um, Murph? What're you doing?" I asked, looking from her to her gun and back.
"What's it look like I'm doing?" she asked evenly. "Whoever this is, she's a thief and possibly a murderer."
"Y'know, we could find an open window, not make a mess of things," I suggested helpfully.
Murphy frowned at me. "All right, what's making you twitch now?"
"I'm not twitching," I objected.
"Yes, you are." Her eyes narrowed. "You weren't exactly all that specific about who 'she' is, Harry. What am I walking into?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I said seriously.
She glared at me. "Harry," she growled.
"She's a dragon," I said.
She paused before nodding. "You're right. I don't believe you." That was when she turned, picked up one foot, and slammed it against the very nice wooden door. There was a very loud cracking, crunching sound, and then the door swung inwards on silent hinges. Murphy walked right in as if she owned the place, and when I didn't immediately follow, she turned around and raised an eyebrow at me.
I eyed the threshold before gritting my teeth and stepping over it. As I suspected, Mai hadn't done anything to weaken her threshold, like say for instance, run an occult consulting agency out of the front half of the building. When I put my foot down inside the house, I could feel my magic being pulled out of me, like using a strainer to drain cooked pasta, and I resisted the urge to look behind me to see if it was just hovering on the doorstep. I got my other foot in and inhaled slowly.
"Harry," Murphy said, frowning, "are you okay?"
"Not really, no," I admitted. "The sooner we get Bob's skull, the sooner we can get out of here."
She kept frowning, but after I nodded, she turned away from me to look at the foyer we'd stepped into. It was big, looked like it cost more than I'd ever hope to see in about a hundred years, and it even smelled nice. As I followed Murphy inside, the wards hit me about six inches later, hard enough to feel like a brick wall. Guess Mai hadn't skimped on the personal defenses.
"Harry?"
I hadn't realized I'd closed my eyes until I opened them and looked at Murphy, who'd made it halfway down a hall with framed photographs and hideously expensive walls before she'd turned to look at me. "Hang on a sec, Murph."
I closed my eyes again and concentrated, opening my wizard's Sight. It's hard to describe what you see with your Third Eye. Not only do you see things more clearly, see what they really are, but all of your senses are opened. It's as though a thick veil is lifted away, and you see the world around you, unfiltered. Magic is just as tangible and real to the your senses when you use the Sight too. Sometimes the things you see with the Third Sight are very beautiful, sometimes they're not. And the thing about the Third Sight is that you'll never be able to forget it. You can try to ignore it, but when you think about what happened, what you saw with your Sight, it comes rushing back as if you'd just seen it a few moments ago. Wizards learn to how to close their Third Eye very quickly, and they keep it closed unless there's an emergency.
I opened my eyes carefully, but instead of seeing the ornate walls, I could see solid rock that looked like it had been ripped into shape. Blues of different shades swirled around my eyes, the wards Mai had put into place resembling shields of different sizes and makes. The walls around Murphy and I smelled of something primal and ancient, the dark scent of old caverns and a time when Man knew that they weren't at the top of the food chain. I could hear wisps of things, barely large enough to call themselves spirits, hovering around the house, attached to the walls, the floor, the ceiling and feeding off of the energies. Unlike Victor Sells' lake house, these spirits weren't malevolent things feeding off of death and evil. They were just spirits, leeching off the excess magic that lingered on the walls.
This wasn't just some house I was looking at. This was Mai's demesne, her den, her little slice of sanctuary in Illinois.
Stars and stones, this was just getting better and better.
Murphy stood, looking like an avenging angel amidst the rock, her physical beauty almost breathtaking. The .44 in her hand looked like a sword now, and she still looked at me impatiently.
I cleared my throat, and then closed my eyes again. When I opened them, it was back to the freaking expensive walls and floors, and Murphy looked less angelic.
"Are you finished?" Murphy asked.
I took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah."
"Any ideas on where Bob might be?" she asked. "What's the crystal..." Her voice trailed off, and I looked down at the crystal.
It had stopped in mid-swing. I frowned at it, and when I headed in the direction it indicated, it suddenly did a 270, and aimed very determinedly at a wall. A second later, it started spinning around until it was a blur of purple. Suddenly, the string snapped, and the crystal shattered when it smacked into the very nice-looking tile.
"Shit," I muttered.
"That happen to you a lot?" Murphy asked, trying to cover how worried she looked by sounding curious. It didn't help too much.
"Not really," I admitted. "Okay, let's try to go down as much as possible."
"Down?" she asked skeptically.
I nodded. "You know how Smaug kept his lair underground?"
Murphy's eyes narrowed at me. "Did you just mention Tolkien while we're in a perp's house?"
"Yes, I did," I said as patiently as possible. "Now, trust me. We want to go down. If you can find any doors that lead to a basement level of some kind, we'll have a good place to start."
"And if this woman and Bob aren't down there?" Murphy asked.
"Then we go up." I said. At her unimpressed look, I shrugged. "It's either that, or we do a room by room search of the house, and I forgot to pack my signal flares."
Murphy snorted. "Fine, let's go."
It took about twenty minutes before we finally lucked out. As we made our way down, with Murphy in front since she had the gun, I could dimly hear voices. Murphy stopped when she heard them, and she glanced up at me. I nodded, and then she stepped off the last stair, heading down the hallway, toward an open door, light spilling on the floor from where it had been left open.
"So we're agreed?" I heard Mai purr, and part of me wanted to pull a Murphy and then throw her across the room.
I saw Murphy glance at me, and I nodded, mouthing, "That's her."
Murphy nodded, her face set in concentration as she braced her feet and readjusted her grip on the gun.
"We are," Bob said, and I had to fight not to heave a relieved sigh. I hadn't realized just how much I'd missed Bob's voice until I heard him practically sneer at Ancient Mai.
"Excellent," Mai purred again, and then I heard the loud hum that I'd first heard back in the sewers connected to Undertown. I gasped.
"The sword," I whispered to Murphy.
"You don't know how long I've waited to do this, warlock," Mai sneered.
Murphy nodded sharply. And then she raised her foot and kicked the door in.
The door slammed open with surprising speed, revealing a room lit by hundreds of tiny candles, the lights reflected off of coin-sized mirrors that hung from the wall I could see in an asymmetric pattern. Mai was dressed in a dark yellow and black dress, her features cold and beautiful. She was holding the sword she'd been using in the sewers, but now it was starting to shake in her hand. She looked down at the blade, ignoring me, and just as I watched, the shining silver metal started to crack down the center.
Mai's head jerked up to Bob, who was actually smiling at her. "What the hell did you do?"
Bob's smile didn't waver, despite the fact that he had a very pissed off dragon staring at him. "It was never meant to be used against its maker, Ancient Mai. If you still wish to continue with the bargain, you should do it quickly."
I rubbernecked between the two of them, and then as Mai let out a low growl, I couldn't stop myself from watching the sword that she lifted with both hands. More cracks spiderwebbed across its surface, and as it got closer and closer to Bob, large shards broke off, bouncing off the floor in a shower of metal, each piece sounding like a miniature church bell as it rang against the floor.
Then the sword, looking like a shadow of its former self with a long sliver of metal still attached to the hilt, slid into Bob's chest cleanly, right through his nonexistent ribs, and slamming home into his heart.
The remnants of the sword suddenly glowed like white fire, forcing me to cover my eyes. I heard Murphy grunt, and Mai let out a piercing shriek of pain before the light winked out. I opened my eyes just in time to see Bob, his eyes wide and staring, sink to his knees, and then collapse on the floor with a thump.
I stared at Bob, and then up at Mai, who seemed to have recovered from the blinding white flash. She screamed, sounding all too inhuman in her fury, and fell on Bob.
Or, at least she tried to. I took my hockey stick, and slammed the blade into her face just before she reached him.
She recoiled in shock, but before she could turn on me, Murphy shouted, "Freeze!"
Mai stopped for a moment, allowing me to see that not only had her mask slipped, Murphy was now getting her first look at a real, live dragon. One whose face had apparently been flash-fried by the sudden burst of light seconds before.
Mai's jaws opened, and she hissed angrily before her reason returned, and she sank back into the shadows. I knelt down next to Bob and reached out a hand to touch him.
His jacket felt like it was made out of something expensive.
"Stars and sky," I breathed, surging forward to touch his face, check his pulse. It was fast as hell, but I couldn't stop myself from touching him, cupping warm skin with my hands. "Bob?" I said, not really believing what my hands were telling me. I licked my lips and tried again. "Bob?"
Blue-green eyes fluttered open, and our eyes met for a split second before we both averted our gazes at the same time. I couldn't stop a smile, and I leaned down to lightly rest my forehead against his. "Bob..." I whispered.
"Hello, Harry," Bob rasped, and then he cleared his throat. "As much as I would like to reacquaint myself with certain aspects of living, this floor is hurting my back. Would you be so kind as to help me up?"
I took the hand he held toward me and pulled him up, grunting at the effort. Bob was a bit heavier than I'd expected.
When Bob looked around, he blinked when he saw Murphy, who'd been keeping her gun trained on Ancient Mai. "Lieutenant Murphy?" he asked, sounding as surprised as he looked.
"Hi, Bob," Murphy said in her clipped, I'm-busy-keeping-a-gun-aimed-on-a-dragon voice.
Bob glanced at me curiously. "I don't suppose you brought anyone else along with you?"
I glanced at the shadows where Mai was still putting herself back together, or so I guessed. "We might have."
"You didn't," Mai said from behind me. I may have jumped about a foot, but no matter what Bob says, I didn't squeal like a little girl.
The three of us turned to face her, and she was back to her normal self. Or as normal as she usually appeared, in any case. "Hi, Ancient Mai," I said, grinning at her. "How's it going? That dress looks nice on you."
Mai's eyes narrowed, and for a second, they flashed red. "You're already intruding on my domain, Dresden. Be lucky I'm letting you live long enough to explain why you are here."
"Hold it right there, lady," Murphy said in a low, dangerous tone of her own. Her gun was aimed at Ancient Mai's chest. "I've already got you on theft and attempted murder."
Mai's eyes flashed again as she took in Murphy. "A mortal police officer, Dresden? You have sunk low, haven't you?"
Murphy narrowed her eyes at Ancient Mai. "I've seen you at Harry's place."
"And as soon as I'm finished with you, you'll swear you never grew past the age of ten," Mai sneered.
"I wouldn't do that, Madam," Bob said mildly. I glanced at him curiously. "It wouldn't do to break one of the laws of magic in front of two witnesses."
Mai's eyes narrowed. "Who said anything about witnesses, warlock?"
I gritted my teeth and stepped in front of Bob. "If you think you're going to touch any of us, you'd better think again," I snarled.
"Please, Harry," Bob said, and then I felt his hand rest on my shoulder, squeezing it once. I got distracted by how strong it felt, but I told myself to focus on the dragon that wanted to kill us, not on the hand that was resting on my shoulder. "Let's not be hasty. I'm sure that Mai would be more than willing to be hospitable." His emphasis on the last word threw me for a second, but Mai's expression went from disdainful to really annoyed.
As I watched, she set her teeth, and turned to go up the flight of stairs Murphy and I had come down on. "To my sitting room, then," she said through gritted teeth.
Bob nodded regally. "Thank you, madam."
Murphy and I glanced at each other before Murphy followed her up the stairs. I pulled back, went inside the room, and found Bob's skull. Scooping it up, I found the drawstring bag laying on a nearby table. Depositing the skull back in the bag, I slipped the drawstring over my shoulder and jogged to catch up with the others.
Mai's sitting room was about as comfortable as being inside a museum. The couch where I sat in the middle, with Bob on my right side and Murphy on my left felt like it had been starched within an inch of its life. Everything in the room was immaculate, and I had to resist the urge to grind my dirty shoes into the carpet, just to be rude.
Mai sat across from us in a chair that looked more like a throne. "Shall I offer you refreshment?" she asked, her tone ice cold.
Bob smiled, showing a flash of crooked teeth. "I wouldn't dream of imposing, madam. All I wish is for Harry, Lieutenant Murphy, and myself to be allowed on our way, unharmed and unmolested for the entirety of the trip. In return, I will honor our agreement as originally stated."
"Bob--" I started, frowning at Mai.
"Not now, Harry," Bob said, looking over and deliberately taking my hand in his, his skin surprisingly warm against mine. "I'll explain later. Are we agreed, madam?"
Mai's eyes narrowed, and then she looked at me. "He doesn't know, does he?"
This time, Bob's expression went glacial, and he arched one grey eyebrow. "That is no business of yours," he murmured, his voice low and dangerous. It almost felt like a freaking hand pressing against my crotch. I quickly thought about what I'd stepped in while we were in the sewers, cleaning out Mister's litter box, anything unappealing.
"Are we agreed?" Bob asked again, his eyes on Mai.
"Give me your word that you'll honor your end of the bargain, warlock," Mai ordered.
Bob's eyes narrowed. "I gave it before."
"That was before the blade you said was safe struck me," Mai hissed. "Give me your word."
"I merely said that the blade you were holding could be dangerous if improperly used," Bob corrected her mildly, his lips pursing.
No, Harry. Mister's litter box.
Mai sneered. "You will give me your word, warlock, or you will be removed from Dresden's guardianship."
I finally had enough. "All right, Mai," I snapped, "for one thing, Bob's actually alive now, so I'm not his guardian anymore. For another, we don't have to do anything you say."
"You do if you want to keep Hrothbert of Bainbridge alive," Mai said, dismissing me to look back at Bob. "Give me your word."
He narrowed his eyes at her, and then after a long moment, he nodded once. "You have it."
She nodded sharply, and stood. "Our business is concluded. Allow me to show you out."
I blinked, but Bob and Murphy both stood up, so I joined them. Mai took us straight to the front door, and in five minutes, we were standing on her porch again.
"What the hell just happened?" I demanded, watching Bob gingerly walk down the stairs.
"I just got Ancient Mai to let me go willingly," he said, smiling up at me.
"Harry means what the hell just happened in general," Murphy said. "We showed up just in time to hear her talk about how long she's wanted to run you through with a sword."
Bob blinked. "I see. Well, I'll have to explain when we return to the house." He looked around curiously. "Where's your Jeep?"
"Left it where I parked before we went into Undertown," I said. "We're taking Murphy's car." I pointed at the car in question, and then Bob stared at it.
"Is it going to last the trip home?" he asked Murphy. "If you think Harry by himself is anathema to machinery, you'll find the two of us together are doubly so."
Murphy shrugged. "It made it here okay."
Bob nodded, looking hesitant, but he climbed into the passenger-side of the backseat. I helped him figure out the buckle, and after we got ourselves situated, Murphy started the car and we headed home.
After an uneventful drive back into Chicago where I watched the scenery, petted Bob's skull where it sat in my lap, and tried to look at Bob's reflection in the side windows, Murphy pulled up at my place, and the three of us headed inside. Bob paused for a moment before stepping across the threshold and shooting me a startled look.
"Harry, what happened to the wards?" he asked sharply.
"What do you mean, what happened to them?" I asked defensively. "They're right there."
Bob frowned, and after an intense look of concentration, he blinked. "Those are the wards?"
I scowled at him and folded my arms over my chest. "Yes. They are. Yeah, I know they're crappy. No, I haven't been able to strengthen them. Between the demon that got in here and all of the cops swarming the place, they've gotten weak."
"They're absolutely nonexistent," Bob hissed. "Had I known--" He stopped himself with visible effort, and closed his eyes to boot. After a minute, he opened them again, and turned to Murphy. "While I'm not the master of the household, I'm sure Harry would offer you some refreshment?" He glanced at me inquiringly.
I blinked. "Um, sure."
Murphy raised an eyebrow at this. "I'm fine, Bob. Now, you said you were going to explain what just happened at that woman's house?"
Bob nodded. "The woman is Ancient Mai. She's a wizard, like Harry and myself."
"I kind of gathered that," Murphy said dryly. "How about you start from the top? What happened after your skull was snatched? I tried to follow you, but the snake got between me and the tunnel Mai went down."
Bob licked his lips. I sat down on the corner of my desk, trying to think of Mister's litter box while also trying not to look Bob up and down.
"Mai took me to her home, and at first, she kept me inside my own skull," Bob began. I winced at that. I had learned the hard way that putting Bob in his skull and keeping him trapped there without the freedom to come out on his own was torture for him. He didn't have a physical body at the time, but being locked in his skull reminded him of the fact that he wasn't alive anymore, and that his soul could have been bent and twisted into something no living person could duplicate. "She put a rather elaborate warding circle around my skull, but other than that, she left me be."
"And then?" Murphy prompted.
"She summoned me, and showed me the Wyrmgastbona."
"Wyrmgast-what?" I asked.
Bob sighed patiently. "Wyrmgastbona, Harry. It is--" He stopped himself, and then said, "--was the name of the blade she was wielding."
Murphy frowned and shook her head. "What's so important about it?"
"It had a rather small reputation as a dragon-slayer," Bob replied, but the way he spoke made me think he knew more than he was telling us. "I aided in its construction before my... enforced retirement." He smiled apologetically at Murphy. "So, it resonated with some of my magic. She offered me a deal. I would be returned to mortality, and in exchange, I would aid in the construction of a similar weapon for her personal use."
"What's the catch?" Murphy asked.
Bob's smile was more like a smirk. "I think I've overcome it, actually. While your arrival was unexpected, it was quite fortuitous. Otherwise, Mai would have been free to lock me in a dungeon somewhere until I did the work she requested, and then she would have been able to keep me in her pocket, if you will. Though..." his voice trailed off, and he looked thoughtful. "Mai isn't foolish enough to think in the short term." He glanced at me. "She'll have something else planned."
"If she tries anything, call me," Murphy said. "I could have her tied up in police tape for a while. She gave Harry a concussion when she took your skull. I could say that was attempted murder, especially since she knew that leaving him in that room with the snake would've contributed to his death."
Bob shook his head. "You've involved yourself enough on my account, milady. I thank you for the offer, but I must respectfully decline. The fewer people Mai can target, the better. Does that explanation suffice?"
Murphy narrowed her eyes. "Not by a long shot, but--" She stopped, and took her phone out of her pocket. She frowned at it when the ringer started to warp like a stretched cassette tape. "Damn it. Mind if I use your phone?"
"Go ahead," I said, reaching over and picking it up before offering it to her. She took the phone off the jack and started spinning the rotary dial.
I glanced at Bob just in time to see him close his eyes and roll his shoulders backwards, taking his time with the movement. If he'd been shirtless, I was sure I would've been able to see the muscles bunch and flex. Instead, I took a deep breath, looked away, and debated checking to make sure Mister's litter box was clean.
Murphy hung up the phone a minute later. "It was the station. They need me back." She tucked her cell phone back in her pocket, and then looked a question at me. "Want me to give you a lift back to your Jeep?"
I should've said yes, because I'd need it if I was going to do any running around tomorrow, and I didn't have enough cash on me to take a cab over there to pick up my car.
But I saw Bob, and I shook my head. "No, thanks. I'll pick it up tomorrow."
Murphy shot me a puzzled frown, but when she looked at Bob, realization dawned. What kind of realization it was, I wasn't sure, but I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Later, Harry," Murphy said.
I nodded. "Drive safe, Murph."
Murphy left, closing the door gently behind her.
I looked at Bob. He looked back.
"There's got to be more to the story than that," I said.
He nodded. "There is."
"And?" I asked, my voice gentler than I expected it to be.
"And," Bob answered slowly, "For the first time in nearly nine hundred years, I'm dreadfully tired."
Guilt grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and gave me a good, hard shake. "Oh," I said, a bit embarrassed I hadn't realized it sooner. "Well, you know where my bed is."
He frowned. "Where are you going to sleep?"
"Living room couch," I said with a shrug. "I've slept on it before."
Bob gave me a tired version of his fondly exasperated look. "Harry, you don't have to give up your bed for me."
"I want to," I said firmly. "And I'm not taking no for an answer. Besides," I said with a smile, "you've never felt flannel before, have you? It'll be a good experience."
Bob looked like he really wanted to argue, but he looked wiped out, and his eyelids were sliding to half-mast, making him adorable in a tired kitten kind of way.
"C'mon, Bob," I said. And for the first time in my life, I guided Bob up the stairs to my loft bedroom, made him sit down on the bed, helped him take off his socks and shoes. I watched him wrestle out of his jacket, shirt, waistcoat and ascot half-heartedly, a lump in my throat. He looked like he needed someone to take care of him, especially when he mashed his cheek against my pillow, blinked, and snuggled into it, a smile spreading across his lips.
I resisted the urge to stare at the lines and muscles in his back, reminding me of drawings from Grey's Anatomy. Instead, I grabbed my bunched-up sheets, carefully undid them, and snapped them out, letting them fall gently on top of Bob's sleeping form. When they'd settled, revealing the vague outline of Bob's long-limbed frame, I couldn't resist reaching out and gently touching Bob's hair. When I was fifteen, I'd wondered what it would feel like to touch it, or run my fingers through it.
His hair was very soft, reminding me of one time when someone I met in Ottawa had been raising three ducklings. They'd been tiny, and the smallest one fit in the palm of my hand, but what had stuck in my mind was how soft their down feathers had felt.
"Sleep well," I murmured.
Bob made some kind of sleepy noise, and I knew that I should've gone downstairs and puttered around, figured out what I had to make for dinner, since we'd gotten back around sunset. But I couldn't.
Bob was sacked out on my bed, and he was alive. Before I passed out this morning, I'd been worried about someone using him to do something, like try to take over the High Council, or maybe even come after me. I'd been worried that Bob would've come out of his skull and return to the kind of slavery he'd hated, the servant of yet another master who didn't give a damn about him.
But instead, I had watched Ancient Mai, of all people, use some weird, humming sword to bring Bob back to life. Was that how it had been when my uncle's copy had brought him back to life? He'd been stolen, and then had an arrow stabbed into his chest? Bob had been sketchy with the details about his first return to mortality, but I'd put together some clues on my own.
Emotions tumbled through me. Shock was taking center stage, but it was the kind of numb shock that you feel when you see someone die right in front of you, and you have no way of stopping it. Just on its heels was wild joy because Bob was alive. I wasn't sure how it'd happened, but I wasn't about to question it. Bob was alive, and he was okay, and he wasn't in danger of using his life force in order to kill someone who was going to kill me. We were both safe, and he was sleeping, and things were all right.
Fear was tapping on joy's shoulder, reminding me of the fact that Ancient Mai didn't do things out of the goodness of her heart. There was a reason she'd brought Bob back, and from that strange conversation in Mai's sitting room, I could guess it was for something extremely dangerous. Bob had apparently been involved in enchanting swords back in the day, and that's what Mai wanted him for, but I was sure there had been things he wasn't telling me and Murphy. Curiosity was trying to shove fear out of the way, though -- what was Bob going to do for Mai? He'd mentioned that Mai probably wanted to keep him exclusively in her pocket somehow. How would that have worked? If I'd gone to the High Council and protested the theft of Bob's skull, they would've either remembered the crystal tracking skull that I'd destroyed while making the tracking spell to find Bob, or they would've seen it as gross negligence, and as soon as the skull was recovered, they would've given Bob over to a more "deserving" master, no matter how much of an asshole they were.
I don't know when I'd sat down on the edge of the bed, but I knew I had to get up. As nice and warm as my bed was, it was going to be Bob's bed until we figured out something. I tried to push away the thought that the arrangement might be temporary, and that Bob might end up leaving after he got his feet under him, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I still wasn't sure if it had really been Bob telling me that he would've wanted to get away from it all and be able to live as a hermit, or if that had been the demon talking, but it made sense. A guy who'd been bound to his skull for the past eight or nine hundred years would want to be able to make his own decisions about how he lived his life. He'd lived as a hermit before, when he had finished his training. He might want to live alone again, not have to deal with people.
And like I'd thought about when he'd first mentioned the idea, right in the middle of dealing with the head-hopping demon, living with the most recent guardian of his skull might just remind him of a time when he wasn't able to make decisions about how he wanted to live his life that were outside the limits of his curse.
I shook my head and got up. Bob needed to sleep, and I needed to think about what to eat. I wasn't sure how long Bob was going to be asleep, but it wouldn't hurt to make a little extra.
After finding some spaghetti in the cabinet, I started making dinner for two, and tried not to think about a future without Bob in it.
END
***
Like what you just read? Leave a comment!
Back to Part One.
This way to the prequel, Missing Persons.
This way to the sequel, Seeing Things.
And if you're just plain lost, this way to the table of contents.
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Thanks for a really great story!!!
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As for what will happen after Bob does what Mai wants, I'm thinking that with Ebenezar involved, the High Council's going to hear about this. I will promise, however, that there's a fic in the works that will deal with this. I'm still trying to think about order and that sort of thing.
I hadn't imagined the skull might lose its markings, to be honest. It hasn't, since I figured the markings would still be carved into the skull after Bob was executed. I'll make sure to mention it in the next fic. *nod*
I like Murphy being a strong character instead of running around, wringing her hands. In these circumstances, I was glad that strength came through, as opposed to her going, "WTH?" all the time. She's a woman that would get answers, no matter what incarnation she was. *firm nod*
And again, I'm very glad you enjoyed the story, and I hope the rest of the series won't disappoint.
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It's quite a long read, so I'll have to reread again tomorrow, just to take it all in.
But seriously! Harry's all defiant, 'you can't make us do anything'. Well, m'dear, I bet that she could - be glad she has other plans. ... Glad might not be the best adjective.
Have I mentioned how much I like your Murphy?
Moar Bob-ness! *glee*
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I'm glad that the fic worked for you, and that all of the characters came together in a way that was believable. :D
Mai has other plans, but Bob (with Harry's help) should be able to deal with them as they come. *nod*
Oh my
I love the way you brought Bob back to life. Very, very creative that.
Although, I am curious how the council will react when they find out what she did. Thinking they may not approve and will that be a problem for Harry and Bob down the road.
Definitely looking forward to more. Write fast, my pretty, write. :-)
Re: Oh my
The Council will have its own to say about what happened, especially since Ebenezar got involved in the whole thing, and he's got friends on the Senior Council.
Harry and Bob will also have to deal with why exactly Mai resurrected Bob later on. :D
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Totally, totally killing you! *performs CPR*
Splat well. <3
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Ok, Mai threatened to take Harry's guardianship away. Does that mean that Bob, though alive, is still bound? And when Mai said, "He doesn't know, does he?" was she talking about Bob's love for him or something else? (sigh) I wish Bob hadn't left things hanging and gone to sleep. He knows Harry loves him. He needs to come clean and admit his own feelings so they can stop dithering (love that word) and get busy with the wild, hot monkey-wizard sex.
Yes, I admit it. I'm a naughty girl.
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Remember how when Bob died in WAB, he just zipped back to his skull? He was alive, but he was still under the curse. And Mai, knowing that about the curse, would've mentioned it. *nod*
Yes, Bob needs to come clean, but there's also plottiness going on that's going to throw monkey wrenches in the works, so they have to deal with monkey wrenches before they can have the monkey sex.
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I was deeply amused by Murphy playing Bob's role in Harry's spell brainstorming and construction after Bob was taken. :-D And this part:
"He's more than eight hundred years old, Murph," I said gently. "I don't think you're going to find the killer."
She blinked once. And then she got her game face back. "Murder doesn't have a statute of limitations."
:-D :-D :-D Best comeback ever!
The rest of that scene...I think I like your Murphy better than canonical TV Murphy. Your Murphy is mostly the same, but I think TV!Murphy wouldn't have wanted to know about Harry's world. The scene in the show in which she essentially says that she'd rather be blind to it...I lost a lot of respect for TV!Murphy there. Your Murphy has more guts and more flexible mind--she's kind of a blend of TV and Book Murphy, in my brain.
Evil!Harry is way too much fun. *g*
And you totally blew me away with the ending! Coporeal!Bob! Ancient Mai! Mysterious sword! Mysterious deal! I love the complexity of this story.
I look forward to the next part!
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As for me, I've seen Murphy in action for too long in the books for her to just cover her ears and close her eyes real hard. She's a smart cookie, and if there's anyone in danger, she's sworn to serve and protect. She hasn't let a little thing like the supernatural stop her from doing that in the books.
The more I've written in this series, the more I've come to realize that the characters are melding with their book counterparts (for those characters that were in the TV series). TV!Harry didn't make some of the mistakes that book!Harry did, and I like book!Harry a lot more. He's sweeter, somehow. I just use TV!Harry's face, because omg pretty. <3
And yay, I'm glad you enjoyed this fic. The next part is in the works, and is taking all kinds of turns I wasn't expecting! :D
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I think that that's inevitable in an extended series like this, really. You're adding so much history, and you're also moving past the events we saw in the series, which means the characters have to become better developed. And when developing the characters, where better to go for material to use as a foundation than the books? If the TV series was ongoing, maybe they wouldn't meld quite as much, but since all we have is 13 eps, it's natural for them to trend back to the book characterizations, I think.
(Also, look! I got some Dresden Files icons. I figure I've been commenting enough, I ought to have a couple.)
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DF icons! Yay! Is that an icon of a wallpaper someone did for the series? I seem to remember one of the wallpapers looked like that?
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I have no idea, actually. I just clicked on the icons tag and browsed back through them until I found a couple I liked.
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Oh BOB! Oh YAY! Hurray for being alive!
Wow, Harry's got some self-control, not jumping his bones the second he sees Bob alive...
That was a wonderful part! Seriously, I LOVED IT!
Now to Continue On!
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