Dead Beat (The Dresden Files 7)

"No," I said, annoyed, and settled onto a chair at the table. "I got drafted."

"Holy crap," Thomas said again.

"I don't get it," Butters said.

"Harry's joined the wizard secret police!" Bob burbled. "He gets to convict on suspicion and take justice into his own hands! How cool is that!"

Thomas looked at me steadily and then at the door behind me. Then back to me.

"I'm alone," I said quietly. "Relax."

He nodded. "What happened?"

"A lot," I said. "There isn't time to cover it all now. But the Wardens are in town, and I'm not so worried about them crawling all over and finding out everyone's secrets."

"Why not?" Thomas asked.

"Because at the moment all five of them are at a hotel downtown, getting showers and changing bandages while I try to come up with more information about the heirs of Kemmler."

Thomas blinked slowly. "All five... and they have wounded?"

I nodded, my lips pressed hard together.

"Wow," Thomas said quietly. "How bad is it?"

"They drafted me," I said.

"That's bad, all right," Bob said cheerfully.

I looked at the scattered papers and books on the table. "Tell me you guys came up with something."

Butters blinked a few times and then started fumbling at the papers on the table, peering at them in the candlelight. "Uh, well, there's good news and bad news."

"Bad first," I said. "I'm going to need the pick-me-up afterward."

"We've got nothing on those numbers," Butters said. "I mean, they aren't a code. They're too short. They could be an address or an account number, but none of the banks we could get on the phone use that number of digits." He coughed apologetically. "If I could have gotten on the Net I could have gotten you a lot more, but..." He gestured uselessly around the room. "We couldn't get one call in fifty to go through, and at most of the places we called, no one answered. And in the past hour the phones have gone out altogether."

I shook my head. "Yeah. City's going insane, too. There were two fires between here and McAnally's. Some kind of riot going in Buck-town, I heard on a police radio."

"The governor has asked for help from the National Guard," Thomas said quietly. "They're sending troops in to keep order on the streets."

I blinked. "How did you find that out?"

"I called my sister," he said.

I frowned. "I thought Lara wasn't speaking with you."

Thomas's voice went dry. "Just because she cut me off from the family's money, kicked me out of any of our holdings, made it clear that I no longer have their protection, and she's holding the woman I love as a virtual prisoner, don't think she doesn't still like me, personally."

"So she did you a little favor," I said.

"Technically," Thomas said, "she did you a little favor."

"Why did she do that?" I asked.

"Well, I hinted about how since her entire power base depended on a certain secret being kept, and since you were awfully irrational about protecting the good citizens of Chicago, that you might develop loose lips to sink her ship if she didn't help you in your moment of need."

"Urn," I said. "So you're telling me that I just engaged in blackmail against the ruler of the White Court. By proxy."

"Yeah," Thomas said. "You've got some great big brass balls on you to do something like that, Harry."

"I guess I do." I shook my head. "Why did I do that?"

"Because we needed help," Thomas said. "We were getting nowhere fast. Lara's got a ton of resources available to her, and a lot of manpower. She was able to come up with some of the other information we needed."

"Which is the good news," Butters said. "She wasn't blacked out and cut off from the Internet like we are, and she was able to get a bunch of information we couldn't." He passed me a piece of paper. "Not on the numbers-but one of her people was able to find out about Native American artifacts and weapons here in Chicago."

I looked up sharply at Butters. "Yeah?"

He nodded at the paper and I read over it. "Yep," he said. "The Native American Center is using their facility to host this big display on tribal hunting and warfare before all of us palefaces showed up with guns and smallpox. The History Channel is using it as a part of some history-of-warfare special, and they were filming there all last week."

"Yeah," I said. "That could have some old hunter spirits attached to it." I read over the list. "Dammit, I should have remembered this myself. The Field Museum has that big Cahokian artifacts exhibit that Professor Bartlesby was in charge of. Hell, it was a bunch of Indian artifacts that Corpsetaker helped assemble himself. Probably with tonight in mind."

Butters nodded. "And the Mitchell Museum up in Evanston has got more Native American artifacts than either one put together."

"Crap," I said. "That's it."

"How do you know that?" Butters asked.

"It only stands to reason," Bob supplied. "The whole point is to summon up as many old spirits as possible and then consume them. The most spirits are going to be attracted to wherever there is the most old junk."

I nodded. "I remember this place now. That museum's on a college campus, right?"

"Kendall College," Butters confirmed.

"College campus on Halloween night," Thomas said. "Hell of a place for a gang of necromancers to slug it out. There's going to be collateral damage."

"No, there isn't," I said, and I was surprised how vicious my own voice sounded. "Because we're going to stop this stupid summoning. And then we're going to hunt those murderous bastards down and kill them."

There was dead silence in the kitchen.

Thomas and Butters both stared at me, expressions apprehensive.

"Maybe it's the cloak," Bob suggested brightly. "Harry, do you feel any more judgmental and self-righteous than you did this morning?"

I took a slow and deep breath. "Sorry," I said. "Sorry. That came out kinda harsh."

"Maybe a little," Butters said, his voice all but a whisper.

I rubbed at my face and glanced at the battery-powered clock on the wall of Murphy's kitchen. "Okay. Sundown's in just over an hour. I have to be ready to call up the Erlking by then."

"Um," Thomas said. "Harry, if it's the Erlking's presence that's going to attract all of these old spirits to their old tools and stuff, then won't it do the same thing no matter who calls him up?"