Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

ext twenty-four hours or so, please, Mr. Dresden?” Nicodemus said in a pained tone. “Unless you prefer him to be ready and waiting for all of us, including yourself? Granted, the likelihood of him taking notice of any one of us, in particular, is vanishing small, but it seems prudent to take a few simple steps.”

“Whatever,” I said. I thought he was being pretty fussy. What with books and movies using him as a character, and mythology courses being taught all over the world, I figured Hades got to hear his name spoken in one form or another tens if not hundreds of thousands of times every day.

Each utterance of a powerful supernatural being’s name is . . . kind of like sending him a page, a ping for his attention. If I could have a phone that survived longer than an hour, and it tried to get my attention ten thousand times a day, I’d throw the damned thing into a hole. The big supernatural beings, especially the very humanlike Greek gods, probably reacted in much the same way. Odds were good that I could sit chatting for an hour or two and mention his name several times, yet he wouldn’t even notice my relative handful of pings among all the others. It took a deliberate and rhythmic repetition, usually at least three times, to really get a signal through the noise.

But on the other hand . . . there was always the chance that Hades just might feel my utterance of his name and randomly decide to take a moment to pay attention. That probably wouldn’t be good. So despite giving Nicodemus lip, I shut up.

“Once we gain entry to the Underworld vault . . . ,” Nicodemus began.

I held up my hand and said, “Question?”

Nicodemus’s left eye began to twitch.

I didn’t wait for him to respond. “You’re planning on just jumping straight to the vault? Hell, not even Hercules could do that. It was kind of a journey to get in. There was a bit with a dog and everything. Do you really think we’re going to just hop right past all of the defenses around the realm of the king of the Underworld?”

That got everyone’s attention, even Grey’s. They all looked at Nicodemus, interested in the answer.

“Yes,” Nicodemus said in a flat tone.

“Oh,” I said. “Just like that, eh?”

“Once we’re inside the vault,” Nicodemus said, as if my question was not interesting enough to waste more time on, “there will be three gates between us and our goal. The Gate of Fire, the Gate of Ice, and the Gate of Blood.”

“Fun,” I said.

“Obviously,” Nicodemus said, “Ascher was chosen for her capability with fire. As the Winter Knight, you, Dresden, will obviously handle the Gate of Ice.”

“Right,” I said. “Obviously. What about the Gate of Blood?”

Nicodemus smiled pleasantly.

Of course. Old Nick had probably spilled more blood than the rest of us in the room together, if you didn’t count Deirdre. “Exactly what does each of these gates entail?”

“If I knew that,” Nicodemus said, “I’d not have bothered recruiting experts. Each of us will take point on our specific gate, with the rest of the team backing whatever play they decide is important. Once we’re through, we’ll be in the vault. It’s quite large. You’ll have a few minutes to gather whatever it is you feel you need to take with you. After that time, I’m leaving. Anyone who lags behind is on his or her own.”

I held up my hand again, and didn’t bother waiting for a response. “What are you after?”

“Excuse me?” Nicodemus asked.

“You,” I said. “Vault Seven is awfully specific. And you don’t care much about money. So I have to wonder what’s in there that you are so interested in.”

“That’s hardly your concern,” Nicodemus said.

I snorted. “The hell it isn’t. We’re all sticking our necks out—and if things don’t go well, we might have an angry god on our tails. I want to know what’s worth that, other than the twenty million. After all, a lot of things could go wrong. Maybe you wind up dead, purely by someone else’s hand on the way in—maybe I want to grab that whatsit for myself.”

There was a mutter of agreement from Binder, and nods from Karrin and Valmont. Even Ascher looked curious. Grey pursed his lips thoughtfully.

“Should I fall, the rest of you will already be dead,” Nicodemus said calmly.

“Indulge me,” I said. “This deal is already starting to stink. A reasonable person might walk based purely on what happened today.”

That brought a low round of mutters, and Valmont asked, “What happened today?”

I told her about Tessa and her ghouls and Deirdre and Harvey. That made Valmont’s lips compress into a line. She knew better than most what was left when a Denarian tore into a mortal, and two out of three possible suspects were Knights of the Coin.

“That has no bearing on our mission,” Nicodemus said.

“The hell it doesn’t,” I said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but the last thing we need is his crazy ex jumping into things on some kind of vengeance kick.”

“It’s not about that,” Nicodemus said.

“Then what is it about?” I asked. “I dealt with the White Council my whole life, so I’m used to being treated like a mushroom—”

“Eh?” Ascher asked.

“Kept in the dark and fed bullshit,” Binder reported calmly.

“Ah.”

“—but this is going beyond the pale, even for me. You ask us to trust you about the plan to get into what should be an impenetrable vault. You ask us to trust you that our share will be waiting next to whatever it is you want. You ask us to trust you and believe that Tessa isn’t on some kind of jihad that will get us all killed, but won’t tell us what it is about.” I looked around the table at my criminal confederates. “Trust is kind of a two-way street, Nicodemus. It’s time to give something.”

“Or you’ll do what, precisely?”

“Or maybe we’ll all walk away from a bunch of empty promises without a sliver of proof to back them up,” I said.

Nicodemus narrowed his eyes. “Dresden and his woman are obviously in accord,” he said.

Karrin scowled.

Nicodemus ignored her. “What about the rest of you?”

“What he said,” Valmont said quietly.

Ascher folded her arms, frowning.

Binder sighed. “Twenty. Million. Quid. Think, girl.”

“We can’t spend it if we’re dead from sticking our heads into a hole and getting them whacked off,” Ascher said firmly.

Nicodemus nodded. “Grey?”

Grey tented his fingertips in front of his lips for a moment and then said, “The personal aspect of this interference troubles me. A job of this sort requires pure professionalism. Detachment.”

Binder made a nonverbal sound of agreement with Grey’s statements.

“I will not walk away from a job once I’ve agreed to it—you know how I operate, Nicodemus,” Grey continued. “But I would sympathize if another professional of less ability and less rigid standards did so.”

Nicodemus regarded Grey thoughtfully for a moment. “Your professional recommendation?”

“The wizard has a point,” Grey said. “He is an annoying, headstrong ass, but he isn’t stupid. It would not be foolish for you to invest some measure of trust to balance what you ask for.”

Nicodemus mused over that for a moment and then nodded his head. “One ought not hire an expert and then ignore his opinion,” he said. Then he turned to the rest of us. “Vault Seven contains, in addition to a standard division of gold and jewels, a number of Western religious icons. It is my intention to retrieve a cup from the vault.”

“A wha’?” Binder asked.

“A cup,” Nicodemus replied.

“All this,” Binder said, “for a cup.”

Nicodemus nodded. “A simple ceramic cup, something like a teacup, but lacking any handle. Quite old.”

My

mouth fell open and I made a choking sound at approximately the same time.

Grey pursed his lips and let out a slow whistle.

“Wait,” Ascher said. “Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Karrin said quietly.

Nicodemus made a face in her direction. “Miss Murphy, please.”

She gave Nicodemus a small, unpleasant smile.

Binder clued in a second later. “The bloody Holy Grail? Is he bloody kidding?”

Valmont turned to me, frowning. “That’s real?”

“It’s real,” I said. “But it was lost more than a thousand years ago.”

“Not lost,” Nicodemus corrected me calmly. “It was collected.”

“The cup that caught the blood of Christ,” Grey mused. He eyed Nicodemus. “Now, what possible use could you have for that old thing?”

“Sentimental value,” Nicodemus said with a guileless smile, and straightened the skinny strands of his grey tie. “I’m something of a collector of such artifacts myself.”

The tie wasn’t a tie, unless you meant it in a very literal sense. It was a length of simple old rope, tied into the Noose—the one that Judas used to hang himself after betraying Christ, if I understood it correctly. It made Nicodemus all but unkillable. I didn’t know if anyone else in the world knew what I knew: that the Noose didn’t protect him from itself. I’d nearly strangled him with it the last time we’d crossed trails—hence his roughened voice.

Grey didn’t look like he believed Nicodemus’s answer, but that hadn’t stopped him from being satisfied with it. He looked around the room and said, “There. You know more than you did. Is it enough?”

“Tessa,” I said. “What’s her beef with you going after the Grail?”

“She wants it for herself, of course,” Nicodemus said. “I’ll deal with Tessa before we launch. It won’t become an issue for the job. You have my personal guarantee.”

Grey spread his hands. “There,” he said. “That’s good enough for me. Binder?”