Working for Bigfoot (9 page)

The spell had been linked to the shrine. It unraveled as I disrupted all the precisely aligned objects that had helped direct and focus its energy. One of the objects had been a small glass bottle of black ink. Most of it wound up splattered on the side of Doctor Fabio’s face.

He stood with his jaw slack, half of his face covered in black ink, the other half gone so pale that he resembled a Renaissance Venetian masque.

“Y-you…you…”

“Wizard,” I said quietly. “White Council. Heck, Doctor, I’m even a Warden these days.”

His face became absolutely bloodless.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “You know us. I’m going to suggest that you answer my questions with extreme cooperation, Doctor. Because we frown on the use of black magic.”

“Please,” he said, “anything.”

“How do you know us?” I asked. The White Council was hardly a secret, but given that most of the world didn’t believe in magic, much less wizards, and that the supernatural crowd in general is cautious with sharing information, it was a given that your average Joe would have no idea that the Council even existed—much less that they executed anyone guilty of breaking one of the Laws of Magic.

“V-v-venator,” he said. “I was a Venator. One of the Venatori Umbrorum. Retired.”

The Hunters in the Shadows. Or of the Shadows, depending on how you read it. They were a boys club made up of the guys who had the savvy to be clued in to the supernatural world, but without the talent it took to be a true wizard. Mostly academic types. They’d been invaluable assets in the White Council’s war with the Red Court, gathering information and interfering with our enemy’s lines of supply and support. They were old allies of the Council—and any Venator would know the price of violating the Laws.

“A Venator should know better than to dabble in this kind of thing,” I said in a very quiet voice. “The answer to this next question could save your life—or end it.”

Doctor Fabio licked his lips and nodded, a jerky little motion.

“Why?” I asked him quietly. “Why were you taking essence from the boy?”

“H-he… He had so
much.
I didn’t think it would hurt him and I…” He cringed back from me as he spoke the last words. “I…needed to grow some hair.”

I blinked my eyes slowly. Twice. “Did you say…hair?”

“Rogaine didn’t work!” he all but wailed. “And that transplant surgery wasn’t viable for my hair and skin type!” He bowed his head and ran fingertips through his thick head of hair. “Look, see? Look how well it’s come in. But if I don’t maintain it…”

“You…used black magic. To grow
hair
.”

“I…” He looked everywhere but at me. “I tried
everything
else first. I never meant to harm anyone. It never hurt anyone
before
.”

“Irwin’s a little more dependent on his essence than most,” I told him. “You might have killed him.”

Fabio’s eyes widened in terror. “You mean he’s…he’s a…”

“Let’s just say that his mother is his second scariest parent and leave it at that,” I said. I pointed at his chair and said, “Sit.”

Fabio sat.

“Do you wish to live?”

“Yes. Yes, I don’t want any trouble with the White Council.”

Heavy footsteps came pounding up behind us. Steve and his unbloodied buddy appeared in the doorway, carrying their batons. “Doctor Fabio!” Steve cried.

“Don’t make me trash your guys,” I told Fabio.

“Get out!” Fabio all but screamed at them.

They came to a confused stop. “But…sir?”

“Get out, get out!” Fabio screamed. “Tell the police there’s no problem here when they arrive!”

“Sir?”

“Tell them!” Fabio screamed, his voice going up several octaves. “For God’s sake, man! Go!”

Steve, and his buddy, went. They looked bewildered, but they went.

“Thank you,” I said, when they left. No need to play bad cop at this point. If Fabio got any more scared, he might collapse into jelly. “Do you want to live, Doctor?”

He swallowed. He nodded once.

“Then I suggest you alter your hairstyle to complete baldness,” I replied. “Or else learn to accept your receding hairline for what it is—the natural progression of your life. You will discontinue
all
use of magic from this point forward. And I do mean all. If I catch you with so much as a Ouija board or a deck of Tarot cards, I’m going to make you disappear. Do you get me?”

It was a hollow threat. The guy hadn’t broken any of the Laws, technically speaking, since Irwin hadn’t died. And I had no intention of turning anyone over to the tender mercies of the Wardens if I could possibly avoid it. But this guy clearly had problems recognizing priorities. If he kept going the way he was, he might slide down into true practice of the black arts. Best to scare him away from that right now.

“I understand,” he said in a very meek voice.

“Now,” I said. “I’m going to go watch over Irwin. You aren’t going to interfere. I’ll be staying until his mother arrives.”

“Are…are you going to tell her what I’ve done?”

“You bet your ass I am,” I said. “And God have mercy on your soul.”

Irwin was awake when I got back to the infirmary, and Nurse Jen had just finished stitching closed a cut on the wounded guard’s scalp. She’d shaved a big, irregularly shaped section of his hair off to get it done, too, and he looked utterly ridiculous—even more so when she wrapped his entire cranium in bandages to keep the stitches covered.

I went into Irwin’s room and said, “How you feeling?”

“Tired,” he said. “But better than earlier today.”

“Irwin,” Nurse Jen said firmly.

“Yes ma’am,” Irwin said, and meekly placed the breathing mask over his nose and mouth.

“Your mom’s coming to see you,” I said.

The kid brightened. “She is? Oh, uh. That’s fantastic!” He frowned. “It’s not…because of me being sick? Her work is very important.”

“Maybe a little,” I said. “But mostly, I figure it’s because she loves you.”

Irwin rolled his eyes but he smiled. “Yeah, well. I guess she’s okay. Hey, is there anything else to eat?”

Later, after Irwin had eaten (again), he slept.

“His temperature’s back down, and his breathing is clear,” Nurse Jen said, shaking her head. “I could have sworn we were going to have to get him to an ICU a few hours ago.”

“Kids,” I said. “They bounce back fast.”

She frowned at Irwin and then at me. Then she said, “It was Fabio, wasn’t it. He was doing something.”

“Something like what?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know it…feels like something that’s true. He’s the one who didn’t want you here. He’s the one who sent security to run you out just as Irwin got worse.”

“You might be right,” I said. “And you don’t have to worry about it happening again.”

She studied me for a moment. Then she said, simply, “Good.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “That’s one hell of a good sense of intuition you have, nurse.”

She snorted. “I’m still not going out with you.”

“Story of my life,” I said, smiling.

Then I stretched out my legs, settled into my chair, and joined Bigfoot Irwin in dreamland.

Bigfoot on Campus

Takes place between
Turn Coat
and
Changes

The campus police officer folded his hands and stared at me from across the table. “Coffee?”

“What flavor is it?” I asked.

He was in his forties, a big, solid man with bags under his calm, wary eyes, and his name tag read dean. “It’s coffee-flavored coffee.”

“No mocha?”

“Fuck mocha.”

“Thank God,” I said. “Black.”

Officer Dean gave me hot black coffee in a paper cup, and I sipped at it gratefully. I was almost done shivering. It just came in intermittent bursts now. The old wool blanket Dean had given me was more gesture than cure.

“Am I under arrest?” I asked him.

Officer Dean moved his shoulders in what could have been a shrug. “That’s what we’re going to talk about.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said in a slow, rural drawl, “you could explain to me why I found you in the middle of an orgy.”

“Well,” I said, “if you’re going to be in an orgy, the middle is the best spot, isn’t it.”

He made a thoughtful sound. “Maybe you could explain why there was a car on the fourth floor of the dorm.”

“Classic college prank,” I said.

He grunted. “Usually when that happens, it hasn’t made big holes in the exterior wall.”

“Someone was avoiding the cliché?” I asked.

He looked at me for a moment, and said, “What about all the blood?”

“There were no injuries, were there?”

“No,” he said.

“Then who cares? Some film student probably watched
Carrie
too many times.”

Officer Dean tapped his pencil’s eraser on the tabletop. It was the most agitated thing I’d seen him do. “Six separate calls in the past three hours with a Bigfoot sighting on campus. Bigfoot. What do you know about that?”

“Well, kids these days, with their Internets and their video games and their iPods. Who knows what they thought they saw.”

Officer Dean put down his pencil. He looked at me, and said, calmly, “My job is to protect a bunch of kids with access to every means of self-destruction known to man from not only the criminal element but themselves. I got chemistry students who can make their own meth, Ecstasy, and LSD. I got ROTC kids with access to automatic weapons and explosives. I got enough alcohol going through here on a weekly basis to float a battleship. I got a thriving trade in recreational drugs. I got lives to protect.”

“Sounds tiring.”

“About to get tired of you,” he said. “Start giving it to me straight.”

“Or you’ll arrest me?” I asked.

“No,” Dean said. “I bounce your face off my knuckles for a while. Then I ask again.”

“Isn’t that unprofessional conduct?”

“Fuck conduct,” Dean said. “I got kids to look after.”

I sipped the coffee some more. Now that the shivers had begun to subside, I finally felt the knotted muscles in my belly begin to relax. I slowly settled back into my chair. Dean hadn’t blustered or tried to intimidate me in any way. He wasn’t trying to scare me into talking. He was just telling me how it was going to be. And he drank his coffee old-school.

I kinda liked the guy.

“You aren’t going to believe me,” I said.

“I don’t much,” he said. “Try me.”

“Okay,” I said. “My name is Harry Dresden. I’m a professional wizard.”

Officer Dean pursed his lips. Then he leaned forward slightly and listened.

The client wanted me to meet him at a site in the Ouachita Mountains in eastern Oklahoma. Looking at them, you might not realize they were mountains, they’re so old. They’ve had millions of years of wear and tear on them, and they’ve been ground down to nubs. The site used to be on an Indian reservation, but they don’t call them reservations anymore. They’re Tribal Statistical Areas now.

I showed my letter and my ID to a guy in a pickup, who just happened to pull up next to me for a friendly chat at a lonely stop sign on a winding back road. I don’t know what the tribe called his office, but I recognized a guardian when I saw one. He read the letter and waved me through in an even friendlier manner than he had used when he approached me. It’s nice to be welcomed somewhere, once in a while.