Chapter Text
Harry
I knew right away when Eb died. This was partially because the wards shook before going into defcon one, partially because a couple of minor spells he had going around the house stopped working, and mostly because the walls started talking and said, “If you’re hearing this, I’m dead, Hoss.”
A lot of spells stop when a wizard dies. A clever wizard can set things up so that this triggers another spell, like an arcane rube goldberg machine.
That’s not what I was thinking about at the time.
But it’s all you need to know.
He left a lot of instructions for not getting my head cut off by the White Council. I probably should have followed them.
But he’d been with the White Council when whatever had happened went down, so I wasn’t much in the mood for running and hiding from them.
For the sake of any other impressionable young wizards reading this: planning to throw down with the White Council before you’ve even graduated your apprenticeship? Not a great idea. I’ve had worse ones, but still - not great.
Only they didn’t show up.
They should have. Doom of Damocles and all. If Eb kicked it, they were supposed to show up and see if anyone else was willing to take me on, and, once they’d established the answer was absolutely not, get to the execution. And it wasn’t like they wouldn’t know he’d died; it had been at their stupid all-hands meeting.
But no one showed.
It took me about twenty-four hours to think through that fact and what it might imply about said stupid all hands meeting.
So I did something even more stupid: I called Edinburgh.
Nobody picked up.
I then did something more stupid still and went down to Eb’s summoning circle to see what I could turn up.
About halfway through gathering the ingredients for a proper summoning, my head finally cleared enough for me to have a halfway decent idea.
I went out to the garden and dug up Bob.
I’d snuck him out there a while back. I didn’t dare keep him anywhere Eb could find him, but I couldn’t get rid of him either, and -
And it didn’t matter now.
Bob could gather information like nobody else, and that was all I cared about.
My plan to kill the entire White Council in bloody vengeance was abruptly brought to a halt by Bob informing me that they were already dead.
This was good news for my life expectancy, since this meant that (a) they wouldn’t be coming for my head now that Ebenezar was no longer around to protect me, and (b) they wouldn’t swat me like a gnat when I attempted to get said bloody vengeance, but it was bad news for my ability to keep standing upright, since about the only thing that had kept me going for the past twenty-four hours was a steady diet of rage.
“Boss?” Bob asked a little nervously. “You okay there?”
“I’m great!” I said a little manically. How many times Bob had asked that, and whether or not I was currently on the floor are not details that need to be recorded for posterity.
I had known that Ebenezar was gone.
Based on my own admittedly fraught history with the White Council, I might have jumped to the wrong conclusion.
“Okay,” I said determinedly when I had pulled myself together. “Then who took them out?”
“Don’t know, Boss,” Bob admitted. “If we assume they spent their last moments casting death curses on whoever was responsible, we have, uh . . . a lot of candidates. Things are getting pretty crazy out there.”
Of course they were.
And, worse, as Bob was quick to remind me, that was a big assumption. Just because you thought someone was responsible for the ambush that killed you didn’t mean you were right, and just because you spent your last minutes cursing someone didn’t even mean you blamed them for your death - wizards had a lot of time to accumulate grudges, and sometimes they were big enough that relatively minor offenses like, say, someone being responsible for your murder, just couldn’t compare.
For example: someone had dropped a satellite on one of the Raith properties. Given the circumstances, Lord Raith probably hadn’t been responsible for the Edinburgh massacre, but short of finding a necromancer, no one was going to be able to ask him now.
Or the several hundred people in anything resembling his vicinity. Apparently the only surviving scion of the Raith side of the family was some son Lord Raith hadn’t wanted anything to do with. Bob was fully prepared to jump into the juicy political implications of that, but I was finding it hard to care.
“So they could be dead already,” I concluded, shoulders slumping. “Or they could be cackling maniacally in a lair somewhere. And you don’t know.”
“Sorry, Boss,” Bob said. He sounded sorry too, which was unusual for him. “Um. We could work our way down their list of surviving enemies? We’d probably hit the right guy sooner or later. If we don’t die first.”
Right.
Even aside from the dangers of a bloody quest of vengeance, there’d be plenty of things happy to snack on a young wizard without any protection. I’d met some of them in the time between running away from Justin and finding my way here.
Another thought crept up on me.
“Bob,” I said, “what’s going to happen to the other apprentices?”
I hadn’t been the only one absent at the all-hands meeting, after all. All-hands hadn’t included apprentices too young or too dangerous for anyone to trust.
The blue lights in the skull bobbed a little in puzzlement. “Uh . . . I dunno, Boss. Depends on how good the wards are on wherever they’re holed up. And if one of those death curses really did take down the bad guy, I guess. If it didn’t, they might be cleaning house.”
“Right,” I said, the brain fog starting to creep off once more now that I had a plan.
Ramirez
Ramirez liked Harry, mostly. He generally liked people who saved him from a painful death by vampire.
It was just that he’d spent the first two desperate weeks with Harry thinking, He’s going to get us all killed if he doesn’t slow down, and every week after that thinking, I’m going to wish I was dead if I can’t keep up.
The others had mostly come around to that point of view too, he knew, but they didn’t all hit it at the same time. For some of them, it was when Harry wiped the Red Court off the map; for some of them, it was when he claimed Demonreach.
For Ramirez, it was when they fought He Who Walks Behind.
“Starborn,” he told Liesel later, in the relative safety of a fast food family bathroom as he tried to stitch her up. “He’s got to be.”
Nobody else could fight Outsiders like that, because nobody else had that little sliver of the Outside inside them.
Liesel snorted. “You didn’t notice that when you Soulgazed him?” She twisted her arm to see how the stitches were coming along.
“Stop that,” he snapped, picking up the needle again. “Of course I noticed! I didn’t know if you noticed, is all.”
For someone two years younger than him, Liesel was remarkably skilled at looking unimpressed.
“I noticed something was off,” he admitted. “But all I get is music. I thought he had just gone warlock, and I wasn’t in much position to care.” He’d found Maria and Alfie by then, two apprentices even younger than he was, and they’d been all but under siege by the Red Court; Harry’s arrival had been a gift he hadn’t dared check the teeth of, once he was sure they weren’t fangs.
“Well, you’ve got to care now,” Liesel said quietly.
Ramirez shifted uncomfortably, finishing up the stitches and rising from his crouch to grab some paper towels from the dispenser. “It doesn’t have to be bad, does it? I mean, there’s no sign he’s gone destroyer, or anything.”
He didn’t think so, at least. Or he hoped not. He was going on things he’d half overheard his mentor say behind closed doors and not much else.
Possibly he wouldn’t notice if Harry had gone destroyer until Harry started monologuing about it.
“Of course there’s not,” Liesel said impatiently, and he wondered if she was bluffing just as hard as he was. She gestured demandingly for him to help her to stand. “That’s not what I meant. You know it’s almost time.”
Ramirez spent a frozen moment thinking Liesel had gone some variety of traitor and was under the mistaken impression he had too before another half-heard memory sank in.
“The Gate,” he said. There had been something about a Gate. The White Council had been very concerned about their ability to keep it closed due to a dangerous lack of Starborn.
She nodded solemnly before grimacing at the sticky residue the floor had left on her hands and going to wash it off. “He’s the only Starborn we’ve got, which means if the Gate breaks open, he’s the only chance we’ve got, unless you want to be a chew toy for the Outsiders.”
“So it doesn’t matter if he goes warlock,” he said as the realization fully hit him.
She paused, hot water still running. “Well. I mean. It would be better if he doesn’t. I don’t really want to be a virgin sacrifice or anything. It’s just . . . look, Carlos, you seem like a good guy. Principled. But if Harry drops this ‘restoring the White Council thing’ and decides to be all ‘Harry Dresden for ruler of the world’ . . . “
“Go with it,” he said, heart sinking.
She shrugged, finally turning the water off. “I’m planning to. And you should too. You’ve got the little guys to think of.” She wiped the bloody water off her arm with one of the towels before slipping out of the bathroom.
He wasn’t too worried about anyone seeing her. Anyone vanilla had been long run off by the battle, and the drive-in was on enough of a backroad that no one else had driven up yet; if they had, he wouldn’t be able to hear the kids still gleefully looting the kitchen.
If Harry went warlock, the youngest ones would be the easiest targets for quick power-ups.
If the Outsiders broke through, Harry would be the only thing between them and something much, much worse than death.
So they’d just have to make sure Harry didn’t go warlock, then.
Or if he had - if it was too late, and Liesel had been some sort of test, feeling him out - he’d just have to make sure they all proved to Harry that they were of much more use alive than dead.
He gave his best smile to Liesel as he left the bathroom and went to go see if he could help Harry with anything at all.
Marcone
Giovanni had reported that there was a tornado of zombies downtown. Marcone had been a little hesitant to credit this.
Sure enough, the report had been garbled.
There was a tornado of ghosts. The zombies were a separate problem.
Still, under the circumstances, he probably owed the man a personal acknowledgement at the funeral. There were few who could have managed even that much clarity in the middle of it.
He had slowly accepted a growing knowledge of the supernatural as he had risen in the city. It had been necessary if he had wanted to continue to rise, instead of ending up as either a puppet or something’s dinner.
He wondered, sometimes, about the previous family - if the Vargassi’s had known just what competition they’d faced on these streets or if they’d been as oblivious to the signs of that as they’d been to his coup.
He suspected the latter, but it was a little hard to feel too superior on the matter. When he’d first entered the outfit, signs of the supernatural had been subtle. Small. Easy to miss.
There had not, for instance, been a fossilized dinosaur charging toward a ghost tornado while small children clung to its back and frantically pounded drums.
There were several aspects of the situation that were admittedly unclear to Marcone, but there were a few things he could cling to.
First, that whatever was happening here, it was almost certainly bad for business.
Second, it was definitely infringing on his territory.
And third, those were definitely small children, and he had strong objections to them being involved in this in any manner whatsoever.
“Mr. Hendricks,” he said as calmly as could, “please instruct the men to provide cover to that dinosaur.”
Mr. Hendricks, to his credit, didn’t blink.
Two hours later, Marcone was still standing. The ghost tornado, horde of zombies, and collection of evil wizards were not, so he was counting this as a victory, if a bewildering one.
“We will, we will, rock you,” a tiny wizard child sang hoarsely from beside him, swaying slightly as she continued to pound her drum.
The other wizard children slid down the fossilized bones like the world’s most morbid playground. One of them waved his hands and said some pig latin that led to the whole thing crashing down around them.
Marcone winced. The drummer girl collapsed into a heap of drums that had the others swarming around her.
All except for the one who had said the pig latin, who was apparently the ringleader, and who was instead squaring off against Marcone.
“I’m not giving you the book,” he said, jaw set.
Marcone had not known there was a book at stake in all of this. He was a little concerned about exactly what sort of book merited ghosts, zombies, and dinosaurs.
“If I’m not getting the book,” he said, because there was absolutely no need for this child to know that, “then I’m going to need something else for my trouble.”
“We didn’t ask for your help.”
“Still. As a . . . down payment for future assistance.”
The small child considered this.
He looked very much on the verge of saying no and stomping off before one of the others broke off from the huddle and whispered something urgently into the leader's ear.
The ringleader added this to his considerations before crossing his arms and saying, “You’re with the mob, right?”
“I’m a concerned businessman,” Marcone said smoothly.
The ringleader snorted. “Right. Are you the kind of concerned businessman that has a doctor on call?”
Marcone stiffened just a little.
He did not like to hear that a doctor was needed for a little girl who had been in an area his men had been shooting in.
In an area he had been shooting in.
“I am exactly that kind of concerned businessman,” he said, gesturing to Mr. Hendricks, who was already pulling out his phone.
The ringleader sighed, shoulders slumping a little. “And what do you want for it? We’ve got - ” He shuffled through his pockets. “Thirty dollars.”
“Fifty,” one of the other children corrected. “I found two tens in Corpsetaker’s pockets. Also a breath mint.”
“Don’t eat that,” the ringleader snapped, sounding very much like an overtired single parent.
Marcone broke in. “How about a conversation?” he suggested. “I have a few questions I think you can answer. We can talk while this young lady is getting treated.” He eyed just how thin most of the children seemed to be and added, “I can call in for some food while we talk.”
Most of the children perked up. “Pizza?”
Marcone was very used to offering bribes by now. Money, power, rare art, special privileges . . .
Pizza was a first, but an affordable one.
“Certainly,” he said, as the car he had called for finally managed to maneuver its way through the ruined street. “As much as you like.”