Chapter Text
"Dresden, I swear to God I am going to kick your ass if you hum the Ghostbusters theme one more time."
"Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do, Ghostbusters!" Harry continued with blithe disregard for the threat. I wasn't even sure if he'd heard me.
I sighed and gripped the steering wheel harder. The backroads that wound through the Ozarks hadn't seen a paver in years, making the rainy night all the more treacherous. Every now and then the frankensteined monstrosity that Harry called the Blue Beetle hit a pothole, jounced, and then slid on the pavement as I struggled to course correct. I wasn't sure how Harry could stand to drive this thing. Though, to be accurate, he hadn't been driving it for the past week. One of his arms was tucked into a sling and held close to his body, but the injury didn't stop him from being a backseat driver.
"Seriously. If I wanted to listen to a Halloween soundtrack I'd have bought a CD or something."
"But you have me."
"I wish I didn't," I sniffed. "Your singing voice could make a saint's ears bleed. I'd be doing the public a favor by strangling you."
"You know you're not the first woman to say that to me."
I fought to keep the smile off my face. Dresden could be an annoying ass, but he was also a funny one. Or maybe he was just wearing me down after so many months on the job, and I'd adapted to preserve my sanity. Six of one and half a dozen of the other, really.
"Why are we traveling to the ass end of nowhere again?" I asked, punctuating the question with a curse when another pothole attempted to swallow our tires whole.
"It's called Hog Hollow, actually," Harry said. "It's a little valley in Carter County. My mentor lives there and he wants a consult on a case. He thinks there's something from our side of the block causing trouble."
"Enough trouble to make you agree to drive nine hours and fork over a bundle for gas? This thing gets what, ten miles per gallon?"
"Twenty," Harry sniffed. "And the money isn't the point."
"It is for me. I still have to pay rent and cases have been scarce. At least tell me that he'll cover the expenses on the way down. Burger King charges excepted of course. There's only so much enabling one can tolerate."
"Ha, ha," Harry said, giving me a dirty look. "You're very funny. And no, he's not going to stiff us. He'll try to pay my fees and then some. That's just the sort of man he is. I'd appreciate it if you could keep the mockery to a minimum. He's one of the only men to ever earn my respect."
The solemn expression on his face brought me up short. In the time I'd known him, Harry was rarely unsmiling unless lives were on the line. He was serious about this. I nodded once. It was too early in the case to be clashing, especially over something so trivial. Politeness cost nothing and I could always be rude later if the situation really called for it.
"You said there was trouble?"
Harry nodded. "Ebenezer called yesterday while you were out with your boyfriend."
Was I imagining it, or was there a hint of jealousy in his tone?
"Zerbrowski isn't my boyfriend, Harry. He's been happily married for ten years. He's just an outrageous flirt and he doesn't know when to quit. That's what landed him in Special Investigations in the first place. We went to the mall to buy Katie a gift for their anniversary. For some reason, he thought I'd be better at picking out jewelry than he was. In the end, the clerk ended up embarrassed for both of us. I'm truly lousy at some of this girl stuff."
Because I'd never really been taught. Even if I had been, the makeup and hairstyles of the previous century wouldn't have flown in this day and age. So far as I knew, modern makeup didn't contain mercury or arsenic. But my childhood hadn't ever contained anything as frivolous as hair combs or face paint. Nothing so trite for the daughter of Heinrich Kemmler. The only thing to ever stain my skin was blood from human sacrifices. I'd seen my first body at two years old and had performed my first direction at five under my father's supervision to get an idea of the pieces of a body slatted together to form a whole. Necromantic theorems were my bedtime stories and requiems had been my lullabies.
Fear had kept me in seclusion even after I'd escaped him. Only now in this lifetime did I dare try to interact with my fellow human beings. I was trying to do penance one case at a time.
"What about that Richard guy? Didn't you go out with him?"
I poorly hid a smile. Someone was being transparent. I would have called him on it if I didn't need to keep my attention on the road. Richard Zeeman was my neighbor and unofficial repairman. Things broke down with distressing regularity now that I wasn't wearing my modified thorn manacles. It was a condition of my secret probation as imposed by my new teacher, Mortimer Lindquist. It was a pain and the landlord was becoming increasingly certain I was sabotaging things on purpose. If it weren't for Richard, I'd probably have been evicted by now. I was preemptively searching for an apartment that would pose fewer problems than the one I was currently in.
"A few times," I said. "I'm not sure it's going to work out."
Because I was pretty sure he was slated to die in the next year or two and I didn't want to get attached. There was a barghest lurking around our apartment complex. I would have written the spectral dog off as a consequence of my presence in most circumstances. The dead were drawn to necromancers whether they liked it or not. Death omens and scions of gods closely related to death felt a similar pull. I'd spotted this barghest in Undertown and kept a close eye on it while Mort and I fled from a scourge of Black Court vampires. But it hadn't been me it was after. Or more accurately, it wasn't only me. I'd spotted the dog lurking in the halls at night, staring at Richard's door. It stalked after him on rainy days and let out plaintive howls that only I could hear.
"Well that's a shame," Harry said, and couldn't quite make it sound sincere.
"What did your mentor say?"
The half-smile that had formed on his face evaporated, leaving him looking tired and more somber. He scrubbed at his face with his good hand and sighed.
"There's a small, unincorporated community near his farm. He goes there to sell things at the farmer's market and get feed for his animals, but yesterday when he went, he found everyone dead. The newscasters are saying that it was carbon monoxide poisoning because there aren't any marks on the corpses. If you really push, the medical examiners will admit they don't know what happened. There's no reason they should be dead."
My skin prickled with unease and I adjusted the air conditioning to hide a shiver. I thought I had an inkling why Harry had brought me in on this one.
"Black magic?" I guessed.
"He's pretty sure of it," Harry agreed. "But he's not sure what's big enough to kill this many people all at once. The M.E. said the liver temps matched exactly on every body. An entire town gone, wiped out in an instant."
"And we're going to tweak the nose of whatever did it?"
"Sounds like us, doesn't it?"
I sighed. "Yes, unfortunately, it does."