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grumpygreenwitch · 6 months

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The Witches and Wizards Job 39-40-41-42-43

THIS IS IT.

As always, thank you so much for coming along for the ride. It always makes me wriggle a little in goblin-glee to see the little like and/or reblog notifications.

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THIRTY NINE

I woke up on a relatively soft surface, which was more than I'd expected. Someone had put a pillow under my head, and there were quiet voices nearby, much louder ones further away. The warmth of Mouse against my leg and on my stomach was a welcome presence, and I reached down to rub his ears. He licked my hand and I heard his tail thumping against something soft. "Did we win?"

"Harry." Parker's voice was nearby. She moved closer and my breath caught. She'd put on the spider gown, an exquisite half-sheath of peach and gold and salmon tones, she'd done up her hair and put on make-up. She looked like a bona-fide, invited, certified guest of the party. In the darkness of the room she gleamed faintly, like a fallen star, the spider silk reacting to my presence. Lights, blue and red and white, flashed through a nearby window.

"I take it the cops are here."

"Well, yeah, but we called them," she specified, sitting next to me. "They're keeping the news people out. Everyone's all over that tidal wave that came out of nowhere and no one can explain." She gave me a tiny, wicked, utterly delighted look. "That was magic. And I was there to see it."

"It was, you were," I agreed. It was hard to get down on myself when there was someone around who so wholeheartedly approved of what I was, what I could do, all the glory and the violence of it, the grit and the beauty. "Nothing else was strong enough to maybe kill the dragon."

"Oh, it did," she assured me, then gestured with her hands to mime something being torn in half. She even made a squelching sound.

I had to laugh, and found that, overall, I wasn't terribly sore or hurt. Bone-tired, yes, I felt like I'd scraped a bottom to my magic I didn't even know was there. But nothing was burn, broken, or bleeding. "The Blackbird? Grandmother?"

"We've got them. Nate said to wait for you, though. Can you stand?"

"Oh, for this I can stand, dance and run a marathon," I told her, sitting up. I rode out a wave of diziness and got to my bare feet, felt them sting a little. My mouth tasted of the sea, and I could feel salt and sand in places best left unmentioned. I was suddenly starved, and I would have loved to wash my mouth if nothing else, but I didn't care. I wanted to see how it ended between Koschei and Baba Yaga.

I'd been lying in a bed that dominated a small room, probably a guest bedroom. My duster had been tossed at the feet of it, and I snagged it as I went, Mouse jumping down lightly to follow Parker and me. On top of a chest of drawers that matched the bed were the rest of my things, and I gave her an amused look. "All together in the same place?"

She grinned at me. "Amateurs. Oh." She rushed back into the room, grabbed a small bundle from the bed, and brought it back to me as I shrugged on the duster. "Nate said you should have this."

I looked down at a familiar bundle wrapped in a plain tablecloth and a lot of duct tape, and a few things made sense. "Fried your bud when you read it, didn't it."

She nodded.

"I should've thought of that."

"Harry, we all should've thought of that. We didn't. I should've got a mirror piece anyways, but I didn't." She shrugged easily. "It still worked out. I stole your earclip," she informed me lightly as she opened the door. My staff was resting by it, and I grabbed it as I followed.

We stepped out onto a hallway and golden light; just past the door, Eliot and Hardison were talking to a man with ash-brown hair cut very short and sharp eyes, dressed casually except for the Red Sox jacket and the discreet bulge of a gun, and a woman with long blonde hair, keen blue eyes and strong, mobile features, dressed as if she'd thrown on the first thing she could find when she'd jumped out of bed, her badge and her gun worn on her belt. Both of them had that unmistakable set to their shoulders of a cop on the trail of something important. He asked them something in the thickest Boston accent I'd yet heard of anyone, and all four of them chuckled low.

Hardison handed him Wattsford's little black notebook. Eliot handed her the sheaf of folders.

"That him?" The man shuffled through the notebook, his face going hard, before he looked up and pointed at me, back to his casual, easy manner. Parker, ironically, didn't get more than an admiring look from both of them, and why should she? She wasn't wearing the skin-fitted black of a thief, she was dressed like someone who'd come to a party.

"I didn't do anything," I replied automatically.

"Yeah, that's him," the woman confirmed with a touch of dark humor to her voice.

I sputtered, vaguely insulted. What's the point of proclaiming your innocence if no one's gonna even pretend to believe you?

"Harry is a consultant," Eliot told them both mildly. "He'll be going home soon, and hopefully we won't be getting him in trouble for a while."

"Like you never get me in trouble?" the man shot back, all amusement, but they all shook hands and parted ways amicably enough.

Eliot and Hardison came over to meet us. The hacker could barely take his eyes off Parker, so it was the hitter who offered me his hand, his eyes dancing, his smile warm as ever. "Sir."

"Sir." I shook his hand back. "I swear I didn't do any of it on purpose."

"The hell you didn't." Eliot snorted in amusement. "I'm glad you're on our side, Harry."

"Til the day I die," I assured him.

"May it be long in coming," he replied as if he were reciting a prayer. "Now come on. Time to finish this."

I followed them down the hallway to the main area of the mansion. "So the van did work, or did you and my dog run all the way across the grounds?"

"I absolutely don't doubt Mouse could run the distance and carry me," Hardison admitted. "I don't run if I can help it, it's undignified. The van did work, it's still working, actually. As much as a seven hundred pound computer made of cathode tubes can be said to be working."

"Those were the original computers, no?"

"No! What I made was better, stronger and capable of carrying you around without fritzing or exploding, capable of hacking into the security cameras so I could see where to go without running into the security people, capable of gagging the electrical system without actually frying it so we could pretend you were being all magic-like while I did my job." The hacker looked entirely too pleased with himself. "You brought me a dedicated, single system OS and I hacked it."

"You hacked magic?"

"I damn well hacked magic."

I couldn't very well refute him. Aside from the spider's phone, every single bit of on-site tech had worked because Hardison had strong-armed it into working, no more, no less.

"You did not," Eliot protested wearily, face scrunched up.

"I did."

"He did."

"Don't enc- Harry, don't encourage him."

"But he did."

"He did not - you did not hack magic, man."

"I absolutely did. Tell me how I did not."

"I -" The hitter shot me a look.

I could only shrug. Eliot looked at Parker. "He kinda did a little," she murmured sheepishly, much to his wounded indignation, and we all went into the main receiving room.

FORTY

"Where's everyone?"

Nate turned from inspecting the small, elegant little clavichord in the room, sipping on a cup of very strong coffee, and examined Leverage's consulting wizard. There were deep shadows under Dresden's eyes, and his hair was going every which way, salt hardening it into peaks here and there. His clothing was singed and still faintly damp, and he smelled of the sea. Not for a minute did the mastermind doubt that he was ready for round two, three and twenty, if that was what it took.

Nate didn't believe in people, not overmuch. He believed in his people; he'd worked with them, he'd seen the steel in their souls often enough to know it ran true to the core of them. But of the average person he expected very little, or nothing at all; he'd seen them crumple far too often under the burdens of the world. He didn't hold it against them, not ever. He himself had crumpled once before, like cheap tin. It had been a labor of years to re-cast himself, to find his own steel. In Dresden, that core ran through and then some. What Leverage faced together, relying on one another, the wizard faced alone. His horrors weren't faceless or nameless; they were solid, real and truly monstrous, even if sometimes those monsters were on his side. Harry Dresden had drawn a line on the sand and he would defend it to his destruction, or that of his enemies.

Then again, he'd seen much the same thing when he'd accidentally Soulgazed the wizard. That, and more. For a while after Nate had kept looking down at himself, expecting to find himself spattered to the neck with blood and perplexed that, every time, he wasn't.

"Gone. None of them wanted to stay to talk to the police," he told Dresden. "We asked mister Stone to keep back only the ones that weren't liable to eat anyone." Over one shoulder he looked at a corner of the room. "And the ones that didn't want to leave."

As if summoned by those words, Classy and his people, six in number, rose from where they were sitting or slouching and drew lazily closer. "We're runnin' a legitimate business here," Classy told Nate mildly; he had never put his jacket back on, or rolled down his sleeves. "Ain't got no reason to run from no fuckin' terriers."

"Yes, well," the mastermind agreed in the same even tone. "You do have to admit that's not a common attitude."

Classy shoved his hands in his pockets and snorted in amusement. "Yeah, alright. I'll be fuckin' honest," he added, tipping his chin and grinning maliciously. "I woulda stayed to see how that ends, police or not." His people muttered in agreement.

Dresden turned to look at what Classy had pointed out. Koschei was sprawled on a chair, asleep, snoring faintly. There was a single, long, thin silver chain binding him to the chair, hardly looking like it would keep him there. What might do the job, however, was the immense bird-like creature hovering just behind him, long neck twisting this way and that, a woman's face at the end of it, its eyes a rich, dark gold with black pupils, like a bird's. She was stout and exceedingly fluffy, each feather three colors, red, black and white-tipped, her train made of iridescent black feathers. She was clucking cheerfully to herself like a contented hen.

All around them, the wizard suddenly realized, were the portraits, eight in total, seven fakes and one copy. "Did you have to bring them all?" he asked Nate.

"I wanted to make a point," the mastermind explained, giving him time to take in the rest of the room. Off by the bar, Vanya Fedorov and Nick flanked the woman from the portrait, who'd wrapped an exquisitely knotted blue shawl about her shoulders; it glowed like a piece of the night sky, dark blue studded with tiny winking dots. Grandmother herself looked far more put together, less fragile and wounded, though still as delicate as the cup full of tea in her hands. Nick had found a garishly colorful shirt and a pair of shorts, and no one had forced him to put on shoes, so he looked absolutely delighted at the proceedings, even if there were none currently ongoing to delight him. Next to him, holding onto a glass of something strong she had yet to sip, was Jessamine Lochlin.

By the door to the main drawing room, never taking his gaze off the shark, stood Stone. He was wearing a plain shirt that barely fit him, and his somewhat bedraggled pants, but otherwise looked implacably unharmed.

"What happened to Fedorov's uncle?" Harry asked quietly.

"Fedorov called his father. Hard to tell which one of them was angrier at the betrayal," Nate replied in the same quiet undertone before pitching his voice to carry. "Sophie, go ahead and wake him up."

Beautiful and radiant still despite the night's shenanigans, the grifter came close to the Russian wizard and pulled from his black hair a lacquered comb - the same comb Parker had originally stolen from the Blackbird's pockets. "That better be enough, I'm not kissing him," she warned Nate dryly. Classy and his people snickered, and the leader of the Dredgers cleared his throat with a muttered apology he absolutely didn't mean.

Koschei roused with a snort and a start, tried to lunge out of the chair, and nearly fell. The alkonost clamped a taloned foot on the back of the chair and forced it back down, and the wizard went with it, seething. He opened his mouth and snarled something, paused… and looked utterly stunned when nothing happened.

"Yeah, that." Nate saluted him with his cup. "I wouldn't bother."

"Release me!"

"Uh, no. Not yet anyways. I've got a couple of questions I was hoping -"

"Release me!"

"- you'd answer before we trade you for your heart."

Koschei went white, though it was hard to tell if it was fury or panic. "You cannot imagine what I can do for you, for all of you. All you know of magic is what that brute Dresden has shown you."

"Ouch," Harry muttered without heat.

"Release me. I will grant you anything you desire."

"Yeah, you already made that offer," Nate reminded him mildly. "You already got your answer. Or do you mean them?" He gestured to the Dredgers with his cup. "You guys want anything from the Blackbird?"

"His guts on a platter, his head on a bowl," Classy growled. His people hissed and chattered agreement, all of their eyes burning with a lambent red light. "His fingers and toes to bite and gnaw."

"Um. Need him alive. Sorry."

Classy shrugged, seamlessly going back to his easy mood. "No harm. Figured I'd ask just in case."

"Stone," Koschei began.

"I was fool enough to make one bad bargain with you, wizard. I will make no more," the golem replied calmly.

"You should ask Fedorov," Nate suggested. "I'm sure you've got many things he thinks he wants."

Koschei said nothing, glaring furiously at the mastermind, and Nate sipped at his coffee. "But it's not so easy, is it, to tempt a man who knows that what he wants and what he needs are two different things. Who knows that those things aren't always going to agree with one another." He pinned a level look on the Russian enforcer. "Or is this because he already made his choice, and there's some sort of prohibition between the two of you?" He gestured lightly at the hand gently squeezing Grandmother's shoulder. "When a Royal chooses one of you, the other can't interfere?"

Koschei exploded into profanities in Russian, as well as a couple of other languages that made Eliot's brows climb nearly to his hairline. Grandmother reached out to pat Fedorov's hand, but the enforcer looked nothing if not confused.

"You don't look like the men in your family," the mastermind told Fedorov. "I mean, obviously that's not an absolute, like genetic testing, but it's pretty telling when you don't look at all like any of the men in your family. We looked them up. Not one. You look like your mother, though. Same eyes, same hair. All the way back seven generations or so. The Sagorovs might have taken you in, but you're not a blood-relation."

"Yes, but -" Vanya hesitated. "My mother was… a casualty of the family's business. They made amends by taking care of me. What does that have to do with anything?"

"She wasn't a casualty, she was the target. His target." Nate gestured at the frothing wizard. "It left you alone, vulnerable at a young age. But then the family stepped in, and he saw the potential for an even bigger payout if he just waited. A high-ranking member of the Russian mafia and a Fyodorov? You don't find a lot of those lying around these days."

Fedorov pressed his mouth to a thin line.

"That's the problem with paper records," the mastermind pointed out mildly. "They tend to stick around for a long, long time."

"How did you know?"

"The invitation," Sophie murmured. "The coat of arms embossed on it was for the Russian Tsars. It just took me a little while to remember it, it hasn't been used for so long."

"I am not this thing. I am me. I am my own man."

"You just saved Grandmother from her greatest enemy in pitched battle." Dresden's voice was very calm, in spite of the surprises rolling out to smack everyone in the face. "Heroes do that. Princes do that."

"Do not call him that," Baba Yaga's voice crackled through the tension in the room. "He has chosen to be prince of a different empire, and that is his choice. As it should be." She leveled a cool, disappointed glare on Koschei. "How can this lesson not sink in after all these centuries, Kostya? We do not choose them, they choose us. Always."

"I don't have the patience for your maudlin beggary. They are mortal, and weak, and flawed. They are tools to be put to use, nothing else. They are power. My power."

"And you wonder why no one likes you," Fedorov commented, then crouched by Baba Yaga. "All I have ever wanted to be is my own man. I do not ask for favors easily." He shot Nate a look. "The price is always far more than one is willing to pay. I would ask only one thing of you, Grandmother." He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a bundled handkerchief. Unwrapping it, he offered her the small, oddly shaped, carved wooden cup, a chicken bone tucked neatly inside it. "I would know what you think of me."

She gasped, and took the cup with wrinkled fingers. Then she looked up and smiled at him. "You already know, little prince. I think you are more than worthy. I think any path you choose should be proud to have you." She touched his cheek lightly and, Russian enforcer or not, he flushed faintly under her praise.

Koschei strained against his bonds with a high-pitched, strangled howl, before going limp in the chair. "So," he growled at Nate. "You win. You would make an enemy of me for all the days of your miserable mortal life. I hope it was worth it."

"Sort of," the mastermind replied. "See, Dresden is supposed to just be our consultant. Answer questions, provide information, that sort of thing. Things, eh, escalated, but he still made time for the information bit, and one thing he made real clear is that you like to carry grudges. You really do. So part of doing all this was also making sure you can't do that to my people, or to him."

"And what will you do, kill me?" Koschei laughed darkly at him.

"We could, I suppose, but we really don't kill people unless we have to."

"I am immortal," the wizard laughed.

"No," Dresden countered. "You just hid your heart so well even death couldn't find it. But then you went and dug it out." He rapped his staff lightly on the floor, and one of the portraits began to glow faintly, as if illuminated by a light behind it. "Worse, you went and dug up the keys to open your little magical lockbox, the same keys where you trapped your death. You might not be a necromancer, but man," Dresden shook his head. "I've walked the edge, and I thought I was close, but you make it look like I was hiking fifty miles from the Damocles Doom."

"A feeble threat from a feeble pack of feeble old men."

"You've been out of the loop. They've got women and everything in the Council these days. Real modern of them."

"You don't have the keys, I stole them back from Dresden's home."

"You made the most basic of mistakes." Sophie came up behind Koschei, just close enough to purr against his ear with Ekaterina's Russian accent before she straightened up and abandoned the persona altogether. "You forgot the first rule of the grift: always keep your eyes on the mark." She moved to stand by Nate.

"You kept looking for heroes," the mastermind sipped at his cup, "because you're used to fighting heroes. But the one hero you found, you kinda. Well. Brought him on yourself." He saluted Fedorov with his cup before giving Koschei his attention once again. "But we're not heroes. We're conmen. And you just fell for the oldest con: the shell game. " He moved to his feet and reached into his pocket, pulling from it the plastic chess piece. "In a tower."

The frame of the portrait began to glow with its own light, as it had back in the vault of the MFA. There, among the gilt and the filigree in the ancient wood, Nate found the carving of the tower, pressed the chess piece against it, and was unsurprised at last to see it sink in seamlessly.

"In a box," Eliot said, reaching for the box of matches Harry had thrown at him so carelessly. It had a treasure chest painted on top, and it was still half-full of matches. The little drawing led the hitter to the right place on the frame.

"I stole those from you," Koschei sounded strangled.

"Did you?" Nate asked casually. "Because we had a set at the safehouse, a set at the pub -"

"A set in Lucille," Hardison pointed out.

"And in the u-Haul," Eliot added, stepping aside for Parker, who frowned minutely at the frame until she found the carving of a rabbit missing a foot, and grinned victoriously as she did magic all on her own. "Inside a rabbit."

Hardison came up behind her. "You look absolutely glorious doing magic," he murmured, blindly shoving the duck-shaped whistle at the frame.

She beamed at him. "I do magic all the time," she replied just as quietly. "Pay at- Hardison, pay attention!"

"Hardison!" Eliot hissed, forcing the hacker to actually focus.

"Alright, ok! Messing up my rhythm here," he grumbled. He was one of the few people present who could reach the top of the frame and return the duck to its graven, flying flock.

"You see, our consultant explained something to us called a Mirror-Mask. When you bind several items together to make it look like they're all the real thing." Nate looked pointedly around. "I think you might have heard of it. Of course you were going to try and steal the keys, that's just common sense. All we had to do was make you think you'd succeeded. Make it, ah," he glanced at Dresden, "believable."

"The real set was never together, not after the first time," Sophie told Koschei mildly. "The best way to keep a magical item from being tracked is to have it always on the move. Harry taught us that too." She grinned at him. "And your own magic to hide the items did the rest of the job." From her purse she pulled the egg, and pressed it lightly to the bottom of the frame.

The painted emerald brooch burst into radiant color, bright enough to dazzle everyone present for a moment. Sophie brought out the key and bit her lip. "Are you sure, Harry?"

"You won't damage it," the wizard assured her.

She lifted the key and put it lightly against the brooch. It sank into the light as if into a lock. The grifter tested it one way, then the other, and slid it around a quarter turn, then another, before pulling it out.

With it came a black velvet bag the size of a man's head, secured with a golden cord, weighted at the ends with cabochon diamonds, each as big as a quarter, one pure, one black. Eliot caught the bag by the strings before it could drop from the key. "Heavy," he commented, his expression full of uncertain anticipation.

Sophie reached for the bag, hesitated, reached again and then took a full step back. "Parker."

"Dresden," Nate added.

"Mister Act," Harry said at once.

"The hell d'yer want me for, wizard?" Classy exclaimed, caught completely by surprise.

"To find out if it's booby-trapped," the wizard replied evenly.

"… Oh."

The bag was set on a small lacquered table, and all three bend down to stare curiously at it. Classy sniffed it lightly. "Dust. Time. Magic. No poison, no bugs, nothin' that bites or stings." He leaned even closer and licked the black velvet, then spat off to one side. "Night's breath and rowan ash. Their power's wore off with time, 's nothing but crap tea and soot."

"No hexes, no curses," Harry agreed. At Classy's dictum he gingerly laid a gentle hand on the velvet, then pulled it back, wriggling his fingers.

"Don't trust me, wizard?" Classy challenged.

"I do," Dresden replied evenly, then shrugged in the direction of the bar. "But I just spend a whole evening sneaking suppression potions into people's drinks. I made sure not to get you or your people, but you say rowan ash and I get paranoid."

The Dredger stared at him open-mouthed before he started cackling. "The Witchwell. That's how you made it work."

Parker ran her hands smoothly over the rich velvet. "There's nothing here but the one thing." She untied the cord and reached in.

The jewel filled both her hands. The emerald was immense, the same vitriolic green of its owner's eyes, flawless, shaped into an oval and set into a frame of platinum that made one dizzy if stared at for too long. Parker turned it this way and that, held it up to the light. Behind her, Sophie breathed out in disbelief. The thief suddenly shuddered and put it down abruptly. "It's wriggling," she declared tightly.

Sophie put her fingertips to it. "The Emerald Heart of Koschei the Deathless," she murmured. She could just feel the faint tremors of a heartbeat against her skin. "It's real."

"And untouchable," Koschei told them smugly. "Go on. Ask mister Stone to break it. Ask Grandmother to grind it up in her mortar. Ask. You do not have the final key, you did not find it, did you. You cannot touch me."

"We did not find it," Nate admitted readily. "We're just conmen. But you brought a hero into the mix," he told the Russian wizard mildly. "And he did find it, rattling around inside a chicken bone. Or what, did you think when you stole it, that we somehow miraculously found another chicken bone with a needle in it?" The mastermind's tone suddenly went to lethal ice. "Dresden."

Without hesitation, Harry pulled off the pin secured to the top of his shirt and flicked off the little mirror shard at the top.

"You cannot kill me." Koschei's panicked voice was a wheeze. "Your Council will murder you for it."

Dresden seemed to consider that. "True. Hey, Fedorov -"

"Wait!" Koschei shrieked. "What do you want, you must want something, everyone wants something. There is always something!"

"There is," Nate agreed, and gestured to the painting. "Tonight you were going to lock Grandmother in there with your heart, and finally do what you couldn't pull off all those centuries ago. You'd taken all the tools she uses for her magic, the mortar, the pestle, the shawl - left her her house, though, that's nice of you." He nodded at the alkonost who curtsied gracefully back. "You were going to lock her in there, and let the curse on the heart do what it was always meant to do. Sell the painting and wash your hands of her fate while you stole her power. So, instead, you're going to step in that cage. We're going to throw your heart in with you and we're going to lock the door. And then that lovely lady over there," he pointed at Jessamine, "is going to take you back to her museum. And if you're lucky, by the time you get out, your heart will have left you enough magic to fill up a thimble." He leaned back, once again the harmless, slightly rumpled, friendly man he could pretend to be so flawlessly. "But you'll be alive, though."

"There must be something you want," Koschei croaked, his eyes gone to rolling green pebbles in his corpse-white face.

"Probably lots of things," Nate admitted. "But I know the difference between what I want and what I need. And since we dosed you with a full suppression potion before we started this conversation, I don't think you're in any shape to offer me either."

FORTY ONE

The Dredgers boxed up the portrait after Dresden pulled the keys back out, and Eliot and Parker carried it out for Jess. The hitter excused himself discreetly, and both young women stared uncomfortably at anything but one another in the dark next to the u-Haul van.

"So you're a thief?"

"Sort of."

"Were you gonna - 'cuz I mean. I never got that vibe from you, that you were using me to steal from me."

"No!" Parker exclaimed. "No, I was, I wanted to work with you, 'cuz it was fun, and you were fun, and we could make plans, and then take 'em apart, and that was so much fun and that's what you're supposed to do with friends, have fun, except now I ruined everything and, and-"

"Alright!" Jess threw her hands out to try and stave off the deluge. She chewed angrily on her lip. "You don't have a lot of friends, do you."

Parker shrugged. "You just met them all but one."

"Oh my gosh," Jess tugged on her curling hair. "I mean, I'm not saying it wasn't fun, but you lied to me. Like, big lies! Important lies!"

"I know. I just… You wouldn't have wanted to make friends with a thief."

"Well… No, I guess not."

"But it was fun?" Parker asked tentatively.

Jess, flustered, wriggled uncomfortably in place. "So what's your real name?"

"Parker."

"Parker what?"

"No, just Parker."

"Well, there goes your free membership," Jess told her sternly.

"Ok, that's fair," the thief agreed, crestfallen.

The silence lingered and grew.

"So you're an art thief."

"Thief-thief, mostly."

"You wouldn't happen to know, you know. The Dutch Gallery."

"I know who did it, but they don't have them anymore, they sold them."

Jess let out an irate little squeal, stomping a foot. "I don't suppose that you'd want to. Do like a. Counter… heist?"

Parker's glum expression shattered under a burst of sunny, delighted surprise. "Would I ever."

"Well, good!" Jess nodded stoutly, then offered a hand. "Hello. I'm Jessamine Lochlin, and I've got a proposition for you."

Parker reached out to shake the young curator's hand. "Hi. I'm Parker, and I'm all ears."

FORTY TWO

"Wizard."

I turned to find myself nose to chest with Stone. "Oh, good," I said in a tone that implied the golem's presence was anything but.

"We made a bargain, you and I, back at the boat-house. That the building is no longer there is not a valid excuse to welsh on it."

"I'm not welshing on it. I'm just not keeping up all that well with local events. The boat-house's gone?"

"You tore multiple holes into the building and then called up a tidal wave, wizard," Stone gave me a look as deadpan as his tone. "What did you expect would happen to it?"

I shrugged. I hadn't exactly been planning ahead beyond getting rid of the zmei. "Come with me. Hey, Ford, a word?"

The mastermind turned to look at me, then up at the golem. "I don't know that I have the energy to deal with your friends tonight, Dresden," he declared wearily.

"Well, you're in luck because this one actually is a friend. Did Eliot and Hardison ever talk to you about the moonlighting I did with them?"

"Yes, briefly. But they also mentioned it was not likely to happen again once you go home."

"To you, no. You're human. But it occurs to me, what if you had a group of non-humans doing what you do?"

Ford opened his mouth. He said nothing, closed it. Looked up at Stone.

"I don't follow," the golem admitted.

"Ford and his people run a small operation. Very neat, very tidy, very challenging," I explained, hoping the mastermind would catch the emphasis on the last word.

"We help people," Ford jumped in. "We help people who have lost the war. We come into a situation when the odds are entirely against us. When our customers have had hope and spirit crushed out of them by companies, by governments, by forces that seem too big, to powerful for any one person to challenge, let alone defeat. Our monsters aren't solid," he gestured at the painting, "but they are real. And so are the challenges."

The golem looked most definitely intrigued. "I don't see how this applies to me. Are you offering me a job?"

"Not exactly," Ford demurred. "You see, while we were working on Grandmother's case, a couple of people approached us. One was a seal-woman."

"Looking for her skin?"

"Looking for her fourteen-year-old daughter's skin."

The golem straightened up sharply. "Was it found?"

I liked him for asking that question. Never mind what he might say about ethics or morals, Stone still had, somewhere under the granite exterior, an awareness of right and wrong.

"We did, and we also managed to sneak in some information to the authorities that won't compromise any other potential seal-women out there, but that will make the lives of the men involved very, very difficult." Nate gestured. "Abstract enemy. Lost fight. We still pulled a win. But… they aren't going to come to us anymore."

"You're human," the golem said thoughtfully.

"You aren't," the mastermind pointed out. "We could, in theory, provide you with the infrastructure, with training, with advice come from our experience fighting these fights. While you, and your team, can reach out to Boston's supernatural community in a way we can't. You can provide them with the… leverage they lack."

Stone was silent a long, long time, looking deeply thoughtful. "I have no team. I would not involve my security people in this matter. They are good at what they do, but that is very much all they are good at."

"Can I make a suggestion about that?" I raised my hand.

"This was your idea and your bargain, wizard. Suggest."

"Nick!"

The shark, who'd been demolishing what was left of the buffet, came trotting over. "Wizard! Tell me you have more fights to offer. This has been the best night since I came to your world."

"No," Stone said stiffly.

"Uh, well, you know," Ford spoke before I could. "Nick's the one who sniffed out Dresden for the seal-woman. He's been nothing but good about following directions tonight, on nearly no notice. And you know he'll never be afraid to call you out if he thinks you're going about a job the wrong way." His eyes strayed to Sophie. "Personal experience talking here, that is incredibly important to the job."

Stone looked down at the niuhi, frowning. Nick beamed up at him, then at me. "Lots of seal-women out there who need help, Nick," I told him casually. "Lots of other people, too, and no one's helping them."

The shark snorted. "You think I could help anyone, wizard? Biting makes as many problems as it solves!"

"Untrue," Stone said. "Biting can absolutely solve many problems without creating more, as long as they are the right problems."

"I'm not very good at telling the difference."

The golem sighed. "I am." He faced Ford. "Perhaps we should speak after all, you and the shark and I."

The three of them walked away and I breathed a sigh of relief. Was the night over yet? I wanted nothing more than a blessedly hot shower, a fresh change of clothes, and a bed, any bed. Maybe just a couch. A sleeping bag. Or a couple of blank-

"You got somethin' of mine, wizard."

I turned. Classy had approached me alone, and I knew his people well enough to recognize the respect and deference he was showing me. Unfortunately, that didn't help me understand what he was saying, and I stared at him with what I knew was a blank, dumb expression on my face. "I do?"

The Dredger stopped playing with the thin silver chain he'd loaned Ford to contain Koschei. It looked like nothing but a silvery piece of jewelry in his hands. He cocked a brow at me. "Ford said you had it."

"He did?"

Classy peered curiously at my face, and broke into low snickers. "Long night, wizard?"

I could only groan in reply. "I feel like I've been put through a wringer and run over a few miles of bad road until all the soft bits are raw -" It hit me then, with the unpleasant mental image. "Oh, I do have something of yours!"

"There you are, found the one thinky bit ain't fallin' down tired," the Dredger cheered me on as I groped around inside my trenchcoat.

"You guys coming out alright out of this one?"

"Well enough." He shrugged, then pointed to where Sophie was having an animated conversation with his people. "Learning about this thing called a Zanzibar market. Humans are fuckin' brilliant, wizard. You think you got one up on them and they're a fucking dozen steps ahead already. Ah, there's my beauty."

I handed over the Burning Witchwell. "You know the thing's nearly empty, right?"

"I know. Blackbird promised he'd empty it for us, lying crow's arsehole. Ain't in the business of killing me own fuckin' customers, wizard. The Witchwell's what I want, not the poison innit."

"Well, hell, if that's all you want I can empty it for you."

"Right?" The Dredger brightened up. "What's yer fee?"

"You know the Bag of Winds Ying Ying Amarin wanted?"

He grinned and winked at me. "You want a stitch or three should come loose on it?"

"That sounds perfect, unless it's gonna get you in trouble."

He cackled. "Caveat emptor, wizard. We're Dredgers. We find what's not to be found. We get into places and things we don't got no business puttin' our hands an' our mouths an' our teeth on. Ain't no one better'n us at what we do. You do business with us at your own risk an' peril." He gave me a yellow-toothed grin and offered me a hand to shake.

I took it without hesitation. "You mind if I do it tomorrow after I get enough sleep to maybe not kill myself and everyone else around?"

He laughed merrily and walked away.

FORTY THREE

The morning of the day after the party broke sunny, warm and beautiful, the sort that promised a hot, breezy summer noon, a perfect day to head down to the beach. Boston stirred under the clattering of the T and the scent of hundreds of little coffee shops, and the tidal wave was no longer the biggest bit of news.

Nate and Hardison met Stone on the steps of the Back Bay Station. Hardison handed the golem the spider's phone. Stone, once again dressed impeccably in a custom-tailored turtleneck and dress slacks, took it with care and tapped his thumb lightly on it. His surprise when the screen actually lit up was very obvious. "I was unaware such a thing was possible," he admitted. "You're giving me a very rare treasure, mister Hardison."

"You're gonna need it. At least until you can get a different setup. You can do tech and magic, you just gotta be willing to, you know. Compromise."

"You do understand this is temporary?" Nate told the golem. "We're not going to handhold you. You don't answer to us. We'll help you set up, but the job's yours, you and your people."

Stone seemed to think very carefully on his answer. "I have worked for someone or another for nearly all of my existence," he explained. "My security firm is the first attempt I have ever made at others working for me, and yet… it was still me, working for someone else. I think this opportunity you offer me, mister Ford - I think it is everything the wizard promised." He smiled thinly. "And I do have the shark to keep me honest."

Nate couldn't help but be a little amused at that. "In that case, here's something to remember today by." He handed over the plain plastic chess tower.

Stone stared at it, then pocketed it. "It will be kept safe as long as I can do such a thing."

Across the Concourse, Harry Dresden, professional wizard, was staring at the growing rivers of people coming and going, a trickle quickly turning into a flood. Boston was beautiful, alive, a city as worthy of attention and devotion as any other.

He couldn't wait to go home.

"Wizard," Classy's rough voice called out, and Harry turned. The Dredger, flanked by two of his people, came up to the wizard sedately, blinking a bit in the bright morning light. The wizard offered him the wrapped-up bundle of the Witchwell, sans duct-tape; Classy dug the small cylinder out and shook it. "Not a fuckin' drop. You do good work, wizard."

"Well, you know. When someone's not trying to kill me."

Classy chuckled. "All said, I'm glad this ain't your turf. Don't fancy the fight if we had to go up against you."

"Nicest thing anyone's said about me in a while," Harry assured the Dredger, and they shook hands. "Stay alive, mister Act."

"Same, mister Dresden. Safe travels and all that crap." The Dredgers turned and walked away, pausing briefly to nod politely at Sophie as they crossed paths.

The grifter was leading Parker and Eliot, and she hugged Harry without hesitation. "Oh, I feel like we ought to keep you here for a month, just to give all those bruises a chance to heal," she protested mildly.

"Believe me, I'm going home in one piece. That's more than I usually get," Harry assured her sheepishly.

"I really did mean it, you know. You were only supposed to be a consultant."

"I did consult," he replied with a lopsided grin. "This is the easiest consulting I've ever done. You told me everything I needed to know, you let me sleep, you fed me. Watered me. Watered me a lot." She had to grin at that. "Hot showers every day, dang. Doesn't get much better than that."

She pulled away, and Eliot offered his hand. "It's all the hot showers, huh?"

"I have no idea what your water heater's made of, but you should invest in the company."

Eliot, who wasn't about to tell Harry the water heaters at both the loft and the safehouse had been replaced three times, merely beamed at the wizard as they shook hands. "Sir."

"Sir."

"You're a good man, Harry. Violence doesn't make you a bad man." He shrugged a little. "It's just a thing we have to do sometimes. You're not responsible for other people's choices, no one is but them."

The wizard's grin stuttered. "You make it sound like it's easy."

"Hardest thing in the world, my man," the hitter admitted. "Because you gotta convince yourself of it every day, every time you get up and look in the mirror. Just remember: forehead to nose, not nose to nose."

"Elbow, not wrist," Harry repeated dutifully, his grin returning. "Or I just hit them with magic really, really hard."

Eliot laughed. "Or that." He bent down to ruffle Mouse's ears and ruff roughly, much to the young dog's delight, while Parker came to stand before Harry.

"Are you really going to be alright?"

"I mean, I'm probably gonna get some version of yelled at for not reporting the Blackbird thing," he admitted, punctiliously honest with her as he'd tried to be all along. "Are you? With Jess, I mean?"

"Oh, yeah, we're good. We're gonna be - we've got plans. We're good. Harry? Thank for you asking."

"Thank you for accepting me. Me, and what I am."

"But it's magic," she protested. "Who wouldn't?"

The wizard didn't say anything, he merely cut his gaze to one side. She turned and looked. "Oh. Right."

Nate and Hardison joined the little group, and the hacker offered his hand with a grin. "Mister Hacker," he said solemnly.

A snort of laughter burst out of Harry, and he offered his hand. "Mister Wizard," he replied.

"I am," Hardison agreed. "And you are. You know, I had the theory in my head, the thought that we were just two sides of the same coin. I'm glad I was right."

"I am super envious of everything you can accomplish," Dresden admitted readily. "Let's start there. But mostly I'm also so mad that we can't do more. If you ever figure out how we can work together without me frying all your equipment, I'll be the first one there."

"Holding you to that, Dresden."

"You bet."

Nate stared very levelly at the wizard. Harry stared just as levelly back.

"Walk with me, Dresden."

"My train -"

"- doesn't leave until Hardison lets it."

The two men walked across one edge of the Concourse, with the mastermind lost in thought. After a few moments, he reached into his jacket and offered Harry a plain white envelope. "Your pay. Plus incidentals, and so on."

"Jeez," Harry stared at the envelope, then pocketed it inside his duster. "Thank you."

Nate stopped and turned to face the wizard. "You did magic."

"I did."

The mastermind shook his head. "You know, after the MFA, Sophie was explaining it to me. She described it as being sheep in a pen facing a man with a shotgun."

"It's not… entirely wrong. But also not completely right."

"No?"

Dresden smiled thinly. "Sometimes the sheep have shotguns, too."

Nate made a faintly amused sound. "Sometimes the sheep hire a wizard."

"And now you know where ninety percent of my work comes from. Congratulations, another puzzle solved," Dresden teased.

"Yes, but -"

"But you don't like the shape of it?" The wizard shrugged. "Neither does most of the world. Give it time, Ford. In a few months you'll be looking for explanations, twisting your memories into things that fit your reality better. In a year you won't think twice about it."

"You make it sound so easy."

"That's because I've seen it happen most of my adult life, and all of my professional life."

Nate thought very carefully on that. "I don't like that. I don't like thinking that the only way this works is if I lie to myself. I'm not interested in being comfortable, or I wouldn't do what I do. I don't want, I don't need the world to be in order, Dresden. I need it to be fair."

"That's our job, not the world's," the wizard replied simply. "We make it fair."

Nate chewed on that. "So it is."

"Besides, I doubt Parker's gonna let you forget that magic's a thing that happens. And hell, there's Sophie right there with you, Ford. If you don't look at her and see what she does is magic, I'm not sure I can help you. I'm not sure anyone can."

That did make the mastermind grin, however crookedly. He turned and offered his hand. "Pleasure doing business with you, mister Dresden. Can I add your number to our Rolodex?"

Harry shook it amicably. "Absolutely. Unless it's Portland."

"Worse than Boston?" They started walking back to the team.

"You have no idea. Besides, you'd have local help there if you needed it."

"Another wizard?"

"No." Harry gestured vaguely, as if to organize his thoughts before he spoke. "Do you happen to know what a Grimm is?"

#my writing #fanfiction #crossover #the dresden files #leverage #harry dresden #nathan ford #sophie deveraux #parker #eliot spencer #alec hardison #urban fantasy

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grumpygreenwitch · 6 months

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The Witches and Wizards Job 34-35-36

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THIRTY FOUR

Nate closed his eyes for a moment in the dark.

They had the real portrait, for now.

They had the real Grandmother, for now.

They had Koschei, upstairs, for now.

But the first was going to cost them Parker, the second Eliot and the third Dresden, and at that point the cost got way too high for any con to be feasible. "Hardison," he said at last, beginning to move once again. "Endgame."

"Wh- I'm not ready, Nate!"

"Be ready. Sophie, Fedorov, go make sure our consultant stays in one piece. More or less. I need to borrow your bodyguard for a second, Fedorov."

"Oh, sure, give us the easy job," Sophie shot at him.

"Well, you gave him to me," the Russian agreed easily, looking mildly intrigued. "I suppose you're free to take him back. Are you looking for your thief?"

"Parker?" Nate seemed nothing if not puzzled at the question. "No, she's fine. She just got too close to something that fried her earbud which, you know. Inconvenient. No, I just don't want the Blackbird to know Nick exists. Yet."

Nick's grin broadened in delight at that. "Oh, you understand ambushes. I like you."

"That is slightly terrifying coming from you," the mastermind admitted cheerfully as the group split up. "Eliot, the non-negotiable factor."

"Yeah, I got her." The hitter had slipped into the mansion's vast basement without a problem; it was the one place where there were no visible guards. It was a vast, echoing space, a little dusty but overall in good order. He could see plenty of lights over his head when he shone his phone's flashlight up. Several smaller spaces had been partitioned out: a pantry, a cava, a corner full of totes marked 'Christmas', 'Halloween', 'Easter' and so on. It was also one of the few rooms that betrayed the house's age: salt streaked the concrete walls. There was a good reason why most houses along the New England coastline didn't have basements; once you got inland, sure. But where the land had been stolen from the ocean, the ocean was ever eager to reclaim it, one drop at a time if need be.

He'd found the room behind the old cast iron furnace and its piping, which had been disconnected but never removed. It was one of the few rooms that, like the cava, showed signs that care had gone into its construction, the walls solid when he ran a hand over them. Eliot guessed it was a man-cave of some sort. Light came in from under the door, a steady golden glow which he figured came from the glow-sticks the leshy favored. He could hear the rough, gravelly voices of the leshy and the more familiar Russian speech of the humans with them. The light, the hitter knew, was for their benefit; the leshy couldn't fully see in the dark, but it also didn't hamper them. He counted voices, and steps, walked back to the cava and the pantry, prepared his weapon of choice, took off the earbud and the earclip with the mirror shard, and walked right back to the door, knocking jauntily on it. "Tea service!"

The voices on the other side went silent. "We asked for nothing," someone replied.

"Look, man, I just know I have wine, cheese, some of them lil' toast things, a whole spread of jams -"

The door opened a crack. A man stared out, mouth open and ready to take Eliot's head off, metaphorically, until he saw the massive tray and the two bottles of wine the hitter was carrying.

A leshy came up behind the man, growling quietly. It, too, paused, sniffing. Eliot lifted up the tray, where he'd painstakingly smeared every sweet jam he'd been able to find in the pantry, and grinned winningly. Man and leshy crossed a look, and the door opened all the way. Eliot passed the human one of the wine bottles, winked and stepped in. The door closed behind him.

Two broken bottles, a dented tray, an utterly thrashed room and eight unconscious thugs later, the hitter knocked politely on the bathroom door. "Ma'am? You there?"

The door opened a crack. "That sounded very exciting."

"It gets the blood flowing," Eliot admitted as the old woman stepped out. She could've just as easily been stepping down from the portrait, stern and austere, though there was an odd fragility to her that was not part of Sokolov's work. Her silver hair was neatly braided back and she wore an elegantly simple white blouse with little golden mice for buttons, a flaring skirt with a repeating pattern of dancing farmfolk, and a black knotwork shawl. She glanced appreciatively at two leshy embedded into one of the walls as Eliot escorted her out of the bathroom and through the ruins of the room, and then clung to his arm with a small, very ladylike swear.

"Are you alright?"

She attempted a smile. "He has taken much from me," she admitted. "I did not realize how much until he trapped me. Arrogance makes fools of the best of us." She shrugged a little. One of the thugs groaned, sprawled among the wreck of a low shelf and a scattering of movies. Without missing a beat she aimed one of her sensibly-clad feet and kicked him hard enough to bowl him over and knock him out once again. "What now?"

Eliot managed to stop staring long enough to dig in his pocket for the enchanted mirror shard and clip it back on his ear. "I've got Grandmother, Nate."

"Give it to her."

"Got it." Eliot reached into an inner pocket of his dress jacket and smiled at the old woman. "Got something for you, ma'am. I believe it's yours to begin with." He offered her a plain, coarse square of blue fabric, neatly folded, and she stared at it and him in surprise and keen interest. "So, here's the plan."

While Eliot escorted his precious cargo away, mister Alexander Worthington (the Third), drove back up the driveway to the front of the mansion, yelling to all and sundry as well as at the person on the other line that he did not want to be there, he did not need to be there, he had no reason or goal to be there, not with every portrait being a fake and the seller being a con man - and a bad one, at that. He yelled a brief bout of angry Russian into the phone before hanging up and trotting furiously up the stairs. The guards on duty could scarcely believe their good luck, but they were also not about to question it, even when the Brit switched from whining on the phone to whining at them about everything and anything, the portrait failing to be produced, the outlandish nature of the company, the buffet being a joke. Coming in to find the mansion subsumed in complete darkness did nothing to appease him. He was escorted back to the main room and was there all of ten seconds before disappearing into the dark guts of the house.

They had been told, after all, to keep people in, not out. And mister Worthington (the Third) had been invited.

But only Sophie and Fedorov were close enough to the room on the top floor of the mansion to hear when Harry screamed in pain. She went very still with a little gasp; the Russian enforcer instinctively reached for his gun, and she immediately reached out to put a quelling hand over his. "That won't help," she assured him quietly. "He knew this would happen."

"That does not make me willing to let it," he countered tightly, but he drew his hand away.

"We're not going to let it," she assured him. "I need you to wait out here until it's time for you to come in."

"And how will I know when it is time?"

She smiled a little at him. "Parker will tell you," she assured him, and stepped gracefully away to knock on the room's door.

THIRTY FIVE

Koschei stalked into my room surrounded by half a dozen guards and a single floating source of pale green light. One of the guards was tugging Parker's friend along; she looked pale and terrified, and a little angry. Then again, I was probably all of those things myself, I just had more practice hiding them. "Is this how you treat your guests, Blackbird? Who's your friend?"

He didn't seem to hear my taunt. He rushed over, picked me up by the front of the very nice shirt and vest I was wearing, and lifted me up. He was about my height, which made him taller than the average person, and I was sure he had plenty of muscle to pick people up right off their their feet. But I was just tall enough, just heavy enough, that he couldn't quite pull the trick on me. "What did you do, Dresden," he snarled at me, and it wasn't really a question.

Golly, the list was endless, and I wasn't about to give him even one breath of it without a fight. "Getting a little grabby, aren't we? I don't know what you mean."

"I mean my guests are tearing this place apart down there. I mean my associates think I tried to poison them just now. I mean the Dredgers think I've stolen from them! I mean," he leaned closer until we were barely dodging a Soulgaze, him and me, "that it took me three tries to create the bloody light, so what. did you. do."

"To be fair, you did steal from them."

He dropped me like a sack of flour. "Stone," he said, "disarm him."

His head of security moved forward, but it was one of the guards who'd brought me up to the room who sucker-punched me, driving all the breath right out of me and setting the bruise the leshy had given me to red-hot throbbing pain. I went down on one knee but they pulled me back up, which made my bad shoulder really sing, and they frisked me down with ruthless efficiency. By the time someone dumped me back on my chair they'd taken my staff, my wand, both bracelets, my wallet. They even took off my duster before zip-tying my hands behind the back of the chair. Someone put their hands on me and tried to take my pentacle bracelet, and my anger suddenly came flooding back, helping me gather my scattered wits. I saw the guard kneeling in front of me and snapped my head forward. Forehead to nose, not nose to nose, Eliot had told me, and I tried to remember that.

It was a little harder when I knew the nose I was aiming for wasn't there, but the crunch of the glamour nose was still deeply satisfying. The guard staggered and fell back. Heavy hands yanked me back to the seat and I got punched again, but nothing was going to take away my satisfaction. I heard Jessamine make a little squeak of terror, and then someone shoved her in a chair next to me. "Are you alright?" she whispered at me.

"I've been better," I admitted, trying to get my breath back. Someone had tied my thumbs and index fingers together - while magic was a matter of will and intent, most wizards were trained to use tools, words and gestures to focus their power, like my staff, the bracelets. The words I used were mostly nonsense, but they made sense to me. And while I didn't often use my bare hands, I did tend to fall back on gestures when I didn't have access to anything else. Obviously Koschei knew that as well as I did. I started to work as best I could on tightening the zip-tie further; it wasn't much.

Someone caught my head in a rough grip and yanked the earclip off, handing it off to Koschei. "What is this?" he demanded, sniffing it. "Why does it smell fam-" The most painful feedback sound came out of the earclip and everyone in the room cringed. Koschei threw the earclip on the table along with everything else. "A machine, Dresden? Really?"

"Well, you know, any port in a storm and all that." I had to admire the quick-thinking of Alec-not-a-burger-Hardison. I could think of no better way to disguise the little mirror shard than making it act like the piece of technology it definitely wasn't.

"Well. That tells one much about your magic, does it not," he declared scornfully, flicking his fingers. The guards left me alone. Someone brought him a chair and he sat before me, fussing with his robe first, then with the items his goons had taken from me. "Toys." He rolled my wand between his fingers, and then pocketed it, the asshole. "Scraps. You are many things, Dresden, but I hesitate to even call you a wizard."

He hadn't taken the pin on the collar of my shirt, or my necklace. He hadn't caught onto the shirt.

"Now, what did you do with my painting?"

"Portrait."

His magic hit me hard and fast, like talons closing around my heart and squeezing, slow and relentless. The pain was immediate, burning like acid. I've had worse, but I wasn't about to let him know that. I made what I figured were appropriate noises for someone being tortured. Fortunately, I've had a lot of experience on what that sounds like.

"I have had my patience thoroughly tried tonight, Dresden. It would behoove you to indulge me." He let go of me and smiled that grin that made me want to punch him. "Unless you want the young lady to know what it feels like to disagree with me."

"You won't hurt her. You need her." I grinned at him, but I could feel it in my face, it wasn't friendly.

"I didn't do anything," Jessamine breathed, frightened. Apparently I'd done my job so well I'd spooked the angry right out of her. Time to give her back some agency.

"He can't tell his own portrait from the fakes. He n-" The vise closed around my heart and my lungs, boiling venom, crushing harder this time. "Needs you to make sure he's got the real one," I gritted out, teeth bared at Koschei.

"I am sincerely wondering if you are worth the trouble of keeping you alive, Dresden."

"Get in line, you old bird. You think tonight ends with you winning? You've lost everything. You filled this house with fake portraits, and now you can't tell yours from the copies. The Dredgers know you cheated them. Some of the most powerful people in the European and Asian supernatural underworlds think you were out to kill them. I don't know what you were after but man, you're certainly raking up some heavy-duty debts in the process, aren't you? Can't wait to see you try to squirm out of them-"

Unsurprisingly, he struck again. This time his power locked not just around my heart but my lungs, up my throat. I could taste the foulness of it on the back of my mouth, blackest magic. I heard myself scream, blowing air out of my lungs just to try and get some of the foulness out with it. "I will tell them you did it," he declared blithely. "You will not be around to defend yourself, of course."

"Leave him alone!" Jessamine yelled at him.

There was a knock on the door. Koschei let me go and stood up, and I heard him speaking to the guards. There was a sense of wary readiness in the air that made the hair on my arms stand up on end. A guard opened the door while Koschei faced it.

It's hard to explain the quality anyone's talking about when they say that something shines with the darkest light. It's a radiance that both brings details out of something while terrifying you with the sum total of them. It's the light you see from the darkest fairies, the glow around them that replaces the golden, summery haze of their counterparts.

That light, that darkest radiance, filled the door and spilled into the room. The guards all took a step back; Koschei took two and squeaked like a toddler. Fear and cold came in with the woman who stepped through the door. "So this is where you are hiding," she purred in a tone of such menace that I felt cold sweat break out along my spine, and I wasn't even the one she was talking to.

I'd wrought a hell of a Veil, but it wasn't just that. It was the way she spoke, the way she moved, the way she wore it. Sophie stepped into that room and she was Ekaterina Yegorov, an unknown supernatural power, a thing both beautiful and terrible, worthy of Tolkien's every written word.

"Hiding -" Koschei had to clear his throat before he could continue. "Hiding is such a strong accusation, my good lady."

She merely glided in, glancing disdainfully at the guards, who backed away nervously. "Why are you in the dark?" she demanded, flicked her fingers. On cue, the lights in the room -and only in the room- came back to bright and beautiful life.

No one there could make sense of her. The guards didn't even dare look at her directly. Koschei was still trying to figure out what she was; without that knowledge he couldn't shape a defense, a counter. "Hiding," she repeated. "Do you think disappearing will save you? After you tried to kill us all? The vampire down there is already offering a blood price on your head." She smiled. "Perhaps it will do tricks and tell prophecies. A man's head is so much more useful when separated from the body."

"My body is quite useful to me, madam, and I am rather fond of it," he declared tightly.

"Perhaps you should have thought of that before you stole Batra's pet and cheated the Dredgers. I am becoming hard-pressed to think of someone you have not upset in this house."

"You," he replied without missing a beat.

She stared at him for a brief moment… and then laughed, soft and rich and deadly. "Me," she agreed in a tiger's sated purr. "Though I am no more pleased about that trick with the Witchwell than anyone else."

"I swear on my heart, madam, that was not my doing."

"Whose, then?" She tipped her chin disdainfully in my direction. "His?" When Koschei opened his mouth she added. "Do not lie to me, wizard. You hang from a very thin thread as it is."

"No," Koschei admitted, and it was obvious to anyone with eyes that it cost him to do so. "Though that is what I mean to tell the rest of the gathering. But my people have reported that it is very likely the Prince of Thieves is inside the house."

She scoffed elegantly. "Seeking what? Fascinating as all the oddities here are, that is all they are. Oddities. Only the portrait would be worth anything to a mortal, and he would not be able to tell it apart from the fakes any more than you can."

"I believe she is in cahoots with Dresden."

"She? The Prince of Thieves is a woman?" The unknown power facing Koschei mulled on that, seemingly the only thing he'd said that had surprised her, and smiled minutely. "Well, finally the job goes to someone worth the title. But what does that have to do with anything?"

"Dresden put a marker on the portrait. A childish scrawl. I believe she's using it, he's empowered her to detect it in some fashion."

"Then use it yourself."

Koschei scowled at me and I grinned the biggest grin I could. "He can't. He tried, and then he realized that he couldn't keep it under wraps because I made it in a hurry and it's sloppy as hell, bleeding power everywhere. Everyone downstairs would sniff it out along with him if he kept it active." There were times when not having a fine touch with magic could come in so handy. "You think he's got a target painted on his back right now? That portrait's gonna be a neon arrow pointed at his head no matter where he goes with it."

She blew out an exasperated breath. "I do not care to wait until you are in pieces or in possession of the portrait, one or the other," she declared archly. "I need access to the gate it hides, and it is a critical matter."

"I am afraid, madam -"

"You should be." She stepped into his space and glowered briefly. "Send your men to bring all the portraits here. You have the foremost Sokolov expert in the room, you have angered a very powerful creature to get her here. Use her, be done with her and start soothing some tempers by handing back what things you can give back. Or do you expect the Prince of Thieves can steal a portrait that size while you're in the same room with it?"

"Even if I did, I could not open the gate for you!" he protested. "I have been unable to recover the key -"

"Oh, the key Vanya promised you?" she interrupted him sweetly, reaching down her cleavage and pulling out the platinum key. "This key?"

Koschei's mouth worked soundlessly a few times. He surged forward but she'd already tucked the key back under the folds of the dress, and she cocked a single brow at him.

He stopped.

She stepped forward, closer, until she could reach out and brush the lapels of the Blackbird's old-fashioned coat. Until the Rosalind diamond just barely brushed the fine black fabric. He went so pale he looked like a fresh corpse. "Have your men gather the portraits. I do not care where. You should not care where, as long as you have her." She nodded toward Jessamine. "I must have access to that gate before sunrise. After that, I do not care what you do, here or anywhere else. I do not care how you deal with your guests, or how they deal with you. I have one care, wizard. It is not a hard one to indulge, not given what I am willing to pay for it, yes?"

She stepped away then, and I saw Koschei reel, as did most people who were ever on the receiving end of Sophie Deveraux's talents.

Someone knocked on the door again. "Oh, that is for me," she told the guards cheerfully, and flicked her fingers at them. "Well, open it."

They obeyed before Koschei could say anything; that's the way with the sort of thug the Russian wizard preferred: not too bright, really good at violence, nearly indestructible but very much keyed to instinctively respond to the authority of the biggest power in the room.

I caught my breath. Parker stepped in, her hands laced over her head, angry and stone-faced, dressed all in skin-tight black. Just behind her, gun leveled at the base of her skull, Fedorov chivvied the thief into the room. "Kate, are you - ah, you did find him," he declared casually.

This was not the plan. None of it was part of any of the plans Ford had explained to me. I was feeling the loss of the ear-clip keenly; the only reason I could tell this was still a plan of some sort was that no one who should be was actually upset.

"Iggy!" Jessamin cried out, lunging out of her chair. One of the guards slammed her back on it none too gently.

"Hey!" Parker surged forward.

"No," the third woman in the room purred, and the thief went down like a puppet with her strings cut.

Ok, so yes, it was a plan of some sort, one I didn't know about, but I still tried to launch myself to my feet all the same. I nearly took the chair down to the floor with me.

Fedorov tipped his gun back, examined Parker, and grinned a little as he holstered it. "Show-off."

"Flatterer," she replied.

Fedorov and one of the guards brought Parker to another chair. They frisked her, found nothing beyond her phone and the non-working earbud in a pocket. "Hands in front," Koschei said when someone broke out the zip ties. "Where we can see them. One should never bind a thief's hands out of sight." He looked daunted and, looking at from his point of view, I couldn't blame him; here was a wizard as deeply attuned to the currents of magic all around him as any I'd ever met. It took that particular awareness to be able to pull off all of the magic I'd seen him work. But he wouldn't have seen anything from miss Ekaterina Yegorov. Not a breath, not a whisper, not a sigh of magic, not one single detectable little thread of energy. She'd spoken one word and the Prince of Thieves had gone down, just like that. The only possible conclusion one could draw was that she was operating way, way out of his league, a house on fire compared to his little candle.

"Thief?" Jessamine squeaked.

"Long story," Parker mumbled.

"Is Isabelle even your real name?" the young curator cried out in despair.

I saw Parker's face crumple with very real hurt. There was crap-all I could do at the moment to help her, and it made my heart hurt just as much, so I did the only thing I could - I stuck to the plan and started laughing. It's not hard; I've done my share of it when staring death or worse in the face. I knew the sound of it, I knew where it came from. I had to force it a little at the beginning, but once it got going it flowed naturally out, along with all the pain and the anger.

"What," Koschei gritted out, "are you laughing at, Dresden?"

"You," I admitted. "You and your best laid plans. You need her," I tipped my head at Jessamine, "to cooperate. The only way you're gonna get that is if you threaten her friend, so you need her," I tipped my head at Parker. "And since she's not about to tell you where the painting actually is, you need me." I beamed at him. "Ain't life a bitch. Just when you thought you finally got to kill someone."

"The night is young," the Russian wizard hissed at me.

"Maybe. But three people already found you, all cozy up here with me. How long until one of Batra's dryads sniffs you out? Or Ying Ying? I'm surprised the Dredgers aren't here already. How many guards you got willing to tangle with Mister Act and his people?" Every word was a blow that Koschei couldn't dodge, couldn't block, couldn't defend against. He'd been left primed for it, and I could only hope I was helping the plan, not hindering it.

"Mister Stone," the Blackbird said at last. "Get your people together and round up all the portraits. Bring them to the boat-house."

Stone did a nearly-visible head count before turning to his boss, his tone dubious. "All of them, sir?"

Koschei paused; his own head count was a little less obvious. "Well, the two in the main room are fakes, those can stay behind. And bring the wizard, I do not trust him out of sight." He clamped a hand on Jessamine's arm and dragged her up, his tone going to utter cordiality. "Mister Fedorov, could I possibly impose on you to bring the young lady with you?" He tipped his head at Parker. "We will further tie her up if you believe it will help."

"What's there is enough," the Russian enforcer declared blithely, moving over to Parker and tossing her over his shoulder like a sack of laundry. "I trust the lady whose protection I'm under." He grinned winningly at said lady, who beamed at him.

Stone, having finished instructing the rest of his people, moved over to me, closed a hand on the back of the chair and picked it up, with me in it. I knew instantly he was going to be a severe problem down the line; strength is not an uncommon attribute in Nevernever thugs, but Stone hadn't even paused to take a breath or brace himself. He'd simply done as he was told. I looked more closely at him, since I was being given the chance, looking for confirmation; I was pretty sure his clothes weren't painted on, but he hadn't been so close to me until that moment.

The clothes were real, well fitted, custom-made - not surprising, the man was too big to fit in anything off the rack. It was as he shifted to wrap his free arm around me so I couldn't jostle out of the chair that his sleeve hiked up, just a bit. Just enough for me to see that there were no wrinkles where his wrist was bending, no hair, no definition to his knuckles. His nails were engraved - they looked real from afar, but I was less than a foot away.

Well, crap. I started running down the list of any magic I knew that could scratch a golem, let alone take one down, as we left the room and moved through the darkened hallways, led by Koschei's pale light spell. It was a really short list and I didn't have any angelic swords at hand or dragon's blood on tap.

"Let's keep in mind I need to breathe, Stone, alright?" I told him when his arm tightened a little too much over my sore ribs.

"Let us keep in mind that I do not care, wizard," he replied indifferently, considering the chair and tossing it carelessly aside in favor of throwing me over his shoulder, like Fedorov was carrying Parker, except he hung me with my head facing his chest.

"Gosh, who spit in your cornflakes? Is Koschei holding your keystone hostage or something?"

The golem didn't hesitate. "My keystone is my own. The cornflakes, you can keep."

"Oh, hey! I didn't think golems had a sense of humor."

"Lacking one yourself, I see how you would not recognize one."

I wasn't just talking to get him to talk at that point, I was honestly astonished. "You're old."

He did glance down at me at that, as if detecting the honesty of emotion in my voice, and why wouldn't he? I'd never even heard of a golem capable of independent action, or thought. To have one that also had a sense of wit and levity was mind-boggling. "Age and craftsmanship," he admitted.

"And you waste it all working for him."

"I enjoy service. I do not see the point of ethics or morals. The first is for everyone. The others are mortal fripperies."

I wasn't going to win that argument, not with a golem. "But, that aside, why? Why the Blackbird?"

"He promised I would be challenged." The golem looked down at me once more, then ahead once again. "And I have been."

We got out of the mansion with no one the wiser, though it sounded like the scuffle that had started in the main room had spilled over past the bar and into the dinning room. There were just too many disparate powers gathered all together in a single place; most of the time there was no violence between them because their interests didn't cross paths, and if the auction had gone along as the Dredgers had planned, they never would have. But Koschei and his games had made them all linger. The Blackbird had no one to blame but himself for the mess that he'd brewed.

Hanging there, over a shoulder as broad and solid as a rock, I came to an abrupt realization: I'd been there before. Many times, actually. I was either famous or infamous, depending on who you ask, for throwing myself off the deep end and into the thick of my enemies, and hoping I could wade back out. Most of the time I'd managed, but I usually limped out exhausted, bloody and battered, and there were losses, in friendship, in love, in trust, that were so great they were injuries in their own right.

Koschei was a power that should have left me in that kind of shape. Hell, that roomful of people back at the mansion would've probably loved to take me apart one piece at a time. I had no idea what sort of relationship the Jade and Red Courts had, but I'd never met a vampire that would've passed up the opportunity to get a little debt owed to them from another vamp, and I know the fairy twins would have loved to have me on a leash, because that was just a thing with every fairy in my life barring one.

But there I was. Barring the fact I was hogtied, or that Koschei had taken most of my tools away, I was literally brimming with power, relatively in one piece, and what injuries I did have had been tended to. I still had two aces up my sleeve, three if you counted my pendant, which had come clutch in so many occasions that I really ought to start putting it at the top of the list.

I was as good for the fight as it got, and I had the Leverage people to thank for it. For the time to prep, for the research, for the tools, but above all for covering the bases I couldn't. Good as I was at fighting magic with magic, there was still only one of me. With Leverage, it didn't matter if the leshy came at me or someone tried to rob me or if I couldn't make sense of the puzzle pieces, or if they were all to be found in the electronic ether. These people had a phalanx formation that they'd refined to perfection, and they'd made me part of it without missing a step. It felt both nice and terrifying. Imagine what I'd be able to do with a team like them backing me up. Imagine what they could pull off with a wizard on their corner.

But I also knew it was not a tenable situation. It wasn't just Hardison; we were actually working together just fine, him and me. The language and the tools might be different, but we were both doing basically the same job. It was Ford, who try as he might still couldn't quite get to the believing part. It was Sophie, who thought she needed magic to pull off a grift when really, she didn't. It was Eliot, going up against a golem. It was all of them, running into a Burning Witchwell if I'd arrived in Boston a day late.

It was Boston, burning me to cinders and brushing me off her hands without a second thought. A city can't help what it is. I was Chicago's wizard, I knew my city, its moods, its weather, its seasons, the things about it that empowered me, strengthened me. Did Boston deserve a wizard of its own? Absolutely. It had to be someone better than me at self-control. Swinging power like I did in Boston would get me killed sooner rather than later, and it wouldn't even take a bad guy.

I heard the sound of the surf and became aware of the nearby press of the North Atlantic. I'd expected it to be a grounding influence, like Lake Michigan, but instead it seethed with dormant, subtle layers of power, restive and waiting. Then we were in the boat-house, an elegant single-story house done in that marine kitschy style that says an interior designer got paid very well and no one actually lived in the premises. The open wrap-around porch surrounded two sides of the boat-house, reaching for the stirring surf. Off to one side a dock had been partially dug out, lined with rip-rap and attached to the boat-house like an oversized closed garage. There were two yachts docked there, and an assortment of smaller craft pinned against the walls.

Fedorov automatically tried to flip on the light switches by the door, but nothing happened. A murmur and a gesture from Sophie, and the lights were on.

"You really must tell me how you are doing that." Koschei smiled at her as he walked in, dismissing his own light spell and clapping his hands so every door in the boat-house swung open.

"I asked the little voice in my head for help," she told him with a graceful gesture.

He gave her a strained, polite little chuckle. "Mister Stone, take the rest of our guests to the boat-house. If they give you any trouble, drown them a little."

"Hey!" Jessamine protested.

"Oh, no, not you, my dear," Koschei had clamped his hand around one of her arms, and dragged her back to him none too gently. "The drowning bit is just for Dresden and the princess."

"How do you even drown someone just a little?" Parker muttered.

"Not the question to be asking present company," I replied as Stone took a few steps onto the docks, making them groan with his weight, and threw me down onto the boards roughly. I rolled onto my good shoulder to try and protect myself, and Parker got tossed right on top of me, driving the rest of my breath out.

I felt her brush her hands against mine and suddenly the mage-knot binding the thumb and index of my good hand was gone; I felt her press something familiar against my palm before Stone put his foot against her side and shoved her off to one side.

Seriously, HOW?!

I slid my wand up my sleeve, closed my good hand into a fist over my shield bracelet and decided not to question it. Magic is magic.

"Why?" She countered immediately.

"Because mister Stone might actually oblige with a demonstration, and he doesn't need to breathe."

Parker looked up. The golem looked implacably down. "Oh." She scooted to sit next to me as I dragged myself up, and we both leaned against one another. "He's not really gonna hurt Jess, is he?"

"No, he needs her. He may bluff her, he may scare her, but it doesn't profit him to hurt her. He might hurt you to scare her, though."

Fedorov chuckled a little. "The wizard is not being fully truthful with you."

Parker looked up at me, then at him, then at me again. "Harry?"

I hadn't wanted to say it, but the Russian wasn't leaving me a choice. "He might also hurt you to get to me," I had to admit. "Because the only one who knows where the original is, if Stone's people can't find it, is you. And if you won't tell him -" she scoffed pointedly "- the only one who can safely locate it by the marker on it is me."

She frowned. She looked up at Stone. "What if I tell you where it is?"

"Parker!"

"That would -" the golem began.

I kicked at Stone's shin. It was a moot effort; I knew it and he knew it. I might as well be kicking a piece of concrete. Stone bent down, picked me up by the throat, and let me hang there, unable to breathe and my feet a good few inches off the dock, while he continued speaking in the same calm tone. "That would make matters go faster."

"Faster meaning you and Dresden will die quicker," Fedorov pointed casually.

"But he'll let Jess go?"

I kicked at her. I was two lengths of my leg too far, but dammit, Parker!

"Untrue." Stone leveled an even gaze on Fedorov, then shook me a little, until starbursts of blackness began to swim in front of my eyes, the rest of me tingling unpleasantly. Ok, ok, no more kicking. "It profits him immensely to return miss Lochlin to mister Batra unharmed. It profits him reasonably to have the Prince of Thieves, you, owe him a life-debt." He turned to look at me. "The wizard, he almost certainly will kill."

"No! You go tell him I will tell him where the original is, but he's got to let us all go, Jess and Harry and me! All of us!"

Fedorov and Stone crossed a look. The Russian enforcer looked as dubious as he was amused.

"Why are you here?" the golem suddenly asked Fedorov.

The Russian aimed a thumb at the inside of the boat-house. " The lady promised me an interesting night. My safety was guaranteed." The boards where we were all standing creaked and groaned once again, and Fedorov looked down, then up at Stone with open curiosity. "Should I worry her?"

The world was beginning to blur into colors without shape when Stone let my feet touch the ground again. "Mind yourself, wizard," he warned me, and shoved me down. I went sprawling on my back, landing on my zip-tied hands with all of my weight. Stone bent down and picked up Parker by the front of her skin-tight black sweater, and threw her over a shoulder.

"Hey!"

"Mind the wizard, please," the golem told Fedorov. "He has a bodyguard and no one seems to be able to tell me where he's gone off to." When the Russian gestured agreeably, Stone went into the house.

I laid there for a long moment, examining my circumstances, considering my options and mostly just getting my breath back. "You could've let me lie to her," I told Fedorov.

"I could," he admitted. "But I am coming to realize a lie of kindness is no better than any other lie."

"I'm not her uncle."

He snorted in humorless amusement. "No. But you are her friend. Respect what she has given you."

I had no good answer to that, because he was right. Every time I hid something from the people around me, every time I lied or kept secrets, my friends, the people I cared about, those who depended on me, ended up in trouble, or hurt, or worse. And there was a lot worse in my world that hurt or dead. So I just laid there, staring up at the beams of the open ceiling in the boat-house, with nets keeping floats and boards and kayaks and paddles safe.

The door to the boat-house opened again and Koschei stalked out, dragging Jessamine with him. Behind him came Stone and Parker, the golem stepping carefully on the boards of the dock. trying to keep the complaining from the wood to a minimum, not that it helped. Behind them all came the beautiful, deadly woman in the indigo dress, who moved immediately to Fedorov's side. The wizard was back to his tooth-rottingly cheerful self. "It is a promise easily given, easily kept," he assured Parker. "Give me the original, prove that it is the original, and all three of you can leave safe and sound at once."

"Parker, it's a tr-"

Koschei turned and whipped a hand at me, and his power choked the voice right out of my throat. It didn't matter, she was far too quick for it. "What does he mean it's a trap?"

"How would I know?" Koschei replied archly. "You have what you asked for, after all, no?" He spread his arms. "I am being very generous, all things considered. You have stolen from me, after all. I could just pry the knowledge out of your head and be done with it."

I saw her chew restlessly on her lip, but without the ear bud I didn't know if there was an ongoing plan, if she was winging things, if everything was going to hell in a handbasket. Jessamine looked both frightened and mutinous, but she wasn't making a peep.

"You'll let all three of us go. You won't do anything to stop us, or to hurt us."

"On my power I swear it. Provided you deliver the correct portrait to me."

"And you won't have anyone else stop us or hurt us, either, like him, or them." She gestured at Stone, then glowered at the Russian mobster and his companion.

"Ah, clever princess," Koschei smiled. "They will not." He glanced back. "I'm not even entirely sure while the young prince is still here."

"We're still willing to put a bid on the portrait," Fedorov assured him mildly, tucking his hands in his pockets. "Unless you have decided not to sell?"

"Oh, no, no, I prefer to keep that portrait as far away from my person as possible."

I wanted to yell. I wanted to scream the obvious trap at her. I wanted to launch myself at Koschei and shake that smarmy, condescending smirk off his face. But he had Jessamine, Stone had Parker, and I was choking on black, poisonous magic. Not to mention I had every reason to believe this was still part of Ford's plan, whatever that plan might be, but without my ear clip or Parker's bud I had no way of knowing if we'd gone off the rails half a dozen death threats back. I was about ready to sell my soul, or at least a kidney, for any information.

That was when Nate Ford stepped out of one of the yachts and hopped lightly down onto the dock, and I realized I hadn't been worried enough before. "Well, you're in luck," he said mildly, a slightly rumpled, harmless-looking man. "Because it's not even on the grounds anymore."

THIRTY SIX

You ever get that feeling in the pit of your stomach, when you thought you knew the shape of your life, the world and everything else, and then one little thing goes out of whack and the entire house of cards comes tumbling down?

It felt a little like that, watching Ford come up on us. Though from the look on Koschei's face, he was feeling a whole lot more of it. "You." For a moment I wished I could pack all the conflicting emotions the Russian wizard put into the one tiny word, but then again that would mean I'd fucked up nearly as badly as he had and you know what? I was good.

"Me," Ford agreed, walking up calmly. "The sensible one, you said."

"I am allowed an occasional lapse in judgement." Koschei was trying hard to stick to that smarmy avuncular cheer but it was cracking hard at the seams.

"Are you? 'Cuz you've piled up, uh, a number of lapses tonight -"

"Where is my painting?"

"A painting," Ford replied, "is just about any sort of paint you put on a medium. Canvas, paper, wood. A portrait is specifically a painting of a person, or persons."

"I am aware of the difference," Koschei ground out.

"Are you?" Nate nodded politely at Fedorov and Sophie. They both nodded back minutely. He gave me a very level look where I was, still sprawled on the boards of the dock. He didn't even glance at Parker, but his eyes lingered on Jessamine. It struck me then: the curator was the only person there not in the con who could link Sophie to the rest of us. Ford was no longer gambling on her being innocent of what was going on; he was outright betting she'd help.

"Sir, I would prefer to believe you sensible a little bit longer," Koschei ground out. "I want my painting back or I will have to start turning you and your allies," he gestured at Parker and me, "inside out as creatively as I can."

The mastermind made vague appeasing gestures. "Ok, ok, no need to get violent. Alright. So, uh." Ford paused to think for a moment; the man's showmanship was flawless and I was absolutely taking notes. "Let's do it this way: you give me proof that you still have Grandmother lined up and ready to go into her cage - uh, your cage. And I give you the portrait."

The silence turned into a nearly solid thing, broken only by the surf outside and the gentle lapping of the waves against the pillars of the dock. "She," Koschei's voice had turned hard and dark. I felt that finally something of the real Blackbird, the creature behind the fairy tales, the real monster, was coming to the surface, poisonous and deadly, "is ready."

"Is she?" Ford said with a deceptive apathy that was nothing but ice under the thinnest of veneers.

Koschei stared at Ford. Ford stared at the water. The Blackbird suddenly shoved Jessamine at Stone and gestured to the surf, drawing up a perfect, thin sheet of motionless water. He spun his hands in a circle, partitioning off a piece the size of an ornamental mirror. He murmured in Russian, then spoke sharply, making the water ripple.

He'd summoned a perfect scrying circle while still keeping me gagged. And he hadn't even hesitated, or paused to gather up his strength or focus his will. I had to keep reminding myself that, no matter what happened, if it came to a throwdown with Koschei he'd be punching down, and I'd need every counter I'd prepared for it.

Koschei spoke twice more, sharper and sharper each time.

Ford rubbed idly at his cheek.

Koschei threw the mastermind a brief, and entirely murderous, glare, passed his hand over the rippling surface, stilling it again before he called out once more. This time, the rough voice of a leshy answered him. Koschei and the leshy spoke in Russian, the wizard's tone growing angrier the longer the conversation went on. In the end he let out a furious yell and the water went flying in every direction when he threw his hands out in a fury. "What," he hissed at Ford, "have you done."

Ford seemed to ponder that question carefully. "You're going to have to be more specific. Last I checked you had like seven plans going off tonight, and I only accounted for four of them. You know, the ones I was interested in." He shrugged indifferently.

"Who are you?"

"I -"

"WHERE IS SHE?!"

The lights flickered and faltered, the glass on the nearby windows of the boat-house's wraparound porch rattled. The yachts rocked uneasily in their moorings. Willing to find any port in a storm, Jessamine pressed a little closer to Stone, who looked down in mild surprise. Fedorov shifted to put himself between everyone else and his companion.

I tightened my grip on my wand. When Stone had thrown me down, all of my weight and all of the golem's momentum had come crashing down on the zip tie with which I'd been restrained. It had snapped. I was loose except for the wizard's peace-knot on the thumb and index of my bad hand.

"She's right here," Ford declared mildly. "I mean, she's been here all along. I thought you'd - well, she was your teacher for centuries, probably more depending on who you ask," Nate sounded politely disbelieving, and vaguely embarrassed, as if Koschei had grabbed the wrong fork at a fancy dinner and were trying to butter toast with it. "You haven't figured it out yet?"

Slowly, unwillingly, the poison green gaze turned to the only woman on the docks that he could not account for.

Ekaterina Yegorov laid a gentle hand on Fedorov's shoulder and spoke in soft Russian, and very much not with Sophie's voice. He dipped his head courteously and stepped back and for the first time in who knew so many centuries master and apprentice faced each other off.

#the dresden files #leverage #my writing #fanfiction #crossover #harry dresden #nathan ford #sophie deveraux #parker #eliot spencer #alec hardison #urban fantasy

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