Or maybe it was because part of me wondered if it would be so impossible to find a way to use the power the coin obviously offered. If it had made some random schmuck on the way to pan for gold into a killing machine that it took all three Knights of the Cross to handle, what could someone like me do with it?
Beat the living snot out of Duke Paolo Ortega. That’s for sure.
I blinked, refocusing my eyes. Michael watched me, his expression pained, and I knew that he’d guessed at my thoughts. I closed my eyes, shame making my stomach uneasy.
"You’re in danger, Harry," Michael said. "Leave the case alone."
"If I was in so much danger," I responded, "why did Father Vincent come and hire me?"
"Forthill asked him not to," Michael said. "Father Vincent … disagrees with Forthill on how supernatural matters are to be handled."
I stood up and said, "Michael, I’m tired. I’m really damned tired."
"Harry," Michael chided me.
"Darned," I mumbled. "Darned tired. Darn me unto heck." I headed for the door and said, "I’m heading home to get some sleep. I’ll think about it."
Michael stood up, and Shiro with him, both of them facing me. "Harry," Michael said. "You are my friend. You’ve saved my life. I’ve named a child for you. But stay out of this business. For my sake, if not for your own."
"And if I don’t?" I asked.
"Then I’ll have to protect you from yourself. In the name of God, Harry, please don’t push this."
I turned and left without saying good-bye.
In this corner, one missing Shroud, one impossibly and thoroughly dead corpse, one dedicated and deadly vampire warlord, three holy knights, twenty-nine fallen angels, and a partridge in a pear tree.
And in the opposite corner, one tired, bruised, underpaid professional wizard, threatened by his allies and about to get dumped by his would-be girlfriend for John Q. Humdrum.
Oh, yeah.
Definitely bedtime.
Chapter Eight
I fumed and brooded all the way back to my apartment, the Beetle’s engine sputtering nervously the whole time. Mister was sitting at the top of the steps, and let out a plaintive meow as I shut and locked up my car. Though I kept my blasting rod and shield bracelet ready in case any vanilla goons were waiting around with more silenced guns, I was fairly confident no preternasties were hanging around in ambush. Mister tended to make lots of noise and then leave whenever supernatural danger was around.
Which just goes to show that my cat has considerably more sense than me.
Mister slammed his shoulder against my legs, and didn’t quite manage to trip me into falling down the stairs. I didn’t waste any time getting inside and locked up behind me.
I lit a candle, got out some cat food and fresh water for Mister’s bowls, and spent a couple minutes pacing back and forth. I glanced at my bed and wrote it off as a useless idea. I was too worked up to sleep, even tired as I was. I was already chin deep in alligators and sinking fast.
"Right, then, Harry," I mumbled. "Might as well do some work."
I grabbed a heavy, warm robe off its hook, shoved aside one of my rugs, and opened the trapdoor leading down to the subbasement. A folding ladder-staircase led down to the damp stone chamber beneath, where I kept my lab, and I padded down it, my robe’s hem dragging against the wooden steps.
I started lighting candles. My lab, barring a brief bout of insanity, generally reflects the state of my own mind—cluttered, messy, unorganized, but basically functional. The room isn’t large. Three worktables line three of the walls in a U shape, and a fourth table runs down the center of the U, leaving a narrow walkway around it. Wire utility shelves line the walls above the tables. Piled on the shelves and tables are a vast array of magical ingredients, plus that sort of miscellaneous domestic clutter that in households of more substance always winds up in a big drawer in the kitchen. Books, notebooks, journals, and papers line the shelves, together with containers and boxes and pouches full of all sorts of herbs, roots, and magical ingredients, from a bottle of snake hisses to a vial of milk-thistle extract.
At the far end of the room there was a patch of floor kept completely clear of all clutter. A copper ring set into the stone of the floor, my summoning circle, resided there. Experience had shown me that you never can tell when you might need a ritual circle to defend yourself from magical attack, or for its other most obvious use—keeping a denizen of the Nevernever a temporary prisoner.
One of the shelves had less on it than the others. At either end rested a candleholder, long since overrun with many colors of melted wax until they were nothing but mounds, like a honeybee Vesuvius. Books, mostly paperback romances, and various small and feminine articles took up the rest of the shelf, but for where a bleached human skull sat in the middle. I picked up a pencil and rapped it against the shelf. "Bob. Bob, wake up. Work to be done."
Twin points of orange and gold light kindled in the shadows of the skull’s eye sockets, and grew brighter as I went about the room lighting half a dozen candles and a kerosene lamp. The skull rattled a little, and then said, "It’s only a few hours from dawn, and you’re just starting up? What gives?"
I started getting out beakers and vials and a small alcohol burner. "More trouble," I said. "It’s been one hell of a day." I told Bob the Skull about the television studio, the vampire’s challenge, the hit man, the missing Shroud, and the plague-filled corpse.
"Wow. You don’t do things halfway, do you, Harry?"
"Advise now; critique later. I’m going to look into things and whip up a potion or two, and you’re going to help."
"Right," Bob said. "Where do you want to start?"
"With Ortega. Where is my copy of the Accords?"
"Cardboard box." Bob said. "Third shelf, on the bottom row, behind the pickling jars."
I found the box and pawed through it until I had found a vellum scroll tied shut with a white ribbon. I opened it and peered down at the handwritten calligraphy. It started off with the word Insomuch, and the syntax got more opaque from there.
"I can’t make heads or tails of this," I said. "Where’s the section about duels?"
"Fifth paragraph from the end. You want the Cliff’s Notes version?"
I rolled the scroll shut again. "Hit me."
"It’s based on Code Duello," Bob said. "Well, technically it’s based on much older rules that eventually inspired the Code Duello, but that’s just chickens and eggs. Ortega is the challenger, and you’re the challenged."
"I know that. I get to pick the weapons and the ground, right?"
"Wrong," Bob said. "You pick the weapons, but he gets to choose the time and location."
"Damn," I muttered. "I was going to take high noon out in a park somewhere. But I guess I can just say that we’ll duel with magic."
"If it’s one of the available choices. It almost always is."
"Who decides?"
"The vampires and the Council will pick from a list of neutral emissaries. The emissary decides."
I nodded. "So if I don’t have it as an option I’m screwed, right? I mean, magic, wizard, kind of my bag."