"Allow me to reiterate," Thomas panted a minute later. "What. The h.e.l.l. Was that that."
I settled down onto the seat, breathing hard. I buckled up, and checked that the puppies and their box were both intact. They were, and I closed my eyes with a sigh. "Shen," I said. "Chinese spirit creatures. Demons. Shapeshifters."
"Christ, Dresden! You almost got me killed!"
"Don"t be a baby. You"re fine."
Thomas frowned at me. "You at least could have told me!"
"I did did tell you," I said. "I told you at Mac"s that I"d give you a ride home, but that I had to run an errand first." tell you," I said. "I told you at Mac"s that I"d give you a ride home, but that I had to run an errand first."
Thomas scowled. "An errand errand is getting a tank of gas or picking up a carton of milk or something. It is is getting a tank of gas or picking up a carton of milk or something. It is not not getting chased by flying purple pyromaniac gorillas hurling incendiary poo." getting chased by flying purple pyromaniac gorillas hurling incendiary poo."
"Next time take the El."
He glared at me. "Where are we going?"
"O"Hare."
"Why?"
I waved vaguely at the backseat. "Returning stolen property to my client. He wants to get it back to Tibet, p.r.o.nto."
"Anything else you"re neglecting to tell me? Ninja wombats or something?"
"I wanted you to see how it feels," I said.
"What"s that supposed to mean?"
"Come on, Thomas. You never go to Mac"s place to hang out and chum around. You"re wealthy, you"ve got connections, and you"re a freaking vampire. You didn"t need me to give you a ride home. You could have taken a cab, called for a limo, or talked some woman into taking you."
Thomas"s scowl faded away, replaced by a careful, expressionless mask. "Oh? Then why am I here?"
I shrugged. "Doesn"t look like you showed up to bushwhack me. I guess you"re here to talk."
"Razor intellect. You should be a private investigator or something."
"You going to sit there insulting me, or are you going to talk?"
"Yeah," Thomas said. "I need a favor."
I snorted. "What favor? You do remember that technically we"re at war, right? Wizards versus vampires? Ring any bells?"
"If you like, you can pretend that I"m employing subversive tactics as part of a fiendishly elaborate ruse meant to manipulate you," Thomas said.
"Good," I said. ""Cause if I went to all the trouble of starting a war and you didn"t want to partic.i.p.ate it would hurt my feelings."
He grinned. "I bet you"re wondering whose side I"m on."
"No." I snorted. "You"re on Thomas"s side."
The grin widened. Thomas has the kind of whiter-than-white boyish grin that makes women"s panties spontaneously evaporate. "Granted. But I"ve done you some favors over the past couple of years."
I frowned. He had, though I didn"t know why. "Yeah. So?"
"So now it"s my turn," he said. "I"ve helped you. Now I need payback."
"Ah. What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to take a case for an acquaintance of mine. He needs your help."
"I don"t really have time," I said. "I have to make a living."
Thomas flicked a piece of monkey flambe off the back of his hand and out the window. "You call this living?"
"Jobs are a part of life. Maybe you"ve heard of the concept. It"s called work? See, what happens is that you suffer through doing annoying and humiliating things until you get paid not enough money. Like those j.a.panese game shows, only without all the glory."
"Plebe. I"m not asking you to go pro bono. He"ll pay your fee."
"Bah," I muttered. "What"s he need help with?"
Thomas frowned. "He thinks someone is trying to kill him. I think he"s right."
"Why?"
"There have been a couple of suspicious deaths around him."
"Like?"
"Two days ago he sent his driver, girl named Stacy Willis, out to the car with his golf clubs so he could get in a few holes before lunch. Willis opened the trunk and got stung to death by about twenty thousand bees who had somehow swarmed into the limo in the time it took her to walk up to the door and back."
I nodded. "Ugh. Can"t argue there. Gruesomely suspicious."
"The next morning his personal a.s.sistant, a young woman named Sheila Barks, was. .h.i.t by a runaway car. Killed instantly."
I pursed my lips. "That doesn"t sound so odd."
"She was waterskiing at the time."
I blinked. "How the h.e.l.l did that that happen?" happen?"
"Bridge over the reservoir was the way I heard it. Car jumped the rail, landed right on her."
"Ugh," I said. "Any idea who is behind it?"
"None. Think it"s an entropy curse?" Thomas asked.
"If so, it"s a sloppy one. But strong as h.e.l.l. Those are some pretty melodramatic deaths." I checked on the puppies. They had fallen together into one dusty lump and were sleeping. The notch-eared pup lay on top of the pile. He opened his eyes and gave me a sleepy little growl of warning. Then he went back to sleep.
Thomas glanced back at the box. "Cute little furb.a.l.l.s. What"s their story?"
"Guardian dogs for some monastery in the Himalayas. Someone s.n.a.t.c.hed them and came here. A couple of monks hired me to get them back."
"What, they don"t have dog pounds in Tibet?"
I shrugged. "They believe these dogs have a foo heritage."
"Is that like epilepsy or something?"
I snorted and put my hand palm-down out the window, waggling it back and forth to make an airfoil in the wind of the Beetle"s pa.s.sage. "The monks think their great-grandcestor was a divine spirit-animal. Celestial guardian spirit. Foo dog. They believe it makes the bloodline special."
"Is it?"
"How the h.e.l.l should I know, man? I"m just the repo guy."
"Some wizard you are."
"It"s a big universe," I said. "No one can know it all."
Thomas fell quiet for a while, and the road whispered by. "Uh, do you mind if I ask what happened to your car?"
I looked around at the Beetle"s interior. It wasn"t Volkswagen-standard anymore. The seat covers were gone. So was the padding underneath. So was the interior carpet, and big chunks of the dashboard that had been made out of wood. There was a little vinyl left, and some of the plastic, and anything made out of metal, but everything else had been stripped completely away.
I"d done some makeshift repairs with several one-by-sixes, some hanger wire, some cheap padding from the camping section at Wal-Mart, and a lot of duct tape. It gave the car a real postmodern look: By which I meant that it looked like something fashioned from the wreckage after a major nuclear exchange.
On the other hand, the Beetle"s interior was very, very clean. My gla.s.ses are half-full, dammit.
"Mold demons," I said.
"Mold demons ate your car?"
"Sort of. They were called out of the decay in the car"s interior, and used anything organic they could find to make bodies for themselves."
"You called them?"
"Oh, h.e.l.l, no. They were a present from the guest villain a few months ago."
"I hadn"t heard there was any action this summer."
"I have a life, man. And my life isn"t all about feuding demiG.o.ds and nations at war and solving a mystery before it kills me."
Thomas lifted an eyebrow. "It"s also about mold demons and flaming monkey poo?"
"What can I say? I put the "ick" in "magic.""
"I see. Hey, Harry, can I ask you something?"
"I guess."
"Did you really save the world? I mean, like the last two years in a row?"
I shrugged. "Sort of."
"Word is you capped a faerie princess and headed off a war between Winter and Summer," Thomas said.
"Mostly I was saving my own a.s.s. Just happened that the world was in the same spot."
"There"s an image that will give me nightmares," Thomas said. "What about those demon h.e.l.l guys last year?"
I shook my head. "They"d have let loose a nasty plague, but it wouldn"t have lasted very long. They were hoping it would escalate into a nice apocalypse. They knew there wasn"t much chance of it, but they were doing it anyway."
"Like the Lotto," Thomas said.
"Yeah, I guess. The genocide Lotto."
"And you stopped them."
"I helped do it and lived to walk away. But there was an unhappy ending."
"What?"
"I didn"t get paid. For either case. I make more money from flaming demon monkey c.r.a.p. That"s just wrong."
Thomas laughed a little and shook his head. "I don"t get it."
"Don"t get what?"
"Why you do it."
"Do what?"
He slouched down in the driver"s seat. "The Lone Ranger impersonation. You get pounded to sc.r.a.p every time you turn around and you barely get by on the gumshoe work. You live in that dank little cave of an apartment. Alone. You"ve got no woman, no friends, and you drive this piece of c.r.a.p. Your life is kind of pathetic."
"Is that what you think?" I asked.
"Call them like I see them."
I laughed. "Why do you think I do it?"
He shrugged. "All I can figure is that either you"re nursing a deep and s.a.d.i.s.tic self-hatred or else you"re insane. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and left monumental stupidity off the list."
I kept on smiling. "Thomas, you don"t really know me. Not at all."
"I think I do. I"ve seen you under pressure."
I shrugged. "Yeah, but you see me, what? Maybe a day or two each year? Usually when something"s been warming up to kill me by beating the tar out of me."
"So?"