“Get more information,” I said. “I’m gonna listen in and see what they’re chatting about.”
Murphy nodded, glancing around. “Hotel security is going to have an issue with you lurking about the hallways. I’ll go have a word with them.”
I nodded. “I’ll be on twelve.”
“Don’t kick down any doors without someone to watch your back,” she warned me.
“No kicking at all,” I said. “Not until I know enough to kick them where it’s going to hurt.”
I went up to the twelfth floor, left the elevator, and pulled a can of Silly String out of my duster pocket. I shook it up as I walked down the hallway until I found room twelve thirty-three. Then, without preamble, I blasted a bit of the Silly String at the door. It slithered cheerfully through the air and stuck.
Then I turned and walked back down the hall until I found a door that opened onto a tiny room containing an ice dispenser and a couple of vending machines. I sat down, drew a quick circle around me on the tile floor with a dry-erase marker, and got to work.
I closed the circle with an effort of will, and it sprang up around me in a sudden invisible screen. It wasn’t exactly a heavy-duty magical construct, but such a quick circle would still serve perfectly well to seal away external energies and allow me to gather my own and shape it for a specific purpose without interference. I took the Silly String and sprayed a bunch of it into the palm of my left hand so that it mounded up sort of like shaving cream. Then I set the can down, held the mound of Silly String out in front of me, closed my eyes, and gathered my will.
Working magic is all about creating connections. Earlier, I’d taken Binder’s hairs to create a link back to him and used it for a tracking spell. I could have done any number of things with that connection, including some that were extremely nasty and dangerous. I’d seen it happen before, generally from the receiving end.
This time, I was creating a link between the Silly String in my hand, and the bit stuck to the door down the hall. They’d both come from the same can, and they’d been part of one distinct amount of liquid when they’d been canned. That meant I would be able to take advantage of that sameness and create a connection between them.
I focused my will on my desired outcome, gathered it all up together, and released it with a murmur of “Finiculus sonitus.” I reached out and smeared away a section of the circle I’d drawn, breaking it, and instantly began feeling a buzzing vibration in the palm of my left hand.
Then I tilted my head far to my right and slapped a bunch of Silly String into my left ear.
“Don’t try this at home folks,” I muttered. “I’m a professional.”
The first thing I heard was hectic-sounding, hyperactive music. A singer was screaming tunelessly and drums were pounding and someone was either playing electric guitars or slowly dipping partially laryngitic cats in boiling oil. None of the supposed musicians appeared to be paying attention to anything anyone else in the band was doing.
“Christ,” came Binder’s accented voice. “Not even you could dance to that tripe.”
There was a low-throated female laugh, and a slurred and very happy-sounding Madeline Raith replied, “This music isn’t about skill and precision, my sweet. It’s about hunger and passion. And I could dance to it to make your eyes fall out.”
“I am not ‘your sweet,’ ” Binder said, his voice annoyed. “I am not your anything, ducks, excepting your contracted employee.”
“I’m not sure I’d emphasize that if I were you, Binder,” Madeline said. “Since you’ve been a crushing disappointment as a hireling.”
“I told you when I got started that if anyone from the White Council showed up, I couldn’t make you any promises,” he shot back, his voice annoyed. “And lo and behold, what happens? That buggering lunatic Harry Dresden shows up with backup—and with the support of the local constabulary, to boot.”
“I’m getting so sick of this,” Madeline said. “He’s only one man.”
“One bloody member of the White bloody Council,” Binder countered. “Bear in mind that someone like him can do everything I can do and considerable besides. And even people on the bloody Council are nervous about that one.”
“Well, I’m sick of him,” spat Madeline. “Did you find out where he’s got Morgan hidden?”
“Maybe you didn’t hear, love, but I spent my day chained to a chair getting popped in the mouth.”
Madeline laughed, a cold, mocking sound. “There are places you’d have to pay for that.”
“Not bloody likely.”
“Did you find Morgan?”
Binder growled. “Dresden had him stashed in rental storage for a bit, but he hared off before the cops could pick him up. Probably took him into the Nevernever. They could be anywhere.”
“Not if Dresden is back in Chicago,” Madeline said. “He’d never let himself be too far from Morgan.”
“So check his bloody apartment,” Binder said.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Madeline said. “That’s the first place anyone would look. He’s not a total moron.”
Yeah. I wasn’t. Ahem.
Binder snickered. “You’re money, Raith. Money never really gets it.”
Madeline’s voice turned waspish. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That not everyone has a bloody string of mansions around the world that they live in or extra cars that they never really drive or cash enough to not think twice about dropping two hundred bloody dollars on a bottle of forty-dollar room service champagne.”
“So?”
“So, Dresden’s a bloody kid by Council standards. Lives in that crappy little hole. And pays for an office for his business, to boot. He ain’t had a century or two of compounded interest to shore up his accounts, now, has he? And when he set himself up an emergency retreat, did he buy himself a furnished condo in another town? No. He rents out a cruddy little storage unit and stacks some camping gear inside.”
“All right,” Madeline said, her tone impatient. “Suppose you’re right. Suppose he’s got Morgan at his apartment. He won’t have left him unprotected.”
“Naturally not,” Binder replied. “He’ll have a bloody minefield of wards around the place. Might have some conjured guardians or some such as well.”
“Could you get through them?”
“Give me enough time and enough of my lads, and yeah,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be quick, quiet, or clean. There’s a simpler way.”
“Which is?”
“Burn the bloody place down,” Binder said promptly. “The apartment’s got one door. If Morgan comes scurrying out, we bag him. If not, we collect his bones after the ashes cool. Identify him with dental records or something and claim the reward.”
I felt a little bit sick to my stomach. Binder was way too perceptive for my comfort level. The guy might not be overly smart, but he was more than a little cunning. His plan was pretty much exactly the best way to attack my apartment, defensive magicks notwithstanding. What’s more, I knew he was capable of actually doing it. It would kill my elderly neighbors, the other residents of the building, but that wouldn’t slow someone like Binder down for half of a second.
“No,” Madeline said after a tense moment of silence. “I have my instructions. If we can’t take him ourselves, we at least see to it that the Wardens find him.”
“The Wardens havefound him,” Binder complained. “Dresden’s a bloody Warden. Your boss should have paid up already.”
There was a quiet, deadly silence, and then Madeline purred, “You’ve been modestly helpful to him in the past, Binder. But don’t start thinking that you would survive telling him what he should or should not do. The moment you become more annoying than useful, you are a dead man.”