Grave Peril

"Dresden," Rudolph snapped. "Let’s go."

I lifted a hand, extending my senses out, pushing my perception out along with my will. "Hang on a second," I said. "I need to …" I quit trying to speak, and searched for the source of the sensation. What the hell was it?

"Fucking showboat," Rudolph growled. I heard him start toward me.

"Hang on, kid," Stallings said. "Let the man work. We’ve both seen what he can do."

"I haven’t seen shit that can’t be explained," Rudolph growled. But he stayed put.

I drifted across the street, to the yard of the house in question, and found the first body in the fallen leaves, five feet to my left. A small, yellow-and-white furred cat lay there, twisted so that its forelegs faced one way, its hindquarters the opposite. Something had broken its neck.

I felt a pang of nausea. Death isn’t ever pretty, really. It’s worst with people, but with the animals that are close to mankind, it seems to be a little nastier than it might be elsewhere in the wild kingdom. The cat couldn’t have reached its full growth, yet – maybe a kitten from early in the spring, roaming the neighborhood. There was no collar on its neck.

I could feel a little cloud of disturbance around it, a kind of psychic energy left by traumatic, agonizing, and torturous events. But this one little thing, one animal’s death, shouldn’t have been enough to make me aware of it all the way over from my seat in the police car.

Five feet farther on, I found a dead bird. I found its wings in two more places. Then two more birds, without heads. Then something that had been small and furry, and was now small and furry and squishy – maybe a vole or a ground squirrel. And there were more. A lot more – all in all, maybe a dozen dead animals in the front yard, a dozen little patches of violent energies still lingering. No single one of them would have been enough to disturb my wizard’s sense, but all of them together had.

So what the hell had been killing these animals?

I rubbed my palms over my arms, a sickly little feeling of dread rolling through me. I looked up to see Rudolph and Stallings following me around. Their faces looked kind of greenish.

"Jesus," Stallings said. He prodded the body of the cat with one toe. "What did this?"

I shook my head and rolled my shoulders in a shrug. "It might take me a while to find out. Where’s Micky?"

"Inside."

"Well then," I said, and stood up, brushing off my hands. "Let’s go."

Chapter Twelve

I stopped outside the doorway. Micky Malone owned a nice house. His wife taught elementary school. They wouldn’t have been able to afford the place on his salary alone, but together they managed. The hardwood floors gleamed with polish. I saw an original painting, a seascape, hanging on one of the walls of the living room, adjacent to the entryway. There were a lot of plants, a lot of greenery that, along with the wood grain of the floors, gave the place a rich, organic glow. It was one of those places that wasn’t just a house. It was a home.

"Come on, Dresden," Rudolph snapped. "The lieutenant is waiting."

"Is Mrs. Malone here?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Go get her. I need her to invite me in."

"What?" Rudolph said. "Give me a break. Who are you, Count Dracula?"

"Drakul is still in eastern Europe, last time we checked," I replied. "But I need her or Micky to ask me in, if you want me to do anything for you."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

I sighed. "Look. Homes, places that people live in and love and have built a life in have a kind of power of their own. If a bunch of strangers had been trouping in and out all day, I wouldn’t have any trouble with the threshold, but you’re not. You guys are friends." Like Murphy had said – this one was personal.

Stallings frowned. "So you can’t come in?"

"Oh, I could come in," I said. "But I’d be leaving most of what I can do at the door. The threshold would mess with me being able to work any forces in the house."

"What shit," Rudolph snorted. "Count Dracula."

"Harry," Stallings said. "Can’t we invite you in?"

"No, Has to be someone who lives there. Besides, it’s polite," I said. "I don’t like to go places where I’m not welcome. I’d feel a lot better if I knew it was all right with Mrs. Malone for me to be here."

Rudolph opened his mouth to spit venom on me again, but Stallings cut him off. "Just do it, Rudy. Go get Sonia and bring her back here."

Rudolph glowered but did what he was told, going into the house.

Stallings tapped out a cigarette and lit up. He puffed for a second, thoughtfully. "So you can’t do magic inside a house unless someone asks you in?"

"Not a house," I said. "A home. There’s a difference."

"So what about Victor Sells’s place? I hear you took him on, right?"

I shook my head. "He’d screwed up his threshold. He was running his business out of it, using the place for dark ceremonies. It wasn’t a home anymore."

"So you can’t mess with anything on its own turf?"

"Can’t mess with mortals, no. Monsters don’t get a threshold."

"Why not?"

"How the hell should I know," I said. "They just don’t. I can’t know everything, right?"

"Guess so," Stallings said, and after a minute he nodded. "Sure, I see what you mean. So it shuts you down?"

"Not completely, but it makes it a lot harder to do anything. Like wearing a lead suit. That’s why vampires have to keep out. Other nasties like that. If you give them that much of a handicap, they have trouble just staying alive, much less using any freaky powers."

Stallings shook his head. "This magic crap. I never would have believed it before I came here. I still have trouble with it."

"Yeah? That’s good. Means you aren’t running into it too much."

He blew out twin columns of smoke from his nostrils. "Could be changing. Last couple of days, we’ve had some people go missing. Bums, street people, folks some of the cops and detectives know."

I frowned. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. It’s all rumors so far. And people like that, they can just be gone the next day. But since I started working S.I., stuff like that makes me nervous."

I frowned, and debated telling Stallings what I knew about Bianca’s party. Doubtless, there would be a whole flock of vampires in from out of town for the event. Maybe she and her flunkies were rounding up hors d’oeuvres. But I had no proof of that – for all I knew, the disappearances, if they were disappearances, could be related to the turbulence in the Nevernever. If so, the cops couldn’t do anything about it. And if it was something else, I could be starting a very nasty exchange with Bianca. I didn’t want to sic the cops on her for no reason. I’m pretty sure Bianca had the resources to send them back at me – and she could probably make it look like I’d done something to deserve it, too.