Small Favor

A corpse floated in the water, nude, facedown. It was a man I’d never seen before, his hair long, grey, and matted. His limp, outstretched hand had bumped against my foot.

"Jesus, Harry," Murphy said, her voice shaking. "He’s dead. Harry, it’s okay. He’s dead, Harry."

My right hand remained where it was, fingers outspread, ripples of light flickering over them. Then they started shaking. I lowered my hand again, releasing the power I’d gathered, and as I did I felt my fingers tingle and go numb once more.

I stared at them, puzzled. That wasn’t right. I was fairly sure that I should be a lot more worried about that than I was at the moment, but I couldn’t put together enough cohesive thought to remember why.

Murphy was still talking, her voice steady and soothing. I dimly realized, a minute later, that it was the tone of voice you use with crazy people and frightened animals, and that I was breathing hard and fast despite the lack of any exertion to explain it.

"It’s all right, Harry," she said. "He’s dead. You can let go of me."

That was when I realized that my left arm had pulled Murphy tight against me, drawing her across my body and away from the corpse as I’d gotten ready to do…whatever it was I had been about to do. She was, at the moment, more or less sitting across my lap. Wherever she was touching me, I was warm. It took me a moment to figure out exactly why it was a good idea to let her go. Eventually, though, I did.

Murphy slid carefully away from me, shaking her head. "God," she said. "What happened to you, Harry? What did they do to you?"

I slumped, too tired to move my foot out of the water, too tired to try to explain that I’d failed to stop the demons from carrying away a little girl.

After a moment of silence Murphy said, "That’s it. I’m getting you to a doctor. I don’t care who these people think they are. They can’t just waltz into town and tear apart my-" She broke off suddenly. "Hngh. What do you make of this, Harry?"

She took a step down into the water and bent over.

"No!" I snapped.

She froze in place.

"Jesus, those things get predictable," I muttered. "Silver coin just fall out of the corpse’s fingers?"

Murphy blinked and looked at me. "Yes."

"Evil. Cursed. Don’t touch it." I shook my head and stood up. The wall had to help me, but I made it all the way up, thinking out loud on the way. "Okay, we’ve got to make sure there’s no more of these lying around, first thing. I’m already carrying one. We limit the risk. I carry them all for now. Until they can be properly disposed of."

"Harry," Murphy said in a steady voice. "You’re mumbling, and what’s coming through is making a limited amount of sense."

"I’ll explain. Bear with me." I bent over and found another stained denarius gleaming guiltily in the water. "Moron," I muttered at the coin, then picked it up with my gloved hand and put it in my pocket along with the other one. In for a penny, in for a pound, ah hah hah.

Damn, I’m clever.

Footsteps sounded, brisk and precise, and Luccio walked into view beside Gard. There was a subtle difference in Gard’s body language toward Luccio, something a shade more respectful than was there before. The captain of the Wardens was wiping her sword clean on her grey cloak-blood wouldn’t stain it, which made it handy for such things. Luccio paused for a moment upon seeing me, her expression carefully guarded, then nodded. "Warden. How are you feeling?"

"I’ll live," I rasped. "What happened?"

"Two Denarians," Gard replied. She nodded her head briefly to Luccio. "Both dead."

Luccio shook her head. "They’d been half-drowned," she said. "I only finished them off. I shouldn’t have liked to fight them fresh."

"Take me to the bodies," I said quietly. "Hurry."

There was a sighing sound from behind us. I didn’t freak out about it this time, but Murphy did, her gun appearing in her hand. To be fair, Luccio had her sword half out of its sheath, too. I checked and found what I’d more or less expected: The body of the former Denarian, relieved of its coin, was decomposing with unnatural speed, even in the cold water. The Fallen angel in the coin might have been holding off the ravages of time, but the old man with the hourglass is patient, and he was collecting his due from the fallen Denarian with compounded interest.

"Captain, we’ve got to get every single coin we possibly can, and we’ve got to do it now."

Luccio cocked her head at me. "Why?"

"Look, I don’t know what arrangements Kincaid made, but somebody is going to notice something soon, and then emergency services will be all over this place. I don’t want some poor fireman or cop accidentally picking up one of these things."

"True enough," she said, nodding-and then glanced at Murphy. "Sergeant, do you concur?"

Murphy grimaced. "Dammit, there’s always something…" She held up her hands as if pushing away a blanket that was wrapped too tightly around her and said, "Yes, yes. Round them up."

"Michael," I said. "Sanya?"

"When we got here," Murphy said, "a bunch of those things were pulling you out of the water."

"They ran. We went different directions, pursuing them," Gard supplied.

"Where’s Cujo?" I asked.

Gard gave me a blank look.

"Hendricks."

"Ah," she said. "Lookout. He’ll give us a warning when the authorities begin to arrive."

At least someone was thinking like a criminal. I suppose she was the right person for the job.

I raised my voice as much as I could. It came out sort of furry and rough. "Michael?"

"Here," came the answer. He came walking around the curving path toward us a few moments later, wearing only his undershirt beneath his heavy denim jacket. I hadn’t seen him wearing that little before. Michael had some serious pecs. Maybe I should work out. He was carrying with both hands part of his blue-and-white denim shirt folded into a careful bundle in front of him.

Sanya came along behind Michael, soaking wet, his chest bare underneath his coat. Never mind Michael’s pecs. Sanya made us both look like we needed to eat more wheat germ or something. He was carrying Esperacchius and Amoracchius over one shoulder-and Kincaid over the other.

Kincaid wasn’t moving much, though he was clearly trying to support some of his weight. His skin was chalk white. He was covered in blood. The rest of Michael’s shirt, and both of Sanya’s, had been pressed into service as emergency bandages-and layers of duct tape had been wrapped around and around them, sealing them into place around both arms, over his belly, and around one leg.