Storm Front

"The wind?" I eyed him. "I haven’t heard of that one before, Bob."

"I am an air spirit, after all," Bob told me. "This’ll work fine. Trust me."

I grumbled, and set the first potion to simmering, then started on the next one. I hesitated, after Bob told me the first ingredient.

"Tequila?" I asked him, skeptically. "Are you sure on that one? I thought the base for a love potion was supposed to be champagne."

"Champagne, tequila, what’s the difference, so long as it’ll lower her inhibitions?" Bob said.

"Uh. I’m thinking it’s going to get us a, um, sleazier result."

"Hey!" Bob protested, "Who’s the memory spirit here! Me or you?"

"Well – "

"Who’s got all the experience with women here? Me or you?"

"Bob – "

"Harry," Bob lectured me, "I was seducing shepherdesses when you weren’t a twinkle in your great-grandcestor’s eyes. I think I know what I’m doing."

I sighed, too tired to argue with him. "Okay, okay. Sheesh. Tequila." I got down the bottle, measured eight ounces into the beaker, and glanced up at the skull.

"Right. Now, three ounces of dark chocolate."

"Chocolate?" I demanded.

"Chicks are into chocolate, Harry."

I muttered, more interested in finishing than anything else, and measured out the ingredients. I did the same with a drop of perfume (some name-brand imitation that I liked), an ounce of shredded lace, and the last sigh at the bottom of the glass jar. I added some candlelight to the mix, and it took on a rosy golden glow.

"Great," Bob said. "That’s just right. Okay, now we add the ashes of a passionate love letter."

I blinked at the skull. "Uh, Bob. I’m fresh out of those."

Bob snorted. "How did I guess. Look on the shelf behind me."

I did, and found a pair of romance novels, their covers filled with impossibly delightful flesh. "Hey! Where did you get these?"

"My last trip out," Bob answered blithely. "Page one seventy-four, the paragraph that starts with, ‘Her milky-white br**sts. Tear that page out and burn it and add those ashes in."

I choked. "That will work?"

"Hey, women eat these things up. Trust me."

"Fine," I sighed. "This is the spirit ingredient?"

"Uh-huh," Bob said. He was rocking back and forth on his jawbones in excitement. "Now, just a teaspoon of powdered diamond, and we’re done."

I rubbed at my eyes. "Diamond. I don’t have any diamonds, Bob."

"I figured. You’re cheap, that’s why women don’t like you. Look, just tear up a fifty into real little pieces and put that in there."

"A fifty-dollar bill?" I demanded.

"Money," Bob opined, "Very sexy."

I muttered and got the remaining fifty out of my pocket, shredding it and tossing it in to complete the potion.

The next step was where the effort came in. Once all the ingredients are mixed together, you have to force enough energy through them to activate them. It isn’t the actual physical ingredients that are important – it’s the meaning that they carry, too, the significance that they have for the person making the potion, and for those who will be using it.

The energy from magic comes from a lot of places. It can come from a special place (usually some spectacular natural site, like Mount St. Helens, or Old Faithful), from a focus of some kind (like Stonehenge is, on a large scale), or from inside of people. The best magic comes from the inside. Sometimes it’s just pure mental effort, raw willpower. Sometimes it’s emotions and feelings. All of them are viable tinder to be used for the proverbial fire.

I had a lot of worry to use to fuel the magic, and a lot of annoyance and one hell of a lot of stubbornness. I murmured the requisite quasi-Latin litany over the potions, over and over, feeling a kind of resistance building, just out of the range of the physical senses, but there, nonetheless. I gathered up all my worry and anger and stubbornness and threw them all at the resistance in one big ball, shaping them with the strength and tone of my words. The magic left me in a sudden wave, like a pitcher abruptly emptied out.

"I love this part," Bob said, just as both potions exploded into puffs of greenish smoke and began to froth up over the lips of the beakers.

I sagged onto a stool, and waited for the potions to fizz down, all the strength gone out of me, the weariness building up like a load of bricks on my shoulders. Once the frothing had settled, I leaned over and poured each potion into its own individual sports bottle with a squeeze-top, then labeled the containers with a permanent Magic Marker – very clearly. I don’t take chances in getting potions mixed up anymore, ever since the invisibility/hair tonic incident, from when I was trying to grow out a decent beard.

"You won’t regret this, Harry," Bob assured me. "That’s the best potion I’ve ever made."

"I made it, not you," I growled. I really was exhausted, now – way too tired to let petty concerns like possible execution keep me from bed.

"Sure, sure," Bob agreed. "Whatever, Harry."

I went around the room putting out all the fires and the kerosene heater, then climbed the ladder back to the basement without saying good night. Bob was chortling happily to himself as I did.

I stumbled to my bed and fell into it. Mister always climbs in and goes to sleep draped over my legs. I waited for him, and a few seconds later he showed up, settling down and purring like a miniature outboard motor.

I struggled to put together an itinerary for the next couple of days through the haze of exhaustion. Talk to the vampire. Locate missing husband. Avoid the wrath of the White Council. Find the killer.

Before he found me.

An unpleasant thought – but I decided that I wasn’t going to let that bother me, either, and curled up to go to sleep.

Chapter Nine

Friday night, I went to see Bianca, the vampiress.

I didn’t just leap out of bed and go see her, of course. You don’t go walking into the proverbial lion’s den lightly. You start with a good breakfast.

My breakfast took place around three in the afternoon, when I woke up to hear my phone ringing. I had to get out of bed and pad into the main room to answer it.

"Mmmrrmmph," I grumbled.

"Dresden," Murphy said, "what can you tell me?"

Murphy sounded stressed. Her voice had that distinct edge that she got whenever she was nervous, and it rankled me, like fingernails scraping on bones. The investigation into Tommy Tomm’s murder must not be going well. "Nothing yet," I said. Then I lied to her, a little. "I was up most of the night working, but nothing to show yet."