White Night (Page 41)

So I revved up the spell, hung the amulet from the rearview mirror of the Blue Beetle, and headed out onto the Chicago streets. I kept an eye on my amulet, which leaned slightly, drawn as if by a light magnetic field toward Thomas’s amulet. That wasn’t a perfect way to track something down – the spell had no concern for streets and traffic flow, for example – but I’d been finding things like this for a good while, and I piloted the Beetle through the maze of buildings and one-way streets that make up the fair city.

Elaine watched me in silence the whole while. I knew that she was wondering what I had used to lock on to our apparent abductor/murderer. She didn’t push, though. She just settled down and trusted me.

When I finally parked the car and got out, I brought my amulet with me and stared grimly at the necklace, which continued to lean steadily to the east, toward the Burnham Harbor piers that stretched out over Lake Michigan. An entire cove had been built into the lakeshore and decked out with an array of docks for dozens and dozens of small commercial boats, pleasure craft, and yachts.

"Boats," I muttered. "Why did it have to be boats?"

"What’s wrong with boats?" Elaine asked.

"I haven’t had a good time on boats," I said. "In fact, I haven’t had a good time this close to the lake in general."

"It smells like dead fish and motor oil," Elaine noted.

"You never did like my cologne." I got my staff out of the car. "You need a big stick."

Elaine smiled sweetly at me, and drew out a heavy chain from her purse. She held both ends in one fist, leaving a doubled length of heavy metal links about two feet long. Each of the links glittered with veins of what might have been copper, forming sinuous text. "You’re a prisoner to tradition, big guy. You should learn to be a little more flexible."

"Careful. If you tell me you’ve got bracelets and a magic lariat in there, I may lose control of my sexual impulses."

Elaine snorted. "You can’t lose what you’ve never had." She glanced up at me. "Like the new shield, by the way."

"Yeah. Sexy, huh?"

"Complex," she replied. "Balanced. Strong. Sophisticated. I’m not sure I could have made a focus for something like that. It took real skill, Harry."

I felt myself actually blush, absurdly pleased by the compliment. "Well, it isn’t perfect. It takes a lot more juice than the old shield did. But I figured getting tired faster is far preferable to getting dead fester."

"Seems reasonable," she said, and squinted at the docks. "Can you tell which boat it is?"

"Not yet. But once you get two or three hundred yards over the water, that spell would have grounded out. So we know it’s one of these at the docks."

Elaine nodded. "You want to lead?"

"Yeah. We should be able to run it down fairly fast. Stay about ten or fifteen feet back from me."

Elaine frowned. "Why?"

"Any closer than that and we’d be a dandy target. Someone could take us both out with one burst from a machine gun."

Her face got a little pale. "I thought you trusted him."

"I do," I said. "But I don’t know who might be there with him."

"And you’ve learned this kind of thing on the job? Machine guns?"

I felt my left hand twitch. "Actually, I learned it with flamethrowers. But it applies to machine guns, too."

She took a deep breath, green eyes flickering over the docks and ships. "I see. After you, then."

I readied my shield bracelet, got a good grip on my staff, and wrapped my amulet’s chain around the first two fingers of my right hand, holding it up and out a little so that the amulet could dangle and indicate direction. I stepped out onto the docks and followed the spell toward the outermost row of moored boats. I was acutely conscious of Elaine’s light, steady footsteps behind me, and the little slapping sighs of water hitting hulls.

The summer sky was overcast with lead, and occasional thunder rumbled through the air. The docks weren’t nearly as crowded as they could be, but there were a couple of dozen people around, walking to and from boats, working on decks, getting ready to cast off or else just now securing their lines. I was the only one wearing a big leather coat, and got a few odd looks.

The amulet led me to the last slip of the dock farthest from shore. The boat moored there was a big one, at least for those docks, and looked like it might have been a stunt double for the boat in Jaws. It was old, battered, its white paint smudged to a faded, peeling grey, the planks of its hull often patched. The windows on the wheelhouse were obscured with dust and greasy smudges. It needed to be sandblasted and repainted – except for the lettering on its stern, which had apparently been added only recently in heavy black paint: WATER BEETLE.

I walked ten feet away and rechecked the amulet’s indication, triangulating. The Water Beetle was the right boat.

"Hey!" I called out. "Er, uh. Ahoy! Thomas!"

Silence met my hail.

I checked over my shoulder. Elaine had moved away, to where she could see the little ship’s entire deck while still standing a good twenty feet down the dock from me. What was the military term for that? Establishing a cross fire? Maybe it was creating a defilade. The point being, though, that if anything came gibbering up out of the boat’s hold, we’d tear it up between us before you could say boogity-boo.

Of course, if anyone on the boat had hostile intent and an ounce of brains, they’d probably realize that, too.

"Thomas!" I shouted again. "It’s Harry Dresden!"

If someone on that boat meant me harm, the smart thing to do would be to stay quiet and tempt me out onto the boat itself. That would minimize my chances of avoiding an attack, and give them their best shot at taking me out in a hurry – which is just about the only reliable way to do it, when you’re dealing with wizards. Give one of us time to catch our breath, and we can be a real handful.

"Okay," I said to Elaine, not taking my eyes off the boat. "I’m going aboard."

"Is that smart?"

"No." I glanced at her for a second. "You got a better idea?"

"No," she admitted.

"Cover me."

"Cover you." Elaine shook her head, but she let one end of the chain slip loose from her hand, and caught it in the other. She took a grip on it, leaving a couple of feet hanging from her left hand. Little flickers of light played along it – subtle enough that I doubted anyone would notice if they weren’t looking for it. "I thought I was here on a job. Now it turns out I’m half of a buddy-cop movie."