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grumpygreenwitch · 26 days

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The Witches and Wizards Job 39-40-41-42-43

THIS IS IT.

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THIRTY NINE

I woke up on a relatively soft surface, which was more than I'd expected. Someone had put a pillow under my head, and there were quiet voices nearby, much louder ones further away. The warmth of Mouse against my leg and on my stomach was a welcome presence, and I reached down to rub his ears. He licked my hand and I heard his tail thumping against something soft. "Did we win?"

"Harry." Parker's voice was nearby. She moved closer and my breath caught. She'd put on the spider gown, an exquisite half-sheath of peach and gold and salmon tones, she'd done up her hair and put on make-up. She looked like a bona-fide, invited, certified guest of the party. In the darkness of the room she gleamed faintly, like a fallen star, the spider silk reacting to my presence. Lights, blue and red and white, flashed through a nearby window.

"I take it the cops are here."

"Well, yeah, but we called them," she specified, sitting next to me. "They're keeping the news people out. Everyone's all over that tidal wave that came out of nowhere and no one can explain." She gave me a tiny, wicked, utterly delighted look. "That was magic. And I was there to see it."

"It was, you were," I agreed. It was hard to get down on myself when there was someone around who so wholeheartedly approved of what I was, what I could do, all the glory and the violence of it, the grit and the beauty. "Nothing else was strong enough to maybe kill the dragon."

"Oh, it did," she assured me, then gestured with her hands to mime something being torn in half. She even made a squelching sound.

I had to laugh, and found that, overall, I wasn't terribly sore or hurt. Bone-tired, yes, I felt like I'd scraped a bottom to my magic I didn't even know was there. But nothing was burn, broken, or bleeding. "The Blackbird? Grandmother?"

"We've got them. Nate said to wait for you, though. Can you stand?"

"Oh, for this I can stand, dance and run a marathon," I told her, sitting up. I rode out a wave of diziness and got to my bare feet, felt them sting a little. My mouth tasted of the sea, and I could feel salt and sand in places best left unmentioned. I was suddenly starved, and I would have loved to wash my mouth if nothing else, but I didn't care. I wanted to see how it ended between Koschei and Baba Yaga.

I'd been lying in a bed that dominated a small room, probably a guest bedroom. My duster had been tossed at the feet of it, and I snagged it as I went, Mouse jumping down lightly to follow Parker and me. On top of a chest of drawers that matched the bed were the rest of my things, and I gave her an amused look. "All together in the same place?"

She grinned at me. "Amateurs. Oh." She rushed back into the room, grabbed a small bundle from the bed, and brought it back to me as I shrugged on the duster. "Nate said you should have this."

I looked down at a familiar bundle wrapped in a plain tablecloth and a lot of duct tape, and a few things made sense. "Fried your bud when you read it, didn't it."

She nodded.

"I should've thought of that."

"Harry, we all should've thought of that. We didn't. I should've got a mirror piece anyways, but I didn't." She shrugged easily. "It still worked out. I stole your earclip," she informed me lightly as she opened the door. My staff was resting by it, and I grabbed it as I followed.

We stepped out onto a hallway and golden light; just past the door, Eliot and Hardison were talking to a man with ash-brown hair cut very short and sharp eyes, dressed casually except for the Red Sox jacket and the discreet bulge of a gun, and a woman with long blonde hair, keen blue eyes and strong, mobile features, dressed as if she'd thrown on the first thing she could find when she'd jumped out of bed, her badge and her gun worn on her belt. Both of them had that unmistakable set to their shoulders of a cop on the trail of something important. He asked them something in the thickest Boston accent I'd yet heard of anyone, and all four of them chuckled low.

Hardison handed him Wattsford's little black notebook. Eliot handed her the sheaf of folders.

"That him?" The man shuffled through the notebook, his face going hard, before he looked up and pointed at me, back to his casual, easy manner. Parker, ironically, didn't get more than an admiring look from both of them, and why should she? She wasn't wearing the skin-fitted black of a thief, she was dressed like someone who'd come to a party.

"I didn't do anything," I replied automatically.

"Yeah, that's him," the woman confirmed with a touch of dark humor to her voice.

I sputtered, vaguely insulted. What's the point of proclaiming your innocence if no one's gonna even pretend to believe you?

"Harry is a consultant," Eliot told them both mildly. "He'll be going home soon, and hopefully we won't be getting him in trouble for a while."

"Like you never get me in trouble?" the man shot back, all amusement, but they all shook hands and parted ways amicably enough.

Eliot and Hardison came over to meet us. The hacker could barely take his eyes off Parker, so it was the hitter who offered me his hand, his eyes dancing, his smile warm as ever. "Sir."

"Sir." I shook his hand back. "I swear I didn't do any of it on purpose."

"The hell you didn't." Eliot snorted in amusement. "I'm glad you're on our side, Harry."

"Til the day I die," I assured him.

"May it be long in coming," he replied as if he were reciting a prayer. "Now come on. Time to finish this."

I followed them down the hallway to the main area of the mansion. "So the van did work, or did you and my dog run all the way across the grounds?"

"I absolutely don't doubt Mouse could run the distance and carry me," Hardison admitted. "I don't run if I can help it, it's undignified. The van did work, it's still working, actually. As much as a seven hundred pound computer made of cathode tubes can be said to be working."

"Those were the original computers, no?"

"No! What I made was better, stronger and capable of carrying you around without fritzing or exploding, capable of hacking into the security cameras so I could see where to go without running into the security people, capable of gagging the electrical system without actually frying it so we could pretend you were being all magic-like while I did my job." The hacker looked entirely too pleased with himself. "You brought me a dedicated, single system OS and I hacked it."

"You hacked magic?"

"I damn well hacked magic."

I couldn't very well refute him. Aside from the spider's phone, every single bit of on-site tech had worked because Hardison had strong-armed it into working, no more, no less.

"You did not," Eliot protested wearily, face scrunched up.

"I did."

"He did."

"Don't enc- Harry, don't encourage him."

"But he did."

"He did not - you did not hack magic, man."

"I absolutely did. Tell me how I did not."

"I -" The hitter shot me a look.

I could only shrug. Eliot looked at Parker. "He kinda did a little," she murmured sheepishly, much to his wounded indignation, and we all went into the main receiving room.

FORTY

"Where's everyone?"

Nate turned from inspecting the small, elegant little clavichord in the room, sipping on a cup of very strong coffee, and examined Leverage's consulting wizard. There were deep shadows under Dresden's eyes, and his hair was going every which way, salt hardening it into peaks here and there. His clothing was singed and still faintly damp, and he smelled of the sea. Not for a minute did the mastermind doubt that he was ready for round two, three and twenty, if that was what it took.

Nate didn't believe in people, not overmuch. He believed in his people; he'd worked with them, he'd seen the steel in their souls often enough to know it ran true to the core of them. But of the average person he expected very little, or nothing at all; he'd seen them crumple far too often under the burdens of the world. He didn't hold it against them, not ever. He himself had crumpled once before, like cheap tin. It had been a labor of years to re-cast himself, to find his own steel. In Dresden, that core ran through and then some. What Leverage faced together, relying on one another, the wizard faced alone. His horrors weren't faceless or nameless; they were solid, real and truly monstrous, even if sometimes those monsters were on his side. Harry Dresden had drawn a line on the sand and he would defend it to his destruction, or that of his enemies.

Then again, he'd seen much the same thing when he'd accidentally Soulgazed the wizard. That, and more. For a while after Nate had kept looking down at himself, expecting to find himself spattered to the neck with blood and perplexed that, every time, he wasn't.

"Gone. None of them wanted to stay to talk to the police," he told Dresden. "We asked mister Stone to keep back only the ones that weren't liable to eat anyone." Over one shoulder he looked at a corner of the room. "And the ones that didn't want to leave."

As if summoned by those words, Classy and his people, six in number, rose from where they were sitting or slouching and drew lazily closer. "We're runnin' a legitimate business here," Classy told Nate mildly; he had never put his jacket back on, or rolled down his sleeves. "Ain't got no reason to run from no fuckin' terriers."

"Yes, well," the mastermind agreed in the same even tone. "You do have to admit that's not a common attitude."

Classy shoved his hands in his pockets and snorted in amusement. "Yeah, alright. I'll be fuckin' honest," he added, tipping his chin and grinning maliciously. "I woulda stayed to see how that ends, police or not." His people muttered in agreement.

Dresden turned to look at what Classy had pointed out. Koschei was sprawled on a chair, asleep, snoring faintly. There was a single, long, thin silver chain binding him to the chair, hardly looking like it would keep him there. What might do the job, however, was the immense bird-like creature hovering just behind him, long neck twisting this way and that, a woman's face at the end of it, its eyes a rich, dark gold with black pupils, like a bird's. She was stout and exceedingly fluffy, each feather three colors, red, black and white-tipped, her train made of iridescent black feathers. She was clucking cheerfully to herself like a contented hen.

All around them, the wizard suddenly realized, were the portraits, eight in total, seven fakes and one copy. "Did you have to bring them all?" he asked Nate.

"I wanted to make a point," the mastermind explained, giving him time to take in the rest of the room. Off by the bar, Vanya Fedorov and Nick flanked the woman from the portrait, who'd wrapped an exquisitely knotted blue shawl about her shoulders; it glowed like a piece of the night sky, dark blue studded with tiny winking dots. Grandmother herself looked far more put together, less fragile and wounded, though still as delicate as the cup full of tea in her hands. Nick had found a garishly colorful shirt and a pair of shorts, and no one had forced him to put on shoes, so he looked absolutely delighted at the proceedings, even if there were none currently ongoing to delight him. Next to him, holding onto a glass of something strong she had yet to sip, was Jessamine Lochlin.

By the door to the main drawing room, never taking his gaze off the shark, stood Stone. He was wearing a plain shirt that barely fit him, and his somewhat bedraggled pants, but otherwise looked implacably unharmed.

"What happened to Fedorov's uncle?" Harry asked quietly.

"Fedorov called his father. Hard to tell which one of them was angrier at the betrayal," Nate replied in the same quiet undertone before pitching his voice to carry. "Sophie, go ahead and wake him up."

Beautiful and radiant still despite the night's shenanigans, the grifter came close to the Russian wizard and pulled from his black hair a lacquered comb - the same comb Parker had originally stolen from the Blackbird's pockets. "That better be enough, I'm not kissing him," she warned Nate dryly. Classy and his people snickered, and the leader of the Dredgers cleared his throat with a muttered apology he absolutely didn't mean.

Koschei roused with a snort and a start, tried to lunge out of the chair, and nearly fell. The alkonost clamped a taloned foot on the back of the chair and forced it back down, and the wizard went with it, seething. He opened his mouth and snarled something, paused… and looked utterly stunned when nothing happened.

"Yeah, that." Nate saluted him with his cup. "I wouldn't bother."

"Release me!"

"Uh, no. Not yet anyways. I've got a couple of questions I was hoping -"

"Release me!"

"- you'd answer before we trade you for your heart."

Koschei went white, though it was hard to tell if it was fury or panic. "You cannot imagine what I can do for you, for all of you. All you know of magic is what that brute Dresden has shown you."

"Ouch," Harry muttered without heat.

"Release me. I will grant you anything you desire."

"Yeah, you already made that offer," Nate reminded him mildly. "You already got your answer. Or do you mean them?" He gestured to the Dredgers with his cup. "You guys want anything from the Blackbird?"

"His guts on a platter, his head on a bowl," Classy growled. His people hissed and chattered agreement, all of their eyes burning with a lambent red light. "His fingers and toes to bite and gnaw."

"Um. Need him alive. Sorry."

Classy shrugged, seamlessly going back to his easy mood. "No harm. Figured I'd ask just in case."

"Stone," Koschei began.

"I was fool enough to make one bad bargain with you, wizard. I will make no more," the golem replied calmly.

"You should ask Fedorov," Nate suggested. "I'm sure you've got many things he thinks he wants."

Koschei said nothing, glaring furiously at the mastermind, and Nate sipped at his coffee. "But it's not so easy, is it, to tempt a man who knows that what he wants and what he needs are two different things. Who knows that those things aren't always going to agree with one another." He pinned a level look on the Russian enforcer. "Or is this because he already made his choice, and there's some sort of prohibition between the two of you?" He gestured lightly at the hand gently squeezing Grandmother's shoulder. "When a Royal chooses one of you, the other can't interfere?"

Koschei exploded into profanities in Russian, as well as a couple of other languages that made Eliot's brows climb nearly to his hairline. Grandmother reached out to pat Fedorov's hand, but the enforcer looked nothing if not confused.

"You don't look like the men in your family," the mastermind told Fedorov. "I mean, obviously that's not an absolute, like genetic testing, but it's pretty telling when you don't look at all like any of the men in your family. We looked them up. Not one. You look like your mother, though. Same eyes, same hair. All the way back seven generations or so. The Sagorovs might have taken you in, but you're not a blood-relation."

"Yes, but -" Vanya hesitated. "My mother was… a casualty of the family's business. They made amends by taking care of me. What does that have to do with anything?"

"She wasn't a casualty, she was the target. His target." Nate gestured at the frothing wizard. "It left you alone, vulnerable at a young age. But then the family stepped in, and he saw the potential for an even bigger payout if he just waited. A high-ranking member of the Russian mafia and a Fyodorov? You don't find a lot of those lying around these days."

Fedorov pressed his mouth to a thin line.

"That's the problem with paper records," the mastermind pointed out mildly. "They tend to stick around for a long, long time."

"How did you know?"

"The invitation," Sophie murmured. "The coat of arms embossed on it was for the Russian Tsars. It just took me a little while to remember it, it hasn't been used for so long."

"I am not this thing. I am me. I am my own man."

"You just saved Grandmother from her greatest enemy in pitched battle." Dresden's voice was very calm, in spite of the surprises rolling out to smack everyone in the face. "Heroes do that. Princes do that."

"Do not call him that," Baba Yaga's voice crackled through the tension in the room. "He has chosen to be prince of a different empire, and that is his choice. As it should be." She leveled a cool, disappointed glare on Koschei. "How can this lesson not sink in after all these centuries, Kostya? We do not choose them, they choose us. Always."

"I don't have the patience for your maudlin beggary. They are mortal, and weak, and flawed. They are tools to be put to use, nothing else. They are power. My power."

"And you wonder why no one likes you," Fedorov commented, then crouched by Baba Yaga. "All I have ever wanted to be is my own man. I do not ask for favors easily." He shot Nate a look. "The price is always far more than one is willing to pay. I would ask only one thing of you, Grandmother." He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a bundled handkerchief. Unwrapping it, he offered her the small, oddly shaped, carved wooden cup, a chicken bone tucked neatly inside it. "I would know what you think of me."

She gasped, and took the cup with wrinkled fingers. Then she looked up and smiled at him. "You already know, little prince. I think you are more than worthy. I think any path you choose should be proud to have you." She touched his cheek lightly and, Russian enforcer or not, he flushed faintly under her praise.

Koschei strained against his bonds with a high-pitched, strangled howl, before going limp in the chair. "So," he growled at Nate. "You win. You would make an enemy of me for all the days of your miserable mortal life. I hope it was worth it."

"Sort of," the mastermind replied. "See, Dresden is supposed to just be our consultant. Answer questions, provide information, that sort of thing. Things, eh, escalated, but he still made time for the information bit, and one thing he made real clear is that you like to carry grudges. You really do. So part of doing all this was also making sure you can't do that to my people, or to him."

"And what will you do, kill me?" Koschei laughed darkly at him.

"We could, I suppose, but we really don't kill people unless we have to."

"I am immortal," the wizard laughed.

"No," Dresden countered. "You just hid your heart so well even death couldn't find it. But then you went and dug it out." He rapped his staff lightly on the floor, and one of the portraits began to glow faintly, as if illuminated by a light behind it. "Worse, you went and dug up the keys to open your little magical lockbox, the same keys where you trapped your death. You might not be a necromancer, but man," Dresden shook his head. "I've walked the edge, and I thought I was close, but you make it look like I was hiking fifty miles from the Damocles Doom."

"A feeble threat from a feeble pack of feeble old men."

"You've been out of the loop. They've got women and everything in the Council these days. Real modern of them."

"You don't have the keys, I stole them back from Dresden's home."

"You made the most basic of mistakes." Sophie came up behind Koschei, just close enough to purr against his ear with Ekaterina's Russian accent before she straightened up and abandoned the persona altogether. "You forgot the first rule of the grift: always keep your eyes on the mark." She moved to stand by Nate.

"You kept looking for heroes," the mastermind sipped at his cup, "because you're used to fighting heroes. But the one hero you found, you kinda. Well. Brought him on yourself." He saluted Fedorov with his cup before giving Koschei his attention once again. "But we're not heroes. We're conmen. And you just fell for the oldest con: the shell game. " He moved to his feet and reached into his pocket, pulling from it the plastic chess piece. "In a tower."

The frame of the portrait began to glow with its own light, as it had back in the vault of the MFA. There, among the gilt and the filigree in the ancient wood, Nate found the carving of the tower, pressed the chess piece against it, and was unsurprised at last to see it sink in seamlessly.

"In a box," Eliot said, reaching for the box of matches Harry had thrown at him so carelessly. It had a treasure chest painted on top, and it was still half-full of matches. The little drawing led the hitter to the right place on the frame.

"I stole those from you," Koschei sounded strangled.

"Did you?" Nate asked casually. "Because we had a set at the safehouse, a set at the pub -"

"A set in Lucille," Hardison pointed out.

"And in the u-Haul," Eliot added, stepping aside for Parker, who frowned minutely at the frame until she found the carving of a rabbit missing a foot, and grinned victoriously as she did magic all on her own. "Inside a rabbit."

Hardison came up behind her. "You look absolutely glorious doing magic," he murmured, blindly shoving the duck-shaped whistle at the frame.

She beamed at him. "I do magic all the time," she replied just as quietly. "Pay at- Hardison, pay attention!"

"Hardison!" Eliot hissed, forcing the hacker to actually focus.

"Alright, ok! Messing up my rhythm here," he grumbled. He was one of the few people present who could reach the top of the frame and return the duck to its graven, flying flock.

"You see, our consultant explained something to us called a Mirror-Mask. When you bind several items together to make it look like they're all the real thing." Nate looked pointedly around. "I think you might have heard of it. Of course you were going to try and steal the keys, that's just common sense. All we had to do was make you think you'd succeeded. Make it, ah," he glanced at Dresden, "believable."

"The real set was never together, not after the first time," Sophie told Koschei mildly. "The best way to keep a magical item from being tracked is to have it always on the move. Harry taught us that too." She grinned at him. "And your own magic to hide the items did the rest of the job." From her purse she pulled the egg, and pressed it lightly to the bottom of the frame.

The painted emerald brooch burst into radiant color, bright enough to dazzle everyone present for a moment. Sophie brought out the key and bit her lip. "Are you sure, Harry?"

"You won't damage it," the wizard assured her.

She lifted the key and put it lightly against the brooch. It sank into the light as if into a lock. The grifter tested it one way, then the other, and slid it around a quarter turn, then another, before pulling it out.

With it came a black velvet bag the size of a man's head, secured with a golden cord, weighted at the ends with cabochon diamonds, each as big as a quarter, one pure, one black. Eliot caught the bag by the strings before it could drop from the key. "Heavy," he commented, his expression full of uncertain anticipation.

Sophie reached for the bag, hesitated, reached again and then took a full step back. "Parker."

"Dresden," Nate added.

"Mister Act," Harry said at once.

"The hell d'yer want me for, wizard?" Classy exclaimed, caught completely by surprise.

"To find out if it's booby-trapped," the wizard replied evenly.

"… Oh."

The bag was set on a small lacquered table, and all three bend down to stare curiously at it. Classy sniffed it lightly. "Dust. Time. Magic. No poison, no bugs, nothin' that bites or stings." He leaned even closer and licked the black velvet, then spat off to one side. "Night's breath and rowan ash. Their power's wore off with time, 's nothing but crap tea and soot."

"No hexes, no curses," Harry agreed. At Classy's dictum he gingerly laid a gentle hand on the velvet, then pulled it back, wriggling his fingers.

"Don't trust me, wizard?" Classy challenged.

"I do," Dresden replied evenly, then shrugged in the direction of the bar. "But I just spend a whole evening sneaking suppression potions into people's drinks. I made sure not to get you or your people, but you say rowan ash and I get paranoid."

The Dredger stared at him open-mouthed before he started cackling. "The Witchwell. That's how you made it work."

Parker ran her hands smoothly over the rich velvet. "There's nothing here but the one thing." She untied the cord and reached in.

The jewel filled both her hands. The emerald was immense, the same vitriolic green of its owner's eyes, flawless, shaped into an oval and set into a frame of platinum that made one dizzy if stared at for too long. Parker turned it this way and that, held it up to the light. Behind her, Sophie breathed out in disbelief. The thief suddenly shuddered and put it down abruptly. "It's wriggling," she declared tightly.

Sophie put her fingertips to it. "The Emerald Heart of Koschei the Deathless," she murmured. She could just feel the faint tremors of a heartbeat against her skin. "It's real."

"And untouchable," Koschei told them smugly. "Go on. Ask mister Stone to break it. Ask Grandmother to grind it up in her mortar. Ask. You do not have the final key, you did not find it, did you. You cannot touch me."

"We did not find it," Nate admitted readily. "We're just conmen. But you brought a hero into the mix," he told the Russian wizard mildly. "And he did find it, rattling around inside a chicken bone. Or what, did you think when you stole it, that we somehow miraculously found another chicken bone with a needle in it?" The mastermind's tone suddenly went to lethal ice. "Dresden."

Without hesitation, Harry pulled off the pin secured to the top of his shirt and flicked off the little mirror shard at the top.

"You cannot kill me." Koschei's panicked voice was a wheeze. "Your Council will murder you for it."

Dresden seemed to consider that. "True. Hey, Fedorov -"

"Wait!" Koschei shrieked. "What do you want, you must want something, everyone wants something. There is always something!"

"There is," Nate agreed, and gestured to the painting. "Tonight you were going to lock Grandmother in there with your heart, and finally do what you couldn't pull off all those centuries ago. You'd taken all the tools she uses for her magic, the mortar, the pestle, the shawl - left her her house, though, that's nice of you." He nodded at the alkonost who curtsied gracefully back. "You were going to lock her in there, and let the curse on the heart do what it was always meant to do. Sell the painting and wash your hands of her fate while you stole her power. So, instead, you're going to step in that cage. We're going to throw your heart in with you and we're going to lock the door. And then that lovely lady over there," he pointed at Jessamine, "is going to take you back to her museum. And if you're lucky, by the time you get out, your heart will have left you enough magic to fill up a thimble." He leaned back, once again the harmless, slightly rumpled, friendly man he could pretend to be so flawlessly. "But you'll be alive, though."

"There must be something you want," Koschei croaked, his eyes gone to rolling green pebbles in his corpse-white face.

"Probably lots of things," Nate admitted. "But I know the difference between what I want and what I need. And since we dosed you with a full suppression potion before we started this conversation, I don't think you're in any shape to offer me either."

FORTY ONE

The Dredgers boxed up the portrait after Dresden pulled the keys back out, and Eliot and Parker carried it out for Jess. The hitter excused himself discreetly, and both young women stared uncomfortably at anything but one another in the dark next to the u-Haul van.

"So you're a thief?"

"Sort of."

"Were you gonna - 'cuz I mean. I never got that vibe from you, that you were using me to steal from me."

"No!" Parker exclaimed. "No, I was, I wanted to work with you, 'cuz it was fun, and you were fun, and we could make plans, and then take 'em apart, and that was so much fun and that's what you're supposed to do with friends, have fun, except now I ruined everything and, and-"

"Alright!" Jess threw her hands out to try and stave off the deluge. She chewed angrily on her lip. "You don't have a lot of friends, do you."

Parker shrugged. "You just met them all but one."

"Oh my gosh," Jess tugged on her curling hair. "I mean, I'm not saying it wasn't fun, but you lied to me. Like, big lies! Important lies!"

"I know. I just… You wouldn't have wanted to make friends with a thief."

"Well… No, I guess not."

"But it was fun?" Parker asked tentatively.

Jess, flustered, wriggled uncomfortably in place. "So what's your real name?"

"Parker."

"Parker what?"

"No, just Parker."

"Well, there goes your free membership," Jess told her sternly.

"Ok, that's fair," the thief agreed, crestfallen.

The silence lingered and grew.

"So you're an art thief."

"Thief-thief, mostly."

"You wouldn't happen to know, you know. The Dutch Gallery."

"I know who did it, but they don't have them anymore, they sold them."

Jess let out an irate little squeal, stomping a foot. "I don't suppose that you'd want to. Do like a. Counter… heist?"

Parker's glum expression shattered under a burst of sunny, delighted surprise. "Would I ever."

"Well, good!" Jess nodded stoutly, then offered a hand. "Hello. I'm Jessamine Lochlin, and I've got a proposition for you."

Parker reached out to shake the young curator's hand. "Hi. I'm Parker, and I'm all ears."

FORTY TWO

"Wizard."

I turned to find myself nose to chest with Stone. "Oh, good," I said in a tone that implied the golem's presence was anything but.

"We made a bargain, you and I, back at the boat-house. That the building is no longer there is not a valid excuse to welsh on it."

"I'm not welshing on it. I'm just not keeping up all that well with local events. The boat-house's gone?"

"You tore multiple holes into the building and then called up a tidal wave, wizard," Stone gave me a look as deadpan as his tone. "What did you expect would happen to it?"

I shrugged. I hadn't exactly been planning ahead beyond getting rid of the zmei. "Come with me. Hey, Ford, a word?"

The mastermind turned to look at me, then up at the golem. "I don't know that I have the energy to deal with your friends tonight, Dresden," he declared wearily.

"Well, you're in luck because this one actually is a friend. Did Eliot and Hardison ever talk to you about the moonlighting I did with them?"

"Yes, briefly. But they also mentioned it was not likely to happen again once you go home."

"To you, no. You're human. But it occurs to me, what if you had a group of non-humans doing what you do?"

Ford opened his mouth. He said nothing, closed it. Looked up at Stone.

"I don't follow," the golem admitted.

"Ford and his people run a small operation. Very neat, very tidy, very challenging," I explained, hoping the mastermind would catch the emphasis on the last word.

"We help people," Ford jumped in. "We help people who have lost the war. We come into a situation when the odds are entirely against us. When our customers have had hope and spirit crushed out of them by companies, by governments, by forces that seem too big, to powerful for any one person to challenge, let alone defeat. Our monsters aren't solid," he gestured at the painting, "but they are real. And so are the challenges."

The golem looked most definitely intrigued. "I don't see how this applies to me. Are you offering me a job?"

"Not exactly," Ford demurred. "You see, while we were working on Grandmother's case, a couple of people approached us. One was a seal-woman."

"Looking for her skin?"

"Looking for her fourteen-year-old daughter's skin."

The golem straightened up sharply. "Was it found?"

I liked him for asking that question. Never mind what he might say about ethics or morals, Stone still had, somewhere under the granite exterior, an awareness of right and wrong.

"We did, and we also managed to sneak in some information to the authorities that won't compromise any other potential seal-women out there, but that will make the lives of the men involved very, very difficult." Nate gestured. "Abstract enemy. Lost fight. We still pulled a win. But… they aren't going to come to us anymore."

"You're human," the golem said thoughtfully.

"You aren't," the mastermind pointed out. "We could, in theory, provide you with the infrastructure, with training, with advice come from our experience fighting these fights. While you, and your team, can reach out to Boston's supernatural community in a way we can't. You can provide them with the… leverage they lack."

Stone was silent a long, long time, looking deeply thoughtful. "I have no team. I would not involve my security people in this matter. They are good at what they do, but that is very much all they are good at."

"Can I make a suggestion about that?" I raised my hand.

"This was your idea and your bargain, wizard. Suggest."

"Nick!"

The shark, who'd been demolishing what was left of the buffet, came trotting over. "Wizard! Tell me you have more fights to offer. This has been the best night since I came to your world."

"No," Stone said stiffly.

"Uh, well, you know," Ford spoke before I could. "Nick's the one who sniffed out Dresden for the seal-woman. He's been nothing but good about following directions tonight, on nearly no notice. And you know he'll never be afraid to call you out if he thinks you're going about a job the wrong way." His eyes strayed to Sophie. "Personal experience talking here, that is incredibly important to the job."

Stone looked down at the niuhi, frowning. Nick beamed up at him, then at me. "Lots of seal-women out there who need help, Nick," I told him casually. "Lots of other people, too, and no one's helping them."

The shark snorted. "You think I could help anyone, wizard? Biting makes as many problems as it solves!"

"Untrue," Stone said. "Biting can absolutely solve many problems without creating more, as long as they are the right problems."

"I'm not very good at telling the difference."

The golem sighed. "I am." He faced Ford. "Perhaps we should speak after all, you and the shark and I."

The three of them walked away and I breathed a sigh of relief. Was the night over yet? I wanted nothing more than a blessedly hot shower, a fresh change of clothes, and a bed, any bed. Maybe just a couch. A sleeping bag. Or a couple of blank-

"You got somethin' of mine, wizard."

I turned. Classy had approached me alone, and I knew his people well enough to recognize the respect and deference he was showing me. Unfortunately, that didn't help me understand what he was saying, and I stared at him with what I knew was a blank, dumb expression on my face. "I do?"

The Dredger stopped playing with the thin silver chain he'd loaned Ford to contain Koschei. It looked like nothing but a silvery piece of jewelry in his hands. He cocked a brow at me. "Ford said you had it."

"He did?"

Classy peered curiously at my face, and broke into low snickers. "Long night, wizard?"

I could only groan in reply. "I feel like I've been put through a wringer and run over a few miles of bad road until all the soft bits are raw -" It hit me then, with the unpleasant mental image. "Oh, I do have something of yours!"

"There you are, found the one thinky bit ain't fallin' down tired," the Dredger cheered me on as I groped around inside my trenchcoat.

"You guys coming out alright out of this one?"

"Well enough." He shrugged, then pointed to where Sophie was having an animated conversation with his people. "Learning about this thing called a Zanzibar market. Humans are fuckin' brilliant, wizard. You think you got one up on them and they're a fucking dozen steps ahead already. Ah, there's my beauty."

I handed over the Burning Witchwell. "You know the thing's nearly empty, right?"

"I know. Blackbird promised he'd empty it for us, lying crow's arsehole. Ain't in the business of killing me own fuckin' customers, wizard. The Witchwell's what I want, not the poison innit."

"Well, hell, if that's all you want I can empty it for you."

"Right?" The Dredger brightened up. "What's yer fee?"

"You know the Bag of Winds Ying Ying Amarin wanted?"

He grinned and winked at me. "You want a stitch or three should come loose on it?"

"That sounds perfect, unless it's gonna get you in trouble."

He cackled. "Caveat emptor, wizard. We're Dredgers. We find what's not to be found. We get into places and things we don't got no business puttin' our hands an' our mouths an' our teeth on. Ain't no one better'n us at what we do. You do business with us at your own risk an' peril." He gave me a yellow-toothed grin and offered me a hand to shake.

I took it without hesitation. "You mind if I do it tomorrow after I get enough sleep to maybe not kill myself and everyone else around?"

He laughed merrily and walked away.

FORTY THREE

The morning of the day after the party broke sunny, warm and beautiful, the sort that promised a hot, breezy summer noon, a perfect day to head down to the beach. Boston stirred under the clattering of the T and the scent of hundreds of little coffee shops, and the tidal wave was no longer the biggest bit of news.

Nate and Hardison met Stone on the steps of the Back Bay Station. Hardison handed the golem the spider's phone. Stone, once again dressed impeccably in a custom-tailored turtleneck and dress slacks, took it with care and tapped his thumb lightly on it. His surprise when the screen actually lit up was very obvious. "I was unaware such a thing was possible," he admitted. "You're giving me a very rare treasure, mister Hardison."

"You're gonna need it. At least until you can get a different setup. You can do tech and magic, you just gotta be willing to, you know. Compromise."

"You do understand this is temporary?" Nate told the golem. "We're not going to handhold you. You don't answer to us. We'll help you set up, but the job's yours, you and your people."

Stone seemed to think very carefully on his answer. "I have worked for someone or another for nearly all of my existence," he explained. "My security firm is the first attempt I have ever made at others working for me, and yet… it was still me, working for someone else. I think this opportunity you offer me, mister Ford - I think it is everything the wizard promised." He smiled thinly. "And I do have the shark to keep me honest."

Nate couldn't help but be a little amused at that. "In that case, here's something to remember today by." He handed over the plain plastic chess tower.

Stone stared at it, then pocketed it. "It will be kept safe as long as I can do such a thing."

Across the Concourse, Harry Dresden, professional wizard, was staring at the growing rivers of people coming and going, a trickle quickly turning into a flood. Boston was beautiful, alive, a city as worthy of attention and devotion as any other.

He couldn't wait to go home.

"Wizard," Classy's rough voice called out, and Harry turned. The Dredger, flanked by two of his people, came up to the wizard sedately, blinking a bit in the bright morning light. The wizard offered him the wrapped-up bundle of the Witchwell, sans duct-tape; Classy dug the small cylinder out and shook it. "Not a fuckin' drop. You do good work, wizard."

"Well, you know. When someone's not trying to kill me."

Classy chuckled. "All said, I'm glad this ain't your turf. Don't fancy the fight if we had to go up against you."

"Nicest thing anyone's said about me in a while," Harry assured the Dredger, and they shook hands. "Stay alive, mister Act."

"Same, mister Dresden. Safe travels and all that crap." The Dredgers turned and walked away, pausing briefly to nod politely at Sophie as they crossed paths.

The grifter was leading Parker and Eliot, and she hugged Harry without hesitation. "Oh, I feel like we ought to keep you here for a month, just to give all those bruises a chance to heal," she protested mildly.

"Believe me, I'm going home in one piece. That's more than I usually get," Harry assured her sheepishly.

"I really did mean it, you know. You were only supposed to be a consultant."

"I did consult," he replied with a lopsided grin. "This is the easiest consulting I've ever done. You told me everything I needed to know, you let me sleep, you fed me. Watered me. Watered me a lot." She had to grin at that. "Hot showers every day, dang. Doesn't get much better than that."

She pulled away, and Eliot offered his hand. "It's all the hot showers, huh?"

"I have no idea what your water heater's made of, but you should invest in the company."

Eliot, who wasn't about to tell Harry the water heaters at both the loft and the safehouse had been replaced three times, merely beamed at the wizard as they shook hands. "Sir."

"Sir."

"You're a good man, Harry. Violence doesn't make you a bad man." He shrugged a little. "It's just a thing we have to do sometimes. You're not responsible for other people's choices, no one is but them."

The wizard's grin stuttered. "You make it sound like it's easy."

"Hardest thing in the world, my man," the hitter admitted. "Because you gotta convince yourself of it every day, every time you get up and look in the mirror. Just remember: forehead to nose, not nose to nose."

"Elbow, not wrist," Harry repeated dutifully, his grin returning. "Or I just hit them with magic really, really hard."

Eliot laughed. "Or that." He bent down to ruffle Mouse's ears and ruff roughly, much to the young dog's delight, while Parker came to stand before Harry.

"Are you really going to be alright?"

"I mean, I'm probably gonna get some version of yelled at for not reporting the Blackbird thing," he admitted, punctiliously honest with her as he'd tried to be all along. "Are you? With Jess, I mean?"

"Oh, yeah, we're good. We're gonna be - we've got plans. We're good. Harry? Thank for you asking."

"Thank you for accepting me. Me, and what I am."

"But it's magic," she protested. "Who wouldn't?"

The wizard didn't say anything, he merely cut his gaze to one side. She turned and looked. "Oh. Right."

Nate and Hardison joined the little group, and the hacker offered his hand with a grin. "Mister Hacker," he said solemnly.

A snort of laughter burst out of Harry, and he offered his hand. "Mister Wizard," he replied.

"I am," Hardison agreed. "And you are. You know, I had the theory in my head, the thought that we were just two sides of the same coin. I'm glad I was right."

"I am super envious of everything you can accomplish," Dresden admitted readily. "Let's start there. But mostly I'm also so mad that we can't do more. If you ever figure out how we can work together without me frying all your equipment, I'll be the first one there."

"Holding you to that, Dresden."

"You bet."

Nate stared very levelly at the wizard. Harry stared just as levelly back.

"Walk with me, Dresden."

"My train -"

"- doesn't leave until Hardison lets it."

The two men walked across one edge of the Concourse, with the mastermind lost in thought. After a few moments, he reached into his jacket and offered Harry a plain white envelope. "Your pay. Plus incidentals, and so on."

"Jeez," Harry stared at the envelope, then pocketed it inside his duster. "Thank you."

Nate stopped and turned to face the wizard. "You did magic."

"I did."

The mastermind shook his head. "You know, after the MFA, Sophie was explaining it to me. She described it as being sheep in a pen facing a man with a shotgun."

"It's not… entirely wrong. But also not completely right."

"No?"

Dresden smiled thinly. "Sometimes the sheep have shotguns, too."

Nate made a faintly amused sound. "Sometimes the sheep hire a wizard."

"And now you know where ninety percent of my work comes from. Congratulations, another puzzle solved," Dresden teased.

"Yes, but -"

"But you don't like the shape of it?" The wizard shrugged. "Neither does most of the world. Give it time, Ford. In a few months you'll be looking for explanations, twisting your memories into things that fit your reality better. In a year you won't think twice about it."

"You make it sound so easy."

"That's because I've seen it happen most of my adult life, and all of my professional life."

Nate thought very carefully on that. "I don't like that. I don't like thinking that the only way this works is if I lie to myself. I'm not interested in being comfortable, or I wouldn't do what I do. I don't want, I don't need the world to be in order, Dresden. I need it to be fair."

"That's our job, not the world's," the wizard replied simply. "We make it fair."

Nate chewed on that. "So it is."

"Besides, I doubt Parker's gonna let you forget that magic's a thing that happens. And hell, there's Sophie right there with you, Ford. If you don't look at her and see what she does is magic, I'm not sure I can help you. I'm not sure anyone can."

That did make the mastermind grin, however crookedly. He turned and offered his hand. "Pleasure doing business with you, mister Dresden. Can I add your number to our Rolodex?"

Harry shook it amicably. "Absolutely. Unless it's Portland."

"Worse than Boston?" They started walking back to the team.

"You have no idea. Besides, you'd have local help there if you needed it."

"Another wizard?"

"No." Harry gestured vaguely, as if to organize his thoughts before he spoke. "Do you happen to know what a Grimm is?"

#my writing #fanfiction #crossover #the dresden files #leverage #harry dresden #nathan ford #sophie deveraux #parker #eliot spencer #alec hardison #urban fantasy

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grumpygreenwitch · 29 days

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The Witches and Wizards Job 31-32-33

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THIRTY ONE

The first rule of dealing with something magically stronger than you is to keep a low profile. You know, the one thing I've never been able to do all that well.

To be fair, I'd known from the beginning that if I went to the auction, that if I agreed to follow Ford's plan, I'd be in Koschei's crosshairs sooner or later. The mastermind had not lied to me, not one single step of the way. I'd just been hoping that with all those plans and machinations, I'd be able to stay in the background, for once.

Harry Dresden, eternal optimist.

I'd stayed closed to the bar after I was done with my part in the festivities, the easier for Eliot to find me. It was a good central place, I had a nice line of sight to two other rooms, and I could catch a glimpse of a couple more. I waited for the flash of blue.

I didn't have a plan. Despite my reputation, I'm not the sort of man that goes looking for fights, particularly with something I know it's stronger than me. I will fight if there's no other option, and most of the time there just isn't.

Sophie walked back into the main area, looking around, and I had to force myself to walk up to her. I'd done my job too well; the Veil on the diamond dripped a sort of subtle menace that matched her perfume, and my feet didn't want to go. Paradoxically, it was the memory of the Soulgaze, paired with how she'd charmed the Dredgers, that got me moving. This was Sophie Deveraux. A creature made of mirrors, of masks, that still managed to know herself better than anyone I'd ever met. No Veil could ever be more powerful than the woman currently wearing it. So I scooted over and introduced myself.

We managed to trade a whole three pleasantries before she hauled up and slapped me so hard I went staggering back. The only reason I didn't go down was that my supposed bodyguard came back at that moment and caught me. Sophie was snarling rapid-fire Russian at me, glaring murder. The entire room turned their attention on us. She took one step forward and suddenly Fedorov was there, one arm around her waist, murmuring soothingly, his uncle and Nick just a step behind him. She hissed something back at him, in no mood to be appeased. Ying Ying had a tiny little grin on her perfect orchid mouth, and two of the people with her looked like they were about to start laughing. A few, very few, of those around me, looked mildly disconcerted - the look of people who'd come to a party expecting, you know. A party. Not a potential brawl.

"Dresden, what did you do?" Eliot hissed at me through gritted teeth. Someone laughed, high and brittle, off to one side; the fey twins had just arrived.

"I was complimenting her!" I protested my innocence. Surely I was a very convincing advocate for it.

"Complimenting!" Sophie exclaimed in angry disbelief, her Russian accent even more clipped.

"Kate, it's fine," Fedorov tried.

"It is not fine!" She whirled on him. "I will not be compared to a, a peddling, graverobbing mortal mongrel!"

"I didn't compare!"

"Dresden -"

"I just said it was kinda nice to meet a bigger crook than the Brit."

"Harry!" Eliot snapped.

She made to charge me. Fedorov caught her, just barely, speaking hasty Russian. Off to one side Hardison, having just come downstairs, pushed his glasses up his nose. "Well, that seems uncalled for," he muttered primly. Those around him tittered mildly.

"This is why you need a babysitter, man," the hitter growled at me.

"Please!" Here came the man of the hour, arms outstretched, friendly uncle mode fully engaged. "No violence, no violence, this is a party! We're celebrating. If someone has to be drawn and quartered, surely it can wait until after the auction -" Koschei caught sight of me and came to a dead stop, mouth open, eyes gone wide, the joke forgotten.

"And you!" Sophie all but shouted at him. "What game are you playing here? None of these are real, they are all fakes! The portrait is not here! Were you going to rob us all? Have you stolen all the originals and were you going to play us all for fools?"

For a second, a single dangerous moment, Koschei was too stunned by my presence at his shindig to defend himself or refute Sophie's accusations. Under normal circumstances that wouldn't be a problem. Most people's minds didn't jump to betrayal just because someone shouts about thirty pieces of silver in the crowd.

But most of those around us weren't people.

"There's really only a few confidence games," Nate had told me. "Every con, every heist, every job is based off of them. The Kennedy half-dollar is a variant of the Golden Fiddle, the con we did when we needed you in the MFA vaults. We're going to question the value of everything in that auction, forcing the man in black to prove its worth."

And on that razor's edge of perfect timing, Sophie pulled it off. I felt the mood in the room shift as vividly as if it were a visible tide. No one thought much of Harry Dresden, professional wizard. Ying Ying had only noticed me, probably, because of the current situation between the White Council and the Red Court. But the fact I'd approached a deadly, unknown predator, coupled with the interest they all had on Vanya Fedorov, meant Sophie's curator character and I both had a sudden wealth of banked credibility. We were believable. And when Koschei didn't immediately refute the accusations, given everyone there was a crook of one kind or another, doubt immediately sank in and took root.

"Of course they're real!" Koschei protested at last with a scoff. "The only item I'm selling is the painting -"

"Portrait!" she hissed at him.

"Whatever! I have no interest in the Dragon's Flute or the Bag of Winds, or any of the other…" He waggled his hand restlessly. "Oddities on offer here!"

"And yet it would not be the first time you have taken something from their sellers, is it," she shot back acidly.

Koschei recoiled. Minutely, but it was still the worst possible thing he could have done. Behind me I heard Ying Ying whisper something to one of her cohorts. Unlike her, I couldn't make out the words, and I doubted Eliot could either; then again, I didn't know if he even spoke Thai. That didn't matter. What mattered was watching the young woman march off smartly, already reaching for her phone. Past her, security began to slip into the room, likely sniffing the potential for trouble. I counted four and stopped paying attention, because after that numbers weren't gonna matter.

"Is this true?" a young man's voice asked. The fey twin, the memory-eater, stepped forward. He was wearing a tux in bloody shades, and somehow he made it look good. "Are all of the items copies, are none of the real items here?"

"No!" Koschei tried to laugh it off. "Yes, I did put the actual portrait elsewhere, for safekeeping reasons. But I haven't tampered with anything else, why would I?"

"Yeah, why would ya?" Classy growled, flanked by four of his people, all of them glaring murder at the wizard. "Why fuckin' would ya," he clipped out.

Koschei was glaring murder at me, even though I hadn't said a word since the whole mess had started. I grinned back at him. The whispers among the small crow were beginning to turn into a solid, angry murmur. "Please!" He threw his arms out. "I'll have the original painting, er, portrait, brought over at once. You can authenticate it to your heart's content. I cannot account for everything else -"

"Why the hell not?" Classy snarled back. "This whole copy bait-n'-switch mess was yer fuckin' idea!"

"I will tend," Koschei gritted out, "to those concerns in a moment, mister Act, I assure you."

Entirely unrelated to anything going on, my brain suddenly figured out Classy's actual name, and I snickered. It wasn't much. It burst out of me when even I wasn't expecting it. The room's attention lashed out and latched onto that sound, and then came back to rest on Koschei like a shroud of stone. He flicked his fingers at one of the security people, a man who looked vaguely like an unfinished slab of rock given human shape, and said something. I felt Eliot tense next to me.

The man nodded to his instructions and waved a couple of his people over. They moved on at a brisk step. I felt a press of heat at my back and knew we'd been given some company. "Two?" I asked Eliot as quietly as I could.

"Three," he replied evenly.

A large, flat wooden crate was brought in. Crowbars came out, and Sophie gasped. She was not the only one. Hardison made to say something but thought better of it, and everyone around him whispered uneasily.

"Carefully, please," Koschei entreated his people.

"Why not have Mister Act and his people do it?" Sophie suggested. "I trust their handling of priceless treasures far more than I trust your thugs."

The crowd murmured agreement. Classy looked surprised for a fleeting moment, then put on his best business face on and stepped forward, shrugging off his jacket and nodding to his people. One of the security people offered him a crowbar and he scoffed. "Clod," he declared disdainfully, rolling up his sleeves. His people, somehow having become five in number, swarmed over the box, tipped it over until their boss could run his hands over the seam between two boards. He felt his way along until he found the right spot, nodded to himself, and slid his claws in. The wood bulged, he twisted his arms a smidge, and the front board sprang free along one corner. The Dredger shifted his grip in some impossible way and peeled the board off one nail at a time, methodical and slow, until he and the woman with him could remove it altogether. Another one of his crew carefully removed the padding away and they all stepped back. A sigh went through the crowd. The portrait was, magic aside, truly a work of art. The colors, the details, the sheer amount of work that had obviously gone into it were enough to make even an uneducated goon like me understand why art was what it was, why it touched people the way it did.

Sophie stepped forward. So did Hardison, working his glasses. "So this is the original, then?" he asked Koschei. "The actual original?"

"On my word it is," the wizard smiled stiffly at him.

That one was gonna come back to hurt him, I thought. It made me smile.

Sophie and Hardison paced before the painting. It was him who stepped back first. "No, it isn't."

"Excuse me?" Koschei stared at him blankly.

Sophie swore at him in Russian. Behind Fedorov, I saw his uncle put a despairing hand to his face. "What game do you think to play with us?" Her voice was regal and lethal; the Veil was pretty much overkill at that point. "This is just another fake!"

"Sir," Hardison's British accent had gotten even more rigid. "I find this unacceptable -"

"This is the real portrait!" the wizard protested.

Sophie scoffed in patent disbelief. Koschei puffed up indignantly. The crowd was growing loud and very restless.

A sound like a drum silenced everyone. "If I may," a man's voice wheezed. "I have, for the auction, acquired the services, very costly, of one of city's, quite capable, experts on the artist." The crowd parted. The toad-like man shifted, settling back down, stubby fingers holding a brandy glass. No amount of custom-fitted tailoring or magic could fully hide his nature, though he was making the best attempt of everyone present to pass as human. He was surrounded by four willowy blondes that I was sure could murder most everyone there without care or effort. The toad dredged in another breath. "I must question, unfortunately, the lady's opinion, as one must." He gestured with one stubby hand at Sophie. "You may be, possibly, tricking the competition, being us, into leaving."

Sophie gasped, elegantly offended.

"A possibility," Hardison said before she could detonate, then turned to Koschei. "If there's another expert curator present, I would welcome their opinion. I'm good, of course, but Sokolov is not my particular field of expertise."

Koschei was looking outright murderous, but he managed to dig up a smile out of somewhere. "Of course. Mister Batra, please, your expert?"

The toad's bodyguards parted; he stepped aside.

Jessamine Lochlin, dressed in a lovely lilac and green gown, stepped forward.

Well, crap.

THIRTY TWO

The only person present who could say anything did. "Jessamine," Sophie breathed.

Parker's friend gave her a withering glare, even as her feet tried to shy her away. "I can't believe I liked you," she told Sophie angrily, and then refused to look at her altogether. I felt Eliot shift behind me and moved to cover him, remembering the situation at the MFA. No way of knowing if she'd remember him from it.

Hardison blew out a low breath and rubbed at the side of his face. I could only imagine what the conversation on his earbud was like. Ford wasn't speaking through the mirror shards - there were too many people around that might have heard him, with so many of us put together, but I was pretty certain Parker wouldn't take this one lying down.

"Are we to trust the word of a human in this matter?" the twin to the fey memory-eater asked. She was wearing a gown in every shade of gray and silver and looked both inhuman and beautiful. Somehow Sophie still managed to outmatch her in elegance.

"Doctor Jessamine Lochlin has made it her life's goal to be the world's foremost Sokolov expert," Sophie fired back before anyone else could. "If you believe you can produce someone better, please. Do."

The fey woman looked away, pissed. Her twin grinned, examining both Sophie and Jess with open interest.

For a moment, the only sounds were those of the breeze coming through the open windows, the distant surf across the gardens. No one said a word, and I wasn't entirely sure half the audience was even breathing. We all watched and waited as the young woman examined every inch of the portrait and its lavishly carved, antique wooden frame. I saw her expression fall but, stubbornly, she checked and double-checked before she took three steps back. "It's a fake," she declared, not quite able to hide her heartbreak.

Koschei lunged at her. I'm not sure what I was thinking, I'm not sure I was thinking at all, but before I knew what I was doing I'd taken two long steps and was between him and Jess. He bared his teeth at me and I knew I had about two seconds before he threw a spell on me point-blank. So I grinned at him. "We're still all your guests here, aren't we?"

He froze, hands curled into fists. "So you are," he ground out, and took a step back.

It struck me then. That was it. That was why I kept walking away, that was why I kept surviving. In all his centuries Koschei had gotten comfortable knowing no one could challenge him if he bent or twisted the rules to serve his own interests. But I was a wizard. I could call him out, and I had, every time. Ironically, my time under the Damocles Doom had taught me to slide right up to the very limit of what wizardly law had to tolerate without crossing a line. Koschei could pretend he was still within the law and force acceptance by sheer firepower. I didn't. I knew to the millimeter what I could get away with without ever lifting a finger for a spell.

And he hated it. He hated that I was outright calling him out on it every. single. time. But he couldn't do anything about it, because he was technically not a criminal, and that was important to him. That facade was vital to the man and he would do anything to preserve it.

Even back off from a staredown with the hobo-looking wizard from Chicago.

I could feel hands gripping the back of my duster in a white-knuckled grip, and turned a little. Jessamine Lochlin was ashen and terrified, but she was on her feet and not gibbering, and honestly I counted that a win even as my heart went out to her. I could see why Parker liked her, too; to have finagled an invite to the party just to try and get close to the portrait? She was made of titanium. "You alright, miss?"

She looked up at me and managed a little nod. That was all the communication we managed before two of the toad's bodyguards came to shepherd her away.

"Mister Stone," Koschei called out to one of the hulking behemots passing off as a security guard. "Close the house, please. Security at every door and window."

"Wizard, what do you think you're doing?" Ying Ying demanded.

"Recovering my stolen property," he ground out. "The real portrait was here. Now it is not. I have been robbed, and I intend to find out who, and how, and why -"

"Rot the portrait!" Another man said. "How dare you presume to imprison us -"

"I will not be accused of theft!" Sophie declared, utterly outraged.

Hardison moved closer to Koschei. "My good sir," he informed the wizard as primly as possible. "Unless you believe I'm hiding Piotr Sokolov's largest work in one of my pockets, I will be leaving now. I don't know what game you think you're playing here, but it's uncalled for. It's…" He groped for a word, and finally declared. "It's rude. You will be hearing from my office about this matter. Good day, sir."

He stalked off. One of the security people moved to stop him, but Koschei gestured impatiently to let him go. Hardison wasn't even out of sight and he already had his phone in his hand, and not a single one of the guests there spared a thought for that. Me, I didn't even try to figure out what sort of digital magic he was about to wreak on the gathering.

A very heavy hand dropped on my bad shoulder. I couldn't quite keep from wincing, but I did a passable job of not making a sound. "Mister Koschei would like a word with you in private, wizard," the man said, low and indifferent.

I'd barely looked back before Eliot had grabbed the wrist of the security man in an equally heavy grip. "You don't want to do that," he said very mildly.

Half a dozen heads, those with supernaturally keen hearing, turned immediately in our direction. The security man, who was my height and built like a Cold War bunker, took one look at Eliot and scoffed.

The hitter shifted his grip a little bit. The next thing I knew he'd peeled the man off of me and had his arm twisted at an impossible angle. The security goon crashed down to one knee with a startled, pained howl.

"I did ask nicely first," Eliot declared amicably.

"You did," I confirmed, but the other two security with us were already rousing angrily, and I could see three more coming at us through the crowd. "Let him up, though. Koschei might be selling duds, but I don't wanna get on the bad side of the Dredgers if we break something."

Eliot held his grip just a second longer, to make his point, before he let go. The man reeled back, and one of his buddies helped him up. I stepped forward to keep things somewhat under control. "I'll be happy to speak with wizard Koschei," I assured them sunnily. "Lead on." One of them gestured me on; another tried to block Eliot's path. "My bodyguard comes with me, of course."

The hitter looked up very levelly at the guard. "Are we doing this?" He was still perfectly calm, but there was murder in his eyes.

The guard stepped back, and we were both shepherded away.

THIRTY THREE

Alexander Worthington (the Third), stalked out of the mansion speaking irately into his phone, past the pack of door guards, who did nothing more than stare indolently after him. He made it to a nondescript black rental before he dropped the accent and the pretense. "Alright, Nate, I'm out," he informed the mastermind as he got in the car, popped an earbud in and drove sedately away - directly into the parking lot where Lucille 2.0 and the U-Haul van were parked.

Not a moment later a tousled, breathless man came charging down the hallway and up to the door, looking slightly rumpled. "The portrait's missing," he wheezed to the woman in charge. "No one leaves, by the wizard's orders."

They blinked at him, and he could all but see their heart sinking. "The Christie's man just left," the lead security woman informed him, sounding and looking aghast.

"What?!"

"He just -"

"Well, go! Go find him! Stop him!" Nate turned and trotted back into the manor as the woman started barking orders. "And don't let anyone else leave!" He shifted to a more leisurely walk just in time to meet the security guard he'd narrowly avoided when sneaking in, coming down to warn the door guards of the same thing. He nodded politely at the man and headed further in.

The guard put a hand out. "No one is to leave, sir."

"Oh, I'm not - I'm not leaving," Nate assured him. "I just got here, is the auction over already?" The thing was, Nate was coming from the right direction. He was dressed the part, he wasn't trying to leave, he didn't ring any warning bells. He'd snuck in with the slimmest of margins, directly behind the door guards but just ahead of the arriving guard, the only weak point in security at that moment, knowing he needed them both to see him at the right time, at the right place.

The guard grimaced and stepped away. "No, it hasn't started, go on, sir."

"Thank you," Nate watched the man hurry away. "Alright, who's free?"

"I'm with Nick in the dining room, by the bar," Sophie murmured. "Fedorov's putting pressure on his uncle. He's going to get the truth out of the man sooner or later."

"We're going a whole lot further into the house than the guests were allowed," Eliot commented casually. The mastermind heard the voice of one of the guards, the words impossible to make out; the mirror shards had a lot less peripheral range than the earbuds.

"I'm ready down here," Parker reported. She sounded cold and distant; Nate knew that finding out her friend was in the line of fire had shifted the thief's priorities radically.

To be fair, it had shifted his own priorities as well. Nate paused at the door to the main room, where tempers were fraying and moods were disimproving. The guards were just finishing closing off the windows. He moved out of the way of another woman who was closing the door with a quiet, polite apology, and headed to the bar.

He'd had to cut Dresden's part short; he could only hope it'd be enough. The last window latch fell, the last heavy, ancient door closed. "Go ahead, Parker."

Boston's older buildings, for the most part, had either radiators or floor-level heating systems. Both worked more or less the same way: a heated medium was run through a pipe surrounded by heat-dispersing fins. The system subscribed to the true-and-tried adage: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But modern, wealthy homes were often moved to the more familiar HVAC system, which were more efficient, quieter, simply pumping heated or cooled air as needed through vents - the same vents Parker had been using to peer around the mansion.

Those vents quietly, efficiently went to work pumping cooled air into the room as soon as all the doors and windows shut.

"Well, now." Koschei turned to look at his very angry, very captive audience.

Ekaterina coughed delicately into one hand. Fedorov leaned attentively close with a question, but she shook her head and murmured an easy reply.

"I should like my portrait back, if you please," the wizard declared. "I would prefer it happen before one must resort to violence."

"Resort fuckin' away," Classy challenged from the back of the crowd.

One of the fey twins coughed, startling her sibling into giving her a puzzled look. She looked no less surprised herself; she'd nearly dropped the champagne flute she was carrying.

"Mister Act, as I have told you, I have not touched any of your belongings -"

"Yeah? What about the one you already t- " Classy suddenly choked, hawked and spat off to one side, squinting. "The hell."

Ekaterina coughed again. This time, she didn't manage to stop, and had to lean on Vanya's shoulder.

"Come on," Nate murmured.

"It will be returned at the end of the night, as promised. Now, if you don't mind -"

"It was s'posed t' -" Classy coughed roughly, but his anger carried him on. "Supposed to be ret-" A coughing fit caught him. The fey woman was all but clinging to her twin, and they were not the only ones. The toad wasn't coughing, but all of his bodyguards were. Nearly all of Ying Ying's party was beginning to choke. Nick cleared his throat pointedly.

"What is this?" the toad demanded; he'd gone slightly grey with alarm.

"Come on, come on," Nate urged.

Ekaterina opened her mouth, but Classy beat her to the punch, his voice a snarl as he and his group retreated against a wall. "He's usin'… he's usin' a fuckin' Witchwell t' p… t' poison the lot of us!"

"He did this back at the museum, to steal the portrait," Ekaterina wheezed. "Did you think we would not notice you trying to kill us? What were you going to do, Blackbird, loot the corpses?"

"I have done no such thing!" Koschei exclaimed. "I don't even have the damned thing! Everyone here would be affected, I would be affected!"

"Unless you knew what was coming," Vanya pointed out. "Unless you protected yourself and your friends. All those people you introduced me to, they are not affected."

The crowd glanced around. Without hesitation, sudden and absolute battle-lines were drawn up when Fedorov's words rang true: a small number of people who were, very much, not of the average human variety, found themselves suddenly surrounded and outnumbered two-to-one by their angry, coughing peers. The twins shoved at each other, hissing, hands turned to claws. The one member of Ying Ying's entourage that wasn't coughing was suddenly ringed by lambent-eyed vampires.

The fey in the blood-red tux caught his sister with one arm when she collapsed down on one knee, unable to fight him. He picked up an elegant antique chair with his free hand and flung it at a window. Glass shattered explosively; two of the security guards charged at him. He caught one by the throat like a stoat catches a vole and flung him at his counterpart, sending them both tumbling.

"Carevogh!" Koschei roared. "Don't you dare!"

"Bite me, Crow," the fey snapped back coolly, picked up his sister in a bridal carry, and leapt out the window.

"Stone!" Koschei bellowed. The security forces converged on him, which was good, because a lot of angry guests were beginning to advance on the wizard, too.

"Alright, Parker, that's good. Shut it off and get out." He got out of the way of a very large woman escorting what looked like a child, until one noticed the porcelain gloss of her skin and the clicking joints on every limb. The woman kicked open the door and Nate left her to it while he worked his way along the perimeter of the room, further into the mass of frustrated guests. This, he knew, was the most dangerous part for him. One stray look from Koschei and the wizard might well figure out the trap.

But Koschei was too busy trying to keep the guests from scattering. "Mazarena!" The wizard shouted.

"Keep me out of you schemes, wizard," the animated doll said in a clipped, mechanical voice, and trotted out. "I came here to bid, not to thin out your enemies for free."

"On it," Parker declared, just in time for the earbuds to screech angrily and collapse into static. Nate kept his hands firmly in his pockets, but it was a close thing. "Hardison?"

"She's offline," the hacker replied, his voice tight.

Nate finally got close enough to Classy and his people. He unlatched the window and threw it open, and lent both his hands to steadying two of the strangers until they were all but sitting on the windowsill. On the other side of the room Fedorov had yanked one of the decorative runners off a table and was using it to cover one of the vents. Nick and Ekaterina were by one of the windows. The vampires had tried to bully their way closer but one flat, level look from Nick, along with that unnerving smile, had led them to instead force open the doors to another room.

Nate paused. "Where's Sagorov?" He helped Classy up along with the one woman in his band, pulled him up close and whispered something very quickly against the Dredger's ear before hurrying away, leaving him staring after the mastermind in disbelief.

Fedorov brought Ekaterina a drink. They both whirled around at the sound of a yelp, just in time to watch Koschei slip away in the midst of a pack of security guards, dragging Jess along with him. The doors were slammed shut behind them. The main room was turning into a riot. "Bugger. Nate, Koschei just slipped away, and he took Jess."

"He's tracking the portrait." That was Dresden, barely speaking over a breath. "He just triggered my marker on it."

"Parker," Nate hissed, hoping against hope. There was, unsurprisingly, no answer. "Dresden, is there any way you can slow him down?"

"Um." He heard the wizard blow out a sharp breath. "Hardison, is there a sprinkler system?"

"Yeah."

"Ah, no, no. We're not using water until we know the watercolor is safe," Nate hurried to head that particular train off at the pass, even as his brain caught onto the fact he'd refused to see. Running water, the mastermind realized, and on the heels of that understanding he grimaced. He was doing it again, trying to explain things away, trying not to see them, not to hear them, not to know them. And he was costing himself and his team options in doing so. He closed his eyes and counted his blessings on Dresden. The wizard was working against Nate's own blinders, but what would happen if he tripped on a problem that didn't have a solution Dresden could improvise on the fly?

"Alright." Hitter and wizard had both retreated to one corner of the fancy drawing room where they'd been brought, but even so neither of them dared speak too loudly, not knowing if the guards would have keen enough hearing to catch them at it. Dresden tipped his fancy chair back until Eliot was sure he was going to topple backwards, and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Hardison, where's the closest big electrical junction?"

"Let me stop you right there," the hacker said. "Harry, I need power to manipulate the systems inside the house, I can't have you frying the electrical."

"I'm not gonna fry it," Dresden whispered mildly. "You're gonna make it look like I did."

"Oh, I like that. Finally we're meeting somewhere in the middle." Hardison sounded delighted. "East wall, about ten feet from the windows.

"How's that going to stop Koschei?"

"It won't. Nothing we can do is gonna stop him. But he's a man same as you and me and everyone, Ford. He needs eyes to see, he can't use a flashlight, and right now any magic he didn't have prepared beforehand is going to be a little hard for him. You didn't ask me to stop him, you know better. You asked me to slow him down." Harry rolled to his feet; the guards immediately turned in his direction, and he gestured at an elegant gingerbread cabinet. "I'm just going here. You know, looking for something to drink or something?"

The guards relaxed minutely. In the spirit of pretending Harry was still a guest, not a prisoner, they hadn't frisked him or Eliot, and were treating them both like live IEDs. They also didn't know enough about human habitats to realize a doily-covered gingerbread chest of drawers wasn't likely to be a fine repository for booze, and lost interest quickly in what the wizard was doing.

Until he leaned against the wall next to the cabinet, and every light in the mansion went out.

"Oh." Dresden said. "Can someone point me to my chair?"

"Dresden." Eliot sounded as if the last of his patience had run out several hours ago. "Get over here and siddown."

Nate, downstairs, met up with Sophie, Fedorov and Nick just before the lights went out. The Russian enforcer was scowling at his phone. "My uncle isn't answering," he told the mastermind. "I think once again you have brought me a truth I didn't want to hear."

"Oh, I'm so sorry we didn't let him raffle you off like a prize bull," Sophie declared tartly and he gestured appeasingly at her.

"Unless he can leave the grounds he's a problem that can wait." He turned to Nick. "We need to find Dresden, fast. Can you take us to him?"

"Sure." Nick shrugged and began to walk away. "I'm a little off from the flower stuff, but he's got a strong scent to him." At the far end of the dining room, two of the security guards were watching the door they needed. One put a hand up preemptively. Nick picked him up and threw him through the door. The other guard backed warily away and he smiled that wildly cheerful smile at her. She backed away another couple of steps.

They all walked on by the light of Fedorov's phone. Behind them, Vanya had finally gotten through to someone; he spoke in clipped, coldly angry Russian very briefly before hanging up. In the brief pause between his ending the call and reactivating the flashlight, Nate noticed something. "Sophie, you're um. You're glowing."

They paused. Fedorov turned off the flashlight. In the dark, the shades of blue of the spider-silk gown gleamed like the last gasps of sunlight through deep water.

"I'm not doing that," she breathed.

"You're doing strong magic," Nick said mildly as he sniffed at a crossing of hallways. "The silk's reacting to it, soaking it up."

"Strong -" The grifter's hand wrapped around the diamond she wore.

"Nate." Hardison's voice was low and worried. "The emergency GPS tracker on Parker's phone just went off."

The mastermind paused. He and Hardison were the only ones at the moment with both a working earbud and a pair of mirror shards. He gave Parker enough time to sound off. She didn't. "Eliot. We're coming to get Dresden. I need you to get to that tracker."

Eliot turned to look at the man sitting next to him. No one had bothered to make light of any kind; the guards either didn't need it or didn't care. In the dim glow coming through the windows, starlight and moonlight, the wizard's profile looked refined, ascetic, ancient as a knight errant keeping his midnight watch. But this was still Harry Dresden, professional wizard, and no matter what sort of power he could sling he was also the man that kept getting run through a meat grinder every time Eliot took his eyes off him.

Without looking at the hitter, Harry gave him a tiny nod.

Eliot rolled to his feet. The guards instantly tensed up. "Relax, relax, I just gotta, you know. Been drinking a little too much champagne. Where's, uh -" One of the guards nodded to another, who huffed minutely and moved to open the door for Eliot. The hitter glanced idly at him. "Alright. Didn't realize I needed a babysitter to use the bathroom."

"Walk, Spencer."

"Where, man, I can't see, and my phone," he gestured pointedly at the wizard, "bit it."

"Not my problem."

Eliot scoffed, thinking hard about the crash course Harry had given him on the many beings likely to be used as security, aside from leshy, by Koschei. The man was too big to be one of the hare-folk. The clothes were good, but they were definitely clothes - not a golem. The fingers were normal, no extra joints - not a ghoul or a gaunt. Normal teeth - not a were or a vampire. Gloved hands, but the shape of the claws was subtly visible.

"Hey, Eliot, catch." Dresden threw something small and shiny at the hitter. The guard intercepted it, opened his hand, and sniffed thoroughly at it before licking it. "Jeez, Godzilla, it's just a box of matches."

The guard growled and handed the matches over. Eliot grinned at Harry's help. It had been startling as hell to realize his reputation stretched into territory he'd only ever suspected existed, but at the moment that was a hindrance, not a bonus. Unlike most humans, who saw him as a challenge to be conquered, Koschei's security forces were instead brutally cautious of his every move. The hitter was getting nearly as much attention as Dresden, if not more. He flicked the lighter on and headed out into the darkness of the mansion's hallways. Somewhere in the mid-distance it sounded like a small riot was going on, but in their immediate vicinity all was quiet.

They made it to the bathroom on a single flickering light, and Eliot glanced at the, presumably, reptilian creature with him. "You gonna come in with me?" he mocked lazily.

His escort scowled at him, peered into the bathroom, saw a window and stepped in.

"Hey!" Eliot protested.

Unsurprisingly, he was ignored. It was likely to be the only half-second of diffidence his escort was going to give him, because the thug knew Eliot was going to complain, knew the hitter wouldn't like the situation. It was a protest he was expecting. What he was not expecting was the hitter to whip around, a blur of motion, slamming the flat of his hand against the guard's throat. Twice. Eliot stepped further into his opponent's reach when the guard staggered and gagged, one hand groping at his throat, the other grabbing for his attacker. He hooked a foot behind the one joint he knew for sure the guard had on his leg and shoulder-checked him. The man crashed down into the sink, spine leading. Eliot elbowed him through the porcelain sink.

And still the man was trying to get up, grabbing for him. Helpfully, the hitter picked him up and kicked him hard into the tub. Tangled up in the shower curtain, the guard was still feebly trying to come at him, so Eliot picked up the cover of the toilet tank and swung like a baseball pro. The cover shattered. So did the glamour, finally, revealing a heavily scaled, noseless face with awkward proportions, a mouth full of peg teeth, beady eyes and, surreally, a battered toupee. The guard sank into a groaning heap.

"Yeah, you do that," Eliot said, throwing the pieces of the toilet cover on top of the creature before he charged out of the bathroom, fishing his earbud out of one pocket and putting it in place. "Where, Hardison?"

"Basement," the hacker replied.

"Ok, Nate, I'm on my way."

Nate, Sophie and Fedorov were still following Nick as he single-mindedly moved through the house. They surprised a trio of people who were, apparently, using the distraction from the blackout to try and get away. Nick caught one; Fedorov stepped forward and punched another, hard. The stranger crashed down with a startled little squawk. The third tried to run, and went down in a tangle when Nick threw their buddy at them.

Sophie stared at Fedorov, who lifted a hand and tightened it into a fist around the gleaming knuckledusters in it. "I had a very enlightening conversation with your wizard," he said mildly. "And I know a few priests."

"Do you solve all your problems by throwing people?" Nate asked Nick with utmost courtesy.

Nick shrugged. "When I'm not allowed to bite 'em." He sniffed at the air and resumed walking.

They'd made it halfway up the stairs when Harry's voice came through the mirror shards, a lazy drawl laced heavily with sarcasm. "Is this how you treat your guests, Blackbird? Who's your friend?"

"Stop," Nate put a hand over the pin on his lapel and snapped out the one word. "Koschei's not looking for the painting, he's with Dresden."

"Nate." Eliot's voice was tight and furious. "I'm here, but I don't know what Parker tagged, it's just a basement."

Hardison's phone, back in Lucille 2.0, rang. He snatched it up when he saw the ID and hit the speaker feature. "Parker! Wher-"

"I am not Parker," the stern voice of an older woman with a thick accent whispered.

Everyone who could came to a halt. "Hardison, go on." There was a steady, subtle crackle of static to the earbuds, but they were hanging in there. The mirror shards could barely pick up the voice on Parker's phone, but it was enough for Sophie to have gone perfectly still, her face carved in ice. She and the wizard were the only ones without an earbud.

Hardison pressed his lips into a tight line before he spoke. "Grandmother, I presume?"

"Yes," the woman whispered.

"Ma'am, are you alright?"

A small, wryly amused sound came through the line and the phone flickered, the connection faltering. "I was hurt long before I was brought to this place," the woman said. "But thank you. I do not know who you are, or why you care, you and your princess, but thank you."

"Hardison," Eliot ground out.

"Ma'am, we're actually here to get you out," the hacker informed her.

"Yes, she said that. But I do not see how."

"Where are you?"

"There is a small room beneath the house, behind the old iron heat bellows and pipes," she reported

"Eliot."

"On it." The hitter started moving again. "Hardison, tell her to get to some cover."

"Ma'am -"

"No, no, it is not me you should be helping, but the princess, the prince. They should not have come. He has always been greedy for such people, such power."

"What do you mean, what happened to Parker?" The hacker was trying to remain focused, but his worry was beginning to froth over.

"Is that her name?" she asked gently, and the tone soothed him back under control.

"Yes."

"You care for her."

"Yes, ma'am, I do."

The phone crackled angrily. "I do not think your little device likes me very much. I am not diminished enough for it to work much longer. She found me while she was hiding down here, among the pipes. But the leshy heard her, too."

"Can you get somewhere… out of the way, ma'am?" Hardison asked cautiously.

"I am in a bathroom. I am an old lady, splashing water on my face. All this iron, you know, it makes me ill." She sounded terribly amused.

"Stay there. It's gonna be safer for you."

"You must help your princess -" Hardison's phone suddenly went dark, the line lost.

#the dresden files #leverage #my writing #fanfiction #crossover #harry dresden #nathan ford #sophie deveraux #parker #eliot spencer #alec hardison #urban fantasy

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