And look. I found one.
"Which explains why I hadn't heard anything about it," I said. "If everyone thinks the Wardens are responsible, there's not a prayer they'd draw attention to themselves by reporting what was happening and asking for help. Or call in a gumshoe who happens to be a Warden, himself."
Elaine nodded. "Right. I started getting called in about a month after I got my own license and opened my business."
I grunted. "How'd they know to call you?"
She smiled. "I'm in the book under 'Wizards.'"
I snorted. "I knew you were copying my test answers all those years."
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." She pulled a strand of hair back behind one ear, an old and familiar gesture that brought with it a pang of remembered desire and a dozen little memories. "Most of the business has come in on referral, though, because I do good work. In any case, one fact about the killer's victims was almost always the same: people who lived alone or were isolated."
"And I," Anna said quietly, "am the last living member of the Ordo who lives alone or were isolated."
"These other cities," I said. "Did the killer leave anything behind? Messages? Taunts?"
"Like what?" Elaine asked.
"Bible verses," I said. "Left in traces, something only one of us would recognize."
She shook her head. "No. Nothing like that. Or if there was, I never found it."
I exhaled slowly. "So far, two of the deaths here have had messages left behind. Your friend Janine and a woman named Jessica Blanche."
Elaine frowned. "I gathered, from what you said earlier. It doesn't make any sense."
"Yes, it does," I said. "We just don't know why." I frowned. "Could any of the other deaths be attributed to the White Court?"
Elaine frowned and rose. She took her coffee cup to the kitchen and came back, a pensive frown on her brow. "I... can't be certain they haven't, I suppose. I certainly haven't seen anything to suggest it. Why?"
"Excuse me," Anna said, her voice quiet and unsure. "White Court?"
"The White Court of vampires," I clarified.
"There's more than one kind?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said. "The Red Court are the ones the White Council is fighting now. They're these bat-monster things that can look human. Drink blood. The White Court are more like people. They're psychic parasites. They seduce their victims and feed on human life energy."
Elaine nodded. "But why did you ask me about them, Harry?"
I took a deep breath. "I found something to suggest that Jessica Blanche may have died as the result of being fed upon by some kind of sexual predator."
Elaine stared at me for a moment and then said, "The pattern's been broken. Something's changed."
I nodded. "There's something else involved in the equation."
"Or someone."
"Or someone," I said.
She frowned. "There's one place to start looking."
"Jessica Blanche," I said.
Without warning, Mouse came to his feet, facing the door to the apartment, and let out a bubbling basso growl.
I rose, acutely conscious of the fact that my power was still interdicted by the apartment's threshold, and that I didn't have enough magic to spell my way out of a paper bag.
The lights went out. Mouse continued to growl.
"Oh, God," Anna said. "What's happening?"
I clenched my teeth and closed my eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the sudden darkness, when a very slight, acrid scent tickled my nose.
"You smell that?" I asked.
Elaine's voice was steady, calm. "Smell what?"
"Smoke," I said. "We've got to get out of here. I think the building's on fire."
Chapter Twelve
"Light," I said.
Almost before I was finished saying the word, Elaine murmured quietly, and the pentacle amulet she wore, nearly a twin to mine, began to glow with a green-white light. She held it overhead by its silver chain.
By its light, I crossed to the door and felt it, like those cartoons when I was little said you were supposed to do. It felt like a door. "No fire in the hall," I said.
"Fire stairs," Elaine said.
"They're not far," Anna said.
Mouse continued staring at the door, growling in a low and steady rumble. The smoke smell had thickened.
"Something's waiting for us in the hall."
"What?" Anna said.
Elaine looked from Mouse to me and bit her lip. "Window?"
My heart was skipping along too fast. I don't like fire. I don't like getting burned. It hurts and it's ugly. "Might be able to handle the fall," I said, forcing myself to breathe slowly, evenly. "But there's a building full of people here, and none of the alarms or sprinklers have gone off. Someone must have hexed them. We've got to warn the residents."
Mouse's head whipped around and he stared intently at me for a second. Then he trotted in a little circle, shook his head, made a couple of chuffing sounds, and started doing something I hadn't heard him do since he was a puppy small enough to fit in my duster pocket.
He barked.
Loud. Steady. WOOF, WOOF, WOOF, with the mechanical regularity of a metronome.
Now, saying he was barking might give you the general shape of things, but it doesn't convey the scale. Everyone in Chicago knows what a storm-warning siren sounds like. They're spread liberally through the Midwestern states that comprise Tornado Alley. They make your usual warning siren sound. But I had an apartment about thirty yards from one of them once upon a time, and take it from me, that sound is a whole different thing when you're next to it. It isn't an ululating wail. When you're that close to the source, it's a tangible flood, a solid, living, sonic cascade that rattles your brain against your skull.
Mouse's bark was like that - but on several levels. Every time he barked, I swear to you, several of my muscles tightened and twitched as if hit with a miniature jolt of adrenaline. I couldn't have slept through half as much racket, even without the odd little jabs of energy that hit me like separate charges of electricity with each bark. It was deafening in the little apartment, nearly as loud as gunfire. He let out twelve painfully loud barks, and then stopped. My ears rang in the sudden silence that followed.
Within seconds I began to hear thumping sounds on the floor above me, bare feet swinging out of beds and landing hard on the floor, almost in unison, like something you'd expect in a training barracks. Someone shouted in the apartment neighboring Anna's. Other dogs started barking. Children started crying. Doors started slamming open.