Aftertaste Read online

  “Chicago,” he said. “St. Mark’s Academy for the Gifted and Talented.”

  “Boarding school. I know the place.” I finished the Coke and rose. “It will be my pleasure to help the Forest People once again.”

  The giant echoed my actions, standing. “Already had your retainer sent to your account. By morning, his mother will have granted you the power of a turnkey.”

  It took me a second to translate River Shoulders’ imperfect understanding of mortal society. “Power of attorney,” I corrected him.

  “That,” he agreed.

  “Give her my best.”

  “Will,” he said, and touched his thick fingertips to his massive chest.

  I put my fingertips to my heart in reply and nodded up to my client. “I’ll start in the morning.”

  It took me most of the rest of the night to get back down to Chicago, go to my apartment, and put on my suit. I’m not a suit guy. For one thing, when you’re NBA sized, you don’t exactly get to buy them off the rack. For another, I just don’t like them—but sometimes they’re a really handy disguise, when I want people to mistake me for someone grave and responsible. So I put on the grey suit with a crisp white shirt and a clip-on tie, and headed down to St. Mark’s.

  The academy was an upper-end place in the suburbs north of Chicago, and was filled with the offspring of the city’s luminaries. They had their own small, private security force. They had wrought iron gates and brick walls and ancient trees and ivy. They had multiple buildings on the grounds, like a miniature university campus, and, inevitably, they had an administration building. I started there.

  It took me a polite quarter of an hour to get the lady in the front office to pick up the fax granting me power of attorney from Irwin’s mom, the archeologist, who was in the field somewhere in Canada. It included a description of me, and I produced both my ID and my investigator’s license. It took me another half an hour of waiting to be admitted to the office of the dean, Doctor Fabio.

  “Doctor Fabio,” I said. I fought valiantly not to titter when I did.

  Fabio did not offer me a seat. He was a good-looking man of sober middle age, and his eyes told me that he did not approve of me in the least, even though I was wearing the suit.

  “Ms. Pounder’s son is in our infirmary, receiving care from a highly experienced nurse practitioner and a physician who visits three days a week,” Doctor Fabio told me, when I had explained my purpose. “I assure you he is well cared for.”

  “I’m not the one who needs to be assured of anything,” I replied. “His mother is.”

  “Then your job here is finished,” said Fabio.

  I shook my head. “I kinda need to see him, Doctor.”

  “I see no need to disrupt either Irwin’s recovery or our academic routine, Mister Dresden,” Fabio replied. “Our students receive some of the most intensive instruction in the world. It demands a great deal of focus and drive.”

  “Kids are resilient,” I said. “And I’ll be quiet like a mouse. They’ll never know I was there.”

  “I’m sorry,” he replied, “but I am not amenable to random investigators wandering the grounds.”

  I nodded seriously. “Okay. In that case, I’ll report to Doctor Pounder that you refused to allow her duly appointed representative to see her son, and that I cannot confirm his well-being. At which point I am confident that she will either radio for a plane to pick her up from her dig site, or else backpack her way out. I think the good doctor will view this with alarm and engage considerable maternal protective instinct.” I squinted at Fabio. “Have you actually met Doctor Pounder?”

  He scowled at me.

  “She’s about yay tall,” I said, putting a hand at the level of my temples. “And she works outdoors for a living. She looks like she could wrestle a Sasquatch.” Heh. Among other things.

  “Are you threatening me?” Doctor Fabio asked.

  I smiled. “I’m telling you that I’m way less of a disruption than Mama Bear will be. She’ll be a headache for weeks. Give me half an hour, and then I’m gone.”

  Fabio glowered at me.

  St. Mark’s infirmary was a spotless, well-ordered place, located immediately adjacent to its athletics building. I was walked there by a young man named Steve, who wore a spotless, well-ordered security uniform.

  Steve rapped his knuckles on the frame of the open doorway and said, “Visitor to see Mister Pounder.”

  A young woman who looked entirely too nice for the likes of Doctor Fabio and Steve looked up from a crossword puzzle. She had chestnut-colored hair, rimless glasses, and had a body that could be readily appreciated even beneath her cheerfully patterned scrubs.

  “Well,” I said. “Hello, nurse.”

  “I can’t think of a sexier first impression than a man quoting Yakko and Wakko Warner,” she said, her tone dry.

  I sauntered in and offered her my hand. “Me neither. Harry Dresden, PI.”

  “Jen Gerard. There are some letters that go after, but I used them all on the crossword.” She shook my hand and eyed Steve. “Everyone calls me Nurse Jen. The flying monkeys let you in, eh?”

  Steve looked professionally neutral. He folded his arms.

  Nurse Jen flipped her wrists at him. “Shoo, shoo. If I’m suddenly attacked I’ll scream like a girl.”

  “No visitors without a security presence,” Steve said firmly.

  “Unless they’re richer than a guy in a cheap suit,” Nurse Jen said archly. She smiled sweetly at Steve and shut the infirmary door. It all but bumped the end of his nose. She turned back to me and said, “Doctor Pounder sent you?”

  “She’s at a remote location,” I said. “She wanted someone to get eyes on her son and make sure he was okay. And for the record, it wasn’t cheap.”

  Nurse Jen snorted and said, “Yeah, I guess a guy your height doesn’t get to shop off the rack, does he.” She led me across the first room of the infirmary, which had a first aid station and an examination table, neither of which looked as though they got a lot of use. There were a couple of rooms attached. One was a bathroom. The other held what looked like the full gear of a hospital’s intensive care ward, including an automated bed.

  Bigfoot Irwin lay asleep on the bed. It had been a few years since I’d seen him, but I recognized him. He was fourteen years old and over six feet tall, filling the length of the bed, and he had the scrawny look of young things that aren’t done growing.

  Nurse Jen went to his side and shook his shoulder gently. The kid blinked his eyes open and muttered something. Then he looked at me.

  “Harry,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Sup, kid,” I said. “I heard you were sick. Your mom asked me to stop by.”

  He smiled faintly. “Yeah. This is what I get for staying in Chicago instead of going up to British Columbia with her.”

  “And think of all the Spam you missed eating.”

  Irwin snorted, closed his eyes, and said, “Tell her I’m fine. Just need to rest.” Then he apparently started doing exactly that.

  Nurse Jen eased silently out of the room and herded me gently away. Then she spread her hands. “He’s been like that. Sleeping maybe twenty hours a day.”

  “Is that normal for mono?” I asked.

  “Not so much,” Nurse Jen said. She shook her head. “Though it’s not completely unheard of. That’s just a preliminary diagnosis based on his symptoms. He needs some lab work to be sure.”

  “Fabio isn’t allowing it,” I said.

  She waggled a hand. “He isn’t paying for it. The state of the economy, the school’s earnings last quarter, et cetera. And the doctor was sure it was mono.”

  “You didn’t tell his mom about that?” I asked.

  “I never spoke to her. Doctor Fabio handles all of the communication with the parents. Gives it that personal touch. Besides. I’m just the nurse practitioner. The official physician said mono, so behold, it is mono.”

  I grunted. “Is the boy in danger?”<
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  She shook her head. “If I thought that, to hell with Fabio and the winged monkeys. I’d drive the kid to a hospital myself. But just because he isn’t in danger now doesn’t mean he won’t be if nothing is done. It’s probably mono. But.”

  “But you don’t take chances with a kid’s health,” I said.

  She folded her arms. “Exactly. Especially when his mother is so far away. There’s an issue of trust, here.”

  I nodded. Then I said, “How invasive are the tests?”

  “Blood samples. Fairly straightforward.”

  I chewed that one over for a moment. Irwin’s blood was unlikely to be exactly the same as human blood, though who knew how intensively they would have to test it to realize that. Scions of mortal and supernatural pairings had created no enormous splash in the scientific community, and they’d been around for as long as humanity itself, which suggested that any differences weren’t easy to spot. It seemed like a reasonable risk to take, all things considered, especially if River Shoulders was maybe wrong about Irwin’s immunity to disease.

  And besides. I needed some time alone to work.

  “Do the tests, on my authority. Assuming the kid is willing, I mean.”

  Nurse Jen frowned as I began to speak, then nodded at the second sentence. “Okay.”

  Nurse Jen woke up Irwin long enough to explain the tests, make sure he was okay with them, and take a couple of little vials of blood from his arm. She left to take the vials to a nearby lab and left me sitting with Irwin.

  “How’s life, kid?” I asked him. “Any more bully problems?”

  Irwin snorted weakly. “No, not really. Though, they don’t use their fists for that, here. And there’s a lot more of them.”

  “That’s what they call civilization,” I said. “It’s still better than the other way.”

  “One thing’s the same. You show them you aren’t afraid, they leave you alone.”

  “They do,” I said. “Coward’s a coward, whether he’s throwing punches or words.”

  Irwin smiled and closed his eyes again.

  I gave the kid a few minutes to be sound asleep before I got to work.

  River Shoulders hadn’t asked for my help because I was the only decent person in Chicago. The last time Irwin had problems, they’d had their roots in the supernatural side of reality. Clearly, the giant thought that this problem was similar, and he was smarter than the vast majority of human beings, including me. I’d be a fool to discount his concerns. I didn’t think there was anything more troublesome than a childhood illness at hand, but I was going to cover my bases. That’s what being professional means.

  I’d brought what I needed in the pockets of my suit. I took out a small baggie of powdered quartz crystal and a piece of paper inscribed with runes written in ink infused with the same powder and folded into a fan. I stood over Irwin and took a moment to focus my thoughts, both upon the spell I was about to work and upon the physical coordination it would require.

  I took a deep breath, then flicked the packet of quartz dust into the air at the same time I swept the rune-inscribed fan through a strong arc, released my will, and murmured, “Optio.”

  Light kindled in the spreading cloud of fine dust, a flickering glow that spread with the cloud, sparkling through the full spectrum of visible colors in steady, pulsing waves. It was beautiful magic, which was rare for me. I mean, explosions and lightning bolts and so on were pretty standard fare. This kind of gentle, interrogative spell? It was a treat to have a reason to use it.

  As the cloud of dust settled gently over the sleeping boy, the colors began to swirl as the spell interacted with his aura, the energy of life that surrounds all living things. Irwin’s aura was bloody strong, standing out several inches farther from his body than on most humans. I was a full-blown wizard, and a strong one, and my aura wasn’t any more powerful. That would be his father’s blood, then. The Forest People were in possession of potent magic, which was one reason no one ever seemed to get a decent look at one of them. Irwin had begun to develop a reservoir of energy to rival that of anyone on the White Council of wizardry.

  That was likely the explanation for Irwin’s supposed immunity to disease—the aura of life around him was simply too strong to be overwhelmed by a mundane germ or virus. Supported by that kind of energy, his body’s immune system would simply whale on any invaders. It probably also explained Irwin’s size, his growing body drawing upon the raw power of his aura to optimize whatever growth potential was in his mixed genes. Thinking about it, it might even explain the length of River Shoulders’ body hair, which just goes to show that no supernatural ability is perfect.

  Oh, and as the dust settled against Irwin’s body, it revealed threads of black sorcery laced throughout his aura, pulsing and throbbing with a disturbing, seething energy.

  I nearly fell out of my chair in sheer surprise.

  “Oh no,” I muttered. “The kid couldn’t just have gotten mono. That would be way too easy.”

  I called up a short, gentle wind to scatter the quartz dust from Bigfoot Irwin’s covers and pajamas, and then sat back for a moment to think.

  The kid had been hit with black magic. Not only that, but it had been done often enough that it had left track marks in his aura. Some of those threads of dark sorcery were fresh ones, probably inflicted at some point during the previous night.

  Most actions of magic aren’t any more terribly mysterious or complicated than physical actions. In fact, a lot of what happens in magic can be described by basic concepts of physics. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, for example—but it can be moved. The seething aura of life around the young scion represented a significant force of energy.

  A very significant source.

  Someone had been siphoning energy off of Bigfoot Irwin. The incredible vital aura around the kid now was, I realized, only a fraction of what it should have been. Someone had been draining the kid of that energy and using it for something else. A vampire of some kind? Maybe. The White Court of Vampires drained the life-energy from their victims, though they mostly did it through physical contact, mostly sexual congress, and there would be really limited opportunity for that sort of thing in a strictly monitored coed boarding school. Irwin had been attacked both frequently and regularly, to have his aura be so mangled.

  I could sweep the place for a vampire. Maybe. They were not easy to spot. I couldn’t discount a vamp completely, because they were definitely one of the usual suspects, but had it been one of the White Court after the kid, his aura would have been more damaged in certain areas than others. Instead, his aura had been equally diminished all around. That would indicate, if not conclusively prove, some kind of attack that was entirely nonphysical.

  I settled back in my chair to wait, watching Bigfoot Irwin sleep. I’d stay alert for any further attack, at least until Nurse Jen got back.

  River Shoulders was right. This wasn’t illness. Someone was killing the kid very, very slowly.

  I wasn’t going to leave him alone.

  Nurse Jen came back in a little less than two hours. She looked at me with her eyebrows raised and said, “You’re still here.”

  “Looks like,” I said. “What was I supposed to do?”

  “Leave me a number to call with the results,” she said.

  I winked at her. “If it makes you feel any better, I can still do that.”

  “I’m taking a break from dating cartoon characters and the children who love them.” She held up the envelope and said, “It’s mono.”

  I blinked. “It is?”

  She nodded and sighed. “Definitely. An acute case, apparently, but it’s mono.”

  I nodded slowly, thinking. It might make sense, if Irwin’s immune system had come to rely upon the energy of his aura. The attacks had diminished his aura, which had in turn diminished his body’s capacity to resist disease. Instead of fighting off an illness when exposed, his weakened condition had resulted in an infection—and it was entirely possible t
hat his body had never had any practice in fighting off something that had taken hold.

  Nurse Jen tilted her head to one side and said, “What are you thinking?”

  “How bad is it?” I asked her. “Does he need to go to a hospital?”

  “He’s in one,” she said. “Small, but we have everything here that you’d find at a hospital, short of a ventilator. As long as his condition doesn’t get any worse, he’ll be fine.”

  Except that he wouldn’t be fine. If the drain on his life-energy kept up, he might never have the strength he’d need to fight off this disease—and every other germ that happened to wander by.

  I was thinking that the boy was defenseless—and I was the only one standing between Bigfoot Irwin and whatever was killing him.

  I looked at Nurse Jen and said, “I need to use a phone.”

  “How serious?” Doctor Pounder asked. Her voice was scratchy. She was speaking to me over a HAM radio from somewhere in the wilds of unsettled Canada, and was shouting to make herself heard over the static and the patch between the radio and the phone.

  “Potentially very serious,” I half-shouted back. “I think you need to come here immediately!”

  “He’s that ill?” she asked.

  “Yeah, Doc,” I replied. “There could be complications, and I don’t think he should be alone.”

  “I’m on the way. There’s weather coming in. It might be tomorrow or the next day.”

  “Understood,” I said. “I’ll stay with him until then.”

  “You’re a good man, Dresden,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll move as fast as I can. Pounder, out.”

  I hung up the phone and Nurse Jen stared at me with her mouth open. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “My job,” I replied calmly.

  “The boy is going to be fine,” Jen said. “He’s not feeling great, but he’ll be better soon enough. I told you, it’s mono.”

  “There’s more going on than that,” I said.

  “Oh?” Jen asked. “Like what?”

  Explaining would just convince her I was a lunatic. “I’m not entirely at liberty to say. Doctor Pounder can explain when she arrives.”