All of which had been made possible by Harry Dresden. And the truly galling thing about the entire situation was that it had been the least evil of the options that had been available to me at the time.
I looked up from the circle I'd chalked on the concrete beneath a sheltered overhang in the alley and shook my head. "Sorry. Can't get anything. Maybe the blood is too dry. Maybe the donor is dead."
Murphy nodded. "I'll keep an eye on the morgues, then."
I broke the circle with a swipe of my hand and rose from my knees.
"Can I ask you something?" Murphy said.
"Sure."
"Why don't you ever use pentagrams? All I ever see you draw is circles."
I shrugged. "PR mostly. Run around making lots of five-pointed stars in this country and people start screaming about Satan. Including the satanists. I've got enough problems. If I need a pentagram, I usually just imagine it."
"You can do that?"
"Magic's in your head, mostly. Building an image in your mind and holding it there. Theoretically you could do everything without any chalk or symbols or anything else."
"Then why don't you?"
"Because it's a pointlessly difficult effort for identical results." I squinted up at the still-falling snow. "You're a cop. I need a doughnut."
She snorted as we left the alley. "Stereotype much, Dresden?"
"Cops do a lot of running around in their cars, and they don't always get to control their hours, Murph. Lots of times they can't leave a crime scene to hit a drive-through. So they need food that can sit in a car for hours and hours without tasting foul or giving them food poisoning. Doughnuts are good for that."
"So are granola bars."
"Is Rawlins a masochist, too?"
Murphy casually bumped her shoulder against my arm when I was between steps, making me wobble, and I grinned. We emerged onto the mostly empty street. The firemen had been wrapping up their job when I arrived, and every truck but one had departed. Once the flames were out the show was over, and there were no rubberneckers anymore. Only a few cops were in sight, most of them in their cars.
"So what happened to your face?" Murphy asked.
I told her.
She concealed a smile. "‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff '?"
"Hey. They're tough, all right? They kill trolls."
"I saw you do that once. How hard could it be?"
I found myself grinning. "I had a little help."
Murphy matched my smile. "One more short joke and I'm taking a kneecap."
"Murphy," I chided, "petty violence is beneath you. Which is saying something."
"Keep it up, wise guy. I'm always going to be taller than you once you're lying unconscious on the ground."
"You're right. That was a low blow. I'll try to rise above it."
She showed me a clenched fist. "Pow, Dresden. Right to the moon."
We reached Murphy's car. Rawlins was in the passenger seat, pretending to snore. He wasn't the sort to just fall asleep.
"So, Summer made a run at you," Murphy said. "You think the attack on Marcone's building is connected with that?"
"I lost my faith in coincidence," I said.
"Get in," she said. "I'll give you a ride home."
I shook my head. "There might be something I can do here, but I need to be alone. And I need a doughnut."
Murphy arched a delicate dark-gold eyebrow. "Ooooooo-kay."
"Get your mind out of the gutter and give me the damned doughnut."
Murphy shook her head and got in her car. She tossed me a sack from Dunkin' Donuts that was sitting on Rawlins's side of the dashboard.
"Hey!" Rawlins protested without opening his eyes.
"For a good cause," I told him, nodding my thanks to Murphy. "Call you when I know something."
She frowned at my nose. "You sure you want to be alone?"
I winked one of my blackened eyes at her. "Some things a wizard has to do for himself," I said.
Rawlins swallowed a titter.
I get no respect.
They drove off and left me in the silently falling snow in the still hours before dawn. There were still a couple of fire crews and uniform cops there, the latter blocking off the street, though the former weren't actively firefighting. The building was out, and coated in a layer of ice-but I guess there always could have been something hidden in the walls and ready to pop out again. I overheard one of them telling another that the road crew that was supposed to clean the rubble out of the street was helping a city plow truck stuck in the snow, and would be there when they could.
I trudged to about a block away, found an alley not choked, and went in with my doughnut. I debated for a moment what approach I would take. My relationship with this particular source had changed over the years, after all. Reason indicated that sticking with longstanding procedure was my best bet. Instinct told me that reason had disappointed me more than once, and that it wasn't thinking in the long term anyway.
Over the years, my instincts and I have gotten cozy.
So, instead of bothering with a simple bait-and-snare, I braced my feet, held out my right hand palm up, placed the doughnut upon it like an offering, and murmured a Name.
Names, capital N, have power. If you know something's Name, you automatically have a conduit with which you can reach out and touch it, a way to home in on it with magic. Sometimes that can be a really bad idea. Speak the Name of a big, bad spiritual entity and you might be able to touch it, sure-but it can touch you right back, and the big boys tend to do it a lot harder than any mortal. It's worth as much as your soul to speak the Name of beings like that.
But the Nevernever is a big place, and not to mix metaphors, but there are plenty of fish in that sea. There are literally countless beings of far less metaphysical significance, and it really isn't terribly difficult to get one of them to do your bidding by invoking its Name.
(People have Names, too. Sort of. Mortals have this nasty habit of constantly reassessing their personal identity, their values, their beliefs, and it makes it a far more slippery business to use a mortal's Name against them.)
I know a few Names. I invoked this one as lightly and gently as I could in an effort to be polite.
It didn't take me long, maybe a dozen repetitions of the Name before the entity it summoned appeared. A basketball-sized globe of blue light dived out of the snow overhead and hurtled down the alley toward my face.
I stood steady as it came on. Even with relatively minor summonings, you never let them see you flinch.
The globe snapped to an instant halt about a foot away from the doughnut, and I could just make out the luminous shape of the tiny humanoid figure within. Tiny, but not nearly so tiny as the last time I had seen him. Hell's bells, he must have been twice as tall as the last time we'd spoken.
"Toot-toot," I said, nodding to the pixie.
Toot snapped to attention, piping, "My lord!" The pixie looked like an athletically slender youth, dressed in armor made of discarded trash. His helmet had been made from the cap to a three-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, and tufts of his fine lavender hair drifted all around its rim. He wore a breastplate made from what looked like a carefully reshaped bottle of Pepto-Bismol, and carried a box knife sheathed in orange plastic on a rubber-band strap over one shoulder. Rough lettering on the box knife's case, written in what looked like black nail polish, proclaimed, Pizza or Death! A long nail, its base carefully wrapped in layers of athletic adhesive tape, was sheathed in the hexagonal plastic casing of a ballpoint pen at his side. He must have lifted the boots from a Ken doll, or maybe a vintage GI Joe.
"You've grown," I said, bemused.
"Yes, my lord," Toot-toot barked.
I arched an eyebrow. "Is that the box knife I gave you?"
"Yes, my lord!" he shrilled. "This is my box knife! There are many who like it, but this one is mine!" Toot's words were crisply precise, and I realized that he was imitating the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. I throttled the sudden smile trying to fight its way onto my face. It looked like he was taking it seriously, and I didn't want to crush his tiny feelings.
What the hell. I could play along. "At ease, soldier."
"My lord!" he said. He saluted by slapping the heel of his hand against his forehead and then buzzed a quick circle around the doughnut, staring at it intently. "That," he declared, in a voice much more like his usual one, "is a doughnut. Is it my doughnut, Harry?"
"It could be," I said. "I'm offering it as payment."
Toot shrugged disinterestedly, but the pixie's dragonfly wings buzzed in excitement. "For what?"
"Information," I said. I jerked my head at the fallen building. "There was a seriously large sigil-working done in and around that building several hours ago. I need to know anything the Little Folk know about what happened." A little flattery never hurt. "And when I need information from the Little Folk, you're the best there is, Toot."
His Pepto-armored chest swelled up a bit with pride. "Many of my people are beholden to you for freeing them from the pale hunters, Harry. Some of them have joined the Za-Lord's Guard."
"Pizza Lord" was the title some of the Little Folk had bestowed upon me-largely because I provided them with a weekly bribe of pizza. Most don't know it, even in my circles, but the Little Folk are everywhere, and they see a lot more than anyone expects. My policy of mozzarella-driven goodwill had secured the affections of a lot of the locals. When I'd demanded that a sometime ally of mine set free several score of the Folk who had been captured, I'd risen even higher in their collective estimation.