“I’ll take it from there. Do not get close to him, man. You get an instinct he’s looking in your direction, run for the hills. This guy’s dangerous.”

“Yeah,” Vince said. “Hell, I’m lucky I haven’t wet my pants already.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know you are. It’s cute. Seventeen minutes.”

“I’ll be there.”

“With my check. I’ve got a two-day minimum. You know that, right?”

“Right, right,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

“What have we got?” Murphy asked as I put the phone down.

“Binder thinks he shook me,” I said. “He’s headed for a meeting at Hotel Sax.”

She stood up and grabbed her car keys. “How do you know it’s a meeting?”

“Because he’s been made. If he was here alone, he’d be on his way out of town right now.” I nodded. “He’s running back to whoever hired him.”

“Who is that?” Murphy asked.

“Let’s find out.”

Chapter Thirty-two

The Hotel Sax is a pretty good example of its kind in the beating heart of downtown Chicago. It’s located on Dearborn, just across the street from the House of Blues, and if you look up while standing outside of the place, it looks like someone slapped one of those fish-eye camera lenses on the sky. Buildings stretch up and up and up, at angles that seem geometrically impossible.

Many similar sections of Chicago have wider streets than you find in other metropolises, and it makes them feel slightly less claustrophobic, but outside of the Sax, the street was barely three narrow lanes across, curb to curb. As Murphy and I approached, looking up made me feel like an ant walking along the bottom of a crack in the sidewalk.

“It bugs you, doesn’t it?” Murphy said.

We walked under a streetlight, our shadows briefly equal in length. “What?”

“Those big things looming over you.”

“I wouldn’t say it bothers me,” I said. “I’m just . . . aware of them.”

She faced serenely ahead as we walked. “Welcome to my life.”

I glanced down at her and snorted quietly.

We entered the lobby of the hotel, a place with a lot of glass and white paint with rich red accents. Given how late it was, it was no surprise only one member of the staff was visible: a young woman who stood behind one of the glass-fronted check-in counters. One guest reading a magazine sat in a nearby chair, and even though he was the only guy in the room, it took me a second glance to realize that he was Vince.

Vince set the magazine aside and ambled over to us. His unremarkable brown eyes scanned over Murphy. He nodded to her and offered me his hand.

I shook it, and offered a check to him with my left as we did. He took it, glanced at it noncommittally, and put it away in a pocket. “He took an elevator to the twelfth floor,” Vince said. “He’s in room twelve thirty-three.”

I blinked at him. “How the hell did you get that? Ride up with him?”

“Good way for me to get hurt. I stayed down here.” He shrugged. “You said he was trouble.”

“He is. How’d you do it?”

He gave me a bland look. “I’m good at this. You need to know which chair he’s in, too?”

“No. That’s close enough,” I said.

Vince looked at Murphy again, frowned, and then frowned at me. “Jesus,” he said. “You two look pretty serious.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I told you, this guy’s dangerous. He have anyone with him?”

“One person,” he said. “A woman, I think.”

Murphy suddenly smiled.

“How the hell do you know that?” I asked him.

“Room service,” she said.

Vince smiled in faint approval at Murphy and nodded his head. “Could have been someone else on twelve who ordered champagne and two glasses two minutes after he got off the elevator. But this late at night, I doubt it.” Vince glanced at me. “I’ll take the bill I duked the steward out of my fee.”

“Appreciated,” I said.

He shrugged. “That it?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Vince.”

“As long as the check clears,” he said, “you’re welcome.” He nodded to me, to Murphy, and walked out of the hotel.

Murphy eyed me, after Vince left, and smiled. “The mighty Harry Dresden. Subcontracting detective work.”

“They’re expecting me to be all magicky and stuff,” I said. “And I gave them what they expected to see. Binder wouldn’t have been looking for someone like Vince.”

“You’re just annoyed because they pulled that trick on you,” Murphy said. “And you’re taking your vengeance.”

I sniffed. “I like to think of it as symmetry.”

“That does make it sound nobler,” she said. “We obviously can’t just go up there and haul them off somewhere for questioning. What’s the plan?”

“Get more information,” I said. “I’m gonna listen in and see what they’re chatting about.”

Murphy nodded, glancing around. “Hotel security is going to have an issue with you lurking about the hallways. I’ll go have a word with them.”

I nodded. “I’ll be on twelve.”

“Don’t kick down any doors without someone to watch your back,” she warned me.

“No kicking at all,” I said. “Not until I know enough to kick them where it’s going to hurt.”

I went up to the twelfth floor, left the elevator, and pulled a can of Silly String out of my duster pocket. I shook it up as I walked down the hallway until I found room twelve thirty-three. Then, without preamble, I blasted a bit of the Silly String at the door. It slithered cheerfully through the air and stuck.

Then I turned and walked back down the hall until I found a door that opened onto a tiny room containing an ice dispenser and a couple of vending machines. I sat down, drew a quick circle around me on the tile floor with a dry-erase marker, and got to work.

I closed the circle with an effort of will, and it sprang up around me in a sudden invisible screen. It wasn’t exactly a heavy-duty magical construct, but such a quick circle would still serve perfectly well to seal away external energies and allow me to gather my own and shape it for a specific purpose without interference. I took the Silly String and sprayed a bunch of it into the palm of my left hand so that it mounded up sort of like shaving cream. Then I set the can down, held the mound of Silly String out in front of me, closed my eyes, and gathered my will.

Working magic is all about creating connections. Earlier, I’d taken Binder’s hairs to create a link back to him and used it for a tracking spell. I could have done any number of things with that connection, including some that were extremely nasty and dangerous. I’d seen it happen before, generally from the receiving end.

This time, I was creating a link between the Silly String in my hand, and the bit stuck to the door down the hall. They’d both come from the same can, and they’d been part of one distinct amount of liquid when they’d been canned. That meant I would be able to take advantage of that sameness and create a connection between them.

I focused my will on my desired outcome, gathered it all up together, and released it with a murmur of “Finiculus sonitus.” I reached out and smeared away a section of the circle I’d drawn, breaking it, and instantly began feeling a buzzing vibration in the palm of my left hand.

Then I tilted my head far to my right and slapped a bunch of Silly String into my left ear.

“Don’t try this at home folks,” I muttered. “I’m a professional.”

The first thing I heard was hectic-sounding, hyperactive music. A singer was screaming tunelessly and drums were pounding and someone was either playing electric guitars or slowly dipping partially laryngitic cats in boiling oil. None of the supposed musicians appeared to be paying attention to anything anyone else in the band was doing.

“Christ,” came Binder’s accented voice. “Not even you could dance to that tripe.”

There was a low-throated female laugh, and a slurred and very happy-sounding Madeline Raith replied, “This music isn’t about skill and precision, my sweet. It’s about hunger and passion. And I could dance to it to make your eyes fall out.”