It had all the things such offices always did: a prominent desk, several seats in a waiting area, a coffee machine, and a table laden with magazines. In this office, however, all of those materials were made of stainless steel. So were the floors. So were the walls. As was the ceiling. Even the lamps and the coffeepot were made of stainless steel. The magazines alone stood out as shapeless, soft-looking blobs of garish color.
The logo for Monoc Securities stood out upon one wall, in basrelief, and somehow reminded me more of a crest upon a shield than a corporate marketing symbol: a thick, round circle bisected by a straight vertical line emerging from either side of the circle. It might have been a simplified, abstract representation of an eye being cut from its socket by some kind of blade—I have some of that symbol written in scar tissue on my own face, where a cut had run down from eyebrow to cheekbone but had barely missed my eye. It might have been simple abstract symbology, representing the female and the male with round and straight shapes, suggesting wholeness and balance. Or, heck, it could have been overlaid Greek lettering, omega and iota on top of each other. Omega-iota. The last detail? The final detail? Maybe it meant something more like “every last little thing.”
Or maybe it combined all of those things: the blind eye that sees all.
Yeah. That felt right.
Two women sat behind the big desk at computer monitors consisting of small clouds of very fine mist, wherein were contained all the drifting images and letters of the company cyber-reality, floating like the wispiest of illusions. Sufficiently advanced technology, I suppose.
The women themselves were, apparently, identical twins. Both had raven-dark hair cut in close-fitting caps, and it matched the exact shade of their identical black suits. Both had dark eyes that sparkled with intensity and intelligence. They were both pale and their features were remarkable, if not precisely beautiful. They would stand out in any crowd, and not in an unpleasant way, either—but they would never be mistaken for cover models.
The twins rose as the elevator doors opened, and their eyes looked very intent and very black as they stared at us. I’ve looked down the barrel of a gun before. This was like looking down four of them at once. They stood there, inhumanly motionless. Both wore headsets, but only one of them murmured into hers.
I started to step out of the elevator, but Gard put out a cautionary hand. “Don’t, until you’re approved,” she said. “They’ll kill you. Maybe me, too.”
“Like their receptionists tough in these parts, huh?”
“It would be wiser not to joke,” she said quietly. “They don’t miss anything—and they never forget.”
The receptionist who had spoken into her mike flexed one hand slowly closed and open. Her nails peeled up little silver curls from the stainless-steel desk.
I thought about making a manicure joke . . . and decided not to. Go, go, Gadget wisdom.
“Do you do oranges, too?” asked my mouth, without checking in with the rest of me. “What about sharpening table knives and scissors and lawn tools? My landlady’s lawn mower blade could use a hand job from a girl like y—”
“Dresden,” Gard hissed, her eyes both furious and wide with near-panic.
Both of the receptionists were focused on me intently now. The one who had remained silent shifted her weight, as though preparing to take a step.
“Come on, Sigrun,” I said to my companion. “I’m trying to be diplomatic. The wisdom of my ass is well-known. If I didn’t lip off to them, after shooting my mouth off to faerie queens and Vampire Courts—plural, Courts—demigods and demon lords, they might get their feelings hurt.”
Gard eyed me for a moment more, before her uncertain blue eyes gained a gleam of devil-may-care defiance. It looked a lot more natural on her than fear. “Perhaps your insults and insolence are not the valued commodities you believe them to be.”
“Heh,” I said. “Good one.”
The chatty twin tilted her head slightly to one side for a moment, then said, “Right away, sir.” She pointed her fingernail at me. “You are to enter the office through the doors behind me.” She aimed her nail at Gard next. “You are to accompany him and make introductions.”
Gard nodded shortly and then tilted her head in a “come along” sort of gesture. We walked out of the elevator and past the twins to the door behind them. They turned their heads as I went by, tracking my every movement. It was downright creepy.
On the other side of the door was a long hallway, also made of stainless steel. There were multiple ports or hatches of some kind in a row along the walls, all closed. They were about the size of dinner plates. I got a feeling that any visitors who tried the hors d’oeuvres served up from those plates would not be asking for the recipe later in the evening.
At the end of the hall was another set of steel doors, which gave way soundlessly before us, revealing another room done all in stainless steel, holding only a massive desk behind which was seated a man.
Donar Vadderung sat with his chin propped on the heel of his hand, squinting at a holographic computer display, and the first thing my instincts did was warn me that he was very, very dangerous.
He wasn’t all that imposing to look at. A man in good shape, maybe in his early fifties. Lean and spare, in the way of long-distance runners, but too heavy in the shoulders and arms for that to be all he did. His hair was long for a man, and just a bit shaggy. It was the color of a furious thundercloud, and his eye was ice blue. A black cloth patch over the other eye combined with a vertical scar similar to my own made me think that I’d been right about the corporate logo. He kept a short, neat beard. He was a striking-looking rogue, particularly with the eye patch, and looked like the sort of person who might have served thirty years of a triple life sentence and managed to talk the parole board into setting him free—probably to their eventual regret.
“Sigrun,” he said, his tone polite.
Gard went down to one knee and bowed her head. There was no hesitation whatsoever to the woman’s movements—the gesture was not simply a technicality she had to observe. She believed that Vadderung merited such obeisance.
“My lord,” Gard said. “I’ve brought the wizard, as you commanded.”
“Well done,” the grey-haired man said, and made a gesture to indicate that she should rise. I don’t think she saw it, with her head bowed like that, but she reacted to it anyway, and stood up. Maybe they’d just had a few hundred years to practice.
“My lord. May I present Harry Dresden, wizard and Warden of the White Council of wizards.”
I nodded to Vadderung.
“Wizard, this is Donar Vadderung, CEO of Monoc Secur—”
“I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what he’s in charge of,” I said quietly.
The old man’s mouth turned faintly up at the corners when I spoke. He gestured to a steel chair across the desk from him. “Please. Sit down.”
I pointed at the holographic display. “You sure you want to put that at risk? If I stand too close to it . . .”
Vadderung turned his face up to the ceiling and barked out a laugh of genuine amusement. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Suits me,” I said. I walked over to the desk and sat down in the steel chair across from Vadderung’s. It didn’t have a cushion or anything, but it was surprisingly comfortable nonetheless.
“Coffee?” he asked me. “Something to eat?”
I paused for a breath to think before answering. Duties such as this involved the obligations and responsibilities of guest to host and vice versa. If Vadderung was who I thought he was, he had been known, from time to time, to go forth and test people on how well they upheld that particular tradition—with generous rewards for the faithful, and hideous demises for the miserly, callous, or cruel.