Murphy and I walked around the hotel, and as we did I popped open a fresh can of blue Play-Doh. At the corners of major intersections and at the exterior exits, I pinched off bits and plunked them down on top of the molding over doorways, inside flowerpots, inside fire extinguisher cabinets, and anywhere else where they wouldn’t be easily or immediately noticed. I made sure to leave plenty of them in unnoticed little spots along the hallways chiefly in use for the convention, especially Dutside the rooms that the schedule designated as showing films as evening approached.
“What are we doing again?” Murphy asked.
“Setting up a spell,” I said.
“With Play-Doh.”
“Yes.”
She gave me a level look.
I shook out the can that still had most of the original material in it, and showed it to her. “The little pieces I’ve been leaving around are part of this piece. See?”
“Not yet,” she said.
“They used to be one piece. Even when they’re separated, they still have a thaumaturgical connection to the original,” I told her. “It means that I'll be able to use the big piece to reach out and connect to the little pieces.”
“That’s what you meant by a web?”
“Yes. I’ll be able to…” I twisted up my face, searching for the words to explain. “I can extend energy out to all the smaller pieces. I’ll set it up so that if one of the little pieces picks up on a disturbance of the energies, I’ll be able to feel it through the larger piece.”
“Like… seismographs, sort of,” Murphy said.
“Yeah,” I said. “And we use blue Play-Doh. Blue for defense.”
She arched a brow at me. “Does the color really matter?”
“Yes,” I said, then thought about it for a second. “Well, probably no. But yes, for me.”
“Huh?”
“A lot of the use of magic is all tied up with your emotions. With what you believe is real. When I was younger, I learned a lot of stuff, like the role of colors in the casting of spells. Green for fertility and prosperity, red for passion and energy, white for purity, black for vengeance, and so on. It could be that the color doesn’t matter at all-but if I expect the spell to work because of the color used, then that color is important. If I don’t believe in it, the spell won’t ever get off the ground.”
“Like Dumbo’s magic feather?” Murphy asked. “It was his confidence that was really important?”
“Yes,” I said. “The feather was just a symbol-but it was an important symbol.”
I gestured with the can. “So I use blue, because I don’t have to do too much introspection, and I don’t introduce new doubts in a crisis situation. And because it was cheap at Wal-Mart.”
Murphy laughed. “Wal-Mart, huh?”
“Wizarding doesn’t pay much,” I said. “You’d be surprised how much stuff I get from Wal-Mart.” I checked a clock on the wall. “We’ve got about two hours before the first movie starts showing.”
She nodded. “What do you need?”
“A quiet space to work in,” I told her. “At least six or seven feet across. The more private and secure, the better. I’ve got to assume that the bad guy knows I’m around here somewhere. I don’t want to get a machete in the back when I’m busy running the spell.”
“How long do you need to set it up?”
I shrugged. “Twenty minutes, give or take. What I’m really concerned about is-”
“Mister Dresden!” called a voice from across the crowded convention hallway. I looked up to see Sandra Marling hurrying through the crowd toward me. The convention’s chairwoman looked exhausted and too nervous to be awake, much less standing, much less politely pushing her way through a crowd, but she did it anyway. She still wore the same black T-shirt with the red SplatterCon!!! logo on it, presumably the same I’d seen her in the night before.
“Ms. Marling,” I said, nodding to her as she approached. “Good afternoon.”
She shook her head wearily. “I’m such… this is such an enormous amount of… but I don’t know who else I can turn to about this.” Her words failed her, and she started trembling with nerves and weariness.
I traded a frown with Murphy. “Sandra. What’s wrong?”
“It’s Molly,” she said.
I frowned. “What about her?”
“She came here from the hospital a couple of hours ago. The police came to talk to her and I don’t think she’s come out since then, and none of the officers I’ve spoken to know where she is. I think-”
“Sandra.” I told her, “Take a breath. Slow down. Do you know where Molly is?”
The woman closed her eyes and shook her head, bringing herself under control, lowering her voice several pitches. “They’re still… interrogating her, I think? Isn’t that what they say? When they try to scare you and ask questions?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Yeah,” I said. “Was she arrested?”
Sandra shook her head jerkily. “I don’t think so. They didn’t handcuff her or read from that little card or anything. Can they do that? Just drag her into a room?”
“We’ll see,” I said. “Which room?”
“Other wing, second door on the right,” she said.
I nodded, slung my pack off my back, and took out a small notebook. I scribbled some phone numbers and names on a page, and gave it to Sandra. “Call both of these people.”
She blinked at the paper. “What do I tell them?”
“The truth. Tell them what’s going on and that Harry Dresden said they need to get down here immediately.”
Sandra blinked down at the page. “What are you going to do?”
“Oh, you know. The usual,” I said. “Get to that phone.”
“I’ll catch up in a minute,” Murphy said.
I nodded, slung the pack back on, jerked my head at Mouse, and started walking with purposeful strides toward the knot of reporters that had begun to dissolve at the conclusion of the official statements to the press. My dog fell in to pace at my side until I spotted Lydia Stern at the rear of the crowd.
Lydia Stern was a formidable woman, a reporter for the Midwestern Arcane, a yellow journal based out of Chicago that did its best to report on the supernatural. Sometimes they managed to get close to the truth, but more often they ran stories that had headlines like Lizard Baby Born in Trailer Park, or maybe Bigfoot and the Chupacabra, the Unholy Alliance. By and large, the stories were amusing and fairly harmless, but once in a while someone stumbled into something strange and it made it into the paper. Susan Rodriguez had been a lead reporter for the Arcane, until she’d run into exactly the wrong story. Now she lived her life somewhere in South America, fighting off the infection in her soul that wanted to turn her into one of the Red Court while she and her half-vampire buddies campaigned against their would-be recruiters.
When Lydia Stern took over Susan’s old job a couple of years back, her reporting had taken a different angle. She’d investigated strange events and then demanded to know why the appropriate institutions had been ignoring them. The woman had a scathing intellect and penetrating wit, and she employed both liberally and with considerable panache in her writing. She was unafraid to challenge anyone in her articles, from some smalltown animal control unit to the FBI.
It was a shame she was working at a rag like the Arcane instead of at a reputable paper in DC or New York. She’d have been a Pulitzer nominee inside of five years. City officials who had to deal with the cases I’d brushed up against had developed a nearly supernatural ability to vanish whenever she was around. None of them wanted to be the next person Lydia Stern eviscerated in print. She had a growing reputation as an investigative terror.
“Ms. Stern,” I said in a low, grave voice, extra emphasis on the “z” in “Ms.”