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“Go back to Chicago, wizard,” he said. “You’re in my territory now.”
“This isn’t a smart move for you,” I said. “The kid’s connected. If anything bad happens to him, you’re in for trouble.”
“Is that a threat?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Chuck, I’ve got no objection to working things out peaceably. And I’ve got no objection to doing it the other way. If you know my reputation, then you know what a sincere guy I am.”
“Perhaps I should kill you now.”
“Here, in public?” I asked. “All these witnesses? You aren’t going to do that.”
“No?”
“No. Even if you win, you lose. You’re just hoping to scare me off.” I nodded toward his goons. “Ghouls, right? It’s going to take more than two, Chuck. Hell, I like fighting ghouls. No matter what I do to them, I never feel bad about it afterward.”
Barrowill missed the reference, like the monsters usually do. He looked at me, then at his Rolex. “I’ll give you until midnight to leave the state. After that, you’re gone. One way or another.”
“Hang on,” I said, “I’m terrified. Let me catch my breath.”
Barrowill’s eyes shifted color slightly, from a deep green to a much paler, angrier shade of green-gold. “I react poorly to those who threaten my family’s well-being, Dresden.”
“Yeah. You’re a regular Ozzie Nelson. John Walton. Ben Cartwright.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mr. Drummond? Charles … in Charge? No?”
“What are you blabbering about?”
“Hell’s bells, man. Don’t any of you White Court bozos ever watch television? I’m giving you pop reference gold, here. Gold.”
Barrowill stared at me with opaque, reptilian eyes. Then he said, simply, “Midnight.” He took two steps back before he turned his back on me and got into his car. His goons both gave me hard looks before they, too, got into the car and pulled away.
I watched the car roll out. Despite the attitude I’d given Barrowill, I knew better than to take him lightly. Any vampire is a dangerous foe—and one of them with holdings and resources and his own personal brute squad was more so. Not only that but … from his point of view, I was messing around with his little girl’s best interests. The vampires of the White Court were, to a degree, as dangerous as they were because they were partly human. They had human emotions, human motivations, human reactions. Barrowill could be as irrationally protective of his family as anyone else.
Except that they were also inhuman. All of those human drives were intertwined with a parasitic spirit they called a Hunger, where all the power and hunger of their vampire parts came from.
Take one part human faults and insecurities and add it to one part inhuman power and motivation. What do you get?
Trouble.
* * *
“Barrowill?” Officer Dean asked me. “The oil guy? He keeps a stable. Of congressmen.”
“Yeah, probably the same guy,” I said. “All vampires like having money and status. It makes their lives easier.”
Dean snorted. “Every vampire. And every nonvampire.”
“Heh,” I said. “Point.”
“You were in a fix,” he said. “Tell the girl, you might wreck her. Don’t tell her, and you might wr
eck her and Kid Bigfoot both. Either way, somebody’s dad has a bone to pick with you.”
“Pretty much.”
“Seems to me a smart guy would have washed his hands of the whole mess and left town.”
