Free Turn Coat by Jim Butcher Page A

Harry?”
    “Half buzzed on this smoke, and floundering,” I said. “Thomas told me you had some information.”
    Justine nodded seriously, and picked up a manila file folder from the couch beside her. “Word is out about a hunt for a renegade Warden,” she said. “There weren’t a lot of details, but I was able to turn up this.”
    She slid the folder over to me, and I opened it. The first page was a printout of a Web site of some kind. “What the hell is Craigslist?”
    “It’s a site on the Internet,” Justine said. “It’s sort of like a giant classified ads section, only you can get to it from anywhere in the world. People use it to advertise goods they want to buy or sell.”
    “Goods,” Thomas put in, “and services. Help wanted, with veiled language for the less-legal things. A lot of shady deals happen there because it’s relatively easy to do so anonymously. Escorts, mercenaries, you name it.”
    There was an ad printed on it:
WANTED FOR PERMANENT POSITION,
DONALD MORGAN, 5MIL FINDER’S FEE,
CONSIDERATIONS.
[email protected].
    “Hell’s bells,” I cursed quietly.
    I passed the page to Thomas. “A wanted poster,” he said.
    I nodded. “And not dead or alive, either. They just want him dead.”
    Every supernatural hitter on the bloody planet was going to be coming after Morgan. Not so much for the money, probably, as for the favors that the ad promised. They carry a hell of a lot more weight than cash in the world of the weird. The five million was just there to provide scope, a sense of scale for the favors that would come with it.
    “Every button man in the world and his brother,” I muttered. “This just keeps getting better and better.”
    “Why would your people do that?” Justine asked.
    “They wouldn’t,” I said.
    Thomas frowned. “How do you know?”
    “Because the Council solves things in-house,” I said. Which was true. They had their own assassin for jobs like this, when he was needed. I grimaced. “Besides, even if they did put out a hit, they sure as hell wouldn’t use the Internet to do it.”
    Thomas nodded, fingers idly stroking Justine’s rubberized shoulder. “Then who did?”
    “Who indeed,” I said. “Is there any way to find out who put this here? Or who this e-mail thingy belongs to?”
    Justine shook her head. “Not with any confidence.”
    “Then we’ll have to make contact ourselves,” Thomas said. “Maybe we can draw them out.”
    I scratched my chin, thinking. “If they’ve got a lick of sense, they won’t show themselves to anyone who isn’t established in the field. But it’s worth a try.” I sighed. “I’ve got to move him.”
    “Why?” Thomas asked.
    I tapped the page with my finger. “When the hard cases start coming out of the woodwork, things are going to get messy, and old people live upstairs from me.”
    Thomas frowned and nodded. “Where?”
    I began to answer when the tempo of the beat suddenly changed below, and a wave of frenzied cries rolled up, deafening despite any soundproofing. A second after that, an odd frisson crawled across my nerves, and I felt my heart pound a little more quickly, and the earlier demands my body had been making returned in a rush.
    Across from me, Justine shivered and her eyes slid almost completely closed. She took a deep breath, and her nipples tightened against the rubber cat suit. Her hips shifted in a small, unconscious movement, brushing against Thomas’s thigh.
    My brother’s eyes flashed from light grey to cold, hard silver for a second, before he narrowed them and rose, carefully disentangling himself from Justine. He turned to face the dance floor, his shoulders tense.
    I followed his example. “What is it?”
    “Trouble,” he said, and looked over his shoulder at me. “Family’s come to visit.”

Chapter Nine
    T homas stared hard at the floor below, and then nodded once, as if in recognition. “Harry,” he said in a steady, quiet voice, “stay out of this.” in