Free Side Jobs by Jim Butcher

anyone else knew, they’d been married at that disastrous travesty of a farce in Lincolnshire.
    The ceremony was simple and heartfelt. I stood with Billy. Murphy stood with Georgia. They both looked radiantly happy. They held hands the whole time, except when exchanging rings.
    Murphy and I stepped back when they got to the vows.
    “Not exactly a fairy-tale wedding,” she whispered.
    “Sure it was,” I said. “Had a kiss and an evil stepmother and everything.”
    Murphy smiled at me.
    “Then by the power vested in me,” the padre said, beaming at the pair from behind his spectacles, “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss th—”
    They beat him to it.

IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, TOO
    —from Many Bloody Returns , edited by Charlaine Harris
     
Takes place between White Night and Small Favor
     
     
     
    I’ve met people who are sweeter and nicer and more likeable than Charlaine Harris—but I really can’t remember when. Every author I’ve ever talked with who knows Charlaine just couldn’t be happier about the success of her books and the HBO series True Blood . She’s that nice. I can’t even bring myself to be jealous. She’s that nice.
    So when she invited me to contribute, I said, “Heck, yeah!”
    Using a birthday theme (since the book, originally, was supposed to be published on Vlad Dracula’s something-hundredth birthday) was sort of a challenge. Birthdays are about families. Whether they’re a biological family or one that’s come together by choice, it’s your family who gathers to celebrate the anniversary of you .
    It’s kind of a profound thing, when you think about it.
    But Dresden hadn’t ever really associated his birthday with that kind of joy—only with the knowledge that he’d never really had a family. So I decided to do a story about Harry coping with the unfamiliar role of being the guy celebrating the life of his half brother. I found a very good mall in Chicago that I could demolish with the usual Dresdenesque shenanigans, set the story against the backdrop of a vampire-ish LARP, and knocked this one out over the course of about three weeks.
    H ey, Miyagi-san,” my apprentice said. Her jeans still dripped with purple-brown mucus. “You think the dry cleaner can get this out?”
    I threw my car keys down on my kitchen counter, leaned my slimed, rune-carved wooden staff next to them, and said, “The last time I took something stained by a slime golem to a cleaner, the owner burned his place down the next day and tried to collect on the insurance.”
    Molly, my apprentice, was just barely out of her teens, and it was impossible not to notice what great legs she had when she stripped out of her trendily mangled jeans. She wrinkled her nose as she tossed them into the kitchen trash can. “Have I told you how much I love the wizard business, Harry?”
    “Neither of us is in the hospital, kid. This was a good day at work.” I took my mantled leather duster off. It was generously covered in splatters of the sticky, smelly mucus as well. I toted it over to the fireplace in my basement apartment, which I keep going during the winter. Given that I have to live without the benefits of electricity, it’s necessary. I made sure the fire was burning strongly and tossed the coat in.
    “Hey!” Molly said. “Not the coat!”
    “Relax,” I told her. “The spells on it should protect it. They’ll bake the slime hard and I’ll chisel it off tomorrow.”
    “Oh, good. I like the coat.” The girl subsided as she tossed her secondhand combat boots and socks into my trash after her ruined jeans. She was tall for a woman and built like a schoolboy’s fantasy of the Scandinavian exchange student. Her hair was shoulder length and the color of white gold, except for the tips, which had been dyed in a blend of blue, red, and purple. She’d lost a couple of the piercings she’d previously worn on her face, and was now down to only one eyebrow, one nostril, her tongue, and her lower lip.