The Law (The Dresden Files #17.4)(16)

“Take that up with Mab,” Bob said. “But based on Inverno’s court records, it looks like she stuck the pair of them out in the mortal world not too long after Arctis Tor got slagged.”

I frowned. “She doesn’t trust them.”

“Guy’s a demigod of strife and division,” Bob said. “Could be it just hangs around him like a toxic cloud of radiation. Maybe she wanted him stored somewhere that wasn’t in her own back yard. Or maybe she did it to see if Marcone could handle it. I mean, you gotta admit… look at Chicago, boss. Strife and division are pretty much order of the day.”

“Point,” I muttered. I blew out a breath. “How tough is this nameless son likely to be?”

“Well,” Bob hedged. “Not Titan tough. But he isn’t a problem you can solve by punching.”

“I punched the Titan pretty hard.”

“Yeah, after she’d mopped the ring with every heavyweight around for several hours, wrecked a city, and was wobbling on her feet, and you came at her with a baseball bat,” Bob said. “Come on, boss.”

I frowned. “If he was so tough,” I said, “how come Mab didn’t have him in the ring, too?”

“What, you guys didn’t have enough strife and division on your team already?” Bob asked.

I grunted. “Point. Again.”

“I’m good with those.”

“What’s his weakness?”

“Boss?”

“Every one of these folklore yahoos has a weakness of some kind.”

“Well,” Bob said with a delicate cough, “his weakness is kind of the same as yours.”

“Eh?”

“He’s living under Mab’s aegis,” Bob explained. “Without that, he’ll have trouble, you know, continuing to breathe, due to all the enemies he’s made. Probably makes sense that he’s living pretty low profile.” Bob cleared his throat. “Boss. Maybe you should think about dropping this one.”

“Eh?” I asked.

“Look. I know you wanna help the hot teacher—”

“Tutor.”

“Whatever. But you’re getting into some deep water with some pretty big fish here, and you’re not even getting a paycheck out of it. I mean, it isn’t like this teacher is gonna die or something. Or any of the kids.”

“It’s not about consequences, Bob,” I said. “It’s about principles.”

“First teachers, now principals.”

“Hah,” I said. “The point is, that Tripp Gregory? He doesn’t have the right to do this to Maya. He has the means, and maybe he has the power, but he doesn’t have the right.”

“Seems fishy to me, boss,” Bob chirped. “Pretty much all he needs is the means and the power.”

“I say differently,” I said firmly. “Maya needs help and I’m gonna help her. And if all this is about is power, fine. I’ve got some of that too.” I shook my head. “But it’s got to be about more than that. He shouldn’t be able to do this to nice people—wreck their lives, take their means of livelihood. Doesn’t matter who he is, or what he has piled up on his side. It’s wrong.”

“So?” Bob asked.

“So, when you see something wrong happening, you do whatever you can,” I said.

“Even if you’re probably going to lose?”

“If I don’t do anything, she definitely loses,” I said. “I have to try.”

“Even if it means you gotta go tell Mab about your quest for the windmill, there, Don Quixote?”

I swallowed.

“Maybe it won’t come to that,” I said. “Did Gary get what I needed?”

“Check the wall,” Bob said, and his eyelights flared brilliant white.

I winced and looked at the wall across from the skull. Projected on the castle’s stones was a white square. Then Bob made a chirping sound, and a text message as if from a phone appeared on it:

One more thing, Gary, it read. The Boss says he needs to know how to contact that one lawyer who actually beat Talvi Inverno in court—Bob

These are text messages, dude. You don’t have to sign them. Is everyone there a luddite like Dresden? read a reply message, this one in a green field with white letters.

The next message was a block address.

I leaned forward, peering. “Maximillian Valerious, Esquire,” I muttered. “What a corny name.”

Bob made a choking sound and I scowled back over my shoulder at him. Then I got out a pen and paper and wrote down the address of the man who’d beat a demigod of strife in a court of law.

“Boss,” Bob said, “I thought you couldn’t afford a powerful lawyer.”

“I can’t afford a pricey one,” I said. “But if this guy whipped the nameless son in open battle in a court of law once, maybe he’d be willing to do it again on the cheap.”

Bob snorted. “Sure.”

“Well,” I said. “We’ll see. I’ve got to try something.”





Chapter Eleven





Maximillian Valerious worked out of his home in a residential neighborhood in Park West.