it’s easy to tell yourself that those aren’t gunshots, that there’s no need to call the police, no need to even worry. It’s probably just a car backfiring. Sure. Or a kid with fireworks. There might be loud wailing or screams coming from the apartment upstairs, but you don’t know that the drunken neighbor is beating his wife with a rolling pin again. It’s not really any of your business, and they’re always fighting, and the man is scary, besides. Yeah, you know that there are cars coming and going at all hours from your neighbor’s place, and that the crowd there isn’t exactly the most upright-looking bunch, but you haven’t seen him dealing drugs. Not even to the kids you see going over there sometimes. It’s easier and safer to shut the door, be quiet, and turn up the TV.
We’re ostriches and the whole world is sand.
Newbies who are just learning about the world of wizards and the unpleasant side of the supernatural always think there’s this huge conspiracy to hide it from everyone. There isn’t. There’s no need for one, beyond preventing actual parades down Main Street. Hell’s bells, from where I’m standing, it’s a miracle anyone ever notices.
Which is why I was fairly sure that our parley with the Archive and the Denarians in the Shedd Aquarium was going to go unremarked. Oh, sure, it was right in the middle of town, within a stone’s throw of the Field Museum and within sight of Soldier Field, but given the weather there wasn’t going to be a lot of foot traffic—and the Aquarium was in its off-season. There might be a handful of people there caring for the animals, but I felt confident that Kincaid would find a way to convince them to be somewhere else.
Murphy had rented a car, since hers was so busted-up. The past few days of snow had seen a load of accidents, and there weren’t any compact cars left, so she’d wound up with a silver Caddy the size of a yacht, and I’d called shotgun. Hendricks and Gard rode in the backseat. Gard had gotten to the car under her own power, though she had been moving carefully. Luccio sat beside Gard with her slender staff and her silver rapier resting on the floorboards between her feet, though my own staff was a lot longer and had to slant back between the front seats and past Gard’s head, up into the rear window well.
City work crews were still laboring to clear roads and access to critical facilities. An off-season tourist attraction was not high on anyone’s priority list. For that matter, the Field Museum had been closed due to the weather, which meant that there really weren’t any functioning public buildings for several hundred yards in any direction.
That could be a problem. Michael’s white truck wasn’t going to be able to get anywhere close without being spotted, which meant that he and Sanya were going to be two, maybe three minutes away from helping, provided they could be signaled at all. That was practically the other side of the world, where a violent confrontation is concerned. On the other hand, it also meant that the bad guys weren’t going to be able to bring in any help without being spotted, either.
Provided they were driving cars, of course.
Glass half-full, Harry, glass half-full. There was no profit to be had in a fight—not yet, anyway. Whatever Nicodemus was after, he’d have to make his demands before he had a chance to double-cross us out of whatever he wanted us to bring him. Besides, given what I’d seen of the Archive in action, he’d be freaking insane to try anything where she was officiating. She didn’t brook slights to her authority lightly.
The nearest street had been cleared by city trucks, but none of the parking lots had been done, and the excess snow from the streets formed small mountains on either side of the road.
“Looks like we’re going to have to walk in,” Murphy said quietly.
“Keep circling. They keep the animals here year-round,” I said quietly. “And they’ve got to be fed every day. The staff will have broken a trail in somewhere.”
“Perhaps they let the exhibits go hungry during the storm,” Gard suggested. “Few would venture into this for the sake of their paychecks.”
“You don’t do oceanography for the money,” I said. “And you sure as hell don’t take up working with dolphins and whales for the vast paycheck and the company car.” I