Blood Rites (The Dresden Files #6) - Jim Butcher Page 0,4

of monks hired me to get them back."

"What, they don't have dog pounds in Tibet?"

I shrugged. "They believe these dogs have a foo heritage."

"Is that like epilepsy or something?"

I snorted and put my hand palm-down out the window, waggling it back and forth to make an airfoil in the wind of the Beetle's passage. "The monks think their great-grandcestor was a divine spirit-animal. Celestial guardian spirit. Foo dog. They believe it makes the bloodline special."

"Is it?"

"How the hell should I know, man? I'm just the repo guy."

"Some wizard you are."

"It's a big universe," I said. "No one can know it all."

Thomas fell quiet for a while, and the road whispered by. "Uh, do you mind if I ask what happened to your car?"

I looked around at the Beetle's interior. It wasn't Volkswagen-standard anymore. The seat covers were gone. So was the padding underneath. So was the interior carpet, and big chunks of the dashboard that had been made out of wood. There was a little vinyl left, and some of the plastic, and anything made out of metal, but everything else had been stripped completely away.

I'd done some makeshift repairs with several one-by-sixes, some hanger wire, some cheap padding from the camping section at Wal-Mart, and a lot of duct tape. It gave the car a real postmodern look: By which I meant that it looked like something fashioned from the wreckage after a major nuclear exchange.

On the other hand, the Beetle's interior was very, very clean. My glasses are half-full, dammit.

"Mold demons," I said.

"Mold demons ate your car?"

"Sort of. They were called out of the decay in the car's interior, and used anything organic they could find to make bodies for themselves."

"You called them?"

"Oh, hell, no. They were a present from the guest villain a few months ago."

"I hadn't heard there was any action this summer."

"I have a life, man. And my life isn't all about feuding demigods and nations at war and solving a mystery before it kills me."

Thomas lifted an eyebrow. "It's also about mold demons and flaming monkey poo?"

"What can I say? I put the 'ick' in 'magic.' "

"I see. Hey, Harry, can I ask you something?"

"I guess."

"Did you really save the world? I mean, like the last two years in a row?"

I shrugged. "Sort of."

"Word is you capped a faerie princess and headed off a war between Winter and Summer," Thomas said.

"Mostly I was saving my own ass. Just happened that the world was in the same spot."

"There's an image that will give me nightmares," Thomas said. "What about those demon Hell guys last year?"

I shook my head. "They'd have let loose a nasty plague, but it wouldn't have lasted very long. They were hoping it would escalate into a nice apocalypse. They knew there wasn't much chance of it, but they were doing it anyway."

"Like the Lotto," Thomas said.

"Yeah, I guess. The genocide Lotto."

"And you stopped them."

"I helped do it and lived to walk away. But there was an unhappy ending."

"What?"

"I didn't get paid. For either case. I make more money from flaming demon monkey crap. That's just wrong."

Thomas laughed a little and shook his head. "I don't get it."

"Don't get what?"

"Why you do it."

"Do what?"

He slouched down in the driver's seat. "The Lone Ranger impersonation. You get pounded to scrap every time you turn around and you barely get by on the gumshoe work. You live in that dank little cave of an apartment. Alone. You've got no woman, no friends, and you drive this piece of crap. Your life is kind of pathetic."

"Is that what you think?" I asked.

"Call them like I see them."

I laughed. "Why do you think I do it?"

He shrugged. "All I can figure is that either you're nursing a deep and sadistic self-hatred or else you're insane. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and left monumental stupidity off the list."

I kept on smiling. "Thomas, you don't really know me. Not at all."

"I think I do. I've seen you under pressure."

I shrugged. "Yeah, but you see me, what? Maybe a day or two each year? Usually when something's been warming up to kill me by beating the tar out of me."

"So?"

"So that doesn't cover what my life is like the other three hundred and sixty-three days," I said. "You don't know everything about me. My life isn't completely about magical mayhem and creative pyromania in Chicago."

"Oh, that's right. I heard you went to exotic Oklahoma a few months back. Something about a tornado and the National Severe