location of another of Marcone’s secret stashes, maybe even the name of whatever doctor he had on his payroll. And since it was Murphy’s car, and Murphy was with me, and Gard needed my help, there wasn’t diddly Gard could do about it.
That’s my Murphy, manufacturing her own damned silver lining when the clouds didn’t cough one up.
Mouse was delighted to see me, and greeted me with much fond twitching and bumping against my legs and tail wagging. He, at least, thought I merely smelled interesting. Molly greeted us with only slightly less enthusiasm, and immediately set about making food for everyone. It turns out that Molly wasn’t her mother’s daughter in that respect. Charity was like the MacGyver of the kitchen. She could whip up a five-course meal for twelve from an egg, two spaghetti noodles, some household chemicals, and a stick of chewing gum. Molly…
Molly once burned my egg. My boiled egg. I don’t know how.
She could, however, make a mean cup of coffee.
Once Kincaid had been settled down on the guest bed in Charity’s sewing room, everyone else gathered in the kitchen. Murphy looked strained. I poured her a cup of joe, and she came to stand next to me. I offered Luccio one as well. She accepted with a small, grateful nod.
“How is he?” she asked Murphy.
“Sleeping,” Murphy said. “Gard got him some painkillers.”
I guzzled coffee, fighting off a round of chills. “Okay, people. Here’s the situation. We are bent over, greased up, and Nicodemus and his crew are about to drive one of those Japanese bullet trains right up our collective ass.”
The room went quiet.
“They took Ivy,” I said. “That’s bad.”
“Harry,” Murphy said, “I know I’m the new kid, but you’re going to have to explain this thing with the little girl to me again.”
“Ivy is the Archive,” I said quietly. “A long time ago—we don’t know when—somebody—we don’t know who—created the Archive. A kind of intellectual construct.”
“What?” Sanya asked.
“A kind of entity composed of pure information. Think of it as software for the brain,” Luccio said. “Like a very advanced database management system.”
“Ah,” Sanya said, nodding.
I arched an eyebrow at Luccio in surprise.
She shrugged, smiling a little. “I like computers. I read all about them. It’s…my hobby, really. I understand the theory behind them.”
“Right,” I said. “Ahem. Okay. The Archive is passed from one generation to the next, mother to daughter—all the memories of the previous bearers of the Archive, and all the facts they have gathered.
“All that knowledge makes the Archive powerful—and it was created as a repository of learning, a safeguard against the possibility of a cataclysm of civilization, a loss of all knowledge, the destruction of all learning. It was bound to neutrality, to the preservation and gathering of knowledge.”
“Gathering?” Murphy said. “So…the Archive reads a lot?”
“It goes deeper than that,” I said. “The Archive is a magic so complex that it’s practically alive—and it just knows. Anything that gets printed or written down, the Archive knows.”
Hendricks said a bad word.
“Sideways,” I agreed. “That’s what Nicky and the Nickelheads have taken.”
“With that kind of information at their disposal,” Murphy said, “they could…My God, they could blackmail officials. Control governments.”
“Launch nuclear warheads,” I said. “Stop thinking so small.” I nodded at Michael. “Remember, you told me that Nicodemus was playing Armageddon lotto. He makes big plans, but he plots them out so that he can make an incremental profit along the way. This was just one more scheme.”
Michael frowned. “He was after the Archive all along? He deliberately came here and provoked a confrontation to get you to call her in to arbitrate?”
“That isn’t much of a plan,” Luccio said. “You could have chosen any one of a dozen neutral arbiters.”
Murphy snorted. “But it’s Dresden. He’s lived in the same apartment since I first met him. Drives the same car. Drinks at that same little pub. Favorite restaurant is Burger King. He gets the same damned meal every time he goes there, too.”
“You can’t improve on perfection,” I said. “That’s why it’s called perfection. And what’s your point?”
“You’re a creature of habit, Harry. You don’t like change.”
There wasn’t much use denying that. “Even if I hadn’t called Ivy, Nicodemus still could realize some gains. Maybe recruit Marcone. Maybe kill off Michael or Sanya. Maybe ditch some deadwood within his own organization. Who knows? The point is, I did call Ivy in, he did get the opportunity to take her down, and it paid off.”
“But the Archive was created neutral,” Sanya said. “Constrained.