Fool Moon

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The Dresden Files
Fool Moon
By Jim Butcher

Chapter 1
I never used to keep close track of the phases of the moon. So I didn't know that it was one night shy of
being full when a young woman sat down across from me in McAnally's pub and asked me to tell her all
about something that could get her killed.
"No," I said. "Absolutely not." I folded the piece of paper, with its drawings of three concentric rings of
spidery symbols, and slid it back over the polished oak-wood table.
Kim Delaney frowned at me, and brushed some of her dark, shining hair back from her forehead. She
was a tall woman, buxom and lovely in an old-world way, with pale, pretty skin and round cheeks well
used to smiling. She wasn't smiling now.
"Oh, come on, Harry," she told me. "You're Chicago 's only practicing professional wizard, and you're
the only one who can help me." She leaned across the table toward me, her eyes intent. "I can't find the
references for all of these symbols. No one in local circles recognizes them either. You're the only real
wizard I've ever even heard of, much less know. I just want to know what these others are."
"No," I told her. "You don't want to know. You're better off forgetting this circle and concentrating on
something else."
"But-"
Mac caught my attention from behind the bar by waving a hand at me, and slid a couple of plates of
steaming food onto the polished surface of the crooked oak bar. He added a couple of bottles of his
homemade brown ale, and my mouth started watering.
My stomach made an unhappy noise. It was almost as empty as my wallet. I would never have been
able to afford dinner tonight, except that Kim had offered to buy, if I'd talk to her about something during
the meal. A steak dinner was less than my usual rate, but she was pleasant company, and a sometime
apprentice of mine. I knew she didn't have much money, and I had even less.
Despite my rumbling stomach, I didn't rise immediately to pick up the food. (In McAnally's pub and grill,
there aren't any service people. According to Mac, if you can't get up and walk over to pick up your
own order, you don't need to be there at all.) I looked around the room for a moment, with its annoying
combination of low ceilings and lazily spinning fans, its thirteen carved wooden columns and its thirteen
windows, plus thirteen tables arranged haphazardly to defray and scatter the residual magical effects that
sometimes surrounded hungry (in other words, angry) wizards. McAnally's was a haven in a town where
no one believed in magic. A lot of the crowd ate there.
"Look, Harry," Kim said. "I'm not using this for anything serious, I promise. I'm not trying any
summoning or binding. It's an academic interest only. Something that's been bothering me for a while."
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She leaned forward and put her hand over mine, looking me in the face without looking me in the eyes, a
trick that few nonpractitioners of the Art could master. She grinned and showed me the deep dimples in
her cheeks.
My stomach growled again, and I glanced over at the food on the bar, waiting for me. "You're sure?" I
asked her. "This is just you trying to scratch an itch? You're not using it for any anything?"
"Cross my heart," she said, doing so.
I frowned. "I don't know ..."
She laughed at me. "Oh, come on , Harry. It's no big deal. Look, if you don't want to tell me, never
mind. I'll buy you dinner anyway. I know you're tight for money lately. Since that thing last spring, I
mean."
I glowered, but not at Kim. It wasn't her fault that my main employer, Karrin Murphy, the director of
Special Investigations at the Chicago Police Department, hadn't called me in for consulting work in more
than a month. Most of my living for the past few years had come from serving as a special consultant to
SI, but after a fracas last spring involving a dark wizard fighting a gang war for control of Chicago 's drug
trade, work with SI had slowly tapered off-and with it, my income.
I didn't know why Murphy hadn't been calling me in as often. I had my suspicions, but I hadn't gotten the
chance to confront her about them yet. Maybe it wasn't anything I'd done. Maybe the monsters had gone
on strike. Yeah, right.
The bottom line was I was strapped for cash. I'd been eating ramen noodles and soup for too many
weeks. The steaks Mac had prepared smelled like heaven, even from across the room. My belly
protested again, growling its neolithic craving for charred meat.
But I couldn't just go and eat the dinner without giving Kim the information she wanted. It's not that I've
never welshed on a deal, but I've never done it with anyone human-and definitely not with someone who
looked up to me.
Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.
"All right, all right," I sighed. "Let me get the dinner and I'll tell you what I know."
Kim's round cheeks dimpled again. "Thanks, Harry. This means a lot to me."
"Yeah, yeah," I told her, and got up to weave my way toward the bar, through columns and tables and
so on. McAnally's had more people than usual tonight, and though Mac rarely smiled, there was a
contentment to his manner that indicated that he was happy with the crowd. I snatched up the plates and
bottles with a somewhat petulant attitude. It's hard to take much joy in a friend's prosperity when your
own business is about to go under.
I took the food, steaks and potatoes and green beans, back to the table and sat down again, placing
Kim's plate in front of her. We ate for a while, myself in sullen silence and she in hearty hunger.
"So," Kim said, finally. "What can you tell me about that?" She gestured toward the piece of paper with
her fork.
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I swallowed my food, took a sip of the rich ale, and picked up the paper again. "All right. This is a figure
of High magic. Three of them, really, one inside the other, like layered walls. Remember what I told you
about magical circles?"
Kim nodded. "They either hold something out or keep it in. Most work on magic energies or creatures
of the Nevernever, but mortal creatures can cross the circles and break them."
"Right," I said. "That's what this outermost circle of symbols is. It's a barrier against creatures of spirit
and magical forces. These symbols here, here, here, are the key ones." I pointed out the squiggles in
question.
Kim nodded eagerly. "I got the outer one. What's the next?"
"The second circle is more of a spell barrier to mortal flesh. It wouldn't work if all you used was a ring
of symbols. You'd need something else, stones or gems or something, spaced between the drawings." I
took another bite of steak.
Kim frowned at the paper, and then at me. "And then what would that do?"
"Invisible wall," I told her. "Like bricks. Spirits, magic, could go right through it, but mortal flesh couldn't.
Neither could a thrown rock, bullets, anything purely physical."
"I see," she said, excited. "Sort of a force field."
I nodded. "Something like that."
Her cheeks glowed with excitement, and her eyes shone. "I knew it. And what's this last one?"
I squinted at the innermost ring of symbols, frowning. "A mistake."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that it's just gobbledygook. It doesn't mean anything useful. Are you sure you copied this
correctly?"
Kim's mouth twisted into a frown. "I'm sure, I'm sure. I was careful."
I studied her face for a moment. "If I read the symbols correctly, it's a third wall. Built to withhold
creatures of flesh and spirit. Neither mortal nor spirit but somewhere in between."
She frowned. "What kind of creatures are like that?"
I shrugged. "None," I said, and officially, it was true. The White Council of wizards did not allow the
discussion of demons that could be called to earth, beings of spirit that could gather flesh to themselves.
Usually, a spirit-circle was enough to stop all but the most powerful demons or Elder Things of the outer
reaches of the Nevernever. But this third circle was built to stop things that could transcend those kinds
of boundaries. It was a cage for demonic demigods and archangels.
Kim wasn't buying my answer. "I don't see why anyone would make a circle like this to contain nothing,
Harry."
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I shrugged. "People don't always do reasonable, sensible things. They're like that."
She rolled her eyes at me. "Come on, Harry. I'm not a baby. You don't have to shelter me."
"And you," I told her, "don't need to know what kind of thing that third circle was built to contain. You
don't want to know. Trust me."
She glowered at me for a long moment, then sipped at her ale and shrugged. "All right. Circles have to
be empowered, right? You have to know how to switch them on, like lights?"
"Something like that. Sure."
"How would a person turn this one on?"
I stared at her for a long time.
"Harry?" she asked.
"You don't need to know that, either. Not for an academic interest. I don't know what you've got in
mind, Kim, but leave it alone. Forget it. Walk away, before you get hurt."
"Harry, I am not-"
"Save it," I told her. "You're sitting on a tiger cage, Kim." I thumped a finger on the paper for emphasis.
"And you wouldn't need it if you weren't planning on trying to stick a tiger in there."
Her eyes glittered, and she lifted her chin. "You don't think I'm strong enough."
"Your strength's got nothing to do with it," I said. "You don't have the training. You don't have the
knowledge. I wouldn't expect a kid in grade school to be able to sit down and figure out college calculus.
And I don't expect it of you, either." I leaned forward. "You don't know enough yet to be toying with this
sort of thing, Kim. And even if you did, even if you did manage to become a full-fledged wizard, I'd still
tell you not to do it. You mess this up and you could get a lot of people hurt."
" IfI was planning to do that, it's my business, Harry." Her eyes were bright with anger. "You don't have
the right to choose for me."
"No," I told her. "I've got the responsibility to help you make the right choice." I curled the paper in my
fingers and crushed it, then tossed it aside, to the floor. She stabbed her fork into a cut of steak, a sharp,
vicious gesture. "Look, Kim," I said. "Give it some time. When you're older, when you've had more
experience ..."
"You aren't so much older than me," Kim said.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "I've had a lot of training. And I started young." My own ability with
magic, far in excess of my years and education, wasn't a subject I wanted to explore. So I tried to shift
the direction of the conversation. "How is this fall's fundraiser going?"
"It's not," she said. She leaned back wearily in her seat. "I'm tired of trying to pry money out of people to
save the planet they're poisoning or the animals they're killing. I'm tired of writing letters and doing
marches for causes no one believes in anymore." She rubbed at her eyes. "I'm just tired."
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"Look, Kim. Try to get some rest. And please, please don't play with that circle. Promise me."
She tossed her napkin down, left a few bills on the table, and stood up. "Enjoy your meal, Harry," she
said. "And thanks for nothing."
I stood up as well. "Kim," I said. "Wait a minute."
But she ignored me. She stalked off toward the door, her skirt swaying along with her long hair. She cut
an impressive, statuesque figure. I could feel the anger bubbling off her. One of the ceiling fans shuddered
and let out a puff of smoke as she walked under it, then whirled down to a halt. She raced up the short
flight of stairs and exited the bar, banging the door shut behind her. People watched her leave, then
glanced back to me, speculation on their faces.
I sat back down, frustrated. Dammit. Kim was one of several people I had coached through the difficult
period surrounding the discovery of their innate magical talents. It made me feel like crap to withhold
information from her, but she had been playing with fire. I couldn't let her do that. It was my responsibility
to help protect her from such things, until she knew enough to realize how dangerous they were.
To say nothing of what the White Council would think of a nonwizard toying with major summoning
circles. The White Council didn't take chances with things like that. They just acted, decisively, and they
weren't always particular about people's lives and safety when they did it.
I had done the right thing. Keeping that kind of information out of Kim's hands had been the right
decision. I had been protecting her from danger she didn't, couldn't, fully appreciate.
I had done the right thing-even if she had trusted me to provide answers for her, as I had in the past,
when teaching her to contain and control her modest magical talents. Even if she had trusted me to show
her the answers she needed, to be her guide through the darkness.
I'd done the right thing.
Dammit.
My stomach was soured. I didn't want any more of Mac's delicious meal, steak or no steak. I didn't feel
like I'd earned it.
I was sipping ale and thinking dark thoughts when the door opened again. I didn't look up, occupied as I
was with brooding, a famous pastime of wizards everywhere. And then a shadow fell over me.
"Sitting here pouting," Murphy said. She bent over and absently picked up the wadded scrap of paper I
had tossed aside earlier, tucking it tidily into her coat pocket rather than letting it lie about as clutter on
the floor. "That's not much like you, Harry."
I glanced up at Murphy. I didn't have far to look. Karrin Murphy wasn't much more than five feet tall.
She'd gotten her golden hair cut, from shoulder length to something far shorter, and a little longer in front
than in back. It was a punky sort of look, and very appealing with her blue eyes and upturned nose. She
was dressed for the weather in what must have been her at-home clothes: dark jeans, a flannel shirt,
hiking boots, and a heavy woodsman's jacket. She was wearing her badge on her belt.
Murphy was extremely cute, for a grown adult who also held a black belt in aikido, and had several
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marksmanship awards from Chicago PD. She was a real professional, one who had fought and clawed
her way up the ranks to become full lieutenant. She'd made enemies along the way, and one of them had
seen to it that she was put in charge of Special Investigations soon after.
"Hello there, Murphy," I told her. I took a swig of ale and said, "Long time, no see." I tried to keep my
voice even, but I'm pretty sure she heard the anger in it.
"Look Harry-"
"Did you read the editorial in the Tribune ? The one criticizing you for wasting the city's money hiring a
'charlatan psychic named Harry Dresden'? I guess you must have, since I haven't heard from you since it
came out."
She rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "I don't have time for this."
I ignored her. "Not that I blame you. I mean, not many of the good taxpayers of Chicago believe in
magic, or wizards. Of course, not many of them have seen what you and I have. You know. When we
worked together. Or when I was saving your life."
Her eyes tightened at the edges. "I need you. We've got a situation."
"You need me? We haven't talked for more than a month, and you need me all of a sudden? I've got an
office and a telephone and everything, Lieutenant. You don't need to track me down here while I'm
having dinner."
"I'll tell the killer to be sure to operate during business hours next time," Murphy said. "But I need you to
help me find him."
I straightened in my chair, frowning. "There's been a murder? Something in my field?"
Murphy flashed a hard smile at me. "I hope you didn't have anything more important to do."
I felt my jaw grow tense. "No. I'm ready." I stood up.
"Well then," she said, turning and walking away. "Shall we go?"


Chapter 2

Murphy declined to ride in the Blue Beetle, my old Volkswagen bug.
The Beetle wasn't really blue, not anymore. One of the doors had been replaced with a green duplicate,
the other one with white, when something with claws had shredded the originals. The hood had been
slagged by fire, and my mechanic, Mike, had replaced it with the hood from a red vehicle. The important
thing is that the Beetle runs, even if it doesn't do it very fast, and I'm comfortable with the car. Mike has
declared that the VW bug is the easiest car in the world to repair, and so that's what I drive. He keeps it
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running eight or nine days in ten. That's phenomenal.
Technology tends to foul up around wizards-flip on a light switch, and it'll be the time the bulb burns out.
Drive past a streetlight, and it'll pick just then to flicker and die. Whatever can go wrong will, automobiles
included.
I didn't think it made much sense for Murphy to risk her vehicle when she could have taken mine, but
she said she'd take her chances.
She didn't speak as she drove her Saturn down the JFK, out toward Rosemont. I watched her,
uncomfortable, as we went. She was in a hurry, taking a few too many chances cutting in and out of
traffic, and I put on my seat belt. At least we weren't on her motorcycle.
"Murph," I asked her, "where's the fire?"
She glanced aside at me. "I want you out there before some other people show up."
"Press?" I couldn't quite keep a nasty slur out of the word.
She shrugged. "Whoever."
I frowned at her, but she didn't say anything else-which seemed typical. Murphy didn't speak much to
me anymore. We rode the rest of the way in silence, exited the JFK, and pulled into the parking lot of a
half-completed little strip mall. We got out of the car.
A jet came in, low, heading for O'Hare International Airport, only a few miles to the west. I squinted at it
for a moment, and then frowned at Murphy as a uniformed officer led us toward a building surrounded
by police tape. There was an abundance of light, the moon overhead bright silver and almost a
completely round circle. I cast an enormous, gangly shadow as I walked, my duster flapping around my
legs. It towered beside Murphy's far smaller shadow ahead of me.
"Murphy?" I said, "Aren't we outside Chicago city limits?"
"Yeah," Murphy said shortly.
"Uh. Then aren't we out of your jurisdiction, technically?"
"People need help wherever they can get it, Dresden . And the last several killings happened in Chicago
, so we want to look at this firsthand. I already worked things out with the local force. It's not really an
issue."
"Several killings?" I said. "Several? As in more than one? Murphy, slow down."
But she didn't. Instead, she led me into a roomy building that proved to be under construction, though all
the exterior work was finished. Some of the windows were still covered with board. I didn't see the sign
on the building's front doors until I got close.
"The Varsity?" I said, reading it. "I thought Marcone burned it down last spring."
"Mmm-hmm," Murphy said, glancing at me over her shoulder. "Relocated and rebuilding."
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Chicago 's resident crime lord, Gentleman Johnny Marcone, was the robber baron of the mean streets.
He kept all the rough business inside the city proper, leaving his legitimate interests out in the suburbs, like
here in Rosemont. Last spring, when I had confronted him in his club, a previous incarnation of the
Varsity, about a deadly new drug on the streets, the place had wound up burning to the ground.
After the whole mess was over, word got out that the drug dealer I'd taken out had been Marcone's
enemy, and that I had nuked him at the crime lord's request. I hadn't refuted the rumor. It was easier to
let people talk than to force Marcone to make an issue of things.
Inside the building, the floors were rough, unfinished. Someone had turned on a couple of halogen work
lights, and they cast the interior into brilliant, clear white light. There was drywall dust everywhere. There
were a few card tables set up, with workmen's tools left out on them in places. Plastic buckets of paint,
tarps, and a sack of new paintbrushes waited for use off to one side. I didn't notice the blood until
Murphy put her arm out in front of me to keep me from walking into it.
"Wake up, Dresden ," she said. Her voice was grim.
I stopped, and looked down. Blood. A lot of blood. It began near my feet, where a long splatter had
reached out like an arm from a drowning man, staining the dusty floor with scarlet. My eyes followed the
path of the long bloodstain back to a pool, maybe an eighth of an inch deep, surrounding a mound of
ripped cloth and torn meat that must have been the corpse.
My stomach quailed, threatening to eject the bites of steak I'd taken earlier that evening, but I forced it
down. I walked in a circle around the body, keeping my distance. The corpse was, I guessed, that of a
male in his thirties. He had been a large man, with a short, spiky haircut. He had fallen onto his side,
facing away from me, his arms curled up toward his head, his legs up toward his vitals. A weapon, a little
automatic pistol, lay seven or eight feet away, uselessly out of the victim's reach.
I walked around the corpse until I could see the face.
Whatever had killed him, it hadn't been human. His face was gone, simply torn away. Something had
ripped his lips off. I could see his bloodstained teeth. His nose had been torn all the way up one side, and
part of it dangled toward the floor. His head was misshapen, as though some enormous pressure had
been put upon his temples, warping his skull in.
His eyes were gone. Torn out of his head. Bitten out. There were the ragged slash marks of fangs all
around the edges of the sockets.
I closed my eyes, tightly. I took a deep breath. Another. A third. That didn't help. The body stank, a
sickly sewer-smell that rose up from the torn innards. My stomach wanted to roll up my throat, out my
mouth, and onto the floor.
I could remember the other details, even with my eyes closed, and catalogued them neatly for later
reference. The victim's jacket and shirt had been torn to bloody ribbons along his forearms, in defensive
wounds. His hands and arms were a mass of pulped, ripped meat, the palms and fingers slashed to
ragged lumps. The curl of his body hid his abdomen from me, but that was where the blood was pooling
from, spreading out like ink from a spilled bottle. The stench only confirmed that he had been
eviscerated.
I turned away from the corpse and opened my eyes, staring down at the floor.
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"Harry?" Murphy said, from the far side of the body. The note of hardness that had been in her voice all
evening was absent. She hadn't moved while I had done my cursory examination.
"I recognize him," I said. "At least, I think I do. You'll need to check dental records or something, to be
sure."
I could hear her frown in her words. "Yeah? Who was he?"
"I don't know his name. I always called him Spike. For the haircut. He was one of Johnny Marcone's
bodyguards."
Murphy was quiet for a moment, then said, succinctly, "Shit."
"What, Murph?" I looked back at her, without looking down at Spike's mangled remains.
Murphy's face was set in concern, for me, her blue eyes gentle. I saw her wipe the expression away, as
quickly as a shadow crosses the floor, a smoothing of lines that left her features neutral. I guess she hadn't
expected me to turn to her. "Take a look around a little more," she said. "Then we'll talk."
"What am I looking for?" I asked her.
"You'll know it," she said. Then added, in a whisper that I think she didn't intend me to hear, "I hope."
I turned back to my work, and looked around the room. Off to one side, one of the windows was
broken. Near it was a table, lying askew on the floor, its legs warped and bent. I walked over to it.
Broken glass littered the ground around the collapsed table. Since the glass was on the inside of the
building, something must have come in through the window. There was blood on several of the broken
pieces of glass. I picked up one of the larger ones and frowned at it. The blood was dark red, and not
yet wholly dried. I took a white handkerchief from my pocket, folded the shard of glass into it, and then
slipped it into the pocket of my duster.
I rose and paced over the floor, my eyes downcast, studying the dust. In one spot, it was rubbed almost
clean off the floor, as though a struggle had taken place there without blood being spilled. In another
spot, where the halogen lamps didn't quite reach, there was a pool of silver moonlight below a window. I
knelt down beside it.
In the center of the pool was a paw print, in the dust, a paw print almost as big as my spread hand.
Canine. Dots at the tips of the paw spoke of heavy nails, almost claws.
I looked up through the window at the rounded silver shape of the almost-full moon.
"Oh, hell," I breathed. "Oh, hell."
Murphy came toward me and watched me silently for a moment, waiting. I licked my lips, stood up, and
turned to her. "You've got problems."
"No kidding. Talk to me, Dresden ."
I nodded, then pointed at the window. "The attacker probably came in there. He went after the victim,
attacked him, got the gun away from him, and killed him. It's the attacker's blood on the window. They
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struggled a while, over there by that clean spot, maybe, and Spike made a break for the door. He didn't
make it there. He got torn to pieces first."
I turned toward Murphy, looking down at her solemnly. "You've had other murders happen in the same
way. Probably about four weeks ago, when the moon was last full. Those were the other killings you
were talking about."
Murphy glanced at my face for a moment, keeping her eyes off mine, and nodded her head. "Yeah. Four
weeks ago, almost exactly. But no one else picked up the full moon angle. Just me."
"Uh-huh. Then you should see this, too," I said. I led her over to the window and showed her the paw
print in the dust beneath it. She regarded it in silence.
"Harry," she said after a minute. "Are there such things as werewolves?" She brushed a strand of hair
back from her cheek, a small and oddly vulnerable gesture. She folded her arms over her stomach, as
though she were cold.
I nodded. "Yeah. Not like you see in the movies, but yeah. I figure that's what you got going here."
She drew in a deep breath. "All right, then. All right. What can you tell me? What do I need to know?"
I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn't get a chance to say anything. There was a brief bout of
shouting outside, and then the front doors of the building banged open. Murphy tensed, and I saw her
mouth set in a hard little line. Her back straightened, and she stopped hugging herself, putting her fists on
her hips.
"Godammit," she said. "How do those assholes get everywhere so fast?"
I stepped forward, so that I could see. A quartet of people in suits came through the door, fanned out in
an almost military diamond formation. The man in front was not quite as tall as me, but still very tall, six
feet and three or four inches. His hair was jet black, as were his eyebrows, while his eyes were a shade
of grey as pale as wood smoke. His dark blue suit fit him well, and I had the impression that it concealed
an athletic build, in spite of the fact that he had obviously seen more than four decades. A blue
identification badge reading "FBI" in huge, obnoxious letters dangled from one lapel.
"Secure the scene," he said, his voice deep, tense. "Lieutenant Murphy, what the hell are you doing on a
crime scene out of your jurisdiction?"
"Nice to see you, too, Agent Denton," Murphy said in a flat tone. "You get around fast."
"I told you that you weren't welcome on this investigation," Denton said, his words crisp. His grey eyes
flashed, and I saw a vein bulge rhythmically on his forehead. His gaze shifted to me. "Who is this?"
"Har-" I started to say, but Murphy's snort cut over my words.
"No one," she said. She flashed me a look that said, very clearly, to shut up. That annoyed the hell out of
me.
"Harry Dresden," I said, making the words loud and clear. Murphy and I exchanged a glare.
"Ah," Denton said. "The charlatan. I've read about you in the Tribune. " His clear, tense gaze returned to
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