"Certainly."
Helen left. Healthy brunette Bonnie, in her oh-so-fetching exercise outfit, bounced in with a manila folder, gave me a Colgate smile, and departed again. Marcone opened the folder, withdrew a stack of papers, and started flicking through them. He got to the last page, turned it around, slid it across the desk, and produced a pen from his pocket. "Here is the contract you faxed me. Sign here, please."
I walked over to the desk, took the entire stack, and started reading it from page one. You never sign a contract you haven't read, even if you aren't a wizard. If you are one, it's even more important than that. People joke about signing away their soul or their firstborn. In my world, it's possible.
Marcone seemed to accept that. He made a steeple of his fingers and waited with the relaxed patience of a well-fed cat.
The contract was the standard one for approving a new signatory of the Accords, and though he'd had it retyped, Marcone hadn't changed a word. Probably. I kept reading. "So you suggested the name Demeter for Helen?" I asked as I read.
Marcone's expression never changed. "Yes."
"How's Persephone?"
He stared at me.
"Persephone," I said. "Demeter's daughter. She was carried away by the Lord of the Underworld."
Marcone's stare became cold.
"He kept her there in Hades, but Demeter froze the whole world until the other gods convinced him to return Persephone to her mother." I turned a page. "The girl. The one in the coma, who you're keeping in a hospital somewhere, and visiting every week. That's Helen's daughter, isn't it. The one who got caught in the cross fire of one of your shoot-outs."
Marcone didn't move.
"Newspaper file on it said she was killed," I said.
I read several more pages before Marcone answered. "Tony Vargassi, my predecessor, I suppose, had a son. Marco. Marco decided that I had become a threat to his standing in the organization. He was the shooter."
"But the girl," I said, "didn't die."
Marcone shook his head. "It put Vargassi in an awkward position. If the girl recovered, she might identify his son as the shooter, and no jury in the world would fail to send a thug to jail who'd shot a pretty little girl. But if the girl died, and it came back on Marco, he'd be looking at a murder charge."
"And someone who murders little girls gets the needle in Illinois," I said.
"Exactly. There was a great deal of corruption at the time - "
I snorted.
Marcone's little smile returned for a moment. "Pardon me. Say instead that the Vargassis exerted their influence on official matters with a heavy hand. Vargassi had the little girl declared dead. He convinced the medical examiner to sign false paperwork, and he hid the girl away in another hospital."
I grunted. "If Marco got identified as the shooter and put up for trial, Vargassi could produce the little girl. Look, she's not dead. Mistrial."
"One possibility," Marcone replied. "And if things went quietly for a while, he could simply delete her records."
"And her," I said.
"Yes."
"Whatever happened to old Tony Vargassi?" I asked.
I saw a flash of Marcone's teeth. "His whereabouts are unknown. As are Marco's."
"When did you find out about the girl?"
"Two years later," he said. "Everything was set up through a dummy corporation's trust fund. She could have just..." He looked away from me. "Just lain there. Indefinitely. No one would have known who she was. Known her name."
"Does Helen know?" I asked him.
He shook his head. He was quiet for a moment more. "I can't return Persephone from Hades. The child's death almost destroyed Helen - and her world is still frozen. If she knew her daughter was... trapped... just lying there in a half-life..." He shook his head. "It would shatter her world, Dresden. And I shouldn't wish that."
"I've noticed," I said quietly, "that most of the young ladies working here would be about the same age as her daughter."
"Yes," Marcone said.
"That isn't exactly a healthy recovery."
"No," Marcone said. "But it's what she has."
I thought about it while I kept reading. Maybe Helen deserved to know about her daughter. Hell, she probably did. But whatever else Marcone was, he was no fool. If he thought news of her daughter's fate might shatter Helen, he was probably right. Sure, she should know. But did I have the right to make that decision?
Probably not - even if Marcone wouldn't do his best to have me killed if I tried. Hell, I probably had less right to decide than Marcone. He had way more invested in the girl and her fate than I did.
Because that was the secret I'd seen in a soulgaze with Gentleman Johnnie Marcone, years ago. The secret that gave him the strength and the will to rule the mean streets.
He felt responsible for the little girl who'd taken a bullet meant for him.
He'd taken over Chicago crime with ruthless efficiency, always cutting down on the violence. A couple of people had been hurt in gang-related crimes. The gangsters responsible hadn't been heard from again. I'd always assumed it was because Marcone had decided to manipulate matters, to make himself appear to be a preferable alternative to more careless criminals who might take his place if the cops took him down.
I'd never even considered the idea that he might actually give a crap about innocents being harmed.
Granted, that didn't change anything. He still ran a business that killed far more people than any amount of collateral damage. He was still a criminal. Still a bad guy.
But...
He was the devil I knew. And he probably could have been worse.
I got to the last page of the contract and found spaces for three signatures. Two of them were already filled.
"Donar Vadderung?" I asked Marcone.
"Current CEO of Monoc Securities," Marcone replied. "Oslo."
"And Lara Raith," I murmured.
"Signing on behalf of her father, the White King, who is obviously in charge of the White Court." There was a trace of irony in Marcone's voice. He hadn't been fooled by the puppet show.
I looked at the third open line.
Then I signed it, and left without another word.
It isn't a perfect world. I'm doing the best I can.
"Hmmmm." said Bob the Skull, peering at my left hand. "It looks like..."
I was sitting in my lab, my hand spread open on the table, white the skull examined my palm.
I'd worn a mark there for years - an unblemished patch of skin amidst all the burn scars, in the perfect shape of the angelic sigil that was Lasciel's name.