Ficathon entry!
Mar. 30th, 2010 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamwafflesThis is my fullfillment of the wonderful ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sabinelagrande 's Ficathon Walks Into a Bar challenge!
My prompt: Harry Dresden walks into a bar and meets... Kate Moreau!
Title: Once There Was a Wizard
Word Count: 2035
Rating: PG
Fandoms: Dresden Files (the books) and White Collar
Warnings/Spoilers: None that I'm aware of for Dresden Files; one extremely vague one for the first season finale of White Collar.
Summary: Harry Dresden, private investigator and very homesick wizard, is tracking down a cursed necklace in New York, when the confidence artist he's looking for walks right into the bar he's in...
I made myself check the clock behind the bar again before letting my head thunk back down onto the bar.
“I hate New York,” I muttered to the scratched, dingy wood, which on closer inspection was, unfortunately for my forehead, sticker than I’d originally thought. Reluctantly, I pulled myself to a slightly more upright position, wiping surreptitiously at my brow as I fruitlessly scanned the room again.
Five and a half hours.
Five and a half hours I’d been waiting in this damn bar, smack in the middle of Queens, New York City, New York, scanning every patron who came in or out of the place, and I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of whoever was carrying the cursed necklace I was supposed to find.
And I couldn’t even order anything alcoholic. Not while I was on stakeout.
For something to do with my hands, I pulled the little business card my client had given me out of my pocket and reread the note on the back for the umpteenth time.
The necklace will come to the Queen’s bar between sunset and sunrise.
It’s widely known, at least among certain circles, that the temporally gifted have a strict code they’re supposed to follow so they don’t tear a hole in the fabric of space-time. Personally, I’m convinced there’s also a second code they all follow to confuse us temporally-ordinary schmucks as much as is possible.
Particularly when they’re also members of the Faerie Court.
This was way, way more effort than I was used to expending when searching for lost objects.
It hadn’t taken all that long to figure out that the bar I was looking for was in the New York Queens, luckily enough, though there had been an odd few hours when I’d been convinced the only way to find the necklace was to frequent the bars of drag queens. It didn’t help that Bob, my assistant, had delightedly regaled me with a list of every drag bar in Chicago, complete with lewd commentary.
Anyway, almost a week ago, I’d packed up and taken the train from Chicago to New York City, where I’d been staying in a poky little motel ever since. It had taken me maybe half an hour on day one to locate the right bar, but I’d decided at some point during the last few hours of day four if the necklace didn’t show in the next two days, I was gone. Forget my client. I wanted to go home.
My rather miserable train of thought was interrupted when the door opened and every hair on my body tried to stand up. I hastily clamped down on my power, but the television that had been gamely stuttering along in my presence for the last few hours at the other end of the bar died with a sad little whistling noise.
Yep. That would be the necklace. I breathed deeply, trying to ignore the feeling of utter wrongness it radiated, and focused instead on the person who had just walked in.
The girl carrying it had long dark hair and wide eyes. I caught her gaze across the room and nodded towards the barstool, taking a gamble that she was here to meet a contact, but didn’t yet know what the contact might look like.
She hesitated for a moment, then firmed her shoulders and crossed the bar, taking the stool next to me. I kept my eyes on her face without making eye contact-easier than it sounds, particularly after a good few decades of practice, and extended a hand. “Harry Dresden. I’m told you’re carrying something I want.”
She shook my hand with a confidence artist’s grip, firm but relaxed, and utterly honest if you didn’t know what the calluses felt like. “Call me Kate,” she said, deliberately making fearless eye contact that I kept from becoming a soulgaze by turning to flag down the bartender.
Interesting. She clearly had no idea I was a wizard, and probably had even less idea of what she was carrying.
I wondered if Kate was her real name.
“Well, Kate,” I said, after she’d received her scotch and I’d rewarded myself for hours of waiting by ordering an ale, “I’m here about the necklace.”
Probably she was expecting me to dance around the topic for a while before getting down to negotiations, if the brief flicker of her eyebrows was any clue, but damn it, I was tired. Almost six hours of staking out a bar for the fourth night in a row can do that to a man.
Not to mention the mere presence of the thing, wherever it was-I couldn’t quite locate it, though it was definitely on her-was making my skin do its level best to crawl off my body.
“A necklace, you say,” Kate repeated, taking a small sip of scotch and setting it down on the bar. “I know a little about jewelry. What exactly are you looking for?”
“Oh, for-“ I muttered, and sighed heavily, taking a long gulp of ale before looking back up at her. “Look, you seem to be under a misapprehension,” I continued, “As I said, my name is Harry Dresden. I’m a private investigator, and that necklace is an old family heirloom of my client’s. She is already very distressed that it has passed out of the family hands.”
Kate was very good, I noted; her expression hardly flickered. “I’m very sorry for your client, but I don’t believe I have what you’re looking for,” she said, sliding a little forward on the barstool as if to stand up.
Crap.
“Kate,” I said, shifting on my own stool and looming, ever so slightly, until she settled back a little, “I don’t know where you got it, but you should know that the necklace is cursed. If you carry it for much longer, the curse is going to catch up with you.”
“Cursed?” replied Kate, with a laugh, tossing her hair over one shoulder and relaxing again on her stool. Clearly, she thought I was a nut. I’m used to it. “Mr. Dresden, there’s no such thing.”
Well, I hadn’t really expected that line of reasoning to work on her right away, but as I wasn’t in my hometown, where the Chicago PD, however reluctantly, would still back me up in legal matters, the ‘stolen property’ argument I would usually fall back on about now wouldn’t carry much weight. I considered Kate’s face for a moment, and reached into one pocket.
I saw her tense almost imperceptibly, but she relaxed again when all that left my pocket was a business card.
“Private investigator’s just how I pay the bills,” I said conversationally, as I handed it to her, “Really, I’m a wizard. I know what I’m talking about. Please give me the necklace.”
Kate took the card and studied it, raising her eyebrows in what was probably disbelief.
“I have a friend who’d love you,” she muttered, making the card vanish somewhere on her person a lot more smoothly than I could have done, and turning back to her scotch. “Thank you for speaking to me, Mr. Dresden, but I don’t think there’s anything I can do for you.”
I really, really hadn’t wanted to do this, but the continuous presence of the damned necklace was putting my back up, and all I wanted to do was go home.
As she set her scotch down again, I waved a hand vaguely, focused my will, and muttered, “Flicum bicis.” The remaining alcohol in the glass burst into flame, and Kate nearly fell off the stool in surprise. She whipped around to face me, a deep scowl marring her face.
“I do not appreciate,” she began, but whatever the rest of her sentence, it was utterly lost when the soulgaze began.
A soulgaze happens when a wizard makes full eye contact for the first time with another human being. They can take many forms; I know one wizard who hears the gaze as musical themes, and another who sees a person’s life unfold like a pop-up book. Inevitably, the one I see is probably one of the most confusing forms possible for it to take; I see a person in terms of metaphor and imagery, and although I’ve never forgotten a single person I’ve ‘gazed, fully understanding what I’ve seen is often rather beyond me.
Behind Kate’s eyes, she stood before a mirror, practicing gestures and postures. Both her clothing and the clothing of her mirror image changed from moment to moment. Around the mirror were more mirrors, a differently dressed woman reflected in each one, and I realized after a few seconds that I had no idea which one was the real Kate.
For half a heartbeat, I got the impression that she didn’t know either.
I blinked, and the moment was gone. Kate was staring at me openmouthed, gripping the bar with one white-knuckled hand.
I raised my own hand to flag down the bartender, sort of regretting setting fire to her drink, though her expression had been extremely funny. “Same again for her,” I told him, giving Kate a little time to pull herself under control.
“You all right?” I asked, modulating my voice as she took the scotch and drained the glass in one gulp, coughing a little when she set it down.
“Uh,” she said, her voice shaky and a little rough, “I…think so.” She looked at me sidelong, her eyes wide and wary.
“It won’t happen again,” I said, taking another sip of my ale, “I’m sorry about that, but I needed to convince you, and party tricks weren’t going to do it.”
Kate stared into her empty glass, but shook her head when I started to beckon the bartender over a third time.
“Cursed, you say?” she said, her voice carefully neutral.
I sat back as best I could on the stool. “In 1682, a French noblewoman tried and failed to capture the love of King Louis XIV. Infuriated by her failure, she made a deal with a lady of the Winter Court of Faerie, and presented a cursed necklace to the Sun King’s wife. The queen died a year later, and the noblewoman married Louis the same year.”
Kate turned to stare at me. “Are you talking about Madame de Maintenon?” she said in disbelief, and my own eyebrows went up; I hadn’t expected a confidence artist to be familiar with Renaissance France.
“The very same,” I said, “Anyway, the Fae in question would like it back. The curse is a very nasty one, and she didn’t give me any clear idea how long the necklace must be in someone’s possession before it takes hold-“
Almost before I’d finished speaking, Kate had opened her coat, flicked open part of the lining with a practiced motion, drew out a small packet of silk, and dropped it on the bar. I twitched a little, then took a pencil out of my pocket and poked at the wrapping until a bit of the necklace was exposed. I put my left hand just over it, careful not to touch it, and concentrated for a second, just to make absolutely sure.
“That’s the one,” I said, withdrawing my hand hastily, and pulling a square of cloth from my pocket. As Kate watched, I dropped it over the silk packet, pulled it off the bar, and tied the corners sloppily together without ever touching it. As soon as I had it properly shielded, I relaxed.
“Thank you,” I said, looking up at her, and concentrating carefully. “I don’t think it’s left a mark on you. I can check further if you like-“
Just then, Kate glanced at the clock behind the bar, and shook her head. “Thank you, but not tonight,” she said, standing up and leaving a bill on the bar. I followed to a standing position automatically. “Would another time work for you?” I asked, but she seemed to be in a hurry, buttoning her coat with some haste.
“No, no,” she said, “I didn’t realize-I’m sorry, I have to see a man about a plane.”
I picked up her bag from where she’d set it neatly at the foot of the stool and handed it to her. Kate took it, and nodded to me. “Thank you,” she said, pausing just long enough to smile at me, “I-don’t know if I believe you, but if you’re right…my life’s been interesting enough lately. I don’t need a curse on top of it.”
“Good luck to you, Kate,” I said, nodding politely, and she left the bar almost at a run.
I sat back down and took another long pull of my ale. The evil little packet in my coat pocket was successfully shielded, I’d finished my commission, I’d saved the girl, my drink was still cold, and tomorrow, I would finally be able to go home.
Life was good.
sabinelagrande 's Ficathon Walks Into a Bar challenge!My prompt: Harry Dresden walks into a bar and meets... Kate Moreau!
Title: Once There Was a Wizard
Word Count: 2035
Rating: PG
Fandoms: Dresden Files (the books) and White Collar
Warnings/Spoilers: None that I'm aware of for Dresden Files; one extremely vague one for the first season finale of White Collar.
Summary: Harry Dresden, private investigator and very homesick wizard, is tracking down a cursed necklace in New York, when the confidence artist he's looking for walks right into the bar he's in...
I made myself check the clock behind the bar again before letting my head thunk back down onto the bar.
“I hate New York,” I muttered to the scratched, dingy wood, which on closer inspection was, unfortunately for my forehead, sticker than I’d originally thought. Reluctantly, I pulled myself to a slightly more upright position, wiping surreptitiously at my brow as I fruitlessly scanned the room again.
Five and a half hours.
Five and a half hours I’d been waiting in this damn bar, smack in the middle of Queens, New York City, New York, scanning every patron who came in or out of the place, and I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of whoever was carrying the cursed necklace I was supposed to find.
And I couldn’t even order anything alcoholic. Not while I was on stakeout.
For something to do with my hands, I pulled the little business card my client had given me out of my pocket and reread the note on the back for the umpteenth time.
The necklace will come to the Queen’s bar between sunset and sunrise.
It’s widely known, at least among certain circles, that the temporally gifted have a strict code they’re supposed to follow so they don’t tear a hole in the fabric of space-time. Personally, I’m convinced there’s also a second code they all follow to confuse us temporally-ordinary schmucks as much as is possible.
Particularly when they’re also members of the Faerie Court.
This was way, way more effort than I was used to expending when searching for lost objects.
It hadn’t taken all that long to figure out that the bar I was looking for was in the New York Queens, luckily enough, though there had been an odd few hours when I’d been convinced the only way to find the necklace was to frequent the bars of drag queens. It didn’t help that Bob, my assistant, had delightedly regaled me with a list of every drag bar in Chicago, complete with lewd commentary.
Anyway, almost a week ago, I’d packed up and taken the train from Chicago to New York City, where I’d been staying in a poky little motel ever since. It had taken me maybe half an hour on day one to locate the right bar, but I’d decided at some point during the last few hours of day four if the necklace didn’t show in the next two days, I was gone. Forget my client. I wanted to go home.
My rather miserable train of thought was interrupted when the door opened and every hair on my body tried to stand up. I hastily clamped down on my power, but the television that had been gamely stuttering along in my presence for the last few hours at the other end of the bar died with a sad little whistling noise.
Yep. That would be the necklace. I breathed deeply, trying to ignore the feeling of utter wrongness it radiated, and focused instead on the person who had just walked in.
The girl carrying it had long dark hair and wide eyes. I caught her gaze across the room and nodded towards the barstool, taking a gamble that she was here to meet a contact, but didn’t yet know what the contact might look like.
She hesitated for a moment, then firmed her shoulders and crossed the bar, taking the stool next to me. I kept my eyes on her face without making eye contact-easier than it sounds, particularly after a good few decades of practice, and extended a hand. “Harry Dresden. I’m told you’re carrying something I want.”
She shook my hand with a confidence artist’s grip, firm but relaxed, and utterly honest if you didn’t know what the calluses felt like. “Call me Kate,” she said, deliberately making fearless eye contact that I kept from becoming a soulgaze by turning to flag down the bartender.
Interesting. She clearly had no idea I was a wizard, and probably had even less idea of what she was carrying.
I wondered if Kate was her real name.
“Well, Kate,” I said, after she’d received her scotch and I’d rewarded myself for hours of waiting by ordering an ale, “I’m here about the necklace.”
Probably she was expecting me to dance around the topic for a while before getting down to negotiations, if the brief flicker of her eyebrows was any clue, but damn it, I was tired. Almost six hours of staking out a bar for the fourth night in a row can do that to a man.
Not to mention the mere presence of the thing, wherever it was-I couldn’t quite locate it, though it was definitely on her-was making my skin do its level best to crawl off my body.
“A necklace, you say,” Kate repeated, taking a small sip of scotch and setting it down on the bar. “I know a little about jewelry. What exactly are you looking for?”
“Oh, for-“ I muttered, and sighed heavily, taking a long gulp of ale before looking back up at her. “Look, you seem to be under a misapprehension,” I continued, “As I said, my name is Harry Dresden. I’m a private investigator, and that necklace is an old family heirloom of my client’s. She is already very distressed that it has passed out of the family hands.”
Kate was very good, I noted; her expression hardly flickered. “I’m very sorry for your client, but I don’t believe I have what you’re looking for,” she said, sliding a little forward on the barstool as if to stand up.
Crap.
“Kate,” I said, shifting on my own stool and looming, ever so slightly, until she settled back a little, “I don’t know where you got it, but you should know that the necklace is cursed. If you carry it for much longer, the curse is going to catch up with you.”
“Cursed?” replied Kate, with a laugh, tossing her hair over one shoulder and relaxing again on her stool. Clearly, she thought I was a nut. I’m used to it. “Mr. Dresden, there’s no such thing.”
Well, I hadn’t really expected that line of reasoning to work on her right away, but as I wasn’t in my hometown, where the Chicago PD, however reluctantly, would still back me up in legal matters, the ‘stolen property’ argument I would usually fall back on about now wouldn’t carry much weight. I considered Kate’s face for a moment, and reached into one pocket.
I saw her tense almost imperceptibly, but she relaxed again when all that left my pocket was a business card.
“Private investigator’s just how I pay the bills,” I said conversationally, as I handed it to her, “Really, I’m a wizard. I know what I’m talking about. Please give me the necklace.”
Kate took the card and studied it, raising her eyebrows in what was probably disbelief.
“I have a friend who’d love you,” she muttered, making the card vanish somewhere on her person a lot more smoothly than I could have done, and turning back to her scotch. “Thank you for speaking to me, Mr. Dresden, but I don’t think there’s anything I can do for you.”
I really, really hadn’t wanted to do this, but the continuous presence of the damned necklace was putting my back up, and all I wanted to do was go home.
As she set her scotch down again, I waved a hand vaguely, focused my will, and muttered, “Flicum bicis.” The remaining alcohol in the glass burst into flame, and Kate nearly fell off the stool in surprise. She whipped around to face me, a deep scowl marring her face.
“I do not appreciate,” she began, but whatever the rest of her sentence, it was utterly lost when the soulgaze began.
A soulgaze happens when a wizard makes full eye contact for the first time with another human being. They can take many forms; I know one wizard who hears the gaze as musical themes, and another who sees a person’s life unfold like a pop-up book. Inevitably, the one I see is probably one of the most confusing forms possible for it to take; I see a person in terms of metaphor and imagery, and although I’ve never forgotten a single person I’ve ‘gazed, fully understanding what I’ve seen is often rather beyond me.
Behind Kate’s eyes, she stood before a mirror, practicing gestures and postures. Both her clothing and the clothing of her mirror image changed from moment to moment. Around the mirror were more mirrors, a differently dressed woman reflected in each one, and I realized after a few seconds that I had no idea which one was the real Kate.
For half a heartbeat, I got the impression that she didn’t know either.
I blinked, and the moment was gone. Kate was staring at me openmouthed, gripping the bar with one white-knuckled hand.
I raised my own hand to flag down the bartender, sort of regretting setting fire to her drink, though her expression had been extremely funny. “Same again for her,” I told him, giving Kate a little time to pull herself under control.
“You all right?” I asked, modulating my voice as she took the scotch and drained the glass in one gulp, coughing a little when she set it down.
“Uh,” she said, her voice shaky and a little rough, “I…think so.” She looked at me sidelong, her eyes wide and wary.
“It won’t happen again,” I said, taking another sip of my ale, “I’m sorry about that, but I needed to convince you, and party tricks weren’t going to do it.”
Kate stared into her empty glass, but shook her head when I started to beckon the bartender over a third time.
“Cursed, you say?” she said, her voice carefully neutral.
I sat back as best I could on the stool. “In 1682, a French noblewoman tried and failed to capture the love of King Louis XIV. Infuriated by her failure, she made a deal with a lady of the Winter Court of Faerie, and presented a cursed necklace to the Sun King’s wife. The queen died a year later, and the noblewoman married Louis the same year.”
Kate turned to stare at me. “Are you talking about Madame de Maintenon?” she said in disbelief, and my own eyebrows went up; I hadn’t expected a confidence artist to be familiar with Renaissance France.
“The very same,” I said, “Anyway, the Fae in question would like it back. The curse is a very nasty one, and she didn’t give me any clear idea how long the necklace must be in someone’s possession before it takes hold-“
Almost before I’d finished speaking, Kate had opened her coat, flicked open part of the lining with a practiced motion, drew out a small packet of silk, and dropped it on the bar. I twitched a little, then took a pencil out of my pocket and poked at the wrapping until a bit of the necklace was exposed. I put my left hand just over it, careful not to touch it, and concentrated for a second, just to make absolutely sure.
“That’s the one,” I said, withdrawing my hand hastily, and pulling a square of cloth from my pocket. As Kate watched, I dropped it over the silk packet, pulled it off the bar, and tied the corners sloppily together without ever touching it. As soon as I had it properly shielded, I relaxed.
“Thank you,” I said, looking up at her, and concentrating carefully. “I don’t think it’s left a mark on you. I can check further if you like-“
Just then, Kate glanced at the clock behind the bar, and shook her head. “Thank you, but not tonight,” she said, standing up and leaving a bill on the bar. I followed to a standing position automatically. “Would another time work for you?” I asked, but she seemed to be in a hurry, buttoning her coat with some haste.
“No, no,” she said, “I didn’t realize-I’m sorry, I have to see a man about a plane.”
I picked up her bag from where she’d set it neatly at the foot of the stool and handed it to her. Kate took it, and nodded to me. “Thank you,” she said, pausing just long enough to smile at me, “I-don’t know if I believe you, but if you’re right…my life’s been interesting enough lately. I don’t need a curse on top of it.”
“Good luck to you, Kate,” I said, nodding politely, and she left the bar almost at a run.
I sat back down and took another long pull of my ale. The evil little packet in my coat pocket was successfully shielded, I’d finished my commission, I’d saved the girl, my drink was still cold, and tomorrow, I would finally be able to go home.
Life was good.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2010-04-01 08:50 am (UTC)May your spring be beautiful and may god set a flower upon your head.
*hugs*
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Date: 2010-04-03 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-08 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-09 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-11 07:30 am (UTC)Thanks for reading it!