“Whatever. But you’re getting into some deep water with some pretty big fish here, and you’re not even getting a paycheck out of it. I mean, it isn’t like this teacher is gonna die or something. Or any of the kids.”
“It’s not about consequences, Bob,” I said. “It’s about principles.”
“First teachers, now principals.”
“Hah,” I said. “The point is, that Tripp Gregory? He doesn’t have the right to do this to Maya. He has the means, and maybe he has the power, but he doesn’t have the right.”
“Seems fishy to me, boss,” Bob chirped. “Pretty much all he needs is the means and the power.”
“I say differently,” I said firmly. “Maya needs help and I’m gonna help her. And if all this is about is power, fine. I’ve got some of that too.” I shook my head. “But it’s got to be about more than that. He shouldn’t be able to do this to nice people—wreck their lives, take their means of livelihood. Doesn’t matter who he is, or what he has piled up on his side. It’s wrong.”
“So?” Bob asked.
“So, when you see something wrong happening, you do whatever you can,” I said.
“Even if you’re probably going to lose?”
“If I don’t do anything, she definitely loses,” I said. “I have to try.”
“Even if it means you gotta go tell Mab about your quest for the windmill, there, Don Quixote?”
I swallowed.
“Maybe it won’t come to that,” I said. “Did Gary get what I needed?”
“Check the wall,” Bob said, and his eyelights flared brilliant white.
I winced and looked at the wall across from the skull. Projected on the castle’s stones was a white square. Then Bob made a chirping sound, and a text message as if from a phone appeared on it:
One more thing, Gary,it read.The Boss says he needs to know how to contact that one lawyer who actually beat Talvi Inverno in court—Bob
These are text messages, dude. You don’t have to sign them. Is everyone there a luddite like Dresden?read a reply message, this one in a green field with white letters.
The next message was a block address.
I leaned forward, peering. “Maximillian Valerious, Esquire,” I muttered. “What a corny name.”
Bob made a choking sound and I scowled back over my shoulder at him. Then I got out a pen and paper and wrote down the address of the man who’d beat a demigod of strife in a court of law.
“Boss,” Bob said, “I thought you couldn’t afford a powerful lawyer.”
“I can’t afford a pricey one,” I said. “But if this guy whipped the nameless son in open battle in a court of law once, maybe he’d be willing to do it again on the cheap.”
Bob snorted. “Sure.”
“Well,” I said. “We’ll see. I’ve got to try something.”
Chapter Eleven
Maximillian Valerious worked out of his home in a residential neighborhood in Park West.
I pulled up to the address, peered at the house, and double checked what I’d written down, because it wasn’t the kind of place where I expected a high-priced lawyer to settle.
Valerious’s place could best have been described as ‘quirky.’ For one, it was painted a bright canary yellow with sky blue trim. There was a large oak tree in the front yard, along with high, wire fencing and a chicken hutch. A dozen chickens in a dozen different shades and patterns of feathers clucked around the yard, under the sleepy watch of a droopy-eyed basset hound. The house didn’t have a driveway, but the car parked out in front of it was an old sedan from somewhere just after World War II, and its personalized license plate read ‘LAWYUR.’
I swung out of the Munstermobile into the sultry summer evening and squinted at the house for a moment. The windows were open, and I could see half a dozen fans whirling in front of them, taking in air on the shaded front side of the house and pushing it out the side still facing the sunset.
I walked up to the gate and squinted at a wood-burned sign that read, ‘No solicitors or proselytizers welcome, business clients and known personal friends only, everyone else is TRESPASSING, please leave packages in the box inside the gate, mind the chickens, beware of dog, this sign does not constitute an invitation of any kind.”
