We know there is some mysterious person in PG at the Splattercon. I know who it was! (Really
)
Missing person quote:
There were a few more screams, the quick, light sound of frightened feet, and I whirled. I saw someone flee the room from the corner of my eye, but I didn’t get much of a look at them.
Some quotes:
about the murk:
“What the hell,” he said, and shook the light a few times. He had his hand on his gun, the restraining strap off, but he hadn’t drawn it yet. Good man. He knew as well as I did that the hotel was going to have far more panicked attendees than potential threats.
“We’ll try mine,” I said, and got the silver pentacle on its chain from around my neck. A gentle whisper and an effort of will and the amulet began to emit a pure, silver-blue light that reached into the darkness around us, burning it away as swiftly as it pressed in, until we could see for maybe fifteen feet around us. Beyond that was just a murky vagueness— not so much a cloud or a mist as a simple lack of light.
about the ward:
struggled to ignore the sounds of frightened people in the dark and focused on my magical senses. I reached out to the cold and the gloom, and found it a vaguely familiar kind of spellworking, though I couldn’t remember precisely where I’d encountered it before.
I nodded once at him, turned, and plunged into the darkness, Rawlins at my back. Screams erupted around us, sometimes accompanied by the sight of stumbling, terrified people. Rawlins nudged them toward the walls, barked at them in a tone of pure paternal authority to stay near them, to move carefully for the exits. The gloom began to press in closer to me, and it became an effort of will to hold up the light in my amulet against it. A few steps more and the air grew even colder. Walking forward became an effort, like wading through waist-deep water. I had to lean against it, and I heard a grunt of effort come out of my mouth. “What’s wrong?” Rawlins asked, his voice tight.
We passed under one of the hotel’s emergency light fixtures, its floodlights only dim orange rings in the murk until my amulet’s light burned the shadows away. “Dark magic,” I growled through clenched teeth. “A kind of ward. Trying to keep me from moving ahead.”
He[Rawlins] gave me an odd look, grabbed an older woman who was passing blindly, and sent her off to follow the wall to the door out. He shivered then, and when he exhaled his breath came out in a long, frosty plume. The temperature had dropped maybe forty degrees in the space of a minute.
about Pell's theater:
I caught my breath a little, and asked, “Anything at Pell’s theater?”
Murphy nodded and crossed the room to pick up two of the candles. “A lot of nothing. Place was locked up tight. Chains on the front doors, and the back door was locked. Sign on the door said they were closed until further notice.”
I grunted. “You’d think Pell would be wild to have the place open, if the convention was providing a significant amount of his income—even if he was in a hospital bed. Hell, especially if he was in a hospital bed.”
“Unless he doesn’t have anyone he trusts to run it for him.”
The magic strongly points toward Maeve. It's cold. It's darkness. Harry has seen the same binding in Summer Knight performed on Slate by Maeve. She was the one who closed the door at the theater: the fetches attacked Pell, freeing the Way back to Artis Tor.
Now that's indications, not proof. But I've more: Harry saw her. She was at Splattercon.
Two girls, both too young for me to think adult thoughts about, sidled by in black-and-purple clothing and makeup that left a lot of skin bare, their faces painted pale, trickles of fake blood at the corners of their mouths. One of them smiled at me, and she had fangs.
This is Maeve. Right in front of Harry. Taunting him. The girls are described
exactly like Maeve. They wear the clothes she likes. They wear the colors of Winter. It's also a reference to Harry's costume in GP.
I give you the official descriptions of Maeve:
The young woman who entered the bar could have been Lily’s sister. She had the same exotic beauty, the same canted, feline eyes, the same pale, flawless skin. But this one’s hair was worn in long, ragged strands of varying lengths, like a Raggedy Ann doll, each one dyed a slightly different color from frozen seas—pale blues and greens, as though each had borrowed its color from a different glacier. Her eyes were a cold, brilliant shade of green, almost entirely darkened by pupils dilated as though with drugs or arousal. A slender silver hoop gleamed at one side of her nose, and a collar of black leather studded with silver snowflakes encircled the graceful line of her slender throat. She wore sandals and cut-off blue jean shorts—very cut-off, and very tight. A tight, white T-shirt strained across her chest, and read, in pale blue letters stretched into intriguing curves, “YOUR BOYFRIEND WANTS ME.”
She looked young. Young enough to make a man feel guilty for thinking the wrong thoughts, but old enough to make it difficult not to. Her hair had been bound into long dreadlocks, each of them dyed a different shade, ranging from a deep lavender to pale blues and greens to pure white, so that it almost seemed that her hair had been formed from glacial ice. She wore leather pants of dark, dark blue, laced and open up the outside seams from calf to hip. Her boots matched the pants. She wore a white T-shirt tight enough to show the tips of her breasts straining against the fabric, framing the words OFF WITH HIS HEAD. She had hacked the shirt off at the top of her rib cage, leaving pale flesh exposed, along with a glitter of silver flashing at her navel.
Now, wait, it gets worse, this is just after the murk appears:
Rawlins stared at me for a second and then said, “What the hell is going on?”
There were running footsteps and shouts and cries in the gloom. All of them sounded choked, muffled somehow. One of the two teenaged “vampires” stumbled into the circle of my azure wizard’s light, sobbing.
Yes. One of the two was missing. That was Maeve who went backstage. She was in Chicago, and that's how she showed up so quickly:
That is one way to describe it,” Lily said quietly. “I would not, myself, interpret it that way. I had no part in bringing the fetches here—but their presence and their capture of Lady Charity’s daughter presented us with an opportunity to temporarily neutralize the presence of Mab’s forces upon our borders.”
“We,” I murmured. “Maeve is working with you. That was why she showed up at McAnally’s so quickly.”
Solved.
Edit:
Thanks to Griffyn612, we even know the reason for each attack.
The first attack was targeting Pell. Aim: free the theater,where there is a Way to Artis Tor.
The second attack was to make Harry react, and make sure he would send the phages to Molly.
The third attack was targeting the vampire/girl to make sure there would be no witness.
The third victim had been one of the little vampire girls I’d seen the previous evening. I could only tell because her head had landed facing me. The rest of her was hopelessly intermixed with the other two bodies.
Time resumed its course. The energy that powered the spell fled out of me in another rush, and left me lying on my side, struggling to draw in enough breath. I could feel the spell sizzling down the lines of power for the summoner, and a heartbeat later there was a sense of impact as the spell went home. As it happened, the entities my web touched went abruptly still, the web ceasing its trembling—and then they all surged forward into sudden motion, vanishing from the web, and presumably streaking after the lure.
All but one.
That's why Harry's spell failed. Mab knew Harry was planning a redirection spell. The last phage was specifically send to kill the vampire/girl and could not be diverted.
The fourth attack was targeting Glau, killing the last witness, saving Harry if necessary, and taunting him.
Poll