by Jim Butcher
“The stones will absorb the pain for a while. They’ll crumble one at a time, so you’ll know when they stop working.” He looked up to my face. “Do you want my help tonight?”
An hour ago it wouldn’t even have been a question. I’d have been more than glad to have Ebenezar next to me in a fight. But the old man had been right. The truth hurt. The truth burned. My thoughts and feelings boiled in a blistering, dangerous tumult in my chest. I didn’t want to admit what was at the core of that turmoil, but denying it wouldn’t make it any less true.
Ebenezar had lied to me. From day one.
And if he’d been lying to me, what else had he lied about?
I’d built my whole stupid life on a few simple beliefs. That I had a responsibility to use my power to help people. That it was worth risking my own life and safety to defend others. Beliefs I’d taken as my own primarily because of the old man’s influence.
But he hadn’t been what I thought he was. Ebenezar wasn’t a paragon of wizardly virtue. If anything he was a precautionary tale. He had seemed to talk a good game, but underneath that surface, he’d been as cold and as vicious as any of the cowardly bastards in the Council whom I despised.
Maybe he’d never claimed to be a shining example. Maybe I’d just needed someone to admire. To believe in. Maybe I’d been the stupid one, putting my faith in the wrong place.
But none of that changed the fact that Ebenezar had hidden things from me. That he’d lied.
That made it simple.
“No,” I whispered. “I don’t want you there. I don’t know you. I never did.”
“But you’d fight beside someone like the Hellhound.”
“Kincaid’s a killer for hire. He never pretended he was anything else.”
The old man exhaled slowly and said, “I reckon that ain’t unfair.”
“Thank you for your help. But I’ve got things to do. You should go.”
He rose, picked up the paper bag, and said, “I’m still there for you, Hoss, if you change your—”
I felt my teeth clench. “I said get out.”
He blinked his eyes a few times and whispered, “A hard lesson. The hardest.”
Then he left.
I refused to watch him go.
Chapter Thirty-six
I sat in the silence of the old man’s departure and felt a lot of things. I felt tired. I felt afraid. And I felt alone. The puppy sat up and displayed some of the wisdom and compassion of his kind. He wobbled carefully over to me, scrambled up onto my lap, and started licking the bottom of my chin.
I petted his soft baby fur, and it gave me an unexpected sense of comfort. Sure, he was tiny, and sure, he was just a dog, but he was warm and loving and a brave little beast. And he liked me. He kept on giving me puppy kisses, tail wagging, until I finally smiled at him and roughed up his fur with one hand.
Mister wasn’t about to let a mere dog outdo him. The hefty tom promptly descended from his perch on my bookshelf and started rubbing himself back and forth under my hand until I paid attention to him, too.
“I guess you aren’t nothing but trouble,” I told the dog. “But I already have a furry companion. Right, Mister?”
Mister blinked at me with an enigmatic cat expression, batted the puppy off the couch and onto the floor, and promptly lost interest in me. Mister flowed back down onto the floor, where the puppy rolled to his feet, tail wagging ferociously, and began to romp clumsily around the cat, thrilled with the game. Mister flicked his ears with disdain and went back up onto his bookshelf.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The world might be vicious and treacherous and deadly, but it couldn’t kill laughter. Laughter, like love, has power to survive the worst things life has to offer. And to do it with style.
It got me moving. I dressed for trouble—black fatigue pants, a heavy wool shirt of deep red, black combat boots. I put on my gun belt with one hand, clipped my sword cane to the belt, and covered it with my duster. I made sure I had my mother’s amulet and my shield bracelet, sat down, and called Thomas’s cell phone.
The phone got about half of a ring out before someone picked it up and a girl’s frightened voice asked, “Tommy?”
“Inari?” I asked. “Is that you?”
“It’s me,” she confirmed. “This is Harry, isn’t it.”
“For another few hours anyway,” I said. “May I speak to Thomas, please?”
“No,” Inari said. It sounded like she had been crying. “I was hoping this was him. I think he’s in trouble.”
I frowned. “What kind of trouble?”
“I saw one of my father’s men,” she said. “I think he had a gun. He made Thomas drop his phone in the parking lot and get into the car. I didn’t know what I should do.”
“Easy, easy,” I said. “Where was he taken from?”
“The studio,” she said, her voice miserable. “He gave me a ride here when we heard about the shooting. I’m here now.”
“Is Lara there?” I asked.
“Yes. She’s right here.”
“Put her on, please.”
“Okay,” Inari said.
The phone rustled. A moment later Lara’s voice glided out of the phone and into my ear. “Hello, Harry.”
“Lara. I know your father is behind the curse on Arturo, along with Arturo’s wives. I know they’ve been gunning for his fiancée so that Raith can get Arturo back under his control. And I have a question for you.”
“Oh?” she said.
“Yeah. Where is Thomas?”
“It excites me when a man is so subtle,” she said. “So debonaire.”
“Better brace yourself, then,” I said. “I want him in one piece. I’m willing to kill anyone who gets in the way. And I’m willing to pay you to help me.”
“Really?” Lara said. I heard her murmur something, presumably to Inari. She waited a moment, I heard a door close, and the tone of her voice changed subtly, becoming businesslike. “I am willing to hear you out.”
“And I’m willing to give you House Raith. And the White Court with it.”
Shocked silence followed. Then she said, “And how would you manage such a thing?”
“I remove your father from power. You take over.”
“How vague. The situation isn’t a simple one,” she said, but I could hear a throbbing note of excitement in her voice. “The other Houses of the White Court follow House Raith because they fear and respect my father. It seems unlikely that they would transfer that respect to me.”
“Unlikely. Not impossible. I think it can be done.”
She made a slow, low purring sound. “Do you? And what would you expect from me in return? If my father has decided to remove Thomas, I am hardly capable of stopping him.”
“You won’t need to. Just take me to him. I’ll get Thomas myself.”
“After which, my father will be so impressed with your diplomatic skills that he cedes the House to me?”
“Something like that,” I said. “Get me there. Then all you have to do is watch from the sidelines while Cat’s-paw Dresden handles your father.”
“Mmm,” she said. “That would certainly raise my status among the Lords of the Court. To arrange for a usurpation isn’t so unusual, but very few manage to have good seats to it as well. A firsthand view of it would be a grace note few have attained.”
“Plus if you were standing right there and things went badly for me, you’d be in a good spot to backstab me and keep your father’s goodwill.”
“Of course,” she said, without a trace of shame. “You understand me rather well, wizard.”
“Oh, there’s one other thing I want.”
“Yes?” she asked.
“Leave the kid alone. Don’t push her. Don’t pressure her. You come clean with Inari. You tell her the deal with her bloodline and you let her make up her own mind when it comes to her future.”
She waited for a beat and then said, “That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
&n
bsp; She purred again. “My. I am not yet sure if you are truly that formidable or simply a vast and mighty fool, but for the time being I am finding you an extremely exciting man.”
“All the girls tell me that.”
She laughed. “Let us assume for a moment that I find your proposal agreeable. I would need to know how you intend to overthrow my father. He’s somewhat invincible, you see.”
“No, he isn’t,” I said. “I’m going to show you how weak he really is.”
“And how do you know this?”
I closed my eyes and said, “Insight.”
Lara lapsed into a thoughtful silence for a moment. Then she said, “There is something else I must know, wizard. Why? Why do this?”
“I owe Thomas for favors past,” I said. “He’s been an ally, and if I leave him hanging out to dry it’s going to be bad for me in the long term, when I need other allies. If the plan comes off, I also get someone in charge of things at the White Court who is more reasonable to work with.”
Lara made a soft sound that was probably mostly pensive but that would have been a lot more interesting in the dark. Uh. I mean, in person.
“No,” she said then. “That’s not all of it.”
“Why not?”
“That would be sufficient reason if it were me,” she said. “But you aren’t like me, wizard. You aren’t like most of your own kind. I have no doubt that you have reasonable skill at the calculus of power, but calculation is not at the heart of your nature. You prepare to take a terrible risk, and I would know why your heart is set to it.”
I chewed on my lip for a second, weighing my options and the possible consequences. Then I said, “Do you know who Thomas’s mother was?”
“Margaret LeFay,” she said, puzzled. “But what does that—” She stopped abruptly. “Ah. Now I see. That explains a great deal about his involvement in political matters over the past few years.” She let out a little laugh, but it was somehow sad. “You’re much like him, you know. Thomas would sooner tear off his own arm than see one of his siblings hurt. He’s quite irrational about it.”
“Is that reason enough for you?” I asked.
“I am not yet entirely devoid of affection for my family, wizard. It satisfies me.”
“Besides,” I added, “I’ve just handed you a secret with the potential for some fairly good blackmail down the line.”
She laughed. “Oh, you do understand me.”
“Are you in?”
There was silence. When Lara finally spoke again, her voice was firmer, more eager. “I do not know precisely where my father would have had Thomas taken.”
“Can you find out?”
Her voice took on a pensive tone. “In fact, I believe I can. Perhaps it was fate.”
“What was fate?”
“You’ll see,” she said. “What sort of time frame did you have in mind?”
“An immediate one,” I said. “The immediater the better.”
“I’ll need half an hour or a little more. Meet me at my family’s home north of town.”
“Half an hourish,” I said. “Until then.”
I hung up the phone just as a loud, low rumble approached my house. A moment later Murphy came back in. She was decked out in biker-grade denim and leather again. “I guess we’re going somewhere.”
“Rev up the Hog,” I said. “You ready for another fight?”
Her teeth flashed. She tossed me a red motorcycle helmet and said, “Get on the bike, bitch.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Motorcycles aren’t safe transport, as far as it goes. I mean, insurance statistics show that everyone in the country is going to wind up in a traffic accident of some kind and most of us are going to be involved in more than one. If you’re driving around in a beat-up old Lincoln battleship and someone clips you at twenty miles an hour, it probably is going to frighten and annoy you. If you’re sitting on a motorcycle when it happens, you’ll be lucky to wind up in traction. Even if you aren’t in an accident with another vehicle, it’s way too easy to get yourself hurt or killed on a bike. Bikers don’t wear all that leather around simply for the fashion value or possible felony assaults. It’s handy for keeping the highway from ripping the skin from your flesh should you wind up losing control of the bike and sliding along the asphalt for a while.
All that said, riding a motorcyle is fun.
I put on the bulky, clunky red helmet, fairly certain that I had never before disguised myself as a kitchen matchstick. Murphy’s black helmet, by comparison, looked like something imported from the twenty-fifth century. I sighed as the battered corpse of my dignity took yet another kick in the face and got on the bike behind Murphy. I gave her directions, and her old Harley growled as she unleashed it on the unsuspecting road.
I thought the bike was going to jump out from underneath me for a second, and my balance wobbled.
“Dresden!” Murphy shouted back to me, annoyed. “Hang on to my waist!”
“With what?” I shouted back. I waved my bandaged hand to one side of her field of vision and the hand holding the staff to the other.
In answer, Murphy took my staff and shoved the end of it down into some kind of storage rack placed so conveniently close to the rider’s right hand that it couldn’t have been mistaken for anything but a holster for a rifle or baseball bat. My staff stuck up like the plastic flagpole on a golf cart, but at least I had a free hand. I slipped my arm around Murphy’s waist, and I could feel the muscles over her stomach tensing as she accelerated or leaned into turns, cuing me to match her. When we got onto some open road and zoomed out of the city, the wind took the ends of my leather duster, throwing them back up into the air of the bike’s passage, and I had to hold tight to Murphy or risk having my coat turn into a short-term parasail.
We rolled through Little Sherwood and up to the entrance of Château Raith. Murphy brought the Harley to a halt. It might have taken me a few extra seconds to take my arm from around her waist, but she didn’t seem to mind. She had her bored-cop face on as she took in the house, the roses, and the grotesque gargoyles, but I could sense that underneath it she was as intimidated as I had been, and for the same reasons. The enormous old house reeked of the kind of power and wealth that disdains laws and societies. It loomed in traditional scary fashion, and it was a long way from help.
I got off the bike and she passed me my staff. The place was silent, except for the sound of wind slithering through the trees. There was a small flickering light at the door, another at the end of the walk up to it, and a couple of splotches of landscape lighting, but other than that, nothing.
“What’s the plan?” Murphy asked. She kept her voice low. “Fight?”
“Not yet,” I said, and gave her the short version of events. “Watch my back. Don’t start anything unless one of the Raiths tries to physically touch you. If they can do that, there’s a chance they could influence you in one way or another.”
Murphy shivered. “Not an issue. If I could help it they weren’t going to be touching me anyway.”
An engine roared and a white sports car shot through the last several hundred yards of Little Sherwood. It all but flew up the drive, narrowly missed Murphy’s bike, spun, and screeched to a neat stop, parallel-parked in the opposite direction.
Murphy traded a glance with me. She looked impressed. I probably looked annoyed.
The door opened and Lara slid out, dressed in a long, loose red skirt and a white cotton blouse with embroidered scarlet roses. She walked purposefully toward us. Her feet were bare. Silver flashed on a toe and one ankle, and as she drew closer I heard the jingle of miniature bells. “Good evening, wizard.”
“Lara,” I said. “I like the skirt. Nice statement. Very Carmen.”
She flashed me a pleased smile, then focused her pale grey gaze on Murphy and said, “And who is this?”
“Murphy,” she said. “I’m a friend.”
Lara smiled at Murphy. Very slowly. “I can never have too many friends.”
Murph’s cop face held, and she added a note of casual disdain to her voice. “I didn’t say your friend,” she said. “I’m with Dresden.”
“What a shame,” Lara said.
“I’m also with the police.”
The succubus straightened her spine a little at the words, and studied Murphy again. Then she inclined her head with a little motion half suggesting a curtsy, a gesture of concession.
The other door of the white sports car opened and Reformed Bully Bobby got out, carsick and a little wobbly on his feet. Inari followed him a second later, slipping underneath one of his arms to help hold him steady despite her own broken arm and sling.
Lara raised her voice. “Inari? Be a darling and fetch her for me right away. Bobby, dear, if you could help her I would take it as a kindness.”
“Yeah, sure,” Bobby said. He looked a little green but was recovering as he hurried toward the house with Inari.
“We’ll bring her right down,” Inari said.
I waited until they had gone inside. “What the hell are they doing here?” I demanded of Lara.
She shrugged. “They insisted and there was little time for argument.”
I scowled. “Next time you’re practicing the sex appeal, maybe you should spend some time working up some ‘go-thither’ to go with all the ‘come-hither.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” she said.
“Who are they bringing out?” I asked.
Lara arched a brow. “Don’t you know?”
I gritted my teeth. “Obviously. Not.”
“Patience then, darling,” she said, and walked around to the back of the sports car, hips and dark hair swaying. She opened the trunk and drew out a sheathed rapier—a real one, not one of those skinny car-antenna swords most people think of when they hear the word. The blade alone was better than three feet long, as wide as a couple of my fingers at the base, tapering to a blade as wide as my pinkie nail and ending in a needle tip. It had a winding guard of silver and white-lacquered steel that covered most of the hand, adorned with single red rose made of tiny rubies. Lara drew out a scarlet sash, tied it on, and slipped the sheathed weapon through it. “There,” she said, and sauntered over to me again. “Still Carmen?”
