by Jim Butcher
"Susan?" I said.
She paused without turning to look back at me.
"Do you want to get dinner or something? Before you go, I mean. I want to, uh, you know."
"Say good-bye," she said quietly.
"Yeah."
"All right."
She left. I sat in my apartment, in front of the fire, and breathed in the scent of her perfume. I felt cold, lonely, and tired. I felt like a hollowed-out husk. I felt as if I had failed her. Failed to protect her to begin with, failed to cure her after the vampires had changed her.
Change. Maybe that's what this was really about. Susan had changed. She'd grown. She was more relaxed than I remembered, more confident. There had always been a sense of purpose to her, but now it seemed deeper, somehow. She'd found a place for herself, somewhere where she felt she could do some good.
Maybe I should have gone with her after all.
But no. Part of the change was that she felt hungrier now, too. More quietly sensual, as if every sight and sound and touch in the room was occupying most of her attention. She'd smelled drops of blood on my clothing and it had excited her enough to make her move away from me.
Another change. She had an instinctive hunger for my blood. And she could throw vampires twenty feet through the air. She sure as hell wouldn't have any trouble tearing my throat out in an intimate moment if her control slipped.
I washed my face mechanically, showered in my unheated shower, and went shivering to my bed. The routine hadn't helped me. It only delayed me from facing the harshest truth of my relationship with Susan.
She had left Chicago.
Probably for good.
That was going to hurt like hell in the morning.
Chapter Fifteen
I had bad dreams.
They were the usual fare. Flames devoured someone who screamed my name. A pretty girl spread her arms, eyes closed, and fell slowly backward as dozens of fine cuts opened all over her skin. The air became a fine pink spray. I turned from it, into a kiss with Susan, who drew me down and tore out my throat with her teeth.
A woman who seemed familiar but whom I did not recognize shook her head and drew her hand from left to right. The dream-scenery faded to black in the wake of her motion. She turned to me, dark eyes intent and said, "You need to rest."
Mickey Mouse woke me up, my alarm jangling noisily, his little hand on two and the big hand on twelve. I wanted to smack the clock for waking me up, but I reined in the impulse. I'm not against a little creative violence now and then, but you have to draw the line somewhere. I wouldn't sleep in the same room with a person who would smack Mickey Mouse.
I got up, got dressed, left a message for Murphy, another for Michael, fed Mister, and hit the road.
Michael's house did not blend in with most of the other homes in his neighborhood west of Wrigley Field. It had a white picket fence. It had elegant window dressings. It had a tidy front lawn that was always green, even in the midst of a blazing Chicago summer. It had a few shady trees, a lot of well-kept shrubberies, and if I had found a couple of deer grazing on the lawn or drinking from the birdbath, it wouldn't have surprised me.
I got out of the Beetle, holding my blasting rod loosely in my right hand. I opened the gate, and a few jingle bells hanging on a string tinkled happily. The gate swung shut on a lazy spring behind me. I knocked on the front door and waited, but no one answered. I frowned. Michael's house had never been empty before. Charity had at least a couple kids who weren't old enough to be in school yet, including the poor little guy they'd named after me. Harry Carpenter. How cruel is that?
I frowned at the cloud-hazed sun. Weren't the older kids getting out of school shortly? Charity had some kind of maternal obsession with never allowing her kids to come home to an empty house.
Someone should have been there.
I got a sick, twisty feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I knocked again, put my ear against the door, and Listened. I could hear the slow tick of the old grandfather clock in the front room. The heater cycled on for a moment, and the vents inside whispered. There were a few sounds when a bit of breeze touched the house, the creaks of old and comfortable wood.
Nothing else.
I tried the front door. It was locked. I stepped back off the porch, and followed the narrow driveway to the back of the property.
If the front of the Carpenter home would have qualified for Better Homes and Gardens, the back would have been fit for a Craftsman commercial. The large tree centered on the back lawn cast lots of shade in the summer, but with the leaves gone I could see the fortresslike tree house Michael had built for his kids in it. It had finished walls, an actual window, and guardrails anywhere anyone could possibly have thought about falling. The tree house had a porch that overlooked the yard. Hell, I didn't have a porch. It's an unfair world.
A big section of the yard had been bitten off by an addition connected to the back of the house. The foundation had been laid, and there were wooden beams framing what would eventually be walls. Heavy contractor's plastic had been stapled to the wooden studs to keep the wind off the addition. The separate garage was closed, and a peek in the window showed me that it was pretty well filled with lumber and other construction materials.
"No cars," I muttered. "Maybe they went to McDonald's. Or church. Do they have church at three in the afternoon?"
I turned around to go back to the Beetle. I'd leave a Michael a note. My stomach fluttered. If I didn't get a second for the duel, it was likely to be a bad evening. Maybe I should ask Bob to be my second. Or maybe Mister. No one dares to mess with Mister.
Something rattled against the metal gutters running the length of the back of the house.
I jumped like a spooked horse and scrambled away from the house, toward the garage at the back of the yard so that I could get a look at the roof. Given that in the past day or so no less than three different parties had taken a poke at me, I felt totally justified in being on edge.
I got to the back of the yard, but couldn't see the whole roof from there, so I clambered up into the branches, then took a six-foot ladder up to the main platform of the tree house. From there, I could see that the roof was empty.
I heard brisk, somewhat heavy footsteps below me, and beyond the fence at the back of the little yard. I froze in place in the tree house, Listening.
The heavy footsteps padded up to the fence at the back of the yard, and I heard the scrape of chain link dragging against dry leaves and other late-winter detritus. I heard a muted grunt of effort and a long exhalation. Then the footsteps came to the base of the tree.
Leather scraped against a wooden step, and the tree shivered almost imperceptibly. Someone was climbing up.
I looked around me but the ladder was the only way down, unless I felt like jumping. It couldn't have been more than nine or ten feet down. Odds were I could land more or less in one piece. But if I misjudged the jump I could sprain an ankle or break a leg, which would make running away both impractical and embarrassing. Jumping would have to be a last resort.
I gathered in my will and settled my grip on my blasting rod, pointing it directly at where the ladder met the platform. The tip of the blasting rod glowed with a pinpoint of bright red energy.
Blond hair and the top half of a girl's angelic young face appeared at the top of the ladder. There was a quiet gasp and her blue eyes widened. "Holy crap."
I jerked the tip of the blasting rod up and away from the girl, releasing the gathered energy. "Molly?"
The rest of the girl's face appeared as she climbed on up the ladder. "Wow, is that an acetylene torch or something?"
I blinked and peered more closely at Molly. "Is that an earring in your eyebrow?"
The girl clapped her fingers over her right eyebrow.
"And your nose?"
Molly shot a furtive look over her shoulder at the house, and scrambled the rest of the way up to the tree house. As tall as her mother, Molly was all coltish legs and long
arms. She wore a typical private-school uniform of skirt, blouse, and sweater-but it looked like she'd been attacked by a lech with razor blades where fingers should have been.
The skirt was essentially slashed to ribbons, and underneath it she wore black tights, also torn to nigh indecency. Her shirt and sweater had apparently endured the Blitz, but the bright red satin bra that peeked out from beneath looked new. She had on too much makeup. Not as bad as most kids too old to play tag but too young to drive, but it was there. She wore a ring of fine gold wire through one pale gold eyebrow, and a golden stud protruded from one side of her nose.
I worked hard not to smile. Smiling would have implied that I found her outfit amusing. She was young enough to be hurt by that kind of opinion, and I had a vague memory of being that ridiculous at one time. Let he who hath never worn parachute pants cast the first stone.
Molly clambered in and tossed a bulging backpack down on the wooden floor. "You lurk in tree houses a lot, Mister Dresden?"
"I'm looking for your dad."
Molly wrinkled up her nose, then started removing the stud from it. I didn't want to watch. "I don't want to tell you how to investigate stuff, but generally speaking you won't find him in tree houses."
"I came over, but no one answered the door when I knocked. Is that normal?"
Molly took out the eyebrow ring, dumped the backpack out onto the floorboards, and started sorting out a long skirt with a floral print, a T-shirt, and a sweater. "It is on errands day. Mom loads up the sandcrawler with all the little snot-nosed Jawas and goes all over town."
"Oh. Do you know when she's due back?"
"Anytime," Molly said. She hopped into the skirt, and wriggled out of the tattered skirt and tights in that mystifyingly modest way that girls always seem to manage to acquire sometime in their teens. The shirt and pink sweater went on next, and the ripped up sweater and, to my discomfort, the bright red bra came out from under the conservative clothes and got tucked back into the backpack.
I turned my back on the girl as well as I could in the limited space. The link of handcuff Anna Valmont had slapped onto my wrist chafed and pinched. I scratched at it irritably. You'd think I'd been cuffed enough times that I should have gotten myself a key by now.
Molly took a wet-wipe from somewhere and started peeling the makeup from her face. "Hey," she asked a minute later. "What's wrong?"
I grunted and waved my wrist vaguely, swinging the cuff around.
"Hey, neat," Molly said. "Are you on the lam? Is that why you're hiding in a tree house, so the cops won't find you?"
"No," I said. "It's kind of a long story."
"Ohhhh," Molly said wisely. "Those are fun-time handcuffs, not bad-time handcuffs. I gotcha."
"No!" I protested. "And how the hell would you know about fun-time handcuffs anyway? You're like ten."
She snorted. "Fourteen."
"Whatever, too young."
"Internet," she said sagely. "Expanding the frontiers of adolescent knowledge."
"God, I'm old."
Molly clucked and dipped into the backpack again. She grabbed my wrist firmly, shook out a ring of small keys, and started trying them in the lock of the cuffs. "So give me the juicy details," she said. "You can say 'bleep' instead of the fun words if you want."
I blinked. "Where the bleep did you get a bunch of cuff keys?"
She looked up at me and narrowed her eyes. "Think about this one. Do you really want to know?"
I sighed. "No. Probably not."
"Cool," she said, and turned her attention back to the handcuffs. "So stop dodging the issue. What's up with you and Susan?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"I like romance. Plus I heard Mom say that you two were a pretty hot item."
"Your mom said that?"
Molly shrugged. "Sorta. As much as she ever would. She used words like 'fornication' and 'sin' and 'infantile depravity' and 'moral bankruptcy.' So are you?"
"Morally bankrupt?"
"A hot item with Susan."
I shrugged and said, "Not anymore."
"Don't move your wrist." Molly fiddled with one key for a moment before discarding it. "What happened?"
"A lot," I said. "It's complicated."
"Oh," Molly said. The cuffs clicked and loosened and she beamed up at me. "There."
"Thanks." I rubbed my sore wrist and put the cuffs in my coat pocket.
Molly bent over and picked up a piece of paper. She read it and said, "Ask Michael about duel? Whiskey and tobacco?"
"It's a shopping list."
Molly frowned. "Oh." She was quiet for a moment and then asked, "So was it the vampire thing?"
I blinked at the girl again. "Was there a PBS special or something? Is there some kind of unauthorized biography of my life?"
"I snuck downstairs so I could listen to Dad tell Mom what had happened."
"Do you eavesdrop on every private conversation you can?"
She rolled her eyes and sat down on the edge of the platform, her shoes waving in the air. "No one says anything interesting in a public conversation, do they? Why did you guys split up?"
I sat down next to her. "Like I said. It was complicated."
"Complicated how?"
I shrugged. "Her condition gives her - an impulse-control problem," I said. "She told me that strong emotions and uh, other feelings, are dangerous for her. She could lose control and hurt someone."
"Oh," Molly said, and scrunched up her nose again. "So you can't make a play for her or-"
"Bad things could happen. And then she'd be a full vampire."
"But you both want to be together?" Molly asked.
"Yeah."
She frowned. "God, that's sad. You want to be with her but the sex part-"
I shuddered. "Ewg. You are far too young to say that word."
The girl's eyes shone. "What word? Sex?"
I put my hands over my ears. "Gah."
Molly grinned and enunciated. "But the bleep part would make her lose control."
I coughed uncomfortably, lowering my hands. "Basically. Yeah."
"Why don't you tie her up?"
I stared at the kid for a second.
She lifted her eyebrows expectantly.
"What?" I stammered.
"It's only practical," Molly stated firmly. "And hey, you've already got the handcuffs. If she can't move while the two of you are bleeping, she can't drink your blood, right?"
I stood up and started climbing down the ladder. "This conversation has become way too bleeping disturbing."
Molly laughed at me and followed me back to the ground. She unlocked the back door with another key, presumably from the same ring, and that was when Charity's light blue minivan turned into the driveway. Molly opened the door, darted into the house, and returned without her backpack. The minivan ground to a halt and the engine died.
Charity got out of the van, frowning at me and at Molly in more or less equal proportions. She wore jeans, hiking boots, and a heavy jacket. She was a tall woman, only an inch or so under six feet, and carried herself with an assurance that conveyed a sense of ready strength. Her face had the remote beauty of a marble statue, and her long blond hair was knotted behind her head.
Without being told, Molly went to the rolling side panel door, opened it, and reached inside, unloading children from safety seats, while Charity went to the rear of the van and opened the rear doors. "Mister Dresden," she said. "Lend a hand."
I frowned. "Uh. I'm sort of in a hurry. I was hoping to find Michael here."
Charity took a twenty-four-pack of Coke from the van in one arm and a couple of bulging paper grocery sacks in the other. She marched over to me and shoved them at my chest. I had to fumble to catch them, and my blasting rod clattered to the ground.
Charity waited until I had the sacks before heading for the van again. "Put them on the table in the kitchen."
"But- " I said.
She walked past me toward the house. "I have ice cream melting,
meat thawing, and a baby about to wake up hungry. Put them on the table, and we'll talk."
I sighed and looked glumly at the groceries. They were heavy enough to make my arms burn a little. Which probably isn't saying much. I don't spend much time working out.
Molly appeared from the van, lowering a tiny, tow-headed girl to the driveway. She was wearing a pink dress with a clashing orange sweater and bright purple shoes and a red coat. She walked up to me and said, words edged with babyish syllables, "My name is Amanda. I'm five and a half and my daddy says I'm a princess."
"I'm Harry, Your Highness," I said.
She frowned and said, "There's already a Harry. You can be Bill." With that, she broke into a flouncing skip and followed her mother into the house.
"Well, I'm glad that's settled," I muttered. Molly lowered an even smaller blond girl to the driveway. This one was dressed in blue overalls with a pink shirt and a pink coat. She held a plush dolly in one arm and a battered-looking pink blanket in the other. Upon seeing me, she retreated a couple of steps and hid around the corner of the van. She leaned out to look at me once, and then hid again.
"I've got him," said an accented male voice.
Molly hopped out of the van, grabbed a grocery bag from the back, and said, "Come on, Hope." The little girl followed her big sister like a duckling while Molly went into the house, but Hope glanced back at me shyly three or four times on the way.
Shiro emerged from the van carrying a baby seat. The little old knight carried the walking stick that concealed his sword on a strap over one wide shoulder, and his scarred hands held the chair carefully. A boy, probably not yet two years old, slept in it.
"Little Harry?" I asked.
"Yes, Bill," Shiro said. His eyes sparkled behind his glasses
I frowned and said, "Good-looking kid."
"Dresden!" snapped Charity's voice from the house. "You're holding the ice cream."
I scowled and told Shiro, "Guess we'd better get in."
Shiro nodded wisely. I took the groceries into the Carpenters' big kitchen and put them on the table. For the next five minutes, Shiro and Molly helped me carry in enough groceries to feed a Mongol horde.
