Turn Coat

by Butcher, Jim

  “Uh-huh,” Bob scoffed. “Because everyone knows how honorable the naagloshii are.”

  “He’s alive,” I said quietly. “Or at least I’m going to proceed on that assumption.”

  Bob somehow managed to look baffled. “Why?”

  Because you need your brother to be all right, whispered a quiet voice in my head. “Because anything else isn’t particularly useful toward resolving this situation,” I said aloud. “Whoever is behind the curtains is using the skinwalker and probably Madeline Raith, too. So if I find Thomas, I find Shagnasty and Madeline, and I’ll be able to start pulling threads until this entire mess unravels.”

  “Yeah,” Bob said, drawing out the word. “Do you think it’ll take long to pull all those threads? Because the naagloshii is going to be doing something similar to your intestines.”

  I made a growling sound in my throat. “Yeah. I think I got its number.”

  “Really?”

  “I keep trying to punch Shagnasty out myself,” I said. “But its defenses are too good—and it’s fast as hell.”

  “He’s an immortal semidivine being,” Bob said. “Of course he’s good.”

  I waved a hand. “My point is that I’ve been trying to lay the beating on it myself. Next time I see it, I’m going to start throwing bindings on it, just to trip it up and slow it down, so whoever is with me can get a clean shot.”

  “It might work . . .” Bob admitted.

  “Thank you.”

  “. . . if he’s such an idiot that he only bothered to learn to defend himself from violent-energy attacks,” Bob continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Which I think is almost as likely as you getting one of those tracking spells to work. He’ll know how to defend himself from bindings, Harry.”

  I sighed. “I’ve got gender issues.”

  Bob blinked slowly. “Uh. Wow. I’d love to say something to make that more embarrassing for you, boss, but I’m not sure how.”

  “Not my . . . augh.” I threw another pencil. It missed Bob and bounced off the wall behind him. “With the skinwalker. Is it actually a male? Do I call it a he?”

  Bob rolled his eyelights. “It’s a semidivine immortal, Harry. It doesn’t procreate. It has no need to recombine DNA. That means that gender simply doesn’t apply. That’s something only you meat sacks worry about.”

  “Then why is it that you stare at naked girls every chance you get,” I said, “but not naked men?”

  “It’s an aesthetic choice,” Bob said loftily. “As a gender, women exist on a plane far beyond men when it comes to the artistic appreciation of their external beauty.”

  “And they have boobs,” I said.

  “And they have boobs!” Bob agreed with a leer.

  I sighed and rubbed at my temples, closing my eyes. “You said the skinwalkers were semidivine?”

  “You’re using the English word, which doesn’t really describe them very precisely. Most skinwalkers are just people—powerful, dangerous, and often psychotic people, but people. They’re successors to the traditions and skills taught to avaricious mortals by the originals. The naagloshii.”

  “Originals like Shagnasty,” I said.

  “He’s the real deal, all right,” Bob replied, his quiet voice growing more serious. “According to some of the stories of the Navajo, the naagloshii were originally messengers for the Holy People, when they were first teaching humans the Blessing Way.”

  “Messengers?” I said. “Like angels?”

  “Or like those guys on bikes in New York, maybe?” Bob said. “Not all couriers are created identical, Mr. Lowest-Common-Denominator. Anyway, the original messengers, the naagloshii, were supposed to go with the Holy People when they departed the mortal world. But some of them didn’t. They stayed here, and their selfishness corrupted the power the Holy People gave them. Voila, Shagnasty.”

  I grunted. Bob’s information was anecdotal, which meant it could well be distorted by time and by generations of retelling. There probably wasn’t any way to know the objective truth of it—but a surprising amount of that kind of lore remained fundamentally sound in oral tradition societies like those of the American Southwest. “When did this happen?”

  “Tough to say,” Bob said. “The traditional Navajo don’t see time the way most mortals do, which makes them arguably smarter than the rest of you monkeys. But it’s safe to assume prehistory. Several millennia.”

  Yikes.

  Thousands of years of survival meant thousands of years of accumulated experience. It meant that Shagnasty was smart and adaptable. The old skinwalker wouldn’t still be around if it wasn’t. I upgraded the creature, in my thoughts, from “very tough” to “damned near impossibly tough.”

  But since it still had my brother, that didn’t change anything.

  “Don’t suppose there’s a silver bullet we can use?” I asked.

  “No, boss,” Bob said quietly. “Sorry.”

  I grimaced, did a half-assed job of cleaning up the mess I’d made, and began to leave the lab. I paused before I left and said, “Hey, Bob.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Any thoughts as to why, when LaFortier was being murdered by a wizard, no one threw any magic around?”

  “People are morons?”

  “It’s damned peculiar,” I said.

  “Irrationality isn’t.” Bob said. “Wizards just aren’t all that stable to begin with.”

  Given what I had done with my life lately, I could hardly argue with him. “It means something,” I said.

  “Yeah?” Bob asked. “What?”

  I shook my head. “Tell you when I figure it out.”

  I went back up into my living room through the trapdoor in its floor. The door was a thick one. Sound didn’t readily travel up from the lab when it was closed. Luccio was loaded with narcotics and asleep on my couch, lying flat on her back with no pillow, and covered with a light blanket. Her face was slack, her mouth slightly open. It made her look vulnerable, and even younger than she already appeared. Molly sat in one of the recliners with several candles burning beside her. She was reading a paperback, carefully not opening the thing all the way to avoid creasing the spine. Pansy.

  I went to the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. As I did, I reflected that I was getting really tired of sandwiches. Maybe I ought to learn to cook or something.

  I stood there munching, and Molly came to join me.

  “Hey,” she said in muted tones. “How are you?”

  She’d helped me bandage the fairly minor cut on my scalp when I had returned. Strips of white gauze bandage were wound around my head to form a lopsided, off-kilter halo. I felt like the fife player in Willard’s iconic Spirit of ’76.

  “Still in one piece,” I replied. “How are they?”

  “Drugged and sleeping,” she said. “Morgan’s fever is up another half of a degree. The last bag of antibiotics is almost empty.”

  I clenched my jaw. If I didn’t get Morgan to a hospital soon, he was going to be just as dead as he would be if the Council or Shagnasty got hold of him.

  “Should I get some ice onto him?” Molly asked anxiously.

  “Not until the fever goes over one hundred and four, and stays there,” I said. “That’s when it begins to endanger him. Until then, it’s doing what it’s supposed to do and slowing the infection.” I finished the last bite of sandwich. “Any calls?”

  She produced a piece of notebook paper. “Georgia called. Here’s where Andi is. They’re still with her.”

  I took the paper with a grimace. If I hadn’t let Morgan in my door half an eternity ago, he wouldn’t have been in Chicago, Shagnasty wouldn’t have been tailing me to find him, Andi wouldn’t be hurt—and Kirby would still be alive. And I hadn’t even tried to call and find out how she was. “How is she?”

  “They still aren’t sure,” Molly said.

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  “Did you find Thomas?”

  I shook my head. “Total bust.”

  Mouse came sh
ambling over. He sat down and looked up at me, his expression concerned.

  She chewed on her lip. “What are you going to do?”

  “I . . .” My voice trailed off. I sighed. “I have no idea.”

  Mouse pawed at my leg and looked up at me. I bent over to scratch his ears, and instantly regretted it as someone tightened a vise on my temples. I straightened up again in a hurry, wincing, and entertained wild fantasies about lying down on the floor and sleeping for a week.

  Molly watched me, her expression worried.

  Right, Harry. You’re still teaching your apprentice. Show her what a wizard should do, not what you want to do.

  I looked at the paper. “The answer isn’t obvious, which means that I need to put some more thought into it. And while I’m doing that, I’ll go look in on Andi.”

  Molly nodded. “What do I do?”

  “Hold down the fort. Try to reach me at the hospital if anyone calls or if Morgan gets any worse.”

  Molly nodded seriously. “I can do that.”

  I nodded and grabbed my gear and the key to the Rolls. Molly went to the door, ready to lock it behind me when I left. I started to do just that—and then paused. I turned to my apprentice. “Hey.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  She blinked at me. “Um. What did I do?”

  “More than I asked of you. More than was good for you.” I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you, Molly.”

  She lifted her chin a little, smiling. “Well,” she said. “You’re just so pathetic. How could I turn away?”

  That made me laugh, if only for a second, and her smile blossomed into something radiant.

  “You know the drill,” I said.

  She nodded. “Keep my eyes open, be supercareful, don’t take any chances.”

  I winked at her. “You grow wiser, grasshopper.”

  Molly started to say something, stopped, fidgeted for half a second, and then threw her arms around me in a big hug.

  “Be careful,” she said. “Okay?”

  I hugged her back tight and gave the top of her head a light kiss. “Hang in there, kid. We’ll get this straightened out.”

  “Okay,” she said. “We will.”

  Then I headed out into the Chicago night wondering how—or if—that was possible.

  Chapter Thirty

  I don’t like hospitals—but then, who does? I don’t like the clean, cool hallways. I don’t like the stark fluorescent lights. I don’t like the calm ring tones on the telephones. I don’t like the pastel scrubs the nurses and attendants wear. I don’t like the elevators, and I don’t like the soothing colors on the walls, and I don’t like the way everyone speaks in measured, quiet voices.

  But mostly, I don’t like the memories I’ve collected there.

  Andi was still in intensive care. I wouldn’t be able to go in to see her—neither would Billy and Georgia, if they hadn’t arranged for power of attorney for medical matters, a few years back. It was long after standard visiting hours, but most hospital staffs stretch rules and look the other way for those whose loved ones are in ICU. The world has changed a lot over the centuries, but death watches are still respected.

  Billy had come to me on the down low to set up power of attorney for me, in case he should be hospitalized without Georgia being nearby to handle matters. Though neither of us said so, we both knew why he really did it. The only reason Georgia wouldn’t be there is if she was dead—and if Billy was in no shape to make decisions for himself, he didn’t want to hang around and find out what his world would be like without her in it. He wanted someone he could trust to understand that.

  Billy and Georgia are solid.

  I’d spent some endless hours in Stroger’s ICU waiting room, and it hadn’t changed since I’d been there last. It was empty except for Georgia. She lay on the sofa, sleeping, still wearing her glasses. A book by what was presumably a prominent psychologist lay open on her stomach. She looked exhausted.

  I bypassed the waiting room and went to the nurses’ desk. A tired-looking woman in her thirties looked up at me with a frown. “Sir,” she said, “it’s well after visiting hours.”

  “I know,” I said. I took my notepad out of my pocket and scribbled a quick note on it. “I’ll go back to the waiting room. The next time you go past Miss Macklin’s room, could you please give this to the gentleman sitting with her?”

  The nurse relaxed a little, and gave me a tired smile. “Certainly. It will just be a few minutes.”

  “Thanks.”

  I went back to the waiting room and settled into a chair. I closed my eyes, leaned my head back against the wall, and drowsed until I heard footsteps on tile.

  Billy entered with a rolled-up blanket under his arm, glanced around the room, and nodded to me. Then he went immediately to Georgia. He took her glasses off, very gently, and picked up the book. Georgia never stirred. He put the book on the end table, and her glasses on top of it. Then he took the blanket from under his arm and covered her up. She murmured and stirred, but Billy shushed her quietly and stroked his hand over her hair. She sighed and shifted onto her side, then snuggled down under the blanket.

  I reached up a hand and flicked the light switch beside my head. It left the room dim, if not really dark.

  Billy smiled his thanks to me, and nodded toward the door. I got up and we walked out into the hallway together.

  “Should have tried to call you sooner,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “I know how it is, man. No apology needed.”

  “Okay,” I said, without actually agreeing with him. “How is she?”

  “Not good,” he replied simply. “There was internal bleeding. It took two rounds of surgery to get it stopped.” The blocky young man shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “They told us if she makes it through the night, she’ll be out of the worst of it.”

  “How are you holding up?”

  He shook his head again. “I don’t know, man. I called Kirby’s folks. I was his friend. I had to. The police had already contacted them, but it isn’t the same.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “They took it pretty hard. Kirby was an only child.”

  I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Kirby knew the risks. He’d rather have died than stand by and do nothing.”

  “Georgia?”

  “I’d have lost it without her. Pillar of strength and calm,” Billy said. He glanced back toward the waiting room and a smile touched the corners of his eyes. “She’s good at setting things aside until there’s time to deal with them. Once things have settled out, she’ll be a wreck, and it’ll be my turn to hold her up.”

  Like I said.

  Solid.

  “The thing that did Kirby took Thomas Raith,” I said.

  “The vampire you work with sometimes?”

  “Yeah. As soon as I work out how to find it, I’m taking it down. The vampires are probably going to help—but I might need backup I can trust.”

  Billy’s eyes flickered with a sudden fire of rage and hunger. “Yeah?”

  I nodded. “It’s part of something bigger. I can’t talk to you about everything that’s going on. And I know Andi needs you here. I understand if you don’t—”

  Billy turned his eyes to me, those same dangerous fires smoldering. “Harry, I’m not going to move forward blind anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that for years, I’ve been willing to help you, even though you could barely ever tell me what was actually happening. You’ve played everything close to the chest. And I know you had your reasons for that.” He stopped walking and looked up at me calmly. “Kirby’s dead. Maybe Andi, too.”

  My conscience wouldn’t let me meet his gaze, even for an instant. “I know.”

  He nodded. “So. If I’d had this conversation with you sooner, maybe they wouldn’t be. Maybe if we’d had a better idea about what’s actually
going on in the world, it would have changed how we approached things. They follow my lead, Harry. I have a responsibility to make sure that I do everything in my power to make them aware and safe.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can see your point.”

  “Then if you want my help, things are going to change. I’m not charging ahead blindfolded again. Not ever.”

  “Billy,” I said quietly. “This isn’t stuff you can unlearn. Right now, you’re insulated from the worst of what goes on because you’re . . . I don’t want to be insulting, but you’re a bunch of amateurs without enough of a clue to be a real threat to anyone.”

  His eyes darkened. “Insulated from the worst?” he asked in a quiet, dangerous voice. “Tell that to Kirby. Tell that to Andi.”

  I took several steps away, pinched the bridge of my nose between thumb and forefinger, and closed my eyes, thinking. Billy had a point, of course. I’d been careful to control what information he and the Alphas had gotten from me, in an effort to protect them. And it had worked—for a while.

  But now things were different. Kirby’s death had seen to that.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to back out?” I asked. “Once you’re part of the scene, you aren’t getting out of it.” I clenched my jaw for a second. “And believe it or not, Billy, yes. You have been insulated from the worst.”

  “I’m not backing off on this one, Harry. I can’t.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him fold his arms. “You’re the one who wants our help.”

  I pointed a finger at him. “I don’t want it. I don’t want to drag you into what’s going on. I don’t want you walking into more danger and getting hurt.” I sighed. “But . . . there’s a lot at stake, and I think I might need you.”

  “Okay, then,” Billy said. “You know what it will cost.”

  He stood facing me solidly, tired eyes steady, and I realized something I hadn’t ever made into a tangible thought before: he wasn’t a kid anymore. Not because he’d graduated, and not even because of how capable he was. He’d seen the worst—death, heartless and nasty, come to lay waste to everything it could. He knew in his heart of hearts, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it could come for him, take him as easily as it had taken Kirby.