“Only when he’s bleeding out,” Karrin said. “Usually you can’t get him to shut up.”
“Hey,” I said.
Karrin eyed me, a faint glimmer of humor somewhere in the look.
I shrugged a shoulder tiredly. “Yeah. Okay.”
“So if you’re such a tough guy,” Ascher said, “how come I didn’t see you kicking ass and taking names in there?”
I closed my eyes for a moment. I didn’t feel like explaining to Ascher about how the Winter Knight was built to be a killing machine, one that moved and struck and never paused to think. I didn’t feel like explaining what could have happened if I’d let that particular genie out of the bottle in the middle of one of Chicago’s premier hotels. Karrin was right. I’d burned down buildings like they were going out of style in the past. A fire in the Peninsula could have killed hundreds. If I’d lost control of the instincts forced upon me by the Winter mantle, I might have killed even more.
What I did want to do, in the wake of the life-and-death struggle, was rip her party dress off and see what happened next. But that was the Winter in me talking. Mostly. And I wasn’t going to let that out, either.
“We weren’t there to kill Fomor,” I said. “We went to get Valmont. We got her. That’s all.”
“If I hadn’t been there,” Ascher said, “that thing would have torn you apart.”
“Good thing you were there then,” I said. “You’ve got some game. I’ll give you that. Fire magic is tricky to use that well. You’ve got a talent.”
“Okay,” Ascher said, seemingly mollified. “You’ve got no idea how many guys I’ve worked with that don’t want to admit they got saved by a girl.”
“Gosh,” I said, glancing at Karrin. “It’s such a new experience for me.”
Karrin snorted, and pulled the car over. We’d made it back to the slaughterhouse.
“Tell Nicodemus we’ll be back at sunrise,” I said.
Valmont said nothing. But she took off the slightly too large shoes and passed them back to Ascher.
“Sure,” Ascher said. “Don’t bleed to death or anything. This is too interesting.”
“Meh,” I said.
She flashed me another smile, took her shoes, and slid out of the limo. Karrin didn’t pause to watch her reenter the building, but pulled out again at once.
I looked back over my shoulder at Valmont. “You okay?”
She took off the sunglasses and gave me a very small smile. “Nicodemus. He’s really back there?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And you’re going to burn him?”
“If I can,” I said.
“Then I’m good,” she said. She turned her eyes back to the night outside. “I’m good.”
Karrin stared at Valmont in the mirror for a moment, frowning. Then she set her jaw and turned her eyes back to the road.
“Where?” I asked her quietly.
“My place,” she said. “I called Butters the minute the alarms started going off at the hotel. He’ll be waiting for us.”
“I don’t want anyone else tangled up in this,” I said.
“You want to take on the Knights of the Blackened Denarius,” Karrin said. “Do you really think you can do it alone?”
I grunted, tiredly, and closed my eyes.
“That’s what I thought,” she said.
The limo’s tires whispered on the city streets, and I stopped paying attention to anything else.