Fifty-one
I woke up in bed. There was a colorful cartoon pony on the ceiling above me.
My body ached. I mean it ached to no end. Just breathing felt like a motion that stretched sore muscles. I was hideously thirsty and ravenous, and considering the complaints from my bladder, I’d been down for a while.
I looked around without moving my head. I was in Maggie’s room. Judging from the amber sunshine coming in through the window and covering one wall, it was evening. I wondered if it was the same day. Maggie’s raised bed towered over me, and I realized that I was on a mattress laid on the floor of her room. Something heavy was on one of my feet, and it had gone to sleep. I moved my head enough to see what it was, and wished I hadn’t done that. My skull pounded like a little man was slamming it with a hammer.
I winced and focused my eyes through the discomfort. Mouse slept on the floor beside the bed, and his massive chin rested on my ankle. His ears were twitching, though his eyes were closed, his breathing steady.
“Hey,” I croaked. “Gonna lose my foot, you keep that up. Fall right off.”
Mouse snorted and lifted his head. He blinked blearily for a second, as any reasonable person does upon waking, and then dropped his mouth open in a doggy grin. His tail started wagging, and he rose so that he could walk to my head and start giving me slobbery dog kisses while making little happy sounds.
“Ack!” I said. I waved my hands without any real enthusiasm, and settled for scratching him under the chin and behind the ears while he greeted me. “Easy there, superdog,” I said. “I think I exfoliated a couple of licks ago.”
Mouse made a happy chuffing sound, tail still wagging. Then he turned and padded out of the bedroom.
A moment later, he returned, and Molly followed him in.
She made an impression walking into the room. I was used to Molly in old jeans and sandals and a faded T-shirt. Now she wore slacks and a deep blue blouse that looked like they’d been hand-tailored to fit. Her hair, which I had seen in every improbable shade and configuration imaginable, was now long and straight and the color of moonlight on corn silk. She still looked a shade too angular and thin. Her eyes had been haunted and strained the last time I’d seen her in the flesh. Now they had a few added wrinkles at the corners, maybe, and a gravity I hadn’t seen in them before—but they were steady and calm.
Without a word, she knelt down beside me and gave me a hard hug around the neck.
“Ack,” I said again, but I was smiling. Again. It made all the muscles in my body twinge, but I moved one arm and patted her hair. “Hey, grasshopper.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. Her arms tightened a little. “I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”
“Hey, it all worked out,” I said. “I’m okay.”
“Of course you’re okay,” she said, and despite the bravado in her words, I thought she might have been sniffling. “I was the one working on you.”
“Look,” I said. “The parasite. It isn’t some kind of hostile entity—”
She nodded, her hair rubbing against mine. “I know. I know. The guy in black told me all about it while I was in there.”
“Is the spirit all right?” I asked.
She released me from her hug/choke hold and nodded at me, smiling, her eyes suspiciously wet. “Of course, the first thing you want to know is if someone else is all right.” She reached across me and picked up something from the floor near my head, where I hadn’t been able to see. It was the wooden skull I’d carved for Bob.
“It was a tough delivery,” Molly said. “She’s very tired.”
I grunted, lifted my hand, and took the wooden skull in my fingers.
Immediately, tiny flickers of greenish light appeared in the eye sockets, and the little spirit made a soft, confused sound.
“Shhh,” I said. “It’s me. Get some rest. We’ll talk later.”
“Oh,” said the little spirit. “Hi. Good.” And the flickers of light vanished again with a small, weary pop.
“You know,” Molly said, smiling, “it’s traditional to have a home of your own if you’re going to keep adopting strays.”
I tucked the wooden skull into the crook of my arm and said, “Home is where, when you go there and tell people to get out, they have to leave.”
She grinned, smoothed some hair back from my forehead, and said, “I’m glad to see that you’re feeling more like yourself.”
I smiled at her a little. “Makes two of us,” I said. “How you holding up?”
Her eyes glittered. “It’s . . . been really interesting. It all looks very, very different from the inside.”
“Usually how it works,” I said. “Tell me about it?”
“Can’t, literally,” she said cheerfully and waved an airy hand. “Faerie mystique and all that.”
“Figures. You like it?”
“Not always,” she said without rancor. “But . . . it’s necessary work. Worth doing.”
“Yet you didn’t tell your folks about it.”
For the first time, Molly’s calm slipped a little. Her cheeks turned a little pink. “I . . . Yeah, I haven’t quite gotten around to that yet.” Her eyes widened suddenly. “Oh, God, you didn’t . . .”
“No,” I said. “Skated past it just in time. Though I think I might have given your father the impression that we, uh . . . you know.”
A small, choked laugh, a sound equal parts mirth and absolute horror burst out of her mouth. “Oh. Oh, God. That’s what those looks were about.” She shook her head.
“You should tell them,” I said.
“I will,” she said, with a little too much instant assurance. “You know. When I find a way to bring it up.” She bit her lower lip, maybe unconsciously, and said, “You, uh . . . you’ll let me do that, right?”
“If that’s your choice, I’ll respect it. You aren’t really my apprentice anymore, Molls.”
She stared at me for a second after I said that, and I saw hurt and realization alike flicker through her features. Then she nodded and said quietly, “I guess I’m not, am I?”
I made another major effort and patted her hand. “Things change,” I said. “Nothing to feel sad about.”
“No,” she said. She squeezed my fingers back for a second and forced a smile. “Of course not.”
“Mab been around?” I asked.
She shook her head. “She knows I’m going to want to talk to her about sidetracking me. But she’s in town. I can feel that much. Why?”
“Because I’m going to want to talk to her too.”
* * *
One hour, one shower, and one barrage of painkillers later, I was dressed and able to shamble down the stairs under my own power, just after sundown. Mouse followed me carefully. Molly didn’t quite hover around like a Secret Service agent prepared to throw herself into the way of a bullet if necessary, but only just.
“You know what’s weird?” I said, as I got to the first floor.
“What?” Molly asked.
“The lack of cops,” I said. “There should be cops everywhere. And police tape. And handcuffs.” I raised my wrists. “Right here.”
“Yeah,” Molly said. “I noticed that too.”
I looked at her and arched an eyebrow. “Was this you?”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t really know how to go about bribing the authorities. And I’m not sure Mab understands the concept.”
The first floor of the Carpenter house had always been something of a riot in progress, even in calm times. Tonight was no exception.
“Run!” screamed a young woman with curly blond hair, who was dressed in a school uniform, was a shade taller than Molly, and who probably caused neck injuries when turning the heads of the boys in her school. She fled past the bottom of the stairs, firing one of those toy soft-dart guns behind her. As she ran past, she waved a hand at me, flashed me a grin, and said, “Hi, Bill!”
“Hell’s bells,” I said, feeling somewhat bewildered. “Was that Amanda?”
“She still wears the uniforms,” Molly said, shaking her head. “I mean, even after school. Freak.”
“Rargh!” roared a young man, whose voice warbled between a high tenor and a low baritone. He was lanky with youth, with Michael’s darker hair and grey eyes, and was running after Amanda half bent over at the waist, with his hands pressed up against his chest as if mimicking relatively tiny dinosaur claws. I recognized “little” Harry immediately. He looked like he was big for his age, developing early, and already starting to fill out through the shoulders, and his hands and feet looked almost comically too large for the rest of him.
Maggie was riding astride his back, clinging with her legs, with one arm wrapped around his neck. She’d have been choking him if she wasn’t on the small end of the bell curve herself. She clutched a toy dart gun in her free hand, and sent a few darts winging aimlessly around the room, giggling.
“Dinosaur Cowgirl wins again!” she declared proudly, as Harry ran by.
A moment later, another blond girl came through, calmly picking up fallen darts. She was older than Harry, but younger than Amanda, and shorter than any of the other Carpenters. She smiled at me and said, “Hey, Harry.”
“Hope,” I said, smiling.
“Hobbit,” she corrected me, winking. “Molly, Mom says to tell you that our guests need to get going.”
Maggie, her steed, and her prey went running by in the other direction with the roles reversed, with my daughter shrieking, “No one can catch Dinosaur Cowgirl! Get her, Mouse!”
Mouse’s tail started wagging furiously and he bounced in place, then whipped his head around to look at me.
“Go play,” I told him.
He bounded off after them.
I watched them rampage off in the other direction for a moment. I sensed Molly’s eyes on me.
“Man,” I said quietly. “Is . . . is it like this for her all the time?”
“There are crazymaking moments too,” Molly said quietly, in the tone of someone delivering a caveat. “But . . . mostly, yeah. Mom and Dad have some pretty strong opinions but . . . they know how to do family.”
I blinked my eyes quickly several times. “When I was a kid . . .” I stopped talking before I started crying, and smiled after them. When I was a kid in the foster system, I would have given a hand and an eye to be a part of something like this. I took a steadying breath and said, “Your family has given my daughter a home.”
“She’s a pretty cool kid,” Molly said. “I mean, as Jawas go, she’s more or less awesome. She makes it easy to love her. Go on. They’re waiting for you.”
We went into the kitchen, where Charity was sitting at the kitchen table. Her eyes were a little glazed over with prescription painkillers, but she looked alert, with her wounded leg propped up and pillowed on another chair. Michael sat in the chair next to her, his own freshly wounded leg mirroring hers on a chair of its own, and the pair of them were holding hands, a matched set.
Michael’s cane, I noted, was back. It rested within arm’s reach.
Binder and Valmont sat at the table across from them, and everyone was drinking from steaming mugs. There were five brand-new locking metal cash boxes from an office supply store sitting side by side on the table.
Binder was in the middle of a story of some kind, gesticulating with both thick-fingered hands. “So I looked at her and said, ‘That’s not my pen, love.’”
Michael blinked and then turned bright pink, while Charity threw back her head and let out a rolling belly laugh. Anna Valmont smiled, and sipped at her tea. She was the first to notice that I had come in, and her face brightened, for a moment, into a genuine smile. “Dresden.”
Binder glanced over his shoulder and said, “About bloody time, mate. You look a right mess.”
“Yeah, but I feel like an utter disaster,” I said, and limped to the table. “Where’s Grey?”
“He won’t come in the yard,” Michael said.
I arched an eyebrow and looked at him. “Hngh.”
Michael spread his hands. “He said he’d be around and that you would take him his pay.”
“Said he didn’t want a share of the stones,” Binder said in a tone of utter disbelief. “That he had his pay coming from you.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Huh.”
“There’s professional,” Binder said, “and then there’s just bloody odd.”
“Not everyone is motivated solely by money,” Valmont said, smiling into her tea.
“And how much more sensible a world it would be if they were,” Binder said.
“I’ve divided the stones by weight,” Valmont said. “Each box is the same. Everyone else should pick theirs and I’ll take whichever one is left.”
“Sensible, professional,” Binder said in a tone of approval. “Dresden?”
“Sure,” I said. I tapped a box and picked it up. It was heavy. Diamonds are, after all, rocks.
Binder claimed one. Michael frowned thoughtfully.
“Michael?” I asked him.
“I’m . . . not sure I can accept—”
Charity, very firmly, picked up one of the boxes and put it on her lap. “We have at least twenty-three more child-years of college education to finance,” she said. “And what if there are grandchildren one day, after that? And have you considered the good we might do with the money?”
Michael opened his mouth, frowned, and then closed it again. “But what do we know about selling diamonds?”
“Anna assures me it’s perfectly simple.”
“Fairly,” Valmont said. “Especially if you do so quietly, over time. I’ll walk you through it.”
“Oh,” Michael said.
“And we have an extra,” Valmont said, “since Grey didn’t want a share.”
“Here’s a brainstorm,” Binder said. “Give it to me.”
“Why on earth would I do that?” Valmont said.
“Because I’ll take it to Marcone and bribe him with it to not kill us all, after we wrecked his perfectly nice bank,” Binder said. “Walking away rich is all very well, but I want to live to spend it.”
“Give it to me,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Harry?” Michael asked.
“I know Marcone,” I said. “He knows me. I’ll use it to keep him off of all of us. You have my word.”
Michael exhaled through his nose. Then he nodded and said, “Good enough for me. Miss Valmont?”
Anna considered me and then nodded once. “Agreed.”
“Better you than me, mate,” Binder chimed in. “Just you try to get some kind of warning to us if he kills you when you go to talk to him.”
“I’ll bear it in mind,” I said, and took a second box. Valmont claimed the last one.
We were all quiet for a moment.
Then Binder rose and said, “Ladies, gents, what a treat it’s been scraping out of a mess by the skin of our teeth with you. Godspeed.” And he headed for the door.
Valmont rose, too, smiling quietly. She came over to me and gave me a hug.
I eyed her. Then I made a bit of a show of checking my pockets for missing items.
That made her laugh, and she hugged me again, a little longer. Then she stood up on tiptoe to kiss my cheek and said, “I left your things in the closet of the room you were sleeping in.”
I nodded, very slightly.
She withdrew then, smiled at Charity, and said, “Give me three days.Then call me at the number I gave you.”
“I will,” Charity said. “Thank you.”
Anna smiled at her, nodded to Michael, and left.
Michael idly unlocked his box and opened it. Light spilled off of the diamonds heaped inside.
“My, my, my,” Michael said.
Charity picked up a stone carefully and shook her head, bemused. “My, my, my.”
“Watch my loot for me?” I asked. “I need to go speak to Grey.”
* * *
I found Grey standing on the sidewalk outside the house, leaning against the streetlight with his arms folded over his chest and his head bowed. He looked up as I came out of the house and shuffled down the front walk to the gate.
“Dresden,” he said.
“Grey. You really came through for me.”
“What you hired me to do,” Grey said, as if I might be a bit thick.
“I guess I did, didn’t I?” I said. “You could have bailed. You could have taken Nick’s money.”
He looked at me as if I had begun speaking in tongues.
“Guess Vadderung was right about you.”
Something not quite a smile touched Grey’s mouth. “Heh,” he said. “He’s one who would know, isn’t he?”
“So how come you won’t come in the yard?” I asked, stepping through the broken gate to join him.
Grey stared at me, his eyes opaque. He turned his head to the Carpenters’ home, and looked up and around the yard, as if noting the position of invisible sentries. Then he looked back at me.
And his body language shifted, relaxing slightly. His eyes flickered and changed, from brown orbs with that odd golden sheen to them to something brighter gold, almost yellow, the color spreading too wide for human eyes, the pupils slit vertically like a cat’s. I had seen eyes exactly like them once before.
My heart leapt up into my throat and I slammed the gate shut. “Hell’s bells,” I stammered. “A naagloshii? You’re a freaking naagloshii?”
Grey’s eyes narrowed and changed back to mostly human brown again. He was silent for a moment, and then said, “You didn’t choose to be the son of Margaret LeFay. You didn’t choose the legacy she left you with her blood. And she was a piece of work, kid. I knew her.”
I frowned at him, and said nothing.
“I didn’t choose my father, either,” Grey said. “And he was a piece of work, too. But I do choose how I live my life. So pay up.”
I nodded, slowly, and said, “What’s it going to cost me?”
He told me.
“What?” I said. “That much?”
“Cash only,” he said. “Now.”
“I don’t have that much on me,” I said.
He snorted and said, “I believe you. We going to have a problem?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll go get it.”
“Sure,” he said, and bowed his head again, as if prepared to wait from now until Judgment Day.
And I shambled back into the house, went in to Michael and asked, “Can you loan me a dollar?”
* * *
I watched Grey depart, walking down the sidewalk, turning the corner, and continuing on his way. The day had warmed up enough to melt the ice, and the evening was misty, cool, and humid. The streets gleamed. It was very quiet. For a moment, I stood there alone.
“If you have a minute,” I said to the air.
Uriel suddenly stood next to me.
“Look at you,” I said. “Got your jet plane back.”
“Undamaged,” he said. “Michael is a good man.”
“Best I know,” I said. “Would you really have nuked Grey if he’d come in the yard?”
Uriel considered the statement for a moment. Then he said, “Let’s just say that I’m relieved that he didn’t make the attempt. It would have been awkward.”
“I think I’m starting to see the picture now,” I said. “Who was really moving this whole mess.”
“I thought you might,” he said.
“But I don’t get your role in it,” I said. “What was your angle?”
“Redemption,” he said.
“For Nicodemus?” I asked him. “You risked that much—your grace, the Sword, Michael, me—for that clown?”
“Not only for him,” Uriel said.
I thought about that for a second and then said, “Jordan.”
“And the other squires, yes,” Uriel said.
“Why?” I asked. “They made their choices, too, didn’t they?”
Uriel seemed to consider the question for a moment. “Some men fall from grace,” he said slowly. “Some are pushed.”
I grunted. Then I said, “Butters.”
Uriel smiled.
“When Cassius Snakeboy was about to gut me, I remember thinking that no Knight of the Cross was going to show up and save me.”
“Cassius was a former Knight of the Blackened Denarius,” Uriel said. “It seems appropriate that he should be countered by an incipient Knight of the Cross. Don’t you think?”
“And the Sword breaking?” I asked. “Did you plan that, too?”
“I don’t plan anything,” Uriel said. “I don’t really do anything. Not unless one of the Fallen crosses the line.”
“No? What is your job, then?”
“I make it possible for mortals to make a choice,” he said. “Ms. Murphy chose to act in a way that would shatter the Sword. Mr. Butters chose to act with a selflessness and courage that proved him worthy to be a true Knight. And you chose to believe that a ruined, broken sword could make a difference. The sum of those acts created a Sword that is, in some ways, greater than what was broken.”
“I didn’t choose for it to do that,” I said. “Seriously. There might be some kind of copyright infringement going on here.”
Uriel smiled again. “I must admit,” he said, “I never foresaw that particular form of faith being expressed under my purview.”
“Belief in a freaking movie?” I asked him.
“Belief in a story,” Uriel said, “of good confronting evil, of light overcoming darkness, of love transcending hate.” He tilted his head. “Isn’t that where all faith begins?”
I grunted and thought about it. “Huh.”
Uriel smiled.
“Lot of Star Wars fans out there,” I noted. “Maybe more Star Wars fans than Catholics.”
“I liked the music,” he said.
* * *
I took the extra box of diamonds and went to see Marcone.
Molly came with me, but I didn’t need her intuition to know who I would find there. When we got there, she looked at the building and said, “That bitch.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I knocked at the door of the Brighter Future Society. It was a small but genuine castle that Marcone had paid to move to Chicago. It was not lost on me that he had erected the damned thing on the lot formerly occupied by the boardinghouse whose basement I’d rented for years. Jerk.
The door opened and a man the height and width of a drawbridge glowered down at me. He had long hair, a mad bomber’s beard, and enough muscle to feed a thousand hungry vultures.
“Your name is Skaldi Skheldson,” I said. “You know who I am. I’m here to see Marcone and his guest.”
Skaldi frowned. Skaldi’s frown would have been intimidating if I hadn’t spent the past few days hanging out with the Genoskwa.
I bobbed an eyebrow at him and said, “Well?”
The frown became a scowl. But he stepped aside and let me in. I said, “Thanks,” and headed for the conference room. I knew right where it was. I’d visited when I was a mostly dead ghost. Skaldi hurried to keep up with me. The fact that I already knew where I was going appeared to leave him a little unsettled.
Wizard.
We passed several other Einherjaren as I walked through the building, and opened the door to the conference room without knocking.
Mab was inside, seated at one end of the table, her expression distant and implacable, her back ramrod-straight. Her dress and her hair were both pitch-black, as were her eyes, all the way across her sclera. She was here, then, in her aspect of Judgment.
People die when Mab shows up in black. The last time I’d seen her in that outfit, two Faerie Queens had bled out onto the soil of Demonreach.
Seated at her right hand, wearing a charcoal-grey suit, was Gentleman Johnnie Marcone, Baron of Chicago under the Unseelie Accords—and made so, at least in part, by my own signature. There might have been slightly more silver at his temples than the last time I’d seen him, but it only made him look more distinguished. Otherwise, he looked exactly as he always did: calm, alert, impeccably groomed, and as merciful as a lawn mower’s blade.
“You could have told me from the beginning,” I said to Mab.
She regarded me with flat black eyes and tilted her head, a curiously birdlike gesture.
“You were balancing the scales with Nicodemus,” I said. “But it was never about paying back a favor. And it wasn’t about foiling his scheme. This was full-scale political vengeance.”
Very, very slowly, Mab lifted her hands and placed them flat on the table in front of her. Her nails were black and looked sharp enough to slice silk.
“You set Nicodemus up from the very beginning,” I said. “You, Hades, and Marcone.”
Marcone tilted his head from one side to the other and said nothing.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” I said. “Why you sent Molly away—because she’d have known you were up to something. Why the plans to Marcone’s vault were available. Why the bodies got cleaned up, and why the cops didn’t crawl all over this thing when it was done. Hell, they’re probably spinning the shoot-out and the explosions as some kind of terrorist attack. And I’ll bet you anything that the squires found themselves offered a new job, now that their demigod has fallen from grace. Right?”
A ghost of a smile haunted Marcone’s lips.
“Nicodemus violated your Accords,” I said to Mab. “He kidnapped Marcone. He abducted the emissary appointed under the Accords. This was your payback. You arranged for him to get the details about Hades’ vault.” I turned to Marcone. “You built your vault specifically to create the link so that a Way could be opened there. All so you could set Nicodemus up, years after he wronged you both.” I met Mab’s unwavering gaze and said, “And you dealt him the worst pain you could imagine. You took away his daughter. No, you did even worse—you made him do it himself.”
Neither of them said anything.
But Mab’s raven black nails sank a fraction of an inch into the wood of the table, and her void black eyes glittered.
“Now he’s lost his lieutenant,” I continued. “He’s lost his squires. When word gets out of his treachery, he’ll lose his name. No one will want to work with him. No one will deal with him. From where you’re standing, you’ve done worse than kill him. You’ve wounded him, strangled his power, and left him to suffer.”
A long moment of silence passed.
I turned to Marcone. “And what did you get out of it? You got to build the vault, and to secure the clientele who use it. My money says that Hades was your first depositor. That when he made that gesture of trust in you, others followed his example—and that now you’re holding in trust a treasure trove like none in the supernatural world. And if you got a little payback on Nicodemus as a side effect of that, you didn’t mind it at all. And you’ll have plenty of money to pay to have him hounded down, now that he’s been weakened.”
Marcone’s eyes, the exact green shade of old dollar bills, focused pleasantly on me. Still, he said nothing.
Then Mab finally spoke, her voice sepulchral. “Do you have a point, my Knight?”
“I wanted you to know that I knew,” I said. Then I turned to Marcone. “There were people involved in the robbery. People who aren’t otherwise involved in this affair.”
“People who violated my territory, nonetheless,” Marcone said quietly.
“While helping you get your vengeance,” I said. “Go after Nicodemus as hard as you want. Leave the rest of them out of it. They took nothing from you.”
“They took the life of one of my employees,” Marcone said.
“The woman who did that is dead already,” I said. And I tossed the cash box onto the conference table. It landed with an impressive thump.
Mab frowned.
Marcone raised his eyebrows briefly. “And what is this?”
“It’s weregild,” I said. “You know the word?”
“Salic Code,” he replied, instantly. “Blood money.”
“That’s right,” I said. “That’s for your dead employee’s family. Take care of them with it. And leave my people out of it. It ends here.”
Marcone considered the box and then me. “And if I should disagree with your terms?”
“Then you and I are going to have a serious problem,” I said. I turned to Mab and added, “Right here. Right now.”
Mab’s eyes widened.
If I threw down on Marcone, any number of things could happen—but one of them would certainly be a major disgrace for Mab. She was a guest under Marcone’s roof. For her Knight and instrument to betray that trust would utterly destroy her name in the world—and what’s more, she knew it.
“Come, now, Baron,” Molly said, her voice smooth, soothing. “Consider how much you have gained. You are in the process of destroying the man who truly wronged you. What does it matter if his hirelings go about their business? After all, you might need their services yourself, one day. The offer is a reasonable one.” And on those last words, she reached over to the cash box, unlocked it, and opened it.
Marcone’s expression rarely showed much—but his eyes widened, if only for an instant, as he saw the stones.
I stared at Marcone without blinking or looking away.
Marcone looked up from the diamonds and returned the stare for a long time.
I put my hands on the table, leaned in close to his face, and said, “Just you remember who pulled your ass out of the fire when those maniacs grabbed you. You owe me.”
Marcone considered that for a moment. Then he said quietly, “You did so as a favor to Mab. Not to me.” He reached out and smoothly closed the cash box, then drew it to his side of the table and squared it with the table’s edge. His voice was almost silken—but there was a blade hidden within the folds of it. “However, the fact that there is a debt remains—and I would not see Mab’s name suffer any childish diminishment when she has kept such excellent faith with me. I accept your offer, Dresden. This balances our account. Do you understand my meaning?”
I understood it, all right. It meant that the next time I crossed him, he would feel perfectly free to waste me.
Which was fine. The feeling was pretty much mutual.
Mab was far too contained to give any reaction to the resolution of the situation, beyond a very, very small nod to Marcone. But she regarded me with a look of displeasure that promised me a reckoning later. Molly got the same glare.
I doubt that my former apprentice looked any more chagrined than I did.
* * *
“. . . the point of having a squadron of angels around the place if they aren’t going to do anything to protect it,” Molly said, exasperated.
We were walking up to Karrin’s room in the hospital. Visiting hours were almost over, but I didn’t want the day to go by before I’d seen her.
“Any kind of supernatural threat, they’d have been all over it,” I said. “Nick obviously knew that, too. That’s why he sent purely vanilla mortals in, with purely mortal weaponry.”
Molly scowled. “It’s a pretty darned huge loophole. That’s all I’m saying.”
“So do something about it,” I said.
“I already have,” she said. “The house is being watched now. And I’m buying the place for sale down the street.”
“You can afford that?” I asked. “Mab pays that well?”
“The account balance I have now has eight zeroes in it,” Molly said. “I could buy the neighborhood if I wanted. There will be someone keeping an eye on my parents’ place, twenty-four seven in case anyone tries the same thing again.”
“Unseelie bodyguards.” I grunted. “Not sure they’re going to like that.”
“They don’t have to like it,” Molly said. “In fact, they don’t even have to know about it.”
“I’m sensing a pattern here, Molly.”
She gave me a quick glance, and for a second, I could see the worry in her eyes. “Harry . . . if you hadn’t been there today . . .” She swallowed. “They’re my family. I have to do whatever I can to protect them.”
I walked for a few steps, thinking, and said, “Yeah. You do.”
She smiled faintly as Karrin’s room came into sight and her steps slowed. “You go ahead. I’ve got some things to arrange. I’ll be back later tonight.”
“Cool,” I said, and offered her my closed fist.
She shook her head and said, “Not very respectful of you, sir Knight.”
I waggled my fist and said, “Come on. You know you want it.”
That drew a quick, merry laugh from her. She bumped my fist with hers, and turned away—and as she walked away from me, I saw her pull a cell phone out of her pocket and turn it on.
That stopped me in my tracks.
Cell phones were some of the technology that was absolutely the most sensitive to the unbalanced fields of energy around a mortal wizard. When one of us got near a powered-up cell phone, it was likely to kick the bucket right there.
Inhuman practitioners, on the other hand, had no problem with that effect whatsoever.
And I suddenly felt very afraid for Molly.
She was hiding a lot of things from her parents. And now I had to wonder how many things she might be hiding from me.
More things to keep an eye on in the future.
I traded a greeting with Rawlins and walked into Karrin’s room, to find Butters sitting in the chair by her bed, his feet on the seat, his butt on the back, waving his hands animatedly as he spoke. “. . . and I looked at him and said, ‘Mister, where I come from there is no try.’ And I went straight at him, and the evil son of a bitch bailed.”
Karrin looked like she’d been beaten with rubber hoses after a double triathlon, but she was sitting up, and if she looked a little bleary, she also looked composed. One of her arms had been wrapped up and immobilized in a sling fixed to her body. Her hair was a lank mess, and she had an IV line running to her unwounded arm. “You are telling me lie after lie, Waldo Butters,” she said. She turned to me and her smile widened. “Hey, Harry. You look terrible.”
“I’m in good company,” I said, and put my hand on her head for a second, grinning.
“Tell her,” Butters said. “Harry, you were there, right? Tell her.” He blinked. “Oh, God, you were pretty out of it. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”
“I remember,” I said. “Butters went full-on Jedi Knight on us. Sword. Vomm. Vroom, krsoom, kazark, skreeow.”
Karrin gave me a suspicious glance, and looked back and forth between us. “You can’t be serious.”
“Got it with you?” I asked Butters.
“Are you kidding?” he said, grinning. “I may never put it down again.”
“So show her,” I said.
“You think that’s . . . you know. Okay? To show it off like that?”
“You aren’t showing off,” I said. “You’re confirming her faith.”
Butters screwed up his face and then said, “Yeah. I guess that’s okay, then.” He reached into his coat and produced the hilt of Fidelacchius. The moment he drew it from his coat, the blade of light hissed out to its full length, banishing shadows from the room and humming with power.
Karrin’s eyes widened. “Mary, Mother of God,” she said. “And . . . he just ran?”
“Not right away,” I said. “He took a swing at Butters here, first. And that thing sliced through Nick’s sword like it was made of pasta.”
“Yeah,” Butters said. “Seemed to catch him totally off guard. And even if he’d still had a sword, I don’t think it would have helped him much. I mean, lightsaber. Actually, it was kinda unfair.”
“That guy’s earned it,” I said.
“Butters,” Karrin said, shaking her head. “That’s . . . that’s really amazing. I’m so proud of you.”
If Butters could have floated up off the floor, Karrin’s words would have made him do so. “Yeah, I . . . Thanks, Murph.”
Murph.
Well, look at you, Butters. One of the boys.
“Well deserved,” she said. “But . . .” Her face turned grim. “You don’t have to keep it if you don’t want to, you know.”
Butters frowned and moved to return the handle to his coat. The blade vanished seemingly of its own accord. “Why wouldn’t I keep it?”
“Lot of responsibility, bearing one of those,” Karrin said.
“Lot of travel, too,” I said, just as seriously.
“Bad guys,” Karrin noted.
“Hopeless situations you’ll be expected to overcome,” I said.
“Monsters, ghosts, ghouls, vampires,” Karrin said.
“And all the Knights of the Blackened Denarius will want to stuff you and mount you on the wall,” I said, my voice harder. “Butters, you took Nicodemus by surprise on what was probably the worst day he’s had in a couple of thousand years, when his only backup was a woman twisty enough to marry him, who had spent the past two days trying to derail his plans. He retreated because he was facing a new and unknown threat and it was the smart thing to do. Next time you see him, he won’t be running away. He’ll be planning to kill you.”
Butters looked at me uncertainly. “Do . . . do you guys not think I can do it?”
I stared at him, expression suitably grave. Karrin too.
“Michael and Charity said they’d train me,” he said seriously. “And Michael said he’d show me how to work out and eat right and help me figure out what the Sword can do. I mean . . . I know I’m just a little guy but”—he took a deep breath—“I can do something. Make a difference. Help people. That’s a chance a lot of people never get. I want it.”
Karrin glanced at me and asked, “What do you think?”
I winked at her, and we both grinned as I said, “He’ll do. I mean, he routed Nicodemus Archleone and all. I guess that’s something.”
“Yeah,” Karrin said. “That’s something.”
Butters grinned in relief. “Oh,” he said. “There is one thing I . . . I sort of have an issue with.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
He spread his hands and said, “A Jewish Knight of the Cross?”
Karrin burst out into something suspiciously like giggles. Later, she would swear that it had been the drugs.
* * *
Butters left Karrin and me alone a little while later. We had a few minutes until some polite nurse would be along to kick me out.
“You’re going to have to take care of yourself,” Karrin said quietly. “Over the next few weeks. Rest. Give yourself a chance to heal. Keep the wound on your leg clean. Get to a doctor and get that arm into a proper cast. I know you can’t feel it, but it’s important that—”
I stood, leaned over the bed, and kissed her on the mouth.
Her words dissolved into a soft sound that vibrated against my lips. Then her good arm slid around my neck, and there wasn’t any sound at all. It was a long kiss. A slow one. A good one. I didn’t draw away until it came to its end. I didn’t open my eyes for a moment after.
“. . . oh . . . ,” she said in a small voice. Her hand slid down my arm to lie upon mine.
“We do crazy things for love,” I said quietly, and turned my hand over, fingers curling around hers.
She swallowed. Her cheeks were flushed with color. She lowered her eyes.
“I want you to rest and get better, too,” I said. “We have some things to do.”
“Like what?” she asked.
I felt myself smile. There might have been something merrily wolfish in it. “Things I’ve only dreamed about.”
“Oh,” she breathed. Her blue eyes glittered. “That.” She tilted her head. “That was . . . was me?”
“That was you,” I said. “Seems fair. It was your bed.”
Her hand tightened on mine and her face broke into an open grin. I lifted her hand and kissed her fingers, one at a time.
“I am on so many drugs right now,” she said.
I grinned. She wasn’t really talking about her IV.
The nurse came in while we were kissing again. She cleared her throat pointedly. Two or three times. I let her. The kiss wasn’t finished yet. The nurse went out in the hallway to complain to Rawlins, who appeared to listen politely.
Karrin ended the kiss with another little laugh.
And she didn’t even know I’d slipped her half of my diamonds in a couple of knotted-off socks when she wasn’t looking.
* * *
By about ten that night, I was back at the Carpenters’ house. The evening had turned unseasonably gentle, even if it was a little muggy. I was sitting on the porch with Michael, in one of a pair of rocking chairs that he had made himself. Both of us had a bottle of Mac’s Pale Ale in hand, having already emptied the pair of bottles at our feet.
Maggie was sitting with her legs across my lap. She’d fallen asleep with her head against my chest half an hour before, and I wouldn’t have disturbed her for the world. Or a third beer. Mouse dozed at my feet, delighted to be able to take up a station close to both of the people he most wanted to slobber on.
“So Karrin’s surgery was successful? She’s going to recover?” Michael asked.
“Probably not ever to where she was,” I said. “But the doctors told her she could get to ninety percent.”
“That’s wonderful,” Michael said. I saw him glance down at his bad leg, propped up on a kitchen chair Molly had brought out for the purpose. I could practically hear him wondering what it would have been like to get back to fifty percent. At least Nicodemus had stabbed him in the leg that was already messed up.
“What was it like?” I asked him. “Getting out into the fight again?”
“Terrifying,” he said, smiling. “And for a little while . . . like being young again. Full of energy and expectation. It was amazing.”
“Any regrets?” I asked.
“None,” he said. Then he frowned. “One.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Nick got away with the Grail.”
He nodded, his face darkening with worry.
“Hey, we went four for five on the artifact scoreboard,” I said. “That’s not bad.”
“I’m not sure this is a score that can be tallied,” he said.
“What do you think he’ll do with it?”
Michael shrugged and took a thoughtful sip of beer. “The Grail is the most powerful symbol of God’s love and sorrow on the face of the earth, Harry. I don’t see how he could use it to do harm—but if Nicodemus sacrificed so much to acquire it, I suspect that he does.”
“I figure the Grail was a secondary goal,” I said. “He really wanted something else.”
The knife was still in the pocket of my duster, now draped over the back of my chair in deference to the evening’s warmth.
Michael glanced at my coat and then nodded. “What will you do with the other four?”
“Research them. Learn about them until I can see when and how they should be used.”
“And until then?”
“Store them someplace safe.” I figured the deepest tunnels of Demonreach should do.
He nodded and regarded his bottle. “Did you ever once consider giving them back to the Church?”
“All things considered,” I said, “nope.”
He grimaced and nodded. And after a very long silence he said, “I fear you may be right.”
That made me look at him sharply.
“The Coins we captured should not have been able to escape from storage so quickly or easily,” he said slowly. “Which suggests . . .”
“That someone in the Church facilitated their recirculation,” I said.
“I fear corruption,” Michael said simply.
I thought of the state of affairs in the White Council, and Molly’s cell phone, and shuddered. “Yeah,” I said. “Lot of that going around.”
“Then you’ll understand this.” Michael leaned his head back and called, “Hank!”
A moment later, little Harry appeared at the door. He was carrying Amoracchius in his arms, scabbard, baldric, and all. He passed them off to Michael, who ruffled the boy’s hair and sent him back inside.
“Here,” Michael said simply, and leaned the Sword against the side of my chair. “When you store the artifacts, take that as well. You’re its keeper again.”
I frowned. “Because I did such an amazing job the last time around?”
“Actually,” Michael said, “you did an excellent job. You defended the Swords from those who would try to claim them, and you issued them to people who used them well.”
“Murphy didn’t,” I said quietly. “I mean, I know it worked out in the end—but my judgment was obviously in error.”
“But you didn’t call her to be a true Knight,” Michael said. “You entrusted her with the Sword for one purpose—to help you save your little girl from Chichén Itzá. She appointed herself the Swords’ keeper after you apparently died. And this morning, you gave the Sword of Faith to the right person at the right time.”
“That was an accident.”
“I don’t believe in accidents,” Michael said. “Not where the Swords are concerned.”
“Suppose I don’t want it.”
“It’s your choice, of course,” Michael said. “That’s sort of the point. But Uriel asked me to pass it to you. And I trust you.”
I sighed. Maggie’s limp, warm little body was emitting a barrage of some kind of subatomic particle that was making me drowsy. Probably sleepeons. Mouse snored a little, generating his own sleepeon field. The gentle night wasn’t helping things, either. Nor was my battered body.
I had a surplus of burdens already.
“The thing is,” I said quietly, “the Swords’ keeper needs clear judgment more than anything else. And I’m not sure I have it anymore.”
“Why not?” Michael asked.
“Because of the Winter mantle. Because of Mab. If I take the Sword, bad things could happen down the line.”
“Of course they could,” Michael said. “But I don’t believe for a second that they would happen because you chose to make them happen.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said. “What if . . . what if Mab gets to me, eventually?” I waved my hand. “Stars and stones, I just spent the weekend working with Denarians on behalf of freaking Marcone. I’ve had this job for . . . what? A couple of years? What will I be like five years from now? Or ten? Or a hundred and fifty?”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” Michael said. “I know you.”
“I’m not sure I do anymore,” I said, “and it scares the hell out of me. What happens if she does it? What happens if she turns me into her personal monster? What is she going to do with me then?”
“Oh, Harry,” Michael said. “You’re asking exactly the wrong question, my friend.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He looked at me, his face serious, even worried. “What is she going to do with you if she can’t?”
A fluttery fear went through my belly at the thought. Silence fell. The night was dark and quiet and misty. Somewhere, out there in it, Mab was moving, planning. Part of her plans, the dark, bloody, violent parts, included me.
Maggie was warm and soft beside my heart. Mouse stirred for a moment, and shifted until his big shaggy head was lying on my foot before going back to sleep. Behind me, the Carpenter household was settling into the quiet, stable energy of a home going through a familiar pattern. Bedtime.
Sometimes you realize you’re standing at a crossroads. That there are two paths stretching out ahead of you, and you have to pick one of them.
Without a word, I took Amoracchius and settled it where I could reach it easily when it was time to stand up.