Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

Bad things happen in places like this.

“Go in?” I asked Karrin.

“Let’s watch for a bit,” she said. “See what happens.”

“Aye-aye, Eye-guy,” I said.

“I want you to imagine me kicking your ankle right now,” Karrin said, “because it is beneath my dignity to actually do it.”

“Since when?”

“Since I don’t want to get your yucky boy germs on my shoes,” she said, watching the street. “So what’s Nicodemus after?”

“No clue,” I said. “And whatever he says he’s after, I think it’s a safe bet that he’ll be lying.”

“Ask the question from the other direction, then,” she said. “What’s Hades got?”

“That’s the thing,” I said. “My sources say he’s the collector of the supernatural world. He’s famous for it. Art, treasure, gems, jewels, antiques, you name it.”

“Nicodemus doesn’t seem like an antiquer to me.”

I snorted. “Depends. There are a lot of kinds of antiques. Old coins. Old swords.”

“For example,” she said, “you think he’s after some kind of magical artifact?”

“Yeah. Something specific. It’s the only thing I can think of that he couldn’t get somewhere else,” I said.

“Could he be trying to make something happen with the act of burglary itself?”

I shrugged. “Like what? Other than pissing off something as big, powerful, and pathologically vengeful as a freaking Greek god. Those guys took things personally.”

“Right. What if he’s setting it up to make it look like someone else did the crime?”

I grunted. “Worth considering. But it seems like there’d be simpler ways to accomplish the same thing than to break into someone’s version of Hell.” I frowned. “Ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You planning to bring one of the Swords with you?”

Karrin had two swords that had been forged with nails from the Cross (yeah, that Cross) worked into the blades. They were powerful talismans, borne by the Knights of the Cross, the natural foes of Nicodemus and his crew of thirty silver-coined lunatics (yeah, those thirty pieces of silver).

She frowned, her eyes scanning the street, and didn’t answer for a moment. When she did, I had the impression that she was choosing her words carefully. “You know I have to be careful with them.”

“They’re weapons, Karrin,” I said. “They’re not glass figurines. What’s the point in having two genuine holy swords with which to fight evil if you don’t, you know, fight evil with them occasionally?”

“Swords are funny,” she replied. “The most capable muscle-powered tool there is for killing a man. But they’re fragile, too. Use them the wrong way, and they’ll break like glass.”

“The Denarians are on the field,” I said. “They’re the people the Swords were meant to challenge.”

“The things inside the Coins are what the Swords were meant to fight. The ones holding the Coins are the people the Swords were meant to save,” she said, her tone gently emphatic. “And that’s why I’m not carrying one. I don’t want to save those animals, Harry. And it’s not enough to use the Swords against the right foe. You have to use them for the right reasons—or they could be lost forever. I won’t be the reason that happens.”

“So you’ll just let them sit and do nothing?” I asked.

“I’ll give them to anyone I think will use them wisely and well,” she said calmly. “But people like that don’t come along every day. Being a keeper of the Swords is a serious job, Harry. You know that.”

I sighed. “Yeah. I do. But Nicodemus and his girl are right over there in that building—and we could use every advantage we can get.”

Karrin suddenly smiled. It transformed her face, though her eyes never stopped sweeping the street. “You’re just going to have to have a little faith, Harry.”

“Faith?”

“That if a Knight with a Sword needs to be here, one will be here. For all we know, Sanya will come walking down the street and get in the car with us.”

I scowled at that, even though she was probably right. When a Knight of the Sword was meant to show up and intervene, one would damned well make an entrance and intervene, regardless of who or what stood in the way. I’d seen it more than once. But . . . part of me hated to let go of the advantage the Swords would offer.

Of course, that was what faith was all about, wasn’t it—letting go and trusting Someone Else.

Maybe wizards just weren’t terribly predisposed to surrendering control. I mean, not when they have so much personal power available to them. Once you’ve had your hands on the primal forces that created the universe, it’s a little hard to relax and let them slip through your fingers. It would certainly explain why so few of the wizards I knew were even mildly religious.

Also, it illustrated pretty clearly why I was never, ever going to be a Knight. Aside from the fact that I was working for the queen of the wicked faeries and getting into bed with jerks like Nicodemus, I mean.

Karrin’s eyes flicked up to her rearview mirror and sharpened. “Car,” she said quietly.

In a spy movie, I would have watched them coolly in the rearview mirror, or perhaps in my specially mirrored sunglasses. But as I am neither cool nor a spy, nor did I feel any particular need for stealth, I twisted my upper body around and peered out the back window of Karrin’s car.

A white sedan with a rental agency’s bumper sticker on it pulled up to the curb halfway down the block. It was shuddering as it did, as if it could barely get its engine to turn over, even though it was a brand-new vehicle. Before it had entirely stopped moving, the passenger door swung open and a woman stepped out onto the street as though she just couldn’t stand to be stuck in one place.

She was striking—rangy and nearly six feet tall, with long and intensely curled dark hair that fell almost to her waist. She wore sunglasses, jeans, and a thick, tight scarlet sweater that she filled out more noticeably than most. Her cowboy boots struck the street decisively in long strides as she crossed it, heading toward the old slaughterhouse. Her sharp chin was thrust forward, her mouth set in a firm line, and she walked as though she felt certain that the way was clear—or had better be.

“Hot,” Karrin said, her tone neutral, observational. “Human?”

I wasn’t getting any kind of supernatural vibe off of her, but there’s more than one way to identify a threat. “Can’t be sure,” I said. “But I think I know who she is.”

“Who?”

“A warlock,” I said.

“That’s a rogue wizard, right?”

“Yeah. When I was in the Wardens, they used to send out wanted posters for warlocks so the Wardens could recognize them. I didn’t hunt warlocks. But I was on the mailing list.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked. “Word is that they’re dangerous.”

“Dangerous children, most

of them,” I said. “Kids who no one ever taught or trained or told about the Laws of Magic.” I nodded toward the woman. “That one’s name is Hannah Ascher. She was on the run longer than any other warlock on recent record. She’s supposed to have died in a fire in . . . Australia, I think, about six years ago.”

“You drowned once. How much pressure did the Council put on you after that?”

“Good point,” I said.

“What did she do?” Karrin asked.

“Originally? Ascher burned three men to death from the inside out,” I said.

“Jesus.”

“Killed one Warden, back before my time. She’s put three more in the hospital over the years.”

“Wizards trained to hunt rogue wizards, and she took them out?”

“Pretty much. Probably why she doesn’t look worried about walking in there right now.”

“Neither will we when we go in,” Karrin said.

“No, we won’t,” I said.

“Here comes the driver.”

The driver’s-side door opened and a bald, blocky man of medium height in an expensive black suit got out. Even before he reached up to take off his sunglasses to reveal eyes like little green agates, I recognized him. Karrin did too, and let out a little growling sound. He put the sunglasses away in a pocket, checked what was probably a gun in a shoulder holster, and hurried to catch up to Ascher, an annoyed expression on his blunt-featured face.

“Binder,” she said.

“Ernest Armand Tinwhistle,” I said. “Name that goofy, don’t blame him for wanting to use an alias.”

Though, honestly, he hadn’t chosen it. The Wardens had given it to him when they’d realized how he’d somehow managed to bind an entire clan of entities out of the Nevernever into his service. He could whistle up a modest horde of humanoid creatures who apparently felt nothing remotely like pain or fear, and who were willing to sacrifice themselves without hesitation. Binder was a one-man army, and I’d told the little jerk that if I saw him in my town again, I’d end him. I’d told him to stay out, and yet here he was.