Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

“Morrison Fiduciary Services, for the rest of the day,” he said. “The point of not killing Harvey was to avoid the possibility that he’d be noticed if he went missing. So he’s about to not go missing.”

“You’re going to fake being a confidential and knowledgeable financial expert to people you’ve never met before for the rest of the day?” I asked him, my voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Yes,” Grey said calmly.

I felt my eyebrows going up. “You’re that good?”

“I’m better,” he said. His eyes glinted weirdly and it made me shudder.

“What about Harvey’s body?”

“He didn’t have any family. And you’ve got two ghouls on ice,” he said. “Leave them where they are. They’ll take care of him for us when they thaw out.”

That made me grind my teeth. “Maybe I should take them out now. Those guys were different than the usual ghoul. I don’t feel like giving them a second shot at me.”

“Whatever,” Grey said. “I need to get moving.”

Grey started lapping the fresh blood out of his cupped hand. He grimaced, and then shuddered, and a second later, he looked exactly like the corpse at his feet, clothes and all. He leaned over and took Harvey’s glasses out of his shirt pocket. He wiped the blood off them on a corner of Harvey’s shirt, and then put them on. “Better get someone to look at that arm, eh?”

I eyed my broken arm distractedly and then said, “Grey.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not leaving Harvey’s body to be eaten by ghouls. And if you’ve got a problem with that, then we can discuss it right now.”

Grey looked at me with Harvey’s face and then nodded once. “Your call. You do it.”

And he padded off through the rapidly thinning fog toward the opening I’d blasted in the store’s window, and vanished onto the street.

I looked down at Harvey’s corpse. Then I said, “I’m sorry.” It seemed inadequate. I was going to promise him that I would punish his murderer—but Harvey was beyond that now.

The dead don’t need justice. That’s for those of us who are left looking down at the remains.

I pushed the heavy shelves back in front of Harvey’s body. The authorities would probably find him in a couple of days. It wasn’t dignified, but there wasn’t a lot more that I could do—and I really didn’t feel like making a run on Hades’ vault only to find a batch of mythological badasses waiting to kill us all the moment we came in. So I did what I could.

I didn’t have much left in the way of a magical punch. But I did have the strength of my good arm and a big heavy stick. I used them to shatter the frozen ghouls into chunks, and then I left the store too, and shambled back out to the rental car, feeling tired and sick and useless.

Twenty

I wasn’t sure where I was driving. The important thing was to drive.

Some part of me was noting, with more than a little alarm, that I was not behaving in any kind of rational fashion. The numbers weren’t adding up. I had a badly broken arm. We were on the clock. I had left Karrin by herself among that crew, though I felt fairly sure that Ascher and Binder wouldn’t kill her out of hand, and that Nicodemus had no good reason to do so. Yet. But I had only Grey’s word that he had gone where he said he meant to go. For all I knew, he’d doubled back to the warehouse to indulge his interest in Karrin. Unlikely, maybe, but I still didn’t like the idea of leaving her there.

On the other hand, I couldn’t go back either. Not with my arm hurt like that. Showing weakness to that crew was not an option.

I checked to be sure that my arm wasn’t bleeding. It wasn’t, but I nearly crashed into a car that had come to a stop in front of me while I was looking. Whatever the mantle of the Winter Knight did for me, the damage was catching up to me now. Maybe I couldn’t feel the pain, but the mantle had to draw its energy from something, and the most logical source was me. The pain didn’t hurt, but it was still being caused by a very real injury, and covering that pain was costing me in exhaustion and focus.

I needed help.

Right. Help. I should drive to Butters, get him to set the arm and splint it.

But instead I found myself parking the car in front of a pretty, simple, Colonial home in Bucktown. It was a lovely house, unpretentious and carefully maintained. There was a large oak tree out front, a couple more in the back, and a freshly painted white picket fence surrounded the front yard. A new mailbox, handmade and hand-carved, rested on a post beside the fence’s gate. Metallic gold lettering on the mailbox’s side read: THE CARPENTERS.

I put the car in park and eyed the house nervously.

I hadn’t been there since my last trip to Chicago, the year before. I’d stopped by when I’d been pretty sure no one was home, like a big old coward, to collect my dog, Mouse, for a secret mission.

Doing so had permitted me to craftily dodge my first meeting with my daughter since I’d carried her from the blood-soaked temple in Chichén Itzá, from the deaths of thousands of vampires of the Red Court—and from her mother’s body, dead by my hand.

Her name was Maggie. She had dark hair and eyes, just like Susan, her mother.

Beautiful Susan, who I’d failed, just like I’d failed Harvey.

And after that, I’d taken Molly Carpenter out and gotten her involved with some of the most dangerous beings I knew. Because she’d been helping me, Molly had fallen prey to the power games of the Sidhe—and now, for all I knew, she wasn’t even truly human anymore.

Molly, who I’d failed, just like I’d failed Harvey.

What the hell was I doing here?

I left the car and shambled up to the gate. After a brief pause, I opened it, and continued to the front door.

I knocked, wondering who might be home. It was the middle of the day. The kids would all be in school. For a second, I debated fleeing, driving away. What was I hoping to accomplish here? What could I possibly do here that would make victory in my treach-off with Nicodemus any more likely?

It was wholly against reason.

I stood on the front porch of Michael Carpenter’s house, and only then did I realize that I was crying, and had been for a while. Again, I considered simple, childish flight. But my feet didn’t move.

A moment later, a good man opened the door.

Michael Carpenter was well over six feet tall, and if he didn’t have quite the same musculature he’d carried when he’d been an active Knight of the Cross, he still looked like he could take most men apart without breaking a sweat. His brown hair was more deeply threaded with silver than it had been before, and his beard was even more markedly grizzled. There were a few more lines on his face, especially around the eyes and mouth—smile lines, I thought. He wore jeans and a blue flannel work shirt, and he wa

lked with the aid of a cane.

He’d gotten the injury fighting beside me because I hadn’t acted fast enough to prevent it. I’d failed Michael, too.

My view of him went watery and vague and fuzzed out completely.

“I think I need help,” I heard myself whisper, voice little more than a rasp. “I think I’m lost.”

There was not an instant’s hesitation in his answer or in his deep, gentle voice.

“Come in,” my friend said.

I felt something break in my chest, and let out a single sob that came out sounding like a harsh, strangled groan.

* * *

I sat down at Michael’s kitchen table.

Michael’s house had a big kitchen that looked neater and a lot less cluttered than the last time I’d seen it. There were two big pantries, necessary for the provisioning of his platoon-sized family. The table could seat a dozen without putting the leaves in.

I squinted around. The whole place looked neater and better organized, though it had always been kept scrupulously clean.

Michael took note of my gaze and smiled quietly. “Fewer people occupying the same space,” he said. There was both pride and regret in his voice. “It’s true, you know. They grow up fast.”

He went to the fridge, pulled out a couple of beers in plain brown bottles, and brought them back to the table. He used a bottle opener shaped like Thor’s war hammer, Mjolnir, to open them.

I picked up the bottle opener and read the inscription on it. “‘Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall wield the power of Thor.’ Or at least to crack open a beer.”

Michael grinned. We clinked bottles and drank a pull, and I put my arm up on the table.

He took one look at my sleeve and exhaled slowly. Then he said, “Let me help.”

I eased out of my duster, with his aid, my arm and wrist flickering with silvery twinges of sensation as the sleeve came off. Then I eyed my arm.