Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

“She’s disposing of you without angering your allies at her. Surely you can’t be so deluded that you don’t see that.”

A slow chill went through me at the words.

That . . . could make a great deal of sense, actually. If Mab had decided not to use me after all, then my presence was no longer needed—but enough people thought well of me that they could prove extremely trying for her, should they set out to seek revenge.

Of course, that wasn’t how Mab played the game. When she set something up, she did it so that no matter what happened, she would run the table in the end. Mab probably intended me to do exactly what she’d told me she sent me to do. But what she hadn’t said was that she’d set it up so that it wouldn’t hurt her too badly if I failed. If I was too incompetent to work her will, she would regard me as a liability, to be dispensed with—preferably without angering my allies. Nicodemus would get the vengeance-level blame for my death if I failed, and Mab would be free and clear to choose a new Knight.

I felt my jaw tightening and loosening. Well. I couldn’t really have expected anything else. Mab struck me as the kind of mother who taught her children to swim by throwing them into the lake. My entire career with her would be shaped the same way—sink or swim.

“We’ll see,” I said.

She smiled, very slightly, and turned back to regard the table below. Grey was sitting with Karrin, speaking quietly, a smile on his face. She had her narrow-eyed expression on hers, but a smile also lurked somewhere inside it. He was being amusing.

Jerk.

“Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?” Deirdre asked.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Why?”

“Why what?”

I gestured around. “Why this? Why do you do what you do? Why bite out the tongues and murder hirelings and whatnot? What makes a person do something like this?”

She fell silent. The weight of it became oppressive.

“Tell me, child,” she said. “What is the longest-lasting relationship in your life?”

“Uh,” I said. “Like, in terms of when it started? Or how long it continued?”

“Whichever.”

“My mentor in the White Council, maybe,” I said. “I’ve known him since I was sixteen.”

“You see him daily? You speak to him, work with him?”

“Well, no.”

“Ah,” she said. “Someone that close to you. Who shares your life with you.”

“Uh,” I said. “A girlfriend or two. My cat.”

A small smirk touched her mouth. “Temporary mates and a cat. One cat.”

“He’s an awesome cat.”

“What you are telling me,” she said, “is that you have never shared your life with another over the long term. The closest you have come to it is providing a home and affection for a being which is entirely your subject and in your control.”

“Well, not at bath time . . .”

The joke did not register on her. “You have had nothing but firefly relationships, there and then gone. I have watched empires rise and fall and rise again beside Nicodemus. You call him my father, but there are no words for what we are. How can there be? Mortal words cannot possibly encompass something which mortals can never embrace and know. Centuries of faith, of cooperation, of trust, working and living and fighting side by side.” Her mouth twisted into a sneer. “You know nothing of commitment, wizard child. And so I cannot possibly explain to you why I do what I do.”

“And what is it that you think you’re doing with him, exactly?” I asked her.

“We,” she said, with perfect serenity, “are fighting to save the world.”

Which, if true, was about the creepiest thing I’d run into that day.

“From what?” I asked.

She smiled, very faintly, and finally fell silent.

I didn’t press. I didn’t want to hear anything else from her anyway.

I withdrew and went down to the table with the others.

“. . . dinner,” Grey was saying. “Assuming we’re all alive and filthy rich afterward, I mean.”

“I certainly can say no,” Karrin replied, her tone light with banter. “You’re a little creepy, Grey.”

“Goodman,” Grey said. “Say it with me. ‘Goodman.’”

“I was a cop for twenty years, Grey,” Karrin said. “I can recognize a fake name when I hear it.”

I settled down next to Karrin and pulled the new revolver out of my pocket, put it on the conference table right where I could reach it and said to Grey, “Hi.”

Grey eyed me and then the gun. Then he said to Karrin, “Does he make these kinds of calls for you?”

“You’ll have to try a little harder with something a little less obvious than that,” Karrin said. “Honestly, I’m sort of hoping he shoots you a little. I’ve never seen a round from that beast hit somebody.”

Grey settled back in his seat, eyeing me sourly. “Bro,” he said, “you’re totally cockblocking me.”

In answer, I picked up the monster revolver. “No,” I said, and then I freaking cocked it, drawing the hammer back with my thumb. Rather than a mere click, it made a sinister ratcheting sound. “Now I’m cockblocking you.”

The table got completely quiet and still. Anna Valmont’s eyes were huge.

“Touché,” Grey said, nodding slightly. “Well, there was no harm in my asking the lady, was there?”

“None to her,” I agreed amiably. “Murphy, should I shoot him anyway?”

Karrin put a finger to her lips and tapped thoughtfully. “I’ve got to admit, I’m curious as hell. But it seems a little unprofessional, as long as he backs off.”

“Hear that?” I asked Grey.

“You people are savages,” Grey said. He shook his head, muttered something beneath his breath, and rose to stalk away from the table and settle down not far from the Genoskwa—who did not object. The two exchanged a very slight nod, and began to speak in low voices in a language I did not recognize.

I lowered the hammer carefully and put the revolver down. The table was silent for another long moment, before Binder said in a jovial tone, as if he had never stopped speaking, “So there I was in Belize with thirty monkeys, a panda, and a pygmy elephant . . .”

He had begun to tell a story that everyone around the table thought was completely fabricated, while he insisted that every detail was absolutely true, when Nicodemus entered the factory through emergency doors on the floor level, letting in a blast of freezing mist and winter air. He had added a long coat to his ensemble, and he dropped it behind him as he strode forward across the floor. His shadow slid over the floor beside him, too large and never quite in sync with the rest of him.

“Good evening,” he said, as he took his seat at the head of the table. “Ladies and gentlemen, please give me your attention. Wizard Dresden, if you would, please give us a brief primer on the nature of Ways and how they open.”

I blinked as every eye on the table turned to me. “Uh,” I said. “Ways are basically passages between the mortal world and some portion of the Nevernever—the spirit world. Any point in the mortal world will open a Way to somewhere, if you know how to do it. The Way opens to a place that shares something in common with the point of origin in the mortal world. Uh, for example, if you wanted to open a Way to Hell, you’d have to find a hellish place in the mortal world and start from there. If you want to go to a peaceful place in the Nevernever, you start with a peaceful place here. Like that. Chicago is a great place for Ways—it’s a crossroads, a big one. You can get just about anywhere from here.”

“Thank you,” Nicodemus said. “Our goal is to open a Way into the secured facility containing our objective.” He accepted a large sheet of rolled paper from a squire who had hurried up to hand it to him. “Bearing all those factors in mind, I’m sure you’ll understand why

we will begin the job here.”

With a flick of his wrist, he unrolled the large sheet of paper.

It proved to be blueprints, a floor plan. I frowned and stared at it, but it didn’t look familiar.

Karrin made a choking sound.

“Murph?” I asked.

“Ah,” Nicodemus said, smiling. “You know it.”