Peace Talks (The Dresden Files 16)

She stopped and turned to face me, slate grey eyes as hard as stone.

“I tried to be reasonable. Etri declined to meet me halfway. It’s time to create a better position. So, tomorrow night, while everyone is distracted, I’m taking my brother back. I’m going through anyone who gets in the way.”

Oh, Hell’s bells. I knew what came next.

So much for the diplomatic solution.

Her teeth showed very white as she saw my dawning comprehension. “And I’m calling in my second favor. You, Sir Knight, are going to help me.”

22

Is she insane?” Karrin demanded.

I threw up my hands halfheartedly.

Her blue eyes stared hard at me for a moment before she said, in a calm, practical voice, “Oh God. You want to do it.”

“I don’t want to do it,” I said. “But he’s my brother.”

She lifted her good hand and pressed her fist against her nose. “God, Harry, there are times when I could just choke you.”

“Yeah,” I said tiredly. “Me, too.”

Her grandmother’s clock ticked steadily on the mantel over the little steel-lined gas fireplace, which must have been one of the fanciest things in the neighborhood when the house was first built. Karrin had been cleaning that day, which was a bad sign. It was one of her go-to reactions for stress. If she started cleaning the guns, I would know it was really bad.

“Things are already tense enough,” she said. “If this disrupts the peace talks, there are going to be consequences.”

“I know.”

“My read is that this whole conference is Marcone’s baby.”

I grunted agreement. “He’s actually doing what Cristos only thinks he is,” I said. “Building alliances.”

“And if you screw up Marcone’s plan?” Karrin asked bluntly.

“His reputation takes a hit,” I said.

“And he will respond to that.”

“Marcone is acutely aware of the concept of payback,” I agreed.

Karrin glowered. “I don’t know all of the beings you deal with very well, Harry. But I know Marcone. And he scares me.”

I stared at her for a moment.

I’m pretty sure there wasn’t anyone else on the planet Karrin would say those words to.

She returned my gaze for a moment, and I had to look away. She knew what she’d just shown me. She’d decided to do it.

“Hey,” I said, and went over to sit next to her on the couch. I put an arm around her. She fit very neatly into the space against my side. She pressed her cheek against my chest for a moment.

“What happens if you tell Lara no?” she asked.

“ It … hurts,” I said.

“You’ve done pain before,” she said. “What will they do to you?”

“Mab is also all about payback,” I said. “She’d act.” I frowned and said, “Hell. If I get caught helping Lara disrupt the Accords, as her own damned enforcer, she’ll have to act, too. Quickly. And publicly.”

“Couldn’t the White Council tell her to back off?”

I thought about that for a second and then said, “Maybe they could. Question is if they would. Pretty sure the answer is no.”

“Useless,” she muttered.

“I’m not exactly their poster child,” I said. “It’s likely they’d wrap me up in a bow for Mab to keep from crossing her.”

“Can’t your grandfather put a stop to that?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Last time, he had Martha Liberty’s support. I don’t know if he would, this time around. If that’s the case, the Senior Council vote would definitely go against me. So he’d have to leave it to an open vote of the whole Council and … well …”

“Useless,” Murphy repeated, more firmly. She pushed away from me, hauled herself to her feet, and hobbled out of the room stiffly on her cane.

When she came back in, she was carrying a blue plastic pistol case. She set it down on the table and sat down. Then she clicked open the case decisively.

Only instead of removing a pistol, she pulled out a handheld oscillating multitool and tossed me the end of its power cord. “Plug that in.”

I clambered around until I found the power strip between the couch and the end table, and did. Then I withdrew a bit. Wizards and technology don’t get along so well, but I’d been hitting new highs of self-restraint over the past few months. If I didn’t get close to something as simple as an electric motor, I probably wouldn’t screw it up, as long as I stayed calm. Probably. “What are you doing?” I asked.

Instead of answering, she snapped a saw blade onto the tool, flicked a switch that set it to buzzing, and immediately took the blade to the cast on her shoulder.

“Karrin,” I blurted, rising.

“Back off before you short it out,” she snapped. “Go stand over there in the kitchen. Go.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked.

She gave me a brief annoyed glare. “You’re obviously doing this, no matter how stupid it is. I can’t help you get away with it if I’m too busy being a starfish.”

I clenched my fist against my nose and said, “There are times when I could choke you, too.”

“Try it and I’ll break your wrist,” she said grimly.

I took a step toward her.

“No, don’t come help me, you lummox. I can do it myself.”

“Karrin,” I said.

I might have sounded a little terrified.

She hesitated.

“Karrin,” I said, more gently. “Murph. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. You’re hurt. You need time to heal. Please.”

She looked away from me, into the middle distance, her lips tight. “This is probably as healed as I’m going to get, for all practical purposes,” she said. Her voice was very thin.

“I can still use your help,” I said. “Just coordinating communications with our friends—”

She shook her head several times. “No. No, Harry. I’m not changing how I live my life. This is my choice. And you’ve got no stones to throw when it comes to stupid plans. So either back me up or get out of the way.”

Frustration flashed through me. Karrin might have been damned near superhuman, but she wasn’t supernatural. She’d fought. She’d been beaten. She’d been hurt. She was in no condition to get involved in another one of my problems, and there was a very real chance that it could get her killed. She didn’t have the protection of her badge anymore, and she no longer had the full use of a body that had spent a lifetime dealing with predators of one kind or another.

But she did have the enemies to show for it.

Granted, what made Karrin Murphy dangerous had never been her arms and legs. It had been the mind that directed them. But even there, I had doubts. She’d always had a lot to prove, to herself and to other people—and she had never been okay with showing weakness. Was that affecting her judgment now?

Or maybe it was something simpler than that.

Maybe she was just afraid for the man she loved.

I swallowed.

For a second, I debated killing the little saw. A simple hex would render it useless. And then I realized the manifest idiocy of that idea. Karrin would not readily forgive me that—and she’d just find another way to get the damned cast off when I wasn’t looking anyhow. She probably had a second saw waiting in a box in the garage marked REPLACEMENTS FOR THINGS HARRY SCREWED UP. She believed in being prepared.