Peace Talks (The Dresden Files 16)

Murphy smirked. “Like I said. You visited the place a few times. I lived there. Especially in the gym.”

One of Marcone’s people in the red jackets looked like he might disagree with me going up the stairs to the gym, but I pacified him with upraised hands and said, “I need to sort this out or my boss is gonna kill me. Just give me a minute.”

It was one of the same guys from the night before. The guard looked from me over toward Marcone’s camp. Marcone didn’t look up from his conversation, but Hendricks, at his right hand, gave the guard a nod.

The guard stepped back with a grimace and said, “Watch that Freydis, man. She’ll gut you as soon as look at you.”

“Spoken like a three,” I said. He looked confused. I kept moving.

I came up the stairs to the soft sounds of Freydis’s sobs. Lara was standing by the nearest corner of the boxing ring with her arms around the Valkyrie’s shoulders. I checked the stairs behind me to be sure that they were empty, closed the door, and said, “Clear.”

“Od’s blood, I should have been an actress,” Freydis said in a pleased voice, standing clear of Lara.

“Well. The Einherjaren weren’t buying it,” I said. “Everyone knows you’re up to something.”

Lara smirked at me. Vampiric allure completely aside, the woman had a smirk that was to die for, and her little black dress was stylish and stunning. She flexed her hands like claws and said, “Getting my hooks into Mab’s Knight, of course.”

“Obviously,” I said. I started for the back of the room, where the towels were stacked on a shelf, ready to be used. I shrugged out of my suit coat and vest as I went, and then out of the shoes, pants, and shirt, until I was left in just boxer briefs, an undershirt, and socks. It was necessary.

“I still believe this is a serious breach of security planning,” Lara complained as she lifted her dress over her head and tossed it on a bench. She added her shoes, more carefully, and was wearing nothing else. Excellently. I averted my eyes.

“You don’t know Einherjaren,” Freydis insisted in a firm tone. “Once they get it in their heads that something needs to be one way, that’s it. That’s how it needs to be.”

Lara sounded as if she was speaking with her nose wrinkled up. “Still. An old privy shaft?”

“Once they realized they could use it to drop their towels right next to the laundry room in the basement, instead of carrying them down in hampers, there was no stopping it,” Freydis said. “They just knocked holes in the wall with the dumbbells and started dropping towels down the shaft. Marcone had to give in with grace and installed dumbwaiter doors.”

I went to said door, flipped a latch, and opened it. It rolled up smoothly to reveal a shaft that began overhead and led straight down into the darkness. It was not excessively large.

There was an incredibly wonderful smell, flowers and cinnamon and something darker and sweeter, and then Lara was standing next to me, her bare shoulder against my elbow. My elbow approved, ecstatically—but Lara jumped and let out a little truncated sound of discomfort.

She glanced down at her shoulder, where a patch the shape, I guess, of the end of my elbow was turning red, as though she’d brushed it against a hot pan.

Vampires of the White Court had a severe allergy to sincere love, the way the Black Court doesn’t like sunbathing. Skin-to-skin contact with people who love and who are loved in return is hardest of all on the White Court.

Which meant that …

Oh.

Well. I hadn’t been thinking about having that aura of protection around me when Karrin and I got busy, but it was nice to have it.

And it was nice to know it was real. Very nice.

“Ouch,” Lara said, her tone annoyed. Then she glanced up at me and her expression became suddenly pleased. “Oh. You and the policewoman? Congratulations, wizard.”

“My relationships are none of your beeswax,” I responded in a grumpy tone.

Lara nodded at the old privy shaft. “We’re both about to crawl down that together, so I’d say I have a minor need to know if I’m going to receive second- and third-degree burns for bumping into you.” She regarded the space gravely. “Small. Are you going to fit?”

“Stop setting me up for dirty jokes,” I complained. “I’ll manage. Are you sure you can handle the guard?”

Lara turned her head slightly toward me, her eyes down, and caught her lip between her teeth, before slowly looking up at me. Suddenly the light fled from the room, except where it touched the pale perfection of her skin.

I just about started howling and pounding my chest, I suddenly wanted her so badly. It took me a good long breath to get control of myself and force myself to avert my eyes.

“I’ll manage,” Lara murmured, and the painful pressure of my desire was abruptly mitigated.

I gritted my teeth and said, through them, “I meant the details. Are you sure he isn’t going to see or hear anything else?”

“Give me sixty seconds,” Lara said. “Once I get close enough, he’s not going to notice anything else, even if you walked by him playing a trumpet and pounding drums. And even if he noticed, he’d not remember it.”

“Sixty seconds,” Freydis sighed. She was knotting towels together with mechanical precision. “Men.”

Lara turned her eyes to Freydis, who suddenly caught her breath, her cheeks flushing with color.

“Darling, this isn’t the same thing at all,” Lara purred. “It’s a pity your contract was so specific, or I’d demonstrate for you sometime.”

Freydis let out a deep sigh and then went back to knotting towels without looking up.

Lara gave me an impish smile, held out her hands, and said, “Help me up, Harry.”

“You don’t need any help from me,” I said, a little thickly. Even when she wasn’t shining the come-hither flashlight right in my face, Lara Raith still left me feeling a little bit dazzled.

The de facto monarch of the White Court responded with an amused laugh and entered the shaft like a diver, silently vanishing down into the darkness.

“Sixty seconds,” I muttered. “Going to take me twice that just to climb down.”

“Going to lose my mind on this damned job,” Freydis noted. “I’ll have the rope ready in five.”

“Cover,” I said.

“Oh, right.” She shook her head, dipped a hand into her dress, and took out a little wooden plaque. “If my head wasn’t attached. I’ve never worked for a client this distracting.”

She picked up my suit coat and Lara’s dress and dropped them into the boxing ring. Then she touched the plaque to them, muttered something, and snapped the wood in her fingers. There was an eye-searing flash of light that left a Norse rune shaped like a lightning bolt burned on my retina in purple, and suddenly there I was, on top of Lara in the boxing ring, making out furiously.

As illusions went, it was excellent. Just really … detailed. Maybe too much so. I turned away, a little embarrassed.

“She likes you, you know,” Freydis said, watching the illusion with amusement.

“From what I can tell, Lara mostly likes Lara,” I said.

“Maybe. But she treats you differently than she does others.”