Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

“Yeah, Binder and his Rule Number One,” I said. “He doesn’t know about what you’ve done, does he?”

She narrowed her eyes and her voice became a degree hotter. “Nicodemus and Lasciel and the other Denarians have treated me with respect,” she said. “They’ve talked to me. Trusted me. Worked with me. Made me rich. When one side treats you like a sad freak and a hunted animal and the other treats you like an equal, it gets really easy to decide where you stand.”

Hard to argue with that. But I tried. “Doesn’t mean you have to run everything exactly the way he wants you to do it,” I said.

She let out a harsh laugh. “But I do want to do it,” she said. “I’ve been looking forward to it. Every time you looked at me, flirted with me, spoke with me.”

“As have I,” said Lasciel’s voice, from the same mouth. “No one’s ever turned me down before, Harry. Not once. And to think that I liked you.”

“We wouldn’t have worked out, babe,” I said.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps not. In any case, be assured that I may have one of the few accurate perspectives in the universe when I say that ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.’”

Ah. So that’s what my subconscious had been trying to warn me about. That Lasciel was right there in front of me, and itching for payback.

“Meaning what?” I asked her.

“Meaning that since a whisper in your ear that should have killed you seems to have failed, I intend to skip the subtlety, rip your head apart, and collect our child. She’s far too valuable a resource to be allowed to die with you.”

My eyes widened. “You, uh, you know about that.”

“Child?” Michael said, baffled.

“Complicated,” I said through clenched teeth.

Well. At least now I knew which side Ascher was taking.

“I’d tell you to give me the knife, Dresden,” Nicodemus said, still smiling. “But unlike your friend, I don’t do second chances. And you won’t have any need for it in a moment.”

Ursiel made a sound that I normally only associate with tractor-trailer rigs, and which might have been a hungry growl. Then he stepped over the four-foot block with no particular difficulty and padded in near silence to my left. Lasciel took up station a bit to my right, with Nicodemus making the third point of a lopsided triangle surrounding us.

This day was going bad a little more rapidly than I had anticipated. It had, in fact, sprayed gravel on the windshield of my worst-case scenario as it went rocketing past.

And then footsteps sounded, and Grey sauntered into the amphitheater, casually carrying Anna Valmont’s pack over one shoulder.

There was blood on it, and on Grey’s fingers.

“Ah, Grey,” Nicodemus said. He was enjoying getting a little of his own back after the theater I’d thrown into his face. “And?”

“Valmont’s dead, as ordered,” Grey said calmly. He surveyed the scene on the stage as he approached, his eyes lingering on Lasciel appreciatively. “We about done here?”

“A few final details to tie up,” Nicodemus said. “Have you considered my offer?”

“The Coin thing?” Grey asked. He shrugged and glanced at Lasciel again. “It’s got possibilities. I’ve got questions. Let’s finish the job and talk about them over dinner.”

“Excellent,” Nicodemus said. “Would you mind?”

I tracked Grey, staring hard at him as he took up position at the fourth corner of the square centered on me and Michael, watching him as he set the pack of diamonds and artifacts to one side and cracked his knuckles, smiling.

“I never pretended to be anything but a villain,” he said to me, as if baffled by my glare. “Should have seen this one coming, wizard.”

“You really killed her?” I asked.

“No particular reason not to. It was quick.”

“You are a treacherous son of a bitch,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “Maybe you should have been the one to hire me, then.”

His response made me grind my teeth.

There weren’t going to be any temptations offered this time, no bargains to think twice about, and no cavalry was about to ride over the horizon. Nicodemus meant to kill us.

Michael and I could not win this fight.

I heard him take a deep breath and murmur a low, steady prayer. He set his feet and raised his sword to the high guard.

I gripped my staff mostly in my right hand, holding it across my body with a few fingers of my damaged left arm, and called forth my will and Winter, readying for a hopeless battle.

Lasciel turned her hands palms up, and searing points of violet light appeared in them. Waves of heat shimmered around Hannah Ascher’s body.

Anduriel seethed up around Nicodemus like a dark cloak made from a breaking wave, foaming around the slender man as he raised his sword and started forward.

Ursiel let out a subsonic rumble that shook my chest, and the Genoskwa’s beady eyes stared hate from the face of the prehistoric demon-bear.

Grey tensed and crouched slightly, his bland features relaxed and amused.

And I stopped being able to fight back the maniac’s grin that had been struggling to get loose as I played my hole card and said, “Game over, man. Game over.”

Forty-four

A good con doesn’t just happen.

It’s all about the setup.

Let’s rewind.

Set the

Wayback Machine for three mornings ago, just after walking out of that first meeting with Nicodemus and Deirdre at the Hard Rock, while riding away in the limo with Mab.

I told her who I wanted to see.

For a moment, she didn’t react. Her eyes were locked somewhere beyond the roof of the limo, her head tracking slowly, as if she could still see Nicodemus and Deirdre in their suite. There was no expression on her face, absolutely none—but the interior of the car had dropped several degrees in temperature, purely from the intensity of whatever she wasn’t showing.

“You grow in wisdom, my Knight,” she said a moment later, turning her head back to face the front. “Slowly, perhaps, but you grow. He is the logical person to consult in this matter. I have already arranged a meeting.”

“Oh,” I said, and idly fingered the earring, unused to the sensation of something metallic there. “Good.”

“Stop playing with that,” Mab said. “The less attention you draw to it, the better.”

I scowled and futzed with it a little more, just to show her that I could, but she was right. As things stood, it might be seen as a simple fashion statement. If Nicodemus realized that by taking the earring away, he could all but incapacitate me, things could go downhill rapidly once we finally came to grips.

So I dropped my hands and schooled myself mentally the rest of the way to the meeting, focusing on accepting the new sensation and dismissing it from my thoughts entirely.

I started playing with it again as the limo stopped, and Mab sighed.

McAnally’s pub is the best of the watering holes in Chicago that serve the supernatural community. It’s a basement bar, like Cheers, but there the resemblance ends. It’s all decorated in stained and polished wood, with clunky electric ceiling fans from the thirties whirling lazily overhead. The ceiling isn’t very high, so they whirl away just a few inches over my head, and I remind myself not to do the bunny hop every time I come through the door.