Peace Talks (The Dresden Files 16)

There was a quality to the stillness that I had never experienced before I’d started taking care of Maggie. A sense of … intense satisfaction like nothing I’d ever known. There she was, sleeping, happy, healthy—safe.

I took a deep stabilizing breath. Weariness fled, not from my body, but from somewhere deeper and infinitely more important. My brother exhaled at the same time and thumped his fist on my shoulder. Then he turned for the kitchen and I headed for the shower.

I broiled myself for as long as seemed appropriate, and as I was getting dressed I heard voices from the kitchen.

“Milk doesn’t have feelings,” Maggie was saying.

“Why not?” piped a voice even younger.

“Because milk is inanimate,” Maggie said cheerfully.

“Oh.” There was a pause. “But it is moving.”

“I moved it,” Maggie said. “And then it sloshes around for a while.”

“Why?”

“Because of gravity, I think,” Maggie said. “Or maybe memontum.”

“Do you mean momentum?” the littler voice asked.

“I might,” Maggie said seriously.

“How do you know, then?”

“When you’re ten, you’ll know things, too,” Maggie said.

“Why?”

I walked into the apartment’s little kitchen to find Maggie, in her pajamas, making a mess with the attentive help of Mouse and a skull carved from wood. Little green dots of light glowed in the skull’s eye sockets, like the embers of some bizarre fire. Half the contents of the apartment’s little pantry were crowded onto the kitchen counter.

I eyed Thomas, who was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee. He’d already poured mine. I walked over to him and took my cup, murmuring, “You didn’t think to step in here?”

“You got in the shower so long ago, I forget exactly what I was thinking back in those days,” he shot back.

I lowered my voice a little. “How’d she do?” I asked him.

He spoke in kind. “Pretty good. We exchanged good-mornings, made eye contact, and she seemed happy to do it,” he said. “She asked me if I wanted pancakes.”

“And you said yes?”

“Harry,” Thomas said, “be real. Everyone wants someone to make us pancakes; we’re all just too grown-up to say it.”

I sipped coffee, because it was impossible to argue with logic like that.

He sipped, too. “You going to stop her?”

I savored the perfection that is coffee and enjoyed that first swallow before responding. “Think I’d better scout it out.”

I took my cup into the kitchen and heard Thomas get up to tag along. When I came into its line of sight, the little wooden skull’s eyes swiveled to me, and her voice proclaimed proudly, “Pancakes are inanimate!”

“Correct,” I said, speaking to the spirit inside the skull. Better inside that wooden one than mine, let me tell you. Ever since the new-formed spirit of intellect had coalesced inside my mind, it had grown until it was too big for the space, which admittedly had not taken her very long. We’d managed to successfully get her out of my head, and she’d taken up residence in the carved wooden skull prepared for her. Ever since, we’d been teaching her and answering a river of endless questions. “Good morning, Bonea.”

“Morning is when the sun comes up!” the little skull said. “It ends at noon!”

Bonea was full of points of information that didn’t connect to anything else. She could tell you the particulars of all sorts of secrets of the universe, but she’d have no idea what kind of an effect those secrets could have on the actual world. Which made her … someone to be carefully managed. “Correct again,” I said. “Good morning, Maggie.”

“Hi, Dad,” Maggie said. “I am making us all pancakes for breakfast.”

“Which is awesome,” Thomas said, nudging me in the small of the back.

Maggie threw him a swift glance and a shy smile.

I didn’t have to look to know he winked back at her.

I lifted my eyebrows. “Yeah. Pancakes. That’s new.”

“Molly says you have to be brave and try new things to grow,” my daughter said seriously. “And Thomas says everyone likes pancakes.”

“Everyone likes pancakes,” Thomas said.

I gave him a narrow-eyed look over my shoulder to tell him to stop helping me. He returned it with a guileless smile.

“Well. They’re not wrong,” I said seriously. “Do you want any help?”

“I can do it by myself,” she said. “I know how to work the stove and Bonnie knows the recipe.”

“I know two hundred and twenty-seven individual pancake recipes!” Bonnie said. “Sixteen can be made with the current inventory of the kitchen!”

“We’re using number seven,” Maggie said seriously. “From scratch is best.”

That sounded like the makings of a huge mess to me. Mouse gave me what I swear was a smug look and licked his chops. It would be extra work to clean up afterward—but it would probably be good for Maggie to try it. So I leaned down and kissed her on the head and said, “Be careful of the stove. And let me know if you need help with anything, punkin.”

“See there, Miss Maggie?” Thomas said. “I told you so.”

I stopped and eyed him. “Did you set all this up so you could get pancakes?”

Thomas put on a serious expression and widened his eyes a little at Maggie. “I’m not saying that I didn’t.”

I rolled my eyes at him.

My daughter giggled. “Mister Thomas is okay, Dad.”

“You are very young. Tell you what. You let me deal with him,” I said. “You keep your mind on what you’re doing, okay? Be safe.”

“ ’Kay,” she said. She turned back to the task, and though her eyes were still puffy with sleep, she focused on the work with the instant morning energy that can be possessed only by someone who has not yet discovered the immutable necessity of coffee.

I settled down on the couch, nearby. The apartment was basically a single large room, sharing the kitchen, the dining room, and a living room with no walls between. There were two doors to the two bedrooms—Molly’s and mine. Well, technically the room was Molly’s. As far as I knew, she hadn’t actually been in it since I’d moved in, except for a couple of times she’d breezed through, petted Mouse, tickled Maggie, shared some sunny chat with me, and departed again.

It had been a while since we’d really talked.

The apartment reminded me of my old place in the basement of Mrs. Spunkelcrief’s boardinghouse. Only there was no musty, moldy smell of old basement. And it was bigger. And it was more brightly lit. And newer. And quite a bit cleaner. And it just didn’t feel right.

As dumpy as it had been, that grotty little apartment had been my home. Damn the vampires, for burning it down. Damn Marcone, for buying the property and putting up his new headquarters on the ground where home used to be.

I missed it.

Ah, well. There was no sense in brooding over it. Life never stays the same. There’s always some kind of curveball coming at you. Nothing to do but swing away.

Thomas picked a spot of wall to lean against where he could see the kitchen and sipped his coffee. His eyes were focused on Maggie with thoughtful intensity. “Living dangerously, eh?”