Peace Talks (The Dresden Files 16)

But there’s a deeper meaning to home. Something simpler, more primal.

It’s where you eat the best food because other predators can’t take it from you very easily there.

It’s where you and your mate are the most intimate.

It’s where you raise your children, safe against a world that can do horrible things to them.

It’s where you sleep, safe.

It’s where you relax.

It’s where you dream.

Home is where you embrace the present and plan the future.

It’s where the books are.

And more than anything else, it’s where you build that world that you want.

I drove through Chicago streets in the early morning and wished that I felt numb. My head hurt from lack of sleep and insufficient amounts of insufficiently nourishing food. My body ached, especially my hands and forearms. My head still spun with motion sickness, my guts sending up frequent complaints.

My brother was in trouble, and I didn’t know if I could get him out.

I thought of Justine’s misery and fear and the trust in her eyes when I’d promised to help Thomas, and suddenly felt very tired.

I very much wanted to go home.

And I didn’t have one.

My comfy, dumpy old apartment was gone, flattened by Gentleman Johnnie Marcone to make way for his stupid little castle and the Bigger Better Brighter Future Society. I mean, that had only been after the Red Court of Vampires had burned my home down, but I guess I’d settled their hash not long after. I was willing to call that one even.

But I missed my couch and the comfy chairs in front of my fire. I missed reading for hours on end with Mouse snoozing comfortably beside me and Mister purring between my ankles. I missed my cluttered, thoroughly functional little magical laboratory in the subbasement, and Bob on the shelf. I missed problems as simple as a rogue sorcerer trying to run his own drug cartel.

And I missed not being afraid for the people I loved.

I bowed my head at a light and wept. The guy behind me had to honk to get me to look up again. I considered blowing out his engine in a fit of pure pique and decided against it: I was the one who wasn’t moving at a green light.

I didn’t know what else to do.

I felt tired and lost and sick. Which left me only one place to go.

The sky had just begun to turn golden in the east when I pulled up to the Carpenters’ house. As I got out of the car, a neighbor a few doors down, an elderly gentleman in a flannel shirt and a red ball cap, came out of the door and stumped down the driveway to get his morning paper. He gave me a gimlet glower as he did, as if I’d personally come and put all his newspaper pages out of order, then carefully folded it up again and walked stiffly back into his house.

Man. I wished I was old enough to be irrationally grumpy at some random guy on the street. I could have blown out his engine.

I didn’t knock on the door. I went around to the backyard. There I found the Carpenter treehouse, which looked like something out of a Disney movie, in a massive old oak tree in the backyard. A bit behind it was the workshop, the rolling door of which was currently wide open. An old radio played classic rock in the background, and one of the better human beings I knew was on a weight bench, working out.

Michael Carpenter was in his fifties from the neck up, with silvering hair, grey eyes, and a well-kept salt-and-pepper beard. From the neck down, he could have been twenty or thirty years younger. He was performing basic bench presses with around two hundred and fifty pounds on the bar. Michael was doing slow reps with it.

I hadn’t seen the start of his set, but I counted fourteen repetitions of the movement before he carefully set the bar back onto the rack, so he was probably doing twenties. The struts of the bench creaked a bit as the weight settled onto them.

Michael glanced up at me and smiled. He sat up, breathing heavily but in a controlled manner, and said, “Harry! Up early or late?”

“Late,” I said, and bumped fists with him. “Going light this morning?”

He grinned a bit wider. “Most mornings. It’s my shoulders. They just can’t take the heavy stuff anymore.”

I eyed the weights and said, “Yeah, you wimp.”

He laughed. “Want a turn?”

I felt awful. And angry about it. The Winter mantle didn’t care if I’d missed sleep and felt terrible. It wanted me to kill or have sex with something. Feeding it exercise was as close as I could get. Dammit. “Sure.”

He got up amiably, using an aluminum cane lying beside the bench to stand. Michael had taken multiple hits from an AK-style assault rifle out on the island a few years back. He shouldn’t have survived it. Instead, he’d come out of it with a bad hip, a bum leg, a bad eye, a severe limp, and the only non-posthumous retirement I’d ever heard about for a Knight of the Cross.

He limped gamely over to the head of the bench to spot me. I took off my duster, lay down, and started working.

“You look”—Michael paused, considering his words—“distracted.”

He was my friend. I told him what was up. He listened gravely.

“Harry, you idiot,” he said gently. “Go get some sleep.”

I glared at him and kept working.

He was one of a relatively few people in my life upon whom my glare had no effect. “You aren’t going to muscle your way through this one, and you aren’t going to be able to think your way through it in your current condition. Help your brother. Get some sleep.”

I thought about that one until the frozen chill of Winter had seeped into my arms and chest and I was breathing like a steam engine. Then I put the weight down.

“How many was that?” I asked.

“I stopped counting at forty.” Michael put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Enough, Harry. Get some rest.”

“I can’t,” I said, my voice suddenly harsh. I sat up, hard. “Somebody pushed my brother into this. Somehow. I have to stop them. I have to fight them.”

“Yes,” Michael said, his tone patient. “But you need to fight them smarter, not harder.”

I scowled and glanced back over my shoulder at him.

“You’re no kid anymore, Harry. But take it from someone who did this kind of thing for a very long time: Take your sleep wherever you can get it. You never know when you’ll have no other choice.”

I shook my head. “What if something happens while I’m sleeping? What if those lost hours are the difference between saving him and …”

“What if a meteor hits the planet tomorrow?” Michael replied. “Harry, there is very little in this world that we can control. You have to realize when you’ve reached the limits of what you can choose to do to change the situation.”

“When you reach the limits,” I said quietly, “maybe it’s time to change your limits.”

Those words fell on a very long silence.

When Michael spoke, his voice was frank. “How well did that work out for you, the last time?”

I tilted my head a little, in acceptance of the hit.

“Harry,” he said, “over the years, I’ve talked to you many times about coming to church.”

“Endlessly,” I said.

He nodded cheerfully. “And the invitation is a standing one. But all I’ve ever wanted for you was to help you develop in your faith.”