Turn Coat (The Dresden Files 11)

I looked up at him. His hard sour face had gone gray. His expression was twisted up in shock and surprise, like that of a small child discovering the painful consequences of gravity for the first time.

"Ana," he said, almost choking on the words. "You... you think that I... How could you think that I would...?"

He turned his face away. It couldn't have been a tear. Not from Morgan. He wouldn't shed tears if he had to execute his own mother.

But for a fraction of a second, something shone on one of his cheeks.

Anastasia rose and walked over to Morgan. She knelt down by him and put her hand on his head. "Donald," she said gently, "we've been betrayed by those we trusted before. It wouldn't be the first time."

"That was them," he said unsteadily, not looking up. "This is me."

She stroked his hair once. "I never thought you had done it of your own free will, Donald," she whispered quietly. "I thought someone had gotten into your mind. Held a hostage against your cooperation. Something."

"Who could they have held hostage?" Morgan said in a bitter voice. "There's no one. For that very reason. And you know it."

She sighed and closed her eyes.

"You knew his wards," Morgan went on. "You've been through them before. Often. You opened them in under a second when you came in. You have a key to his apartment."

She said nothing.

His voice turned heavy and hollow. "You're involved. With Dresden."

Anastasia blinked her eyes several times. "Donald," she began.

He looked up at her, his eyes empty of tears or pain or anything but weariness. "Don't," he said. "Don't you dare."

She met his eyes. I'd never seen such gentle pain on her face. "You're running a fever. Donald, please. You should be in bed."

He laid his head on the rug and closed his eyes. "It doesn't matter."

"Donald-"

"It doesn't matter," he repeated dully.

Anastasia started crying in silence. She stayed next to Morgan, stroking her hand over his mottled silver-and-brown hair.

An hour later, Morgan was unconscious in bed again. Molly was down in the lab, pretending to work on potions with the trapdoor closed. I was sitting in the same spot with an empty can of Coke.

Anastasia came out of the bedroom and shut the door silently behind her. Then she leaned back against it. "When I saw him," she said, "I thought he had come here to hurt you. That he had learned about the two of us and wanted to hurt you."

"You," I asked, "and Morgan?"

She was quiet for a moment before she said, "I never allowed it to happen. It wasn't fair to him."

"But he wanted it anyway," I said.

She nodded.

"Hell's bells," I sighed.

She folded her arms over her stomach, never looking up. "Was it any different with your apprentice, Harry?"

Molly hadn't always been the grasshopper she was today. When I'd first begun teaching her, she'd assumed that I would be teaching her all sorts of things that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with her being naked. And that had been more than all right with her.

Just not with me.

"Not much," I acknowledged. "But he hasn't been your apprentice for a long, long time."

"I have always been of the opinion that romantic involvement was a vulnerability I could not afford. Not in my position."

"Not always," I said, "apparently."

She exhaled slowly. "It was a much easier opinion to hold in my previous body. It was older. Less prone to..."

"Life?" I suggested.

She shrugged. "Desire. Loneliness. Joy. Pain."

"Life," I said.

"Perhaps." She closed her eyes for a moment. "When I was young, I reveled in love, Harry. In passion. In discovery and in new experiences and in life." She gestured down at herself. "I never realized how much of it I had forgotten until Corpsetaker left me like this." She opened her pained eyes and looked at me. "I didn't realize how much I missed it until you reminded me. And by then, Morgan wasn't... He was like I had been. Detached."

"In other words," I said, "he'd made himself more like you. Patterned himself after you. And because he'd done that, after your change he wasn't capable of giving you what you wanted."

She nodded.

I shook my head. "A hundred years is a long time to carry a torch," I said. "That one must burn like hell."

"I know. And I never wanted to hurt him. You must believe me."

"Here's where you say, 'The heart wants what the heart wants,' " I said.

"Trite," she said, "but true all the same." She turned until her right shoulder leaned on the door, facing me. "We should talk about where this leaves us."

I toyed with the can of Coke. "Before we can do that," I said, "we have to talk about Morgan and LaFortier."

She exhaled slowly. "Yes."

"What do you intend to do?" I asked.

"He's wanted by the Council, Harry," she said in a gentle voice. "I don't know how he's managed to avoid being located by magical means, but sooner or later, in hours or days, he will be found. And when that happens, you and Molly will be implicated as well. You'll both die with him." She took a deep breath. "And if I don't go to the Council with what I know, I'll be right there beside you."

"Yeah," I said.

"You really think he's innocent?" she asked.

"Of LaFortier's murder," I said. "Yes."

"Do you have proof?"

"I've found out enough to make me think I'm right. Not enough to clear him-yet."

"If it wasn't Morgan," she said quietly, "then the traitor is still running around loose."

"Yeah."

"You're asking me to discard the pursuit of a suspect with strong evidence supporting his guilt in favor of chasing a damn ghost, Harry. Someone we've barely been able to prove exists, much less identify. Not only that, you're asking me to gamble your life, your apprentice's life, and my own against finding this ghost in time."

"Yes. I am."

She shook her head. "Everything I've ever learned as a Warden tells me that it's far more likely that Morgan is guilty."

"Which brings us back to the question," I said. "What are you going to do?"

Silence yawned.

She pushed off the door and came to sit down on the chair facing my seat on the couch.