Turn Coat (The Dresden Files 11)

He raised his dark brows as he saw me. " 'Arry," he said in the hideously accurate French accent he used in public. "Good evening, mon ami."

I nodded to him. "Hey. We need to talk."

His smile faded as he took in my expression and body language, and he nodded. "But of course."

We went on up to his apartment. It was immaculate, as always, the furnishings expensive, modern, and oh so trendy, with a lot of brushed nickel finish in evidence. I went in, leaned my quarterstaff against the frame of the front door, and slouched down onto one of the couches. I looked at it for a minute.

"How much did you pay for this?" I asked him.

He dropped the accent. "About what you did for the Beetle."

I shook my head, and tried to find a comfortable way to sit. "That much money, you'd think they could afford more cushions. I've sat on fences more comfy than this."

"That's because it isn't really meant to be sat upon," Thomas replied. "It's meant to show people how very wealthy and fashionable one is."

"I got one of my couches for thirty bucks at a garage sale. It's orange and green plaid, and it's tough not to fall asleep in it when you sit down."

"It's very you," Thomas said, smiling as he crossed to the kitchen. "Whereas this is very much me. Or very much my persona, anyway. Beer?"

"Long as it's cold."

He returned with a couple of dark brown bottles coated in frost, and passed me one. We took the tops off, clinked, and then he sat down on the chair across from the couch as we drank.

"Okay," he said. "What's up?"

"Trouble," I replied. I told him about Morgan.

Thomas scowled. "Empty night, Harry. Morgan? Morgan!? What's wrong with your head?"

I shrugged. "I don't think he did it."

"Who cares? Morgan wouldn't cross the street to piss on you if you were on fire," Thomas growled. "He's finally getting his comeuppance. Why should you lift a finger?"

"Because I don't think he did it," I said. "Besides. You haven't thought it through."

Thomas slouched back in the chair and regarded me with narrowed eyes as he sipped at his beer. I joined him, and let him mull it over in silence. There was nothing wrong with Thomas's brain.

"Okay," he said, grudgingly. "I can think of a couple of reasons you'd want to cover his homicidal ass."

"I need the medical stuff I left with you."

He rose and went to the hall closet-which was packed to groaning with all manner of household articles that build up when you stay in one place for a while. He removed a white toolbox with a red cross painted on the side of it, and calmly caught a softball that rolled off the top shelf before it hit his head. He shut everything in again, got a cooler out of his fridge, and put it and the medical kit on the floor next to me.

"Please don't tell me that this is all I can do," he said.

"No. There's something else."

He spread his hands. "Well?"

"I'd like you to find out what the Vampire Courts know about the manhunt. And I need you to stay under the radar while you do it."

He stared at me for a moment, and then exhaled slowly. "Why?"

I shrugged. "I've got to know more about what's going on. I can't ask my people. And if a bunch of people know you're asking around, someone is going to connect some dots and take a harder look at Chicago."

My brother the vampire went completely still for a moment. It isn't something human beings can do. All of him, even the sense of his presence in the room, just... stopped. I felt like I was staring at a wax figure.

"You're asking me to bring Justine into this," he said.

Justine was the girl who had been willing to give her life for my brother. And who he'd nearly killed himself to protect. "Love" didn't begin to cover what they had. Neither did "broken."

My brother was a vampire of the White Court. For him, love hurt. Thomas and Justine couldn't ever be together.

"She's the personal aide of the leader of the White Court," I said. "If anyone's in a good position to find out, she is."

He rose, the motion a little too quick to be wholly human, and paced back and forth in agitation. "She's already taking enough risks, feeding information on the White Court's activities back to you when it's safe for her to do it. I don't want her taking more chances."

"I get that," I said. "But situations like this are the whole reason she went undercover in the first place. This is exactly the kind of thing she wanted to do when she went in."

Thomas mutely shook his head.

I sighed. "Look, I'm not asking her to deactivate the tractor beam, rescue the princess, and escape to the fourth moon of Yavin. I just need to know what she's heard and what she can find out without blowing her cover."

He paced for another half a minute or so before he stopped and stared at me hard. "Promise me something, first."

"What?"

"Promise me that you won't put her in any more danger than she already is. Promise me that you won't act on any information they could trace back to her."

"Dammit, Thomas," I said wearily. "That just isn't possible. There's no way to know exactly which information will be safe to use, and no way to know for certain which bits of data might be misinformation."

"Promise me," he said, emphasizing both words.

I shook my head. "I promise that I'll do absolutely everything in my power to keep Justine safe."

His jaws clenched a few times. The promise didn't satisfy him-though it was probably more accurate to say that the situation didn't satisfy him. He knew I couldn't guarantee her complete safety and he knew that I'd given him everything I could.

He took a deep, slow breath.

Then he nodded.

"Okay," he said.

Chapter Four

About five minutes after I left Thomas's place, I found myself instinctively checking the rearview mirror every couple of seconds and recognized the quiet tension that had begun to flow through me. My gut was telling me that I'd picked up a tail.

Granted, it was only an intuition, but hey. Wizard, over here. My instincts had earned enough credibility to make me pay attention to them. If they told me someone was following me, it was time to start watching my back.

If someone was following me, it wasn't necessarily connected to the current situation with Morgan. I mean, it didn't absolutely have to be, right? But I hadn't survived a ton of ugly furballs by being thick all of the time. Generally, maybe, but not all the time, and I'd be an idiot to assume that my sudden company was unconnected to Morgan.