Skin Game

Twenty

I wasn’t sure where I was driving. The important thing was to drive.

Some part of me was noting, with more than a little alarm, that I was not behaving in any kind of rational fashion. The numbers weren’t adding up. I had a badly broken arm. We were on the clock. I had left Karrin by herself among that crew, though I felt fairly sure that Ascher and Binder wouldn’t kill her out of hand, and that Nicodemus had no good reason to do so. Yet. But I had only Grey’s word that he had gone where he said he meant to go. For all I knew, he’d doubled back to the warehouse to indulge his interest in Karrin. Unlikely, maybe, but I still didn’t like the idea of leaving her there.

On the other hand, I couldn’t go back either. Not with my arm hurt like that. Showing weakness to that crew was not an option.

I checked to be sure that my arm wasn’t bleeding. It wasn’t, but I nearly crashed into a car that had come to a stop in front of me while I was looking. Whatever the mantle of the Winter Knight did for me, the damage was catching up to me now. Maybe I couldn’t feel the pain, but the mantle had to draw its energy from something, and the most logical source was me. The pain didn’t hurt, but it was still being caused by a very real injury, and covering that pain was costing me in exhaustion and focus.

I needed help.

Right. Help. I should drive to Butters, get him to set the arm and splint it.

But instead I found myself parking the car in front of a pretty, simple, Colonial home in Bucktown. It was a lovely house, unpretentious and carefully maintained. There was a large oak tree out front, a couple more in the back, and a freshly painted white picket fence surrounded the front yard. A new mailbox, handmade and hand-carved, rested on a post beside the fence’s gate. Metallic gold lettering on the mailbox’s side read: THE CARPENTERS.

I put the car in park and eyed the house nervously.

I hadn’t been there since my last trip to Chicago, the year before. I’d stopped by when I’d been pretty sure no one was home, like a big old coward, to collect my dog, Mouse, for a secret mission.

Doing so had permitted me to craftily dodge my first meeting with my daughter since I’d carried her from the blood-soaked temple in Chichén Itzá, from the deaths of thousands of vampires of the Red Court-and from her mother’s body, dead by my hand.

Her name was Maggie. She had dark hair and eyes, just like Susan, her mother.

Beautiful Susan, who I’d failed, just like I’d failed Harvey.

And after that, I’d taken Molly Carpenter out and gotten her involved with some of the most dangerous beings I knew. Because she’d been helping me, Molly had fallen prey to the power games of the Sidhe-and now, for all I knew, she wasn’t even truly human anymore.

Molly, who I’d failed, just like I’d failed Harvey.

What the hell was I doing here?

I left the car and shambled up to the gate. After a brief pause, I opened it, and continued to the front door.

I knocked, wondering who might be home. It was the middle of the day. The kids would all be in school. For a second, I debated fleeing, driving away. What was I hoping to accomplish here? What could I possibly do here that would make victory in my treach-off with Nicodemus any more likely?

It was wholly against reason.

I stood on the front porch of Michael Carpenter’s house, and only then did I realize that I was crying, and had been for a while. Again, I considered simple, childish flight. But my feet didn’t move.

A moment later, a good man opened the door.

Michael Carpenter was well over six feet tall, and if he didn’t have quite the same musculature he’d carried when he’d been an active Knight of the Cross, he still looked like he could take most men apart without breaking a sweat. His brown hair was more deeply threaded with silver than it had been before, and his beard was even more markedly grizzled. There were a few more lines on his face, especially around the eyes and mouth-smile lines, I thought. He wore jeans and a blue flannel work shirt, and he walked with the aid of a cane.

He’d gotten the injury fighting beside me because I hadn’t acted fast enough to prevent it. I’d failed Michael, too.

My view of him went watery and vague and fuzzed out completely.

“I think I need help,” I heard myself whisper, voice little more than a rasp. “I think I’m lost.”

There was not an instant’s hesitation in his answer or in his deep, gentle voice.

“Come in,” my friend said.

I felt something break in my chest, and let out a single sob that came out sounding like a harsh, strangled groan.

* * *

I sat down at Michael’s kitchen table.

Michael’s house had a big kitchen that looked neater and a lot less cluttered than the last time I’d seen it. There were two big pantries, necessary for the provisioning of his platoon-sized family. The table could seat a dozen without putting the leaves in.

I squinted around. The whole place looked neater and better organized, though it had always been kept scrupulously clean.

Michael took note of my gaze and smiled quietly. “Fewer people occupying the same space,” he said. There was both pride and regret in his voice. “It’s true, you know. They grow up fast.”

He went to the fridge, pulled out a couple of beers in plain brown bottles, and brought them back to the table. He used a bottle opener shaped like Thor’s war hammer, Mjolnir, to open them.

I picked up the bottle opener and read the inscription on it. “‘Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall wield the power of Thor.’ Or at least to crack open a beer.”

Michael grinned. We clinked bottles and drank a pull, and I put my arm up on the table.

He took one look at my sleeve and exhaled slowly. Then he said, “Let me help.”

I eased out of my duster, with his aid, my arm and wrist flickering with silvery twinges of sensation as the sleeve came off. Then I eyed my arm.

The bone hadn’t actually come out of the skin, but it looked like it would only take a little push to make it happen. My forearm was swollen up like a sausage. The area around the upraised bone was purple and blotchy, and something that looked like blisters had come up on my skin. Michael took my arm and laid it out straight on the table. He began to prod it gently with his fingertips.

“Radial fracture,” he said quietly.

“You’re a doctor now?”

“I was a medical corpsman when I served,” he replied. “Saw plenty of breaks.” He looked up and said, “You don’t want to go to the hospital, I take it?”

I shook my head.

“Of course not,” he said. He prodded some more. “I think it’s a clean break.”

“Can you set it?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But without imaging equipment, I’ll have to do it by feel. It could heal crookedly if I’m not good enough.”

“I’d kill most of that equipment just by walking into the room with it,” I said.

He nodded. “We’ll have to immobilize the wrist right away once it’s done.”

“Don’t know if I can afford that.”

“You can’t not afford it,” he replied bluntly. “Assuming I get it set, one twist of your hand will shift the bone at the break. You’ve got to immobilize and protect it or the ends will just grind together instead of healing.”

I winced. “Can you do a cast?”

“There’s too much swelling,” he said. “We’ll have to splint it and wait for the swelling to go down before it can take a proper cast. I could call Dr. Butters.”

I flinched at the suggestion. “He’s. . sort of wary of me right now. And you know how much he doesn’t like working on living people.”

Michael frowned at me for a moment, studying my face carefully. Then he said, “I see.” He nodded and said, “Wait here.”

Then he got up and went out his back door, toward his workshop. He came back a few moments later with a tool-bag of items and set them out on the table. He washed his hands, and then took some antibacterial towelettes to my arm. Then he took my wrist and forearm in square, powerful hands.

“This will hurt,” he advised me.

“Meh,” I said.

“Lean back against the pull.” Then he began pulling with one hand, and putting gentle pressure on the upraised bone with the other.

It turned out that even the Winter Knight’s mantle has limits. Either that, or the batteries were low. A dull, bone-deep throb roared up my arm, the same pain you feel just before your limbs go numb while submerged in freezing water, only magnified. I was too tired to scream.

Besides.

I had it coming.

After a minute of pure, awful sensation, Michael exhaled and said, “I think it’s back in place. Don’t move it.”

I sat there panting, unable to respond.

Michael wrapped the arm in a few layers of gauze, his hands moving slowly at first, and then with increasing confidence-old reflexes, resurfacing. Then he took the rectangular piece of sheet aluminum he’d brought in from his workshop, gave my arm a cursory glance, and used a pair of pliers and his capable hands to bend it into a U-shape. He slid it over my hand at the knuckles, leaving my thumb and fingers free. The brace framed my arm most of the way to my elbow. He slid it back off and adjusted the angle of the bend slightly before putting it back on. Then he took a heavier bandage and secured the brace to my arm.

“How’s that?” he asked, when he was finished.

I tested it very, very gingerly. “I can’t twist my wrist. Of course, there’s a problem with that.”

“Oh?”

I spoke as lightly as I could. “Yeah, I can’t twist my wrist. What if there’s some incredibly deadly situation that can only be resolved by me twisting my left wrist? It could happen. In fact, I’m not quite sure how it could not happen, now.”

He sat back, his eyes steady on my face.

I dropped the joking tone. “Thank you, Michael,” I said. I took a deep breath. There was no point in saying anything else, here. It must have been the broken arm talking, telling me it was a good idea to open up to someone. “I should go.”

I started pushing myself up.

Michael took his cane, hooked the handle around my ankle and calmly jerked my leg out from beneath me. I flopped back into the chair.

“Harry,” he said thoughtfully. “How many times have I saved your life?”

“Bunch.”

He nodded.

“What have I asked you for in return?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Ever.”

He nodded again. “That’s right.”

We sat in silence for a long time.

Finally, I said, very quietly, “I don’t know if I’m one of the good guys anymore.”

I swallowed.

He listened.

“How can I be,” I asked, “after what I’ve done?”

“What have you done?” he asked.

It took me another minute to answer. “You know about Mab. What I am now. The deal I made.”

“I also know that you did so intending to use that power to save your daughter’s life.”

“You don’t know about Susan,” I said. I met his eyes. “I killed her, Michael.”

I don’t know what I looked like-but tears suddenly stood out in his eyes. “Oh, Harry.” He looked down. “She turned, didn’t she? What happened?”

“That son of a bitch, Martin,” I said. “He. . he set her up. Sold out the family that had Maggie. I think he did it to set me on a collision course with the Red King, maybe hoping to focus the White Council on the war effort a little harder. But he had inside knowledge of the Reds, too. He’d worked for them. Was some kind of double agent, or triple agent-I don’t know. I don’t think he was running a grand scheme to get to one specific moment. . but he saw his chance. The Red King was getting set to kill Maggie as part of a ritual bloodline curse. The curse was meant to kill me and. . other people, up my family tree.”

Michael raised his eyebrows.

“But the ritual was all loaded up and Martin saw a chance to wipe out the whole Red Court. All of them. He popped Susan in the face with the knowledge of his treachery and she just snapped. .” I shuddered, remembering it. “I saw it coming. Saw what he was doing. Maybe I could have stopped it-I don’t know-but. . I didn’t. And she killed him. Tore his throat out. And. . she started to change and. .”

“And you finished the ritual,” he said quietly. “You killed her. You killed them all.”

“The youngest vampire in the whole world,” I said. “Brand-new. And they all originated from a single point-the Red King, I guess. Their own curse got every one of them. The whole family.”

“Every Red Court vampire,” Michael said gently, “was a killer. Every one of them, at one point, chose to take someone’s life to slake their thirst. That’s what turned them. That choice.”

“I’m not shedding tears over the Red Court,” I said, contempt in my voice. “The fallout from taking them all out at once. . I don’t know. Maybe I’d wish I could have done it differently. With more planning.”

“One doesn’t destroy an empire built on pain and terror neatly,” Michael said, “if history is to be any indicator.”

I smiled bleakly. “It was a little hectic at the time,” I said. “I just wanted to save Maggie.”

“May I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“After she started to turn. . how did you subdue Susan?”

I sat for a time, trying to remember the moment less clearly.

“You didn’t,” he said gently, “did you?”

“She. . she was turning. But she understood what was happening.”

“She sacrificed herself,” Michael said.

“She allowed me to sacrifice her,” I snarled, with sudden, boiling fury. “There’s a difference.”

“Yes,” Michael said quietly. “There’s a cost for you in that. A burden to be carried.”

“I kissed her,” I said. “And then I cut her throat.”

The silence after I said that was profound.

Michael got up and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Harry,” he said quietly, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you were faced with those awful choices.”

“I never meant. .” I swallowed. “I never meant for all those things to happen. For Susan to get hurt. For Mab’s deal to stick. I never meant to keep it.”

Real pain touched his eyes. “Ah,” he said quietly. “I’d. . wondered. About the after.”

“That was me,” I said. “I arranged it. I thought. . if I was gone before Mab had a chance to change me, it would be all right.”

“You thought. .” Michael took a slow breath and sat down again. “You thought that if you died, it would be all right?”

“Compared to me becoming Mab’s psychotic monster?” I asked. “Compared to letting the Reds kill my daughter and my grandfather? Yeah. I regarded that as a win.”

Michael put his face in his hands for a moment. He shook his head. Then he lifted his face and looked up at his ceiling, his expression a mixture of sadness and frustration and pain.

“And now I’ve got this thing inside me,” I said. “And it pushes me, Michael. It pushes and pushes and pushes me to. . do things.”

He eyed me.

“And right now. . Hell’s bells, right now, Mab has me working with Nicodemus Archleone. If I don’t, there’s this thing in my head that’s going to come popping out of it, kill me, and then go after Maggie.”

“What?”

“Exactly,” I said. “Nicodemus. He’s robbing a vault somewhere and Mab expects me to pay off a debt she owes him. He’s formed his own Evil League of Evil to get it done-and I’m a member. And to make it worse, I dragged Murphy into it with me, and I’m not even telling her everything. Because I can’t.”

Michael shook his head slowly.

“I look around me, man. . I’m trying to do what I’ve always done, to protect people, to keep them safe from the monsters-only I’m pretty sure I’m one of them. I can’t figure out where I could have. . what else I might have done. .” I swallowed. “I’m lost. I know every step I took to get here, and I’m still lost.”

“Harry. .”

“And my friends,” I said. “Even Thomas. . I was stuck out on that island of the damned for a year. A year, Michael, and they only showed up a handful of times. Just Murphy and Thomas, maybe half a dozen times in more than a year. It’s just a goddamned boat ride away, forty minutes. People drive farther than that to go to the movies. They know what I’m turning into. They don’t want to watch it happening to me.”

“Harry,” Michael said in a low, soft voice. “You. . you are. .”

“A fool,” I said quietly. “A monster. Damned.”

“. . so arrogant,” Michael breathed.

I blinked.

“I mean, I was accustomed to a certain degree of hubris from you, but. . this is stunning. Even on your scale.”

“What?” I said.

“Arrogant,” he repeated, enunciating. “To a degree I can scarcely believe.”

I just stared at him for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you were expecting me to share words of wisdom with you, maybe say something to you about God and your soul and forgiveness and redemption. And all those things are good things that need to be said in the right time, but. . honestly, Harry. I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t point out to you that you are behaving like an amazingly pigheaded idiot.”

“I am?” I asked, a little blankly.

He stared at me for a second, anger and pain on his face-and then they vanished, and he smiled, his eyes flickering as merrily as a Christmas Eve fire. I suddenly realized where Molly got her smile. Something very like laughter bubbled just under the surface of his words. “Yes, Harry. You idiot. You are.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

He eyed our beers, which were empty. That tends to happen with Mac’s microbrews. He went to the fridge and opened another pair of bottles with the power of Thor, and put one of them in front of me. We clinked and drinked.

“Harry,” he said, after a meditative moment, “are you perfect?”

“No,” I said.

He nodded. “Omniscient?”

I snorted. “No.”

“Can you go into the past, change things that have already happened?”

“Theoretically?” I asked.

He gave me a level stare.

“I hear that sometimes, some things can be done. But apparently it’s tricky as hell. And I’ve got no idea how,” I said.

“So can you?”

“No,” I said.

“In other words,” he said, “despite all the things you know, and all the incredible things you can do. . you’re only human.”

I frowned at him and swigged beer.

“Then why,” Michael asked, “are you expecting perfection out of yourself? Do you really think you’re that much better than the rest of us? That your powers make you a higher quality of human being? That your knowledge places you on a higher plane than everyone else on this world?”

I eyed the beer and felt. . embarrassed.

“That’s arrogance, Harry,” he said gently. “On a level so deep you don’t even realize it exists. And do you know why it’s there?”

“No?” I asked.

He smiled again. “Because you have set a higher standard for yourself. You think that because you have more power than others, you have to do more with it.”

“To whom much is given, much is required,” I said, without look- ing up.

He barked out a short laugh. “For someone who repeatedly tells me he has no faith, you have a surprising capacity to quote scripture. And that’s just my point.”

I eyed him. “What?”

“You wouldn’t be twisting yourself into knots like this, Harry, if you didn’t care.”

“So?”

“Monsters don’t care,” Michael said. “The damned don’t care, Harry. The only way to go beyond redemption is to choose to take yourself there. The only way to do it is to stop caring.”

My view of the kitchen blurred out. “You think?”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Michael said. “I think that you aren’t perfect. And that means that sometimes you make bad choices. But. . honestly, I don’t know if I would have done any differently, if it had been one of my children at risk.”

“Not you,” I said quietly. “You wouldn’t have done what I did.”

“I couldn’t have done what you did,” Michael said simply. “And I haven’t had to be standing in your shoes to make those same choices.” He tilted his beer slightly toward the ceiling. “Thank you, God. So if you’ve come here for judgment, Harry, you won’t find any from me. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve failed. I’m human.”

“But these mistakes,” I said, “could change me. I could wind up like these people around Nicodemus.”

Michael snorted. “No, you won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know you, Harry Dresden,” Michael said. “You are pathologically incapable of knowing when to quit. You don’t surrender. And I don’t believe for a second that you actually intend to help Nicodemus do whatever it is he’s doing.”

I felt a smile tug at one corner of my mouth.

“Hah,” Michael said, sitting back in his chair. He swallowed some more beer. “I thought so.”

“It’s tricky,” I said. “I’ve got to help him get whatever he’s after. Technically.”

Michael wrinkled his nose. “Faeries. I never understood why they’re such lawyers about everything.”

“I’m the Winter Knight,” I said, “and I don’t get it either.”

“I find that oddly reassuring,” Michael said.

I barked out a short laugh. “Yeah. Maybe so.”

His face grew more serious. “Nicodemus knows treachery like fish know water,” he said. “He surely knows the direction of your intent. He’s smart, Harry. He’s got centuries of survival behind him.”

“True,” I said. “On the other hand, I’m not exactly a useless cream puff.”

His eyes glinted. “Also true,” he said.

“And Murphy’s there,” I said.

“Good,” Michael said, rapping the bottle on the table for emphasis. “That woman’s got brains and heart.”

I chewed on my lip and looked up at him. “But. . Michael, she wasn’t. . for the past year. .”

He sighed and shook his head. “Harry. . do you know what that island is like, for the rest of us?”

I shook my head.

“The last time I was there, I was shot twice,” he said. “I was in intensive care for a month. I was in bed for four months. I didn’t walk again for nearly a year. There was permanent damage to my hip and lower back, and physically, it was the single most extended, horribly painful, grindingly humiliating experience of my life.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And,” he said, “when I have nightmares of it, you know what I dream about?”

“What?”

“The island,” Michael said. “The. . presence of it. The malevolence there.” He shuddered.

Michael, Knight of the Cross, who had faced deadly spirits and demons and monsters without flinching, shivered in fear.

“That place is horrible,” he said quietly. “The effect it has. . It’s obvious that it doesn’t even touch you. But I don’t know if I could go back there again, by choice.”

I blinked.

“But I know Molly went back there. And you tell me Karrin did, too. And Thomas. Many times.” He shook his head. “That’s. . astounding to me, Harry.”

“They. . they never said anything,” I said. “I mean, they never spent the night, either, but. .”

“Of course they didn’t,” he said. “You already beat yourself up for enough things that aren’t your fault. People who care don’t want to add to that.” He paused, and then added gently, “But you assumed it was about you.”

I finished the beer and sighed. “Arrogance,” I said. “I feel stupid.”

“Good,” Michael said. “It’s good for everyone to feel that way sometimes. It helps remind you how much you still have to learn.”

What he said about the island tracked. I remembered my first moments there, how unsettling it was. I had talent and training in defending myself against psychic assault, and I’d shielded against it on pure reflex, shedding the worst that it could have done to me. Wizard. And not long after that, I’d taken on Demonreach in a ritual challenge that had left me the Warden of the place, and exempt from its malice.

Thomas hadn’t had the kind of training, the kind of defenses I did. Molly, who was more sensitive than me to that kind of energy, must have found it agonizing. And Karrin, who had been assaulted psychically before. . damn.

They’d all picked up more scars for me, on my behalf, without a word of complaint-and I’d been upset because they hadn’t been willing to take more.

Michael was right.

I’d gotten completely focused on myself.

“It occurs to me,” I said, “if I wasn’t being the Winter Knight. . Mab would have picked another thug.” Mab had even told me who she would have gone after-my brother, Thomas. I shuddered to think what might have happened, if the temptations of Winter had been added to those he already bore. “Someone else would be bearing this burden. Maybe someone it would have destroyed by now.”

“It occurred to you just now?” Michael asked. “I thought of it about five seconds after I heard about it.”

I laughed and it felt really good to do it.

“There,” Michael said, nodding.

“Thank you.”

I meant it for a lot of things. Michael got it. He inclined his head to me. “There is, of course, an elephant in the room, of which we have not spoken.”

Of course there was.

Maggie.

“I don’t want to make her into a target again,” I said.

Michael sighed patiently. “Harry,” he said, as if speaking to a rather slow child, “I’m not sure if you noticed this. But things did not turn out well for the last monster who raised his hand against your child. Or any of his friends. Or associates. Or anyone who worked for him. Or for most of the people he knew.”

I blinked.

“Whether or not that was your intention,” Michael said, “you did establish a rather effective precedental message to the various predators, should they ever learn of her relationship to you.”

“Do you think Nicodemus would hesitate?” I asked. “Even for a second?”

“To take her from this house?” Michael asked. He smiled. “I’d love to see him try it.”

I lifted my eyebrows.

“A dozen angels protect this house, still,” Michael said. “Part of my retirement package.”

“She’s not always in the house,” I said.

“And when she isn’t, Mouse is with her,” he said. “We got him attached to her as a medical assist dog. He prevents her from having panic attacks.”

I made a choking sound, imagining Mouse in a grade school. “By making everyone else around her panic instead?”

“He’s a perfect gentleman,” Michael said, amused. “The children love him. The teachers let the best students play with him on recess.”

I imagined my enormous moose of a dog on a playground, trotting around after Maggie and other kids, with that dopey doggy grin on his face, cheerfully going along with whatever the kids seemed to have planned, moving with tremendous care around them, and shamelessly cadging tummy rubs whenever possible.

“That’s kind of awesome,” I said.

“Children frequently are,” Michael said.

I chewed on my lip some more. “What if. . Michael, she was there. She was in the temple when. .” I looked up. “What if she remembers what I did?”

“She doesn’t remember any of it,” Michael said.

“Now,” I said. “Stuff like that. . it has a way of popping up again.”

“If it does,” he said, “don’t you think she deserves to know the truth? All of it? When she’s ready?”

I looked away. “The things I do. . I don’t want any of it to splash on her.”

“I didn’t want it to touch my children, either,” Michael said. “Mostly, it didn’t. And I don’t regret my choices. I did everything in my power to protect them. I’m content with that.”

“My boss has a few differences in policy compared to yours.”

“Heh. True, that.”

“I need to get moving,” I said. “Seriously. I’m on the clock.”

“We aren’t done talking about Maggie,” he replied firmly. “But we’ll take it up soon.”

“Why?” I asked. “She’s safe here. Is she. . She’s happy?”

“Mostly,” he said amiably. “She’s your daughter, Harry. She needs you. But not, I think, nearly as much as you need her.”

“I don’t know how you can say that to me,” I said, “after Molly.”

He tilted his head. “What about Molly?”

“You. . you know about Molly, right?” I asked.

He blinked at me. “She’s been doing great lately. I saw her last weekend. Did she lose her apartment or something?”

I looked back at him in dismay, realizing.

He didn’t know.

Michael didn’t know that his daughter had become the Winter Lady. She hadn’t told him.

“Harry,” he said, worried, “is she all right?”

Oh, Hell’s freaking bells. She hadn’t told her parents?

That was so Molly. Unimpressed by a legion of wicked faeries-terrified to tell her parents about her new career.

But it was her choice. And I didn’t have the right to unmake it for her.

“She’s fine,” I blurted. “She’s fine. I mean, I meant, uh. .”

“Oh,” Michael said, a look of understanding coming over his face. “Oh, right. Well, that’s. . that’s fine. Behind us now, and it all worked out.”

I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but it was getting me out of making a major problem for Molly. I rolled with it. “Right,” I said. “Anyway. Thank you, again. For too much.”

“If it’s ever too much,” he said, “I’ll thump you politely on the head.”

“You’ll have to, for it to get through,” I said.

“I know.” He rose, and offered me his hand.

I shook it.

“Michael,” I asked, “do you ever. . miss it?”

His smile lines deepened. “The fight?” He shrugged. “I’m very, very happy to have the time to spend with my wife and children.”

I narrowed my eyes. “That. . wasn’t exactly an answer.”

He winked at me. Then he walked me to the door, leaning on his cane.

By the time I got to the car, the icy ache in my arm had dulled down to a buzzing sensation. I was recovering. I’d get some anti-inflammatories into me before I got back, to help with the swelling. No, I couldn’t feel the pain, but that didn’t mean that it wouldn’t be smart to do whatever I could to take the pressure off the mantle, to save my strength for when it counted. I needed to pick up some other things too, thinking along the same lines.

Whatever Nicodemus had planned, it would go down in the next twenty-four hours, and I was going to be ready for it.