Skin Game

Thirty-two

The fire crackled.

“Because, obviously,” I said, “there wasn’t enough on the line already.”

Uriel smiled. It was a tight, pained expression.

“Take it back,” Michael said. “You’ve got to take it back, right now.”

“I can do that,” Uriel said. “If that is your choice, I will respect it.”

Something in his voice triggered my instincts, and I said, “Michael, wait. Think about this.”

“What’s to think about?” Michael asked. “An archangel of the Lord is vulnerable.”

“Right,” I said, and spread my hands. “Almost as if he thinks this is important or something. Or maybe you figure Uriel for the kind of guy who hands out this kind of power all willy-nilly, every time the wind blows.” I looked at Uriel. “Right?”

Uriel helped Butters get another blanket around the shuddering Karrin, watched us, and said nothing.

“Yeah,” I said. “You can tell when you’re on the right track, because he shuts up and doesn’t tell you a damned thing. It’s about the Grail, isn’t it? About what Nicodemus wants to do with it.”

Uriel gave me a knowing look.

I flushed and said, “I’m playing my cards close to the chest, okay? I know it’s about more than that.”

He put his hand on Karrin’s head and smiled at her encouragingly.

Michael shook his head and walked over to where he’d set Amoracchius after he’d drawn it from his belt once we had Karrin inside. He picked it up absently, and started cleaning the water from it carefully with one of the used towels. “You’re asking me to make a very large choice.”

“Yes,” Uriel said.

“With potentially horrible consequences.”

Uriel looked at him with sympathetic eyes and nodded.

“Can you tell me what is at stake, that I should risk this?”

Uriel frowned, considering the question for a moment. Then he said, “A soul.”

Michael raised his eyebrows. “Oh,” he said. “You should have said that from the beginning.” He extended the Sword and looked down the length of its blade. “I’m not retired at the moment,” he said. “What about my family?”

“The guards remain,” Uriel said. “I have taken your place.”

Michael exhaled and some of the tension eased out of him. “Right. Though this is going to draw attention here again.”

“It might.”

“And your protection doesn’t extend to the merely mortal,” Michael said.

“No.”

“So mortals could enter, and kill you. Kill them.”

“Potentially,” he said.

“Guys,” Butters said, “we need to get her to a hospital.”

“Right,” I said. “Here’s the plan. Butters drives Murphy to the hospital and tells the guys at SI she needs looking after.”

“Those guys can’t stop someone like Nicodemus,” Butters said.

“No,” I said, “but they can force him to get noisy if he wants to get to her, and Nick won’t want that until after the job. He might send some of his squires to do it, but SI can go up against them just fine. Michael, will you loan Butters a car?”

“Of course,” Michael said.

“Good. They’ll help you unload her at the emergency room, Butters.”

“Right,” Butters said. “Great.”

“I’m going to go clean up out front,” I said. “What’s left of the Sword, shell casings, what have you. Those shots were muffled by the sleet, but we don’t need to leave things lying around in case some busybody called the cops.”

“Leaving me to talk to Charity alone,” Michael said drily.

“Yeah, funny how that worked out,” I said. “Where is she, anyway?”

“In the panic room with Mouse and the kids,” Michael said. “Little Harry was all but bouncing off the walls, he was so excited. I didn’t want him seeing. .” He nodded toward Karrin. “I’ll sound the all clear as soon as she and Butters leave.”

“Good call,” I said.

“What should I do?” Uriel asked.

“Sit,” I said. “Stay inside. Don’t put pennies in the outlets or play with matches or run with scissors.”

“I don’t understand,” Uriel said.

“Take no chances,” I clarified.

“Oh, yes.” He frowned and said, “But I want to help.”

“So sit,” I said. “Sitting quietly is very helpful.”

He sat down on the arm of the couch, frowning.

“I think this will hurt the least if one person carries her,” Butters said.

“Right,” I said, rising, and wobbled as the blood rushed to my head.

“Harry,” Michael said, and pushed gently in front of me. He went over to Karrin and adjusted the couch to give him room to stand in front of her. He passed Butters a set of car keys.

“It’s her left arm and leg that are hurt,” Butters said. “Carry her right side against you and try to support her left knee.”

“I’ll be careful,” Michael said, and lifted her gently, keeping her wrapped in the blankets. He didn’t seem to have any trouble doing it. I mean, he didn’t look like he’d gained muscle or anything, but his strength was certainly that of the Knight I remembered, and not of the lame contractor and Little League softball coach he’d been lately.

Karrin let out a soft sound of pain, and closed her eyes, breathing with steady, disciplined rhythm through her nose.

“Right, right,” Butters said. He’d discarded his pack before, but he recovered it now, as we went outside and loaded Karrin into Michael’s white pickup truck.

We got her in and buckled up, though she was obviously fighting the pain. Michael hurried back inside, out of the sleet. She opened her eyes once and gave me a little smile.

“Sorry,” she said, “that I won’t be there to watch your back.”

“You did fine,” I said. “We’ll make sure you’ve got cover.”

“Worry about yourselves,” she said. “I can make some calls. Michael’s a good man, but he doesn’t always see things coming.”

I bit my lip for a second, trying to decide if I should say anything. I decided not to. If she didn’t know what was coming up, she couldn’t possibly tip off anyone that I already knew part of what Nicodemus was up to.

I need to work on my poker face. She looked at my expression and smiled with one side of her mouth. “Need-to-know. I get it, Harry.” She struggled to free her right hand from the blankets, so that she could put it on mine and squeeze. “Make the sucker punch count.”

I winked at her. “I’ll come see you soon.”

“You’d better,” she said.

Butters slammed the driver’s-side door and brought the truck to life with a smooth rumble of V8 engine. He turned the heaters all the way up, first thing, and double-checked Karrin’s seat belt. Then he adjusted the mirrors, muttered something about the truck being the size of a house, and said to me, “Close it up. I’ll get you word as soon as I know anything.”

I nodded and said, “Thanks, Butters.”

He grimaced and said, “Thank me when I save your life.”

“You’ve done that already,” I said. “Back in the museum.”

“So we’re even?”

“Once you’ve made that swap, you don’t keep counting, man,” I said. “Drive safe.”

I closed the door carefully, and watched Butters back the truck out onto the icy street. He put it into the lowest gear, and the tires crunched slowly down the street as he drove away.

He’d been out of the driveway for maybe twenty seconds when a flickering stream of campfire sparks came soaring down out of a nearby tree and through the windshield of the truck-Bob, returning to the skull still in Butters’s backpack.

I watched until they were gone. Then I hurriedly cleaned up the scene, fake rocket launcher, Sword-shards, sheath, hilt, and shell casings all, and hurried back inside.

I shut the door behind me and leaned against it. For a second, I was alone.

I missed Karrin already. Logically, I knew that she probably wasn’t in any immediate danger from Nicodemus and company, but some irrational part of me wanted to be the one who drove her to the hospital, terrified the doctors into perfection, and watched over her when she could finally sleep.

She’d looked so small like that, with her wet hair plastered down, swaddled in blankets.

And she wouldn’t have been that way if I hadn’t invited her along for the ride.

I mean, yeah, logically, I hadn’t been the one to hurt her. Nicodemus had done that. But there was a great, seething tide of anger somewhere behind the walls of my mind, absolute fury that she had come to harm, and since it had no handy targets to crash upon, some stupid part of my brain had decided that I would do.

And now I was going to drag Michael into my mess as well. And if he got put in a compromising position the way Karrin had, the consequences might be significantly more severe.

And all because I’d been weak, and cut a deal with Mab.

I gritted my teeth and forced myself to stand on my own two feet again.

What was done was done. There was no point in tearing myself to shreds over it-especially since indulging in that kind of self-flagellation would not help me protect Michael or stop Nicodemus from obtaining one of the most powerful holy relics in the world.

There would be plenty of time to beat myself up later-assuming I lived long enough to do it.

Focus on the task at hand, Harry. Sort the rest out when you have time.

Yeah, sure. But isn’t that the kind of thinking that got me into this mess in the first place?

I was trying to learn to play the game a few more moves ahead than I had in the past. Part of that had been keeping Karrin in the dark about what I had in mind for Nicodemus and company. But, man, that game was hard to play.

Bleak thoughts. I was roused from them by feet on the stairs. I looked up.

At the top of the stairs stood two figures-an enormous dog and a little girl.

The dog was grey, shaggy, and the size of a bantha. A bulky ruff of fur about his head and shoulders gave him a leonine look, and his dark eyes were bright, his slightly curled tail wagging so furiously that it looked like it might pull him over sideways. When Mouse saw me, he made a happy little chuffing sound, and his front paws bounced off the floor, but then he glanced to the girl beside him and held himself carefully still.

The little girl stood with her hands buried in the thick fur of Mouse’s mane, as though she had refused to admit that she couldn’t just circle her arms around his neck and tote him about like a teddy bear. She was wearing an old T-shirt of Molly’s that read SPLATTERCON!!! across the front. The shirt hung past her knees and its sleeves went halfway to her wrists. She had big brown eyes the size of softballs, it looked like, and her dark brown hair hung straight down to her little shoulders.

Her features were a little long. I could see myself in the shape of her eyes, in the set of her chin. But she had her mother’s full mouth and elegant nose.

Maggie.

My daughter.

My heart all but stopped beating-and then it lurched into high gear in pure terror.

What should I do? What should I say? I mean, I had known I was a father and whatnot, but. . now she was looking at me. And she was a person.

She regarded me soberly from the top of the stairs for several long seconds before she said, “Are you Harry Dresden?”

She was missing a tooth from up front and off to one side. It was kind of adorable.

“Uh,” I said. “Yeah. That’s me.”

“You’re really big,” she said.

“You think so?”

She nodded seriously. “Bigger than Mr. Carpenter.”

“Um,” I said. “How did you know it was me?”

“Because Molly showed me your picture,” Maggie said. She moved her shoulders, as though attempting to hold Mouse up the way she might a favorite doll. “This is my dog, Mouse.”

Mouse wagged his tail furiously and managed not to knock Maggie down while he did it.

“I know,” I said. “I’m the one who gave him to you.”

Maggie nodded. “That’s what Molly said. She said you gave him to me ’cause you loved me.”

“Yes,” I said, recognizing the truth as I spoke it. “That’s true.”

She wrinkled up her nose, as if she had smelled something unpleasant. “Are you mad at me?”

I blinked several times. “What? No, no, of course not. Why would I be mad at you?”

She shrugged and looked down at Mouse’s mane. “Because you aren’t ever here. Never, ever.”

Ow.

The Winter Mantle is pretty amazing, but there are some kinds of pain it can’t do jack about.

“Well,” I said after a moment, “I have a very tough job. Do you know what I do?”

“You fight monsters,” Maggie said. “Molly told me so. Like Draculas and stuff.”

Had Molly been filling in for me a little, while I was away? That. . sounded a lot like the kind of thing Mab had done or ordered done when I was unavailable-taking up some of the duties of her vassal in his stead.

Maybe Molly was following in the same footsteps. Or maybe she was just being Molly, and being as kind as she could to the child. Or maybe it wasn’t as simple as either-or.

“Yeah,” I said. “Like Draculas and stuff. It’s very dangerous and I do it a lot.”

“Mr. Carpenter works harder than two men. That’s what Missus Carpenter says.”

“That’s probably true,” I said.

“But he comes home every night. And you haven’t ever. .” A thought seemed to strike her and she pressed a little closer to Mouse. “Are you going to take me away?”

“Um,” I said, blinking. This was proceeding really quickly. “I, uh. Would you like that?”

She shrugged, almost hiding her eyes in Mouse’s mane. “I don’t know. My toys are all here. And my roller skates.”

“That’s very true,” I said. “Um. Not tonight, anyway.”

“Oh,” she said. “Okay. Molly says you’re really nice.”

“I try to be.”

“Is he nice, Mouse?”

Mouse continued wagging his tail furiously, and gave a quiet bark.

“Mouse is smart,” she said, nodding. “Really super dog smart. We’re reading James and the Giant Peach.”

I blinked. Did she mean that she was reading the book to the dog or that Mouse was reading the book, too? I mean, I already knew that he was as smart as most people, but I’d never really considered whether or not he could learn to do abstract things like reading. It seemed like a very strange notion.

On the other hand, he was going to school. Hell, I only had a GED. If he stayed close enough to Maggie for long enough, the dog might wind up with more education than me. Then there’d be no talking to him.

“Don’t tell people about Mouse, though, okay?” Maggie said, suddenly worried. “It’s a top secret.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“Okay. Do you wanna see my room?”

“I’d like that.”

I came up the stairs, and Maggie let go of the dog’s mane with one hand, to grab my right forefinger with it, and to lead me down the hall.

Maggie’s room had, long ago, been Charity’s sewing room. They’d cleaned it out and redecorated the little chamber, in purple and pink and bright green. There was a tiny kid-sized desk with a chair, and several toy boxes. The toys had all been put neatly away. There were a couple of schoolbooks on the desk. A closet stood slightly open, and proved to have its floor covered in dirty clothes that hadn’t made it into a small laundry hamper. There was a raised bed against one wall, the kind that usually came with a second one beneath it. There wasn’t a lower bunk. Instead, there was a big futon mattress on the floor beneath the bed. Posters of brightly colored cartoon ponies adorned the walls, and the ceiling above the bed.

Once we were in the room, Mouse finally let out a few little whines and came over to me, grinning a big doggy grin. I spent a few minutes rubbing his ears and scratching him beneath the chin and telling him what a good dog he was and how much I’d missed him and what a good job he was doing. Mouse wriggled all over and gave my hands a few slobbery kisses and in general behaved exactly like a happy dog and not at all like a mystic, super-powered guardian creature from Tibet.

Maggie climbed a little ladder to her bunk, to watch the exchange closely. After a minute, Mouse leaned against me so hard that he nearly bowled me over, and then he happily settled down on the futon mattress beneath the little girl’s bed.

“I have a monster under my bed, and it’s Mouse,” she said proudly. “There was another one there but me and Mouse slayerized it.”

I lifted an eyebrow. I mean, any other kid, I might have thought she was reporting a recent game of pretend. But on the other hand. . I mean, she was a Dresden and all. Maybe she was giving me the facts and nothing but the facts.

“He’s the most awesome dog ever,” I said.

That pleased her immensely. “I know!” She chewed on her lip thoughtfully, a gesture that reminded me so much of Susan that a tangible pang went through my chest. “Um,” she said. “Would you like to. . tuck me in?”

“Sure,” I said.

She nodded and flopped down onto her pillow. I stepped up to the bed and took a few seconds to sort out the sheets and the blanket and to get them pulled over her. Once that was done, she said, “Would you like to read me a story?”

Mouse’s tail thumped enthusiastically against the wall.

“Sure,” I said. And we read Where the Wild Things Are.

When I finished, she said, “You didn’t do the voices right.”

“Hmmm,” I said. “Maybe I’ll do better next time.”

“I don’t know,” she said dubiously. “I guess you can try.” She looked at my face searchingly for a moment and then said, in a tiny voice, “Do you want to be my dad?”

I went blind for a few seconds, until I blinked the tears away.

“Sure,” I said. It came out in a tight croak, but when I said it she smiled at me.

* * *

By the time I’d finished the second run-through of Sendak’s opus, she was asleep.

I made sure the blankets had her all covered up, and kissed her hair, and then crouched down beside Mouse and put my arms around him.

“Thank you, boy,” I said. “Thank you for taking care of her.”

He leaned against me, tail wagging, and snuggled his huge head into my ribs. I petted him some more. “I have to go soon. But I need you to keep her safe. The Carpenters, too. Okay?”

He chuffed and snuggled a little closer.

“Missed you too, boy,” I said, rubbing his ears. “I just need a little time to figure this out. To figure out what comes next.”

Had I decided that I was going to be a dad to Maggie now? I examined myself and realized that indeed I had. When did that happen? And why hadn’t anyone kept me in the loop?

It had happened, I thought, the moment I had seen her, talked to her.

Oh my God.

That was terrifying.

And. . exciting?

All things considered, I wasn’t sure I could put a lot of trust in my emotions at the moment. But one thing was certain.

If I wanted to keep my word to my daughter, I’d have to come back. That meant staying alive tomorrow.

I got up, gave Mouse a final round of petting and scratching, and padded quietly from the room into the upstairs hallway. The lights in the other rooms were out-except for the one in Michael and Charity’s room. A light burned there. The door was slightly open.

And I could see Charity, sitting on the edge of the bed in flannel pajamas, a tall blond woman with an excellent physique, whose hair was threading through with silver in style as she aged. Her tearstained face was miserable, as she spoke, presumably, to her husband, seated on the bed beside her. I couldn’t see him from there.

Obviously Michael had intended that talk to take place in private.

I turned away from it and went back down the stairs. I sat down on the bottom steps and tried to clear my head.

A few minutes later, Charity came down the stairs and sat down next to me. I made room.

“Where’s Michael?” I asked.

“Praying over the children,” she answered. “He always does that before he leaves. In case. .”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You know,” Charity said, “I had intended to punch you in the nose, twice, the moment I saw you again. Once to make it bleed, once to break it.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm-hmm. The first time for trying to kill yourself. The second for using my daughter to do it.”

“You, uh. You know about that? How?”

“I watch. I listen. Her reaction to reports of your death was. . too much. It took time, but I eventually worked out why she was so furious at herself.”

“You can hit me right now, if you think it would help,” I said.

“No,” she said tiredly. “I just wanted to tell you something.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “Kids need their father to come home safe, Harry. Make sure it happens.”

“I’ll bring him back to you or die trying. I promise.”

Charity glanced at me and then shook her head with a weary smile. “I wasn’t talking about Michael, Harry. I meant you.” She glanced back up the stairs, toward Maggie’s room. “That child has lost everyone she’s ever loved. Did you notice how close she stays to Mouse? Without him, I wonder if she’d be functioning at all. If anything should happen to you. .”

“Ah,” I said quietly.

“Maggie doesn’t need to feel that pain again. Don’t let her down.”

I chewed on my lip and nodded with my watery eyes closed. “Right.”

“And. . please remember that Michael has children who need him, too. Please.”

“I’ll bring him back or die trying,” I repeated.

Charity exhaled a shaky breath, and then touched my shoulder gently. “Thank you. God be with you and bring you home safe, Harry. Both of you.”