Skin Game

by Jim Butcher

  “Ah,” said a voice next to me, in a tone of intense satisfaction, and I jerked a quick glance up to see Uriel crouching next to me, his teeth showing, his eyes glittering.

  Butters came to his feet, and his jaw hung open. He stared at the humming blade in his hands for a second and then suddenly his teeth showed in a joyous smile that was no less fierce for being so.

  And his eyes locked on Nicodemus.

  Suddenly, there was an incoherent scream from behind one of the vans, and the vehicle rocked, as if something enormous had smashed against it. A second later, Mouse stepped out from behind the van, where its bulk was shielding him from the immediate aim of the slowly recovering squires. The Foo dog’s head was low, his body crouched and tensed, hackles raised, gleaming, sharp, freshly bloodied teeth bared. He was no more than a few feet from Nicodemus’s back, and at his appearance, Anduriel’s shadow form went berserk, flickering and twisting in a dozen directions at once, like a panicked animal running to the ends of its tether.

  “Nice try?” Butters said. “Mister, where I come from, there is no try.”

  And he lifted the Sword to a guard position and charged, coat flaring dramatically, impossibly.

  Mouse let out a great, coughing roar of a bark and flung himself forward, silver-blue light gathering in his fur and around his mane and jaws.

  I saw the fury and the rage and bafflement in Nicodemus’s face as the newly minted Sir Butters came toward him, and I saw something else there, too.

  Fear.

  The furious light of the Sword of Faith renewed filled him with terror.

  He let out a cry of frustration and leapt into the air, where Anduriel’s shadow gathered around him in a sudden blob of fluid darkness, and then streaked away, up into the dawn-lit fog, and was gone.

  Butters whirled at once, toward Tessa, but the other Denarian had already fled into the fog, leaving behind a frustrated cry that turned into her demonform’s brassy shriek as it faded.

  Butters, with Mouse at his side, turned to face the squires who still remained. The nearest one, I saw, was Jordan, who clutched his shotgun in white-knuckled hands, his expression bewildered.

  In fact, as I looked around, I saw the same expression on the faces of every squire there. Utter confusion, as if they’d just beheld something that they knew damned well was impossible. They’d just seen their unbeatable lord and master humbled and forced to flee by a pipsqueak of a Knight who wore black-rimmed spectacles and might have weighed a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet.

  “It’s over,” Butters said. Fidelacchius’s ominous hum gave his voice a certain terrifying punctuation. “We make an end of it, right here. It’s over, guys.”

  Jordan, his eyes welling with tears, dropped his arms to his side, abruptly, limply, like an exhausted child. His weapon tumbled to the ground. And, over the next few seconds, the others did exactly the same.

  The Sword of Faith, I thought, cuts both ways.

  I realized my cheek was back against the floor a moment later, and dully noted that my eyes had stopped working at some point. They were open, but they weren’t showing me any images. Maybe that’s what they meant by the phrase “lazy eye.” Hah. I’m hysterical when I’m dying.

  I heard a sound then—a distant howl of northern wind, rapidly growing louder in pitch and volume.

  “Easy, Harry,” said Uriel’s voice in the blackness. “Molly’s here. Easy.”

  And then I went away.

  Fifty-one

  I woke up in bed. There was a colorful cartoon pony on the ceiling above me.

  My body ached. I mean it ached to no end. Just breathing felt like a motion that stretched sore muscles. I was hideously thirsty and ravenous, and considering the complaints from my bladder, I’d been down for a while.

  I looked around without moving my head. I was in Maggie’s room. Judging from the amber sunshine coming in through the window and covering one wall, it was evening. I wondered if it was the same day. Maggie’s raised bed towered over me, and I realized that I was on a mattress laid on the floor of her room. Something heavy was on one of my feet, and it had gone to sleep. I moved my head enough to see what it was, and wished I hadn’t done that. My skull pounded like a little man was slamming it with a hammer.

  I winced and focused my eyes through the discomfort. Mouse slept on the floor beside the bed, and his massive chin rested on my ankle. His ears were twitching, though his eyes were closed, his breathing steady.

  “Hey,” I croaked. “Gonna lose my foot, you keep that up. Fall right off.”

  Mouse snorted and lifted his head. He blinked blearily for a second, as any reasonable person does upon waking, and then dropped his mouth open in a doggy grin. His tail started wagging, and he rose so that he could walk to my head and start giving me slobbery dog kisses while making little happy sounds.

  “Ack!” I said. I waved my hands without any real enthusiasm, and settled for scratching him under the chin and behind the ears while he greeted me. “Easy there, superdog,” I said. “I think I exfoliated a couple of licks ago.”

  Mouse made a happy chuffing sound, tail still wagging. Then he turned and padded out of the bedroom.

  A moment later, he returned, and Molly followed him in.

  She made an impression walking into the room. I was used to Molly in old jeans and sandals and a faded T-shirt. Now she wore slacks and a deep blue blouse that looked like they’d been hand-tailored to fit. Her hair, which I had seen in every improbable shade and configuration imaginable, was now long and straight and the color of moonlight on corn silk. She still looked a shade too angular and thin. Her eyes had been haunted and strained the last time I’d seen her in the flesh. Now they had a few added wrinkles at the corners, maybe, and a gravity I hadn’t seen in them before—but they were steady and calm.

  Without a word, she knelt down beside me and gave me a hard hug around the neck.

  “Ack,” I said again, but I was smiling. Again. It made all the muscles in my body twinge, but I moved one arm and patted her hair. “Hey, grasshopper.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. Her arms tightened a little. “I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”

  “Hey, it all worked out,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  “Of course you’re okay,” she said, and despite the bravado in her words, I thought she might have been sniffling. “I was the one working on you.”

  “Look,” I said. “The parasite. It isn’t some kind of hostile entity—”

  She nodded, her hair rubbing against mine. “I know. I know. The guy in black told me all about it while I was in there.”

  “Is the spirit all right?” I asked.

  She released me from her hug/choke hold and nodded at me, smiling, her eyes suspiciously wet. “Of course, the first thing you want to know is if someone else is all right.” She reached across me and picked up something from the floor near my head, where I hadn’t been able to see. It was the wooden skull I’d carved for Bob.

  “It was a tough delivery,” Molly said. “She’s very tired.”

  I grunted, lifted my hand, and took the wooden skull in my fingers.

  Immediately, tiny flickers of greenish light appeared in the eye sockets, and the little spirit made a soft, confused sound.

  “Shhh,” I said. “It’s me. Get some rest. We’ll talk later.”

  “Oh,” said the little spirit. “Hi. Good.” And the flickers of light vanished again with a small, weary pop.

  “You know,” Molly said, smiling, “it’s traditional to have a home of your own if you’re going to keep adopting strays.”

  I tucked the wooden skull into the crook of my arm and said, “Home is where, when you go there and tell people to get out, they have to leave.”

  She grinned, smoothed some hair back from my forehead, and said, “I’m glad to see that you’re feeling more li
ke yourself.”

  I smiled at her a little. “Makes two of us,” I said. “How you holding up?”

  Her eyes glittered. “It’s . . . been really interesting. It all looks very, very different from the inside.”

  “Usually how it works,” I said. “Tell me about it?”

  “Can’t, literally,” she said cheerfully and waved an airy hand. “Faerie mystique and all that.”

  “Figures. You like it?”

  “Not always,” she said without rancor. “But . . . it’s necessary work. Worth doing.”

  “Yet you didn’t tell your folks about it.”

  For the first time, Molly’s calm slipped a little. Her cheeks turned a little pink. “I . . . Yeah, I haven’t quite gotten around to that yet.” Her eyes widened suddenly. “Oh, God, you didn’t . . .”

  “No,” I said. “Skated past it just in time. Though I think I might have given your father the impression that we, uh . . . you know.”

  A small, choked laugh, a sound equal parts mirth and absolute horror burst out of her mouth. “Oh. Oh, God. That’s what those looks were about.” She shook her head.

  “You should tell them,” I said.

  “I will,” she said, with a little too much instant assurance. “You know. When I find a way to bring it up.” She bit her lower lip, maybe unconsciously, and said, “You, uh . . . you’ll let me do that, right?”

  “If that’s your choice, I’ll respect it. You aren’t really my apprentice anymore, Molls.”

  She stared at me for a second after I said that, and I saw hurt and realization alike flicker through her features. Then she nodded and said quietly, “I guess I’m not, am I?”

  I made another major effort and patted her hand. “Things change,” I said. “Nothing to feel sad about.”

  “No,” she said. She squeezed my fingers back for a second and forced a smile. “Of course not.”

  “Mab been around?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “She knows I’m going to want to talk to her about sidetracking me. But she’s in town. I can feel that much. Why?”

  “Because I’m going to want to talk to her too.”

  * * *

  One hour, one shower, and one barrage of painkillers later, I was dressed and able to shamble down the stairs under my own power, just after sundown. Mouse followed me carefully. Molly didn’t quite hover around like a Secret Service agent prepared to throw herself into the way of a bullet if necessary, but only just.

  “You know what’s weird?” I said, as I got to the first floor.

  “What?” Molly asked.

  “The lack of cops,” I said. “There should be cops everywhere. And police tape. And handcuffs.” I raised my wrists. “Right here.”

  “Yeah,” Molly said. “I noticed that too.”

  I looked at her and arched an eyebrow. “Was this you?”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t really know how to go about bribing the authorities. And I’m not sure Mab understands the concept.”

  The first floor of the Carpenter house had always been something of a riot in progress, even in calm times. Tonight was no exception.

  “Run!” screamed a young woman with curly blond hair, who was dressed in a school uniform, was a shade taller than Molly, and who probably caused neck injuries when turning the heads of the boys in her school. She fled past the bottom of the stairs, firing one of those toy soft-dart guns behind her. As she ran past, she waved a hand at me, flashed me a grin, and said, “Hi, Bill!”

  “Hell’s bells,” I said, feeling somewhat bewildered. “Was that Amanda?”

  “She still wears the uniforms,” Molly said, shaking her head. “I mean, even after school. Freak.”

  “Rargh!” roared a young man, whose voice warbled between a high tenor and a low baritone. He was lanky with youth, with Michael’s darker hair and grey eyes, and was running after Amanda half bent over at the waist, with his hands pressed up against his chest as if mimicking relatively tiny dinosaur claws. I recognized “little” Harry immediately. He looked like he was big for his age, developing early, and already starting to fill out through the shoulders, and his hands and feet looked almost comically too large for the rest of him.

  Maggie was riding astride his back, clinging with her legs, with one arm wrapped around his neck. She’d have been choking him if she wasn’t on the small end of the bell curve herself. She clutched a toy dart gun in her free hand, and sent a few darts winging aimlessly around the room, giggling.

  “Dinosaur Cowgirl wins again!” she declared proudly, as Harry ran by.

  A moment later, another blond girl came through, calmly picking up fallen darts. She was older than Harry, but younger than Amanda, and shorter than any of the other Carpenters. She smiled at me and said, “Hey, Harry.”

  “Hope,” I said, smiling.

  “Hobbit,” she corrected me, winking. “Molly, Mom says to tell you that our guests need to get going.”

  Maggie, her steed, and her prey went running by in the other direction with the roles reversed, with my daughter shrieking, “No one can catch Dinosaur Cowgirl! Get her, Mouse!”

  Mouse’s tail started wagging furiously and he bounced in place, then whipped his head around to look at me.

  “Go play,” I told him.

  He bounded off after them.

  I watched them rampage off in the other direction for a moment. I sensed Molly’s eyes on me.

  “Man,” I said quietly. “Is . . . is it like this for her all the time?”

  “There are crazymaking moments too,” Molly said quietly, in the tone of someone delivering a caveat. “But . . . mostly, yeah. Mom and Dad have some pretty strong opinions but . . . they know how to do family.”

  I blinked my eyes quickly several times. “When I was a kid . . .” I stopped talking before I started crying, and smiled after them. When I was a kid in the foster system, I would have given a hand and an eye to be a part of something like this. I took a steadying breath and said, “Your family has given my daughter a home.”

  “She’s a pretty cool kid,” Molly said. “I mean, as Jawas go, she’s more or less awesome. She makes it easy to love her. Go on. They’re waiting for you.”

  We went into the kitchen, where Charity was sitting at the kitchen table. Her eyes were a little glazed over with prescription painkillers, but she looked alert, with her wounded leg propped up and pillowed on another chair. Michael sat in the chair next to her, his own freshly wounded leg mirroring hers on a chair of its own, and the pair of them were holding hands, a matched set.

  Michael’s cane, I noted, was back. It rested within arm’s reach.

  Binder and Valmont sat at the table across from them, and everyone was drinking from steaming mugs. There were five brand-new locking metal cash boxes from an office supply store sitting side by side on the table.

  Binder was in the middle of a story of some kind, gesticulating with both thick-fingered hands. “So I looked at her and said, ‘That’s not my pen, love.’”

  Michael blinked and then turned bright pink, while Charity threw back her head and let out a rolling belly laugh. Anna Valmont smiled, and sipped at her tea. She was the first to notice that I had come in, and her face brightened, for a moment, into a genuine smile. “Dresden.”

  Binder glanced over his shoulder and said, “About bloody time, mate. You look a right mess.”

  “Yeah, but I feel like an utter disaster,” I said, and limped to the table. “Where’s Grey?”

  “He won’t come in the yard,” Michael said.

  I arched an eyebrow and looked at him. “Hngh.”

  Michael spread his hands. “He said he’d be around and that you would take him his pay.”

  “Said he didn’t want a share of the stones,” Binder said in a tone of utter disbelief. “That he had his pay coming from you.”r />
  I lifted my eyebrows. “Huh.”

  “There’s professional,” Binder said, “and then there’s just bloody odd.”

  “Not everyone is motivated solely by money,” Valmont said, smiling into her tea.

  “And how much more sensible a world it would be if they were,” Binder said.

  “I’ve divided the stones by weight,” Valmont said. “Each box is the same. Everyone else should pick theirs and I’ll take whichever one is left.”

  “Sensible, professional,” Binder said in a tone of approval. “Dresden?”

  “Sure,” I said. I tapped a box and picked it up. It was heavy. Diamonds are, after all, rocks.

  Binder claimed one. Michael frowned thoughtfully.

  “Michael?” I asked him.

  “I’m . . . not sure I can accept—”

  Charity, very firmly, picked up one of the boxes and put it on her lap. “We have at least twenty-three more child-years of college education to finance,” she said. “And what if there are grandchildren one day, after that? And have you considered the good we might do with the money?”

  Michael opened his mouth, frowned, and then closed it again. “But what do we know about selling diamonds?”

  “Anna assures me it’s perfectly simple.”

  “Fairly,” Valmont said. “Especially if you do so quietly, over time. I’ll walk you through it.”

  “Oh,” Michael said.

  “And we have an extra,” Valmont said, “since Grey didn’t want a share.”

  “Here’s a brainstorm,” Binder said. “Give it to me.”

  “Why on earth would I do that?” Valmont said.

  “Because I’ll take it to Marcone and bribe him with it to not kill us all, after we wrecked his perfectly nice bank,” Binder said. “Walking away rich is all very well, but I want to live to spend it.”

  “Give it to me,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Harry?” Michael asked.

  “I know Marcone,” I said. “He knows me. I’ll use it to keep him off of all of us. You have my word.”