by Butcher, Jim
Beauty runs deeper than that.
There was an inexpressible quality of femininity about her that appealed to me tremendously—some critical mixture of gentle curves, quiet grace, and supple strength that I had only that second realized happened to reside in the same place as the head of the Wardens. Maybe more important, I knew the quality of the person under the skin. I’d known Luccio for years, been in more than one tight spot with her, and found her to be one of the only veteran Wardens whom I both liked and respected.
She shook her hair to the other side of her back and washed the other shoulder and arm just as slowly, and just as evidently taking pleasure in doing so.
It had been a while since I’d seen a woman’s naked back and shoulders. It had been considerably rarer than my views of the various nightmares my job kept exposing me to. I guess even among all the nightmares, sooner or later you’ll get lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a beautiful dream. And despite the trouble I was in, for just that moment there, under all those blankets, I looked at something beautiful. It made me wish I had the talent to capture the sight with charcoal or inks or oils—but that had never been my gift. All I could do was soak up that simple sight: beautiful woman bathing in firelight.
I didn’t actually notice when Luccio paused and turned her head to face me. I just noticed, suddenly, that she was returning my gaze, her dark eyes steady. I swallowed. I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting. Sudden outrage, maybe, or a biting remark, or at least a blush. Luccio didn’t do any of that. She just returned my stare, calm and poised and lovely as you please, one arm folded across her breasts while the other dipped the cloth into the steaming basin again.
“Sorry,” I said finally, lowering my eyes. I was probably blushing. Dammit. Maybe I could pass it off as mild frostbite, heroically suffered on her behalf.
She let out a quiet little murmur of sound that was too relaxed to be a chuckle. “Did it displease you?”
“No,” I said, at once. “God, no, nothing like that.”
“Then why apologize?” she said.
“I, uh…” I coughed. “I just figured that a girl who came of age during the reign of Queen Victoria would be a little more conservative.”
Luccio let out a wicked little laugh that time. “Victoria was British,” she said. “I’m Italian.”
“Bit of a difference, then?” I asked.
“Just a little,” she replied. “When I was young, I posed for a number of painters and sculptors, you know.” She tilted her head back and washed her throat as she spoke. “Mmm. Though that was in my original body, of course.”
Right. The one that had been stolen by an insane necromancer, leaving Luccio’s mind permanently trapped in a loaner. A really young, fit, lovely loaner. “I don’t see how the one you’re in now could possibly come up short by comparison.”
She opened her eyes and flashed me a smile that was entirely too pleased and girlish. “Thank you. But I would not have you misunderstanding me. I’d avail myself of your shower, after being soaked in that foul soup, but the Archive is on your bed, and Kincaid has closed the door. He’s resting too, and I’d rather not have him go for my throat before he wakes. And you were asleep, so…” She gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
It did really interesting things to the shadows the fire cast upon her skin, and I was suddenly glad of all the blankets piled on me.
“Are you feeling all right?” Luccio asked me.
“I’ll live,” I said.
“It was gallant of you to face down Kincaid like that.”
“No problem. He’s an ass.”
“A very dangerous one,” Luccio said. “I wouldn’t have traveled with him if I had not seen him pass through the security checkpoint in Boston.” She rose, dropped the washcloth in the basin, and pulled her shirt on, giving me a rather intriguing view of her back and waist silhouetted against the firelight.
I sighed. Moment over. Back to business.
“What were you doing traveling with them?” I asked.
“Bringing them here for the parley,” she replied.
“Parley?”
“The Archive contacted Nicodemus Archleone regarding our accusations. He agreed to meet with us here, in Chicago, to discuss the matter. You are the initiating party in this instance, and I am here to serve as your second.”
I blinked at her. “You? My second?”
She turned to face me as she finished buttoning her shirt and smiled faintly. “Duty before ego. Relatively few of the Wardens with sufficient seasoning for the role were willing. I thought it might be best if you worked with me instead of Morgan.”
“That’s why they pay you the big bucks, Cap. That keen interpersonal insight.”
“That and because I’m quite good at killing things,” Luccio said, nodding. She turned to the fireplace and took Gard’s little wooden box off the mantel. “Dresden…”
“Hell’s bells,” I breathed, sitting up. “Captain, that thing is dangerous. Put it down.” I snapped out that last in a tone of pure authority, one I’d gotten used to when working with Molly and various folks I’d met through the Paranet.
She froze in her tracks and arched an eyebrow at me, but only for a split second. Then she smoothly replaced the box and stepped away from it. “I see. You were holding it when we dragged you in here. You wouldn’t let it go, in fact.”
“Well,” I said, “no.”
“Which, I take it, explains what you were doing at the station.”
“Well,” I said, “yes.”
“Quite a coincidence,” she said.
I shook my head. “In my experience, when there’s a Knight of the Cross around, there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
She frowned at that. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve been to confession. Nearly a century, in fact. I’m not aware that the Almighty owes me any favors.”
“Mysterious ways,” I said smugly.
She laughed. “I take it they’ve used that line on you before?”
“Constantly,” I said.
“A good man,” she said. “You’re lucky to have him as a friend.”
I frowned and said quietly, “Yeah. I am.” I shook my head. “When’s the parley?”
“Noon, tomorrow.” She nodded at the mantel. “Can you tell me what’s in there?”
“Options,” I said. “If the parley fails.”
“Out with it, Dresden,” she said.
I shook my head.
She put a fist on one hip. “Why not?”
“Gave my word.”
She considered that for a moment. Then she nodded once and said, “As you wish. Get some more rest. You’ll need it.” Then she prowled over to my love seat, sank wearily down into it, and, without another word, curled up under a blanket. She was apparently asleep seconds later.
I thought about getting up and checking out Gard’s case, maybe calling Michael and Murphy, but the weariness that suddenly settled on my limbs made all of that sound impossibly difficult. So I settled in a little more comfortably and found sleep coming swiftly to me as well.
The last thing I noticed, before I dropped off, was that under all the blankets I was entirely undressed.
And I was clean.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“I still don’t see why I can’t go,” Molly said, folding her arms crossly.
“You know how you told me how much you hate it when your parents quote scripture at you to answer your questions?” I asked her.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not gonna do that. Because I don’t know this one well enough to get the quote right.”
She rolled her eyes.
“But it’s something about the best way to defeat temptation is to avoid it.”
“Oh, please,” Molly said.
“Actually, he’s right,” Thomas said, passing over my duster. “Seriously. I know temptation.”
Molly gave my brother a sidelong look and blushed faintly.
“Stop that,” I
told him.
Thomas shrugged. “Can’t help it. I’m hungry. I wound up jumping rooftop to rooftop for half an hour, dodging a bunch of three-foot-tall lunatics with bows and arrows.”
“Elves,” I murmured. “Someone on Summer’s team was calling in backup, too. Interesting. I wonder which side tipped the scales first.”
“You’re welcome,” Thomas said.
“Hey,” Molly snapped. “Can we get back on topic? I know how to handle myself, Harry. This is supposed to be a talk, not a fight.”
I sighed, turning to her. We were talking to each other in the Carpenters’ kitchen, while everyone else geared up in the workshop. Thomas had sneaked in the front door of the house to pass my staff and coat back to me, after his evening of decoy work.
“Grasshopper,” I said, “think who we’re going to be talking to.”
“Nicodemus. The head of the Denarians,” she said. “The man who tried to kill my father and my teacher, and did his best to put a demon inside my little brother’s head.”
I blinked. “How did you know about—”
“The usual, eavesdropping on Mom and Dad,” she replied impatiently. “The point being that I’m not going to be tempted to pick up one of his coins, Harry.”
“I’m not talking about you being tempted, kid,” I said. “I’m worried about Nicodemus. Given everything that’s going on, I’d rather not wave a Knight of the Cross’s brushed-with-darkness daughter under his nose. We’re trying to avoid a huge fight, not find new reasons to start one.”
Molly gave me a steady stare.
“Hey,” I said, “how’s that homework I gave you coming?”
She stared some more. She’d learned from Charity, so she was pretty good at it. I’d gotten Charity’s stare plenty, though, so I’d been inoculated. She turned in silence and stalked out of the kitchen.
Thomas snorted quietly.
“What?” I asked him.
“You really think you’re going to avoid a fight?”
“I think I’m not going to hand them any of Michael’s family as hostages,” I said. “Nicodemus has got something up his sleeve.” As I spoke, I made sure the little holdout knife in its leather sheath was still secured up mine. “The only question is who is going to start the music and where.”
“Where’s the meeting?”
I shrugged. “Neither party knows. Kincaid and the Archive are picking a neutral spot. They left my place early this morning. They’re going to call. But I doubt they’ll start it this soon. My money says that Nicodemus will want something in exchange for Marcone. That’s when he’ll make his move.”
“At the exchange?” Thomas asked.
I nodded. “Try to grab the whole tamale.”
“Uh-huh,” Thomas said. “Speaking of, I came by your place after I was done playing tag with assassin midgets last night. Got a whiff of perfume on the doorway and checked through the window on the south side of the house.” He gave me a sly grin. “About fucking time, man.”
I frowned at him. “What?”
The grin faded. “You mean you still didn’t…Oh, empty night, Harry.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw you, talking to a woman who had already taken half her clothes off for you, man.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Thomas, it wasn’t like that. She was just getting clean.” I gave him the short version of the previous evening.
Thomas gave me a look of his own. Then he thwapped me gently upside the head.
“Hey!” I said.
“Harry,” he said. “You were sleeping for hours. She had plenty of time to get clean. You think she sat around for all that time because she wasn’t tired just yet? You think she didn’t plan on you seeing her?”
I opened my mouth to answer and left it that way.
“For that matter, she could have settled down behind the couch, where you couldn’t have seen her if you did wake up,” Thomas continued. “Not right by the fire, where she made what I thought was quite a nice little picture for you.”
“I…I didn’t think she…”
He stared at me. “You didn’t make a move.”
“She’s…Luccio is my commanding officer, man. We…we work together.”
Thomas rolled his eyes. “That’s a twenty-first-century attitude, man. She’s a nineteenth-century girl. She doesn’t draw the lines the same way you and I do.”
“But I never thought—”
“I can’t believe this,” Thomas said. “Tell me you aren’t that stupid.”
“Stupid?” I demanded.
“Yeah,” he said bluntly. “Stupid. If she offered and you turned her down because you had a reason you didn’t want to, that’s one thing. Never realizing what she was talking about, though—that’s just pathetic.”
“She never said—”
My brother threw up his hands. “What does a woman need to do, Harry? Rip her clothes off, throw herself on top of you, and shimmy while screaming, ‘Do me, baby!’?” He shook his head. “Sometimes you’re a frigging idiot.”
“I…” I spread my hands. “She just went to sleep, man.”
“Because she was being thoughtful of you, you knob. She didn’t want to come on too strong and make you uncomfortable, especially given that she’s older and more experienced than you are, and your commanding officer to boot. She didn’t want to make you feel pressured. So she left you plenty of room to turn her down gracefully.” He rolled his eyes. “Read between the lines once in a while, man.”
“I…” I sighed. “I’ve never been hit on by a woman a hundred and fifty years older than me,” I said lamely.
“Try to use your brain around women once in a while, instead of just your juju stick.” Thomas tossed me my staff.
I caught it. “Everyone’s a critic.”
My brother purloined an apple from the basket on the island in the kitchen on his way to the door, glanced over his shoulder, and said, “Moron. Thank God Nicodemus is a man.”
He left, and I stood there for a second being annoyed at him. I mean, sure, he was probably right—but that only made it more annoying, not less.
Something else he was right about: Anastasia had looked simply amazing in front of that fire.
Huh.
I hadn’t really thought of her in terms of her first name before. Just as “Luccio” or “the captain” or “Captain Luccio.” Come to think of it, she’d been out of the dating game for even longer than I had. Could be that she hadn’t exactly been brimming with self-confidence last night, either.
The situation bore thinking upon.
Later.
For now, there was intrigue and inevitable betrayal afoot, and I had to focus.
I headed out to the workshop. The day was brighter than the one before, but the cloud cover still hadn’t gone. It had stopped snowing, though the wind kicked up enough powder to make it hard to tell. A check of the mirror had revealed that the tip of my nose, the tops of my ears, and the highest parts of my cheeks were rough and ruddy from exposure to cold and my brush with hypothermia. They looked like they’d suffered from a heavy sunburn. Added to my raccoon eyes, I thought them quite charming.
No wonder Luccio had thrown herself at me with such wanton abandon.
Dammit, Harry, focus, focus. Danger is afoot.
I opened the door to the workshop just as Michael folded his arms and said, “I still don’t see why I can’t go.”
“Because we’re trying to avoid a fight,” Luccio said calmly, “and an atmosphere of nervous fear is not going to foster a good environment for a peaceful exchange.”
“I’m not afraid of them,” Michael said.
“No,” Luccio said, smiling faintly. “But they’re afraid of you.”
“In any case,” Gard said, “neither the Church nor the Knights are signatories of the Accords. Not to put it too bluntly, Sir Michael, but this is quite literally none of your business.”
“You don’t know these people,” Michael said quietly. “Not the
way I do.”
“I do,” I said quietly. “At least in some ways.”
Michael turned to give me a steady, searching look. “Maybe,” he said quietly. “Do you think I should stay away?”
I didn’t answer him immediately. Gard watched me from where she sat on the edge of her cot, now dressed and upright, if not precisely healthy-looking. Hendricks sat at the workbench again, although he was sharpening a knife this time. Weapons nuts are always fiddling with their gear. Murphy, seated down the bench from Hendricks, was cleaning her gun. She wasn’t moving her wounded arm much, though she apparently had full use of that hand. Sanya loomed in a corner near the workbench, patiently working some kind of leather polish into Esperacchius’s scabbard.
“I don’t think this is where they’ll try to stick in the knife,” I said quietly. I turned my eyes to Luccio. “I also don’t think it would be stupid to have a couple of Knights on standby, in case I’m wrong.”
Luccio’s head rocked back a little.
“No reason not to hedge our bets,” I told her quietly. “These people don’t play nice like the Unseelie fae, or the Red Court. I’ve seen them in action, Captain.”
She pursed her lips, and her eyes never wavered from my face. “All right, Warden,” she said, finally. “It’s your city.”
“I did not agree to this,” Gard said, rising, her expression dark.
“Oh, deal with it, blondie,” I told her. “Beggars and choosers. The White Council is backing you up on this one, but don’t start thinking it’s because we work for you. Or your boss.”
“I’m going to be there too,” Murphy said quietly, without looking up from her gun. “Not just somewhere nearby. There. In the room.”
Pretty much everyone there said, “No,” or some variant of it at that point, except for Hendricks, who didn’t talk a lot, and me, who knew better.