Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(109)

My eyes flew open and I was on the deck of the Water Beetle, on the far side of the cabin from where Ebenezar had been, where I’d taken cover after dropping the ring and beginning the illusion. Once I’d activated the ring, the veil around me had let me slip aboard the Water Beetle, take cover, and then project my consciousness back into the construct.

I’d blown up my relationship with my grandfather by remote control.

But at least I hadn’t taken a comet to the lung.

As I came all the way back into my body, I was gripped by a weariness so intense that it was its own entirely new form of pain. I could feel myself thrashing in spasms. Murphy had one of those face masks with a rubber pump over my mouth and was forcing air in. Freydis was trying to hold me down.

I fought for control of my body and eventually reasserted it, sagging down to the deck in utter weariness. Freydis lay half across me, panting. Murphy, all business, peeled back one of my eyelids and shone a light on my eye. “Harry? Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” I said, and brushed the mask off my face. “Ugh.”

“Od’s bodkin, seidermadr,” Freydis breathed. She rose off me wearily. “You cut that one close.”

“What the hell is she talking about?” Murphy asked.

“A construct,” I said. “For the illusion. Um. Molly made a really, really good ectoplasmic body for me, stored the pattern for it in the ring, and linked it to me. Everything you need to drop a fake double of yourself in place as a decoy and simultaneously make yourself unseen. Then I … kind of possessed the construct. Projected my awareness into it. Sent all that energy into it, all the way from here, which is exhausting as hell. Had a wonderful chat with McCoy.”

Murphy helped me sit up, staring at my face intently. “What happened?” she asked.

I looked at her and said in a lifeless voice, “I won.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “Is he …”

“Pissed,” I said, with drawn-out, heavy emphasis.

She frowned and touched my temple with one hand for a moment. “He hurt you.”

I closed my eyes. “You should see the other guy.”

“You two are just precious,” the Valkyrie quipped.

“Freydis,” Murphy said, not unkindly, “fuck off.”

Freydis looked back and forth between us, frowned, and said, “Fucking off, ma’am.” And she left us as much privacy as she could on the little ship as the Water Beetle chugged forward.

“Harry,” Murph said gently.

I kept my eyes closed. They were overflowing anyway.

“He’s … he’s not …”

“Not quite the hero you thought he was?”

I pressed my lips together.

“Yeah,” she said. She leaned down and lifted my head into her lap. “He’s human. What a shock.”

“I told him,” I said. “About Thomas.”

“Seems like he reacted a little,” she said.

“He killed me,” I said quietly. “The fake me, I mean. If the fake me had been me me, I would now be dead me. He didn’t mean to do it. But it happened. And he’s not who I thought he was. He was out of control.”

My voice kind of choked on the last sentence. My chest felt like it should have had knives sticking out of it. I leaned my shoulders back against the bulkhead of the wheelhouse and clamped my left hand over my eyes while I sat on the deck. “He was out of control.”

“Oh God, Harry,” Murphy said, her voice full of pain.

“It hurts,” I said quietly. “Oh God. It hurts.”

She put her hand on my forehead, stroking. I lowered my hand and leaned down toward her. And I cried.

That went on until it was quiet.

Then she said, “I heard the beginning of the conversation. And you’re both wrong about each other, you know. You don’t really know who he is. Not yet. And he doesn’t know you. And you both hurt each other terribly, because you’re family. Because what you say and do matters so much more than anyone else.” She leaned down and put her cheek against my forehead. “Listen to me. I know it hurts right now. But the reason it hurts so much is because you care about each other so much. And that pain will eventually fade. But you’ll both still care.”

She was right. I did hurt. The kind of pain a magical mantle can’t do jack about. The real pain, of the heart, the kind that can kill you in about a million ways.

Damn the stubborn old fool.

“I know this is hard, Harry. I remember when I first realized my dad was just human,” she said. “When he shot himself.”

She let that hang in the air for a while.

Then she straightened, framed my face with her hands, and stared out over the darkened lake, her eyes filled with tears. “You can still talk to him, Harry. Something I never got to do. I want you to promise me, for my sake, that you’ll talk to him when tempers have cooled.”

“Karrin,” I said.

She gave one of my cheeks a little slap, annoyed. “Did that sound like a request? Do it. If my advice means a goddamned thing, do it right now. That’s how important this is.”

“What if …” I swallowed. “What if that’s me, one day? What if that’s what I’m like?”

“There’s a difference between you and him,” Murph said.