Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(29)

“Yeah,” I said. “Me. My word on it, Justine.”

She cracked then, doubling over the hands she held cradling her still-flat tummy, and sobbed.

I couldn’t sit down in the spot on the love seat where my brother should have been. But I knelt on the other side of her and put an arm around her shoulders. “Hey. Hey. I’m right here.”

Justine went limp and wept.





11


I stood in the hall after Justine shut the door behind me and felt terrible.

My brother was going to die if I didn’t do something.

Justine was falling to pieces. I hadn’t been able to do much about that, other than just sit there like a giant wooden statue and put an arm around her and say, “There, there.”

My apartment at the svartalves’ place was clearly a thing of the past at this point. No matter how things played out with Thomas, I wasn’t going to keep Maggie in the same building with people who had either killed my brother or else thirsted for vengeance against him. So even if I got through the next several days alive, I was going to be looking at a move on the other end, which is always awesome.

And then there was the little matter of the peace talks with the Fomor, and the political turmoil within the White Council, and the possibility that I might be cast out of it. Which, personally, I didn’t much mind. The White Council had been mainly a pain in my neck my whole life, but … they also gave me the shelter of their community. I’d made a lot of enemies over the years. One of the reasons they didn’t just openly come to kill me all the time was that the White Council was lurking in the background, the keepers of the secrets of the universe, the men and women who could reach out from anywhere in the world and lay the smack down on their enemies. The last time someone from an Accorded nation had openly set out to attack me directly, some rascal had pulled a satellite out of orbit and right down onto his head.

Granted, he’d had his own reasons for doing it—but as far as the world at large was concerned, the White Council had spoken in a simple and clear voice: Mess with one of us, and you mess with all of us.

If they voted me out, that aegis would be gone. No one would have my back, even theoretically.

No one but Mab.

Granted, I trusted Mab with my back, within certain circumstances, more than almost anyone alive. A monster she might be, but she kept her word and stood by her people. Even so, though, I had no illusions about the fact that she wanted me to be more malleable to her various needs. She wanted me meaner, colder, darker, more vicious, because it would make me better able to do the job of being the Winter Knight. Mab couldn’t push me too hard in that direction, I knew, because it would anger certain people on the Council—and the united White Council was a force not even Mab could casually defy.

But if I was cast out of the Council’s graces … Well. Without the threat of action up to and including all-out war to protect a wizard in good standing, Mab would be free to do a heck of a lot more than offer me fresh cookies when it came to pushing me toward the dark side.

I stood there for a moment, thinking. Thomas had gone gunning for Etri. Had it been personal? Unlikely. Thomas had been, ahem, in the good graces of the svartalves. Especially their females. I don’t think he’d even spoken to Etri.

Had it had something to do with jealousy, then? Had Thomas been defending himself against, or maybe trying to make a point to, a jealous boyfriend? Or brother?

Again, unlikely. Svartalves didn’t understand the concept of sexual monogamy. Their pairings were based upon shared assets, biological or otherwise, and beyond an ironclad code of honor when it came to taking care of one’s progeny, they found the usual human approach to sexuality baffling. If I’d sat down to dinner with Etri and announced that I’d boinked his sister, Etri would have found the remark of casual interest and inquired as to whether or not I had enjoyed myself.

Okay, I’m going to say something a little mean, here: My brother is not exactly a complicated guy. He likes, in order, Justine, sex, exercise, food and drink, and occasionally fighting someone who needs fighting. That last would not seem to include Etri and his people, who as a group were about as threatening as the Amish on your average day. So there just weren’t many reasons Thomas would have wanted to kill Etri.

So maybe he didn’t want to. Assume I was your average world-conquering, troublemaking megalomaniac, and I wanted Thomas to whack someone for me. How would I get him to do it?

Obvious answer. She’d still been dabbing at the occasional tear when I left.

If someone had threatened Justine, then at the very least they’d have her under surveillance. But who would do that?

To answer that question, I supposed I had to find out who was watching her and ask them.

I cracked my knuckles and got to work.

I did a quick sweep of the hallway outside their apartment and found nothing, which I expected. Lara and her security teams already had the place covered, and my brother had inherited vestiges of Mom’s power. He wasn’t anything close to a wizard, but he had enough juice to be aware of magical patterns, and it would be a hell of a job to slip around this hallway laying down surveillance spells for an hour or two without being noticed.

I did a second, more careful sweep to be sure, and then went outside, slowly, senses open to perceive any magical forces that might be present. I even took a quick peek at the doorman with my Sight—the dangerous practice of opening one’s mind to the raw input of the energy of the universe. Under the Sight, you see things for what they are, and you remember everything you see, and no enchantment can hide from it.