Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(30)

I got nothing. The doorman was clean, magically speaking, or at least unwounded by the kind of psychic attack it would take to coerce him. Someone could have bribed him just as easily, I supposed, though I felt confident that Lara’s security people would have had that one covered fairly well. Hell, for that matter, I assumed that the doorman was one of Lara’s people. It would be exactly her kind of move to do that.

So I took my search outside, as alert to any kind of magical mischief as I was to any purely vanilla suspicious activity. I circled the building carefully, all my senses open, and found … absolutely nothing.

Which made no damned sense, so I did it again, only slower and more thoroughly, not finishing until after midnight. Apparently, there was a whole lot of nothing going around. But at least it had taken me an hour and a half to determine as much.

I growled to myself, turned to go again, and readied my Sight to make absolutely sure I hadn’t missed anything.

“When a hound goes too hard after a scent,” said a man’s voice behind me, “he ain’t watching his own back trail. A wizard ought to do better.”

I absolutely did not jump in surprise. Not even a little. I turned calmly and with immense dignity and regarded the speaker with stoic calm, and not one of you can prove otherwise.

I turned to find Ebenezar stepping forward out of a veil, stumpy staff in hand. He stared at me for a good long moment, his craggy face devoid of emotion.

“Little late to be your apprentice now, sir,” I said.

“You’d be surprised,” the old man replied. “Hoss—”

“Busy,” I said brusquely. “I’m working. How’d you find me?”

The old man clenched his jaw and looked out at nothing for a minute. “Harry, word is out, about Thomas Raith. Once I knew who the svartalves were holding, I figured you’d be in one of a couple places. This was the first one.”

“You want to be a detective, you could apprentice with me for a year,” I said. “If my license is still current. Gotta be honest, I’ve been too busy to give the city of Chicago as much attention as it thinks it needs.”

“Hoss, Thomas Raith is not your responsibility,” Ebenezar said.

The hell he wasn’t.

“The hell he isn’t, sir,” I said. “I owe him my life, several times.”

“It ain’t about that, boy,” Ebenezar said, keeping his voice calm with an effort. “This one ain’t about right and wrong. It’s about authority and territory.”

My feet hurt. And I wasn’t a child to be lectured about the way of the goddamned world. “You know, it’s funny how many times I hear something isn’t about right and wrong from people who are about to do something awful,” I said. “It’s almost as if they know they’re about to do something awful, and they just don’t want to face any of the negative consequences associated with their choice.”

The muscles at the base of the old man’s jaws clenched until it looked like he was smuggling walnuts in his jowls. “Excuse me?”

“He’s my ally,” I said. “My friend. I recall you telling me about how one should respond to loyalty, once upon a time. That when you get it, you gotta give it back, or else a man starts looking at those people like they’re things to be used.”

“I said like coins to be spent,” the old man snapped, heat everywhere in his tone. Which was an admission that I was right, as much as anything.

We traded a look, and his expression told me that he knew what I was thinking, and it made him angrier.

“You think you know the world,” the old man said. “You’re barely in it yet. You ain’t seen what it gets like. How bad it can get. How cruel.”

I thought of Susan’s face. At the last. And the rage that went through me was incandescent, yet weirdly remote, like seeing fireworks from a passing jet. The scent of woodsmoke came to me, and the alley was suddenly filling with green-gold light from the runes of my staff.

“Maybe I’ve seen a thing or two,” I said back, and my voice sounded perfectly calm.

The wrinkles on the old man’s face were heavier and thicker in the harsh lighting as his expression darkened, even as his voice became gentler, pleading. “You’ve put your feet in the water and you think you know the ocean. My God, boy, I hope you never see the things I’ve seen. But if you keep going the way you’re going, you’ll get that and worse. I’m trying to protect you from the mistakes that damn near killed me. That did kill so many of the people I cared about.”

I thought of Karrin. Of Nicodemus deliberately, efficiently breaking her body. For good. It had been one of those quiet, close winter nights. I had been near enough to hear the cartilage tearing.

The edges of the carved runes on my staff began to blacken, and my vision began to narrow.

In my head, Karrin’s voice warned me quietly about how fights with family hurt so much more. But the voice of my anger was so much louder. By now, the Winter mantle was alert and interested in what was going on, sending jolts of adrenaline into my system, preparing me for a fight.

I poured as much of my anger into my voice as I could, my only outlet. “Susan tried your way. And if they’d been smart instead of obsessed with revenge, the Red Court could have killed Maggie that same day, along with her mother and you and me. So tell me again what a great plan it is to send her away.”