Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(44)

“Agree,” I said quietly. “And they know you. Trust you. Work with them. Get all the intelligence you can and coordinate it with Murphy.”

“What about Thomas?” Butters didn’t know Thomas was my brother, but he knew he was an ally we’d fought beside on too many occasions to consider leaving him behind.

“What I’m working on,” I said. “Could be that a diplomatic solution is the best one.”

Butters slipped on the slime and nearly fell on his ass. He caught the countertop and held himself up instead. Then he stared at me, fighting back a smile, and said, “Who are you, and what have you done with Harry Dresden?”

I glowered at him and rose, careful to keep my balance amid the ectoplasm on the floor. It was already sublimating. Maybe half of it was gone. I shrugged back into my duster. “I don’t prefer to blow things up and burn things down. It just sort of works out that way.”

Butters nodded. “What’s your next move?”

“Diplomacy,” I said, “with a Vampire Queen.”

“You’re not going out to the chateau alone, are you?”

Chateau Raith was White Court headquarters in these parts. “Yeah.”

Butters sighed. “I’ll get my bag.”

“No need,” I told him. “Mab and Lara have a deal going, and Mab’s made it clear what Lara is and is not allowed to do. She’ll play nice.”

Butters frowned. “You sure?”

I nodded. “Rest up. Might need you for real in the next few days.”

He looked from me toward the bedroom, his conscience at war with the rest of him.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Good luck, Harry.”

“I only have one kind of luck.” I nodded my thanks to Butters, grabbed my staff, and set out to visit Lara Raith.





14


The Raith Estates are about an hour north of town, out in the countryside, where the nearest neighbor is too far away to hear you scream. The place is surrounded by a forest of old enormous trees, mostly oak, that look like they were transplanted from Sherwood Forest.

Hell, given how much money and power the White Court had, maybe they had been.

I pulled up to the gates of the estate in the Munstermobile to find them guarded by half a dozen men in full tactical gear and body armor. They weren’t kidding around. As I stopped the car, five men pointed assault rifles at me, and one approached the car. His spine was rigid, his shoulders square, his manner relaxed. Lara recruited her personal security almost exclusively from former military, mostly Marines.

The man who approached my car had a solid blend of the lean athleticism of youth and the weather-beaten edges of experience. He wasn’t even bothering with a friendly smile. I’d run into him before. His name was Riley.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Those look like ARs,” I said. I squinted at the guns pointing at me. “But with real big barrels. Beowulfs?”

Riley shrugged. “Can I help you?”

“I’m to see Ms. Raith,” I said.

“The grounds are closed for the night.”

I looked at him and rested my arm on the window, leaning back comfortably in my seat. Lara didn’t hire chumps, so I was dealing with a professional. Most of the time, when something like this happened, I tended to react … adversely. But I was here to talk about a diplomatic solution. I was kind of new to this, but it seemed like me blowing things up and knocking Lara’s people ass over teakettle probably wouldn’t be an auspicious beginning.

And besides. I was willing to bet the other five or six guys I couldn’t see right now would have a rocket launcher or something, and I didn’t need to add getting blown up to my list of problems.

So I smiled at the guard and said, “Look. You and I crossed trails over the Luther case. Didn’t turn out so good for your boss, but you kept it from being a real wreck—and we were both good to our word.”

Riley eyed me and grunted acknowledgment.

“I’m here to help,” I said. “Call the house. You won’t regret it.”

He stared down at me for a second. Then he walked to the guardhouse and got on a phone while several extremely heavy-duty guns, known for their vehicle-stopping capability, pointed steadily at my noggin. His face turned a little paler than it had been, and he waved at the other guards, causing them to lower the weapons and get out of the way. He pointed at me and then at the gate, and the gate buzzed and began to swing open.

Before I could put the car in gear and pull in, a Humvee pulled out of the dark inside the fence. The military-style truck was painted all black and had an actual Ma Deuce machine gun on a pintle mount atop it. The Humvee preceded me, and as my car began to roll, a second truck, mounted with a second machine gun, pulled in behind me. Riley swung up onto the running board of the second vehicle, his rifle held up and ready with one hand as we began to move forward. I was, it seemed, to have an escort up to the house.

We all drove a couple of miles through Sherwood until we emerged from the trees onto the lawn of a grand estate I’d been to a few times before. As we drove, I could feel subtle webs of magic woven throughout the path along the road. We were moving too fast for me to get much out of what I could sense, but the implications were pretty clear—Lara had blanketed her grounds in magical protections of some kind.