Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(60)

“Okay,” she said, and hopped up with the energy of children on a sunny afternoon, running out. Mouse lumbered to his feet, nuzzled my face fondly with his big, slobbery mouth, and padded out after her.

I looked around helpless for a second, wiped off my face on the comforter, got out my wallet, found it empty, and started rummaging in my pockets for whatever change I could find there.

I got dressed and made a call in Michael’s spartan, organized office. Once I shut the heavy wooden door, the sounds of the television out in the family room and the rap of wood on wood coming from the backyard were muted to nothing.

“It’s Dresden,” I said when he answered.

“Oh boy.”

“I need your help,” I said.

“With what?”

“Good cause.”

He sounded skeptical. “Oh. Those.”

“There’s a cute girl.”

“I like that.”

“You can’t have her,” I said.

“I like that less.”

“In or out?”

“Usual fee,” he said.

“I only stole so many rocks.”

He snorted. “So, get someone else.”

“You’re killing me, man.”

“Only if it’s for a good cause. Tell me about this girl.”

I told him where to find Justine and what she looked like.

“You get that she’s obviously a femme fatale, right?”

I arched an eyebrow. “She’s … kind of not.”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“She isn’t.”

“Customer’s always right. What result do you want?”

I shuddered a bit. It wouldn’t matter to him, personally, whether or not I asked him to save her or kill her. But the more experience I had in the world, the more I had come to think that monstrousness or a lack of it was a little less important than whether or not the monster would keep his word.

This one would.

“Covert surveillance. Make sure nothing bad happens to her.”

“Am I a spy or a bodyguard?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. You’re floundering.”

I was definitely not floundering. “I am definitely not floundering,” I told him in a tone of perfect confidence. “I … just need more information before I can act appropriately.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. Only more annoyingly. “Opposition?”

“Unknown,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

“To you,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Now.”

“Yeah.”

“Here.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” he said. “Super.”

“If I get an easy job, I can call a temp agency.”

“I don’t do politics,” he said. “The good causes mostly aren’t.”

“I’ll handle that part,” I said. “Your concern is solely the girl—and the baby. She’s pregnant. Keep them safe from harm.”

“Ah,” he said, as though I had just simplified his life. “Rules of engagement?”

“Well, I think you should—”

“Trick question,” he said, and hung up on me.

I eyed the phone.

Then I got into my pocket, got out the dollar bill that had been stuck in a pocket on a ride through the laundromat and was now a wadded block of solid pseudo-wood. I put it in an envelope, sealed it, and wrote GREY on it in pink highlighter. I stowed that in a pocket. That’ll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo.

Then I got up and headed outside.

Butters was a squirrely little guy—quick, bouncy, and bright-eyed.

The man pursuing him around the Carpenters’ backyard was more of a bear—huge, powerful, and too fast for his size. He’d shaved his head entirely, and his scalp was the color of dark chocolate, covered with beads of sweat, and the blazing afternoon sun shone gratuitously upon all the muscle. Sanya was the size and build of an NFL linebacker, and his teeth showed in a broad smile the entire time he fought.

Even as I watched, the two men squared off, facing each other, each holding a length of wood carved to vaguely resemble a samurai sword. Butters held his in a two-handed grip, high over his head. The little guy was wearing his sports goggles, a tank top, and close-fit exercise pants. He looked like the protagonists in the old Hong Kong Theater movies—blade thin, flexible, and wiry with lean muscle that was all about speed and reflexes.

Sanya, dressed in battered blue jeans and biker boots, whirled his practice sword in one hand through a couple of flourishes and settled into a fencing stance in front of Butters and just out of his own reach, his off hand held out behind him.

“You have gotten much smoother,” said Sanya, his voice a deep rumble inflected with a thick Russian accent on the vowels.

“Still not any faster,” Butters said. And then his practice sword blurred as it swept down toward Sanya. Santa intercepted with a deflection parry, though he had enough muscle and mass on Butters that he probably didn’t need to. His return thrust slithered down the haft of Butters’s practice sword so fast that I heard it hit Waldo’s thumb. He yelped and leapt back, shaking that hand for a moment—but he didn’t lose his practice weapon.