The Law (The Dresden Files #17.4)
Jim Butcher
Chapter One
Life isn’t fair.
That’s a fact that occurs to all of us when we’re pretty young. Whether it comes to us in a very real and serious way, maybe when a parent dies early, or whether we learn it in a much less heavy fashion on a playground somewhere, the fact gets through. Planet Earth isn’t a fair place. It’s unfair in a broad variety of different ways, some worse than others, but it isn’t fair. Not for anybody.
And that’s pretty much the fairest thing about it.
It had been a tough year for me, ever since the Last Titan attacked the city. I’d lost friends, plural, in the battle. One of them had been Murphy. She’d bled out while I held her. She’d been shot in the neck. Accidentally.
Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw her face, lips going blue, skin turning grey. I couldn’t get it out of my dreams or out of my head. I hated going to sleep, because my dreams were mostly of her dying, over and over again, on replay. Maybe my subconscious was looking for all the ways I could have changed the outcome of the situation, like an angry coach with an after-game video. Or maybe I just couldn’t let her go.
Hell if I knew.
I’d been feeling sorry for myself, which is about the most use-less thing you can feel: it doesn’t do a damned thing for you. You don’t feel any better, you don’t get any better, and you’re too busy moping to do anything to actually make your life any better. There’s a reason the old folks call it sitting and stewing in your own juices. That’s all that goes on—you just soak in the pain.
Still, there is a time for all things, including a time when it’s appropriate to feel that way. For me, that time was between three and five in the morning. I couldn’t sleep more than three or four hours a night, and when I’d wake, I would lay there with my eyes closed and…hurt. Sometimes I’d drift into a nightmarish doze again. For most of a month, though, I had just laid there hurting.
My purely mechanical alarm clock would go off at five—not to wake me up, but to tell me it was time to put those feelings away for a while.
It’s okay to hurt.
It’s not okay to fail the people who rely on me. That was my point of balance.
So, at five AM, on a day about a month after Murphy went away, I got up, went through a stretching routine which other people might call ‘yoga,’ and chose a cold shower because you can’t worry about anything else while you’re in one. Then I dressed, faked being a functional human, and shambled out of my chambers in the castle and to the kitchen for breakfast. It was a huge room full of stainless steel furnishings and polished concrete floors. My big, old, grey tomcat Mister trotting gamely along at my heels—and sometimes in front of them, helpfully keeping my balance in training.
Will was waiting for me with a cup of coffee.
Will Borden the Werewolf had been taking a break from being Will Borden the Dad and Engineer to help me out around the house. He was a blocky man with medium brown hair and beard, and he was built like three quarters of a professional linebacker. His head came up to my sternum. He wore a suit with no jacket or tie, but he had a clipboard thick with papers in lieu of a tablet or smartphone, in deference to the fact that carrying serious tech in the castle would have killed the devices in moments.
“Hngh,” he said, and passed over a cup of coffee from the old Army coffee machine Michael had refurbished and given me.
I accepted it with a polite, “Thngh.”
We sipped for a moment. “Okay,” I said. “Think I can understand English now.” I shambled over to one of the commercial fridges in the castle’s kitchen, opened it, and started taking out things for breakfast. The volunteer cooks from the Ordo Lebes would arrive in an hour to start making the morning meal for the various refugees staying in my old-slash-new home, but for the time being we had the place to ourselves.
Mister purred and walked back and forth between my ankles, rubbing fondly against me. I tried not to trip on him and kill myself as I got out his breakfast and fed him.
“Okay,” Will said, scanning the top page of his clipboard with a yawn. “Ready for today?”
I grunted, getting down the bacon and eggs and firing up one of the big stoves and skillets.
“Carbs,” Will said absently. “Leg day.”
I got out the pot for oatmeal and started that too.
“Budget meeting at one,” Will said. “The city guy is coming at two to threaten us with re-zoning.”
“Again?”
Will shrugged. “Marcone cut some corners when he built this place. The city was careful about him. They aren’t careful about you. Three, you’ve got that meeting with the Paranet committee.”
“With Paranoid Gary,” I said.
“And at four,” Will continued, “Lara’s new assistant is coming to arrange terms for the first date.”
“I’m not budging on my limits. And it’s not for two more weeks,” I said.
“Mab’s lawyers want time to review the terms and limitations,” Will noted.
I sighed. “Understanding and limits are probably a good idea in most interactions. ‘Terms and limitations’ is one of those phrases that probably shouldn’t apply to dating.”
Will chuckled ruefully. Then he paused and looked up at me. “There’s an insert for this morning I think you should look at.”