Chapter Eighteen
Fitz was in bad shape throughout the night, moaning and weakly thrashing.
Out of an abundance of caution, we gave the kid sips of holy water every hour, just in case any bits of the Lurker remained in his belly.
Bear ran him an IV of saline for lost fluids and provided antibiotics through the line, since God knew what kind of conventional bacteria the Lurker had carried in with it when it got to Fitz.
He threw up a couple more times, neither of them anything like the first.
Blue was coming into the sky before the young man settled down, his fever broke, and he fell into an exhausted sleep.
“I should have thought of it when that crow got in the back seat,” Bear said. “But he didn’t say anything.”
“He’s new to all this,” I said. “Kid was screaming, throwing his arms around, stomping a doom bird to death. Car was racing. Adrenaline, confusion, fear. Something could have gotten in his mouth without him even noticing.”
“It’s not new to me,” Bear said. “Vadderung says it’s a flaw in the thinking of most Valkyries. We deal with our problems directly, and we tend to think in those terms.”
“We lived. We’ll learn,” I said.
Bear nodded.
“What did Estevez say?” I asked.
“He’ll be there,” she reported.
Tripp came quietly into the infirmary, awkwardly carrying three cups of coffee. He handed one to Bear and then to me. His room was right down the hall from the infirmary, and he’d poked his head out in concern as we’d brought Fitz in.
He’d been there all night and he hadn’t said a word. Just gone and gotten coffee for us.
Bear sipped at hers and sighed. “I’ll need to get some things ready for tonight. Myself included. You should get some sleep, Dresden.”
“Soon as Dr. Lacalle gets here,” I promised. “Michael is going to sit with him through the day.”
Bear looked amused. “You haven’t even called him yet.”
“It’s Michael,” I said simply. I checked my watch. Four thirty AM. “He doesn’t get up for another hour. I’ll call him then.”
“Right,” Bear said. She got up and lumbered out of the room quietly.
I sat in the chair by Fitz’s bed and sipped coffee. I was tired enough that it might as well have been hot water, and mostly tasted like it. The pendulum of a mechanical clock on the wall ticked steadily back and forth.
Tripp finally spoke.
“What happened to the kid happened because of me,” he said. “ ’Cause he was wearing my suit.”
“Yeah,” I said.
He stared down at his own coffee for a minute.
“Christ,” he said, finally.
I grunted, not really saying anything.
“I got nothing against the kid. Or you. I never wanted anybody to get hurt,” Tripp said.
“But they did,” I said.
He grimaced. “Yeah.”
“Look, Tripp,” I said wearily. “Mostly, stuff like this? It’s the fault of whoever actually did it. In this case, Estevez and the Lurker. They’re the ones who hurt Fitz. But your choices created the circumstances that led to it happening.”
He thought about that for a moment before he asked, without heat, “So, if they’re the ones who did it, why’s it gotta be my fault too?”
“Because you can’t change other people’s choices,” I said. “You can only choose your own. So, when something goes wrong, you look at the part you had a hand in, you accept that you could have done it differently, and you make damned sure you don’t make the same mistake again in the future.”
He thought about that for a minute. Then he said, “If I’m the one who fucked it up … then I’m also the one who can fix it.”
“To the degree that it can be fixed. Yeah,” I said. “It’s not an easy way to look at things. It’s uncomfortable. It’s embarrassing. It’s difficult. But it’s damned useful for making a better life for yourself. And the people around you.”
Tripp took that in and sat with it.
He looked haunted.
“I’ve screwed up a lot of stuff,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how to start.” He shook his head. “How come you know this stuff? They got a school or something?”
“My grandfather taught me a lot,” I said.
“I read some books that made me think. I thought about it. For some people, they find a school of philosophy they try to follow. For others, it’s religion.
Some people find fictional characters, try to emulate them as best they can.
Maybe that’s why so many religions and societies tell stories to teach their kids. I don’t know.”
“My mom went to church,” he said. “St. Anthony’s. But she only talked about it to tell me what to do. You know?” He smiled faintly. “Never occurred to me church might be for more than that. And I never had no dad or grandpa.”
“Lost my dad when I was little,” I said. “My grandfather came later. Hard, not having a dad around.”
“Yeah,” Tripp said.
We sat quietly for a while.
“How do I fix this?” he asked me finally.
“You come with me tonight,” I said. “We’re going to meet with Estevez.”
Tripp looked up warily. “How come?”
“We’re going to get your money. You’re going to make a bunch of things right, and then you’re going to start doing some good.”
“I mean, how come I gotta be there?” Tripp swallowed. “What happened to the kid … that’s what they wanted to do to me. Right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I show up, they’re gonna eighty-six the both of us.”
“They’ll try,” I said, nodding. “But if you don’t show up, they won’t either. And they’ll keep hunting you anyway.”
Tripp thought about that for a minute. “I’m the bait.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I don’t wanna do that.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re not completely stupid. It’s dangerous.” I shrugged. “But it’s more dangerous to do nothing.” I nodded toward Fitz. “And not just for you.”
Tripp looked tired and sickened. “Oh,” he said.
“You can try to dodge and run away from your problems your whole life, if you want to, Tripp,” I said. “Lots and lots of people do. I know you’re afraid. I know because I’m afraid too. But when you treat your problems like running from them is a solution, they just get bigger and worse.”
“So, what do I do?” he asked.
“Cowboy up,” I said. “Ride out and meet them. Deal with them.”
“Estevez is gonna deal with me first,” Tripp said.
“Nah,” I said. “I’m gonna handle him. Mostly, what you have to do is go there. Tell him you want the money you won fair and square off him.”
“What if one of those things gets inside me?”
“Could happen,” I acknowledged. “Just like it did to Fitz. If it does, we’ll deal with it.”
“What if he shoots me?”
“Could happen,” I said, nodding. “We’ll do our best to see that it doesn’t.”
“What if that Emilio guy throws that purple light at me and melts me like he did your tires?”
“He might,” I acknowledged. “But I’ll be more ready for him this time.”
Tripp licked his lips nervously. “Christ.”
“You wanted to know how to fix this,” I said. “This is how.”
Tripp set his coffee cup aside. He rubbed his hands across his thighs a couple of times. I could see that they were shaking.
Then he stood up.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. I finished the coffee and tossed the paper cup in the trash. “Go get some sleep. Get as much as you can. It will be a late night.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Sit with the kid until the doc gets here,” I said.
Tripp frowned. You could see the gears grinding in his head as he thought his way through something he wasn’t used to thinking about.
“Some of this is on me,” he said slowly. He sat back down just as slowly. “I’ll stay here with you guys. Until the doc gets here.”
And suddenly, I was a lot less annoyed with Tripp.
“Good,” I said.
“What books?” he asked.
“Hmmm?”
“You said you read books. To make you think about stuff. What books?”
“Started with a guy named Louis L’Amour,” I said.
Tripp scrunched up his face. “Cowboy guy?”
“He wrote westerns, yeah.”
“What’s he gotta say?”
“With L’Amour, it’s more about what he isn’t saying,” I said.
“How’s that make any sense?”
“Because you have to fill in the empty bits yourself,” I said. “It makes you think.”
“Oh,” Tripp said. “Sounds hard.”
“Like life,” I said.
“Hah,” Tripp said. He looked at the sleeping Fitz. “Yeah. I gotta start doing hard stuff, I guess.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sort of what it means to be a good person. But it’s a better kind of hard to choose than what you’ve done before.”
“Where do I get this guy’s books?” Tripp asked.
“I’ve got several of his paperbacks in my room,” I said. “I’ll loan you a couple.”
Tripp nodded and said, “All right.”
And we settled into a comfortable silence in our chairs. Tripp gazed out the window while the light slowly dawned.