Chapter Twelve
Chapter
Twelve
October came, still warmer than it should have been.
The days were blazing hot, though the nights came with the chilly promise of winter.
The city cleaned the dead cars from the street in front of the castle, and we started seeing occasional traffic.
They’d gotten about half of the L lines repaired and one could occasionally hear the rumble of trains, unusually loud in the quiet of the wounded metropolis.
The castle had settled into an evening routine—training on the roof with Bear from early evening until sundown, then board games and music in the great hall.
Matias played a twelve-string guitar at a semiprofessional level, and he would settle down by the fire and start playing from the time the sun went down until his wife called him to bed.
The ladies had a knitting circle going, though they called it crochet.
I wasn’t sure of the difference. I did learn to crochet a little, enough to make a red-and-blue scarf for Maggie for the coming holidays.
It was an incredibly repetitive and soothing task, and when I did it I found my stomach settling for a while. Plus, I liked making things.
Bear and I folded up the mats and put them into waterproof storage boxes that lived on the roof now, one night after practice.
“So how was Sunday dinner?” she asked.
“You were there,” I said. Bear at the Carpenters’ table had been a sight to see. She made the room look small.
She shrugged, pulling on her enormous black leather jacket against the coming chill. “You should be around the little girl more.”
“Maybe you should keep your opinions about Maggie to yourself,” I said. “I can get a little touchy about other people making decisions about her.”
“I’m not talking about her,” Bear said. “I’m talking about you.”
I squinted at her. Then grunted, closed the plastic storage box, and locked it. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why?”
“She’s good for you.”
I closed my eyes. It had been hard, at several points, not to start crying when the kid was around.
She was just such a tiny thing. And when I was there, she stayed in physical contact with me as much as she could arrange.
Sitting on my lap. Holding my hand. She never left the room. Like she just couldn’t get enough.
I just…gave her all the love I could, while I was there.
And saved feeling terrible about it until it wouldn’t spill onto her.
“I can’t have her here,” I said quietly. “Hell, freaking gremlins tried to blow the place up within three weeks of me moving in.”
“The castle’s security enchantments are active now,” Bear pointed out. “It hasn’t happened again. And you have other people’s kids here.”
“The other kids don’t have anywhere else to go, and don’t have me for their dad,” I said.
“My enemies have already shown me that they’ll take her from me.
Keeping her at a distance keeps her safer.
She’s got freaking angels protecting her there.
And she knows and loves Michael’s family. They’re good to her.”
Bear spread out her hands in acknowledgment of that. “Maybe her dad would be good for her, too.”
“They’re not quite so broken as me. I’m sure she’d be thrilled to be around when I get the screams,” I said. “I need more time.”
“Children can be a trial, even at the best of times,” Bear said. “But you won’t get better by sitting still.”
“You don’t say that when I’m meditating,” I said.
Bear scowled at me.
I smiled. I rarely scored a point on the Valkyrie.
“The roads are mostly clear between here and the Carpenter home now,” she said. “Pick a night of the week. Go see her.” She turned and picked up her enormous duffel bag. “Work your way up to every day. Start with two.”
I frowned and thought about that for a moment.
Poor Maggie. She was so hungry for my attention and affection.
I could only just barely remember what that had been like with my dad.
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Hey. You carry that damned bag everywhere. What’s in it?”
“Trouble for bad guys,” she said.
“Like what?”
Bear looked at me for a moment. Then she reached into the bag and pulled out a goddamned cannon.
“Hell’s bells,” I said. “What is that?”
She offered it to me. It weighed about as much as a barbell.
“Four-bore,” she said.
It had a lever action that I worked. It lowered a block from the barrel, where you’d put a round about the size of a damned can of Red Bull. Just one round, no magazine or anything. “What’s it shoot, tank shells?”
Bear reached into the bag and plucked out a cartridge that was indeed absolutely enormous. She handed it over. The bullet was as big around as my eye socket. “What the hell, Bear?”
“Puts a nice big hole in soft targets,” she said.
“Like ghouls,” I said.
“Just like them,” she confirmed. “You want one?”
“Would it tear my arm off?”
“You’re a big guy,” she said. “Probably not.”
I hefted the empty rifle and examined the iron sights. The weapon was just a block of metal barrel and walnut fittings and felt like it could club someone’s head completely off if I got a good two-handed swing behind it. “Can we use this on the range downstairs?”
Bear burst out laughing and then said, “Indoors? I wouldn’t.”
“Well. Maybe we can take it to an outdoor range at some point.” I offered it back to her, and she took it calmly, restowing it in the bag. “Everything arranged?”
“He’ll be here at midnight,” Bear said. “Alone, under guest-right.”
“Ballsy bastard,” I noted. “Given the last major violation of guest-right happened right here, in this very building.”
“You planning to betray him?” Bear asked. “No judgment, I just want to know what to look out for.”
I grimaced. “No. Mab would have my teeth.”
“Then I imagine things will go smoothly,” Bear said. The big woman paused. “You’re wearing your coat, right? Just in case I’m wrong.”
A chill went down my spine and I looked up.
There might have been a dark shape soaring overhead, in the dark. Without the lights of the city everywhere, it was hard to tell.
“Seidrmadr?” Bear asked.
“You see anything up there?”
She squinted up and said, “No.”
“Huh,” I said. “Okay. Let’s get back indoors.”
—
Carter LaChaise showed up at the front doors of the castle precisely at midnight.
He was a ghoul, but he looked like a big, beefy man with grizzled muttonchops to his jawline, dressed in a white linen suit and a pink Miami Vice shirt, along with gold chains around his neck and rings on every finger.
Bear and a couple of Knights of the Bean escorted him into the great hall, where I was sitting at a table.
“Harry Dresden, I do declare,” LaChaise said, his deep Southern accent full of bourbon and gumbo. “I cannot imagine what would cause you to invite me to your lovely home.”
“LaChaise,” I said. I didn’t like ghouls. By which I meant I was willing to torture them to death, given a chance and half an excuse. I nodded at the chair across the table from me and swallowed my bile. “Have a seat.”
“No,” LaChaise said genially. “Not until you’ve acknowledged your role as host.”
I showed him my teeth. “Please. Be my guest.”
LaChaise glanced over his shoulder at Bear and the guards and then sauntered to the table. “She’s a deluxe-sized morsel, isn’t she? Even I couldn’t handle that in one sitting.”
“Pretty sure you couldn’t handle her in any number of sittings,” I said.
LaChaise rumbled out a low laugh. “To what do I owe the honor of this invitation?”
“There are ghouls in Chicago,” I said.
“Oh my goodness,” LaChaise said.
I drummed my fingers on the tabletop once. I left a moment of silence before I said, “They’re killing people.”
“That does sometimes happen,” LaChaise said, nodding sympathetically.
I took a deep breath and said, “It stops. Now.”
LaChaise regarded me for a moment, a patently false smile on his lips. “Oh, Sir Dresden. You are, I am very much afraid, proceeding under a false assumption.”
“Oh?” I asked. “What’s that?”
“I am no more in charge of every ghoul than you are in charge of every wizard, or every fae,” he said, grinning broadly. “I am the lord of the LaChaise clan, of course, and a number of varied and sundry tribes that have allied themselves with my house.”
I smiled with my mouth only. “I’m supposed to believe the most notorious ghoul in the world can’t make something happen if he wants to.”
LaChaise put a hand on his chest modestly, beaming—but his eyes were cold. “Why, Sir Dresden. I’m flattered you think so much of one of my kind.”
I met his eyes for a long moment and nothing much happened. You’ve got to have a soul to set off a soulgaze. He was just a thing. A clever, dangerous thing.
“Let me put this another way,” I said. “In an attempt to communicate clearly.”
“Oh,” he purred. “By all means.”
“I’ve just declared this city off-limits to ghouls,” I said. “Effective as of sunrise tomorrow. From that point on, any ghoul found within the city limits of Chicago or any of its suburbs will forfeit its life.”
LaChaise’s gold-old-boy smile faded. “Some of my people call this fine metropolis home.”
“Which is fine,” I said. “Until sunrise.”
“Is this meeting, then, for the purpose of the Winter Court declaring war on my house, Sir Dresden?”
“Nothing so formal,” I said, without blinking or moving. “Just me.”
LaChaise stared at me for a long moment. Then he smiled slowly, eyed me, and licked his lips. “You feeling up for a scuffle, then, son?”
“If I were you,” I said, “I’d be asking myself some questions.”
“Such as?”
“I’d be asking just how Ethniu got put in a bottle. And who is holding the bottle. I’d ask where the Eye of Balor wound up. And I’d ask myself how much I’d heard from the Red Court lately.”
LaChaise tensed.
I never saw Bear move. One second she was standing there, and the next she had her four-bore leveled, in one massive paw, with its barrel a foot from LaChaise’s temple.
“I could call in some assistance, I suppose,” I said.
“Make it an Accords matter. I’m still on good terms with some of the White Council.
The Winter Court would back me. The Wild Hunt would have a ball going ratting.
Baron Marcone might take issue with your…
people…operating in his territory. And I have a lot of favors I’ve built up over the years.
” I put my hands on the table and leaned a little toward him.
“But for you and your scavengers, I won’t need them. ”
LaChaise narrowed his eyes. Then he leaned back in his chair and said, “Someone’s ass is getting awfully big for his breeches. You should be careful someone doesn’t take a bite out of it.”
“Count yourself fortunate I’m being polite,” I said. “Until sunrise, you and your people have safe passage out of town. After that, any of them left here are fair game.”
His mouth spread out wide, showing me his teeth.
“I believe we understand one another, Sir Dresden. And let me thank you for the invitation to your lovely home. And for being a real peach.” He rose slowly from the table, his hands visible, keeping Bear in his peripheral vision. “I’ll just see my little old self out.”
“Sunrise,” I said.
LaChaise backed away several steps from me before turning his back and sauntering back out of the castle.
Bear saw him out and returned to the table.
“You sure about this play?” she asked me. “You’re making it a little personal.”
“The advantage of going up against ghouls,” I said, “is that you can be real certain about everything.”
Her frown deepened. “You sure you’re ready for something like this?”
I exhaled slowly, stood up, and headed for the stairs down to my chambers. “We’ll find out in the morning.”