Chapter Fifty-Five #2
This was family business, that Lord Raith had been involved. I didn’t want to spread it out any further than it had to go.
“Saw it with my own eyes,” I said. “A middleman also explains the coordination of different interests.”
Lara pursed her lips for a moment, and then her mouth quirked at one corner. “I believe I know how to turn the issue to advantage. It will be addressed.”
“It isn’t hard to work out why the ghouls wanted trouble with you,” Ramirez said in a dry tone.
“Yeah, I’m good with them showing up, no questions,” I said. “Question is, why would Drakul send his inner circle here and then blow it all up?”
Butters frowned and raised his hand. “I’m not exactly a schemy kind of guy,” he said apologetically. “But when you’re working out logic, the first thing you do is make sure the things you’re taking as givens are solid. Do we have any way to know Drakul sent them here to kill you?”
I looked around the circle. Everyone was looking at Butters.
“I mean,” Butters continued, “what if the point was to get rid of them?”
Lara chewed on her lip. “At Halloween,” she said, “Drakul spoke of making his organization leaner.”
“And he’s still got Wild Bill and Yoshimo,” I said quietly. “They aren’t chump sorcerers. They’re experienced battle wizards.”
“And Mavra,” Lara said. She nodded several times.
“Cui bono? Mavra is now the eldest of Drakul’s inner circle.
She has advanced herself. Drakul’s inner circle were of a courtier’s mindset.
They would never yield their positions or authority for something as pedestrian as practicality.
Mavra is more flexible than that. She has done Drakul a service by removing clumsy, blunt instruments. ”
“Fighting the last war,” Will said, frowning.
“What?” I asked.
“There’s an aphorism used among military historians,” Will said. “Everyone goes into a war prepared to fight like it was the most recent one they were in. But while the big picture of war is the same, the specifics always change. Whoever is best at adapting to those specifics prevails.”
I grunted. “World War II, everyone thought naval matters would be decided by battleships,” I said quietly. “But the aircraft carrier had come along.”
“Exactly,” Will said.
“Drakul is preparing for the next war,” Ramirez murmured.
The room was quiet for a long moment.
“And he seems to have his eye on you, Dresden,” Lara said.
My throat felt a little dry. Probably needed to hydrate.
“Then it’s smart for us to start looking sharper, too,” I said.
“We need to know more. I’ll speak to the Winter Lady.
She has access to a lot of Winter intelligence.
And I can have the Little Folk take a more active role here in town.
Will, be as subtle as you can, but I want you to start reaching out through the Paranet.
Disappearances or anything that looks like Black Court activity needs to get flagged. ”
Will nodded, writing. “It isn’t going to take long for word of what happened tonight to spread among the Paranetters,” he said quietly. “There’s going to be a lot of people afraid of you, Harry. But I’ll do what I can.”
I grimaced and nodded.
“Once I have cleaned house, I’ll take a more active role as well,” Lara said. “Mortal intelligence services gather more information about the supernatural world than most of our kind suspect. Perhaps that can be turned to our advantage.”
“I’ll have to move carefully,” Ramirez said quietly. “The Council’s intelligence is second to none. But I’m already being watched. I’ll see what I can find out.”
“As, of course, will I,” Forthill said. “The church is not what it once was, but we are not wholly blind to the world, yet. Sir Waldo, I’ll send whatever word I receive to you through Rabbi Aaronson.”
Butters looked around at us and said, brightly, “I’m just happy to be here.”
That got a round of muted chuckles and smiles.
“What else?” I said. “What else can we get out of this? I don’t want to get caught out again.”
Down in the great hall, I could hear raised voices.
Matias had begun playing his guitar. People were singing.
And I could smell food being prepared. My stomach growled, and I suddenly realized how ravenous I felt.
The residents of the castle had been terrified tonight—and now they were going to do something about it.
Celebrate life.
Bear stepped up to me and said, “Hey, seidrmadr. I’ve been in a lot of war councils.
This was a productive one. What you do now is take the W.
Go see your daughter. Play with your dog.
Eat. Have a few beers. Sing a little. Yeah, there’s going to be another fight tomorrow.
But the day is yours. Act like it. You’ve done what you can to get your head ready. Now make sure your heart is, too, huh?”
Butters brightened at that. “Hell, yeah!” he said. Then immediately said, “Sorry, Father.”
“Don’t be,” Forthill said, very seriously. “That’s a hell of a good idea.”
—
The rest of April was cool and rainy, but May came and went beautifully. We replaced the gates to the castle. Lara and I had a couple of date nights, which is what we decided to call it when we went out to dinner and then back to my place for a ritual transfer of energy.
We were both careful about keeping things cordial and convivial and calm. As if we were going to a yoga class together.
Very, very careful.
The castle was subjected to a government HBGB inspection a couple of weeks later.
I toyed with the idea of having Toot and his people and the gargoyles reveal themselves to the team of inspectors, who would then, presumably, have to be worried about exposure to the imaginary toxin themselves, while I wondered aloud if they were all right.
But they were only functionaries, dutifully moving around with their chemical strips and sample containers, which couldn’t find something that didn’t exist—so I just walked them to each floor of the castle and let them do their thing, then bade them farewell.
Didn’t mean there wouldn’t be trouble with the government down the road—but those particular folks weren’t the ones who would bring the trouble. No sense in being mean to them.
Then June came.
The city finally got electricity working on my block again, to the celebration of all.
There were nighttime block parties for a solid week, as folks turned on every light they could, played music on their radios, put TVs out in their front yards for movie parties, and generally danced about in happiness at returning to the modern world.
More and more cars would go by on the street as parts to fix them finally came in, or new ones replaced old ones.
Slowly, the bustle and noise of Chicago began to return.
It did my heart good to see it.
Then came midsummer.
The anniversary of the Battle of Chicago.
And I woke up in the dark place again.
It was like nothing had changed in a year.
Nothing at all. My heart felt bleak. My head refused to go anywhere that wasn’t horrible.
I fumbled my clothing trying to get dressed.
Dropped my brush three times before I could get my hair straightened out.
Cut myself several times shaving and had to fight off blinding rage.
I thought about Murphy’s ritual shrine, which I’d packed away into storage boxes in my small room in the basement. I thought about getting it out. Spending time drinking and playing board games until the storm in my head faded to black.
But instead, I went up to the roof, and sat in the sun and breathed, and after a while, I felt less horrible. Then I went and made myself exercise with Fitz, and by the time I was done with that I felt almost not bad.
And when I got done with that, Michael had come to visit, and he and Maggie, under Mouse’s careful observation, had made pancakes, which were waiting for me when I came downstairs.
And that wasn’t bad at all.
Pain is a fire. And twelve months isn’t long enough to heal from life’s most severe burns.
But, if you’re willing to work at it, it’s enough time to make a damned good start.
Michael and Fitz were on the roof with me and Maggie while we ate ice cream and I taught Fitz how to capture sunlight in a handkerchief.
Mouse had lolled out to expose his belly to the sun and fallen asleep.
He was snoring gently. Most of the resident families had moved out, but I’d hired Matias on with my dwindling funds to be the castle’s caretaker, and he’d brought up planters to the roof, and vegetables were growing everywhere in the abundant sunshine.
“Lay it out over both hands, palms up, to start,” I said.
“Why are we doing this again?” Fitz asked.
“Pocket full of sunshine is awfully handy against Black Court vampires,” I said, “and plenty of other things that go bump in the night.”
Fitz draped the specially prepared handkerchief over his hands and frowned. “Okay. Now what?”
“You ever see Peter Pan?”
“I didn’t really grow up a Disney kid,” Fitz said wryly.
“Heh,” I said. “Okay. The basic idea is to gather your will. You focus it into a positive memory. Then as you do, you wrap the memory around the light as you fold the handkerchief closed. The memory will keep it trapped there for as long as you remember it and keep the fold intact, and you can whip it out all of a sudden if you need it.”
“That sounds…weird,” Fitz said.
“Try it,” I said.
So Fitz settled down and held the handkerchief out to the sunlight. He closed his eyes, breathed slowly and methodically, and frowned in concentration.
While he did that, Maggie popped open a can of Coke and brought it over to me. She passed it to me, grinning, and I answered her smile as I took it.
Fitz exhaled suddenly and folded the handkerchief closed, clumsily and unevenly. And he dropped it. There was a flash of light, like sunlight bouncing off a ripple in the water. “Stars and stones,” he complained, wincing.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Takes a little practice to put all that together. Try it again.”
He did, several more times, to little more success.
“Again,” I said calmly.
“In a minute.”
“Try again,” I said.
“It’s so easy,” he said, “how about you show me, great and mighty wizard?”
I paused.
See, the thing is…you have to be happy to catch sunshine like that. Truly happy. And that isn’t something you can pretend your way into.
I took the white handkerchief slowly and spread it out over my hands.
I closed my eyes and lifted my hands to the light, feeling the warmth shining down on me.
Surrounding me was the smell of green things.
Warmth. The gentle snoring of the huge dog sprawled in the sun.
Maggie and Michael were playing checkers on a board a few feet away.
I could still taste the Coca-Cola in my mouth that my little girl had given me, smiling.
I thought of her smile.
Michael laughed gently at something Maggie said, and I knew just what it would look like and how it would crinkle the corners of his eyes.
I thought of Karrin, and the way her laughter would peal out in silvery tones when I’d said something that genuinely amused her.
And I felt at peace with every one of those memories.
With a whisper of will, I folded the cloth closed.
And felt the warm, steady glow of sunlight inside between my palms.
I opened my eyes, and the tears in them were not at all sad.
“Huh,” I said quietly. “How about that.”
Which is when I realized that peace and happiness aren’t the same thing. Not at all.
Happiness is peace in action.
And peace is happiness at rest.
And neither one has to be perfect to be real.
I carefully folded the handkerchief the rest of the way closed and smiled at Fitz. “Like that.” Then I shook out the handkerchief, and a flash of sunlight like the pop of an enormous photo bulb washed over the rooftop. I passed it back to him and said, encouragingly, “Try again.”
A car came down the street and stopped in front of the castle. Then a VW horn went beep-beep.
Mouse came awake instantly, flipping onto his feet, his tail wagging wildly.
I clambered to my feet and went to the battlements, looking down.
A powder-blue Volkswagen Beetle was parked in front of the castle. It had a fresh paint job and looked to have been restored with a great deal of care and attention.
My brother got out.
He stood beside the car for a moment and then called up, “Hey.”
I nodded down to him and said, “Hey.”
“I, uh,” he said. He frowned. “I was going to give this to you for your birthday last year. But, you know. Everything.”
“Oh yeah?” I said.
“I couldn’t save much from the original,” he said. “Just the steering wheel, really. But I’ve been working on it with your mechanic, Mike. I thought, you know. It’s way better than a hearse.”
My brother stared up at me. His face was drawn. There was a quiet yearning there. An ache.
I knew just how he felt.
“We’re having ice cream and playing checkers,” I called down to Thomas. “You wanna come up?”
He blinked several times. Tried to talk once and stopped, mired down by the weight of things that we hadn’t said.
Then he simply nodded.
And I went down to open the door for my brother and hugged him hard.