The Dresden Files Series Part I Part 141

She lifted her eyebrows expectantly.

"What?" I stammered.

"It's only practical," Molly stated firmly. "And hey, you've already got the handcuffs. If she can't move while the two of you are bleeping, she can't drink your blood, right?"

I stood up and started climbing down the ladder. "This conversation has become way too bleeping disturbing."

Molly laughed at me and followed me back to the ground. She unlocked the back door with another key, presumably from the same ring, and that was when Charity's light blue minivan turned into the driveway. Molly opened the door, darted into the house, and returned without her backpack. The minivan ground to a halt and the engine died.

Charity got out of the van, frowning at me and at Molly in more or less equal proportions. She wore jeans, hiking boots, and a heavy jacket. She was a tall woman, only an inch or so under six feet, and carried herself with an a.s.surance that conveyed a sense of ready strength. Her face had the remote beauty of a marble statue, and her long blond hair was knotted behind her head.

Without being told, Molly went to the rolling side panel door, opened it, and reached inside, unloading children from safety seats, while Charity went to the rear of the van and opened the rear doors. "Mister Dresden," she said. "Lend a hand."

I frowned. "Uh. I'm sort of in a hurry. I was hoping to find Michael here."

Charity took a twenty-four-pack of c.o.ke from the van in one arm and a couple of bulging paper grocery sacks in the other. She marched over to me and shoved them at my chest. I had to fumble to catch them, and my blasting rod clattered to the ground.

Charity waited until I had the sacks before heading for the van again. "Put them on the table in the kitchen."

"But-" I said.

She walked past me toward the house. "I have ice cream melting, meat thawing, and a baby about to wake up hungry. Put them on the table, and we'll talk."

I sighed and looked glumly at the groceries. They were heavy enough to make my arms burn a little. Which probably isn't saying much. I don't spend much time working out.

Molly appeared from the van, lowering a tiny, tow-headed girl to the driveway. She was wearing a pink dress with a clashing orange sweater and bright purple shoes and a red coat. She walked up to me and said, words edged with babyish syllables, "My name is Amanda. I'm five and a half and my daddy says I'm a princess."

"I'm Harry, Your Highness," I said.

She frowned and said, "There's already a Harry. You can be Bill." With that, she broke into a flouncing skip and followed her mother into the house.

"Well, I'm glad that's settled," I muttered. Molly lowered an even smaller blond girl to the driveway. This one was dressed in blue overalls with a pink shirt and a pink coat. She held a plush dolly in one arm and a battered-looking pink blanket in the other. Upon seeing me, she retreated a couple of steps and hid around the corner of the van. She leaned out to look at me once, and then hid again.

"I've got him," said an accented male voice.

Molly hopped out of the van, grabbed a grocery bag from the back, and said, "Come on, Hope." The little girl followed her big sister like a duckling while Molly went into the house, but Hope glanced back at me shyly three or four times on the way.

Shiro emerged from the van carrying a baby seat. The little old knight carried the walking stick that concealed his sword on a strap over one wide shoulder, and his scarred hands held the chair carefully. A boy, probably not yet two years old, slept in it.

"Little Harry?" I asked.

"Yes, Bill," Shiro said. His eyes sparkled behind his gla.s.ses I frowned and said, "Good-looking kid."

"Dresden!" snapped Charity's voice from the house. "You're holding the ice cream."

I scowled and told Shiro, "Guess we'd better get in."

Shiro nodded wisely. I took the groceries into the Carpenters' big kitchen and put them on the table. For the next five minutes, Shiro and Molly helped me carry in enough groceries to feed a Mongol horde.

After all the perishables got put away, Charity fixed a bottle of formula and pa.s.sed it off to Molly, who took it, the diaper bag, and the sleeping boy into another room. Charity waited until she had left, then shut the door. "Very well," she said, still putting groceries away. "I haven't spoken to Michael since you called this morning. I left a message with his cell phone voice mail."

"Where is he?" I asked.

Shiro laid his cane on the table and sat down. "Mister Dresden, we have asked you not to get involved in this business."

"That isn't why I'm here," I said. "I just need to talk to him."

"Why are you looking for him?" Shiro asked.

"I'm dueling a vampire under the Accords. I need a second before sundown or I get disqualified. Permanently."

Shiro frowned. "Red Court?"

"Yeah. Some guy named Ortega."

"Heard of him," Shiro said. "Some kind of war leader."

I nodded. "That's the rumor. That's why I'm here. I had hoped Michael would be willing to help."

Shiro stroked a thumb over the smooth old wood of his cane. "We received word of Denarian activity near St. Louis. He and Sanya went to investigate."

"When will they get back?"

Shiro shook his head. "I do not know."

I looked at the clock and bit my lip. "Christ."

Charity walked by with an armload of groceries and glared at me.

I lifted my hands. "Sorry. I'm a little tense."

Shiro studied me for a moment, and then asked, "Would Michael help him?"

Charity's voice drifted out of the cavernous walk-in pantry. "My husband is sometimes an idiot."

Shiro nodded and said, "Then I will a.s.sist you in his stead, Mister Dresden."

"You'll what?" I asked.

"I will be your second in the duel."

"You don't have to do that," I said. "I mean, I'll figure out something."

Shiro lifted an eyebrow. "Have the weapons been set for the duel?"

"Uh, not yet," I said.

"Then where is the meeting with the emissary and your opponent's second?"

I fished out the card I'd gotten from the Archive. "I don't know. I was told to have my second call this number."

Shiro took the card and rose without another word, heading for the phone in the next room.

I put my hand on his arm and said, "You don't need to take any chances. You don't really know me."

"Michael does. That is enough for me."

The old Knight's support was a relief, but I felt guilty, somehow, for accepting it. Too many people had been hurt on my behalf in the past. Michael and I had faced trouble together before, looked out for each other before. Somehow, it made it easier for me to go to him and ask for help. Accepting the same thing from a stranger, Knight of the Cross or not, grated on my conscience. Or maybe on my pride.

But what choice did I have?

I sighed and nodded. "I just don't want to drag someone else into more trouble with me."

Charity muttered, "Let me think. Where have I heard that before?"

Shiro smiled at her, the expression both paternal and amused, and said, "I'll make the call."

I waited while Shiro made a call from the room that served as the family study and the office for Michael's contracting business. Charity stayed in the kitchen and wrestled a huge Crock-Pot onto the counter. She got out a ton of vegetables, stew meat, and a spice rack and set to chopping things up without a word to me.

I watched her quietly. She moved with the kind of precision you see only in someone who is so versed at what they are doing that they are already thinking of the steps coming twenty minutes in the future. I thought she took her knife to the carrots a little more violently than she needed to. She started preparing another meal somewhere in the middle of making the stew, this one chicken and rice and other healthy things I rarely saw in three dimensions.

I fidgeted for a bit, until I stood up, washed my hands in the sink, and started cutting vegetables.

Charity frowned at me for a moment. She didn't say anything. But she got a few more veggies out and put them down next to me, then collected what had been cut so far and pitched them into the Crock-Pot. A couple of minutes later she sighed, opened a can of c.o.ke, and put it on the counter next to me.

"I worry about him," she said.

I nodded, and focused on cuc.u.mbers.

"I don't even know when he'll be home tonight."

"Good thing you have a Crock-Pot," I said.

"I don't know what I would do without him. What the children would do. I'd feel so lost."

What the h.e.l.l. An ounce of well-intentioned but irrational rea.s.surance didn't cost anything. I took a sip of the c.o.ke. "He'll be all right. He can handle himself. And he has Shiro and Sanya with him."

"He's been hurt three times, you know."

"Three?" I asked.

"Three. With you. Every time."

"So it's my fault." My turn to chop vegetables like teenagers in a slasher movie. "I see."

I couldn't see her face but her voice was, more than anything else, tired. "It isn't about blame. Or whose fault it is. All that matters is that when you're around, my husband, my children's father, gets hurt."

The knife slipped and I cut off a neat little slice of skin on my index finger. "Ow," I snarled. I slapped the cold water on in the sink and put my finger under it. You can't tell, with cuts like that, how bad they're going to be until you see how much you're leaking. Charity pa.s.sed me a paper towel, and I examined the cut for a minute before wrapping the towel around it. It wasn't bad, though it hurt like h.e.l.l. I watched my blood stain the paper towel for a minute and then I asked, "Why didn't you get rid of me, then?"

I looked up to see Charity frowning at me. There were dark circles under her eyes that I hadn't noticed before. "What do you mean?"

"Just now," I said. "When Shiro asked you if Michael would help me. You could have said no."

"But he would have helped you in an instant. You know that."

"Shiro didn't."

Her expression became confused. "I don't understand."

"You could have lied."

Her face registered comprehension, and some fire came back into her eyes. "I don't like you, Mister Dresden. I certainly don't care enough for you to abandon beliefs I hold dear, to use you as an excuse to cheapen myself, or to betray what my husband stands for." She stepped to a cabinet and got out a small, neat medical kit. Without another word, she took my hand and the paper towel and opened the kit.

"So you're taking care of me?" I asked.

"I don't expect you to understand. Whether or not I can personally stand you, it has no bearing on what choices I make. Michael is your friend. He would risk his life for you. It would break his heart if you came to grief, and I will not allow that to happen."

She fell silent and doctored the cut with the same brisk, confident motions she'd used for cooking. I hear that they make disinfectants that don't hurt these days.

But Charity used iodine.

Chapter Sixteen Shiro came out of the office and showed me an address written on a piece of paper. "We meet them tonight at eight."

"After sundown," I noted. "I know the place. I'll pick you up here?"

"Yes. I will need a little time to prepare."

"Me too. Around seven." I told them good-bye and headed for the door. Charity didn't answer me but Shiro did. I got into my car. More kids came pelting into the house as I did, two boys and a girl. The smaller of the two boys stopped to peer at my car, but Charity appeared in the door and chivied him inside. She frowned at me until I coaxed the Blue Beetle to life and pulled out.

Driving home left me with too much time to think. This duel with Ortega was something I had no way to prepare for. Ortega was a warlord of the Red Court. He'd probably fought duels before. Which meant that he'd killed people before. h.e.l.l, maybe even wizards. I'd squared off against various toughs but that had been free-for-all fighting. I had been able to find ways to cheat, by and large. In a one-on-one duel, I wasn't going to be able to fall back on cleverness, to take advantage of whatever I could find in my environment.

This was going to be a straight fight, and if Ortega was better than me, he'd kill me. Simple as that. The fear was simple, too. Simple and undeniable.

I swallowed, and my knuckles turned white. I tried to relax my fingers but they wouldn't. They were too afraid to let go of the wheel. Stupid fingers.

I got back to my apartment, pried my fingers off the steering wheel, and found my door halfway open. I ducked to one side, in case someone had a gun pointed up the narrow stairway down to my apartment door, and drew out my blasting rod.

"Harry?" called a quiet, female voice from my apartment. "Harry, is that you?"

I lowered the blasting rod. "Murph?"

"Get inside," Murphy said. I looked down the stairway and saw her appear in the doorway, her face pale. "Hurry."

I came down the stairs warily, feeling out my wards as I did. They were intact, and I relaxed a little. I had given Murphy a personalized talisman that would let her through my defenses, and it would only have worked for her.

I slipped into my apartment. Murphy shut the door behind me and locked it. She'd started a fire in the fireplace and had one of my old kerosene lamps lit. I went to the fireplace and warmed up my hands, watching Murphy in silence. She stood with her back and shoulders rigid for a moment, before she came over to stand beside me, facing the fire. Her lips were held into a tense, neutral line. "We should talk."