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Chapter 22

I needed sleep

I rode back toup the stairs froot out of the car, his alert, wary stance relaxing into the usual waving of a doggy tail and enthusiastic sniffs and nudges of greeting I shambled on into my apartment calmly All was obviously well

Susan and Martin were both inside, both busy, as Mister looked on frohest bookshelf Susan had been shaking out all the rugs and carpets that cover the floor ofthem back into place, probably not in the same order as they had been before She picked up one end of a sofa with a couple of fingers of one hand to get an edge into place

Martin was alphabetizing my bookshelves

They used to kill e like that

I suppressed ht they were helping

"Success," Susan said "Or at least a little of it Our people found out exactly who is tailing us up here"

"Yeah?" I asked "Who?"

"The Eebs," she said

Molly ca Granted, the place was kind of a ot done, but still She was probably as used to the place as I was "Sounds like the Scoobies, only less distinctive"

Martin shook his head "Esteban and Esmerelda Batiste," he clarified "One of the husband-wife teams the Red Court uses for fieldwork"

"One of?" I asked

"Couples traveling together attract less attention," Susan said "They&039;re often given the benefit of the doubt in any kind of judgment call s out a little more than they would be otherwise"

"Hence you and Martin," I said

"Yes," said Martin "Obviously"

"Esteban and Esmerelda are notorious," Susan said "They&039;re unorthodox, difficult to predict, which is saying so about vampires They&039;ll throay their personnel, too, if that is what it takes to get results Personally, I think it&039;s because they have soruesome variation of love for each other Makes them more emotional"

"They have conify it with anything ot away, Harry?" Susan said "Esteban, probably He rabbits early and often, which probably explains why he&039;s still alive Esmerelda would have been the spotter on top of a nearby building - also the one who probably triggered the explosives"

"Gotta figure they&039;re behind the hit outside the FBI building, too," I said "Tinted s on the car Shooter ay back inside the backseat, away from the "

"Maybe, sure," Susan said "They&039;ll suit up in all-over coverage and head out in the daytirunted "So Esteban and Esmerelda"

"Eebs," Susan said firhters They&039;re planners Fair to say?"

"Very ht have been a faint note of approval in his voice

I nodded "So they and their va were supposed to follow you, only when they saw you heading into the data center, they were forced to do more than shadow you They tried to protect the data All rational"

Susan began to frown and then nodded at me

"Of course," Martin said "Difficult to predict but never stupid"

"So why," I said, "if they were here operating under orders from the duchess to foil your efforts, would they take the trouble to try an assassination on me?"

Martin opened his

"I ht? Thank God for clich¨¦d mind-sets, by the way I can&039;t do that if I&039;o early, it cheats her of the fun"

"There&039;s division in the ranks of the Red Court," Susanthat would explain it Countervailing interests - and at the summit of their hierarchy, too"

"Or," Martin said, "it was not the" - he sighed - "Eebswho made the attempt"

"But I haven&039;t seen any of the other people ant to kill ht They&039;re the sihtly in allowance "But remember that what you have is a theory Not a fact You are not blessed with a shortage of foes, Dresden"

"Um, Harry?" Molly asked

I turned to her

"I don&039;t know if I&039; or not, butif there&039;s so on inside the Red Courtwhat if the kidnapping and so on islike a cover for so, inside her court? I mean, maybe it isn&039;t all about you Or at least, not only about you"

I stared at her blankly for a moment "But for that to be true," I said, "I would have to not be the center of the universe"

Molly rolled her eyes

"Good thought, grasshopper," I said "So to keep in mind Maybe we&039;re the diversion"

"Does it o?"

I shrugged "We&039;ll have to see, I guess"

She gri for a different faction than Arianna, then there goes our only lead I was hoping I could convince the held"

"Worth a try in any case," Martin said "If we can catch them"

"We could do that," I said "Or we could rab her when the Reds bring her there for their ¨¹ber-"

Susan whirled to faceoff their big ceremony at Chich¨¦n Itz¨¢," I said I met Susan&039;s eyes and nodded "I found her She&039;ll be there And we&039;ll go get her"

Susan let out a fiercely joyful cry and pounced upon me clear froainst one of the bookshelves Susan&039;s legs twined around my waist and her mouth found mine

Her lips were fever-hot and sweet, and when they touched mine silent fire spread out into ht My arms closed around her - around Susan, so warm and real andand so very, very here My heart lurched into double time, and I started to feel a little dizzy

Mouse&039;s growl rolled through the roouez," Martin barked, his voice tense

Susan&039;s lips lifted from mine, and when she opened her eyes, they were solid black, all the way across - just like a Red valed at the touch of her mouth, a very faint echo of the insidious venoht red tattoos showed on her face, her neck, and winding down one arm She stared at me for a moment, dazed, then blinked slowly and looked over her shoulder at Martin

"You&039;re close," he said, in a very quiet, very soothing voice "You need to back down You need to take soe filled Susan&039;s face for an instant Then she shuddered, glancing fro herself from me

"Sun&039;s out, and it&039;s warently "Cos out"

"Sun," Susan said, her voice still low and husky with arousal "Right, some sun"

Martin shot me a look that he probably hoped would kill me, and then he and Susan left the apartht

Molly waited until they ell away from the front door and said, "Well That was stupid of you both"

I looked over my shoulder at her and frowned

"Call it like I see it," my apprentice said quietly "You know she has trouble controlling her emotions, her instincts She shouldn&039;t have been all over you And you shouldn&039;t have kissed her back" Her otten hurt"

I rubbed atlips for a er "Molly"

"I get it," she said "I do Look You care about her, okay Maybe even loved her Maybe she loved you But it can&039;t be like that anymore" She spread her hands and said, "As messed up as that is, it&039;s still the reality you have to live with You can&039;t ignore it You get close to her, and there&039;s no way for it to coood, boss"

I stared hard at her, all the rage insideout in my voice, despite the fact that I tried to hold it in "Be careful, Molly"

Molly blanched and looked away But she folded her ar this because I care, Harry"

"You care about Susan?" I asked "You don&039;t even know her"

"Not Susan," she said "You"

I took a step toward her "You don&039;t know a godda about me and Susan, Molly"

"I know that you already bla out the words "Think about what it&039;ll be like for her if she gets lost in a kiss with you and realizes, later, that she ripped your throat open and drank your blood and turned herself into a monster Is that how you want your story, Susan and Harry, to end?"

The wordsI don&039;t knohat kept irl

Other than the fact that she would never believe ht Thatto do with it

So I took a deep breath and closedtired of that

When I spoke, a moment later, my voice sounded raw "Study with a wizard has made you manipulative"

She sniffed a couple of ti silently "N-no," she said "That was ment and nodded

She looked at me, and made no move to wipe the tears from her face "You look awful"

"I found out sos," I said

She bit her lip "It&039;s bad Isn&039;t it"

I nodded I said, "Real bad We&039;re" I shook my head "Without the Council&039;s support, I don&039;t see how it can be done"

"There&039;s a way," she said "There&039;s always a way"

"That&039;ssort of the probleanized bookshelf nearest me "Ithink I&039;d like to be by myself for a while," I said

Molly looked atcareful, as if they&039;re concerned that any ht shatter a delicate object "You&039;re sure?"

Mousenoise in his throat

"I&039; desperate," I told her Not yet, anyway "I just need some time"

"Okay," she said "Come on, Mouse"

Mouse watched me worriedly, but padded out of the apartment and up the stairs with Molly

I went to ot under the cold water I just stood there with it sheeting over me for a while and tried to think

Mostly, I thought about how good Susan&039;s mouth had felt I waited for the cold water to sluice that particular thought down to a bearable level Then I thought about Vadderung&039;s warning about the Red Court

I&039;ve taken on soodlike beings - or the reht and the Red King were You couldn&039;t challenge soht have powers, sure Hell, on a good day I&039;d go along with someone who said that I was one of the top twenty or thirty wizards on the planet, in terical muscle And my finesse and skill continued to iht be one of the top two or three wizards on the planet

Of course, if Marcone was right, I&039;d never le was not stupid In fact, I&039;d say that there was an excellent chance I wouldn&039;t live another two or three days

I couldn&039;t challenge the masters of the Red Court and win

But they had irl

I know It shouldn&039;t irl in particular I should have been just as outraged that any little girl was trapped in such ie was my child, and it mattered a whole hell of a lot

I stood in the shower until the cold water had muted away all the hormones, all the e to blood After thinking about it for a while, I decided that three courses lay open toSo I could shoith more muscle on my side I could round up every friend, every ally, every shady character ed h assistance could turn the tide of any battle - and I had no illusions that it would be a battle of epic proportions

The problem was that the only people ould show up to that kind of desperate fight were my friends Andthe and his court, and I had no illusions of what such a struggle would cost My friends would die Most of them Hell, probably all of theet out, while ave their lives to make it possible But after that, then what? Spendover er than a few days?

The second thing I could do was to change the confrontation into sorab the girl and vanish, skipping the whole doole part of option one That plan wouldn&039;t require et my friends killed

Of course, to pull it off, I&039;d have to find sos with millennia of practice and experience at just such acts of infiltration and treachery You didn&039;t survive for as long as they had a awfully s a couple of guards over the head, then donning their unifor in with my friends the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Woodsman

(I had cast myself as the Scarecrow in that one If I only had a brain, I&039;d be able to coht with an all-star team was a bad idea It probably wouldn&039;t work

The sneaky srab at the heart of Red Court poas a bad idea It probably wouldn&039;t work, either

And that left option three Which was unthinkable Or had been, a few days ago Before I kneas a father

My career as a wizard has beenvery active I&039;ve ss in the kisser I&039;ve h I bear the scars, physical and otherwise, of the times I didn&039;t A lot of the major players looked at me and saw potential for one kind of mayhem or another