It had my stuff in it, from the apartment. A pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and my ensorcelled leather duster. My gun belt was in there, too, with my big old monster-shooting revolver, as well as a short-barreled coach gun in a scabbard on a bandolier loaded with various-colored shells.
“Suit up, Sir Knight,” Molly said, and winked at me.
“Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “I’m just a great big Ken doll for you people to dress up, aren’t I?”
“You’re lucky the Leanansidhe is commanding the outer defenses,” Molly said. “Auntie Lea would have insisted you be properly attired.” Her smile faded. Her eyes searched for words for a moment, and when she spoke, she was choosing them carefully. “Harry. I won’t be here for you tonight.”
I paused and stared at her. “What? Why?”
“I can’t tell you.” She grimaced, frustration in her eyes for a moment. “But it’s necessary. And it’s got to be me.”
I drew a deep breath. I’d been counting on having the grasshopper to back me up. The now-immortal grasshopper, for crying out loud.
On the other hand, this was Molly.
I stared at her eyes for a while. She and I had taken each other’s measure already. And what I had seen in her was a dark and terrible potential, power that could be used for weal or woe, based upon her choices. I guess the real question was whether it was really Molly making the choices any longer. If it was still the young woman I’d known.
I knew where I stood on that one.
If my Molly said she had to leave, she had a damned good reason.
“Okay,” I said. I winked at her. “I mean, dammit, but okay.”
She lifted both her eyebrows in surprise for a moment. Then she clasped my hands and gave me a brief luminous smile. She nodded to Ebenezar and turned away, beckoning with a finger and collecting the Redcap like a well-trained hound. The pair of them hurried from the command center and vanished below, presumably to leave the castle.
And I felt a little more alone than I had a moment before.
My stomach wasn’t quite cramping, but . . . the tension was getting higher. The quivering unrest inside me would not cease. We stood there waiting and doing nothing while a war began around us.
Another car went up, this time farther to the south. An assassin squid made it all the way to the roof before Lacuna rammed her spear through it and pinned it to the map table six inches from Vadderung’s hand. The one-eyed man grunted without looking up from the map, unstuck the spear absently, flicked the squid over the side of the building, and offered the weapon back to the small fae.
Wizard Cristos came over, looking dignified and severe in his suit and robes, and spoke quietly in Ebenezar’s ear. The old man nodded, thumped my shoulder with his fist, and walked off to one corner of the rooftop, speaking quietly to the other Senior Councilman.
I couldn’t stand there doing nothing all by myself. I grabbed the nylon bag and took it down to the locker room next to the gym. Then I started doing what you do in locker rooms, and changed clothes. It was a busy place; the Einherjaren who were still coming in from the blacked-out city surrounding the castle would rush in to suit up and arm themselves from the weapons locker.
I was down to my underwear when a man the size of a small polar bear slammed his locker and departed, still buckling a vambrace onto one arm, and abruptly left me alone in the locker bay with Gentleman John Marcone.
The robber baron of Chicago had undressed down to his undershirt and slacks and was currently fastening the fittings on a vest of overlapping scales of some advanced-looking material that covered his torso closely enough to be custom fit. I’d seen him out of a suit only once before, and he’d been in rough shape at the time. Despite his age, Marcone was built like a light-heavyweight boxer. The muscles moving under his forearms were made of lean steel cable. As I watched, he shrugged into his suit shirt and began buttoning it up.
“Did you forget the next step in the dressing process, Dresden?” he asked, without looking up at me. “Or is this some sort of awkward sexual reconnaissance?”
With massive dignity, I put on my pants one leg at a time. “Locker room talk? Really?”
“It seemed something you would be capable of appreciating.”
I snorted and kept getting dressed. Marcone put on a gun belt and hung a pistol under each arm.
“I saw you earlier,” I said. “Facing Ethniu.”
He eyed me without actually looking at me.
The words tasted bitter and tainted in my mouth, but I said, “That took guts.”
His mouth twisted at one corner. “Ouch. That must have hurt.”
I nodded and spat into a trash can. “No idea.”
Marcone took up his suit jacket and shrugged into it. He adjusted it until the cloth fell without revealing the guns. “Do you know the difference between courage and foolhardiness, Dresden?”
“Any insurance adjuster would say no.”
He waved a hand at my banter, as though that was all the acknowledgment it deserved. “Hindsight,” he said. “Until the extended consequences of any action are known, it is both courageous and foolish. And neither.”
“Well,” I said, “tonight you earned yourself a Schrödinger’s Medal, I guess.”
He seemed to muse on that for a moment. “Yes,” he said, fastening one button. “I suppose I did.” He paused and glanced at me. “I notice you kept quiet.”
“Maybe I’m finally learning my lesson.”
“That’s not it.” Marcone tilted his head, frowning. “The only way that would have happened is, frankly . . . if you had not been present.”
Okay, well. Sometimes even the bad guys are right, more or less. I kept my mouth shut and finished getting dressed.
“Dresden,” Marcone said, “while I have enjoyed working with your queen, and find her business practices admirable, do not presume any sort of personal amity between us. At all.”
“Oh. I don’t.”
“Excellent,” Marcone said. “Then I will not need to explain how severely I will be obliged to react to you should you engage in any of your . . . typical shenanigans in violation of my territory or my sovereign rights under the Accords.”
“Really?” I said. “Right now, you’re comparing testosterone size?”
“I have no intention of dying tonight, Dresden,” Marcone said. “Nor of losing what I have fought to claim. I am a survivor. As, improbably, are you.” He nodded to me politely and spoke in a very quiet, reasonable tone that was all the more chilling for the absolute granite rumbling beneath the surface. “I only wish you to be aware that I mean to continue as I have begun. After tonight, I will still be here—and you, by God, will show respect.”