Blood Rites (The Dresden Files #6) - Jim Butcher Page 0,5

Storms Lab."

"I was doing the new Summer Lady a favor, running down a rogue storm sylph. Got to go all over the place in those tornado-chaser geekmobiles. You should have seen the look on the driver's face when he realized that the tornado was chasing us."

"It's a nice story, Harry, but what's the point?" Thomas asked.

"My point is that there's a lot of my life you haven't seen. I have friends."

"Monster hunters, werewolves, and a talking skull."

I shook my head. "More than that. I like my apartment. Hell, for that matter I like my car."

"You like this piece of… junk?"

"She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid."

Thomas slouched down in his seat, his expression skeptical. "Now you've forced me to reconsider the monumentally stupid explanation."

I shrugged. "Me and the Blue Beetle kick ass. In a four-cylinder kind of way, but it still gets kicked."

Thomas's face lost all expression. "What about Susan?"

When I get angry, I'd like to be able to pull off a great stone face like that, but I don't do it so well. "What about her?"

"You cared about her. You got her involved in your life. She got torn up because of you. She got attention from all kinds of nasties and she nearly died." He kept staring ahead. "How do you live with that?"

I started to get angry, but I had a rare flash of insight and my ire evaporated before it could fully condense. I studied Thomas's profile at a stoplight and saw him working hard to look distant, like nothing was touching him. Which would mean that something was touching him. He was thinking of someone important to him. I had a pretty good idea who it was.

"How's Justine?" I asked.

His features grew colder. "It isn't important."

"Okay. But how is Justine?"

"I'm a vampire, Harry." The words were cold and distant, but not steady. "She's my girlfri—" His voice stumbled on the word, and he tried to cover it with a low cough. "She's my lover. She's food. That's how she is."

"Ah," I said. "I like her, you know. Ever since she blackmailed me into helping you at Bianca's masquerade. That took guts."

"Yeah," he said. "She's got that."

"How long have you been seeing her now?"

"Four years," Thomas said. "Almost five."

"Anyone else?"

"No."

"Burger King," I said.

Thomas blinked at me. "What?"

"Burger King," I said. "I like to eat at Burger King. But even if I could afford to do it, I wouldn't eat my meals there every day for almost five years."

"What's your point?" Thomas asked.

"My point is that it's pretty clear that Justine isn't just food to you, Thomas."

He turned his head and stared at me for a moment, his expression empty and his eyes inhumanly blank. "She is. She has to be."

"Why don't I believe you?" I said.

Thomas stared at me, his eyes growing even colder. "Drop the subject. Right now."

I decided not to push. He was working hard not to give anything away, so I knew he was full of crap. But if he didn't want to discuss it, I couldn't force him.

Hell, for that matter, I didn't want to. Thomas was an annoying wiseass who tended to make everyone he met want to kill him, and when I have that much in common with someone, I can't help but like him a little. It wouldn't hurt to give him some space.

On the other hand, it was easy for me to forget what he was, and I couldn't afford that. Thomas was a vampire of the White Court. They didn't drink blood. They fed on emotions, on feelings, drawing the life energy from their prey through them. The way I understood it, it was usually during sex, and rumor had it that their kind could seduce a saint. I'd seen Thomas start to feed once, and whatever it was that made him not quite human had completely taken control of him. It left him a cold, beautiful, marble-white being of naked hunger. It was an acutely uncomfortable memory.

The Whites weren't as physically formidable or aggressively organized as the Red Court, and they didn't have the raw, terrifying power of the Black Court, but they didn't have all the usual vampire weaknesses, either. Sunlight wasn't a problem for Thomas, and from what I'd seen, crosses and other holy articles didn't bother him either. But just because they weren't as inhuman as the other Courts didn't make the Whites less dangerous. In fact, the way I saw it, it made them more