Cold Days (The Dresden Files #14) - Jim Butcher Page 0,118

I don’t know. Rewriting you.”

“I told her if she tried it, I’d start being obstreperous.”

“God,” Karrin said. “You haven’t started?”

She half smiled. For a second, it was almost okay.

But then her face darkened again. “I think she’ll do it slower. An inch at a time, when you aren’t looking. But even if she doesn’t . . .”

“What?”

“I’m not angry at you, Harry,” she said. “I don’t hate you. I don’t think you’ve gone bad. A lot of people have fallen into the trap you did. People better than either of us.”

“Uh,” I said. “The evil-Queen-of-Faerie trap?”

“Christ, Harry,” Murphy said quietly. “No one just starts giggling and wearing black and signs up to become a villainous monster. How the hell do you think it happens?” She shook her head, her eyes pained. “It happens to people. Just people. They make questionable choices, for what might be very good reasons. They make choice after choice, and none of them is slaughtering roomfuls of saints, or murdering hundreds of baby seals, or rubber-room irrational. But it adds up. And then one day they look around and realize that they’re so far over the line that they can’t remember where it was.”

I looked away from her. Something in my chest hurt. I didn’t say anything.

“Do you understand that?” she asked me, her voice even more quiet. “Do you understand how treacherous the ground you’re standing on has become?”

“Perfectly,” I said.

She nodded a few times. Then she said, “I suppose that’s something.”

“That all?” I asked her. “I mean . . . is that the only reason you came in here?”

“Not quite,” she said.

“You don’t trust me,” I said.

Her eyes didn’t meet mine, and didn’t avoid them either. “That will depend largely on the next few minutes.”

I inhaled through my nose and out again, trying to stay calm, clear, even. “Okay,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”

“The skull,” she said. “I know what it is. So does Butters. And . . . it’s too powerful to be left in the wrong hands.”

“Meaning mine?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you what I know. I know you broke into his house when he was at work and took it. I know you left Andi with cuts and bruises. And I know you wrecked the place a bit along the way.”

“You think that means I’ve gone bad?”

She tilted her head slightly to one side, as if considering. “I think you were probably operating under some kind of harebrained lone-hero rationale. Let’s say . . . that I’m concerned that you have enough things to juggle already.”

I thought about snapping at her but . . . she had a point. Bob was a resource far too powerful to be allowed to fall into the hands of anyone who wouldn’t use him responsibly. And I’d been doing the Winter Knight gig full speed for about twelve hours, and I’d already had some disturbing realizations about myself. Twelve hours.

What would I be like after twelve days? Twelve months? What if Karrin was right, and Mab got to me slow? Or worse: What if I was just human? She was right about that, too. Power corrupts—and the people being corrupted never seem to be aware that it’s happening. I’d just told Butters that I wasn’t magically bulletproof. What kind of arrogant ass would I be if I assumed I was morally infallible? That I would be wise and smart and savvy enough to avoid the pitfalls of power, traps that had turned better people than me into something horrible?

I didn’t want her to be right. I didn’t like the idea at all.

But denial is for children. I had to be a grown-up.

“Okay,” I said, my throat tight. “Bob’s in that satchel out in the living room. Give him back to Butters.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I found where you left the swords.”

She meant the two Swords of the Cross, two of three holy blades meant to fill the hands of the righteous in the battle against true evil. I’d wound up babysitting them, being their custodian. Mostly they’d sat around in my place gathering dust. “Yeah?” I said.

“I know how powerful they are,” she said. “And I know how vulnerable they are in the wrong hands. I’m not telling you where they are. I’m not giving them back to you. I’m not negotiating.”

I exhaled slowly. A slow, hard anger rolled into a knot in my guts. “Those . . . were my responsibility,” I said.

“They were,” she said. There was something absolutely rigid