Cold Days (The Dresden Files #14) - Jim Butcher Page 0,30

being born. A monster she’d been given to, no less.

Thinking about it, even if I had saved her life, it wouldn’t have needed saving had she not been with me. I figured that between that and everything else she’d done for me, I was well in her debt.

But I couldn’t help her if I didn’t know more about her.

“For a couple of minutes,” I said. “Please.”

She nodded, and we went inside. I had a little living room outside of my bedroom. I read somewhere that in general, women tend to be more comfortable with someone sitting beside them, rather than across from them. Men tend to be the opposite. Facing each other has undertones of direct physical conflict—in which a generally larger, stronger person would have an advantage. I didn’t know whether it was true or not, but she was already keyed up enough, and I didn’t want to add anything to it. So I seated her at one end of the couch, and then seated myself at the opposite end, out of arm’s reach.

“Okay,” I said. “We haven’t talked, I guess, because I’ve never told you anything about myself. Is that about the shape of it?”

“Trust has to go both ways,” she said.

I huffed out a short laugh. “You’ve been hanging around Mab too much. She’s not big on answering simple yes-or-no questions either.”

Sarissa’s mouth twitched at the corners. “Yes.”

I laughed again. “Okay,” I said. “Well, when in Rome. Maybe we should exchange questions and answers. You can go first.”

She folded her hands, frowning, and then nodded. “I’ve heard a lot of stories about you. That you’ve killed a lot of people. Are they true?”

“I don’t know what you’ve heard,” I said. “But . . . yeah. When bad things came after people in my town, I made it my business to get in the way. And I’ve been a Warden of the White Council for a while now. I fought in the war against the Red Court. I’ve done a lot of fighting. Sometimes people get killed. Why are you in Mab’s debt?”

“I . . . have a form of congenital dementia,” she said. “I watched what it did to my older sister and . . .” She shuddered. “Doctors can’t help me. Mab can. Have you ever killed anyone who wasn’t trying to kill you?”

I looked down at my shoes. “Twice,” I said quietly. “I cut Lloyd Slate’s throat to become the Winter Knight. And—”

A flash of memory. A ruined city full of howling monsters and blood. Flashes of light and roaring detonations of magic tearing asunder stone and air alike. Dust everywhere. Friends fighting, bleeding, desperate. A stone altar covered in a thick coating of dried blood. A terrified little girl, my daughter. Treachery.

A kiss pressed against the forehead of a woman I was about to murder.

God, Susan, forgive me.

I couldn’t see through the blur in my eyes, and my throat felt like the Redcap might be garroting me again, but I forced myself to speak. “And I killed a woman named Susan Rodriguez on a stone altar, because if I hadn’t, a little girl and a lot of good people would have died. She knew it, too.” I swiped a hand at my eyes and coughed to clear my throat. “What were the terms of your bargain with Mab?”

“That as long as I remained myself, and sane, I would attend her and do as she bade me for three months out of every year. Summer vacation, when I was in school. Weekends, now, except for lately. Taking care of you meant that I’d have months and months off to make up for it.” She fidgeted with the bloodied handkerchief. Her split lip had stopped bleeding, and a line of dark, drying blood marred it. “The whole time we worked on your therapy, I think you said something about having a dog and a cat once. But you never spoke about any friends or family. Why not?”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure,” I said. And then I realized that I was lying to everyone in the room. “Maybe . . . maybe because it hurts to think about them. Because I miss them. Because . . . because they’re good people. The best. And I’m not sure I can look them in the eye anymore, after what I’ve done. What about you? Do you have any friends?”

“There are people I sometimes do things with,” she said. “I don’t . . . I’m not sure I’d call them