Cold Days (The Dresden Files #14) - Jim Butcher Page 0,92
“I want you to go talk to Toot. I need the guard to gather up and be ready to move when I give the word.”
“Scouts?” she guessed.
I nodded. “While you’re doing that, I’m going to go figure out the potential sites for the time bomb spell so we know where to aim the guard. Order some pizza; that will gather them in.”
“Okay,” she said. “Um . . . money?”
I looked at Thomas. “She already came through for me once. Your turn.”
Thomas snorted and slipped a white plastic card out of his pocket. It was utterly unmarked except for a few stamped numbers and a magnetic strip. He flicked it across the table to Molly. “When you get your pizza, have them run that.”
Molly studied the card, back and front. “Is this a Diners Club card or something?”
“It’s a Raith contingency card,” he said. “Lara hands them out to the family. Once they ring up the first charge on the card, it’ll be good for twenty-four hours.”
“For how much?” Molly asked.
“Twenty-four hours,” Thomas repeated.
Molly lifted her eyebrows.
Thomas smiled faintly. “Don’t worry about amounts. My sister doesn’t really believe in limits. Do whatever you want with it. I don’t care.”
Molly took the card and placed it very carefully in her secondhand coin purse. “Okay.” She looked at me. “Now?”
I nodded. “Get a move on.”
She paused to draw a pen from her purse. She scribbled on a napkin and passed it to me. “My apartment’s phone.”
I glanced at it, read it, and memorized it. Then I slid it to Thomas, who tucked the napkin away in a pocket. “You’re going to just send her out there alone?”
Molly regarded Thomas blankly. Then vanished.
“Oh,” Thomas said. “Right.”
I stood up and crossed the room to the door. I opened it and glanced out, as though scanning suspiciously for anyone’s approach. I felt Molly slip out past me as I did. Then I closed it again and came back inside. Thunder rumbled over the lake, but no rain fell.
“I noticed,” my brother drawled, “that you didn’t leave her a way to contact you.”
“Did you?”
He snorted. “You think Fix would hurt her?”
“I think she won’t give him much choice,” I said. “She’s come a long way—but Fix is exactly the wrong kind of threat for her to mess with. He’s used to glamour, he can defend against it, and he’s smart.”
“Molly’s not too shabby herself,” Thomas said.
“Molly is my responsibility,” I said.
I hadn’t meant for the words to come out that cold, that hard. The anger surprised me, but it bubbled and seethed still. Some part of me was furious at Thomas for questioning my decision regarding my apprentice. Molly was mine, and I would be damned if some chisel-jawed White Court pretty boy was going to—
I closed my eyes and clenched my jaw. Pride. Possession. Territoriality. That wasn’t me. That was the mantle of Winter talking through me.
“Sorry,” I said a moment later, and opened my eyes.
Thomas hadn’t reacted in any way, to my snarl, my anger, or my apology. He just studied me. Then he said, quietly, “I want to suggest something to you. I’m not trying to make you do anything. You just need to hear it.”
“Sure,” I said.
“I’m a predator, Harry,” he said. “We both know that.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So I recognize it in others when I see it.”
“And?”
“And you’re looking at Molly like she’s food.”
I frowned at him. “I am not.”
He shrugged. “It isn’t all the time. It’s just little moments. You look at her, and I can see the calculations running. You notice every time she yawns.”
I didn’t want what Thomas was saying to be true. “So what?”
“When she yawns, she’s showing us that she’s tired. It makes us take notice because tired prey is easy prey.” He leaned forward, putting one arm on the table. “I know what I’m talking about.”
“No,” I said, my voice getting cold again. “You don’t.”
“I tried going into denial like that when I was about fifteen. It didn’t work out too well.”
“What?” I asked him. “You think I’m going to attack her when she goes to sleep?”
“Yeah,” he said. “If you don’t recognize what’s motivating you and control it, you will. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But eventually. You can’t just ignore those instincts, man. If you do, they’ll catch you off guard some night. And you will hurt her, one way or another.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I frowned down at my empty bottle of ale.