Grave Peril (The Dresden Files #3) - Jim Butcher Page 0,147

the hospital, Thomas sent me a thank-you letter, for saving Justine. He sent it on a little note card attached to a bow, which was all Justine was wearing. I'll let you guess where the bow was. I took the note, but not the girl. There was too much of an ick factor in sharing girls with a sex vampire. Justine was pretty enough, and sweet enough, when she wasn't walking the razor's edge of an organic emotional instabilitybut I couldn't really hold that against her. Plenty of people have to take some kind of medication to keep stable. Lithium, supermodel sex vampireswhatever works, I guess.

I had woman problems of my own.

Susan sent me flowers and called me every day, in the hospital. But she didn't ever talk to me for long. And she didn't come to visit. When I got out, I went to her apartment. She didn't live there anymore. I tried to call her at work, and never managed to catch her. Finally, I had to resort to magic. I used some hair of hers left on a brush at my apartment, and tracked her down on a beach along Lake Michigan, on one of the last warm days of the year.

I found her laying in the sun wearing a white bikini that left maximum surface area bared to it. I sat down next to her, and her manner changed, subtly, a quiet tension that I didn't miss, though I couldn't see her eyes behind the sunglasses she wore.

"The sun helps," she said. "Sometimes it almost goes away for a while."

"I've been trying to find you," I said. "I wanted to talk to you."

"I know," she said. "Harry. Things have changed for me. In the daylight, it's not too bad. But at night." She shivered. "I have to lock myself inside. I don't trust myself around people, Harry."

"I know," I said. "You know what's happening?"

"I talked to Thomas," she said. "And Justine. They were nice enough, I guess. They explained things to me."

I grimaced. "Look," I said. "I'm going to help you. I'll find some way to get you out of this. We can find a cure." I reached out and took her hand. "Oh, Hell's bells, Susan. I'm no good at this." I just fumbled the ring onto it, clumsy as you please. "I don't want you far away. Marry me."

She sat up, and stared at her hand, at the dinky ring I'd been able to afford. Then she leaned close to me and gave me a slow, heated kiss, her mouth melting-warm. Our tongues touched. Mine went numb. I got a little dizzy, as the slow throb of pleasure that I'd felt before coursed through me, a drug I'd craved without realizing it.

She drew away from me slowly, her face expressionless behind the sunglasses. She said, "I can't. You already made me ache for you, Harry. I couldn't control myself, with you. I couldn't sort out the hungers." She pressed the ring into my hand and stood up, gathering her towel and a purse with her. "Don't come to me again. I'll call you."

And she left.

***

I'd bragged to Kravos, at the end, that I'd been trained to demolish nightmares when I was younger. And to a certain extent it was true. If something came into my head for a fight, I could put up a good one. But now I had nightmares that were all my own. A part of me. And they were always the same: darkness, trapped, with the vampires all around me, laughing their hissing laughter.

I'd wake up, screaming and crying. Mister, curled against my legs, would raise his head and rumble at me. But he wouldn't pad away. He'd just settle down again, purring like a snowmobile's engine. I found it a comfort. And I slept with a light always close.

"Harry," Bob said one night. "You haven't been working. You've barely left your apartment. The rent was due last week. And this vampire research is going nowhere fast."

"Shut up, Bob," I told him. "This unguent isn't right. If we can find a way to convert it to a liquid, maybe we can work it into a supplement of some kind"

" Harry ," Bob said.

I looked up at the skull.

"Harry. The Council sent a notice to you today."

I stood up, slowly.

"The vampires. The Council's at war. I guess Paris and Berlin went into chaos almost a week ago. The Council is calling a meeting. Here."

"The White Council is coming to Chicago," I mused.

"Yeah. They're going to want to know what the hell happened."

I shrugged. "I sent them my report. I only did what was right," I said. "Or as close to it as I could manage. I couldn't let them have her, Bob. I couldn't."

The skull sighed. "I don't know if that will hold up with them, Harry."

"It has to," I said.

There was a knock at my door. I climbed up from the lab. Murphy and Michael had shown up at my door with a care package: soup and charcoal and kerosene for me, as the weather got colder. Groceries. Fruit. Michael had, rather pointedly, included a razor.

"How are you doing, Dresden?" Murphy asked me, her blue eyes serious.

I stared at her for a moment. Then at Michael.

"I could be worse," I said. "Come in."

Friends. They make it easier.

So, the vampires are out to get me, and every other wizard on the block. The little wizardlings of the city, the have-nots of magic, are making it a point not to go outside after dark. I don't order pizza for delivery anymore. Not after the first guy almost got me with a bomb.

The Council is going to be furious at me, but what else is new.

Susan doesn't call. Doesn't visit. But I got a card from her, on my birthday, Halloween. She only wrote three words.

I'll let you guess what three.

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