down again.
“My poor Thomas,” she said quietly, when I opened them again. She sat down across the table from me, her dark eyes compassionate. “When we were together, I never realized how hard it was for you. Your demon is much stronger than theirs. Stronger than any but hers, isn’t it.”
“It only matters if I give in to it,” I replied, more harshly than I meant to. “Which means it doesn’t matter. Tell me, Justine. Please.”
She folded her arms across her body, biting on her bottom lip. “It really isn’t much. She said to tell you that word had come to her through the usual channels that the Ladies of the Dark River were in town.” She opened the valise. “And that you would know which one you were dealing with.” She took out a full-page photo, and slid it across the table to me. It was grainy, but big enough to clearly show an image of a stark-featured, young-looking woman getting into a cab at O’Hare. The time stamp on the photo said it was from that morning.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I know her. I thought she was dead.”
“Lara said that this person had taken a child,” Justine continued. “Though she didn’t say how she knew that. And that her aim was to draw out one who could do her cause great good.”
I got a sick feeling in my stomach as Justine slid out the second photograph and pushed it across the table.
The photograph was simple, this time—a hallway, a picture of a door, its top half of frosted glass, bearing simple black lettering:
HARRY DRESDEN, WIZARD.
The door was closed, but I could see the outline of a tall, feminine form, facing an even taller, storkish, masculine outline.
The time stamp said it was barely two hours before.
So.
Lara had been trying to do me a favor, after all. She had protected Justine behind a layer of generalities. And I had dithered around cutting hair and indulging my Hunger and my suspicions, while the Stygian Sisterhood had suckered my brother into a ploy to bring back one of their monstrous matrons.
Justine had never been stupid. Even when she’d been deep in my influence, before, she’d walked into it with her eyes open. “He’s in trouble, isn’t he?”
“And he doesn’t even know it yet,” I said quietly.
She pursed her lips in thought. “And you can’t tell him why, can you? Any more than you could tell me.”
I looked up at her helplessly.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
I rose and reclaimed my knife and gun. “He’s my brother,” I said. “I’m going to cover his back.”
“How are you going to explain it to him?” she asked.
I tugged on a pair of leather gloves and went to her, so I could take her hands in mine, squeezing gently, before I turned to go.
“If he thinks he’s helping her, and you interfere, he’s not going to understand,” she said. “How are you going to explain it to him, Thomas?”
It sucks to be a Venator.
“I’m not,” I said quietly.
Then I and my demon went out to continue an ages-old silent war and help my brother.
I just hoped the two activities wouldn’t be mutually exclusive.
3
Justine had a driver circling the block, waiting for her to call. She did. I walked her to the elevator, holding her hand in my gloved fingers, the whole way. We didn’t speak again. She smiled at me, though, when the elevator arrived, and kissed my fingers through the glove.
Then she was gone.
Technically, there was always a huge empty place inside me—that was what the Hunger was, after all.
So I told myself that this wasn’t any different, and I went back to my apartment to get to work.
Purely for form, I tried Harry’s home and office phones before I left my apartment, but I got no answer at his apartment, and only his answering service at his office. I left a message that I needed to talk to him, but I doubted he would get it in time for it to be of any help. I grimaced as I took my cell phone out of my pocket and left it on my kitchen counter. There wasn’t any point in carrying it with me. Technology doesn’t get along well with magic. Twenty or thirty minutes in Harry’s company could kill a cell phone if he was in a bad mood—less if he was actively throwing spells around.
My own remedial skills weren’t any particular threat to the phone, but once I brought up the