White Night (The Dresden Files #9) - Jim Butcher Page 0,59

public?" I asked. "Facing your past?"

"I have to," she said, her voice growing firmer. "It scares the crap out of me, all the time. And over the years… I've had problems with crowds. With enclosed spaces. With heights. With wide-open spaces. Night terrors. Panic attacks. Paranoia. God, sometimes it seems like there's nothing I haven't had a phobia about."

What Elaine had described was about what I would have expected from someone whose mind had been invaded by an outside will. Magic can get you into someone's head, but if you decide to start redecorating to your tastes, there is no way to avoid inflicting damage to their psyche. Depending upon several factors, someone who has been put under that kind of control can be left twitchy and erratic at best—and at worst, totally catatonic or completely dysfunctional.

And there was the utterly normal element of emotional pain to consider, too. Elaine had, in the course of a single evening, lost absolutely everything she loved. Her boyfriend. Her adopted father. Her home.

Losing a home means a lot more to an orphan than it does to most other people. I'm in a position to know. Like me, Elaine had spent most of her childhood bouncing around from one foster home to another, one state-run orphanage to another. Like me, being given a real home, a real house, a real father figure had been a desperate dream come true. It had been a terrible loss to me, and Justin hadn't gotten any hooks into my head. For Elaine, that series of events had been infinitely more painful, infinitely more frightening.

"I let fear control one part of my life," Elaine said, "and it took root and started growing. I had to get involved, Harry. I have to use what I know to change things. If I don't, then all I'll ever be is DuMorne's tool. His terrified little weapon. I will not allow anyone to take control of my life away from me. I can't." She shrugged. "And I can't stand by and do nothing, either. I threw the tests. I don't regret it. I sure as hell am not going to apologize for it—not to you or to anyone."

I grunted.

"Well?" she asked.

"I think I get it," I said.

"Are you willing to work with me, then?"

I squeezed her hand a little. "Of course."

The tension in her shoulders eased, and she squeezed my hand back. "My turn," she said.

"Your turn?"

She nodded. "You recognized the killer when you looked at the photo."

"What?" I said. "No, I didn't."

She rolled her eyes. "Come on, Harry. It's me."

I sighed. "Yeah, well."

"Who is he?" she asked.

"Thomas Raith," I said. "White Court."

"How do you know him?"

"He's…" Not many people knew that Thomas was my brother. It was safer for both of us to keep that information limited. "He's a friend. Someone I trust."

"Trust," Elaine said quietly. "I notice you use the present tense."

"Thomas isn't hurting anyone," I said.

"He's a vampire, Harry. He hurts someone every time he feeds."

He'd been doing quite a bit of that lately. "I know Thomas," I maintained. "He isn't the killer."

Elaine frowned. "Treachery hurts, Harry. Believe me, I know."

"Nothing has proved Thomas is behind these killings," I said. "It could be someone else, or something else, masquerading as him. It isn't as if there aren't plenty of shapeshifting things around that could do it."

"Little bit of a reach, though," Elaine said. She nodded at the photos, where I'd set them on the dashboard. "The simplest explanation is usually the correct one."

"Sooner or later," I said, "I'll have a case where everything is simple. But I don't think this one is it."

Elaine exhaled slowly, studying my face. "You care about him."

No point in denying that. "Yeah."

"He trusts you in return?"

"Yeah."

"Then why hasn't he explained himself to you?" she asked. "Why hasn't he gotten in touch with you?"

"I don't know. But I know he's not a killer."

She nodded slowly. "But there he is, with Olivia."

"Yeah."

"Then I think you should agree with me that we need to find him."

"Yeah."

"Can you?"

"Yep."

"All right, then," she said, and put on her seat belt. "We'll find him. We'll talk to him. I'll try to keep an open mind." She looked at me. "But if it turns out to be him, Harry, he's got to be stopped—and I expect you to help me."

"If it turns out to be him," I said, "he'd want me to."

* * *

CHAPTER

Twenty

I 've been working as a detective in Chicago for a while now, and there's one thing you do a