Jim Butcher - Skin Game

“She’s a pretty cool kid,” Molly said. “I mean, as Jawas go, she’s more or less awesome. She makes it easy to love her. Go on. They’re waiting for you.”

We went into the kitchen, where Charity was sitting at the kitchen table. Her eyes were a little glazed over with prescription painkillers, but she looked alert, with her wounded leg propped up and pillowed on another chair. Michael sat in the chair next to her, his own freshly wounded leg mirroring hers on a chair of its own, and the pair of them were holding hands, a matched set.

Michael’s cane, I noted, was back. It rested within arm’s reach.

Binder and Valmont sat at the table across from them, and everyone was drinking from steaming mugs. There were five brand-new locking metal cash boxes from an office supply store sitting side by side on the table.

Binder was in the middle of a story of some kind, gesticulating with both thick-fingered hands. “So I looked at her and said, ‘That’s not my pen, love.’”

Michael blinked and then turned bright pink, while Charity threw back her head and let out a rolling belly laugh. Anna Valmont smiled, and sipped at her tea. She was the first to notice that I had come in, and her face brightened, for a moment, into a genuine smile. “Dresden.”

Binder glanced over his shoulder and said, “About bloody time, mate. You look a right mess.”

“Yeah, but I feel like an utter disaster,” I said, and limped to the table. “Where’s Grey?”

“He won’t come in the yard,” Michael said.

I arched an eyebrow and looked at him. “Hngh.”

Michael spread his hands. “He said he’d be around and that you would take him his pay.”

“Said he didn’t want a share of the stones,” Binder said in a tone of utter disbelief. “That he had his pay coming from you.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Huh.”

“There’s professional,” Binder said, “and then there’s just bloody odd.”

“Not everyone is motivated solely by money,” Valmont said, smiling into her tea.

“And how much more sensible a world it would be if they were,” Binder said.

“I’ve divided the stones by weight,” Valmont said. “Each box is the same. Everyone else should pick theirs and I’ll take whichever one is left.”

“Sensible, professional,” Binder said in a tone of approval. “Dresden?”

“Sure,” I said. I tapped a box and picked it up. It was heavy. Diamonds are, after all, rocks.

Binder claimed one. Michael frowned thoughtfully.

“Michael?” I asked him.

“I’m. . not sure I can accept-”

Charity, very firmly, picked up one of the boxes and put it on her lap. “We have at least twenty-three more child-years of college education to finance,” she said. “And what if there are grandchildren one day, after that? And have you considered the good we might do with the money?”

Michael opened his mouth, frowned, and then closed it again. “But what do we know about selling diamonds?”

“Anna assures me it’s perfectly simple.”

“Fairly,” Valmont said. “Especially if you do so quietly, over time. I’ll walk you through it.”

“Oh,” Michael said.

“And we have an extra,” Valmont said, “since Grey didn’t want a share.”

“Here’s a brainstorm,” Binder said. “Give it to me.”

“Why on earth would I do that?” Valmont said.

“Because I’ll take it to Marcone and bribe him with it to not kill us all, after we wrecked his perfectly nice bank,” Binder said. “Walking away rich is all very well, but I want to live to spend it.”

“Give it to me,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Harry?” Michael asked.

“I know Marcone,” I said. “He knows me. I’ll use it to keep him off of all of us. You have my word.”

Michael exhaled through his nose. Then he nodded and said, “Good enough for me. Miss Valmont?”

Anna considered me and then nodded once. “Agreed.”

“Better you than me, mate,” Binder chimed in. “Just you try to get some kind of warning to us if he kills you when you go to talk to him.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” I said, and took a second box. Valmont claimed the last one.

We were all quiet for a moment.

Then Binder rose and said, “Ladies, gents, what a treat it’s been scraping out of a mess by the skin of our teeth with you. Godspeed.” And he headed for the door.

Valmont rose, too, smiling quietly. She came over to me and gave me a hug.

I eyed her. Then I made a bit of a show of checking my pockets for missing items.

That made her laugh, and she hugged me again, a little longer. Then she stood up on tiptoe to kiss my cheek and said, “I left your things in the closet of the room you were sleeping in.”

I nodded, very slightly.

She withdrew then, smiled at Charity, and said, “Give me three days.Then call me at the number I gave you.”

“I will,” Charity said. “Thank you.”

Anna smiled at her, nodded to Michael, and left.

Michael idly unlocked his box and opened it. Light spilled off of the diamonds heaped inside.

“My, my, my,” Michael said.

Charity picked up a stone carefully and shook her head, bemused. “My, my, my.”

“Watch my loot for me?” I asked. “I need to go speak to Grey.”

* * *

I found Grey standing on the sidewalk outside the house, leaning against the streetlight with his arms folded over his chest and his head bowed. He looked up as I came out of the house and shuffled down the front walk to the gate.

“Dresden,” he said.

“Grey. You really came through for me.”

“What you hired me to do,” Grey said, as if I might be a bit thick.

“I guess I did, didn’t I?” I said. “You could have bailed. You could have taken Nick’s money.”

He looked at me as if I had begun speaking in tongues.

“Guess Vadderung was right about you.”

Something not quite a smile touched Grey’s mouth. “Heh,” he said. “He’s one who would know, isn’t he?”

“So how come you won’t come in the yard?” I asked, stepping through the broken gate to join him.

Grey stared at me, his eyes opaque. He turned his head to the Carpenters’ home, and looked up and around the yard, as if noting the position of invisible sentries. Then he looked back at me.

And his body language shifted, relaxing slightly. His eyes flickered and changed, from brown orbs with that odd golden sheen to them to something brighter gold, almost yellow, the color spreading too wide for human eyes, the pupils slit vertically like a cat’s. I had seen eyes exactly like them once before.

My heart leapt up into my throat and I slammed the gate shut. “Hell’s bells,” I stammered. “A naagloshii? You’re a freaking naagloshii?”

Grey’s eyes narrowed and changed back to mostly human brown again. He was silent for a moment, and then said, “You didn’t choose to be the son of Margaret LeFay. You didn’t choose the legacy she left you with her blood. And she was a piece of work, kid. I knew her.”

I frowned at him, and said nothing.

“I didn’t choose my father, either,” Grey said. “And he was a piece of work, too. But I do choose how I live my life. So pay up.”

I nodded, slowly, and said, “What’s it going to cost me?”

He told me.

“What?” I said. “That much?”

“Cash only,” he said. “Now.”

“I don’t have that much on me,” I said.

He snorted and said, “I believe you. We going to have a problem?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll go get it.”

“Sure,” he said, and bowed his head again, as if prepared to wait from now until Judgment Day.

And I shambled back into the house, went in to Michael and asked, “Can you loan me a dollar?”