Jim Butcher - Cold Days

I stared after him.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered to myself.

I stood up and wrapped the army surplus blanket around myself before I walked into the cottage. I smelled coffee and soup, and my stomach wanted lots of both.

There was a fire going in the fireplace, and my coffeepot was hanging near the fire. The soup kettle was hanging on its swinger, too. The soup would be made from stock and freeze-dried meat, but I was hungry enough not to be picky. Everyone else there probably felt the same way.

Thomas was sacked out on one of the cots, snoring. Justine had spooned up behind him, her face pressed into his back. They both had clean faces and hands, at least. Mac was snoozing on the other cot, bare to the waist, his chest and stomach evidently washed free of any dirt—and any blood or any injury as well.

Sarissa was gone. Molly was gone. Fix was gone. I felt confident they had left together.

Karrin sat at the fire, staring in, a cup of coffee in her hands. Mouse sat beside her. When I came in, he looked over at me and started wagging his tail.

“You leave the blanket?” I asked quietly.

“Once we got the fire going,” she said. “I suppose I could go get you your duster now, though.”

“I’d look like a flasher,” I said.

She smiled, very slightly, and offered me two mugs. I looked. One had coffee, the other very chunky soup. She passed me a camp fork to go along with the soup. “It isn’t much,” she said.

“Don’t care,” I said, and sat down on the hearth across from her to partake of both. The heat gurgled into my belly along with the food and the coffee, and I started feeling human for the first time in . . . a while. I ached everywhere. It wasn’t at all pleasant, but it felt like something I’d come by honestly.

“Christ, Dresden,” Karrin said. “You could at least wash your hands.” She picked up a towelette and leaned over to start cleaning off my hands. My stomach thought stopping was a bad idea, but I put the mugs aside and let her.

She cleaned my hands off patiently, going through a couple of towelettes. Then she said, “Lean over.”

I did.

She took a fresh towelette and wiped off my face, slowly and carefully. There were nicks and cuts. It hurt when she cleaned one of them out, but it also felt right. Sometimes the things that are good for you, in the long run, hurt for a little while when you first get to them.

“There,” she said a moment later. “You almost look human—” She paused at that, and looked down. “I mean . . .”

“I know what you mean,” I said.

“Yeah.”

The fire crackled.

“What’s the story with Mac?” I asked.

Karrin looked over at the sleeping man. “Mab,” she said. “She just came in here a few minutes ago and looked at him. Then before anyone could react, she ripped off the bandage, stuck her fingers into the wound, and pulled out the bullet. Dropped it right on his chest.”

“No wound now,” I noted.

“Yeah. Started closing up the minute she was done. But you remember the time he got beaten so badly in his bar? Why didn’t his injuries regenerate then?”

I shook my head. “Maybe because he was conscious then.”

“He did turn down the painkillers. I remember it seemed odd at the time,” Karrin murmured. “What is he?”

I shrugged. “Ask him.”

“I did,” she said, “right before he passed out.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said, ‘I’m out.’”

I grunted.

“What do you think it means?” she asked.

I thought about it. “Maybe it means he’s out.”

“We just let it go?” she asked.

“It’s what he wants,” I said. “Think we should torture him?”

“Point,” she said, and sighed. “Maybe instead we just let him rest.”

“Maybe we should let him make beer,” I said. “What about Thomas?”

“Woke up. Ate.” She frowned and clarified, “Ate soup. Been asleep for a couple of hours. That big bone thing really clobbered him.”

“There’s always someone bigger than you,” I said.

She gave me a look.

“More true for some than others,” I clarified.

She rolled her eyes.

“So,” I said, a moment later.

“So,” she said.

“Um. Should we talk?”

“About what?”

Mouse looked back and forth between us and started wagging his tail hopefully.

“Quiet, you,” I said, and rubbed his ears. “Bad guy made of bones and he gets the drop on you? Charity giving you too many treats or something? That fight should have been like Scooby-Doo versus the Scooby Snack Ghost.”

Mouse grinned happily, unfazed, still wagging his tail.

“Don’t be so hard on him,” Karrin said. “There’s always someone bigger.” Then she shook her head and said, “Wow, we are such children. We’ll grab at any excuse not to talk about us right now.”

My soup did a little flip-flop. “Um,” I said. “Yeah.” I swallowed. “We . . . we kissed.”

“There’s a song about what that means,” Karrin said.

“Yeah. But I don’t sing.”

She paused, as if her soup had just started doing gymnastics, too.

Then she spoke very carefully. “There are factors.”

“Like Kincaid,” I said, without any heat or resentment.

“He’s not one of them,” she said. “Not anymore.”

“Oh,” I said, a little surprised.

“It’s you, Harry.”

“Pretty sure I’m supposed to be a factor.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just . . . not against.” She took my hands. “I’ve seen things in you over the past day that . . . concern me.”

“Concern you.”

“They scare the holy loving fuck out of me,” she said calmly, by way of clarification. “This Winter Knight thing. You’re not changing. You’ve already changed.”

I felt a little chill. “What do you mean? Tonight? Hell, Karrin, when haven’t we done monsters and mayhem?”

“We’ve done it a lot,” she said. “But you’ve always been scared of it before. You did it anyway, but you thought it was scary. That’s the sane thing to think.”

“So?” I asked. “What was different about it tonight?”

“The way your erection kept pressing into my back,” she said wryly.

“Uh,” I said. “Really?”

“Yeah, a woman kind of notices.”

I hadn’t.

Gulp.

“It’s just . . . Karrin, look, that thing hardly ever does something that isn’t ill-advised. Doesn’t mean it’s going to make the calls.”

“I will never understand why men do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Talk about their genitals like they’re some other creature. Some kind of mind-controlling parasite.” She shook her head. “It’s just you, Harry. It’s all you. And part of you was really loving everything that was going on.”

“And that’s bad?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. Then she made a short, frustrated sound. “No. Maybe. It’s a change .”

“Do changes have to be bad?”

“Of course not. But I don’t know if this one is bad or not yet,” she said. “Harry . . . you are the strongest man I know, in more than one sense of the word. And because you are . . . it means that if you do change . . .”

“You think I’d be some kind of monster,” I said.

She shrugged, and squeezed my hands with hers. “I’m not saying this right. It’s not coming out right. But I felt you, when we were with the Hunt. I knew what was driving you, what you were feeling. And in the moment, I was down with it—and that scares me, too.”

“So am I too much of a monster or are you?” I asked. “I’m getting confused.”

“Join the club,” she said.

“You’re saying that the problem is, you think I could go bad,” I said.