Jim Butcher - Cold Days

“What are you talking about?” I said.

Butters held up the metal bowl, tilting it so that I could see inside. Several tiny, bright, sharp, bloodied pieces of metal were inside. “Barbs from those fishhooks,” he said. “Several of them broke off in your skin.”

I grunted. My collapse in the car made more sense now. “Yeah,” I said. “Any kind of iron gets under my skin, it seems to disagree with the Winter Knight’s bundle of awesome. Takes the gumption right out of me.” I started to sit up.

Butters very calmly put his hands on my chest and shoved me back down. Hard. I blinked at him.

“I don’t do assertive much,” he said apologetically. “I don’t really like doctoring people who are still alive. But if I’m going to do it, dammit, I’m going to do it right. So. You stay put until I say you can get up. Got it?”

“I, uh . . .” I said. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Smart,” Butters said. “You have two giant bruises where the lower halves of your arms usually go. You’re covered in lacerations, and a couple need sutures. Some are already inflamed. I need to clean them all out. That’ll work best if you hold still.”

“I can do that,” I said. “But I’m feeling all kinds of better, man. Look.” I held up my hands and wiggled my fingers. They felt a little tight. I glanced down at them. They were a mottled shade of purple and swollen. My wrists and forearms were blotchy with bruises and swollen, too.

“Harry, I once saw an addict pound his fist into concrete until he’d broken nearly every bone in his hand. He never even blinked.”

“I’m not on drugs,” I said.

“No? There’s damage to your body’s machinery. Just because you aren’t feeling it doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” Butters said firmly. “I’ve got a theory.”

“What theory?” I asked, as he got to work on the cuts.

“Well, let’s say you’re a faerie queen with a need for a mortal enforcer. You want the guy to be effective, but you don’t want to make him too powerful to handle. It seems reasonable to me that you might fiddle with his pain threshold. He’s not actually any more indestructible, but he feels like he is. He’ll ignore painful things like . . . like knife wounds or . . .”

“Gut shots?” Thomas suggested.

“Or gut shots, right,” Butters said. “And most of the time, that is probably a huge advantage. He can Energizer Bunny his way right through your enemies—and then, when it’s over, there he is. He feels great, but in reality he’s all screwed up and it’s going to take his body weeks or months to repair itself. If you don’t like the job he’s done, well, there he is all weakened and vulnerable. And if you do like it, you just let him rest and use him again another day.”

“Wow, that’s cynical,” I said. “And calculating.”

“I’m in the right ballpark, aren’t I?” Butters asked.

I sighed. “Yeah, it sounds . . . very Mab-like.” Especially if what Maeve had said about me being dangerous to Mab was true.

Butters nodded sagely. “So, as strong or quick or as fast to heal as it makes you, just remember: You aren’t any more invincible to trauma than before. You just don’t notice it when something happens. . . .” He was quiet for a moment and then asked, “You didn’t even feel that, did you?”

“Feel what?” I asked, lifting my head.

He put the heel of his hand on my forehead and pushed it down again. “I just stitched up a three-inch-long slice over one of your ribs. No anesthetic.”

“Huh,” I said. “No, I didn’t. . . . I mean, I felt something; it just wasn’t uncomfortable.”

“Supports my theory,” he said, nodding. “I already did that cut over your eye while you were out. That’s a beauty. Right down to the bone.”

“Courtesy of Captain Hook,” I said. “He had this bitty sword.” I glanced up at Thomas. “We’ve still got Hook, right?”

“He’s being held prisoner on a ceramic-lined cookie sheet in the oven,” Thomas said. “I figured he couldn’t jigger his way out of a bunch of steel, and it would give him something to think about before we start asking questions.”

“That’s an awful thing to do to one of the Little Folk, man,” I said.

“I’m planning to start making a pie in front of him.”

“Nice.”

“Thank you.”

“How long was I out?” I asked.

“About an hour,” Thomas said.

Butters snorted. “I’d have been here sooner but someone broke into my house last night and I was cleaning up the mess.”

I winced. “Uh, yeah. Right. Sorry about that, man.”

He shook his head. “I’m still kind of freaking out that you’re here at all, honestly. I mean, we held your funeral. We talked to your ghost. It doesn’t get much more gone than that.”

“Sorry to put a speed bump on your mental train track.”

“It’s more of a roller coaster, lately, but a good mind is flexible,” Butters said. “I’ll deal with it; don’t worry.” He worked for a moment more before adding, in a low murmur, “Unlike some other people.”

“Eh?” I asked him.

Butters just looked up across the large apartment and then went back to work.

I followed the direction of his gaze.

Karrin sat curled up in a chair beside the fireplace, on the far side of the big apartment, her arms wrapped around her knees, her head leaning against the chair’s back. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open a little. She was evidently asleep. The gentle snoring supported that theory.

“Oh,” I said. “Uh. Yeah. She didn’t seem to handle it real well when I was ghosting around. . . .”

“Understatement,” Butters breathed. “She’s been through a lot. And none of it made her a bit less prickly.”

Thomas made a low sound of agreement.

“She’s run most of her friends off,” Butters said. “Never talks to cops anymore. Hasn’t been speaking to her family. Just the Viking crew down at the BFS. I’m hanging in there. So is Molly. I guess maybe we both know that she’s in a bad place.”

“And now here I am,” I said. “Man.”

“What?” Thomas asked.

I shook my head. “You gotta know Karrin.”

“Karrin, eh?” Thomas asked.

I nodded. “She’s real serious about order. A man dying, she can understand. A man coming back . That’s different.”

“Isn’t she Catholic?” Thomas asked. “Don’t they have a guy?”

I eyed him. “Yeah. And that makes it so much easier to deal with.”

“Medically speaking,” Butters said, “I’m pretty sure you were never dead. Or at least, never dead and beyond revival.”

“What, were you there?” I asked.

“Were you?” he countered.

I grunted. “From my end, it went black, and then I woke up. Ghosty. Then it went white and I woke up. Hurting. Then did a bunch of physical therapy to recover.”

“Wow, seriously, PT?” Butters asked. “How long?”

“Eleven weeks.”

“Yeah, that really leans things toward ‘coma’ for me.”

“And all the angels and ghost stuff,” I said. “Which way does that make them lean? In your medical opinion?”

Butters pressed his lips together and said, “No one likes a smart-ass, Harry.”

“I never liked him anyway,” Thomas confided to him.

“Why don’t you do something useful?” I said. “Go outside; see if anyone is lurking out there, waiting to kill us the second we walk out.”

“Because Molly has to go with me each and every time or they won’t let me back in, and she’s out dealing with your scouts,” Thomas said. “You worried about that faerie crew using your blood to track you?”

“Not sure. Using it is trickier than most people think,” I said. “You’ve got to keep it from drying out, and you’ve got to get it undiluted. It was raining, so if someone wanted my blood, they’d have had to get to it pretty quick—and it looked like Sith was keeping them busy.”