Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

His cold grey eyes were sunken, with dark rings beneath them. He wore jeans and a T-shirt with drink stains on it. He hadn’t even pretended to need a coat against the night’s cold, and breaking their easily maintained cover as human beings was something that the vampires of the White Court simply did not do. For God’s sake, he was barefoot. He’d just walked out like that, apparently to the nearest liquor store.

My brother took a bottle of whiskey—expensive whiskey—from a paper bag and let the bag fall to the floor. Then he sat down in the brown leather chair, pointed a remote at the television, and clicked it on. He clicked buttons and it skipped through several channels. He stopped clicking based, apparently, on his need to take a drink, and stopped on some kind of sports channel where they were playing rugby.

Then he simply sat, slugged from the bottle, and stared.

“It’s hard for the half-born,” Uriel observed in a quiet, neutral tone.

“What did you call him?” I asked. Belligerently. Which probably wasn’t really bright, but Thomas was my brother. I didn’t like the thought of anyone judging him.

“The scions of mortals and immortals,” Uriel said, unperturbed. “Halflings, half-bloods, half-born. The mortal road is difficult enough without adding a share of our burdens to it as well.”

I grunted. “That skinwalker got hold of him a while back. It broke something in him.”

“The naagloshii feel a need to prove that every creature they meet is as flawed and prone to darkness as they themselves proved to be,” Uriel said. “It . . . gives them some measure of false peace, I think, to lie to themselves like that.”

“You sound like you feel sorry for them,” I said, my voice hard.

“I feel sorry for all the pain they have, and more so for all that they inflict on others. Your brother offers ample explanation for my feelings.”

“What that thing did to Thomas. How is that different from what the Fallen did to me?”

“He didn’t die as a result,” Uriel said bluntly. “He still has choice.” He added, in a softer voice, “What the naagloshii did to him was not your fault.”

“I know that,” I said, not very passionately.

The door to the apartment opened, and a young woman entered. She was in her twenties and gorgeous. Her face and figure were appealing, glowing with vitality and health, and her hair was like white silk. She wore a simple dress and a long coat, and she slipped out of her shoes immediately upon entering.

Justine paused at the door and stared steadily at Thomas for a long moment.

“Did you eat anything today?” she asked.

Thomas flicked the television to another channel and turned up the volume.

Justine pressed her lips together. Then she walked with firm, purposeful strides into the apartment’s back bedroom.

She came out again a moment later, preceded by the click of her high heels. She was dressed in red lace underthings that left just enough to the imagination, and in the same shade of heels. She looked like the cover of a Victoria’s Secret catalog, and moved with a sort of subsurface, instinctive sensuality that could make dead men stir with interest. I had empirical evidence of the fact.

But I also knew that my brother couldn’t touch her. The touch of love, or anyone who was truly beloved, was anathema to the White Court, like holy water was for Hollywood vampires. Thomas and Justine had nearly killed themselves for the sake of saving the other, and ever since then, every time my brother touched her, he came away with second-degree burns.

“If you don’t feed soon, you’re going to lose control of the Hunger,” she said.

Thomas looked away from her. He turned up the television.

She moved one long, lovely leg and, with the toe of her pump, flicked off the main switch of the power strip the television was plugged into. It turned off, and the apartment was abruptly silent.

“You think you’re going to hurt my feelings if you take a lover, even though I’ve given you my blessing. You are irrational. And at this point, I’m not sure you’re capable of thinking clearly about the consequences of your actions.”

“I don’t need you telling me how to deal with the Hunger,” Thomas said in a low voice. He looked at her, and though he was at least a little angry, there was an aching, naked hunger in his gaze as his eyes traveled over her. “Why are you torturing me like this?”

“Because I’m tired of the way you’ve been torturing yourself since Harry died,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t your fault. And it hurts too much to watch you do this every day.”

“He was on my boat,” Thomas said. “If he hadn’t been there—”

“He’d have died somewhere else,” Justine said firmly. “He made enemies, Thomas. And he knew that. You knew that.”

“I should have been with him,” Thomas said. “I might have done something. Seen something.”

“And you might not have,” Justine replied. She shook her head. “No. It’s time, my love, to stop indulging your guilt this way.” Her lips quirked. “It’s just so . . . very emo. And I think we’ve had enough of that.”

Thomas blinked.

Justine walked over to him. I swear, her walk would have been enough to try the chaste thoughts of a saint. Even Uriel seemed to appreciate it. With that same slow, gentle sensuality, she bent over—itself quite a lovely sight—and took the bottle from Thomas. Then she walked back across the room and put it on a shelf.

“Love. I am going to put an end to this Hunger strike of yours tonight.”

Thomas’s eyes were growing paler by the heartbeat, but he frowned. “Love . . . you know that I can’t. . . .”

Justine arched a dark eyebrow at him. “You can’t . . . ?”

He ground his teeth. “Touch you. Have you. The protection of being united with someone who loves you will burn me—even though I was the one who gave it to you.”

“Thomas,” Justine said, “you are a dear, dear man. But there is a way around that, you know. A rather straightforward method for removing the protection of having had sex with you, my love.”

A key slipped into the apartment’s door, and another young woman entered. She had dark-shaded skin, and there was an exotic, reddish sheen to her straight black hair. Her dark chocolate eyes were huge and sultry, and she wore a black trench coat and black heels—and, it turned out, when the trench coat fell to the floor, that was the extent of her wardrobe.

“This is Mara,” Justine said, extending a hand, and the girl crossed the room to slide her arms around Justine. Justine gave Mara’s lips an almost sisterly kiss and then turned to Thomas, her eyes smoldering. “Now, love. I’m going to have her—without deeply committed love, perhaps, but with considerable affection and healthy desire. And after that, you’re going to be able to have me. And you will. And things will be much better.”

My brother’s eyes gleamed bright silver.

“Repeat,” Justine murmured, her lips caressing the words, “as necessary.”

I felt my cheeks heat up and coughed. Then I turned to Uriel and said, “Under the circumstances . . .”

The archangel looked amused at my discomfort. “Yes?”

I glanced at the girls, who were kissing again, and sighed. “Yeah, uh. I think my brother’s going to be fine.”

“Then you’re ready?” Uriel asked.

I looked at him and smiled faintly.

“I wondered when we’d get around to that,” he said, and once more extended his hand.

This time, we appeared in front of a Chicago home. There were a couple of ancient oak trees in the yard. The house was a white Colonial number with a white picket fence out front, and evidence of children in the form of several snowmen that were slowly sagging to their deaths in the warm evening air.