Jim Butcher - Proven Guilty

“This is what happens when I don’t wear the coat,” I opined. “People start thinking I’m not a superhero.”

She snorted and we started back toward her car. “I’m serious,” she said. “You can’t be everywhere at once. You can’t stop all the bad things that are going to happen.”

“Doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t try,” I said.

“Maybe. But you take it personal. You tear yourself up over it. Like with that girl just now.” She shook her head. “I hate to see you like that. You’ve got worries enough without beating yourself up for things you didn’t do.”

I shrugged and fell quiet until we got back to the car. Then I said, “I just can’t stand it. I can’t stand seeing people get hurt like that. I hate it.”

She regarded me steadily and nodded. “Me too.”

Mouse thumped his head against my leg and leaned on me so that I could feel his warmth.

That settled, we all got into Murphy’s car, so that I could track down I knew not what, just as soon as I got done opening an entirely new can of worms with the Summer Knight.

At my request, Murphy dropped me off a couple of blocks from home so that I could give Mouse at least a little chance to stretch his legs. He seemed appreciative and walked along sniffing busily, his tail fanning the air. I kept a watch out behind me, meanwhile, but my unknown tail did not appear. I kept an eye out for any other people or vehicles that might have been following me, in case he was working with a team, but I didn’t spot anyone suspicious. That didn’t stop me from keeping a paranoid eye over my shoulder until we made it back to the old boardinghouse, and I went down the stairs to my apartment door.

I muttered my defensive wards down, temporarily neutralizing powerful constructions of magic that I had placed around my apartment shortly after the beginning of the war with the Red Court. I opened the dead bolt on the steel door, twisted the handle, and then slammed my shoulder into the door as hard as I could to open it.

The door flew open to a distance of five or six whole inches. I kicked it a few times to open it the rest of the way, then tromped in with Mouse and looked up to find the barrel of a chopped-down shotgun six inches from my face.

“Those things are illegal, you know,” I said.

Thomas scowled at me from the other end of the shotgun and lowered the weapon. I heard a metallic click as he put the safety back on. “You’ve got to get that door fixed. Every time you come in it sounds like an assault team.”

“Boy,” I replied, letting Mouse off his lead. “One little siege and you get all paranoid.”

“What can I say.” He turned and slipped the shotgun into his bulging sports bag, which sat on the floor by the door. “I never counted on starring in my own personal zombie movie.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” I said. Mister flew across the room and pitched all thirty pounds of himself into a friendly shoulder block against my legs. “It was my movie. You were a spear-carrier. A supporting role, tops.”

“It’s nice to be appreciated,” he said. “Beer?”

“Sure.”

Thomas sauntered over to the icebox. He was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a white cotton T-shirt. I frowned at the sports bag. His trunk, an old military-surplus footlocker, sat on the ground beside the bag, padlocked shut. Between the trunk and the bag, I figured pretty much every material possession he owned now sat on the floor by my door. He came back over to me with a couple of cold brown bottles of Mac’s ale, and flicked the tops off of both of them at the same time with his thumbs. “Mac would kill you if he knew you were chilling it.”

I took my bottle, studying his face, but his expression gave away little. “Mac can come over here and install air-conditioning, then, if he wants me to drink it warm in the middle of summer.”

Thomas chuckled. We clinked bottles and drank.

“You’re leaving,” I said a minute later.

He took another sip, and said nothing.

“You weren’t going to tell me,” I said.

He rolled a shoulder in a shrug. Then he nodded at an envelope on the fireplace’s mantel. “My new address and phone number. There’s some money in there for you.”

“Thomas…” I said.

He swigged beer and shook his head. “No, take it. You offered to let me stay with you until I got on my feet. I’ve been here almost two years. I owe you.”

“No,” I said.

He frowned. “Harry, please.”

I stared at him for a minute, and struggled with a bunch of conflicting emotions. Part of me was childishly relieved that I would have my tiny apartment to myself again. A much larger part of me felt suddenly empty and worried. Still another part felt a sense of excitement and happiness for Thomas. Ever since he started crashing on my couch, Thomas had been recovering from wounds of his own. For a while there, I had feared that despair and self-loathing were going to cause him to implode, and I had somehow known that his desire to get out on his own again was a sign of recovery. Part of that recovery, I was sure, was Thomas regaining a measure of pride and self-confidence. That’s why he’d left the money on the mantel. Pride. I couldn’t turn down the money without taking that pride from him.

Except for scattered memories of my father, Thomas was the only blood family I’d ever had. Thomas had faced danger and death beside me without hesitation, had guarded me in my sleep, tended me when I’d been injured, and once in a while he’d even cooked. We got on each other’s nerves sometimes, sure, but that hadn’t ever altered the fundamental fact of who we were to one another.

We were brothers.

Everything else was temporary.

I met his eyes and asked, quietly, “Are you going to be all right?”

He smiled a little and shrugged. “I think so.”

I tilted my head. “Where’d the money come from?”

“My job.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “You found a job you could hold?”

He winced a little.

“Sorry,” I said. “But… I know you’d had so much trouble.” Specifically, he’d been subjected to the amorous attentions of various fellow employees who had been drawn to him to such a degree that it had practically been assault. Being an incubus was probably easier at night clubs and celebrity parties than at a drive-through or a cash register. “You found something?”

“Something without people,” he said. He smiled easily as he spoke, but I sensed an undercurrent of deception in it. He wasn’t telling me the whole truth. “I’ve been there a while.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “Where?”

He evaded me effortlessly. “A place down off Lake View. I’ve finally earned a little extra. I just wanted to pay you back.”

“You must be getting all kinds of overtime,” I said. “As near as I can figure it, you’ve been putting in eighty- and ninety-hour weeks.”

He shrugged, his smile a mask. “Working hard.”

I took another sip of beer (which was excellent, even cold) and thought it over. If he didn’t want to talk about it, he wasn’t going to talk about it. Pushing him wouldn’t make him any more likely to tell me. I didn’t get the sense that he was in trouble, and while he had one hell of a poker face, I’d lived with him long enough to see through it most of the time. Thomas hadn’t ever supported himself before. Now that he was sure he could do it, it had become something he valued.

Getting out on his own was something he needed to do. I wouldn’t be doing him any favors by interfering.

“You sure you’ll be okay?” I asked him.

Something showed through the mask, then-embarrassment. “I’ll be all right. It’s past time for me to get out on my own.”