I nodded. “You remember.”
“I try to keep track of the bad guys,” she said. “And on an entirely unrelated note . . . I hear you belong to Mab now.”
The words hit me like a slap in the face. Karrin had been a detective for a long time. She knew how to manipulate a suspect.
I guessed I was a suspect, then.
“I’m not a cocker spaniel,” I said quietly.
“I’m not saying you are,” she said. “But there are creatures out there that can do things to your head, and we both know it.”
“You think that’s what happened?” I asked. “That Mab’s bent my brain into new shapes?”
Her expression softened. “I think she’ll do it slower,” she said. “You’re . . . an abrupt sort of person. Your solutions to problems tend to be decisive and to happen quickly. It’s how you think. I’m willing to believe that you found some kind of way to prevent her from just . . . I don’t know. Rewriting you.”
“I told her if she tried it, I’d start being obstreperous.”
“God,” Karrin said. “You haven’t started?”
She half smiled. For a second, it was almost okay.
But then her face darkened again. “I think she’ll do it slower. An inch at a time, when you aren’t looking. But even if she doesn’t . . .”
“What?”
“I’m not angry at you, Harry,” she said. “I don’t hate you. I don’t think you’ve gone bad. A lot of people have fallen into the trap you did. People better than either of us.”
“Uh,” I said. “The evil-Queen-of-Faerie trap?”
“Christ, Harry,” Murphy said quietly. “No one just starts giggling and wearing black and signs up to become a villainous monster. How the hell do you think it happens?” She shook her head, her eyes pained. “It happens to people. Just people. They make questionable choices, for what might be very good reasons. They make choice after choice, and none of them is slaughtering roomfuls of saints, or murdering hundreds of baby seals, or rubber-room irrational. But it adds up. And then one day they look around and realize that they’re so far over the line that they can’t remember where it was.”
I looked away from her. Something in my chest hurt. I didn’t say anything.
“Do you understand that?” she asked me, her voice even more quiet. “Do you understand how treacherous the ground you’re standing on has become?”
“Perfectly,” I said.
She nodded a few times. Then she said, “I suppose that’s something.”
“That all?” I asked her. “I mean . . . is that the only reason you came in here?”
“Not quite,” she said.
“You don’t trust me,” I said.
Her eyes didn’t meet mine, and didn’t avoid them either. “That will depend largely on the next few minutes.”
I inhaled through my nose and out again, trying to stay calm, clear, even. “Okay,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”
“The skull,” she said. “I know what it is. So does Butters. And . . . it’s too powerful to be left in the wrong hands.”
“Meaning mine?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you what I know. I know you broke into his house when he was at work and took it. I know you left Andi with cuts and bruises. And I know you wrecked the place a bit along the way.”
“You think that means I’ve gone bad?”
She tilted her head slightly to one side, as if considering. “I think you were probably operating under some kind of harebrained lone-hero rationale. Let’s say . . . that I’m concerned that you have enough things to juggle already.”
I thought about snapping at her but . . . she had a point. Bob was a resource far too powerful to be allowed to fall into the hands of anyone who wouldn’t use him responsibly. And I’d been doing the Winter Knight gig full speed for about twelve hours, and I’d already had some disturbing realizations about myself. Twelve hours.
What would I be like after twelve days? Twelve months? What if Karrin was right, and Mab got to me slow? Or worse: What if I was just human? She was right about that, too. Power corrupts—and the people being corrupted never seem to be aware that it’s happening. I’d just told Butters that I wasn’t magically bulletproof. What kind of arrogant ass would I be if I assumed I was morally infallible? That I would be wise and smart and savvy enough to avoid the pitfalls of power, traps that had turned better people than me into something horrible?
I didn’t want her to be right. I didn’t like the idea at all.
But denial is for children. I had to be a grown-up.
“Okay,” I said, my throat tight. “Bob’s in that satchel out in the living room. Give him back to Butters.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I found where you left the swords.”
She meant the two Swords of the Cross, two of three holy blades meant to fill the hands of the righteous in the battle against true evil. I’d wound up babysitting them, being their custodian. Mostly they’d sat around in my place gathering dust. “Yeah?” I said.
“I know how powerful they are,” she said. “And I know how vulnerable they are in the wrong hands. I’m not telling you where they are. I’m not giving them back to you. I’m not negotiating.”
I exhaled slowly. A slow, hard anger rolled into a knot in my guts. “Those . . . were my responsibility,” I said.
“They were,” she said. There was something absolutely rigid in her blue eyes. “Not anymore.”
The room suddenly felt too hot. “Suppose I disagree.”
“Suppose you do,” she said. “What would you do if you were in my position?”
I don’t remember moving. I just remember slamming the heel of my hand into the door six inches from the side of Karrin’s head. It sounded like a gunshot, and left me standing over her, breathing harder, and the difference in our sizes was damned near comical. If I wanted to, I could wrap my fingers almost all the way around her throat. Her neck would break if I squeezed.
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t move. She looked up at me and waited.
It hit me, what I was thinking, what my instincts were screaming at me to do, and I suddenly sagged, bowing my head. My breath came out in uneven jerks. I closed my eyes, tried to get it under control.
And then she touched me.
She rested her hand lightly on my battered forearm. Moving carefully, as if I were made of glass, her fingers slid down my arm to my hand. She took it gently and lowered it, not trying to force anything. Then she took my right hand in her left. We stood that way for a moment, our hands clasped, our heads bowed. She seemed to understand what I was going through. She didn’t push me. She just held my hands and waited until my breathing had steadied again.
“Harry,” she said quietly then. “Do you want my trust?”
I nodded tightly, not trusting myself to speak.
“Then you’re going to have to give me some. I’m on your side. I’m trying to help you. Let it go.”
I shuddered.
“Okay,” I said.
Her hands felt small and warm in mine.
“I . . . we’ve been friends a long time,” I said. “Since that troll on the bridge.”
“Yes.”
My eyes blurred up, stupid things, and I closed them. “I know I’ve screwed up,” I said. “I’m going to have to live with that. But I don’t want to lose you.”
In answer, Murphy lifted my right hand and pressed it against her cheek. I didn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t hear it in her voice or her breathing, but I felt a slight dampness touch my hand.
“I don’t want to lose you, either,” she said. “That scares me.”
I didn’t trust myself to speak for a long time.
She lowered my hands slowly, and very gently let me go. Then she turned to the door.
“Karrin,” I said. “What if you’re right? What if I change? I mean . . . go really bad.”
She looked back enough for me to see her profile, and a quiet, sad smile.
“I work with a lot of monsters these days.”
Chapter Twenty-eight