“Remind me to lecture you about the interest rate on borrowed trouble,” I said. “Simplest explanation is the one to go with until we find out something to the contrary.”
Murphy nodded. “If this creature hit the convention twice, it will probably do it again. Seems to me that maybe we should advise them to close it down. No convention, no attacks, right?”
“Too late for that,” I said.
She tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“The creature feeds on fear. It’s attracted to it,” I said. “If they shut down the convention, it will scare a lot of people.”
“News reports will do that, too.”
“Not the same way,” I said. “A news report might unsettle some folks. But the people at the convention here, the ones who knew the victims, who were in the same buildings-it will hit them harder. It will make what happened here something dangerous. Something real.”
“If the attacker is that dangerous, they should be afraid,” Murphy said.
“Except that intense fear will attract the attacker again,” I said. “In fact, enough of it would attract more predators of the same nature.”
“More?” Murphy said, her voice sharp.
“Like blood in the water draws in sharks,” I said. “Only instead of being at the convention, the targets will be scattered all over Chicago. Right now, the only advantage we have is that we know generally where the thing is going to strike again. If the convention closes, we lose that advantage.”
“And the next chance we get to pick up its trail will be when the next corpse turns up.” Murphy shook her head. “What do you need from me?”
“For now, a ride home,” I said. “I’ll have some consulting to do, and…” I suddenly ground my teeth. “Dammit, I almost forgot.”
“What?”
“I’ve got a lunch meeting I can’t miss.”
“More important than this?” she asked.
“I can’t let it slide,” I said. “Council stuff. Maybe important.”
She shook her head. “You take too much responsibility on yourself, Harry. You’re just one man. A good man, but you’re still only human.”
“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.
Chapter Eighteen
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.