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.”
“Not if you aren’t ready,” I said.
“Harry, come on. So far we’ve been lucky. The Council hasn’t noticed me here. But with all of your Warden stuff, sooner or later somebody’s going to show up and find you rooming with a White Court vampire.”
I grimaced. “That would be a mess,” I agreed. “But I don’t mind chancing it if you need the time.”
“And I don’t mind getting out on my own to avoid making trouble for you with the Council,” he said. “Besides, I’m just covering my own ass. I don’t want to cross them, myself.”
“I wouldn’t let them-”
Thomas burst out in a brief, genuine laugh. “Christ, Harry. You’re my brother, not my mother. I’ll be fine. Now that I won’t be here to make you look bad, maybe you can finally start having girls over again.”
“Bite me, prettyboy,” I said. “You need any help moving or anything?”
“Nah.” He finished the beer. “I just have one box and one bag. Cab’s on the way.” He paused. “Unless you need my help with a case or something. I’ve got until Monday to move in.”
I shook my head. “I’m working with SI on this one, so I’ve got plenty of support. I think I can get things locked down by tonight.”
Thomas gave me a flat look. “Now you’ve done it.”
“What?” I asked.
“You predicted quick victory. Now it’s going to get hopelessly complicated. Jesus, don’t you know any better than that by now?”
I grinned at him. “You’d think that I would.”
I finished my beer and offered my brother my hand. He gripped it. “If you need anything, call me,” he said.
“Ditto.”
“Thank you, little brother,” he said quietly.
I blinked my eyes a couple of times. “Yeah. My couch is always open. Unless there’s a girl over.”
Outside, wheels crunched on gravel and a car horn sounded.
“There’s my ride,” he said. “Oh. Do you mind if I borrow the shotgun? Just until I can replace it.”
“Go ahead,” I told him. “I’ve still got my.44.”
“Thanks.” He bent over and swung the heavy footlocker onto one shoulder without effort. He picked up the sports bag, slung the strap over his other shoulder, and opened the door easily with one hand. He glanced back, winked at me, and shut the door behind him.
I stared at the closed door for a minute. Car doors opened and closed. Wheels crunched as the cab drove away, and my apartment suddenly seemed a couple of sizes too large. Mouse let out a long sigh and came over to me to nudge his head underneath my hand. I scratched his ears for a minute and said, “He’ll be all right. Don’t worry about him.”
Mouse sighed again.
“I’ll miss him too,” I told the dog. Then I shook myself and told Mouse, “Don’t get comfortable. We’re going to go visit Mac. You can meet the Summer Knight.”
I went around getting everything I needed for a formal meeting with the Summer Knight, called another cab, and sat in my too-quiet apartment wondering what it was my brother was hiding from me.
Chapter Nineteen
McAnally’s pub is on the bottom floor of a building not too far from my office. Chicago being what it is-essentially a giant swamp with a city sinking into it-the building had settled over the years, and to enter the pub you had to come in the door and take a couple of steps down. It’s a low-ceilinged room, or at least it’s always felt that way to me, and it offers the added attraction of several whirling ceiling fans at my eye level, just as I come in the door, and after stepping down into the room they’re still uncomfortably close to my head.
There’s a sign Mac’s got hanging up at the door that reads ACCORDED NEUTRAL GROUND. It means that the place was supposed to be a no-combat zone, under the terms laid out in the Unseelie Accords, the most recent and influential set of principles agreed upon by most of the various nations of the supernatural maybe ten or twelve years ago. By the terms of the Accords, there’s no fighting allowed between members of opposing nations in the bar, and we’re not supposed to attempt to provoke anybody, either. If things do get hostile, the Accords say you have to take it outside or risk censure by the signatory nations.
More importantly, at least to me, Mac was a friend. When I came to his place to eat, I considered myself a guest, and he my host. I’d abide by his declared neutrality out of simple respect, but it was good to know that the Accords were there in the background. Not every member of the supernatural community is as polite and neighborly as me.
Mac’s place is one big room. There are a baker’s dozen of thick wooden support pillars spread through the room, each of them carved with figures from Old World nursery tales. There’s a bar with thirteen stools, thirteen tables spread irregularly throughout the room, and the whole place has an informal, comfortable, asymmetrical sort of feel to it.
I came through the door armed for bear and projecting an attitude to match. I bore my staff in my left hand, and I’d slipped my new blasting rod, a shaft of wood two feet long and as thick as my two thumbs together, through my belt. My shield bracelet hung on my left hand, my force ring was on my right, and Mouse walked on my right side on his lead, looking huge and sober and alert.
A couple of people inside looked at my face and immediately tried to look like they had no interest in me. I wasn’t in a bad mood, but I wanted to look that way. Since the war with the Red Court had gotten rolling, I had learned the hard way that predators, human and otherwise, sense fear and look for weakness. So I walked into the place like I was hoping to kick someone in the neck, because it was a hell of a lot easier to discourage potential predators ahead of time than it was to slug it out with them when they followed me out afterward.