I made a small frustrated sound. "Why the hell would you assume something like that?"
She narrowed her eyes as she stared at me. "Why would Morgan flee to the home of the one wizard in the Council who had the most reason to dislike him?" she asked. "I believe your words were: 'that would be crazy.' "
I winced. Ouch. "Uh," I said. "Yeah. I ..."
"You lied to me," she said in a level tone. Most people probably wouldn't have noticed the undertone of anger and pain in her voice, or the almost imperceptible pause between each word. I could see bricks being mortared into place behind her eyes and I looked away from her.
The room was completely silent, until Morgan said, in a small and broken voice, "What?"
I looked up at him. His hard sour face had gone gray. His expression was twisted up in shock and surprise, like that of a small child discovering the painful consequences of gravity for the first time.
"Ana," he said, almost choking on the words. "You ... you think that I ... How could you think that I would ... ?"
He turned his face away. It couldn't have been a tear. Not from Morgan. He wouldn't shed tears if he had to execute his own mother.
But for a fraction of a second, something shone on one of his cheeks.
Anastasia rose and walked over to Morgan. She knelt down by him and put her hand on his head. "Donald," she said gently, "we've been betrayed by those we trusted before. It wouldn't be the first time."
"That was them," he said unsteadily, not looking up. "This is me."
She stroked his hair once. "I never thought you had done it of your own free will, Donald," she whispered quietly. "I thought someone had gotten into your mind. Held a hostage against your cooperation. Something."
"Who could they have held hostage?" Morgan said in a bitter voice. "There's no one. For that very reason. And you know it."
She sighed and closed her eyes.
"You knew his wards," Morgan went on. "You've been through them before. Often. You opened them in under a second when you came in. You have a key to his apartment."
She said nothing.
His voice turned heavy and hollow. "You're involved. With Dresden."
Anastasia blinked her eyes several times. "Donald," she began.
He looked up at her, his eyes empty of tears or pain or anything but weariness. "Don't," he said. "Don't you dare."
She met his eyes. I'd never seen such gentle pain on her face. "You're running a fever. Donald, please. You should be in bed."
He laid his head on the rug and closed his eyes. "It doesn't matter."
"Donald-"
"It doesn't matter," he repeated dully.
Anastasia started crying in silence. She stayed next to Morgan, stroking her hand over his mottled silver-and-brown hair.
An hour later, Morgan was unconscious in bed again. Molly was down in the lab, pretending to work on potions with the trapdoor closed. I was sitting in the same spot with an empty can of Coke.
Anastasia came out of the bedroom and shut the door silently behind her. Then she leaned back against it. "When I saw him," she said, "I thought he had come here to hurt you. That he had learned about the two of us and wanted to hurt you."
"You," I asked, "and Morgan?"
She was quiet for a moment before she said, "I never allowed it to happen. It wasn't fair to him."
"But he wanted it anyway," I said.
She nodded.
"Hell's bells," I sighed.
She folded her arms over her stomach, never looking up. "Was it any different with your apprentice, Harry?"
Molly hadn't always been the grasshopper she was today. When I'd first begun teaching her, she'd assumed that I would be teaching her all sorts of things that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with her being naked. And that had been more than all right with her.
Just not with me.
"Not much," I acknowledged. "But he hasn't been your apprentice for a long, long time."
"I have always been of the opinion that romantic involvement was a vulnerability I could not afford. Not in my position."
"Not always," I said, "apparently."
She exhaled slowly. "It was a much easier opinion to hold in my previous body. It was older. Less prone to ..."
"Life?" I suggested.
She shrugged. "Desire. Loneliness. Joy. Pain."
"Life," I said.
"Perhaps." She closed her eyes for a moment. "When I was young, I reveled in love, Harry. In passion. In discovery and in new experiences and in life." She gestured down at herself. "I never realized how much of it I had forgotten until Corpsetaker left me like this." She opened her pained eyes and looked at me. "I didn't realize how much I missed it until you reminded me. And by then, Morgan wasn't ... He was like I had been. Detached."
"In other words," I said, "he'd made himself more like you. Patterned himself after you. And because he'd done that, after your change he wasn't capable of giving you what you wanted."
She nodded.
I shook my head. "A hundred years is a long time to carry a torch," I said. "That one must burn like hell."
"I know. And I never wanted to hurt him. You must believe me."
"Here's where you say, 'The heart wants what the heart wants,' " I said.
"Trite," she said, "but true all the same." She turned until her right shoulder leaned on the door, facing me. "We should talk about where this leaves us."
I toyed with the can of Coke. "Before we can do that," I said, "we have to talk about Morgan and LaFortier."
She exhaled slowly. "Yes."
"What do you intend to do?" I asked.
"He's wanted by the Council, Harry," she said in a gentle voice. "I don't know how he's managed to avoid being located by magical means, but sooner or later, in hours or days, he will will be found. And when that happens, you and Molly will be implicated as well. You'll both die with him." She took a deep breath. "And if I don't go to the Council with what I know, I'll be right there beside you." be found. And when that happens, you and Molly will be implicated as well. You'll both die with him." She took a deep breath. "And if I don't go to the Council with what I know, I'll be right there beside you."
"Yeah," I said.
"You really think he's innocent?" she asked.
"Of LaFortier's murder," I said. "Yes."
"Do you have proof?"
"I've found out enough to make me think I'm right. Not enough to clear him-yet."
"If it wasn't Morgan," she said quietly, "then the traitor is still running around loose."
"Yeah."
"You're asking me to discard the pursuit of a suspect with strong evidence supporting his guilt in favor of chasing a damn ghost, Harry. Someone we've barely been able to prove exists, much less identify. Not only that, you're asking me to gamble your life, your apprentice's life, and my own against finding this ghost in time."
"Yes. I am."
She shook her head. "Everything I've ever learned as a Warden tells me that it's far more likely that Morgan is guilty."
"Which brings us back to the question," I said. "What are you going to do?"
Silence yawned.
She pushed off the door and came to sit down on the chair facing my seat on the couch.
"All right," she said. "Tell me everything."
Chapter Twenty-four
"This is not how diplomacy is done," Anastasia said as we approached the Chateau Raith.
"You're in America now," I said. "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer."
Anastasia's mouth curved up at one corner. "You brought a sandwich?"
"Who do I look like, Kissinger?"
I'd been to Chateau Raith before, but it had always been at night, or at least twilight. It was an enormous estate most of an hour away from Chicago proper, a holding of House Raith, the current ruling house of the White Court. The Chateau itself was surrounded by at least half a mile of old-growth forest that had been converted to an idyllic, even gardenlike, state, like you sometimes see on centuries-old European properties. Huge trees and smooth grass beneath them dominated, with the occasional, suspiciously symmetrical outgrowth of flowering plants, often located in the center of golden shafts of sunlight that came down through the green-shadowed trees at regular intervals.
The grounds were surrounded by a high fence, topped with razor wire that couldn't be readily seen from the outside. The fence was electrically charged, too, and the latest surveillance cameras-seemingly little more than glass beads with wires running out of them-monitored every inch of the exterior.
At night, it made for one extremely creepy piece of property. On a bright summer afternoon, it just looked ... pretty. Very, very wealthy and very, very pretty. Like the Raiths themselves, the grounds were only scary when seen at the right time.
A polite security guard with the general bearing of ex-military had watched us get out of a cab, called ahead, and let us in with hardly a pause. We'd walked past the gate and up the drive through Little Sherwood until we reached the Chateau proper.
"How good are her people?" Anastasia asked.
"I'm sure you've read the file."
"Yes," she said, as we started up the steps. "But I'd prefer your personal assessment."
"Since Lara's taken over the hiring," I said, "they've improved significantly. I don't think they're fed upon to keep them under control anymore."
"And you base that assessment on what?"
I shrugged. "The before and after. The last batch of hired muscle was ... just out of touch. Willing to die at a moment's notice, but not exactly the sharpest tacks in the box. Pretty and vacant. And pretty vacant." I gestured back at the entrance. "That guy back there had a newspaper nearby. And he was eating lunch when we showed up. Before, they just stood around like mannequins with muscle. I'm betting that most of them are ex-military. The hard-core kind, not the get-my-college-funded kind."
"Officially," she said, as we reached the top of the steps, "they remain untested."
"Or maybe Lara's just smart enough not to show them off until it's necessary to use them," I said.
"Officially," Anastasia said dryly, "she remains untested."
"You didn't see her killing super ghouls with a couple of knives the way I did during the White Court coup," I said. I rapped on the door with my staff and adjusted the hang of my grey cloak. "I know my word isn't exactly respected among the old guard Wardens, but take it from me. Lara Raith is one smart and scary bitch."
Anastasia shook her head with a faint smile. "And yet you're here to hold a gun to her head."
"I'm hoping that if we apply some pressure, we'll get something out of her," I said. "I'm low on options. And I don't have time to be anything but direct."
"Well," she said, "at least you're playing to your strengths."
A square-jawed, flat-topped man in his thirties opened the door. He was wearing a casual beige sports suit accessorized by a gun in a shoulder holster and what was probably a Kevlar vest beneath his white tee. If that wasn't enough, he had some kind of dangerous-looking little machine gun hanging from a nylon strap over one shoulder.
"Sir," he said with a polite nod. "Ma'am. May I take your cloaks?"
"Thank you," Anastasia said. "But they're part of the uniform. If you could convey us directly to Ms. Raith, that would be most helpful."
The security man nodded his head. "Before you accept the hospitality of the house, I would ask you both to give me your personal word that you are here in good faith and will offer no violence while you are a guest."
Anastasia opened her mouth, as if she intended to readily agree, but I stepped slightly in front of her and said, "Hell, no."
The security man narrowed his eyes and looked a little less relaxed. "Excuse me?"