"Sounds swell," I croaked, barely able to get the words out. "Maybe we'll start with getting Thomas back."
She straightened her spine and leaned back from me, her beautiful pale face full of lust and hunger. She closed her eyes and stretched a little in place, the way cats sometimes will. It was a mind-numbing display of lithe femininity. She nodded slowly, then rose and regarded me with her usual cool detachment. "You're right, of course. Business first. You want me to help you."
"I want you to help yourself," I said. "We've both got the same problem."
"And that would be?" she asked.
"Traitors within the organization," I said. "Inciting conflict and destabilizing the balance of power."
She arched a raven black eyebrow. "The Warden is innocent?"
"Only if I can find the guy who set him up."
"You think there's a connection between your traitor and the skinwalker."
"And another connection that led me here," I said. "One of your folk paid that lawyer and rewired her head."
Lara's mouth twisted with distaste. "If that's true, then someone was hideously gauche. One never leaves such obvious and overt blocks behind-and especially not in a contact only one layer removed. Such things call too much attention to themselves."
"So," I said. "A White Court vampire who is gauche, overt, impatient. Oh, and who did not show up to defend the homestead when the skinwalker broke in. And who Thomas recently beat and humiliated in public."
"Madeline," Lara murmured.
"Madeline," I said. "I think whoever is pulling the strings on this operation is using her. I think we need to find her and follow the strings back to the puppeteer."
"How?"
I reached into my duster pocket and took out the sheet of paper with Morgan's supposed account on it, along with a photocopy of the huge deposit check. "Find out who set up this account. Find out where the money came from." I passed her the pages. "After that, see if you can't find some way to track down where Thomas's cell phone is."
"His cell phone?"
"Shagnasty said we could contact him by calling Thomas's phones. Isn't there some way that they can track where those things are?"
"It depends on a number of factors."
"Well I'm betting the skinwalker doesn't have a subscription to Popular Science. He'll probably have some kind of countermeasure for a tracking spell, but he might not even realize that it's possible to physically trace the phone."
"I'll see what I can find out," she said. One of the medics approached us and stood back respectfully. Lara turned to the young man. "Yes?"
He held up a clipboard. "The triage report you wanted."
She held out her hand. He passed her the clipboard as if he didn't want to move his feet too close to her. Lara scanned over the topmost page, and murmured, "Hennesy and Callo both have broken backs?"
"It'll take an X-ray to confirm it," the medic said nervously. "But from what I was told, the, uh, the attacker just broke them over his knee and threw them down. They're paralyzed. Probably permanently."
"And Wilson lost both eyes," Lara murmured.
The medic avoided looking at her. "Yes, ma'am."
"Very well," Lara said. "Take Hennesy to Natalia's chambers. Callo will go to Elisa."
"Yes, ma'am. Should I send Wilson to the infirmary?"
Lara stared at him with absolutely no expression on her lovely face. Then she said, "No, Andrew. I'll come for him in a moment." She held out the clipboard, and the medic took it and hurried away.
I watched Lara for a moment and said, "You're going to kill those men. When Elisa and Natalia wake up..."
"They will feed and their lives will be spared. Annoying as it may be to lose what I invested in those men, I can replace hired guns," she said. "I cannot so easily replace members of my family and my House. As their leader, it is my responsibility to provide adequate care and sustenance in times of need-particularly when loyalty to the House is what created that need."
"They're your own men," I said.
"That was before they became useless to the House," she replied. "They know too much of our internal affairs to be allowed to leave. Lives must be lost if my kin are to survive their injuries. Rather than inflict that upon one who can still be of use to us, I preserve lives by seeing to it that these men serve us one last time."
"Yeah. You're a real humanitarian. A regular Mother Teresa."
She turned that flat, empty gaze to me again. "At what point did you forget that I am a vampire, Dresden? A monster. A habitually neat, polite, civil, and efficient monster." Her eyes drifted down the hallway, to where a well-muscled young man was being helped to sit down, while a medic secured bandages over his eyes. Lara stared intently at him, the color of her eyes lightening to silver, and her lips parted slightly. "I am what I am."
I felt sick to my stomach. I pushed myself to my feet, and said, "So am I."
She glanced obliquely at me. "Is that a threat, Dresden?"
I shook my head. "Just a fact. One day I'm going to take you down."
Her eyes went back to the wounded man, her lips shifting to one side in a smirk. "One day," she murmured. "But not today."
"No. Not today."
"Is there anything else I can do for you, wizard mine?"
"Yeah," I said.
She glanced at me and raised an eyebrow.
"I need a car."
Chapter Twenty-eight
I sort of shambled up one floor and down a wing to the Château's infirmary, escorted there by a guard who was being very careful not to limp on a wounded leg. The skinwalker had smacked my bean against hardwood and knocked something loose. I felt fairly confident that if I jumped up and down and wiggled my head, my brain would slosh squishily around the inside of my skull.
Not that I was going to be doing any of those things. Walking was hard enough.
In the infirmary, I found a white-coated young woman tending to the wounded. She moved with the brisk professional manner of a doctor, and was just finishing seeing to Justine's injuries. The young woman was laid out on a bed, her midsection swathed in bandages, her eyes glazed with the distant, peaceful expression of someone on good drugs.
Anastasia sat on the bed next to Justine's, her back straight, her expression calm. Her right arm was bound up close against her body in a black cloth sling. She came to her feet as I entered the room. She looked a little pale and shaky, but she stood without leaning on her slender wooden staff. "We're leaving now?"