Small Favor

Molly gave me a steady stare.

"Hey," I said, "how’s that homework I gave you coming?"

She stared some more. She’d learned from Charity, so she was pretty good at it. I’d gotten Charity’s stare plenty, though, so I’d been inoculated. She turned in silence and stalked out of the kitchen.

Thomas snorted quietly.

"What?" I asked him.

"You really think you’re going to avoid a fight?"

"I think I’m not going to hand them any of Michael’s family as hostages," I said. "Nicodemus has got something up his sleeve." As I spoke, I made sure the little holdout knife in its leather sheath was still secured up mine. "The only question is who is going to start the music and where."

"Where’s the meeting?"

I shrugged. "Neither party knows. Kincaid and the Archive are picking a neutral spot. They left my place early this morning. They’re going to call. But I doubt they’ll start it this soon. My money says that Nicodemus will want something in exchange for Marcone. That’s when he’ll make his move."

"At the exchange?" Thomas asked.

I nodded. "Try to grab the whole tamale."

"Uh-huh," Thomas said. "Speaking of, I came by your place after I was done playing tag with assassin midgets last night. Got a whiff of perfume on the doorway and checked through the window on the south side of the house." He gave me a sly grin. "About fucking time, man."

I frowned at him. "What?"

The grin faded. "You mean you still didn’t…Oh, empty night, Harry."

"What did you see?"

"I saw you, talking to a woman who had already taken half her clothes off for you, man."

"Oh, come on," I said. "Thomas, it wasn’t like that. She was just getting clean." I gave him the short version of the previous evening.

Thomas gave me a look of his own. Then he thwapped me gently upside the head.

"Hey!" I said.

"Harry," he said. "You were sleeping for hours. She had plenty of time to get clean. You think she sat around for all that time because she wasn’t tired just yet? You think she didn’t plan on you seeing her?"

I opened my mouth to answer and left it that way.

"For that matter, she could have settled down behind the couch, where you couldn’t have seen her if you did wake up," Thomas continued. "Not right by the fire, where she made what I thought was quite a nice little picture for you."

"I…I didn’t think she…"

He stared at me. "You didn’t make a move."

"She’s…Luccio is my commanding officer, man. We…we work together."

Thomas rolled his eyes. "That’s a twenty-first-century attitude, man. She’s a nineteenth-century girl. She doesn’t draw the lines the same way you and I do."

"But I never thought-"

"I can’t believe this," Thomas said. "Tell me you aren’t that stupid."

"Stupid?" I demanded.

"Yeah," he said bluntly. "Stupid. If she offered and you turned her down because you had a reason you didn’t want to, that’s one thing. Never realizing what she was talking about, though-that’s just pathetic."

"She never said-"

My brother threw up his hands. "What does a woman need to do, Harry? Rip her clothes off, throw herself on top of you, and shimmy while screaming, ‘Do me, baby!’?" He shook his head. "Sometimes you’re a frigging idiot."

"I…" I spread my hands. "She just went to sleep, man."

"Because she was being thoughtful of you, you knob. She didn’t want to come on too strong and make you uncomfortable, especially given that she’s older and more experienced than you are, and your commanding officer to boot. She didn’t want to make you feel pressured. So she left you plenty of room to turn her down gracefully." He rolled his eyes. "Read between the lines once in a while, man."

"I…" I sighed. "I’ve never been hit on by a woman a hundred and fifty years older than me," I said lamely.

"Try to use your brain around women once in a while, instead of just your juju stick." Thomas tossed me my staff.

I caught it. "Everyone’s a critic."

My brother purloined an apple from the basket on the island in the kitchen on his way to the door, glanced over his shoulder, and said, "Moron. Thank God Nicodemus is a man."

He left, and I stood there for a second being annoyed at him. I mean, sure, he was probably right-but that only made it more annoying, not less.

Something else he was right about: Anastasia had looked simply amazing in front of that fire.

Huh.

I hadn’t really thought of her in terms of her first name before. Just as "Luccio" or "the captain" or "Captain Luccio." Come to think of it, she’d been out of the dating game for even longer than I had. Could be that she hadn’t exactly been brimming with self-confidence last night, either.

The situation bore thinking upon.

Later.

For now, there was intrigue and inevitable betrayal afoot, and I had to focus.

I headed out to the workshop. The day was brighter than the one before, but the cloud cover still hadn’t gone. It had stopped snowing, though the wind kicked up enough powder to make it hard to tell. A check of the mirror had revealed that the tip of my nose, the tops of my ears, and the highest parts of my cheeks were rough and ruddy from exposure to cold and my brush with hypothermia. They looked like they’d suffered from a heavy sunburn. Added to my raccoon eyes, I thought them quite charming.

No wonder Luccio had thrown herself at me with such wanton abandon.

Dammit, Harry, focus, focus. Danger is afoot.

I opened the door to the workshop just as Michael folded his arms and said, "I still don’t see why I can’t go."

"Because we’re trying to avoid a fight," Luccio said calmly, "and an atmosphere of nervous fear is not going to foster a good environment for a peaceful exchange."

"I’m not afraid of them," Michael said.

"No," Luccio said, smiling faintly. "But they’re afraid of you."

"In any case," Gard said, "neither the Church nor the Knights are signatories of the Accords. Not to put it too bluntly, Sir Michael, but this is quite literally none of your business."

"You don’t know these people," Michael said quietly. "Not the way I do."

"I do," I said quietly. "At least in some ways."

Michael turned to give me a steady, searching look. "Maybe," he said quietly. "Do you think I should stay away?"