“Nnnnngh,” I said and mopped my face with one hand. “Okay, look. If something does happen, I’m going to have the doors ready to open. You get your people behind the walls if it even looks like things are going to get rowdy. Okay?”
He nodded, smiling at me. “Of course. Of course, thank you.”
He took up his ownCoexistsign and joined in with the others, singing about seeing beauty before and behind and all around, and I wanted to scream.
I turned to Bear. “Work with the Knights, huh? Make sure the doors are ready to open for them.”
“Strictly speaking,” Bear noted calmly, “that’s terrible siegecraft on our part. The point of gates is to keep people from coming in too quickly and all at once. That’s exactly how you get your castle burned down.”
“Do whatever you can to minimize the threat, then,” I said. “But make it happen. If things go bad, I want Bock and his people able to get behind the walls.”
Bear blew out her breath through her lips, a skeptical sound. “When this goes south, it’s going to happen in a hurry.”
“If,” I said. “If it goes south.”
“I’m too old to be that optimistic,” she said. “But you’re the boss.”
I looked across the street for a moment.
There were a lot of hostile gazes over there.
“Do what you can,” I told her. I turned to go back inside.
“Harry?” Will asked. “What are you going to do?”
I looked at the counterprotesting crowd and tried to keep the worry from showing on my face. “Whatever I can.”
Chapter
Forty-Six
I took the reusable ingredients for the greater circle I’d built in my lab out to the island the next week.
Lara went with me. I’d provided her energy again at my place a few nights before, and she carried half the weight up the hill and down the stairs to the tunnels beneath the island. She wasn’t even breathing hard when we got there, though I was.
Her presence was very different, this time. She was wearing stretch jeans, sneakers, and a mostly red plaid flannel shirt over a white tank top. Her hair was under a bandana, held back from her face, and while it made her features look sharper, leaner, I took a lot more notice of the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, particularly when she smiled. She moved with the same liquid grace, but there was none of the sense of electric tension in her I’d almost always seen before. She was relaxed, her voice quiet and without any artifice when she spoke. “Are you sure you’re all right for this?”
“Meaning what?” I asked, panting.
“You poured a lot into me the other night,” she said calmly. “Are you sure you’ve rested enough to do this for Thomas?”
“Just haven’t been able to do much cardio lately,” I said, panting. “Protesters outside, been staying in mostly. I can only run up and down the stairs so many times. Plus, I don’t want to spend the time working out on weekends.”
“Because your daughter is there,” Lara said.
I gave her a look. It might have come out harder than I meant it to. Lara didn’t flinch, but she lifted an eyebrow and said, “That’s only an observation. Not a threat. I understand about family.”
I nodded and said nothing. That came out harder than I meant, too.
Lara looked away and said, “Perhaps we should change the subject.”
“No,” I said in a quiet, steady monotone. “Let’s establish something. You deal with me. You have no connection to her. None. Ever. And if you or anyone in your Court tries to harm her? I. Will. Kill. You. All.”
Lara went entirely marble-statue still.
I faced her, meeting her gaze.
She nodded slowly. “If you can.”
