Turn Coat by Jim Butcher

toolbox at her in a wave, and headed into my apartment to see Morgan.
    I had to admit—I hated hearing the sound of my friend’s car leaving.
    I pushed those thoughts away. Psychic trauma or not, I could fall to little pieces later.
    I had work to do.

Chapter Seven
    M organ woke up when I opened the bedroom door. He looked bad, but not any worse than he did before, except for some spots of color on his cheeks.
    “Lemme see to my roommates,” I said. “I got the goods.” I put the medical kit down on the nightstand.
    He nodded and closed his eyes.
    I took Mouse outside for a walk to the mailbox. He seemed unusually alert, nose snuffling at everything, but he didn’t show any signs of alarm. We went by the spot in the tiny backyard that had been designated as Mouse’s business area, and went back inside. Mister, my bobtailed grey tomcat, was waiting when I opened the door, and tried to bolt out. I caught him, barely: Mister weighs the next best thing to thirty pounds. He gave me a look that might have been indignant, then raised his stumpy tail straight in the air and walked haughtily away, making his way to his usual resting point atop one of my apartment’s bookcases.
    Mouse looked at me with his head tilted as I shut the door.
    “Something bad is running around out there,” I told him. “It might decide to send me a message. I’d rather he didn’t use Mister to do it.”
    Mouse’s cavernous chest rumbled with a low growl.
    “Or you, either, for that matter,” I told him. “I don’t know if you know what a skinwalker is, but it’s serious trouble. Watch yourself.”
    Mouse considered that for a moment, and then yawned.
    I found myself laughing. “Pride goes before a fall, boy.”
    He wagged his tail at me and rubbed up against my leg, evidently pleased to have made me smile. I made sure both sets of bowls had food and water in them, and then went in to Morgan.
    His temperature was up another half a degree, and he was obviously in pain.
    “This isn’t heavy-duty stuff,” I told him, as I broke out the medical kit. “Me and Billy made a run up to Canada for most of it. There’s some codeine for the pain, though, and I’ve got the stuff to run an IV for you, saline, intravenous antibiotics.”
    Morgan nodded. Then he frowned at me, an expression I was used to from him, raked his eyes over me more closely, and asked, “Is that blood I smell on you?”
    Damn. For a guy who had been beaten to within a few inches of death’s door, he was fairly observant. Andi hadn’t really been bleeding when we picked her up in my coat. She was only oozing from a number of gouges and scrapes—but there had been enough of them to add up. “Yeah,” I said.
    “What happened?”
    I told him about the skinwalker and what had happened to Kirby and Andi.
    He shook his head wearily. “There’s a reason we don’t encourage amateurs to try to act like Wardens, Dresden.”
    I scowled at him, got a bowl of warm water and some antibacterial soap, and started cleaning up his left arm. “Yeah, well. I didn’t see any Wardens doing anything about it.”
    “Chicago is your area of responsibility, Warden Dresden.”
    “And there I was,” I said. “And if they hadn’t been there to help, I’d be dead right now.”
    “Then you call for backup. You don’t behave like a bloody superhero and throw lambs to the wolves to help you do it. Those are the people you’re supposed to be protecting.”
    “Good thinking,” I said, getting out the bag of saline, and suspending it from the hook I’d set in the wall over the bed. I made sure the tube was primed. Air bubbles, bad. “That’s exactly what we need: more Wardens in Chicago.”
    Morgan grunted and fell silent for a moment, eyes closed. I thought he’d dropped off again, but evidently he was only thinking. “It must have followed me up.”
    “Huh?”
    “The skinwalker,” he said. “When I left Edinburgh, I took a Way to Tucson. I came to Chicago by train. It must