Turn Coat (The Dresden Files, #11)

by Jim Butcher

So I stretched out on my couch to do some thinking, and began focusing on my breathing, trying to relax the headache away and clear my thoughts. It went so well that I stayed right there doing it for about six hours, until the late dusk of a Chicago summer had settled on the city. I didn’t fall asleep. I was meditating. You’re going to have to take my word for

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this,” I said. “So think real careful about where this is coming from. Have you people ever considered talking when you’ve got a problem?”

I don’t like hospitals—but then, who does? I don’t like the clean, cool hallways. I don’t like the stark fluorescent lights. I don’t like the calm ring tones on the telephones. I don’t like the pastel scrubs the nurses and attendants wear. I don’t like the elevators, and I don’t like the soothing colors on the walls, and I don’t like the way everyone speaks in measured, quiet voices. But mostly, I don’t like the memories I’ve collected there.

I watched the three Raith sisters come and thought to myself that if there was any justice in the universe, I would get to watch that in slow motion. Alas.

“Of course. You are, after all, wizards,” Lara said without a detectable trace of irony. “You are the holders of great secrets. If such a group existed, you would surely know of it.”

I saw him thinking and I recognized it when my old mentor got it, when he understood my plan. I could tell because he got that look on his face I’ve only seen when he knows things are about to go spectacularly wrong and he wants to be ready for it. He let his staff fall to rest against his chest and idly dug in a pocket, his eyes flicking across the woods around us.

Adrenaline does weird things to your head. You hear people talk about how everything slows down. That isn’t the case. Nothing is happening slowly. It’s just that you somehow seem to be able to fit a whole lot more thinking into the time and space that’s there. It might feel like things have slowed down, but it’s a transitory illusion. For example, I had time to reflect upon the nature of adrenaline and time while sprinting through the woods at night. It didn’t make me run any faster, though.

That roar held all the fury of a mortally offended, maniacal ego and promised a death that could only be described with the assistance of an encyclopedia of torments, a thesaurus, and a copy of Gray’s Anatomy.

She stared at the two older wizards for a time, then at me. “The Merlin will not be pleased.” “That is good,” Listens-to-Wind said. “No one should be pleased with this day’s outcome.”