by Jim Butcher
Bradley clearly wasn’t buying it. He eyed us both and then nodded and let out a breath. “Yeah. Okay.”
Rudolph stood up briskly and said, “Well, we tried.”
Bradley gave Rudolph a steady look. Then he stood and said, quietly, “I’ll be right out. Wait for me.”
“I am not your fucking junior partner,” Rudolph snarled. “I am your superior officer.”
“Yes, sir,” Bradley said. “And I’ll be right out.”
Rudolph gave him a disgusted look. Then he eyed me, pointed at me with his index finger, and said, “I’m looking forward to seeing you locked up, Dresden.”
“Yeah, keep looking,” I told him.
Rudolph smirked at me. Then at Karrin.
She stared at him. She’s got a good stare. Rudolph’s smirk faded and he abruptly left without another word.
“Prick,” Karrin breathed after the door closed behind him. She eyed Bradley and said, “Him? Really?”
Bradley shrugged, a tectonic shift of massive shoulders. “Job’s gotta get done. Someone’s gotta do it.”
“Yeah,” Karrin said quietly.
“Dogs are out,” he said. “Matter of time before they get a scent. You and Dresden both cut it close for a long time. This time you went over the line.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Karrin said.
“Crap,” Bradley replied. He rubbed a hand over his buzzed scalp. “Okay. That’s how you want it, we play it all the way out.”
“Do your job,” Karrin said. “You always have.”
“Yeah.” Bradley shook his head. “Rudolph let it get personal. Unprofessional. Sorry about that.”
“I don’t expect any better from him,” Karrin said. “Not your fault.”
“Hey,” I said. “Why does Internal Affairs have this one? Why not Homicide?”
He shrugged. “Murphy was one of ours, I guess. You were, too, sort of.”
Karrin stared at him intently for a moment. Then she said, “Thanks for coming by, Bradley.”
Bradley nodded politely. “Yeah. Thanks for your time. I hope you feel better soon, Ms. Murphy.”
He left, too, shutting the door carefully behind him, as if he wanted to avoid cracking it in half by accident. Maybe it had been a problem for him before.
I let out a long breath after he left. Then I went to the door and watched them depart and nodded to Karrin once they were gone.
“What’d you get from him?” I asked. “I didn’t catch it.”
“Because I was one of theirs, he guesses,” Murphy said. “Bradley doesn’t guess about anything. He doesn’t know why IA has the case.”
I rubbed at the spot between my eyes and growled. “Someone is pulling strings behind the scenes. They got the case bumped over to one of their people. Rudolph.”
“And Marcone owns Rudolph,” Karrin said. She pursed her lips. “Or so we’ve assumed.”
I grunted. “Who else could have him? Who else has so much influence in this town?”
She shook her head. “Asking the wrong person in this room.”
“Hah,” I said. “Something else to look into. What can we expect?”
“Bradley’s like a starving dog with a bone,” she said. “He gets on a trail, he doesn’t get off it. He doesn’t sweep things under the rug. Doesn’t play the game.”
“No wonder he’s his age and still junior to Rudolph,” I said. “Fortunately, we have a little thing called fact on our side: We didn’t kill Harvey. Or the guy at the bank.”
Karrin snorted. “We were there, and we’re lying to the police about it. That would get us put away for a while all by itself. But our DNA was at the scene, and they might turn up eyewitnesses who saw us on the street or find more images from a camera somewhere. Or …”
“Or someone could make some more evidence happen,” I said.
She nodded. “They could make a case out of it. This could … wind up badly.”
“What do we do about it, then?”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “Do? What are we, the villains in Bradley’s detective novel? Should we try to warn him off the case? Destroy some evidence? Set someone else up to take the fall?”
I grunted. “Still.”
“Not much we can do,” she said quietly. “Except find out more about what’s going on. I’ve got a few channels left. I’ll check them.”
“I’ll add looking into Rudolph’s sponsor to my list,” I said.
She nodded. “Think this will interfere with the weirdness convention?”
“Might be meant to,” I said. I thought about it for a long moment and then said, “When I go, call Butters.”
Karrin quirked an eyebrow at me.
“This shows every sign of becoming a sharknado,” I said. “Have him get the word out. To everyone. I mean everyone on the Paranet.”
“What word?”
“To keep their eyes open, sing out if they see anything, and to be ready,” I said. “Someone’s cooking something big. I can smell it.”
Karrin nodded, and her gaze flicked to the grandfather clock against the wall. “You’ve still got a little time before you need to be back,” she said.
“Yeah?”
She nodded. Her blue eyes were very direct. “Come here.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Um. Things haven’t really changed on that score. I’m not sure that—”
She let out a wicked little laugh. “Adapt and overcome, Harry. I’m intelligent. And you’ve at least got a decent imagination. Between the two of us, we’ll come up with something.” Her eyes narrowed. “Now. Come. Here.”
It would have been incredibly impolite to refuse a lady.
So I went.
6
I might have been feeling pretty smug on my way back to the car.
But my babysitter had an early morning, so as pleasant as it sounded, there would be no staying around for more. I had to go do the responsible dad thing.
I was whistling as I got in the Munstermobile and got it to roar to life. The car was an old hearse from the forties, painted in shades of dark blue and purple, with flames on the hood and front fenders. It was not subtle. It was not anywhere close to subtle. But I figured that since I wasn’t, either, that made it an entirely appropriate vehicle for me.
The car growled its way to life, and I turned and put one arm on the backrest of the front seat, to look behind me as I pulled out of Karrin’s driveway, and nearly had a freaking heart attack.
Two monsters sat in the backseat.
My reflexes kicked in as I flinched, twisting at the waist to bring up my left hand, the one with my makeshift shield bracelet. I let out a garbled, incoherent cry as my will slammed through it and the copper band exploded with a small cloud of green-yellow sparks as the shield came up between me and the threat. My right hand locked into a rigid claw and a small sphere of the same color of green-yellow energy gathered within the cage of my fingers, spitting and hissing with vicious heat.
The wavering, unsteady light flickered and flashed with manic irregularity, and I got a chance to process the threat.
Neither of the monsters was moving, and both of them were beautiful.
The one on my left was a woman who looked like she had come to a glorious autumn of youthful beauty. Her hair was darker than an undertaker’s grave, and her silver-grey eyes threw back the light of my readied magic in flashes of green and gold. Her teeth were white and perfect, and her smile looked sharp enough to cut a throat. She was wearing a white suit and sat with her legs crossed, gorgeously, and her hands folded in her lap.
“New colors,” she said, her voice velvety smooth and calm. “The shield used to be blue. What changed?”
“He made an alliance with a powerful guardian entity,” said the second monster, a woman seated beside the first. She was as lean as a rod of rebar, but colder and harder, and her opalescent green eyes were too big to be strictly human. Silver-white hair fell to her shoulders, today in a fine silken sheet. Her voice sounde
d calm and precise, and she wore a glacier blue dress that belonged on a runway. “It does not interfere with his duties.”
I looked back and forth between the two women. My heart rate began to slow as my conscious mind started to catch on to the fact that I was not, apparently, under attack.
Which was not to say that I was not in danger.
I silently counted to five while I took a slow breath and decided to be calm and cautious—and polite. “Lara Raith,” I said to the first monster, inclining my head slightly. Then I turned to the second and did the same, only a shade more deeply. “Queen Mab.”
“So nice to see you again, Harry,” Lara said, her sharp smile widening as she tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “I love your hair. You look absolutely wolfish. How long has it been?”
“Since that mess on the island,” I said. “How’s the Vampire Queen business?”
There was something merry in her eyes as she widened them. “Booming. I sometimes think I might be about to explode at the prospect of all the marvelous opportunities that have been opening to me.”
“As long as you don’t do it in my car,” I said. “Hi, Mab.”
The second monster stared at me for a silent moment. Mab was the OG wicked faerie, the Queen of Air and Darkness, and her tolerance for my usual insouciance had limits. It had such limits that I still had a small lump on my skull that hadn’t gone away, ever since she’d smashed my noggin against the inside of an elevator. She stared at me the way a cat stares at any creature of about the right size to be eaten, and said, “It is, in fact, my car.”
“Ah,” I said. “Right. Well. It’s a company car.”
Mab continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “And Ms. Raith is welcome to explode within it or not, as she sees fit.”
“Uh,” I said, “I think she was employing a metapho—”
“Particularly during such a shocking display of bad grace as you are engaging in at the moment.” She gave my hands a pointed look and then stared back at my eyes. “Do you mean to attack my person and my guest or not, my Knight?”
I twitched and remembered that my shield and the energy for an offensive strike were still glowing and pulsing between us. I relaxed my will and let the spells fade out, until there was nothing left but a drizzle of inefficiently transferred energies falling as campfire sparks from my bracelet. “Oh, right,” I said. “Um. Excuse me.”
“I regret my Knight’s … excessive impulse-control issues,” Mab said, turning to Lara. “I trust it has not cast a sour tone upon this meeting.”
“On the contrary,” Lara said. “I find it rather charming.”
Mab’s expression was entirely unreadable. “Your response does nothing to increase my good opinion of you, Ms. Raith. My Knight needs no encouragement.”
“Hey!” I said.
Lara’s eyes wrinkled at the corners. “Think of it as you would someone who had encountered a novel kind of food.” She looked at me, and her eyes turned a few shades paler. “Something substantial and rarely obtained.”
Mab considered that for a moment. Then she smiled. Her scary smile. I mean, most of what Mab does is sort of scary, but her smile is just unnerving. “Just so long as you understand that my Knight is a part of my house. Do not attempt to eat my porridge, Ms. Raith. You will find it neither hot nor cold nor just right, because, unlike Goldilocks, the bears will have eaten you. Am I understood?”
“Entirely,” Lara said, inclining her head to Mab. Her eyes lingered on me for a moment. “Are you sure what I ask isn’t too much trouble?”
“Such things are part and parcel of his duties,” Mab said. “Assuming you find him acceptable.”
“Oh my,” Lara said, glancing at me again. “Oh yes.”
I didn’t much like the sound of where this conversation was going, so I cleared my throat and said, “Ladies. I’m sitting right here. I can hear you.”
“Then you shall have no trouble understanding your orders,” Mab said. “Ms. Raith is owed three favors by the Winter Court.”
“Three?” I blurted. “I had to fight for my life through Arctis Tor and slug it out with an Elder Phobophage just to earn one favor!”
Mab’s eyes swiveled to me. “And you were repaid appropriately for your deeds.”
“I got a doughnut!”
“It is hardly my concern if you wasted your favor upon something so frivolous,” Mab said.
I scowled. “What the hell did she do?”
“She used her mind,” Mab said. “Unlike some.”
“Hey!” I said.
“She has indicated that she wishes to collect upon these favors,” Mab said. “I have already agreed to one. I place the responsibility for providing the substance of the remaining two in your hands.”
I blinked and then narrowed my eyes. “ You … what?”
Mab blinked her eyes and appeared to, just barely, avoid rolling them in exasperation. “Two favors. She may ask them of you during the approaching summit. You will provide whatever she asks, with as much energy and sincerity and forethought … as you are capable of employing. You will not fail me in this.”
“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I’m already kind of busy. You know that. I’m guarding the Senior Council and liaisoning between the Council and Faerie already.”
“My time and attention are infinitely more important than yours,” Mab said. “You now have more work. Cease your whining, desist from your dalliances, and do your duty.”
“Two favors,” I said.
“No more, no less,” Mab said.
“ Just … anything she asks, you expect me to do.”
“I expect her to show respect for my Court and my resources,” Mab said. “I expect her to ask nothing of you that she would be unwilling to ask from me. Within those constraints—yes.”
I sputtered and said, “Suppose she asks me to steal something?”
“I expect you to acquire it.”
“Suppose she asks me to burn down a building?”
“I expect a mountain of fine ash.”
“Suppose she asks me to kill someone?”
“I expect their corpse to be properly disposed of,” Mab said. She leaned forward and narrowed her eyes slightly. “For you to do anything less would be for you to cast shame and dishonor upon my name, upon my throne, and upon all of Winter.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I invite you to contemplate the consequences of that.”
I didn’t meet her eyes. I’d seen the kind of thing Mab would do to someone who merely displeased her, much less made her look bad. My predecessor begged me to kill him. He’d been a monster when he’d had my job—but Mab had crushed him into a broken, whimpering mass of cells before she’d allowed him to die.
And if I gave her reason, she would do the same to me.
No.
She’d do worse. A lot worse.
I glanced at Lara, who was watching me with a much less inhuman but no less unreadable version of Mab’s feline expression. As the effective queen of the White Court, Lara was a card-carrying monster. She was intelligent, driven, and dangerous as hell. Rumor was that she owned politicians coast to coast in the United States now, and that her ambition was driving her to reach even further. Lara was perfectly capable of asking me to do something beyond the pale of any functioning conscience.
But Lara was damned smart, too. She had to know that I had limits—that my compact with Mab hadn’t changed that. If she told me to do something unconscionable, I was going to tell her where she could shove it.
Which would get me killed. Overkilled. Überkilled.
I looked back at Mab. Her face was blank granite, immovable.
Lara was a ruling peer under the Unseelie Accords, the Geneva Conventions of the supernatural world. If I said no, if I defied Mab in front of her, I was pretty sure I would get the Prometheus treatment at the very least. But if I said yes, I could find myself in even more trouble. If I knew one thing about paying off favors that were part of a Faerie bargain, it was that they we
re never, ever simple.
I had nothing but lousy choices. So what else was new?
“Fine,” I said. “Whatever.”
“Excellent,” Mab said. “Ms. Raith?”
Lara nodded, her large, luminous eyes never leaving my face. “Acceptable.”
“Then our business is concluded, for now,” Mab said.
There was a sudden surge of icy cold wind, so out of place in the summer evening that the windows of the car glazed over with misty condensation and I was forced to blink my eyes and shield them with one hand.
When I could see again, Mab and Lara were gone, and I was alone in the Munstermobile.
“Drama queen,” I muttered, and started rolling down the windows. A few minutes later, the glass was clear and I was on the road, muttering imprecations about the ruthless nature of Faerie Queens as I drove back to the apartment.
I heard the sirens a couple of blocks out. I nudged the accelerator as I came down the street toward the svartalf embassy, suddenly anxious.
I became a lot more anxious when I saw the haze of smoke in the air—and when I saw the fire department’s emergency vehicles deploying onto the grounds, anxiety blossomed into pure panic.
Flames leapt forty feet into the air above the compound as the building burned.
The embassy was on fire—and my daughter was inside.
7
I parked the Munstermobile a block away and ran in. I didn’t really feel like being stopped by a well-meaning first responder, so I ran in under a veil. I also didn’t feel like being away any longer than necessary, so I ran in at something like Olympic speed. It probably would have been more subtle if I hadn’t vaulted the hood of the last police car in the way. The cop standing next to the driver’s-side door goggled and fumbled his radio, which I guess is understandable when something resembling a low-budget Predator goes by.
There’s no point in having a soul-threatening source of power to draw on if you aren’t going to draw on it when your daughter is in danger.
That’s exactly the reasoning that got you into this mess in the first place, Dresden, isn’t it?
Shut up, me.
The svartalves must have disabled the wards all over the exterior grounds, or else CFD wouldn’t have been able to get near the place. It must have pained Austri to no end to lower the defenses for a gang of humans. I went by the little security shack outside the place and saw no one in it.