by Butcher, Jim
“Well,” I said. “I don’t know about your true form, but the weight of your ego sure is pushing the crust of the earth toward the breaking point.”
His green eyes blazed. “What did you say?”
“I don’t like bullies,” I said. “You think I’m going to stand here and offer you my firstborn and sacrifice virgins to you or something? I’m not that impressed.”
“Well,” Ferro said. “Let’s see if we can’t make an impression.”
I clutched my cane and gathered up my will, but I was way, way too slow. Ferro just waved a hand vaguely in my direction, and something crushed me down to the earth, as though I suddenly had gained about five thousand pounds. I felt my lungs strain to haul in a breath, and my vision clouded over with stars and went black. I tried to gather up my magic, to thrust the force away from me, but I couldn’t focus, couldn’t speak.
Michael looked down at me dispassionately, then said, to Ferro, “Siriothrax should have learned that trick. It might have kept me from killing him.”
Ferro’s cold regard swept back to Michael, bringing with it a tiny lessening in the pressure—not much, but enough that I could gasp out, “Riflettum,” and focus my will against it. Ferro’s spell cracked and began to flake apart. I saw him look at me, sensed that he could have renewed the effort without difficulty. He didn’t. I climbed back to my feet, gasping quietly.
“So,” Ferro said. “You are the one.” He looked Michael up and down. “I thought you’d be taller.”
Michael shrugged. “It wasn’t anything personal. I’m not proud of what I did.”
Ferro tapped a finger against the hilt of his sword. Then said, quietly, “Sir Knight. I would advise you to be more humble in the face of your betters.” He cast a disdainful glance at me. “And you might consider a gag for this one, until he can learn better manners.”
I tried for a comeback, but I still couldn’t breathe. I just leaned against my cane and wheezed. Ferro and Michael exchanged a short nod, one where neither of them looked away from the other’s eyes. Then Ferro turned and . . . well, just vanished. No flicker of light, no puff of flame. Just gone.
“Harry,” Michael chided. “You’re not the biggest kid on the block. You’ve got to learn to be a little more polite.”
“Good advice,” I wheezed. “Next time, you handle any dragons.”
“I will.” He looked around and said, “People are thinning out, Harry.” He was right. As I watched, a vampire in a tight red dress tapped the arm of a young man in black. He glanced over to her and met her eyes. They stared at one another for a while, the woman smiling, the man’s expression going slowly slack. Then she murmured something and took his hand, leading him out into the darkness beyond the globes of light. Other vamps were drawing more young people along with them. There were fewer scarlet costumes around, and more people blissed out on the ground.
“I don’t like the direction this is going,” I said.
“Nor do I.” His voice was hard as stone. “Lord willing, we can put a stop to this.”
“Later. First, we talk to the Hamlet guy. Then there’s just Bianca herself to check.”
“Not one of the other vampires?” Michael asked.
“No way. They’re all subordinate to Bianca. If they were that strong, they’d have knocked her off by now, unless they were in her inner circle. That’s Kyle and Kelly. She doesn’t have the presence of mind for it, and he’s already out. So if it’s not a guest, it’s probably Bianca.”
“And if it’s not her?”
“Let’s not go there. I’m floundering enough as it is.” I squinted around. “Do you see Hamlet anywhere?”
Michael squinted around, taking a few paces to peer around another set of ferns.
I saw the flash of red out of the corner of my eye, saw a form in a red cloak heading for Michael’s back, from around the ferns. I turned toward Michael and threw myself at his attacker.
“Look out!” I shouted. Michael spun, a knife appearing in his hand as though conjured. I grabbed the red cloaked-figure and whirled it around to face me.
The hood fell back from Susan’s face, revealing her startled dark eyes. She’d pulled her hair into a ponytail. She wore a low-cut white blouse and a little pleated skirt, complete with white knee socks and buckle-down shoes. White gloves covered her hands. A wicker basket dangled in the crook of her elbow, and round, mirror-toned spectacles perched upon the bridge of her slender nose.
“Susan?” I stammered. “What are you doing here?”
She let out a breath, and drew her arm out of my hand. “God, Harry. You scared me.”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“You know why I’m here,” she said. “I came to get a story. I tried to call you and talk you into it, but no, you were way too busy doing whatever you were doing to even spare five minutes to talk to me.”
“I don’t believe this,” I muttered. “How did you get in here?”
She looked at me coolly and flicked open her basket. She reached inside and came out with a neat white invitation, like my own. “I got myself an invitation.”
“You what?”
“Well. I had it made, in any case. I didn’t think you’d mind me borrowing yours for a few minutes.”
Which explained why the invitation hadn’t been on the mantel, back at my apartment. “Hell’s bells, Susan, you don’t know what you’ve done. You’ve got to get out of here.”
She snorted. “Like hell.”
“I mean it,” I said. “You’re in danger.”
“Relax, Harry. I’m not letting anyone lick me, and I’m not looking anyone in the eyes. It’s kind of like visiting New York.” She tapped her specs with a gloved finger. “Things have gone all right so far.”
“You don’t get it,” I said. “You don’t understand.”
“Don’t understand what?” she demanded.
“You don’t understand,” purred a dulcet voice, behind me. My blood ran cold. “By coming uninvited, you have waived any right you had to the protection of the laws of hospitality.” There came a soft chuckle. “It means, Little Red Riding Hood, that the Big, Bad Wolf gets to eat you all up.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
I turned to find Lea facing me, her hands on her hips. She wore a slender, strapless dress of pale blue, which flowed over her curves like water, crashing into white foamy lace at its hem. She wore a cape of some material so light and sheer that it seemed almost unreal, and it drifted around her, catching the light in an opalescent sheen that trapped little rainbows and set them to dancing against her pale skin. When people talk about models or movie stars being glamorous, they take it from the old word, from glamour, from the beauty of the high sidhe, faerie magic. Supermodels wish they had it so good as Lea.
“Why, Godmother,” I said, “what big eyes you have. Are we straining the metaphor or what?”
She drifted closer to me. “I don’t make metaphors, Harry. I’m too busy being one. Are you enjoying the party?”
I snorted. “Oh, sure. Watching them drug and poison children and getting roughed up by every weird and nasty thing in Chicagoland is a real treat.” I turned to Susan and said, “We have to get you out of here.”
Susan frowned at me and said, “I didn’t come here so that you could hustle me home, Harry.”
“This isn’t a game, Susan. These things are dangerous.” I glanced over at Lea. She kept drawing closer. “I don’t know if I can protect you.”
“Then I’ll protect myself,” Susan said. She laid her hand over the picnic basket. “I came prepared.”
“Michael,” I said. “Would you get her out of here?”
Michael stepped up beside us, and said, to Susan, “It’s dangerous. Maybe you should let me take you home.”
Susan narrowed her dark eyes at me. “If it’s so dangerous, then I don’t want to leave Harry here alone.”
“She has a point, Harry.”
“Dammit. We came here to find out who’s behind
the Nightmare. If I leave before I do that, we might as well never have come. Just go, and I’ll catch up with you.”
“Yes,” Lea said. “Do go. I’ll be sure to take good care of my godson.”
“No,” Susan said, her tone flat. “Absolutely not. I’m not some kind of child for you to tote around and make decisions for, Harry.”
Lea’s smile sharpened, and she reached a hand toward Susan, touching her chin. “Let me see those pretty eyes, little one,” she purred.
I shot my hand toward my godmother’s wrist, jerking it away from Susan before the faerie could touch her. Her skin was silk-smooth, cool. Lea smiled at me, the expression stunning. Literally. My head swam, images of the faerie sorceress flooding my thoughts: those berry-sweet lips pressing to my naked chest, smeared with my blood, rose-tipped breasts bared by the light of fire and full moon, her hair a sheet of silken flame on my skin.
Another flash of image came then, accompanied by intense emotion: myself, looking up at her as I lay at her feet. She stretched out her hand and lightly touched my head, an absently fond gesture. An overwhelming sense of well-being filled me like shining, liquid light, poured into me and filled every empty place within me, calmed every fear, soothed every pain. I almost wept at the simple relief, at the abrupt release from worry, from hurt. My whole body trembled.
I was just so damned tired. So tired of hurting. Of being afraid.
“So it will be when you are with me, poor little one, poor lonely child.” Lea’s voice coursed over me, as sweet as the drug already within me. I knew she spoke the truth. I knew it on a level so deep and simple that a part of me screamed at myself for struggling to avoid her.
So easy. It would be so easy to lay down at my lady’s feet, now. So easy to let her make all the bad things go away. She would care for me. She would comfort me. My place would be there, in the warmth at her feet, staring up at her beauty—
Like a good dog.
It’s tough to say no to peace, to the comfort of it. All through history, people have traded wealth, children, land, and lives to buy it.
But peace can’t be bought, can it, chief, prime minister? The only ones offering to sell it always want something more. They lie.
I shoved the feelings away from me, the subtle glamour my godmother had cast. I could have taken a cheese grater to my own skin with less pain. But my pain, my weariness, my worries and fear—they were at least my own. They were honest. I gathered them back to me like a pack of mud-spattered children and stared at Lea, hardening my jaw, my heart. “No,” I said. “No, Lea.”
Surprise touched those delicate features. Dainty copper brows lifted. “Harry,” she said, her voice gentle, perplexed, “the bargain is already made. So mote it be. There is no reason for you to go on hurting.”
“There are people who need me,” I said. My balance wavered. “I still have a job to do.”
“Broken faiths weaken you. They bind you tighter, lessen you every time you go against your given oath.” She sounded concerned, genuinely compassionate. “Godson, I beg of you—do not do this to yourself.”
I said, struggling to be calm, “Because if I do that, there will be less for you to eat, yes? Less power for you to take.”
“It would be a terrible waste,” she assured me. “No one wants that.”
“We’re under truce here, Godmother. You’re not allowed to work magic on me without violating hospitality.”
“But I didn’t,” Lea said. “I’ve not worked any magic on you this night.”
“Bullshit.”
She laughed, silver and merry. “Such language, and in front of your lover too.”
I stumbled. Michael was there at once, supporting my weight with his shoulder, drawing my arm across it. “Harry,” he said. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
My head kept on spinning and my limbs started to shake. The drug already coursing through me, plus this new weakness, almost took me out. Blackness swam in front of my eyes and it was only with an effort of will that I kept myself from drowning in that darkness or giving in to the mad desire to throw myself down at Lea’s feet. “I’m okay,” I stammered. “I’m fine.”
Susan moved to my other side, her anger pouring off of her like heat from a desert highway. “What have you done to him?” she snapped at Lea.
“Nothing,” Lea replied in a cool voice. “He has done this to himself, the poor little one. One always risks dire consequences should one not keep a bargain with the sidhe.”
“What?” Susan said.
Michael grimaced, and said, “Aye. She’s telling the truth. Harry made a bargain last night, when we fought the Nightmare and drove it away from Charity.”
I struggled to speak, to warn them not to let Lea trick them, but I was too busy trying to sort out where my mouth was, and why my tongue wasn’t working.
“That doesn’t give her the right to put a spell on him,” Susan snapped.
Michael rumbled, “I don’t think she has. I can usually feel it, when someone’s done something harmful.”
“Of course I haven’t,” Lea said. “I have no need to do so. He’s already done it himself.”
What? I thought. What was she talking about?
Chapter Twenty-eight
I stared at Susan in mute disbelief.
She looked apologetic. “Oh, I’m sorry. I mean. I didn’t mean to upset you, Mister . . .”
“Dresden,” I supplied in a whisper.
“Mister Dresden, then.” She frowned down at herself, and smoothed a hand uncomfortably over the skirt, then looked around her. “Dresden. Aren’t you the guy who just opened a business as a wizard?”
Anger made me clench my teeth. “Son of a—”
“Harry,” Michael said. “I think we need to leave, rather than stand about cursing.”
My knuckles whitened as I tightened my fingers on my cane. No time for anger. Not now. Michael was right. We had to move, and quickly. “Agreed,” I said. “Susan, did you drive here?”
“Hey,” she said, squaring off against me. “I don’t know you, okay? My name is Miss Rodriguez.”
“Look, Su—Miss Rodriguez. My faerie godmother just stole a year’s worth of your memory.”
“Actually,” Michael put in, “you traded it away to her to keep some kind of spell from leaving Harry helpless.”
I shot him a glare and he subsided. “And now you don’t remember me, or I guess, Michael.”
“Or this faerie godmother, either,” Susan said, her face and stance still wary.
I shot Lea a look. She glanced over at me and her lips curved up into a smirk, before she turned back to her conversation with Thomas. “Oh, damn. She’s such a bitch.”
Susan rolled her eyes a little. “Look, guys. It’s been nice chatting with you, but this has got to be the lamest excuse for a pickup line I’ve ever heard.”
I reached a hand toward her again. Her own flashed down into the picnic basket and produced a knife, a G.I.-issue weapon from the last century, its edge gleaming. “I told you,” she said calmly, “I don’t know you. Don’t touch me.”
I drew my hand back. “Look. I just want to make sure you’re all right.”
Susan’s breathing was a little fast, but other than that she concealed her tension almost completely. “I’m perfectly fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about me.”
“At least get out of here. You’re not safe here. You came in on an invitation you had made up. Do you remember that?”
She screwed up her face into a frown. “How did you know that?” she asked.
“You told me so about five minutes ago,” I said, and sighed.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’ve had a bunch of your memories taken.”
“I remember coming here,” Susan said. “I remember having the counterfeit invitation made.”
“I know,” I said. “You got it off of my living room table. Do you remember that?”
She frowned. “I got it . . .” Her expression flickered, and she swa
llowed, glancing around. “I don’t remember where I got it.”
“There,” I said. “Do you see? Do you remember driving out to bail me out of jail a couple of nights ago?”
She’d lowered the knife by now. “I . . . I remember that I went down to the jail. And paid the bail money, but . . . I can’t think . . .”
“Okay, okay,” I said. My head hurt, and I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. “It looks like she took all of your memories that had me directly in them. Or her. What about Michael, do you remember him?”
She looked at Michael and shook her head.
I nodded. “Okay. Then I need to ask you to trust me, Miss Rodriguez. You’ve been affected by magic and I don’t know how we can get it fixed yet. But you’re in danger here and I think you should leave.”
“Not with you,” she said at once. “I have no idea who you are. Other than some kind of psychic consultant for Special Investigations.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Not with me. But at least let us walk you out of here, so that we can make sure you get out okay. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a vampire in here. So let us get you out to your car and then you can go wherever you like.”
“I didn’t get my interview,” she said. “But . . . I feel so strange.” She shook her head, and replaced her knife in her picnic basket. I heard the click of a tape recorder being switched off. “Okay,” she said. “I guess we can go.”
I nodded, relieved. “Wonderful. Michael, shall we?”
He chewed on his lip. “Maybe I should stay, Harry. If your godmother’s here, the Sword might be here too. I might get the chance to take it back.”
“Yeah. And you might get the chance to get taken from behind without someone here to cover for you. There’s too much messed up stuff here, man. Even for me. Let’s go.”