by Butcher, Jim
“Guide first,” I insisted. “Then pizza.”
Toot shook his arms and legs as though he would fly apart. “Yes, yes, yes!”
“Done,” I said. I opened the pizza box and set it on top of a discarded crate nearby. Then I stepped over to the circle, leaned down, and with a smudge of my hand and an effort of will broke it, freeing the energies inside.
The faeries chorused several pitches and variants of “Yahoo!” and streaked past me so quickly that they left a cone of wild air behind them, tossing my unruly hair and scattering lighter pieces of garbage around the alley. They tore into the pizza with much the same gusto they’d used on the one piece earlier, but there was enough of it now to keep them from mangling it in mere seconds.
Toot zipped over to hover in front of my face and held out his little palm. A moment later, something that looked like an errant spark from a campfire whirled down and lighted on his palm. Toot said something in a language I couldn’t understand, and the tiny light pulsed and flickered as though in response.
“Right,” Toot said, nodding to the light. I peered more closely at it, and could just barely make out a tiny, tiny form inside, no larger than an ant. Another faerie. The light pulsed and flickered, and Toot nodded to it before turning to me.
“Harry Dresden,” Toot-toot said, holding out his palm, “this is Elidee. She’s going to pay me back a favor and guide you to the Winter Lady and then to the Summer Lady. Good enough?”
I frowned at the tiny faerie. “Does she understand me?”
I barely saw Elidee stamp a tiny foot. The scarlet light around her flickered sharply, twice.
“Yes,” Toot-toot translated. “Two lights for yes, and one light for no.”
“Two for yes, one for no,” I muttered.
Toot frowned. “Or is that one for yes and two for no? I can never keep it straight.” And with that, the little faerie blurred and zipped past me and away to join the swarm of softly flashing lights demolishing the pizza.
Elidee, for her part, recovered from the miniature cyclone that Toot-toot left in his wake, whirled around dizzily for a few moments, then spiraled down to me and settled on the bridge of my nose. My eyes crossed trying to look at her. “Hey,” I said, “do I look like a couch to you?”
Two flashes.
I sighed. “Okay, Elidee. Do you want any pizza before we go?”
Two flashes again, brighter. The tiny faerie leapt up into the air again and zoomed over to the cloud around the pizza.
Footsteps came down the alley, then Billy stepped out of the shadows, pulling his sweatshirt down over his muscular stomach. I felt a brief and irrational surge of jealousy. I don’t have a muscular stomach. I’m not overlapping my belt or anything, but I don’t have abs of steel. I don’t even have abs of bronze. Maybe abs of plastic.
Billy blinked at the pizza for a moment and said, “Wow. That’s sort of pretty. In aJaws kind of way.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t look at it for too long. Faerie lights can be disorienting to mortals.”
“Gotcha,” Billy said. He glanced back at me. “How’d it go? You get what you needed?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You?”
He shrugged. “Alley isn’t the best place to pick up scents, but I should be able to recognize them again if I’m in my other suit. They didn’t smell quite normal.”
“Gee, what are the odds.”
Billy’s teeth showed in the dark. “Heh. So what are we waiting for?”
Elidee picked just then to glide back over to me and settle once more on the bridge of my nose. Billy blinked at her and said, “What the hell?”
“This is our guide,” I said. “Elidee, this is Billy.”
Elidee flashed twice.
Billy blinked again. “Uh, charmed.” He shook his head. “So? What’s the plan?”
“We go confront the Winter Lady in her underground lair. I do the talking. You stay alert and watch my back.”
He nodded. “Okay. You got it.”
I looked over to see the last piece of pizza lifted up into the air by greedy faerie hands. They clustered around it, tearing and ripping, and it was gone in seconds. With that, the faeries swarmed away like a squadron of potbellied comets and vanished from view.
Elidee fluttered off my nose and started drifting down the alley in the other direction. I followed her.
“Harry?” Billy asked, his voice a touch hopeful. “Are you expecting trouble?”
I sighed and rubbed at the space between my eyebrows.
Definitely getting a headache. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter Fourteen
Elidee led Billy and me through alleys, up a fire escape to the roof of a building and then down on the other side, and through a junk-cluttered abandoned lot on the way to the Pedway. It took us better than half an hour of scrambling after the tiny faerie through the muggy heat, and by the end of it I wished I’d told Toot-toot that we wanted someone who could read a street map and guide us there in a car.
Chicago’s commuter tunnels are fairly recent construction, compared to much of the rest of the city. The tunnels are a maze if you don’t know them—long stretches of identical overhead lights, drab, clean walls dotted with advertising posters, and intersections bearing plain and not always helpful directional signs. The tunnels closed after the workday and wouldn’t open up again until around six the next morning, but Elidee led us to an unfinished building at Randolph and Wabash. She flitted around in front of a service access door that proved to be unlocked and that led down to a similar door that opened onto a darkened section of the Pedway that looked as though it had been under construction but was abandoned when the building had shut down.
It was completely dark, so I slipped the silver pentacle off my neck, lifting it in my hand and focusing a quiet effort of will upon it. The five-pointed star has been a symbol of magic for centuries, representing the four elements and the power of spirit bound within the circle of will—primal power under the control of human thought. I held the pentacle before me, and as I concentrated it began to glow with a gentle blue light, illuminating enough of our surroundings that we could navigate through the dark, silent tunnels. The little faerie drifted in front of us down the tunnel, and we followed her without speaking. She took us to the intersection with the main tunnels of the Pedway and on a brief walk down another tunnel, to a section shut behind a rusting metal gate with a sign that read,DANGER KEEP OUT. The gate proved to be unlocked, and we went down the tunnel, into a damper section of tunnels, rife with the smell of mold, that was clearly not a part of the Pedway proper.
After another fifty or sixty feet we reached a place where the walls became rough and uneven and shadows lay thick and heavy, despite the glow of my wizard’s light.
Elidee drifted over to an especially dark section of wall and flew in a little circle in front of it.
“Okay,” I said. “I guess this is where we get in.”
“What is where we get in?” Billy asked, his voice skeptical. “Get into where?”
“Undertown,” I said. I ran my hands over the wall. To the casual touch it appeared to be bare, unfinished concrete, but I felt a slight unsteadiness when I pressed against it. It couldn’t have been solid stone. “Must be a panel here somewhere. Trigger of some kind.”
“What do you mean, ‘Undertown’? I’ve never heard of it before.”
“I was probably working here for five or six years before I did,” I said. “You have to understand the history of Chicago. How they did things here.”
Billy folded his arms. “I’m listening.”
“The city is a swamp,” I said, still searching for a means of opening the door with my fingertips. “We’re darn near level with Lake Michigan. When they first built the place, the town kept sinking into the muck. I mean, every year it sank lower. They used to build streets, then build a latticework of wood over them, and thenanother street on top of that, planning on them slowly sinking. They planned houses the same way. B
uilt the front door on the second floor and called it a ‘Chicago entry,’ so when the house sank, the front door would be at ground level.”
“What about when the street sank?”
“Built another one on top of it. So you wound up with a whole city existing under the street level. They used to have a huge problem with rats and criminals holing up under the streets.”
“But not anymore?” Billy asked.
“The rats and thugs mostly got crowded out by other things. Became a whole miniature civilization down here. And it was out of sight of the sun, which made it friendly space for all the night-crawling critters around.”
“Hence, Undertown,” Billy said.
I nodded. “Undertown. There are a lot of tunnels around Chicago. The Manhattan Project was housed in them for a while during World War Two. Did all that atomic bomb research.”
“That’s cheerful. You come down here a lot?”
I shook my head. “Hell, no. All kinds of nastiness lives down here.”
Billy frowned at me. “Like what?”
“Lots of things. Stuff you don’t often see on the surface. Things even wizards know almost nothing about. Goblins, spirits of the earth, wyrms, things that have no name. Plus the usual riffraff. Vampires sometimes find lairs down here during the day. Trolls can hide here too. Molds and fungi you don’t get in most of the natural world. You name it.”
Billy pursed his lips thoughtfully. “So you’re taking us into a maze of lightless, rotting, precarious tunnels full of evil faeries and monsters.”
I nodded. “Maybe leftover radiation, too.”
“God, you’re a fun guy, Harry.”
“You’re the one who wanted in on the action.” My fingers found a tiny groove in the wall, and when I pressed against it a small, flat section of stone clicked and retracted. The switch had to have triggered some kind of release, because the section of wall pivoted in the center, turning outward, and forming a door that led into still more dank darkness. “Hah,” I said with some satisfaction. “There we go.”
Billy pressed forward and tried to step through the door, but I put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him. “Hang on. There are some things you need to know.”
Billy frowned, but he stopped, listening.
“These are faeries. We’ll probably run into a lot of the Sidhe, their nobles, hanging out with the Winter Lady. That means that they’re going to be dangerous and will probably try to entrap you.”
“What do you mean, entrap me?” Billy said.
“Bargains,” I said. “Deals. They’ll try to offer you things, get you to trade one thing for another.”
“Why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s in their nature. The concept of debt and obligation is a huge factor in how they behave.”
Billy lifted his eyebrows. “That’s why that little guy worked for you, right? Because he owed you for the pizza and he had a debt to you.”
“Right,” I said. “But it can work both ways. If you owethem something, they have a conduit to you and can use magic against you. The basic rule is not to accept any gifts from them—and for God’s sake, don’toffer them any gifts. They find anything other than an equal exchange to be either enticing or insulting. It isn’t a big deal with little guys like Toot, but if you get into it with a Sidhe Lord you might not live through it.”
Billy shrugged. “Okay. No gifts. Dangerous faeries. Got it.”
“I’m not finished. They aren’t going to be offering you wrapped packages, man. These are the Sidhe. They’re some of the most beautiful creatures there are. And they’ll try to put you off balance and tempt you.”
“Tempt me? Like with sex, is that what you’re saying?”
“Like any kind of sensual indulgence. Sex, food, beauty, music, perfume. When they offer, don’t accept it, or you’ll be opening yourself up to a world of hurt.”
Billy nodded. “Okay, got it. Let’s go already.”
I eyed the younger man, and he gave me an impatient look. I shook my head. I don’t think I could have adequately conveyed the kind of danger we might be walking into with mere words in any case. I took a deep breath and then nodded to Elidee. “All right, Tinkerbell. Let’s go.”
The tiny scarlet light gave an irritated bob and then darted through the concealed doorway and into the darkness beyond. Billy narrowed his eyes and followed it, and I went after him. We found ourselves in a tunnel where one wall seemed to be made of ancient, moldering brick and the other of a mixture of rotting wooden beams, loose earth, and winding roots. The tunnel ran on out of the circle of light from my amulet. Our guide drifted forward, and we set out to follow her, walking close together.
The tunnel gave way to a sort of low-roofed cavern, supported here and there by pillars, mounds of collapsed earth, and beams that looked like they’d been added in afterward by the dwellers in Undertown. Elidee circled in place a bit uncertainly, then started floating to the right.
I hadn’t been following the little faerie for five seconds before the skin on the back of my neck tried to crawl up over my head and hide in my mouth. I drew up short, and I must have made some kind of noise, because Billy shot a look back at me and asked, “Harry? What is it?”
I lifted a hand to silence him and peered at the darkness around me. “Keep your eyes open,” I said. “I don’t think we are alone.”
From the shadows outside the light came a low hissing sound. The rest of my skin erupted in gooseflesh, and I shook my shield bracelet clear. I lifted my voice and said clearly, “I am the Wizard Dresden, Emissary of the Winter Court, bound to pay a call upon the Winter Lady. I’ve no time or desire for a fight. Stand clear and let me pass.”
A voice—a voice that sounded like a tortured cat might, if some demented being gave it the gift of speech—mewled out of the shadows, grating on my ears. “We know who you are, wizard,” the voice said. Its inflections were all wrong, and the tone seemed to come from not far above the ground, somewhere off to my right. Elidee let out a high-pitched shriek of terror and zipped back to me, diving into my hair. I felt the warmth of the light around the tiny faerie like a patch of sunlight on my scalp.
I traded a look with Billy and turned toward the source of the voice. “Who are you?”
“A servant of the Winter Lady,” the voice replied from directly behind me. “Sent here to guide you safely through this realm and to her court.”
I turned in the other direction and peered more closely toward the sound of the voice. The werelight from my amulet suddenly gleamed off a pair of animal eyes, twenty feet away and a few inches from the floor. I looked back at Billy. He’d already noted the eyes and turned to put his back to mine, watching the darkness behind us.
I turned back to the speaker and said, “I ask again. Who are you?”
The eyes shifted in place, the voice letting out an angry, growling sound. “Many names am I called, and many paths have I trod. Hunter I have been, and watcher, and guide. My Lady sent me to bring you thither, safe and whole and well.”
“Don’t get mad at me, Charlie,” I snapped. “You know the drill as well as I do. Thrice I ask and done. Who are you?”
The voice came out harsh and sullen, barely intelligible. “Grimalkin am I called by the Cold Lady, who bids me guide her mother’s Emissary with safe conduct to her court and her throne.”
I let out a breath. “All right,” I said. “So lead us.”
The eyes bobbed in place, as though in a small bow, and Grimalkin mewled again. There was a faint motion in the shadows outside my light, and then a dull greenish glow appeared upon the ground. I stepped toward it and found a faint, luminous footprint upon the ground, a vague paw, feline but too spread out and too thin to be an actual cat’s. Just as I reached it, another light appeared on the floor several feet away.
“Make haste, wizard,” mewled Grimalkin’s voice. “Make haste. The Lady waits. The season passes. Time is short.”
I moved toward the second footprint, and as I r
eached it a third appeared before us, in the dark, and so on.
“What was that all about?” Billy murmured. “Asking it the same thing three times, I mean.”
“It’s a binding,” I murmured in reply. “Faeries aren’t allowed to speak a lie, and if a faerie says something three times, it has to make sure that it is true. It’s bound to fulfill a promise spoken thrice.”
“Ah,” Billy said. “So even if this thing hadn’t actually been sent to guide us safely, you made him say so three times would mean that he’d be obligated to do it. Got it.”
I shook my head. “I wanted to make sure Grimalkin was on the level. But they hate being bound like that.”
From ahead of us, the faintly glowing eyes appeared briefly, accompanied by another mewling growl that sent a chill down my spine.
“Oh,” Billy said. He didn’t look any too calm himself. His face had gone a little pale, and he walked with his hands clenched into fists. “So if Grimalkin had good intentions to begin with, wouldn’t that make him angry that you needlessly bound him?”
I shrugged. “I’m not here to make friends, Billy. I’m here to find a killer.”
“You’ve never even heard of diplomacy, have you?”
We followed the trail of footprints on the ground for another twenty minutes or so, through damp tunnels, sometimes only a few feet high. More sections of the tunnel showed evidence of recent construction—if you could call swirling layers of stone that seemed to have been smoothed into place like soft-serve ice cream “construction.” We passed several tunnels that seemed entirely new. Whatever beings lived down here, they didn’t seem too shy about expanding. “How much further?” I asked.
Grimalkin let out amrowl ing sound from somewhere nearby—not in the direction of the next footprint, either. “Very near, noble Emissary. Very near now.”