by Butcher, Jim
“Oh,” I said. “Oh. You, uh. You made a deal.”
Thomas smirked. “It’s a tough, dirty job …”
“And one that is not yet finished,” said the female svartalf. “You are ours until dawn.”
Thomas looked from me to the bedroom and back and spread his hands. “You know how it is, Molly. Duty calls.”
“Um,” I said. “What do you want me to tell Justine?”
Again he gave me a look of near incomprehension. “The truth. What else?”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Justine said as we were walking out. “I was afraid they’d have starved him.”
I blinked. “Your boyfriend is banging a roomful of elfgirls and you’re happy about it?”
Justine tilted her head back and laughed. “When you’re in love with an incubus, it changes your viewpoint a little, I think. It isn’t as though this is something new. I know how he feels about me, and he needs to feed to be healthy. So what’s the harm?” She smirked. “And besides. He’s always ready for more.”
“You’re a very weird person, Justine.”
Andi snorted, and nudged me with her shoulder in a friendly way. She’d recovered her dress and the shoes she liked. “Look who’s talking.”
After everyone was safe home, I walked from Waldo’s apartment to the nearest parking garage. I found a dark corner, sat down, and waited. Lea shimmered into being about two hours later and sat down beside me.
“You tricked me,” I said. “You sent me in there blind.”
“Indeed. Just as Lara did her brother—except that my agent succeeded where hers failed.”
“But why? Why send us in there?”
“The treaty with the Fomor could not be allowed to conclude,” she said. “If one nation agreed to neutrality with them, a dozen more would follow. The Fomor would be able to divide the others and contend with them one by one. The situation was delicate. The presence of active agents was intended to disrupt its equilibrium—to show the Fomor’s true nature in a test of fire.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me that?” I asked.
“Because you would neither have trusted nor believed me, obviously,” she said.
I frowned at her. “You should have told me anyway.”
“Do not be ridiculous, child.” Lea sniffed. “There was no time to humor your doubts and suspicions and theories and endless questions. Better to give you a simple prize upon which to focus—Thomas.”
“How did you know I would find the bomb?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Bomb?” She shook her head. “I did not know what was happening in any specific sense. But the Fomor are betrayers. Ever have they been, ever will they be. The only question is what form their treachery will take. The svartalves had to be shown.”
“How did you know I would discover it?”
“I did not,” she said. “But I know your mentor. When it comes to meddling, to unearthing awkward truths, he has taught you exceedingly well.” She smiled. “You have also learned his aptitude for taking orderly situations and reducing them to elemental chaos.”
“Meaning what?” I demanded.
Her smile was maddeningly smug. “Meaning that I was confident that whatever happened, it would not include the smooth completion of the treaty.”
“But you could have done everything I did.”
“No, child,” Lea said. “The svartalves would never have asked me to be their guest at the reception. They love neatness and order. They would have known my purposes were not orderly ones.”
“And they didn’t know that about me?”
“They cannot judge others except by their actions,” Lea said. “Hence their treaty with the Fomor, who had not yet crossed their paths. My actions have shown me to be someone who must be treated with caution. You had … a clean record with them. And you are smoking hot. All is well, your city saved, and now a group of wealthy, skilled, and influential beings owes you a favor.” She paused for a moment and then leaned toward me slightly. “Perhaps some expression of gratitude is in order.”
“From me, to you?” I asked. “For that?”
“I think your evening turned out quite well,” Lea said her eyebrows raised. “Goodness, but you are a difficult child. How he manages to endure your insolence I will never know. You probably think you have earned some sort of reward from me.” She rose and turned to go.
“Wait!” I said suddenly.
She paused.
I think my heart had stopped beating. I started shaking, everywhere. “You said that you know Harry. Not knew him. Know. Present tense.”
“Did I?”
“You said you don’t know how he manages to put up with me. Manages. Present tense.”
“Did I?”
“Auntie,” I asked her, and I could barely whisper. “Auntie … is Harry … is he alive?”
Lea turned to me very slowly, and her eyes glinted with green, wicked knowledge. “I did not say that he was alive, child. And neither should you. Not yet.”
I bowed my head and started crying. Or laughing. Or both. I couldn’t tell. Lea didn’t wait around for it. Emotional displays made her uncomfortable.
Harry. Alive.
I hadn’t killed him.
Best reward ever.
“Thank you, Auntie,” I whispered. “Thank you.”
ALSO BY JIM BUTCHER
THE DRESDEN FILES
JIM BUTCHER
ROC
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, December 2012
Copyright © Jim Butcher, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Butcher, Jim, 1971–
Cold days: a novel of the Dresden files/Jim Butcher.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-101-61700-7
1. Dresden, Harry (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Wizards—Fiction. 3. Magic—Fiction. 4. Chicago (Ill.)—Fiction. 5. Fantasy fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.U85C65 2012
813'.6—dc23 2012032540
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
For Chris Achterhof, writer of “Greed” (he’ll know why after reading this), and all my old gaming buddies in
the International Fantasy Gaming Society. You people are all silly, and you made the nineties a much brighter place.
Contents
Also by Jim Butcher
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter
One
Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, monarch of the Winter Court of the Sidhe, has unique ideas regarding physical therapy.
I woke up in softness.
What I probably should say was that I woke up in a soft bed. But . . . that just doesn’t convey how soft this bed was. You know those old cartoons where people sleep on fluffy clouds? Those guys would wake up screaming in pain if they got suckered into taking one of those clouds after they’d been in Mab’s bed.
The fire in my chest had finally begun to die away. The heavy wool lining coating my thoughts seemed to have lightened up. When I blinked my eyes open, they felt gummy, but I was able to lift my arm, slowly, and wipe them clear. I’d gone jogging on beaches with less sand than was in my eyes.
Man. Being mostly dead is hard on a guy.
I was in a bed.
A bed the size of my old apartment.
The sheets were all perfectly white and smooth. The bed was shrouded in drapes of more pure white, drifting on gentle currents of cool air. The temperature was cold enough that when I exhaled, my breath condensed, but I was comfortable beneath the bed’s covering.
The curtains around the bed parted and a girl appeared.
She was probably too young to drink legally and she was one of the lovelier women I’d ever seen in person. High cheekbones, exotic almond-shaped eyes. Her skin was a medium olive tone, her eyes an almost eerie shade of pale green-gold. Her hair was pulled back into a simple tail, she wore pale blue hospital scrubs, and she had no makeup at all.
Wow. Any woman who could wear that and still look that good was a freaking goddess.
“Hello,” she said, and smiled at me. Maybe it was just the bed talking, but the smile and her voice were even better than the rest of her.
“Hi,” I said. My voice came out in a croak that hardly sounded human. I started coughing.
She placed a covered tray on a little stand beside the bed and sat down on the edge of it. She took the cover off the tray and picked up a white china cup. She passed it to me, and it proved to be filled with not quite scalding chicken noodle soup. “You do that every day. Talk before you’ve gotten anything down your throat. Drink.”
I did. Campbell’s. And it was awesome. I flashed on a sudden memory of being sick when I was very young. I couldn’t remember where we’d been, but my dad had made me chicken noodle soup. It was the same.
“I think . . . I remember some of it,” I said, after several sips. “Your name is . . . Sarah?” She frowned, but I shook my head before she could speak. “No, wait. Sarissa. Your name is Sarissa.”
She lifted both eyebrows and smiled. “That’s a first. It looks like you’re finally coming back into focus.”
My stomach gurgled and at the same time a roaring hunger went through me. I blinked at the sudden sensation and started gurgling down more soup.
Sarissa laughed at me. It made the room feel brighter. “Don’t drown yourself. There’s no rush.”
I finished the cup, spilling only a little on my chin, and then murmured, “The hell there isn’t. I’m starving. What else is there?”
“Tell you what,” she said. “Before you do that, let’s shoot for another first.”
“Eh?” I said.
“Can you tell me your name?”
“What, you don’t know?”
Sarissa smiled again. “Do you?”
“Harry Dresden,” I said.
Her eyes sparkled and it made me feel good all the way to my toes. More so when she produced a plate that was piled with chicken and mashed potatoes and some other vegetables that I had little use for but which were probably good for me. I thought I was going to start drooling onto the floor, that food looked so good.
“What do you do, Harry?”
“Professional wizard,” I said. “I’m a PI in Chicago.” I frowned, suddenly remembering something else. “Oh. And I’m the Winter Knight, I guess.”
She stared at me like a statue for several seconds, absolutely nothing on her face.
“Um,” I said. “Food?”
She shivered and looked away from me. Then she took a quick breath and picked up an odd little fork, the kind they give to kids with motor control issues—it had lots of rounded edges—and pressed it into my hand. “If you’re willing to go for three, we’ll have had a really good day.”
The fork felt weird and heavy in my fingers. I remembered using forks. I remembered how they felt, the slender weight of them, the precision with which I could get food from the plate to my mouth. This fork felt heavy and clumsy. I fumbled with it for a few seconds, and then managed, on the second try, to thrust it into the mashed potatoes. Then it was another chore to get the stupid thing to my mouth.
The potatoes were perfect. Just warm enough, barely salted, with a faint hint of rich butter.
“Ohmmgdd,” I muttered around the mouthful. Then I went for more.
The second forkful was easier, and the third easier than that, and before I knew it the plate was empty and I was scraping the last of the remains into my mouth. I felt exhausted and stuffed, though it hadn’t been all that much food. Sarissa was watching me with a pleased smile.
“Got it all over my face, don’t I?” I asked her.
“It means you enjoyed the food,” she said. She lifted a napkin to my face and wiped at it. “It’s nice to know your name, finally, Harry.”
There was the sound of light, steady footsteps coming closer.
Sarissa rose immediately, turned, and then knelt gracefully on the floor with her head bowed.
“Well?” said a woman’s velvet voice.
My whole body shuddered in response to that voice, like a guitar’s string quivering when the proper note is played near it.
“He’s lucid, Your Majesty, and remembered my name and his. He fed himself.”
“Excellent,” said the voice. “You are dismissed for today.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” said Sarissa. She rose, glanced at me, and said, “I’m glad to see you
feeling better, Sir Knight.”
I tried to come up with something charming or witty and said, “Call me.”
She huffed out a surprised little breath that might have been the beginning of a laugh, but shot a fearful glance the other way and then retreated. The sound of her sneakers scuffing on the hard floor faded into the distance outside the curtained bed.
A shadow moved across the curtains at the end of the bed. I knew whose it was.
“You have passed your nadir,” she said in a decidedly pleased tone. “You are waxing rather than waning, my Knight.”
I suddenly had difficulty thinking clearly enough to speak, but I managed. “Well. You know. Wax on, wax off.”
She didn’t open the curtain around the bed as much as she simply glided through, letting the sheer cloth press against her, outlining her form. She exhaled slowly as she reached my side, looking down at me, her eyes flickering through shades of green in dizzying cycles.
Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, was too terrifying to be beautiful. Though every cell in my body suddenly surged with mindless desire and my eyes blurred with tears to see her beauty, I did not want to come an inch closer. She was a tall woman, well over six feet, and every inch was radiance. Pale skin, soft lips the color of frozen raspberries, long silver-white hair that shone with opalescent highlights. She was dressed in a silk gown of deep frozen green that left her strong white shoulders bare.
And she was about six inches away from being in bed with me.
“You look great,” I croaked.
Something smoldered in those almond-shaped eyes. “I am great, my Knight,” she murmured. She reached out a hand, and her nails were all dark blues and greens, the colors shimmering and changing like deep opals. She touched my naked shoulder with those nails.
And I suddenly felt like a fifteen-year-old about to kiss a girl for the first time—excitement and wild expectation and fluttering anxiety.
Her nails, even just the very tips, were icy cold. She trailed them down over one side of my chest and rested them over my heart.