by Butcher, Jim
“A big fat jerk!” Toot replied, wincing. “He had a real sword, too. You know how hard it is to convince any of you big people to make us a sword we can actually use?”
“I saw his gear,” I said. “I totally liked yours better, Major General. Way cooler and more stylish than that stupid black-knight look.”
Toot gave me a brief, fierce grin. “Thank you, my lord!”
Toot got out of his ruined armor with effort, and with Molly’s cautious, steady-fingered help I managed to clean the wound and bandage it. It looked ugly, and Toot was anything but happy during the process, but he was clearly uncomfortable and weary, rather than being badly hurt. Once the wound was taken care of, Toot promptly flopped onto the table and went to sleep.
Molly smiled, got a clean towel out of a cabinet, and draped it over the little guy. Toot seized it and curled up beneath it with a sigh.
“All right,” Molly said, picking up the first-aid kit. She beckoned me to follow her to the kitchen. “Your turn. Off with the shirt.”
“Not until you buy me dinner,” I said.
For a second, she froze, and I wondered whether that had come out like the joke it had sounded like in my mind. Then she recovered. Molly arched her eyebrow in a look that was disturbingly like that of her mother (a woman around with whom a wise man will not mess) and folded her arms.
“Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes. I shrugged my way out of the ruined tux.
“Jesus,” Molly said softly, looking at me. She leaned around me, frowning at my back. “You look like a passion play.”
“Doesn’t feel so bad,” I said.
“It might if one of these cuts gets infected,” Molly said. “Just . . . just stand there and hold still. Man.” She went to the cabinet and came back with a big brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a couple of kitchen towels. I watched her walking back and forth. “We’ll start with your back. Lean on the counter.”
I did, resting my elbows on the granite, still watching her. Molly fumbled with the supplies for a second, then bit her lower lip and began to move with purpose. She started dribbling peroxide onto the cuts on my back in little bursts of cold liquid that might have made me jump before I’d spent so much time in Arctis Tor. It burned a little, and then fizzed enthusiastically.
“So, not one question?” I asked her.
“Hmmm?” She didn’t look up from her work.
“I come back from the dead, I sort of expected . . . I don’t know. A little shock. And about a million questions.”
“I knew you were alive,” Molly said.
“Yeah, I sort of figured. How?” She didn’t answer, and after a moment I realized the likely answer. “My godmother.”
“She takes her Yoda-ing seriously.”
“I remember,” I said, keeping my tone neutral. “How long have you known?”
“Several weeks,” Molly said. “There are so many cuts here, I don’t think I have enough Band-Aids. We’ll have to wrap it, I guess.”
“I’ll just put a clean shirt over them,” I said. “Look, it isn’t a big deal. Little marks like that are going to be gone in a day or two.”
“Little . . . Winter Knight stuff?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “Mab . . . kinda gave me the tour during my recovery.”
“What happened?” she asked.
I found my eyes wandering to Bob’s skull. Telling Molly what was going on would mean that she was involved. It would draw her into the conflict. I didn’t want to expose her to that kind of danger—not again.
Of course, it probably wasn’t my sole decision. And besides, Molly had intervened in an assassination that had been really close to succeeding. Whoever was behind the swarm of piranha pixies had probably seen it. Molly was already in the fight. If I started keeping things from her now, it would only hinder her chances of surviving it.
I didn’t want her involved, but she’d earned the right to make that choice for herself.
So I gave it to her, straight, succinct, and with zero editing except for the bit about Halloween. It felt sort of strange. I hardly ever tell anyone that much truth. The truth is dangerous. She listened, her large eyes steadily focused on a point around my chin.
When I finished, all she said was, “Turn around.”
I did, and she started working on the cuts on my chest, arms, and face. Again, cleaning the wounds was a little uncomfortable, but nothing more. I watched her tending me. I couldn’t read her expression. She didn’t look up at my eyes while she worked, and she kept her manner brisk and steady, very businesslike.
“Molly,” I said, as she finished.
She paused, still not looking up at me.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I had to ask you to help me . . . do what I did. I’m sorry that I didn’t make you stay home from Chichén Itzá. I never should have exposed you to that. You weren’t ready.”
“No kidding,” Molly said quietly. “But . . . I wasn’t really taking no for an answer at the time, either. Neither of us made smart choices that night.”
“Maybe. But only one of us is the mentor,” I said. “I’m supposed to be the one who knows what’s going on.”
Molly shook her head several times, a jerky motion. “Harry—it’s over. Okay? It’s done. It’s the past. Let it stay there.”
“Sure you want that?”
“I am.”
“Okay.” I picked up a paper towel and dabbed at a few runnels of peroxide bubbling their way down my stomach. “Well. Now all I need is a clean shirt.”
Molly pointed at one of the oak doors. “In there. There are two dressers and a closet. Nothing fancy, but I’m pretty sure it will all fit you.”
I blinked several times. “Um. What?”
She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Harry . . . duh. I knew you were alive. That meant you’d be coming back. Lea told me to keep it to myself, so I got a place ready for you.” She took a quick step back into the kitchen, opened a drawer, and came back with a small brass key. “Here, this will get you past the locks, and past the svartalves’ wards and past my defenses.”
I took the key, frowning. “Um . . .”
“I’m not asking you to shack up with me, Harry,” Molly said, her tone dry. “It’s just . . . until you get back on your feet. Or . . . or just as long as you’re in town and need a place to stay.”
“Did you think I couldn’t take care of it myself?”
“Of course not,” Molly said. “But . . . you know. I guess I think that maybe you shouldn’t have to?” She looked up at me uncertainly. “You were there when I needed you. I figured it was my turn now.”
I looked away before I got all emotional. The kid had gotten this place together, made some kind of alliance with a very suspicious and cautious supernatural nation, furnished a room for me, and picked me up a wardrobe? In just a few weeks? When she’d been living in rags on the street all the time for the better part of a year before that?
“I’m impressed, grasshopper,” I said. “Seriously.”
“This isn’t the impressive part,” she said. “But I don’t think we have time to get into that right now, given what you’ve got going.”
“Let’s survive Halloween,” I said, “and then maybe we can sit and have a nice talk. Molly, you shouldn’t have done this for me.”
“Ego much?” she asked, the ghost of her old, irreverent self lurking in her eyes. “I got this place for me, Harry. I lived my whole life in one home. Living on the street wasn’t . . . wasn’t a good place for me to put myself back together. I needed someplace . . . someplace . . .” She frowned.
“Yours?” I suggested.
“Stable,” she said. “Quiet. And mine. Not that you aren’t welcome here. While you need it.”
“I suppose you didn’t get those clothes for my sake, either.”
“Maybe I started dating basketball teams,” Molly said, her eyes actually sparkling for a moment. “You don’t know.”
“Sure I do,” I said.
She started
putting the kit away. “Think of the clothes as . . . as a birthday present.” She looked up at me for a second and gave me a hesitant smile. “It’s really good to see you, Harry. Happy birthday.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’d give you a hug, but I’d bleach and bloodstain your clothes at the same time.”
“Rain check,” Molly said. “I’m, uh . . . Working up to hugs might take a while.” She took a deep breath. “Harry, I know you’ve got your hands full already, but there’s something you need to know.”
I frowned. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She rubbed her arms with her hands as though cold. “I’ve kind of been visiting your island.”
In the middle of the southern reaches of Lake Michigan lies an island that doesn’t appear on any charts, maps, or satellite images. It’s a nexus point of ley lines of dark energy, and it doesn’t like company. It encourages people who come near it to get lost and wander away. Planes fly over the thing all the time, but no one sees it. A few years back, I’d bound myself to the island, and the world-class genius loci that watched over it. I’d named it Demonreach, and knew relatively little about it, beyond that it was an ally.
When I’d been shot and plunged into the dark waters of Lake Michigan, it had taken Mab and Demonreach both to preserve my life. I’d woken up from a coma in a cavern beneath the island’s surface with plants growing into my freaking veins like some kind of organic IV line. It was a seriously weird kind of place.
“How did you get there?” I asked.
“In a boat. Duh.”
I gave her a look. “You know what I mean.”
She smiled, the expression a little sad. “After you’ve had someone like the Corpsetaker pound your mind into pomegranate seeds, a psychic No Trespassing sign seems kinda slow-pitch.”
“Heh,” I said. “Point. But it’s a dangerous place, Molly.”
“And it’s getting worse,” she said.
I shifted my weight uneasily. “Define ‘worse.’”
“Energy is building up there. Like . . . like steam in a boiler. I know I’m still new at this—but I’ve talked with Lea about it and she agrees.”
God, she was dragging this out, making me wonder what she knew. I hate that. “Agrees with what?”
“Um,” Molly said, looking down. “Harry. I think that within the next few days, the island is going to explode. And I think that when it does, it will take about half the Midwest with it.”
Chapter
Fourteen
“Of course it is,” I said. I looked around and grabbed the first-aid kit, then started stomping toward the indicated guest bedroom. “I swear, this stupid town. Why does every hideous supernatural thing that happens happen here? I’m gone for a few months and augh. Be right back. Grrssll frrrsl rassle mrrrfl.”
There was a light switch in the bedroom and it worked. The lightbulb stayed on and everything. I scowled up at it suspiciously. Normally when I’m in a snit like this, lightbulbs don’t survive eye contact, much less my Yosemite Sam impersonation. Evidently, the svartalves had worked out a fix for technological grumpy-wizard syndrome.
And the room . . . well.
It reminded me of home.
My apartment had been tiny. You could have fit it into Molly’s main room half a dozen times, easy. My old place was almost the same size as her guest bedroom. She’d furnished it with secondhand furniture, like my place had been. There was a small fireplace, with a couple of easy chairs and a comfortable-looking couch. There were scuffed-up old bookshelves, cheap and sturdy, lining the walls, and they contained what was probably meant to be the beginning of a replacement for my old paperback fiction library. Over toward where my bedroom used to be was a bed, though it was a full rather than a twin. A counter stood where my kitchen counter had been, more or less, and there was a small fridge and what looked like an electric griddle on it.
I looked around. It wasn’t home, but . . . it was in the right zip code. And it was maybe the single sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me.
For just a second, I remembered the scent of my old apartment, wood smoke and pine cleaner and a little bit of musty dampness that was inevitable in a basement, and if I squinted my eyes up really tight, I could almost pretend I was there again. That I was home.
But they’d burned down my home. I had repaid them for it, with interest, but I still felt oddly hollow in my guts when I thought about how I would never see it again. I missed Mister, my cat. I missed my dog. I missed the familiarity of having a place that I knew, that was a shelter. I missed my life.
I’d been away from home for what felt like a very long time.
There was a closet by the bed, with a narrow dresser on two sides. It was full of clothes. Nothing fancy. T-shirts. Old jeans. Some new underwear and socks, still in their plastic packaging. Some shorts, some sweatpants. Several pairs of used sneakers the size of small canoes, and some hiking boots that were a tolerable fit. I went for the boots. My feet are not for the faint of sole, ah, ha, ha.
I ditched the tux, cleaned up and covered the injuries on my legs, and got dressed in clothes that felt familiar and comfortable for the first time since I’d taken a bullet in the chest.
I came out of the bedroom holding the bloodied clothes, and glanced at Molly. She pointed a finger at the fire. I nodded my thanks, remembered to take the bejeweled cuff links out of the pockets of the pants, and tossed what was left into the fire. Blood that had already been soaked up by cloth wouldn’t be easy to use against me, even if someone had broken in and taken it somehow, but it’s one of those things best not left to chance.
“Okay,” I said, settling down on the arm of a chair. “The island. Who else knows about it?”
“Lea,” Molly said. “Presumably she told Mab. I assumed word would get to you.”
“Mab,” I said, “is apparently the sort of mom who thinks you need to find things out for yourself.”
“Those are real?”
I grunted. “Have you had any contact with Demonreach?”
“The spirit itself?” Molly shook her head. “It . . . tolerates my presence, but it isn’t anything like cordial or friendly. I think it knows I’m connected to you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure it does. If it wanted you off the island, you’d be gone.” I shook my head several times. “Let me think.”
Molly did. She went into the kitchen, to the fridge. She came out with a couple of cans of Coca-Cola, popped them both open, and handed me one. We tapped the cans together gently and drank. I closed my eyes and tried to order my thoughts. Molly waited.
“Okay,” I said. “Who else knows?”
“No one,” she said.
“You didn’t tell the Council?”
Molly grimaced at the mention of the White Council of Wizards. “How would I do that, exactly? Given that according to them, I’m a wanted fugitive, and that no one there would blink twice if I was executed on sight.”
“Plenty of them would blink twice,” I said quietly. “Why do you think you’re still walking around?”
Molly frowned and eyed me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that Lea’s clearly taught you a lot, Molly, and it’s obvious that your skills have matured a lot in the past year. But there are people there with decades’ worth of years like the one you’ve had. Maybe even centuries. If they really wanted you found and dead, you’d be found and dead. Period.”
“Then how come I’m not?” Molly asked.
“Because there are people on the Council who wouldn’t like it,” I said. “My g— Ebenezar can take anyone else on the Council on any given day, if he gets mad at them. That’s probably enough—but Ramirez likes you, too. And since he’d be the guy who would, theoretically, be in charge of capturing you, anyone else who did it would be walking all over his turf. He’s young, too, but he’s earned respect. And most of the young guns in the Wardens would probably side with him in an argument.” I sighed. “Look, the White Council has always been a gigantic mound of
assorted jerks. But they’re not inhuman.”
“Except sometimes,” Molly said, her voice bitter.
“Humanity matters,” I said. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”
“No thanks to them,” she said.
“If they hadn’t shown up at Chichén Itzá, none of us would have made it out.”
Molly frowned at that. “That wasn’t the White Council.”
True, technically. That had been the Grey Council. But since the Grey Council was mostly made up of members of the White Council working together in secret, it still counted, in my mind. Sort of.
“Those guys,” I said, “are what the Council should be. And might be. And when we needed help the most, they were there.” I sipped some more Coke. “I know the world seems dark and ugly sometimes. But there are still good things in it. And good people. And some of them are on the Council. They haven’t been in contact with you because they can’t be—but believe me, they’ve been shielding you from getting in even more trouble than you’ve already had.”
“You assume,” she said stubbornly.
I sighed. “Kid, you’re going to be dealing with the Council your whole life. And that could be for three or four hundred years. I’m not saying you shouldn’t get in their faces when they’re in the wrong. But you might want to consider the idea that burning your bridges behind you could prove to be a very bad policy a century or two from now.”
Molly looked like she wanted to disagree with me—but she looked pensive, too. She drank some more of her Coke, frowning.
Damn. Why couldn’t I have figured out that particular piece of advice to give to myself when I was her age? It might have made my life a whole lot simpler.
“Back to the island,” I said. “How sure are you about the level of energy involved?”
She considered her answer. “I was at Chichén Itzá,” she said. “It’s all pretty blurry, but I remember a lot of fragments really well. One of the things I remember is the tension that had built up under the main ziggurat. Do you remember?”