by Jim Butcher
I sighed and sat down on the rear bumper of the Hummer. “Fix,” I said. “Look, I’ve been doing this job for about six hours now. I haven’t gone all dark side. Yet.”
Fix folded his arms. His fingers were still close to his weapons, but a little farther away than they’d been a moment before. “You’ve got to understand. Lloyd Slate was a real monster, man.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know. Because you never had to face him without power, the way we did.”
I spread my hands. “I didn’t always have power, Fix. And even with it, there are plenty of big, scary things out there that I’m just as helpless against. I know.”
“Then you know what my problem is,” he said.
“Let’s assume for a moment that I’m sometimes an idiot,” I said. “What’s your problem?”
He gave me a brief smile. “You were dangerous enough without Mab’s hand on you. Now? You can make Lloyd Slate look like a grade-school bully.”
“But I haven’t,” I said.
“But you could.”
“Maybe I won’t.”
“Maybe you will.”
“If I’m as powerful as you seem to think,” I said, “then what makes you think you can stand up to me?”
He shrugged. “Maybe I can’t. But at least I have a chance. The people behind me wouldn’t.”
“Ah,” I said. We both sat for a moment. Then I said, “So I guess it won’t be enough for me to assure you that I’m not up to no good.”
“You know how you could tell when Slate was lying?”
“How?”
“His lips were moving.”
I smiled briefly. “Well. It seems to me you’ve got a couple of choices.”
“Oh?”
“You do the math. You see what I have the potential to do, and you plan for what I could do, rather than what you think I will do.”
“Might be smart,” Fix said. “Von Clausewitz would say so.”
“If this was a war and I was the enemy, sure.”
“What else do you think I could do?”
“Extend a little trust, maybe,” I said. “That’s the illusion here, man. As far as I’m concerned, we don’t need to be enemies. We don’t need to be at war.”
Fix pursed his lips. Then he said, “Here’s the problem with that. You belong to Mab. I like Harry. Maybe I could even trust him. But I know what Mab is like—and Harry belongs to Mab now.”
“The hell I do,” I said. “Just because I took this job doesn’t mean I’m all cozy with her.”
“You, uh, looked kinda cozy, man. With Mab. On the stone table.”
Sealing a contract like the one with Mab isn’t something you do with an impersonal handshake. I felt my cheeks heat up. “Oh. You saw that.”
“All of Faerie did,” Fix said.
“God, that’s humiliating,” I muttered.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “At least it wasn’t on pay-per-view.”
I snorted.
“Okay,” I said finally. “I’m under some time pressure here, so I think you need to make a decision.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “Who is going to make this call? You? Or von Clausewitz?”
Fix looked away. Then he said, “I hate this kind of crap. This is the first time I’ve had a job I’ve held down for more than six months.”
“I hear you.”
He gave me another brief smile. “I want to believe you,” he said. Then he took a steadying breath and faced me, lowering his arms to his sides again. “But there are people depending on me to keep them safe. I can’t afford to do that.”
I stood up, very slowly and reluctantly. “Fix, I don’t want this fight.”
“And you’ll get a chance to avoid it,” he said. “I’m going to give you until noon to get out of town, Harry. If I see you after that, I’m not going to spend any more time talking, and I’m not going to challenge you to a fair fight. If you’re really serious about being your own man, if you really want to keep the peace between us—you’ll go.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” I said.
“I didn’t think you could,” he said quietly. “You have until noon.”
We exchanged a nod. Then he moved back to his SUV, never taking his eyes off me. Once he was in, he started it and drove away.
I sank back down onto the Hummer’s back bumper again and closed my eyes.
Great.
One more thing.
I liked Fix. He was a decent guy. He’d become the Summer Knight, and as far as I knew, he’d never abused his power. People in the supernatural community liked and respected him. I’d even seen him in action once. He was a hell of a lot more formidable than he’d been as the scared young man I’d first met.
I didn’t want to fight him.
He might not give me a choice.
Mab was not about puppies and kittens, and I’d known that when I signed on. Even if she wasn’t evil, exactly, she was vicious, violent, and ruthless. I had no doubt that Mab had done for a number of decent people in her time, one way or another. There were stories about the Winter Knight stretching back for centuries, and various vile personalities had held the title. Some of them had even been famous. Gilles de Rais. Andrei Chikatilo. John Haigh. Fritz Haarmann. If I were in Fix’s shoes, and he were in mine, I might well have pulled the trigger without thinking twice.
I leaned my head back against the truck with a little thunk.
Thomas sat down next to me, and the Hummer settled a little more. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“He going to back off?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Sure it does.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter because he’s a decent guy, and I’m not going to hurt him.”
“He might not give you much choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” I said. “That’s the thing, man. There’s always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a choice.”
“You’d let him kill you?” Thomas asked.
I looked up at him. “No. But I won’t hurt him.”
My brother gave me a tight-lipped look and then got up and walked away.
There was a shimmer in the air, and Molly appeared, standing about ten feet behind what had been Fix’s position during our conversation. She watched Thomas go with an unhappy expression.
I blinked at her. “How long have you been standing there?”
“I got out of your side of the car when Thomas got in,” she said. “You know. Just in case something happened. It seemed like a good idea to make sure he went down quick if a fight broke out, so you wouldn’t have to kill him.”
I smiled at her. “Totally unfair.”
“I had this teacher who kept telling me that if I was ever in a fair fight, someone had made a mistake,” she said.
“Sounds like a jerk.”
“He has his moments,” she said. She squinted after Thomas and said, “He’s just afraid, you know. He doesn’t want to lose his brother twice.”
“I know,” I said.
“But I’m really proud of you, boss,” she said, her voice quieter. “I mean . . . I know you’ve had some hard calls to make lately. But my dad would say that you were right about this one. There’s always a choice.”
I grunted. “If I get into it with Fix,” I said, “I don’t want you to get involved.”
“Why not?”
“Because faeries keep score,” I said. “And they’ll never leave a score unsettled.”
“If I told you that, you’d tell me that wasn’t my choice to make.”
“And I’d be right,” I said, and sighed. “But I have enough worries already, grasshopper. Leave it alone. For me.”
She looked like I’d just asked her to swallow a bug. “I’ll try,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said, and extended my hand.
She helped me up. “What’s next?
”
“A phone call. Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty
“I don’t care how busy he is,” I said into the phone. “I need to talk with him. Period.”
We were in Thomas’s living room. Thomas was sprawled on a recliner. The hideous high-tech brushed-steel look that had been the place’s trademark had been softened with window dressings and various bits of decoration—Justine’s touch. Thomas, like most men, regarded a throw pillow as something to throw.
One bounced off of my chest. “Way to turn on the charm, Harry,” he murmured.
I covered the phone’s receiver with one hand. “Polite gets you nowhere with these people. Trust me.” I turned back to the phone. “No,” I said. “Not over this line. It’s bugged. Just tell him that Doughnut Boy needs to speak to him or an informed high-level operative in person, within the hour.”
Thomas mouthed the word operative at me, his fingers spread in a gesture meant to convey spooky importance. I kicked the pillow back at him.
“Don’t give me excuses,” I said. “He can get here if he damned well wants to and we both know it. Call me back at this number.” I thunked the phone down.
“Earlier today,” Molly said, from where she sat on the floor, “someone said something to me about not burning my bridges. Let me think. Who was that?”
“Ixnay,” I growled. “I know what I’m doing.” I turned to Thomas. “How many bugs does Lara have on this place?”
“Harry,” Thomas said in a scandalized tone—one that was just a little bit too well projected to be meant for me. “I’m her brother. She would never behave that way toward her own flesh and blood, her own kin, her own dear sibling.”
I growled. “How many?”
He shrugged. “It changes. New ones come in sometimes when I’m not home.”
I grunted. I put the phone on the counter, unplugged it, and grabbed a pepper shaker. I put a circle of pepper around the phone, and sealed it with a gentle effort of will. “You’re set for money, right?”
“With Lara’s money, yes.”
“Good,” I said, and then I unleashed a burst of will with a mutter of, “Hexus,” that burned out every bit of electronics within fifty feet. The apartment’s lightbulbs all winked out at the same instant.
Thomas groaned, but he didn’t otherwise complain.
“Grasshopper,” I said.
“On it,” Molly said. She rose to her feet, frowning, her eyes mostly closed, and began walking slowly around the apartment.
While she did that, I broke the circle of pepper with a brush of my hand and plugged the phone back in.
“If you were going to do that,” Thomas asked, “why not do it before you made the phone call that absolutely did set off every flag Lara’s security teams have to wave?”
I held up a hand for silence, until Molly had wandered down the hall and back. “Nothing,” she said.
“No spells?” Thomas asked.
“Right,” I said. “Anyone who came in uninvited wouldn’t be able to make that kind of spell stick. And no one you’ve invited in has . . .” I frowned. “Molly?”
“I didn’t,” she said quickly.
“. . . has planted a spell to listen in on you,” I finished. “And I wanted Lara’s people to know who I contacted. When they try to follow up on it, they’ll betray their presence and he’ll be alerted to how they operate.”
“It was a payment,” Thomas said.
I shrugged. “Call it a friendly gesture.”
“At my sister’s expense,” Thomas said.
“Lara’s a big girl. She’ll understand.” I considered things for a moment and then said, “Everyone be cool. Something might happen.”
Thomas frowned. “Like what?”
“Cat Sith!” I called in a firm voice. “I need you, if you please!”
There was a rushing sound, like a heavy curtain stirred by a strong wind, and then, from the fresh, dark shadows beneath Thomas’s dining table, the malk’s alien voice said, “I am here, Sir Knight.”
Thomas jerked in reaction, despite my warning, and produced a tiny semiautomatic pistol from I knew not where. Molly drew in a sharp, harsh breath, and backed directly away from the source of the voice until her shoulder blades hit a wall.
It was just possible that I had understated how unsettling a malk sounds when it speaks. I’d clearly been hanging around creepy things for way too long.
“Take it easy,” I said, holding a hand out to Thomas. “This is Cat Sith.”
Molly made a sputtering noise.
I gave her a quelling glance and said to Thomas, “He’s working with me.”
Cat Sith came to the edge of the shadows so that his silhouette could be seen. His eyes reflected the light from the almost entirely curtained windows. “Sir Knight. How may I assist you?”
“Empty night, it talks,” Thomas breathed.
“How?” Molly asked. “The threshold here is solid. How did it just come in like that?”
Which was a reasonable question, given that Molly didn’t know about my former cleaning service and how it had interacted with my old apartment’s threshold. “Beings out of Faerie don’t necessarily need to be invited over a threshold,” I said. “If they’re benevolent to the inhabitants of the house, they can pretty much come right in.”
“Wait,” Thomas said. “These freaks can walk in and out whenever they want? Pop in directly from the Nevernever? And you didn’t tell us about it?”
“Only if their intentions are benign,” I said. “Cat Sith came here to assist me, and by extension you. As long as he’s here, he’s . . .” I frowned and looked at the malk. “Help me find the correct way to explain this to him?”
Sith directed his eyes to Thomas and said, “While I am here, I am bound by the same traditions as would apply were I your invited guest,” he said. “I will offer no harm to anyone you have accepted into your home, nor take any action which would be considered untoward for a guest. I will report nothing of what I see and hear in this place, and make every effort to aid and assist your household and other guests while I remain.”
I blinked several times. I had expected Sith to hit me with a big old snark-club rather than actually answering the question—much less answering it in such detail. But that made sense. The obligations of guest and host were almost holy in the supernatural world. If Sith truly did regard that kind of courtesy as the obligation of a guest, he would have little choice but to live up to it.
Thomas seemed to digest that for a few moments and then grunted. “I suppose I am obliged to comport myself as a proper host, then.”
“Say instead that I am under no obligation to allow myself to be harmed, or to remain and give my aid, if you behave in any other fashion,” Sith corrected him. “If you began shooting at me with that weapon, for example, I would depart without doing harm, and only then would I hunt you, catch you outside the protection of your threshold, and kill you in order to discourage such behavior from others in the future.”
Thomas looked like he was about to talk some smack at the malk, but only for a second. Then he frowned and said, “It’s odd. You sound like . . . like a grade-school teacher.”
“Perhaps it is because I am speaking to a child,” Cat Sith said. “The comparison is apt.”
Thomas blinked several times and then looked at me. “Did the evil kitty just call me a child?”
“I don’t think he’s evil so much as hyperviolent and easily bored,” I said. “And you started it. You called him a freak.”
My brother pursed his lips and frowned. “I did, didn’t I?” He turned to Cat Sith and set his gun aside. “Cat Sith, the remark was not directed specifically at you or meant to insult you, but I acknowledge that I have given offense, and recognize that the slight puts me in your debt. Please accept my apologies, and feel free to ask a commensurate service of me should you ever have need of it, to balance the scales.”
Cat Sith stared at Thomas for a moment, and then inclined his head. “E
ven children can learn manners. Done. Until such time as I have need of you, I regard the matter as settled, Thomas Raith.”
“You know him?” I asked.
“And your apprentice, Molly Carpenter,” Sith said, his voice impatient, “as well as the rest of your frequent associates. May I suggest that you get on with the business at hand, Sir Knight? Tempus fugit.”
One of Winter’s most dangerous creatures—most dangerous hunters—knew all about my friends. That was something that a smart man would be concerned about. I reminded myself that just because someone is courteous, it does not necessarily mean that they aren’t planning to vivisect you. It just means that they’ll ask whether the ropes holding you down are comfortable before they pick up the scalpel. Cat Sith might be an ally, for the moment, but he was not my friend.
“In a few minutes, we’re going to be leaving,” I said. “I’ve got a hunch that we’ll be under observation, and I don’t want that. I want you to distract anyone who has us under direct surveillance.”
“With pleasure.”
“Without killing them or causing significant bodily harm,” I said. “For all I know there’s a cop or a PI watching the place. So nothing permanent.”
Cat Sith narrowed his eyes. His tail twitched to one side, but he said nothing.
“Think of it as a compliment,” I suggested. “Any idiot could murder them. What I ask is far more difficult, as befits your station.”
His tail twitched the other way. He said nothing.
“After that,” I said, “I want you to get word to the Summer Lady. I want a meeting.”
“Uh, what?” Thomas said.
“Is that a good idea?” Molly asked at the same time.
I waved a hand at both of them, and kept talking to Sith. “Tell her it’s got to happen before noon. Can you contact her?”
“Of course, Sir Knight,” said Sith. “She will wish to know the reason for such a meeting.”
“Tell her that I’d prefer not to kill her Knight, and I’d like to discuss how best to avoid it. Tell her that I’ll meet her wherever she pleases, if she promises me safe conduct. Bring me her answer.”
Sith eyed me, then said, “Such a course is unwise.”
“I’m not asking you to do it. What do you care?”