by Jim Butcher
I gave them a sunny little smile, vaulted the side rail, and walked to shore through howling winds before the ice started breaking up again.
They actually named the town Unalaska, Alaska. Despite the appeal of an innately oxymoronic name, Unalaska struck me as something closer to a colony on an alien world than as a mortal village. It’s a collection of homes and businesses around Dutch Harbor, famous for being the central port for the fishing boats on that show about how dangerous it is to catch crabs.
(Actual crabs. Literal ones, like, in the water. Sheesh, this Winter mantle thing is so childish sometimes, because it’s definitely not me.)
The buildings are all squat, sturdy, and on the small side—the better to resist massive winds and snows and rains and frozen ocean spray that turns to coatings of ice when whipped up by a storm. The town was surrounded by looming, steep, formidable mountains devoid of human markings, and clung to the limited flat spaces at their feet like some kind of lichen stubbornly hanging on in the shade of a large stone. The icy sea filled whatever vision was not occupied by the sky or the mountains, cold and uncaring and implacable. The sky overhead was a neutral grey, promising neither sunlight nor storms yet ready to deliver both with an impartial hand and little warning.
It wasn’t a place that was inviting, kind, or merciful to mere humanity, and yet there they were.
We were. There we were.
I trudged through freezing winds and half an inch of sleet that had hardened into something between ice and snow and didn’t shiver.
Harry Dresden once warned me about lying to myself.
I tried not to think about that too hard as I walked through the endless twilight of an Aleutian autumn and into town. I threw a glamour, nothing fancy, over myself as I went. I muddled my features from stark-boned beauty down to something much plainer. I darkened my hair, my skin, both of which were paler than usual, these days. I added on a few pounds, because I’d never really recovered the weight I’d lost when I was playing grim-dark superhero on the streets of Chicago, when Harry had been mostly dead. Everything about the look said unremarkable, and I added on the barest hint of an aura that I was an awfully boring person. It would be easier to move around that way.
Then I opened my senses to try to track down the elusive Fae who lived among the human population in Unalaska.
The wind was kicking up, with more rain and sleet on the way, and apparently the inhabitants of Unalaska knew it. No one was on the streets, and a few cars moved about furtively, like mice getting out of the way of a predator. I sensed a trickle of quivery energy coming from one low building, a place called the Elbow Room, and I went on in.
I was immediately subsumed in the energy of a crowded, raucous little dive. Music and the scent of beer, seared meat, and smoke flooded into my face, but worse were the sudden emotions that filled my head. There was drunken elation and drunken dread and drunken sullen anger and drunken lust; mainly, though, there were sober versions of all of those emotions as well. Threads of frustration and tension wove through the other emotions—servers, I imagined, overworked and cautious. Wariness rode steadily through the room from one corner, doubtless the bouncer, and cheerful greed hummed tunelessly under the rest, doubtless from the dive’s owner.
I’m a wizard and I specialize in delicate magicks. I’m awfully sensitive to people’s emotions, and running into this batch was like walking into a wall of none-too-clean water. It took me a moment to get my balance back, adjust, and walk inside.
“Close the door!” someone shouted. I took note of a young man, his face reddened and chapped by frigid wind. “Christ, I been cold enough to freeze my balls off for days!”
“That explains a whole hell of a lot, Clint!” shouted another man from the far side of the bar, to a round of general, rough laughter.
I closed the door behind me and tried to ignore the sullen, swelling anger radiating off Clint. There was something very off about his vibe. When it comes to emotions, people and monsters have a lot in common. It takes a very, very alien mind to feel emotions that are significantly different than those you’d find in human beings—and there’s a vast range of them, too. Throw in mind-altering substances, like hormones and drugs, and it’s absolutely unreal the variety available.
But I recognized an angry sexual predator when I sensed one.
I faked a few shivers against the cold as I wedged myself in at the bar and nodded to the bartender, a woman who looked as if she might wrestle Kodiaks for fun on her days off, if she ever took a day off. I put down some cash, secured a beer, and felt an ugly presence crawling up my spine.
I took a sip of the beer, some kind of Russian monstrosity that tasted as if it had been brewed from Stalin’s sweat and escaped a Soviet gulag, and turned casually to find Clint standing behind me, about three inches too close, and breathing a little too hard.
“I don’t know you,” he said.
“Wow,” I said.
“What?”
“That’s got to be the best opening line in history,” I said, and swigged some more beer. Hairs probably didn’t start popping out on my chest, making little bing noises as they did, but I can’t swear to it. “Did you want something?”
“I don’t know you,” he repeated. His breath was coming faster, and there was a kind of glossy film on his eyes I didn’t like much. “Everyone knows everyone here. You’re new.”
“But not interested,” I said, and turned away.
He clamped a hand down on my shoulder, painfully hard, and spun me back around. “I’m talking to you.”
Once upon a time, that sudden physicality would have made my adrenaline spike and my heart pound with apprehension. Now my whole head suddenly went icy-hot with anger instead. I felt my lips pull back from my teeth. “Oh, pumpkin,” I said. “You should walk away. You aren’t going to like how this one plays out.”
“You need to come with me,” Clint said. He started to pull at me. He was strong. Wobbly on his feet, but strong.
“Take your hand off me before I lose my temper,” I said, my voice very sharp, and pitched to carry to everyone in the room, even over the noise and music.
And I got almost no reaction from the room at all.
Now that was interesting enough to notice. Places like this were full of your usual blue-collar crowd. You wouldn’t find many philosophers or intellectuals here, but there would be plenty of basically decent people who wouldn’t think twice about taking a swing at an aggressor.
Except no one was even looking at me. Not one eye in the entire room. Everyone was staring at a tiny TV screen on a wall, playing a sports broadcast so grainy and blurred that I couldn’t even tell which game it was. Or they were focused on their drinks. Or at random spots on the wall. And the whole place filled with the sudden, sour psychic stench of fear. I turned my eyes to the two men at the bar next to me, and they only traded a look with the bartender, one that practically screamed out the words, Oh no, not this again.
What? Was Clint really that scary?
Apparently.
Certainly no help was coming. Which meant it was up to me.
“Let’s do this the fun way,” I said. “I’m going to count down from three to one, and when I get to one, if you are still touching me, I’m going to put you on a therapist’s couch for the rest of your natural life.”
“With me,” Clint insisted, breathing harder. I’m not even sure he realized I had said anything.
“Three,” I said.
“Show you something,” Clint growled.
“Two,” I replied, drawing out the number, the way Mary Poppins might have to unruly children.
“Yeah,” Clint said. “Yeah. Show you something.”
“O—” I began to say.
I didn’t get to finish the word. A man seized the middle finger of Clint’s hand, the one on my shoulder, snagged the other fingers with his other
hand, and bent the single finger back. There was a snapping sound like a small tree branch breaking, and Clint let out a scream.
The newcomer moved with calm efficiency. Before Clint could so much as turn to face him, the new guy lifted a foot and drove his heel down hard at a downward angle into the side of Clint’s knee. There was a second crack, louder, and Clint dropped to the floor in a heap.
“I don’t think the lady likes you doing that,” the newcomer said, his voice polite. He was a little over medium height, maybe an inch or two shorter than me, and built like a gymnast, all compact muscle and whipcord. He wore nondescript clothes much like my own, his features were darkly handsome, and his black eyes glittered with a feverish, intelligent heat.
I also knew him. Carlos Ramirez was a wizard, and a Warden of the White Council. He was only a couple of years older than me, and hotter than a boy-band bad boy’s mug shot, and I instantly wanted to jump him.
Whoa. Down, girl. Just because you’re the Winter Lady doesn’t mean you have to behave like your predecessor did. Look where it got her.
“Miss?” he asked me. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine,” I said.
“I apologize for that,” he said. “Some things just shouldn’t happen. Excuse me for a moment.”
And with that, Carlos reached down, snagged Clint by the back of his coat, and dragged him to the door. Clint started feebly thrashing and swatting at Carlos, but the young wizard didn’t seem to notice. He dragged Clint to the door and tossed him out into the sleet. Then he shut the door again and turned back to face the room.
Everyone was staring at him. The jukebox was wailing a song about broken hearts, but the talk in the room had died completely. The fear I’d sensed earlier had ratcheted up a notch. For a frozen moment, no one moved. Then one of the customers reached for his wallet and started counting bills onto his table. Everyone else started following suit.
Within five minutes the place was empty except for us and the bartender.
“What the hell is this about?” Carlos murmured, watching the last patrons depart. He looked over his shoulder at the bartender. “Was that guy the sheriff’s kid or something?”
The bartender shook her head and said, “I’m closing. You two need to leave.”
Carlos held up a twenty between two fingers. “Beer first?”
The bartender gave him an exasperated look, took a step to her left, and then said, “Do you understand me, mister? You need to leave. Both of you.”
“That a pistol or shotgun you got back there?” Carlos asked.
“Stick around. You’ll find out,” the bartender said.
The fear coming off her was nauseating, a mortal dread. I shook my head and said to Carlos, “Maybe we should.”
“Mostly frozen water is falling from the sky, I’m starving, and I haven’t had a drink yet,” Carlos said. He asked the bartender, “There another place for one?”
“Charlie’s,” she replied instantly. “Other side of the bay. Green neon sign. Good burgers.”
Carlos squinted his eyes and studied the bartender, as if weighing the value of heeding her words versus the personal pleasure he would take in being contrary.
Harry Dresden has had a horrible influence on far too many people, and has much to answer for.
“Okay,” he said mildly. “Miss, would you care to join me for a meal?”
“That would be lovely,” I said.
So we left and started trudging through the sleet.
The sound of it hitting the ground and the sidewalks and roads was a wet rattle. I didn’t need to, but I hunched my shoulders as if against the cold and dropped my chin down to my neck as much as I could. “Goodness, this is brisk,” I said.
“Is it?” Carlos asked.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“Of course I am,” Carlos said. “But I figured the Winter Lady would think this was a balmy day.”
I stopped in my tracks and stared at him for a moment.
He offered me a sudden, mischievous smile. “Hi, Molly.”
I tilted my head to one side. “Mmm. What gave it away?”
He gestured toward his eyelids with two fingertips. “Seeing ointment,” he said. “Cuts right through glamour. I’ve got eyes all over this town. When they spotted a lone young woman walking in from the far side of the island, I figured it was worth taking a peek.”
“I see,” I said. “Carlos, tell me something.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you mean to arrest me and take me before the White Council? Because that isn’t going to fit into my schedule.”
I’d had some issues with the White Council’s Laws of Magic in the past. The kind of issues that would have gotten my head hacked off if Harry hadn’t interceded on my behalf. But then he mostly died, and I’d been on my own, outside of his aegis. The Wardens, including Carlos Ramirez, had hunted me. I’d evaded them—always moving, always watching, always afraid that one of the grim men and women in gray cloaks would step out of a tear in the fabric of reality right in front of me and smite me. I’d had a recurring nightmare about it, in fact.
But they’d never caught up with me.
“Molly, please,” Ramirez said. “If I’d wanted to find you and take you to the Council, I would have found you. Give me that much credit. I even sandbagged a couple of the ops sent to bring you in.”
I frowned at him. “Why would you do that?”
“Because Harry liked you,” he said simply. “Because he thought it was worth sticking his neck out to help you. Besides, I had my own area to cover, and in the absence of a Warden, you were giving the Fomor hell.”
They hadn’t been the only ones with a surplus of hell. I hadn’t been having much fun, either. “Why didn’t the Council appoint a replacement, then?”
“They tried. They couldn’t get anyone to volunteer to take Dresden’s place as the Warden of the Midwest.”
“Why not, I wonder.”
“Lots and lots of problems and not enough Wardens,” Carlos replied. “With the Fomor going nutballs, we’re up to our necks and sinking already. Plus, everyone they asked had a good opinion of Harry, and nobody wanted to inherit the enemies he’d made.”
“So, to clarify,” I said, “you’re not here to bring me in.”
“Correct, Miss Carpenter. It would be a little awkward now that you’re royalty. And, frankly, I have no intention of crossing Mab if I can possibly help it. Ever.”
“Then why are you here?” I asked.
A boyish smile flickered over his face, and something inside me did a little quivering barrel roll. “Maybe I just wanted to meet the famous new Queen of the Winter Court,” he said.
I fluttered my eyelashes at him and said, “Don’t you trust me, Carlos?”
The smile faded a little and then turned wry. “It isn’t personal, Molly. But from what I hear, you’re a sovereign executive entity of a foreign supernatural nation, one that is on formal and unsteady ground with the White Council.”
I felt myself grinning more widely at his mistake. “So it’s Council business, then,” I said.
His lips pressed into a grimace and he said, “No comment.”
“So formal,” I said. “What did you think of that scene in the bar?”
“Weird, right?” he said.
“Do you know what I think I’d like to do?”
“Circle back and watch the place to see why everyone was leaving?”
I winked at him. “I was going to say, ‘Find a warm spot to make out,’ but, sure, we can do that if you’d rather.”
Carlos blinked several times.
Actually, I kind of blinked, too.
The past few years had been hard ones. I’d gotten used to walling people away. My libido had shriveled up from lack of use. I’d barely been able to allow Harry to come nea
r me. And now here I was, flirting with the really, exceptionally cute Carlos Ramirez, as if I were a girl who enjoyed flirting.
I remembered that girl. I used to be that girl. Was that also a part of what Mab had done for me when she arranged to have me ascend to be the Winter Lady? Because if it was . . .
I liked it.
Should that be scaring me? I decided that I didn’t want to worry about that. It was just such a relief to feel that kind of feeling again.
I pursed my lips, blew Carlos a little kiss, and turned to circle back toward the Elbow Room. It took him about five seconds to begin to follow me.
We found a shadowy spot next to a building within sight of the Elbow Room. I flicked up a veil to make sure we wouldn’t be observed, and we settled down to wait.
It didn’t take long. Within five or ten minutes, a silent column of men, twenty strong, came down the road, their feet crunching through the half-frozen sleet. Clint was at the head of the column with another man, a very tall, very lean character with a captain’s peaked cap, leathery skin, and the dull, flat eyes of a dead fish. They marched up to the Elbow Room and filed inside, neat as a military unit on parade. No one said a word the entire time.
“Huh,” Carlos noted. “That’s not odd at all.”
“No kidding. Dive Bar of the Damned.” I frowned. “They look like locals to you?”
“Waterproof boots and coats,” he said. “Fishermen, likely.”
“Like, Clint’s shipmates? Do shipmates come get involved in bar fights for their fellow shipmates?”
“Do I look like somebody who knows something like that? I’m from LA.” He scratched his nose. “The question I’m having trouble with is, are there people who are willing to get into a fight for the sake of a jackhole like Clint?” He squinted. “Can I ask you something, Molly?”
I grinned at him. “It’s pretty early in the season to entertain any more proposals, Carlos.”
In the dark it was hard to tell, but I think his cheeks turned a few shades of color. It was actually kind of adorable. “What are you doing here?” he asked.