by Jim Butcher
It was a low-ceilinged cave—low for me, any way. Most folks wouldn’t have been troubled. Three feet from the doorway, the floor dropped away into silent, black water that stretched out beyond the reach of my blue wizard light. Murphy stepped up next to me, and the light on her gun sent a silver spear of white light out over the water.
There, on a slab of stone that rose up no more than an inch or two from the water’s surface, lay Georgia.
Murphy’s light played over her. Georgia was a tall woman—in high-enough heels, she could have looked me in the eye. She’d been stork-skinny and frizzy haired when I met her. The years in between had softened her lines and brought out a natural confidence and intelligence that made her an extraordinarily attractive, if not precisely beautiful, woman. She was naked, laid on her back with her arms crossed over her chest in repose, funeral-style. She took slow breaths. Her skin was discolored from the cold, her lips tinged blue.
“Georgia?” I called, feeling like a dummy. But I didn’t know of any other way to see if she was awake. She didn’t stir.
“What now?” Murphy asked. “You go get her while I cover you?”
I shook my head. “Can’t be as easy as it looks.”
“Why not?”
“Because it never is.” I bowed my head for a moment, pressed my fingertips lightly to my forehead, between my eyebrows, and concentrated on bringing up my Sight.
One of the things common to all wizards is the Sight. Call it a sixth sense, a third eye, whatever you please; around the world everyone with enough magic has the Sight. It lets you actually see the forces of energy at work in the world around you—life, death, magic, what have you. It isn’t always easy to understand what I see, and sometimes it isn’t pretty—and anything a wizard views with his Sight is there, in Technicolor, never fading—forever.
That’s why you have to be careful what you choose to Look at. I don’t like doing it, ever. You never know what it is you’ll See.
But when it came to finding out what kinds of magic might be between Georgia and me, I didn’t have many options. I opened my Sight and Looked out over the water to Georgia.
The water was shot through with slithery tendrils of greenish light—a spell of some kind, just under its placid surface. If the water moved, the spell would react. I couldn’t tell how. The stone Georgia lay upon held a dull, pulsing energy, a sullen violet radiance that wound in slow, hypnotic spirals through the rock. A binding was in effect, I was sure, something to keep her from moving. Another spell played over and through Georgia herself—a cloud of deep blue sparkles that lay against her skin, especially around her head. A sleeping spell? I couldn’t make out any details from here.
“Well?” Murphy said.
I closed my eyes and released my Sight, always a mildly disorienting experience. The remnants of my hangover made it worse than usual. I reported my findings to Murphy.
“Well,” she said, “I sure am glad we have a wizard on the case. Otherwise we might be standing here without any idea what to do next.”
I grimaced and stepped to the water’s edge. “This is water magic. It’s tricky stuff. I’ll try to take down the alarm spell on the surface of the pool, then swim out and get Geo—”
Without warning, the water erupted into a boiling froth at my feet, and a claw, a freaking pincer as big as a couple of basketballs, shot out of the water and clamped down on my ankle.
I let out a battle cry. Sure, a lot of people might have mistaken it for a sudden yelp of unmanly fear, but trust me: It was a battle cry.
The thing, whatever it was, pulled my leg out from under me, trying to drag me in. I could see slick, wet black shell. I whipped my blasting rod around to point at the thing and snarled, “Fuego!”
A lance of fire as thick as my thumb lashed from the tip of my blasting rod, which was pointed at the thing’s main body. It hit the water and boiled into steam. It smashed into the shell of the creature with such force that it simply ripped the thing’s body from its clawed limb. I brought my shield up, a pale, fragile-looking quarter dome of blue light that coalesced into place before the steam boiled back into my eyes.
I squirmed away from the water on my butt, shaking wildly at the severed limb that still clutched me.
The waters surged again, and another slick-shelled thing grabbed at me. And another. And another. Dozens of the creatures were rushing toward our side of the pool, and the pressure wave rushing before them rose a foot off the pool’s surface.
“Shellycobbs!” I shouted, and flicked another burst of flame at the nearest, driving it back. “They’re shellycobbs!”
“Whatever,” Murphy said, stepped up beside me, and started shooting. The third shellycobb took three hits in the same center area of its shell and cracked like a restaurant lobster.
It bought me a second to act, and I raised the blasting rod and tried something new on the fly, a blending of a blast of fire with my shield magic. I pointed the rod at one side of the shore, gathered my will, and thundered, “Ignus defendarius!”
A bar of flame, bright enough to hurt my eyes, shot out to one side of the room. I drew a line across the stone with the tip of the blasting rod, and as the flame touched the stone, it adhered, spooling out from my blasting rod until it had formed a solid line between us and the water, and an opaque curtain of flame three feet high separated us from the shellycobbs. Angry rattles and splashes came from the far side of the curtain.
If the fire dropped, the faerie water monsters would swarm us.
The fire took a lot of energy to keep up, and if I tried to hold it too long, I’d probably black out. Worse, it was still fire—it needed oxygen to keep burning, and in those cramped tunnels there wasn’t going to be much of it around for breathing if the fire stayed lit too long. All of this meant we had only seconds and had to do something—fast.
“Murph!” I snapped. “Could you carry her?”
She turned wide blue eyes to me, her gun still held ready and pointing at the shellycobbs. “What?”
“Can you carry her?”
She gritted her teeth and nodded once.
I met her eyes for a dangerous second and asked, “Do you trust me?”
Fire crackled. Water boiled. Steam hissed.
“Yes, Harry,” she whispered.
I flashed her a grin. “Jump the fire. Run to her.”
“Run to her?”
“And hurry,” I said, lifting my left arm, focusing as my shield bracelet began to glow, blue-white energy swiftly becoming incandescent. “Now!”
Murphy broke into a run and hurtled over the wall of fire.
“Forzare!” I shouted, and extended my left arm and my will.
I reshaped the shield, this time forming it in a straight, flat plane about three feet wide. It shot through the wall of flame, over the water, to the stone upon which Georgia lay. Murphy landed on the bridge of pure force, kept her balance, and poured on the speed, sprinting over the water to the unconscious young woman.
Murphy slapped her gun back into its holster, grabbed Georgia, and, with a shout and a grunt of effort, managed to get the tall girl into a fireman’s carry. She started back, much more slowly than she’d gone forward.
The shellycobbs thrashed even more furiously, and the strain of holding both spells started to become a physical sensation, a spidery, trembling weakness in my arms and legs. I clenched my teeth and my will, focusing on holding the wall and the bridge until Murphy could return. My vision distorted, shrinking down to a tunnel.
And then Murphy shouted again and plunged through the fire, this time more slowly. She let out a gasp of pain as she got singed, then stumbled past me.
I released the bridge with a gasp of relief. “Go!” I said. “Come on, let’s go!”
Together, we were barely able to get Georgia lifted. I was only able to hold the wall of flame against the shellycobbs for about fifty feet when I had to release the spell or risk passing out. I guess the shellycobbs weren’t sprinters, because Murphy and I ou
tran them, dragging the naked girl out of her Undertown prison and back to Murphy’s car.
In all that time, Georgia never stirred.
Murphy had a blanket in her trunk. I wrapped Georgia in it and got in the backseat with her. Murphy gunned the car and headed for the Lincolnshire Marriott Resort Hotel, twenty miles north of town and one of the most ostentatious places in the area to hold a wedding. Traffic wasn’t good, and according to the clock in Murphy’s car, we had less than ten minutes before the wedding was supposed to begin.
I struggled in the backseat, fumbling to keep Georgia from bouncing off the ceiling, to get my backpack open, and to ignore the cuts the shellycobb’s pincer left on my leg.
“Is that blood on her face?” Murphy asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Dried. But I figure it wasn’t hers. Bob said she wolfed out in the apartment. I think Georgia got her fangs into Jenny Greenteeth before she got grabbed.”
“Jenny who?”
“Jenny Greenteeth,” I said. “She’s one of the sidhe. Faerie nobility, sidekick to the Winter Lady.”
“Are her teeth green?”
“Like steamed spinach. I saw her leading a big old bunch of shellycobbs just like those guys, back at the faerie war. If Maeve wanted to lay out some payback for Billy and company, Jenny’s the one she’d send.”
“She’s dangerous?”
“You know the stories about things that tempt you down to the water’s edge and then drown you? Sirens that lure sailors to their deaths? Mermaids who carry men off to their homes under the sea?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s Jenny. Only she’s not so cuddly.”
I dug Bob out of my backpack. The skull took one look at the sleeping, naked Georgia and leered. “First you get demolition-level sex with the cop chick, and now a threesome, all in the same day!” he cried. “Harry, you have to write Penthouse about this!”
“Not now, Bob. I need you to identify the spell that’s been laid on Georgia.”
The skull made a disgusted sound but focused on the girl. “Oh,” he said after a second. “Wow. That’s a good one. Definitely sidhe work.”
“I figure it’s Jenny Greenteeth. Give me details.”
“Jenny got game. It’s a sleep spell,” he said. “A seriously good one, too. Malicious as hell.”
“How do I lift it?”
“You can’t,” Bob said.
“Fine. How do I break it?”
“You don’t understand. It’s been tied into the victim. It’s being fueled by the victim’s life force. If you shatter the spell …”
I nodded, getting it. “I’ll do the same to her. Is it impossible to get rid of it?”
“No, not at all. I’m saying that you couldn’t lift it. Whoever threw it could do that, of course. But there’s another key.”
I grew wroth and scowled. “What key, Bob?”
“Uh,” he said, somehow giving the impression that he’d shrugged. “A kiss ought to do it. You know. True love, Prince Charming, that kind of thing.”
“That won’t be hard,” I said, relaxing a little. “We’ll definitely get to the wedding before he goes off alone with Jenny and gets drowned.”
“Oh, good,” Bob said. “Of course, the girl still kicks off, but you can’t save all the people, all the time.”
“What?” I demanded. “Why does Georgia die?”
“Oh, if the Werewolf kid goes through the ceremony with Jenny and plights his troth and so on, it’s going to contaminate him. I mean, if he’s married to another, it can’t really be pure love. Jenny’s claim on him would prevent the kiss from lifting the spell.”
“Which means Georgia won’t wake up,” I said, chewing on my lip. “At what point in the wedding does it happen, exactly?”
“You mean, when will it be too late?” Bob asked.
“Yeah, I mean, when they say, ‘I do,’ when they swap rings, or what?”
“Rings and vows,” Bob said, mild scorn in his voice. “Way overrated.”
Murphy glanced up at me in the rearview mirror and said, “It’s the kiss, Harry. It’s the kiss.”
“Buffy’s right!” Bob agreed cheerily.
I met Murphy’s eyes in the mirror for just a second and then said, “Yeah. I guess I should have figured.”
Murphy smiled a little.
“The kiss seals the deal,” Bob prattled. “If Billy kisses Jenny Greenteeth, the girl with the long legs ain’t waking up, and he ain’t long for the world, either.”
“Murph,” I said, tense.
She rolled down the car’s window, slapped a magnetic cop light on the roof, and started up the siren. Then she stomped on the gas and all but gave me whiplash.
UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, the trip to the resort would have taken half an hour. I’m not saying Murphy’s driving was suicidal. Not quite. But after the third near collision, I closed my eyes and fought off the urge to chant, “There’s no place like home.”
Murphy got us there in twenty minutes.
Tires screeched as she swung into the resort’s parking lot. “Drop me there,” I said, pointing. “Park behind the reception tent so folks won’t see Georgia. I’ll go get Billy.”
Clutching my blasting rod, I bailed out of the car, which never actually came to a full stop, and ran into the hotel. The concierge blinked at me from behind her desk.
“Wedding!” I barked at her. “Where?”
She blinked and pointed a finger down the hall. “Um. The ballroom.”
“Right!” I said, and sprinted that way. I could see the open double doors and heard a man’s voice over a loudspeaker saying, “Until death do you part?”
Eve McAlister stood at the doorway in her lavender silk outfit, and when she saw me, her eyes narrowed into sharp little chips of ice. “There, that’s him. That’s the man.”
Two big, beefy guys in matching badly fitted maroon dress coats appeared—hotel security goons. They stepped directly into my path, and the larger one said, “Sir, I’m sorry, but this is a private function. I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
I ground my teeth. “You have got to be kidding me! Private? I’m the best-fucking-man!”
The loudspeaker voice in the ballroom said, “Then by the power vested in me …”
“I will not allow you to further disrupt this wedding, or tarnish my good name,” Eve said in a triumphant tone. “Gentlemen, please escort him from the premises before he causes a scene.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the bigger goon said. He stepped toward me, glancing down at the blasting rod. “Sir, let’s walk to the doors now.”
Instead, I darted forward, toward the doors, taking the goons by surprise with the abrupt action. “Billy!” I shouted.
The goons recovered in an eyeblink and tackled me. They were professional goons. I went down under them, and it drove the breath out of me.
The loudspeaker voice said, “Man and wife. You may now kiss the bride.”
I lay there on my back under maybe five hundred pounds of security goon, struggling to breathe and staring at nothing but ceiling.
A ceiling lined with a whole bunch of automated fire extinguishers.
I slammed my head into the Boss Goon’s nose and bit Backup Goon on the arm until he screamed and jerked it away, freeing my right arm.
I pointed the blasting rod up, reached for my power, and wheezed, “Fuego …”
Flame billowed up to the ceiling.
A fire alarm howled. The sprinklers flicked on and turned the inside of the hotel into a miniature monsoon.
Chaos erupted. The ballroom was filled with screams. The floor shook a little as hundreds of guests leapt to their feet and started looking for an exit. The security goons, smart enough to realize they suddenly had an enormous problem on their hands, scrambled away from the doorway before they could be trampled.
I got to my feet in time to see a minister fleeing a raised platform, where a figure in Georgia’s wedding dress had hunched over, while Billy, spiffy in his tux, stare
d at her in pure shock. That much running water grounded out whatever glamour the bride might have been using, and her features melted back into those I’d seen before—she lost an inch or two of height and her proportions changed. Georgia’s rather sharp features flowed into a visage of haunting, unearthly beauty. Georgia’s brown hair became the same green as emeralds and seaweed.
Jenny Greenteeth turned toward Billy, her trademark choppers bared in a viridian snarl, and her hand swept at his throat, inhuman nails gleaming.
Billy may have been shocked, but not so much that he didn’t recognize the threat. His arm intercepted Jenny’s and he drove into her, pushing both hands forward with the power of his arms, shoulders, and legs. Billy had a low center of gravity, and was no skinny weakling. The push sent Jenny back several steps and off the edge of the platform. She fell in a tangle of white fabric and lace.
“Billy!” I shouted again, almost managing to make it loud. My voice was lost in the sounds of panic and the wailing fire alarms, so I gritted my teeth, brought my shield bracelet up to its flashiest, sparkliest, shiniest charge, and thrust into the press of the crowd. To them, it must have looked like someone waving a road flare around, and there was a steady stream of interjections that averaged out to “Eek!” I forged ahead through them.
By the time I was past the crowd, Jenny Greenteeth had risen to her feet, tearing the bridal gown off as if it were made of tissue paper. She stretched one hand into a grasping claw and clenched at the air. Ripples of angry power fluttered between her fingers, and an ugly green sphere of light appeared in her hand.
She leapt nimbly back up to the platform, unencumbered by the dress, and flung the green sphere at Billy. He ducked. It flew over his head, leaving a hole with blackened, crumbling edges in the wall behind him.
Jenny howled and summoned another sphere, but by that time I was within reach. Standing on the floor by the platform gave me a perfect shot at her knees, and I swung my blasting rod with both hands. The blow elicited a shriek of pain from the sidhe woman, and she flung the second sphere at me. I caught it on my shield bracelet and it rebounded upon her, searing a black line across the outside of one thigh.