by Jim Butcher
“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. “Even 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?”
“The Queen may be less than pleased with me if I break her newest toy before she’s gotten sufficient use from it.”
“Gosh,” I said.
Sith flicked an ear and managed to do it contemptuously. “I will bear this message, Sir Knight. And I will… distract… those who hunt you. When will you be departing?”
Behind me, Thomas’s phone began to ring.
“Tell you in a second,” I said. I answered the phone. “Go for Doughnut Boy.”
A woman with a voice cold enough to merit the use of the Kelvin scale spat, “He will meet you. Accorded Neutral Ground. Ten minutes.”
“Cool,” I said. “I haven’t had a beer in forever.”
There was a brief, perhaps baffled silence, and then she hung up on me.
I turned back to Thomas and Molly and said, “Let’s go. Sith, please be—”
The eldest malk vanished.
“—gin,” I finished, somewhat lamely.
Thomas swung to his feet and slipped the little automatic into the back of his pants, then pulled his shirt down over it. “Where are we going?”
“Accorded Neutral Ground,” I said.
“Oh, good,” Molly said. “I’m starving.”
Chapter
Twenty-one
In the lobby, we found the doorman sitting on the ground grimacing in pain. A CPD patrol officer was next to him with a first-aid kit. As we passed, I saw several long, long slices in the back of one of the doorman’s legs, running from just above his heel to the top of his calf. His slacks and socks alike were sliced in neat, parallel strips. The wounds were painful and bloody, but not life-threatening.
Both men were both too preoccupied to pay an instant of attention to the three of us as we calmly left the building.
I winced a little as we went by them. Dammit. I hadn’t wanted to turn even the gentlest of Cat Sith’s attentions upon any of my fellow Chicagoans, but I hadn’t worded my command to him tightly enough. Of course, that was a rabbit hole I didn’t want to start down—experience has taught me that you do not win against supernatural entities at lawyering. It just doesn’t happen. I didn’t even want to think about what Sith might have done if I hadn’t forbidden him the use of deadly force.
Maybe this was the malk’s way of telling me to beware the consequences if I kept giving him commands like a common servant. Or maybe this was his idea of playing nice. After all, he hadn’t slashed up the cop and every passerby. For all I knew, he thought he’d been a perfect gentleman.
Molly checked out the parking garage from beneath a veil while Thomas and I waited. Once she pronounced the garage villain-free, we got into my brother’s troop transport and left.
* * *
In Chicago, you can’t swing a cat without hitting an Irish pub (and angering the cat), but McAnally’s place stands out from the crowd. It’s the favored watering hole for the supernatural scene of Chicago. Normals never really seem to find their way in, though we get some tourists once in a while. They rarely linger.
Morning traffic was roaring at full steam, and even though Mac’s wasn’t far, it took us a little time to get there. Clouds had swallowed up the bright dawn, thick and grey. A light rain was falling. Occasionally I could see flashes of distant lightning glowing through the clouds overhead, or hear a subtle growl of low thunder.
“And it was supposed to be nice today,” Molly murmured.
I smiled a little, but didn’t say anything.
Thomas pulled into the little parking lot adjacent to Mac’s, parking his Hummer next to an old white Trans Am. He stopped, frowning at it.
“I thought Mac usually opened up at noon,” he said.
“Eleven,” I said. My old office building hadn’t been far away. I’d eaten many a lunch at Mac’s place. “Guess he came in early today.”
“That’s handy,” Thomas said.
“Where does that saying come from?” I asked.
“Uh,” Thomas said. “Handy?”
I blinked as we walked. “Well, yeah, that one, too, but I was thinking of the phrase, ‘You can’t swing a cat without hitting something around here.’”
Thomas gave me a steady look. “Don’t you have important things to be thinking about right now?”
I shrugged. “I wonder about these things. Life goes on, man. If I stop thinking about things just because some psycho or crew of psychos wants me dead, I’ll never get to think about anything, will I?”
Thomas bobbed his head to one side in acknowledgment of my point.
About thirty feet from the door, Molly abruptly stopped in her tracks and said, “Harry.”
I paused and looked back at her.
Her eyes were wide. She said, “I sense…”
I narrowed my eyes. “Say it. You know you want to say it.”
“It is not a distur
bance in the Force,” she said, her voice half-exasperated. “There’s a… a presence here. Something powerful. I felt it in Chichén Itzá.”
“Good,” I said, nodding. “He’s here. Seriously, neither of you guys knows where that saying comes from? Damn.”
I hate not knowing things. It’s enough to make a guy wish he could use the Internet.
* * *
Mac’s pub was all but empty. It’s a place that looks pretty spacious when empty, yet it’s small enough to feel cozy when it’s full. It’s a study in deliberate asymmetry. There are thirteen tables of varying sizes and heights scattered irregularly around the floor. There are thirteen wooden columns, placed in similarly random positions, their faces carved with scenes from old-world nursery tales. The bar kind of meanders, and there are thirteen stools spaced unevenly along it. Just about everything is made from wood, including the paneled walls, the hardwood floors, and the paneled ceiling. Thirteen ceiling fans hang suspended from the ceiling, ancient things that Mac manages to keep running despite the frequent presence of magical talents.
The decor is a kind of feng shui, or at least something close to it. All that imbalance is intended to scatter the random outbursts of magical energy that cause problems for practitioners. It must work. The electric fans and the telephone hardly ever melt down.
Mac stood behind the bar, a lean man a little taller than average, his shaven head gleaming. I’ve patronized his establishment for most of my adult life and he still looked more or less like he had when I first met him: neat, dressed in dark pants, a white shirt, and a pristine white apron that proved its ongoing redundancy by never getting messy. Mac was leaning on the bar, listening to something the pub’s only other occupant was saying.
The second man was well over six feet tall, and built with the kind of broad shoulders and lean power that made me think of a long-distance swimmer. He wore a dark grey business suit, an immaculate European number of some kind, obviously custom-made. His hair was the color of old steel, highlighted with sweeps of silver, and his sharp chin and jawline were emphasized by the cut of a short silver-white beard. The man wore a black eye patch made of silk, and even against the backdrop of that suit, it gave him a piratical aura.