by Jim Butcher
I paused and thought about it. “Me too. I mean, I know a bunch of these guys. Some of them are good people, some of them are jerks, but most are just guys doing a job. And it’s not like sticking us in a room and questioning us is going to accomplish anything to make their day go more smoothly.”
“And you enjoy driving authority figures insane,” Thomas said.
I shrugged. “I watched The Dukes of Hazzard at a formative age,” I said. “Of course I enjoy it.”
“Where next?” Thomas asked. “Molly’s place?”
I thought about it for a minute. I didn’t think it would be a great idea to be there when Fix came looking for a fight. Svartalves were a little prickly about territory, and they might not be at all amused if I dragged a personal conflict into their domain. But there were other people I wanted to contact before nightfall, and I needed a phone and some quiet workspace to do it in.
“The Summer Lady has granted your request for an audience,” said Cat Sith from the backseat.
Thomas nearly took the Hummer off the street and into a bus stop shelter. My heart leapt into my throat as if it had been given bionic legs and its own sound effects. Thomas regained control of the vehicle almost instantly, letting out a wordless snarl as he did.
“Sith,” I said, too loud. My heart was running at double time. I glared at him over the front seat. “Dammit.”
The malk’s too-long tail flicked back and forth in smug self-satisfaction. “Shall I interpret that as an order to burn something, Sir Knight? If you are to survive long in Winter, you must learn to be much more specific in your turns of phrase.”
“No, don’t burn anything,” I said, grouchily. I thought about giving the malk an order not to sneak up on me like that anymore, but thought better of it. That would be exactly the kind of order that Cat Sith would take grotesque amusement in perverting, and I wanted to avoid putting him into a playful mood. “What did Lily have to say?”
“That she would guarantee your safety from harm wrought by herself, her Court, and any in her employ or influence,” the malk said, “provided that you came alone and kept the peace.”
I grunted, thinking.
“Why would she want you alone?” Thomas asked. “Unless she planned on doing something to you.”
“Because the last time she saw the Winter Knight, he was murdering the previous Summer Knight?” I guessed aloud. “Because the last time she saw the corpse of the Summer Lady, I was the one who’d made it? Because I’m a known thug who wrecks things a lot?”
Thomas bobbed his head slightly to one side in acknowledgment. “Okay. Point.”
“Sith,” I asked, “where is the meeting?”
“A public venue,” Sith said, his eyes half-lidded. “Chicago Botanic Gardens.”
“See?” I said to Thomas. “That’s not a venue for an assassination—for either of us. There are too many people around. There are plenty of ways out for anyone who wants to leave. That’s a viable neutral location.”
“If I remember right,” Thomas said, “the last time the Summer Lady tried a hit on you, didn’t she animate a bunch of plants into a giant monster that tried to kill you in the garden center of a Walmart?”
I rode in silence for a few seconds and then said, “Yeah, but… it was dark. Not as many people around.”
“Oh,” Thomas said. “Okay.”
I held the back of my left fist up to him, then used my right fist to make a little circular cranking motion next to it, while slowly elevating the center finger of my left hand until it was fully extended. Then I turned to Sith.
“What do you think? Is the risk acceptable for a meeting in that location?”
“You would be foolish to meet with her at all,” Cat Sith replied. “However. Given her promise and her chosen location, I judge it to be at least possible that she may actually intend to treat with you.”
“Suppose she’s lying,” Thomas said.
“She can’t,” I told him. “None of the Sidhe or the greater powers of either court can tell an outright lie. Right, Sith?”
“Logically speaking, my answer to that question would be unsupportable as truth.”
I sighed. “Well, that’s how it is among them,” I said. “No falsehoods. They can twist words around, they can avoid answering, they can mislead you by drawing you to false conclusions, but they can’t blatantly tell a lie.”
Thomas shook his head as he pulled onto 94 and started north. “I still don’t like it. That crowd never gives you what you expect.”
“Think how boring it would be if they did,” I said.
We both considered that wistfully for a beat.
“You might have to go in alone,” Thomas said. “But I’m going to stay close. Things go bad, just make some noise and I’ll come in.”
“They aren’t going to go bad,” I said. “But even if they do, I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Summer’s weird, but they’re basically good neighbors. I don’t blame them for being jumpy.”
Sith made a disgusted sound.
“Problem?” I asked him.
“This… compassion,” the malk said. “If you prefer, I can slash your throat open now, Sir Knight, and save the vampire the cost of fuel.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “I want you to stay close to Thomas and alert him to any source of danger. If a fight breaks out, your goal is to assist in making sure that both he and I escape, without doing harm to any innocent bystanders, and without killing any mortals.”
Sith started making a sound like my cat always did right before he spit out a hairball.
“Hey,” Thomas said. “Those are custom leather seats!”
Sith spit out a glob the size of a small plum, but instead of a hairball it was actually a small collection of splintered chips of bone. He flicked his tail in scorn and then leapt lightly into the rear bed of the Hummer.
“Jerk,” Thomas muttered.
“Just drive,” I said.
He grimaced and did. After a few miles he asked, “You think this is going to work? This peaceful summit thing?”
“Sure,” I said. After a second, I added, “Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“We’re down to maybe now?”
I shrugged. “We’ll see.”
Chapter
Twenty-four
The Botanic Gardens of Chicago aren’t actually in Chicago, which always made them seem a little shady to me. Ba-dump-bump.
Rain was coming down in fitful little starts, averaging out to a mild drizzle. The air was cool, in the low fifties, and combined with the rain it meant that the gardens weren’t exactly crowded with ardent floraphiles. The weather didn’t bother me. In fact, I could have taken the jacket off and felt fine—but I didn’t.
My grandfather had taught me that magic wasn’t something you used in a cavalier fashion, and it wasn’t considered to be a seductive, corruptive force, the way black magic and the Winter Knight’s mantle were. I had an instinct that the more I leaned on Mab’s power, the more of an effect it would have on me. No sense flaunting it.
Once I was inside, I found myself in a setting of isolation that would be hard to duplicate anywhere else this close to the city. The gardens are the size of a moderate farm, more than three hundred acres. That wouldn’t mean much to city mice, but to translate that into Chicago units, it was a couple of dozen city blocks’ worth of garden. That’s a lot of space to wander in. You could walk the various paths for hours and hours without ever visiting the same place.
Most of those paths were grey and empty. I passed a retiree near the entrance, and a groundskeeper hurrying out of the rain toward what looked like a concealed toolshed, and other than that it seemed like I had the whole place to myself.
There were seasonal decorations out here and there—a lot of pumpkins and cornstalks, where they’d been planning on Halloween festivities. Apparently they were going to be hosting some kind of trick-or-treating function that afternoon,
but for the time being the place did not teem with costumed children and bedraggled parents. It was a little eerie, really. The place looked like it should have been crowded, and felt like it was meant to be crowded, but my soft footsteps were the only sound other than the whisper of rain.
Yet I did not feel as though I were alone. You hear the phrase “I felt like I was being watched” all the time. There’s a good reason for that—it’s a very real feeling, and it has nothing to do with magic. Developing an instinct for sensing when a predator might be studying you is a fundamental survival trait. If you’re ever in a spooky situation and have a strong instinct that you are being watched, hunted, or followed, I advise you not to treat those instincts lightly. They’re there for a reason.
I walked for about five minutes, and instinct converted into certainty. I was being followed. I couldn’t spot who was doing it, exactly, and there were all kinds of plant cover to conceal whoever or whatever was pacing me, but I was confident that they were out there.
Maybe my brother’s fears hadn’t been entirely without merit.
Lily hadn’t said where she intended to meet me, exactly—or rather, I chided myself, I hadn’t badgered Cat Sith hard enough for the details. The furry jerk had calmly denied me that rather important piece of information, simply by never mentioning it, and I hadn’t questioned him closely enough. My own fault. I’d played the malicious obedience card more than a couple of times in my life, but this was the first time I’d had it played against me.
Man. No wonder it drives people insane.
So I started walking the main paths systematically. The gardens are built on a series of islands in a little lake, joined by footbridges and grouped into themes.
I found Lily waiting on the covered bridge to the Japanese garden.
Her long, fine hair flowed in gentle waves to the small of her back. It was silver-white. Evidently the weather didn’t bother her either. She was dressed in a simple green sundress that fell to her knees, the kind of thing you’d expect to see in July. She had a pastel green sweater folded over one arm for appearance’s sake. Brown leather sandals wrapped her feet, and their ties crisscrossed around her ankles. She stood very still, her deep green eyes focused on the ripples the little raindrops sent up on the surface of the lake.
And if I hadn’t known better, if I hadn’t known Lily’s features well enough to be sure it was her, I would have sworn that I was looking at Aurora, the Summer Lady I’d murdered at the stone table.
Before stepping onto the bridge, I paused for a moment to look around me, to truly focus my senses. There, in the bushes—something that moved with feline smoothness paced me in utter silence. More presences filled the water, stirring up more ripples than the rain could account for. And on the far side of the bridge, a number of presences lurked, veiled by magic that kept me from knowing anything about them beyond the fact of their existence.
I figured that there were at least twice as many guardians present, the ones I couldn’t sense without really buckling down. They would probably be the most capable and powerful of Lily’s escort, too.
If Lily meant to do me harm, walking out onto that bridge was a great way to trap myself, and an absolutely fantastic place in which to be shot. The railing on either side was of light, fine material, and would provide no real cover. There were an almost unlimited number of places where a rifleman could be lying in wait. If I went out there and Lily meant to hurt me, I’d have a hell of a time arguing with her.
But she’d given her word that she wouldn’t. I tried to look at this from her point of view—after all, I hadn’t given my word, and even if I had, I could always break it. Had I intended to attack Lily, the bridge presented her with an opportunity to block me in, to slow me down while she and her people escaped.
Screw this. I didn’t have time to waffle.
I hunched my shoulders, hoped no one was about to shoot me again, and strode out onto the bridge.
Lily didn’t give any indication that she’d noticed me until I got to within about ten feet of her. Then she simply lifted her eyes from the water, though she never looked at me.
I’d been the one to ask for this meeting. I stopped, gave her a bow, and said, “Thank you for meeting me, Lady Summer.”
She inclined her head the slightest visible degree. “Sir Knight.”
“Been a while,” I said.
“Relative to what?” she asked.
“Life, I guess,” I said.
“Much has happened,” she agreed. “Wars have raged. Empires have fallen.” She finally turned her head to regard me directly. “Friends have changed.”
Lily had been gorgeous as a mortal woman. After becoming the Summer Lady, her beauty had been magnified into something that was only barely human, something so tangible and intense that it shone out from her like light flowing out of her skin. It was a different kind of beauty from Mab’s or Maeve’s. Their loveliness was an emptiness. Looking on them created nothing but desire, a need that cried out to be filled.
By contrast, Lily’s beauty was a fire, a source of light and warmth, something that created a profound sense of satisfaction. Looking at Lily made the pains of my heart ease, and I suddenly felt like I could breathe freely for the first time in months.
And some other part of me abruptly filled my mind with a violent and explicit image—my fist tangled in Lily’s hair, that soft gentle mouth under mine, her body writhing beneath my weight as I took her to the ground. It wasn’t an idle thought, and it wasn’t a daydream, and it wasn’t a fantasy. It was a blueprint. If Lily was immortal, I couldn’t kill her. That didn’t mean I couldn’t take her.
I forgot how to speak for a couple of seconds as I fought the image out of my forebrain. Then I forced myself to look away from her, out to the water of the lake. I leaned down on the guardrail, gripping it with my hands. I was a little worried that if I didn’t give them something to do, they might try something stupid. I took a cleansing breath and reengaged my speech centers. “I’m not the only one who’s changed since that day.”
I could feel her eyes on me, intently studying my face. I had a feeling that she knew exactly what I’d just felt. “True,” she murmured. “But we’ve made our choices, haven’t we? And now we are who we are. I am sorry if I made you uncomfortable, Sir Knight.”
“What? Just now?”
I saw her nod in my peripheral vision. “A moment ago, you looked at me. I have seen a face with that precise expression before.”
“Slate.”
“Yes.”
“Well,” I growled, “I’m not Slate. I’m not some pet monster Maeve made to play with.”
“No,” Lily said, her voice sad. “You are a weapon Mab made to war with. You poor man. You always had such a good heart.”
“Had?” I asked.
“It isn’t yours any longer,” Lily said quietly.
“I disagree,” I said. “Strenuously.”
“And the need you felt a moment ago?” she asked. “Did that urge come from your heart, Sir Knight?”
“Yes,” I said simply.
Lily froze for a second, her head tilting slightly to one side.
“Bad things are inside everyone,” I said. “I don’t care how gentle or holy or sincere or dedicated you are. There are bad things in there. Lust. Greed. Violence. You don’t need a wicked queen to make that happen. That’s a part of everyone. Some more, some less, but it’s always there.”
“You say that you were this wicked from the beginning?” Lily asked.
“I’m saying I could have been,” I said. “I chose something else. And I’m going to continue choosing something else.”
Lily smiled faintly and looked back at the lake. “You wished to speak to me about my knight.”
“Fix, yeah,” I said. “He basically gave me until noon to leave town, or we shoot it out at the OK Corral. I’m busy. I don’t have time to skip town. But I don’t want either of us to get hurt.”
“What do you wish me to do?”
/>
“Tell him to stand down,” I said. “Even if only for a few days. It’s important.”
Lily bowed her head. “It grieves me to say this, Sir Knight. But no. I will not.”
I tried not to grind my teeth audibly. “And why not?”
She studied me again, her green eyes intense. “Can it be?” she asked. “Can it be that you have come so far, have fallen in with your current company, without realizing what is happening here?”
“Uh,” I said, frowning. “You mean here, today?”
“I mean here,” Lily said. “In our world.”
“Yeah, uh. Maybe you haven’t heard, but I haven’t been in our world much lately.”
Lily shook her head. “The pieces are all in front of you. You have only to assemble them.”
“Vague much?” I asked. “Why can’t you just tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”
“If you do know, there is no need to speak. If you truly do not know, no amount of speech will convince you. Some things must be learned for oneself.”
I made a disgusted sound and spit into the lake. Take that, lurking bodyguards. “Lily,” I said. “Look, this isn’t complicated. Fix is about to come at me. I don’t want to hurt him. So I came here in peace to try to talk it out. What have I done here today that has convinced you that I’m some kind of psychotic maniac who can’t be trusted?”
“It isn’t anything you’ve done,” Lily said. “It isn’t anything you had any control over. You didn’t know.”
I threw up my hands at that. “Didn’t know what?”
Lily frowned and studied me, her expression drawn with worry. “You…” She shook her head. “God, Harry. You really mean it. You aren’t her creature?”
“No,” I said. “Not yet.”
Lily nodded and seemed to think for a moment. Then she asked, “Would it pain you for me to touch you?”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I must know,” she said. “I must know if it is upon you yet.”
“What?”
She shook her head. “I cannot risk answering any questions until I am sure.”