by Jim Butcher
“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 grey 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 near 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.
“Talking to the Miksani,” I said, or tried to say. To my intense surprise, what came out was, “Talking to prospective make-out partners.”
Carlos grimaced. “I’m serious.”
I tried to say, Miksani, but what came out was, “So am I.”
“Fine,” he said, “be that way.”
Why the hell would that be happening to me? Unless … it was a part of Winter Law.
The Winter Court of Faerie had an ironclad code of law laid out by Mab herself. It didn’t work like mortal law did. If you broke it, you didn’t get punished. You didn’t break it. Period. You were physically incapable of doing so. When Mab laid down the law, the beings of her Court followed it, whether they wanted to or not. They actually knew the law, on a subconscious level, but it took a real effort to summon it to your conscious mind. I took a slow breath and realized that any of the Hidden Peoples of the Winter Court were entitled to their privacy and could not be outed to the mortals or anyone else without their prior consent.
I let out a breath through my teeth and said, “It’s not personal. I can’t talk about it.”
He frowned at me for a moment and then said, “What about a trade?”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?” I asked. “I like the way you think.”
“Wow,” he said, and now I was certain his cheeks were flaming. “Wow, Molly. That’s not … It isn’t … Could you please take this seriously for a minute?”
I smiled at him, and as I did, I realized that a trade changed everything with regard to the law. Bargains had to be balanced in the proper proportions and in similar coin. That, too, was Winter Law. If Carlos told me why he was present, I’d be free to say more about my purpose in kind.
“Deal,” I said.
“We got a report from Elaine Mallory through the Paranet,” Carlos said, watching the door to the Elbow Room. “Vague descriptions of a strange vibe and unusually odd activity here in Unalaska. People going missing, weird behavior, energy out of whack—that kind of thing. Someone had to check it out.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Your turn.”
“Mab sent me,” I said. “I’m here to collect on a debt.”
I felt his eyes on me for a moment, and then he said, “You’ re … Mab’s bagman?”
“Bagperson,” I said. “Though I think it’s more like a tax collector.”
“They’re just bagmen for the government,” he replied. “What happened? One of the Miksani piss Mab off?”
I lifted my eyebrows at him. “You know of them?”
“Duh. Wizard,” he said. “Jeez, Molly, give me a little credit.”
I found myself smiling at him. “It’s internal Winter Court business.”
He nodded. “It occurs to me that if there is a tribe of Fae here, they probably know a whole lot about strange things happening in their town.”
“That does seem reasonable,” I said.
“It seems like we both might benefit from mutual cooperation,” he said. “If I help you with your job, maybe you could help me with mine.”
Help from a mortal, on my first job? Mab wouldn’t like that.
On the other hand, I was pretty sure that when it came to me filling the role of the Winter Lady, Mab wasn’t going to like a lot of things I did. She might as well get used to it now.
“I think that could work out,” I said. “Provided you help me with my job first.”
“Molly,” he said, and put his hand on his chest. “You wound me. Do you think I’d welch on you?”
“Not if we do my job first,” I said sweetly. “You know Winter well enough by now to know that I’ll do what I say I will.”
“Yes,” he said simply. He offered me his hand and said, “Do we have a deal?”
I reached for his hand, but apparently bargains weren’t closed with handshakes under Winter Law. So I drew him toward me by his hand, leaned over, and placed a soft kiss on his mouth.
Suddenly there was nothing else in the world that mattered. Nothing at all. Just the soft heat of his lips on mine, the way he drew in a sudden, shocked breath, and then an abrupt ardor in returning the kiss. Something shuddered through me, a frisson of pleasure like the deep-toned toll of an enormous bell. The kiss was a symbol. Both parties had to agree to a kiss to make it happen like this one.
After a time, the kiss ended and my lips parted from his, just a little. I sat there panting, my eyes only half-open, focused on nothing. My heart was racing and sending bursts of lust running through my body that began to pool in my hips.
I wasn’t sure what the hell was happening to me exactly, but it felt incredibly … right.
That probably should have scared me a little.
Carlos opened his eyes, and they were absolutely aflame with intensity.
“We have a deal, wizard,” I whispered. Then I shivered and rose, stepping away from him before my mouth decided it needed to taste his again. “Let us begin.”
I FOCUSED MY will, quietly murmured, “Kakusu,” and brought up the best veil I could manage—which is to say, world-class. It was one of the first things I learned to do, and I was good at it. The light around us dimmed very slightly, and we vanished from the view of anyone who wasn’t going to extreme supernatural measures to spot us. The mix of sleet and rain could be problematic, since anyone who looked closely enough would see it bouncing off an empty hole in the air. But nothing is perfect, is it?
I nodded to Carlos, and we padded quietly across the street to circle the Elbow Room. A building that spends half the year mostly buried in snow doesn’t go in for a lot of windows. The only two in the
place were side by side, deeply recessed, and high up on the wall, to let in light.
We both reached up and got a grip on the slippery sills, and then quietly pulled ourselves up to peer into the bar.
The fishermen were standing facing the bar in two neat lines. Their scrawny leader in the captain’s hat was staring at the bartender, who stood behind the bar, gripping a cloth like some kind of useless talisman. Her face had gone pale and was covered in beads of sweat. She trembled so violently that it threatened her balance, and she just kept repeating the same phrase, loudly enough to be heard through the window, over the sleet: “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Captain Fisherman took a step forward, toward her, and the strain on her face immediately increased, along with the volume and desperation of her voice. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!”
“Psychic interrogation,” I noted. Invading a human being’s mind was a monstrous act. It inflicted untold amounts of horrible damage, not to their brain but to their mind. The sensations it could cause were technically known as pain, but the word really doesn’t do them justice. If someone went digging in your head long enough, they’d leave you a mindless vegetable, or hopelessly insane.
I knew, because I’d done it. I’d had the noblest intentions in the world, but I’d been younger, dumber, and a lot surer of myself, and people had been hurt.
Carlos let out a growl beneath his breath. “And we have a Third Law violation. And there’s no way that’s an accident or even badly misguided benevolence.”
“Assuming he’s mortal,” I whispered. “If he isn’t, then the laws don’t apply to him.”
“Either way, his head is coming off.”
“Cool,” I said. “Who is he?”
“Who cares?”
“What’s he doing here?”
“Breaking the Laws.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “I wonder how many friends he has.”
In my peripheral vision, I could see the muscles along Carlos’s jaw contract and then relax again. I glanced aside and saw him visibly force down his anger and shake his head a little. “I’m taking him down. Just as soon as I find out exactly who he is, how many buddies he has, and what designs he has on this town.”