Small Favor

Chapter Six

I gritted my teeth and tried to summon up a salvo of snark. It wouldn't come. I was just too scared-and with good reason.

Think of every fairy-tale villainess you've ever heard of. Think of the wicked witches, the evil queens, the mad enchantresses. Think of the alluring sirens, the hungry ogresses, the savage she-beasts. Think of them and remember that somewhere, sometime, they've all been real.

Mab gave them lessons.

Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if she'd set up some sort of certification process, just to make sure they were all up to snuff.

Mab was the ruler of fully half of the realm of Faerie, those areas of the Nevernever, the spirit world, closest to our own, and she was universally respected and feared. I'd seen her, seen her in the merciless clarity of my wizard's Sight, and I knew-not just suspected, but knew-exactly what kind of creature she was.

Fucking terrifying, that's what. So terrifying that I couldn't summon up a single wiseass comment, and that just doesn't happen to me.

I couldn't talk, but I could move. I pushed myself to my feet. I shook with the cold and the fear, but faced the Faerie Queen and lifted my chin. Once I'd done that, proved that I knew where my backbone was, I was able to use it as a reference point to find my larynx. My voice came out coarse, rough with apprehension. "What do you want with me?"

Mab's mouth quivered at the corners, turning up into the tiniest of smiles. The feline voice spoke again as Mab tilted her head. "I want you to do me a favor."

I frowned at her, and then at the dimly seen feline shape behind her. "Is that Grimalkin back there?"

The feline shape's eyes gleamed. "Indeed," Grimalkin said. "The servitor behind me bears that name."

I blinked for a second, confusion stealing some of the thunder from my terror. "The servitor behind you? There's no one behind you, Grimalkin."

Mab's expression flickered with annoyance, her lips compressing into a thin line. When Grimalkin spoke, his voice bore the same expression. "The servitor is my voice for the time being, wizard. And nothing more."

"Ah," I said. I glanced between the two of them, and my curiosity took the opportunity to sucker punch terror while confusion had it distracted. I felt my hands stop shaking. "Why would the Queen of Air and Darkness need an interpreter?"

Mab lifted her chin slightly, a gesture of pride, and another small smile quirked her mouth. "You are already in my debt," the eerie, surrogate voice said for her. "An you wish an answer to that question, you would incur more obligation yet. I do not believe in charity."

"There's a shock," I muttered under my breath. Whew. My banter gland had not gone necrotic. "But you missed the point of the question, I think. Why would Mab need such a thing? She's an immortal, a demigod."

Mab opened her mouth as Grimalkin said, "Ah. I perceive. You doubt my identity." She let her head drift back a bit, mouth open, and an eerie little laugh drifted up from her servitor. "Just as you did in our first meeting."

I frowned. That was correct. When Mab first walked into my office in mortal guise years ago, I noticed that something was off and subsequently discovered who she really was. As far as I knew, no one else had been privy to that meeting.

"Perhaps you'd care to reminisce over old times," mewled the eerie voice. Mab winked at me.

Crap. She'd done that the last time I'd bumped into her. And once again, no one else knew anything about it. I'd been indulging in wishful thinking, hoping she was fake. She was the real Mab.

Mab showed me her teeth. "Three favors you owed me," Mab said-sort of. "Two yet remain. I am here to create an opportunity for you to remove one of them from our accounting."

"Uh-huh," I said. "How are you going to do that?"

Her smile widened, showing me her delicately pointed canines. "I am going to help you."

Yeah.

This couldn't be good.

I tried to keep my voice steady and calm. "What do you mean?"

"Behold." Mab gestured with her right hand, and the layer of snow on the ground stirred and moved until it had risen into a sculpture of a building, about eighteen inches high. It was like watching a sand castle melt in reverse.

I thought I recognized the building. "Is that...?"

"The building the lady knight asked you to examine," confirmed Mab's surrogate voice. It's amazing what you can get used to if your daily allowance of bizarre is high enough. "As it was before the working that rent it asunder."

Other shapes began to form from the snow. Rather disconcertingly detailed shapes of cars rolled smoothly by beside the building, typical Chicago traffic-until one of them, an expensive town car, turned down the alley beside the building, the one I'd walked down not an hour before. I had to take a couple of steps to follow it as it came to a halt and stopped. The snow car's doors opened, and human shapes the size of the old Star Wars action figures came hurrying out of the vehicle.

I recognized them. The first was a flat-top, no-neck bruiser named Hendricks, Marcone's personal bodyguard and enforcer. His mother was a Kodiak bear; his father was an Abrams tank, and after he got out of the car, he reached back into it and came out with a light machine gun that he carried in one hand.

While Hendricks was doing that, a woman got out of the other side of the car. Gard was tall, six feet or so, though Hendricks made her look petite. She wore a smart business suit with a long trench coat, and as I watched she opened the car's trunk and removed a broadsword and an all-metal shield maybe two feet across. She passed her hand over the surface of the shield, and then quickly covered it with a section of cloth that had apparently been cut to fit it.

Both of them moved in a tense, precise, professionally concerned cadence.

The third man out of the car was Marcone himself, a man of medium height and build, wearing a suit that cost more than my car, and he looked as relaxed and calm as he always did. Marcone was criminal scum, but I'll give the rat his due-he's got balls that drag the ground when he walks.

Marcone's head whipped around abruptly, back down the alley the way they'd just come, though neither Hendricks nor Gard reacted with a similar motion. He produced a gun with such speed that it almost seemed magical, and little puffs of frost blazed out from the muzzle of the snow-sculpted weapon.

Hendricks reacted immediately, turning to bring that monster weapon to bear, and tiny motes of blue light flashed down the alley, representing tracer fire. Gard put her shield and her body between Marcone and whatever was at the end of the alley. They hurried into a side door of the building, one that had been destroyed in the collapse. Hendricks followed, still spraying bursts of fire down the alley. He, too, vanished into the building.

"Hell's bells," I breathed. "Marcone was inside?"

Mab flicked her hand in a slashing gesture, and the top two-thirds of the little snow building disintegrated under a miniature arctic gale. I was left with a cutaway image of the building's interior. Marcone and his bodyguards moved through the place like rats through a maze. They sprinted down a flight of stairs. At the bottom Marcone stabbed at some kind of keypad with short, sharp, precise motions and then looked up.

Heavy sheets of what looked like steel fell into place at the top and bottom of the stairs simultaneously, and I could all but hear the ominous boom! as they settled into place. Gard reached up and touched the center of the near door, and there was a flash of light bright enough to leave little spots in my vision. Then they hurried down a short hallway to another keypad and repeated the process. More doors, more flashes of light.

"Locking himself in..." I muttered, frowning. Then I got it. "Wards. Blast doors. It's a panic room. He built a panic room."

Grimalkin made a low, lazy yowling sound that I took for a murmur of agreement.

My own apartment was set up with a similar set of protections, which I could invoke if absolutely necessary-though, granted, my setup was a little more Merlin and a little less Bond. But I had to wonder what the hell had rattled Marcone enough to send him scurrying for a deep hole.

Then Gard's head snapped up, looking directly at where Mab currently stood, as if the little snow sculpture could somehow see the titanic form of the Winter Queen looking down upon her. Gard reached into her suit pocket, drew out what looked like a slender wooden box, the kind that really high-end pen sets come in sometimes, and took a small, rectangular plaque of some kind from the box. She lifted it, facing Mab again, and snapped the little plaque in her fingers.

The entire snow sculpture collapsed on itself and was gone.

"They saw the hidden camera," I muttered.

"Within her limits, the Chooser is resourceful and clever," Mab replied. "The Baron was wise to acquire her services."

I glanced up at Mab. "What happened?"

"All Sight was clouded for several moments. Then this."

At another gesture the building re-formed-but this time little clouds of frost simulated thick smoke roiling all around it, obscuring many details. The whole image, in fact, looked hazier, grainier, as if Mab had chosen to form it out of snowflakes a few sizes too large to illustrate details.

Even so, I recognized Marcone when he came stumbling out the front door of the building. Several forms hurried out behind him. They surrounded him. A plain van appeared out of the night, and the unknown figures cast him through its open doors. Then they entered and were gone.

As the van pulled away, the building shuddered and collapsed in on itself, sliding down into the wreckage and ruin I'd seen.

"I have chosen you to be my Emissary," Mab said to me. "You will repay me a favor owed. You will find the Baron."

"The hell I will," I said before my brain had time to weigh in on the sentiment.

Mab let out a low, throaty laugh. "You will, wizard child. An you wish to survive, you have no choice."

Anger flared in my chest and shoved my brain aside on its way to my mouth. "That wasn't our deal," I snapped. "Our bargain stipulated that I would choose which favors to repay and that you would not coerce me."

Mab's frozen-berry lips lifted in a silent snarl, and the world turned into a curtain of white agony that centered on my eyes. Nothing had ever hurt so much. I fell down, but I wasn't lucky enough to hit my head and knock myself unconscious. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't scream.

Then there was something cold beside me. And something very soft and very cold touched my ear. I recognized the sensation, from the far side of the pain. Lips. Mab's lips. The Queen of Air and Darkness placed a gentle row of kisses down the outside ridge of my ear, then sucked the lobe into her mouth and bit down quite gently.

In the other ear I heard Grimalkin's voice speaking in a low, tense, hungry whisper. "Mortal brute. Whatever your past, whatever your future, know this: I am Mab, and I keep my bargains. Question my given word again, ape, and I will finish freezing the water in your eyes."

The pain receded to something merely torturous, and I clenched my teeth down hard over a scream. I could move again. I flinched away from her, scrambling until my back hit a wall. I covered my eyes with my hands and felt some of my frozen eyelashes snap.

I sat there for a minute, struggling to control the pain, and my vision gradually faded from white to a deep red, and then to black. I opened my eyes. I could barely focus them. I felt a wetness on my face, touched it with a finger. There was blood in my tears.

"I have not coerced you, nor dispatched any agent of mine to do so," Mab continued, as if the break in the conversation had never happened. "Nonetheless, if you wish to survive, you will serve me. I assure you that Summer's agents will not rest until you are dead."

I stared at her for a second, still half-dazed from the pain and once again deeply, sincerely, and wisely frightened. "This is another point of contention between you and Titania."

"When one Court moves, the other perforce moves with it," Mab said.

I croaked, "Titania wants Marcone dead?"

"Put simply," she replied. "And her Emissary will continue to seek your death. Only by finding and saving the Baron's life will you preserve your own." She paused. "Unless..."

"Unless?"

"Unless you should agree to take up the mantle of the Winter Knight," Mab said, smiling. "I should be forced to choose another Emissary if you did, and your involvement in this matter could end." Her eyelids lowered, sleepily sensual, and her surrogate voice turned liquid, heady, an audible caress. "As my Knight you would know power and pleasure that few mortals have tasted."

The Winter Knight. The mortal champion of the Winter Court. The previous guy who had that job was, when last I knew, still crucified upon a frozen tree within bonds of ice, tortured to the point of death and then made whole, only to begin the process again. He'd lost his sanity somewhere in one of the cycles. He wasn't a real nice guy when I knew him, but no human being should have to suffer like that.

"No," I said. "I don't want to end up like Lloyd Slate."

"He suffers for your decision," she said. "He remains alive until you take up the mantle. Accept my offer, wizard child. Give him release. Preserve your life. Taste of power like none you have known." Her eyes seemed to grow larger, becoming almost luminous, and her not-voice was a narcotic, a promise. "There is much I can teach you."

A decent person would have rejected her offer out of hand.

I'm not always one of those.

I could offer you some excuses, if you like. I could tell you that I was an orphan by the time I was six. I could tell you that the foster father who eventually raised me subjected me to more forms of psychological and physical abuse than you could shake a stick at. I could tell you that I'd been held in unjust suspicion for my entire adult life by the White Council, whose principles and ideals I'd done my best to uphold. Or maybe I could say that I'd seen too many good people get hurt, or that I'd looked upon a lot of nasty things with my indelible wizard's Sight. I could tell you that I'd been caught and abused by the creatures of the night myself, and that I hadn't ever really gotten over it. I could tell you that I hadn't gotten laid in a really long time.

And all of those things would be true.

But the fact of the matter is that there's simply a part of me that isn't so nice. There's a part of me that gets off on laying waste to my enemies with my power, that gets tired of taking undeserved abuse. There's this little voice inside my head that sometimes wants to throw the rules away, stop trying to be responsible, and just take what I want.

And for a minute, I wondered what it might be like to accept Mab's offer. Life among the Sidhe would be...intense. In every sense a mortal could imagine. What would it be like to live in a house? Hell, probably a big house, if not a freaking castle. Money. Hot showers every day. Every meal a feast. I'd be able to afford whatever clothes I wanted, whatever cars I wanted. Maybe I could do some traveling, see places I'd always wanted to see. Hawaii. Italy. Australia. I could learn to sail, like I always wanted.

Women, oh, yeah. Hot and cold running girls. Inhumanly beautiful, sensuous creatures like the one before me. The Winter Knight had status and power, and those are even more of an aphrodisiac to the fae than they are to us mortals.

I could have...almost anything.

All it would cost me was my soul.

And no, I'm not talking about anything magical or metaphysical. I'm talking about the core of my identity, about what makes Harry Dresden who and what he is. If I lost those things, the things that define me, then what would be left?

Just a heap of bodily processes-and regret.

I knew that. But all the same, the touch of Mab's chilled lips on my ear lingered on, sending slow, pleasant ripples of sensation through me when I breathed. It was enough to make me hesitate.

"No, Mab," I said finally. "I don't want the job."

She studied my face with calm, heavy eyes. "Liar," she said quietly. "You want it. I can see it in you."

I gritted my teeth. "The part of me that wants it doesn't get a vote," I said. "I'm not going to take the job. Period."

She tilted her head to one side and stared at me. "One day, wizard, you will kneel at my feet and ask me to bestow the mantle upon you."

"But not today."

"No," Mab said. "Today you repay me a favor. Just as I said you would."

I didn't want to think too hard about that, and I didn't want to openly agree with her, either. So instead I nodded at the patch of ground where the sculptures had been. "Who took Marcone?"

"I do not know. That is one reason I chose you, Emissary. You have a gift for finding what is lost."

"If you want me to do this for you, I'm going to need to ask you some questions," I said.

Mab glanced up, as if consulting the stars through the still-falling snow. "Time, time, time. Will there never be an end to it?" She shook her head. "Wizard child, the hour has nearly passed. I have duties upon which to attend-as do you. You should rise and leave this place immediately."

"Why?" I asked warily. I got to my feet.

"Because when your little retainer warned you of danger, wizard child, he was not referring to me."

On the street outside the alley, the gale-force wind and the white wall of blowing snow both died away. On the other side of the street, two men in long coats and big Stetson hats stood facing the alley. I felt the sudden weight of their attention, and got the impression that they had been surprised to see me.

I whirled to speak to Mab-only to find her gone. Grimalkin, too, both of them vanished without a trace or a whisper of power to betray it.

I turned back to the street in time to see the two figures step off the sidewalk and begin moving toward me with long strides. They were both tall, nearly my own height, and thickly built. The snowfall hadn't lightened, and the street was a smooth pane of unbroken snow.

They were leaving cloven footprints on it.

"Crap," I spat, and fled back down the narrow, featureless alley.

Chapter Seven

A t this sign of retreat, the two men threw back their heads and let out shrill, bleating cries. Their hats fell off when they did, revealing the goatlike features and curling horns of gruffs. But they were bigger than the first attack team-bigger, stronger, and faster.

And as they closed the distance on me, I noticed something else.

Both of them had produced submachine guns from beneath their coats.

"Oh, come on," I complained as I ran. "That's just not fair."

They started shooting at me, which was bad news. Wizard or not, a bullet through the head will splatter my brains just as randomly as the next guy's. The really bad news was that they weren't just spraying bullets everywhere. Even with an automatic weapon, it isn't easy to hit a moving target, and the old "spray and pray" method of fire relied upon blind luck disguised as the law of averages: Shoot enough bullets and eventually you have to hit something. Do your shooting like that and sometimes you'll hit the target, and sometimes you won't.

But the gruffs shot like professionals. They fired in short, burping little bursts, aimed fire, even if it suffered from the fact that they were moving while they did it.

I felt something hit my back, just to the left of my spine, an impact that felt somewhat like getting slugged in the back by someone with a single knuckle extended. It was a sharp, unpleasant sensation, and the way my balance wavered was more due to the fact that it surprised and frightened me than to the actual force it imparted. I kept running, ducking my head down as far as I could, hunching up my shoulders. The defensive magics woven into my coat could evidently stop whatever rounds the gruffs were using, but that didn't mean an unlucky ricochet couldn't bounce some lead into me from the front or sides, around the coat-and getting shot in the lower legs, ankles, or feet would probably kill me as certainly as one through the head. It would just take a little more effort on the gruffs' part to make it stick.

It's hard to think when someone's trying to kill you. We human beings aren't wired to be rational and creative when we know our lives are in danger of a swift and violent end. The body has definite ideas of which survival strategies it prefers to embrace, and those are generally limited to "rip threat to pieces" or "run like hell." No thinking need be involved, as far as our instincts are concerned.

Our instincts were a long time in the making, though, and the threats that can come after us now have outpaced them. You can't outrun a bullet, and you don't go hand-to-hand with a gunman unless you're certain you are about to die anyway. Speed and mindless aggression weren't going to keep me alive. I needed to figure a way out.

I felt another bullet hit the lower part of my coat. It caught spell-strengthened leather and tugged it forward, just the way a thrown rock might have done. Admittedly, though, the rock wouldn't have made that angry-hornet buzzing noise as it struck. I dumped a garbage can over behind me, hoping it might trip up the gruffs for a second and buy me a little time.

Hey, you try coming up with a cogent, rational course of action when you're running down a frozen alley with genuine fairy-tale creatures chasing you, spitting bullets at your back. It's way harder than it looks.

I didn't dare turn to face them. I could have raised a shield to stop the gunfire, but once I had stopped moving, I figured odds were fantastic that one of them would just hop over me like a Kung Fu Theater extra, and they'd come at me from two directions at once.

In fact, if I were them, and had tracked me to that alley...

The chattering gunfire from behind me ceased, and I realized what was happening.

I raised my staff as I neared the far end of the alley, pointed it ahead of me, and screamed, "Forzare!"

My timing wasn't perfect. The unseen force I released from the end of the staff rushed out ahead of me, an invisible battering ram. It struck the third gruff just as the fae-thug stepped around the corner, a massive oak cudgel readied in his hands. The blast didn't hit him squarely. It would have thrown him a goodly ways if it had. Instead it caught the right side of his body, ripping the cudgel away from him and sending the gruff into a drunken, spinning stagger.

I don't know much about goats, but I do know a little about horses, having taken care of my second mentor Ebenezar McCoy's riding horses on his little farm in Missouri. Their feet are awfully vulnerable, especially considering how much weight they're putting on such a relatively small area. Any one of a hundred little things can go wrong. One of them is the possibility that some of the surprisingly frail little bones just above the back of the hoof could be fractured or broken. A pastern or fetlock injury like that can lame a horse for weeks, even permanently.

So as I passed the staggered gruff, I swung my heavy staff like a baseball bat, aiming at the back of one of his hooves. I felt the impact in my hands and heard a sharp crack. The gruff let out a high-pitched and utterly bestial scream of surprise and pain, and tumbled to the snow. I all but flew on by, lengthening my stride, crossing the street and heading for the nearest corner, before his buddies could get a clear shot at me.

When you drive game, you'd damn well better be sure that the one you're driving the prey toward is ready and able to handle it.

I ducked around the next corner maybe half a second before the guns behind me coughed and burped again, chewing chips of brick from the wall. There was a steel door on the side of the building, an exit-only door with no handle on the outside. I couldn't stay ahead of the gruffs for long. I took a chance, stopped, and pressed my hand against the door, hoping like hell it had a push-bar opening mechanism and not a dead bolt.

Something went right. I felt the bar on the other side, reached out with my will and another murmur, "Forzare," and directed the force against the other side of the door. It popped open. I went through and pulled it shut behind me.

The building was dark, silent, and almost uncomfortably warm in contrast with the night outside. I leaned my head against the metal door for a second, panting. "Good door," I wheezed. "Nice door. Nice, locked, hostile-to-faeries door."

My ear was in contact with the door, and it was the only reason I heard the movement immediately on its other side. Snow crunched quietly.

I froze in place.

I heard a scraping sound, and a snorted breath that sounded like something you'd hear from a horse. Then nothing.

It took me maybe three seconds to realize that the gruff on the other side of the door was doing the same thing I was: listening to see if he could hear who was on the other side.

It couldn't have been more than six inches away.

And I was standing there in complete darkness. If something went wrong and the gruff came in after me, I could forget running. I couldn't see the floor, the walls, or any obstacles that might trip me up. Like stairs. Or a mound of rusty razor blades.

I froze, not daring to move. Metal door or not, if the gruff had the right submachine gun and the right kind of ammunition, he could riddle me with holes right through the steel. There was no telling what other weapons he might be packing, either. I'd once seen a sobering demonstration of how to skewer someone on a sword from the other side of a metal door, and it hadn't been pretty.

So I stood very still and tried to think quietly.

It was about then that I remembered one of those movies with the maniac in the ghost mask, where one of the kids in the opening segment leans against a bathroom stall, listening exactly the same way I was. The killer, in the neighboring stall, rams a knife into the victim's ear.

It was a panic-inducing thought, and suddenly I had to fight the urge to bolt. My ear began to itch furiously. If I hadn't known that the gruffs were trying to flush me out like a rabbit from his briar patch, I might not have managed to keep my cool. It was a near thing, but I did it.

A week and a half went by before I heard another exhalation from a larger-than-human chest, and a pair of quick, light crunches of cloven hooves on snow.

I pushed away from the door as silently as I could, trembling with adrenaline, fatigue, and cold. I had to think ahead of these assholes if I wanted to get out in one piece. Inky, Binky, and Pinky knew I'd come in here, and they weren't about to give up the chase. Right now one of them was watching the door I'd come in to make sure I didn't backtrack. The other two were circling the building, looking for a way in.

I was pretty sure I didn't want to be hanging around when they found it.

I drew off the pentacle amulet I wore around my neck, murmured, and made a tiny effort of will. The amulet began to glow with gentle blue light.

I stood in a utility corridor of some kind. Bare concrete floor met unpainted drywall. There were a couple of doors on the right side of the hall, and another one at the far end. I checked them out. The first door opened into a room containing several commercial-grade heating and air-conditioning units, all hooked up to a ductwork octopus. No help there.

The next room was padlocked shut. I felt a little bad for doing it, but I lifted my staff, took a moment to close my eyes and concentrate, and then sent another pulse of energy down the rune-carved length of wood, this time focused into a blade of pure force. It sliced through the hasp and bit into the heavy wood of the door behind it. The lock fell to the floor, its cleanly severed steel glowing dull orange at the edges.

The room beyond was probably the workshop of the building's handyman. It wasn't large, but it was neatly organized. It held a woodworking bench, tools, and various supplies-lightbulbs, air filters for the units next door, replacement parts for doors, sinks, and toilets. I availed myself of a few things and dropped my last two twenties onto the workbench by way of apology. Then I stalked back out into the hallway and continued into the building.

The next door was locked, too. I jimmied it open with the crowbar I'd taken from the tool room. It made some noise.

A deep-throated bawl of animal sound came from the far side of the metal door. Something slammed against it, but not hard enough to bring it down, and the sound was followed by an immediate yowl of pain. I bared my teeth in a grin.

The far side of the door opened onto the lobby of an office building, very sparse. A light was blinking on a panel with a keypad on it, next to the door I'd just forced open. Apparently I had triggered the building's security system. That was fine by me. The nearest police station was only a little more than a block from here, and the lights and the appearance of mortal police officers would probably make the gruffs fade and wait for a better moment to settle my hash.

But wait. If the building had a security system, I had to have tripped it when I came in the side door, and that had been a couple of minutes ago. Why hadn't the cops shown up already?

The weather, most likely. Travel would be slow. Lines would be down, causing all kinds of power and communication problems. There would be traffic accidents everywhere there was traffic, and in the wake of all the manpower diverted to Marcone's wrecked building, the station would be overloaded with work, even this late at night. It might take several minutes longer than usual for the police to respond.

A shadow moved outside the building's front door, and one of the gruffs appeared there.

I didn't have minutes.

I was moving before I had consciously recognized the fact, running for the elevators. The steel security gate inside the door would prevent the gruff from crashing through the glass to come at me, but that didn't stop the gruff from lifting its submachine gun and opening up on me.

The gun sounded like heavy canvas ripping, only a thousand times louder. The window shattered and glass flew everywhere. Some of the bullets struck the security gate, throwing off sparks, most of them shattering, a couple bouncing wildly around the lobby. The rest came at me.

I had my left hand stretched out toward the gruff as I ran, and my will was focused on the bracelet on my wrist. Made of a braid of many metals, the chain of the bracelet was hung with multiple charms in the shape of medieval shields. The power of my will rushed into the bracelet, focused by the enchantments I'd laid upon it when I had prepared it. My will coalesced into a concave dome of barely visible blue energy between me and the gruff, and bullets slammed against it, shattering in bursts of light that rippled over the surface of the energy shield like tiny waves in a still pond.

All three of the elevator doors stood open, and I rushed into the nearest and rapidly hit the buttons for every floor up to the top of the building. Then I leapt out, repeated the process in the second elevator, and then jumped into the third and headed straight for the top. No sense in making it easy for the gruffs to follow me up, and even a moment's delay might buy me the time I needed.

The elevator doors closed-then buzzed and sprang open again.

"Oh, come on!" I shouted, and hit the close-door button hard enough to hurt my thumb.

I growled and watched as the elevator twitched closed again, and then once more sprang open, a sad little ding emerging from a half-functioning bell. I was jabbing the button like a lunatic when the gruffs demonstrated their opinion of mortal security systems.

Sure, the touch of metal was anathema to the beings of Faerie. Sure, they couldn't hammer their way through a metal door or bash through a heavy metal gate.

Brick walls, on the other hand, presented fewer problems.

There was a thunder crack of sound, and the wall beside the front door exploded inward. I don't mean it fell in. It literally exploded as the momentum of a superhumanly powerful being struck the wall from the far side and shattered it. Bits of brick flew like bullets. A ceramic pot holding a plastic plant shattered. Several pieces zipped into the elevator and bounced around inside of it. A cloud of brick dust billowed through the lobby.

The gruff who had just one-upped the Big Bad Wolf bulled its way through the cloud, curling ram's horns first. It staggered a step or two, shaking its head, then focused on me and let out another bleating howl.

"Augh!" I screamed at the elevator, jabbing the button. "Close, close, close!"

It did. The car began rising just as the stunned gruff brought his weapon to bear and opened up. Bullets ripped through the relatively flimsy metal of the elevator's door, but my shield bracelet was ready and none of them found their target-who let out a howling, adrenaline-drunken laugh of defiance as the elevator rose.

What they say is true: There's nothing as exhilarating as being shot at and missed. When the shooter happens to be a fairy-tale hit man, it just adds to the zest.

Fourteen floors later I emerged into a darkened hallway and, guided by the light of my upraised amulet, I found the door to the roof. It was an exterior door with a heavy dead bolt, and there was no way that the crowbar was going to get it open.

I took a step back, lifted my staff, and focused my will on the door. Once upon a time I would have just let fly with my will and blasted it right out of its frame, a fairly exhausting bit of spellcraft. Instead I pointed the end of the staff at the bottommost hinge on this side and barked, "Forzare!"

A blade of unseen energy, like that I had used on the padlock, severed the hinge with a miniature crack of thunder. I did it for the middle and lower hinges too, then used the crowbar to pry the heavy door out of its setting and hurried out onto the roof.

There was a lot of wind up this high, even though the night was fairly calm. The towers of the city could funnel even a mild breeze into a virtual gale, and tonight this rooftop was on the receiving end. The wind ripped my coat out to one side, and I had to lean against it. At least there wasn't much snow-except where a portion of architecture created a lee against the wind. There it was piled deep.

It took me a second to orient. When you're fourteen floors up, it gives you an alien perspective of streets and buildings that might otherwise be familiar. I figured out which side of the building I'd come in on and hurried to it, searching for the escape route I'd spotted on the way in.

It wasn't the fire escapes, which decorated two sides of the building in a weathered steel framework. Those things are noisy as hell, and the gruffs would be watching them. Instead I leaned out over the edge and looked at the niche in the brick wall. It ran the entire vertical length of the building, a groove about three feet wide and two feet deep. There was one on either side of each corner of the building, probably there for the aesthetic value, rising like a three-walled chimney from the ground to the roof.

My breath went a little short. Fourteen floors is a much longer way down than it is up, especially when you aren't using things like elevators and fire escapes. Especially when I noted the frost and ice forming on the building's exterior.

I took a moment to debate the sanity of this plan. I'd cut the odds in my favor, assuming there were only three gruffs after me this time. One would have to watch the elevators. Another would have to watch the fire escape. That left only one to actively pursue me. I didn't know how fast the gruff would get to the roof, but I had no doubt that he'd manage it in short order.

The idea of simply pushing the gruff off the roof with a blast of power had a certain appeal, but I decided against it. A fourteen-story drop might just piss the gruff off-and it would absolutely confirm my location. Better to slip away and leave them wondering if I was still hiding in the building.

So I climbed out onto the ledge amidst gusting winds. My nose and fingers went numb almost immediately. I tried to ignore them as I lowered my legs into the groove in the wall and braced my feet against the bricks on either side. Then, my heart pounding madly, I shifted my hips and wriggled a bit, until the outward pressure of my legs against the bricks was the only thing that kept me from kissing sidewalk. Once my arms were low enough, I was able to spread them and plant my forearms against the bricks as well, assisting my legs.

I cannot possibly explain to you how frightened I was, staring down. The swirling snow kept me from seeing the ground at times. Once I started there would be no going back. One slip, one miscalculation, one inconveniently placed patch of ice, and I would be able to add "pancake" to my impersonation repertoire.

I pushed hard with my arms and let my legs loosen. I slid them down a few inches and tightened them again, until they supported my weight once more. Then I loosened my arms and slid down a few inches before stopping, tightening my arms again and repeating the process.

I started climbing down, shifting my legs and arms in turn, five or six inches at a time, moving down the brick groove inchworm style. I made it about ten feet before an image invaded my mind: a gruff, aiming his gun down at me from a couple of feet away and casually popping several rounds through the top of my head.

I started climbing faster, my stomach turning with reaction to the height and the fear. I heard myself making desperate little grunting sounds. The wind howled, blowing snow into my eyes. Frost formed on my eyelashes. My coat did little to protect me from the wind swirling the length of my body, and I started shaking uncontrollably.

I lost the staff when I was about fifty feet up. It tumbled from my numbing fingers, and I held my breath. The rattle of its impact could attract the gruffs' attention and ruin the whole purpose of taking the madman route off the building.

But the solid length of oak fell into a drift of snow and vanished silently into the white powder. I labored to emulate it, only less quickly.

I didn't slip until I was ten feet up. I managed to take the fall well, mostly because I landed in the same snowdrift that had received my staff. I struggled up out of the freezing white, and almost went back down when my staff tangled in my legs. I took it up in mostly nerveless hands and staggered out of the drift.

A sphere of light whipped past the other end of the alley, then reappeared and shot toward me.

Toot-toot's face was unusually sober, even grim. He zipped up to me and held a finger to his lips. I nodded at him and mouthed, I need to know how to get out.

Toot's sphere of light bobbed once in acknowledgment and then sped away. I looked up. Other balls of glowing light darted about the skies, flickers that you would barely even notice if you didn't know what to look for. I took a precaution while I waited.

As before, I didn't wait long. Toot returned a moment later and beckoned me. He took the lead and I followed him. I was getting colder. The fall into the drift had covered me in a light layer of snow, which had then melted. Wet clothes are exactly the worst thing to be wearing in that kind of weather. I had to keep moving. Hypothermia isn't as dramatic a death as being ripped apart by bullets, but it'll get the job done.

When I got to the far end of the alley, I heard another bleating cry from a gruff, drifting on the moaning wind, softened by the falling snow. I glanced back and just barely saw motion as a gruff descended the side of the building the same way I had-though much more swiftly.

A second later there was an agonized, inhuman scream as the gruff got to the bottom and discovered that the snow had hidden the box of nails that I had stolen from the tool room and spread liberally over the ground. The screams went on for several seconds. One of the nails must have pierced the gruff 's hoof, and as tired and cold as I was, I still had energy enough to grin. That one wasn't going to be dancing in elf circles anytime soon.

I'd lamed two of them, and figured it would be enough to make them back off the chase, at least for the moment. But you never can tell. I wasted no time in following Toot through back alleys and away from the chosen emissaries of Summer. Around me the little glowing Christmas balls of light, the Za-Lord's Guard, darted back and forth, a wary ring of sentinels spread in a perimeter that moved as I did.

Several blocks away I found an all-night grocery store and staggered in out of the cold. The clerk glared at me until I hobbled over, clumsily dug change out of my pockets, and left it next to the cash register before shuffling to the coffee counter. At that point the clerk evidently decided that he wouldn't have to get out the shotgun or whatever he had behind the counter, and went back to staring out the window.

There were a few other shoppers there, and I saw a police car crunch through the snow on the street outside, probably responding to the alarm at the building. Nice and public. Probably safe. I was so cold I could barely fill up the cup. The coffee, which burned my tongue a little, was absolutely delicious, even served black. I guzzled the hot drink and felt sensation begin returning to my body.

I stood there for a moment with my eyes closed and finished the coffee. Then I crushed the paper cup and tossed it into the trash.

Someone had snatched John Marcone, and I had to find him and protect him. I had a feeling that Murphy wasn't going to be thrilled with the circumstances around this one. Hell's bells, I wasn't happy with it. But that really wasn't what was bothering me.

What really worried me was that Mab had been involved.

What was the deal with having Grimalkin along to do her talking for her? Aside from making her seem even more extremely disturbing than usual, I mean. Oh, sure, Mab may have seemed fairly straightforward, but there was a lot more going on than she was saying.

For example: Mab had said that Summer's hit men were after me because Mab had chosen me to be her Emissary. But for that to be true, she had to have done it hours ago, at least a little while before the first crew of gruffs had attacked me at the Carpenter place.

And that had happened several hours before the bad guys grabbed Marcone.

Someone was running a game, all right. Someone was keeping secrets.

I had a bad feeling that if I didn't find out who, why, and how, Mab would toss me into the trash like a used paper cup.

Right after she crushed me, of course.

Chapter Eight

A wide-axled, full-of-itself, military-wannabe truck crunched through the snowy streets and came to a halt outside the little grocery store. The lights glared in through the doors. I squinted at it. After a minute the Hummer's horn blared in two short beeps.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," I muttered. I hobbled to the door and out to the truck, which blended seamlessly with the background and the foreground, and with most of the air.

The driver-side window rolled down and revealed a young man whom fathers of teenage daughters would shoot on sight. He had pale skin and deep grey eyes. His dark, slightly curly hair was long enough to declare casual rebellion, and tousled to careless perfection. He wore a black leather jacket and a white shirt, both of them more expensive than any two pieces of furniture at my apartment. In marked contrast, there was a scarf inexpertly crocheted from thick white yarn around his neck, under the collar of the jacket. He faced straight ahead, so that I saw only his profile, but I felt confident that he was smirking on the other side of his face, too.

"Thomas," I said. "A lesser man than me would hate you."

He grinned. "There's someone lesser than you?" He rolled his eyes to me on the last word, to deadpan the delivery, and his face froze in an expression of absolute neutrality. He stayed that way for a few seconds. "Empty night, Harry. You look like..."

"Ten miles of bad road?"

He forced a smile onto his mouth, but that was as far as it went. "I was going to go with 'a raccoon.'"

"Gee. Thanks."

"Get in."

He took the monorail to the other side of the Hummer's cab to unlock the passenger-side door. I showed up eventually, and noticed every little ache in my body on the way-especially the throbbing burn centered on my broken nose. I tossed my staff into the back of Das Truck, half expecting an echoing clatter when it landed. I got in, shut the door, and put on my seat belt while Thomas got the truck moving. He peered carefully into the heavy snow, presumably looking for some runty little sedans he could drive over for fun.

"That's gotta hurt," he said after a moment.

"Only when I exhale," I said testily. "What took you so long?"

"Well, you know how much I love getting called in the middle of the night to drive through snow and ice to play chauffeur for grumpy low-life investigators. The anticipation slowed me down."

I grunted in what might have been construed as an apologetic manner by someone who knew me.

Thomas did. "What's up?"

I told him everything.

Thomas is my half brother, my only family. I'm allowed.

He listened.

"And then," I concluded, "I went for a ride in a monster truck."

Thomas's mouth twitched up in a quick smile. "It is kinda butch, isn't it."

I squinted around the truck. "Do TV shows start an hour later in the backseat than they do up here?"

"Who cares?" Thomas said. "It's got TiVo."

"Good," I said. "It might be a little while before I return you to your regularly scheduled programming."

Thomas let out a theatrical sigh. "Why me?"

"Because if I want to find Marcone, the best place to start is with his people. If word gets out that he's gone missing, there's no telling how some of them might react when I come snooping around. So you've got my back."

"What if I don't want your back?"

"Cope," I said heartlessly. "You're family."

"You've got me there," he admitted. "But I wonder if you've thought this through very thoroughly."

"I try to make thinking an ongoing process."

Thomas shook his head. "Look, you know I don't try to tell you your business."

"Except tonight, apparently," I said.

"Marcone is a grown-up," Thomas said. "He signed on to the Accords willingly. He knew what he was going to be letting himself in for."

"And?" I said.

"And it's a jungle out there," Thomas said. He squinted through the thick snow. "Metaphorically speaking."

I grunted. "He made his bed, and I should let him lie in it?"

"Something like that," Thomas said. "And don't forget that Murphy and the police aren't going to be thrilled with a 'Save the Kingpin' campaign."

"I know," I said, "and I'd love to stand back and see what happens. But this isn't about Marcone anymore."

"Then what is it about?"

"Mab skinning me alive if I don't give her what she wants."

"Come on, Harry," Thomas said. "You can't really think that Mab's motives and plans are that direct, that cut-and-dried." He adjusted the setting of the Hummer's wipers. "She wants Marcone for a reason. You might not be doing him any favors by saving him on Mab's behalf."

I scowled out at the night.

He held up a hand, ticking off fingers. "And that's assuming that, one, he's alive at all right now. Two, that you can find him. Three, that you can get him out alive. And four, that the opposition doesn't cripple or kill you."

"What's your point?" I asked.

"That you're playing against a stacked deck, and that you have no idea if Mab is going to be there to cover your bets when the bad guys call." He shook his head. "It would be smarter for you to skip town. Go someplace warm for a few weeks."

"Mab might take that kinda personal," I said.

"Mab's a businesswoman," Thomas said. "Creepy and weird, but she's cold, too. Calculating. As long as you still represent a potential recruit to her, I doubt she'd elect to depreciate your value prematurely."

"Depreciate. I like that. You might be right-unless, to return to the original metaphor, Mab isn't playing with a full deck. Which the evidence of recent years seems to imply with increasing frequency." I nodded out the window. "And I've got a feeling that I'd have had even more trouble with the gruffs I've seen so far if we weren't in the middle of a freaking blizzard. If I waltz off to Miami or somewhere warm, I'll be putting myself that much nearer to the agents of Summer-who are also planning my murder."

Thomas frowned and said nothing.

"I could run, but I couldn't hide," I said. "Better to face it here, on my home ground, while I'm still relatively rested"-I let out a huge and genuine yawn-"instead of waiting for faerie goons from one Court or the other to, ah, depreciate me by surprise after I've been on the run for a few weeks."

"What about the Council?" Thomas demanded. "You've been wearing the grey cloak for how long, now? And you've fought for them how many times?"

I shook my head. "Right now the Council is still stretched to the limit. We might not be in open battle with the Red Court at the moment, but the Council and the Wardens have got years of catch-up work to do." I felt my jaw tighten. "Lot of warlocks have come up in the past few years. The Wardens are working overtime to get them under control."

"You mean kill them," Thomas said.

"I mean kill them. Most of them teenagers, man." I shook my head. "Luccio knows my feelings on the matter. She refuses to assign any of it to me. Which means that other Wardens are forced to pick up the slack. I'm not going to add to their workload by dragging them into this mess."

"You don't seem to mind adding to mine," Thomas noted.

I snorted. "That's because I respect them."

"So long as we have that clear," he said.

We drove past a city snowplow. It had foundered in a deep drift, like some kind of metallic Ice Age beast trapped in a tar pit. I watched it with bemusement as Thomas's truck crunched slowly, steadily on by.

"By the way," he asked, "where do you want to go?"

"First things first," I said. "I need food."

"You need sleep."

"Tick-tock. Food will do for now." I pointed. "There, an IHOP."

He hauled the big truck into a slow, steady turn. "Then what?"

"I ask people impertinent questions," I said. "Hopefully turning up pertinent answers."

"Assuming someone doesn't kill you while you do."

"That's why I'm bringing my very own vampire bodyguard."

Thomas parked across three spaces in the tiny, otherwise unoccupied lot of an International House of Pancakes.

"I like the scarf," I said. I leaned over and inhaled through my nose as best I could. It stung, but I detected a faint whiff of vanilla and strawberries. "She make it for you?"

Thomas nodded without saying anything. The leather-gloved fingers of one hand traced over the soft, simple yarn. He looked quietly sad. I felt bad for mentioning Justine, my brother's lost lover. Then I understood why he wore the gloves: If she'd made it for him, a token of her love, he didn't dare touch it with his skin. It would sear him like a hot skillet. So he kept it close enough for him to smell her touch upon it, but he didn't dare let it brush against him.

Every time I think my romantic life is a wasteland, I look at my brother and see how much worse it could be.

Thomas shook his head and killed the engine and we sat for a moment in silence.

So I clearly heard a deep male voice outside the truck say, "Don't either of you move." There was the distinct click-clack of a shotgun's pump working. "Or I will kill you."