Changes df-12

by Jim Butcher

  I sputtered.

  Susan arched an eyebrow. “His concubine?”

  “His lover, the mother of his child, yet to whom he is not wed? I believe the term applies, dear.” She waved a hand. “Words. La. Let us see.”

  She rested a fingertip thoughtfully upon the end of her nose, staring at me. Then she said, “Let us begin with silk.”

  She murmured a word, passed her hand over me, and my clothes started writhing as if they’d been made out of a single, flat organism, and one that hadn’t yet had the courtesy to expire. It was the damnedest feeling, and I hit my head on the roof of the limo as I jumped in surprise.

  A few seconds later, clenching my head, I eyed my godmother and said, “I don’t need any help.”

  “Harry,” Susan said in a strangled voice. She was staring at me.

  I looked down and found myself garbed in silken clothing. My shirt had become a billowing affair of deep grey silk, fitted close to my torso by a rather long vest of midnight black seeded in patterns of deep amethysts, green-blue opals, and pale, exquisite pearls. The tights were also made of silk, closely fit, and pure white, while the leather boots that came up to my knees were the same deep grey as the shirt.

  I stared at me. Then at Susan.

  “Wow,” Susan said. “You . . . you really do have a fairy godmother.”

  “And I’ve never been able to indulge,” Lea said, studying me absently. “This won’t do.” She waved her hand again. “Perhaps a bit more . . .”

  My clothing writhed again, the sensation so odd and intrusive that I all but banged my head on the roof again.

  We went through a dozen outfits in half as many minutes. A Victorian suit and coat, complete with tails, was nixed in favor of another silk outfit, this one inspired by imperial China. By then, Susan and Lea were actively engaged in the project, exchanging commentary with each other and ignoring absolutely every word that came out of my mouth. By the seventh outfit, I had given up trying to have any say whatsoever in how I was going to be dressed.

  I was given outfits drawing inspiration from widely diverse cultures and periods of history. I lobbied for the return of my leather duster stridently, but Lea only shushed me and kept speaking to Susan.

  “Which outfit is really going to get that bitch’s goat?” Susan asked her.

  Finally, Lea’s mouth curled up into a smile, and she said, “Perfect.”

  My clothes writhed one more time and I found myself dressed in ornate Gothic armor of the style used in Western Europe in the fifteenth century. It was black and articulated, with decorated shoulder pauldrons and an absurdly ornate breastplate. Gold filigree was everywhere, and the thing looked like it should weigh six hundred pounds.

  “Cortés wore armor in just this style,” Lea murmured. She studied my head and said, “Though it needs . . .”

  A weight suddenly enclosed my head. I sighed patiently and reached up to remove a conquistador’s helmet decorated to match the armor. I put it down on the floor of the limo and said firmly, “I don’t do hats.”

  “Poo,” Lea said. “Arianna still hates the Europeans with a vengeance, you know. It was why she took a conquistador husband.”

  I blinked. “Ortega?”

  “Of course, child,” Lea said. “Love and hate are oft difficult to distinguish between. She won Ortega’s heart, changed him, wed him, and spent the centuries after breaking his heart over and over again. Calling for him and then sending him away. Giving in to him and then reversing her course. She said it kept her hatred fresh and hot.”

  “Explains why he was working in bloody Brazil,” I said.

  “Indeed. Hmmm.” She flicked a hand and added a Roman-style cloak of dark grey to my armor-broadened shoulders, its ties fastened to the front of the breastplate. Another flick changed the style of my boots slightly. She added a deep hood to the cloak. Then she thoughtfully wrought all the gold on the armor into a spectrum that changed from natural gold to a green that deepened along the color gradient to blue and then purple the farther it went from my face, giving the gold filigree a cold, eerily surreal look. She added front panels to the cloak, so that it fell like some kind of robe in the front, belted to my waist with a sash of deep, dark purple. A final adjustment made the armor over my shoulders a bit wider and thicker, giving me that football shoulder-pad profile I remembered from Friday nights in high school.

  I looked down at myself and said, “This is ridiculous. I look like the Games Workshop version of a Jedi Knight.”

  Susan and Lea blinked at me, then at each other.

  “I want my duster back, dammit,” I clarified.

  “That old rag?” Lea said. “You have an image to maintain.”

  “And I’m gonna maintain it in my duster,” I said stubbornly.

  “Harry,” Susan said. “She might have a practical point here.”

  I eyed her. Then my outfit. “Practical?”

  “Appearances and first impressions are powerful things,” she said. “Used correctly, they’re weapons in their own right. I don’t know about you, but I want every weapon I can get.”

  Lea murmured, “Indeed.”

  “Okay. I don’t see why my image can’t wear my duster. We need to be quick, too. This getup is going to be binding and heavier than hell.”

  Lea’s mouth curled up at one corner. “Oh?”

  I scowled at her. Then I shook my shoulders and twisted about a bit. There was a kind of springy flexibility to the base material of the armor that steel would never match. More to the point, now that I was actually moving about, I couldn’t feel its weight. At all. I might as well have been wearing comfortable pajamas.

  “No mortal could cut through it by strength of mundane arms,” she said calmly. “It will shed blows from even such creatures as the vampires of the Red Court—for a time, at least. And it should help you to shield your mind against the wills of the Lords of Outer Night.”

  “Should?” I asked. “What do you mean, ‘should’?”

  “They are an ancient power, godchild,” Lea replied, and gave me her cat’s smile again. “I have not had the opportunity to match my new strength against theirs.” She looked me up and down one more time and nodded, satisfied. “You look presentable. Now, child,” she said, turning to Susan. “Let us see what we might do for you.”

  Susan handled the whole thing a lot better than I had.

  I got distracted while they were working. I looked out the window and saw us blowing past a highway patrol car as if it were standing still instead of racing down the highway with its bulbs flashing and its siren wailing. We had to be doing triple digits to have left him eating our dust so quickly.

  The patrolman didn’t react to our passage, and I realized that Glenmael must be hiding the car behind some kind of veil. He was also, I noticed, weaving and darting through the traffic with entirely impossible skill, missing other motorists’ bumpers and fenders by inches, with them apparently none the wiser. Not only that, but I couldn’t feel the motion at all within the passenger compartment. By all rights, we should have been bouncing off the windows and the roof, but it didn’t feel as if the car were moving at all.

  Long story short: He got us to St. Mary’s in less than fifteen minutes, and gave me several dozen new grey hairs in the process.

  We pulled up and Glenmael was opening the door to the rear compartment at seemingly the same instant that the car’s weight settled back against its parking brakes. I got out, the dark grey cowl covering my head. My shadow, on the sidewalk in front of me, looked friggin’ huge and scary. Irrationally, it made me feel a little better.

  I turned to help Susan out and felt my mouth drop open a little.

  Her outfit was . . . um, freaking hot.

  The golden headdress was the first thing I noticed. It was decorated with feathers, with jade carved with sigils and symbols like those I had seen on the stone table, and with flickering gems of arctic green and blue. For a second, I thought her vampire nature had begun to rise again, because he
r face was covered in what I mistook for tattoos. A second glance showed me that they were some kind of precisely drawn design, sort of like henna markings, but far more primitive and savage-looking in appearance. They were also done in a variety of colors of black and deep, dark red. The designs around her dark brown eyes made them stand out sharply.

  Under that, she wore a shift of some material that looked like simple, soft buckskin, split on the sides for ease of movement, and her feet were wrapped in shoes made of similar material, also decorated with feathers. The moccasins and shift both were pure white, and made a sharp contrast against the dark richness of her skin, and displayed the smooth, tight muscles of her arms and legs tremendously well.

  A belt of white leather had an empty holster for a handgun on one of her hips, with a frog for hanging a scabbard upon it on the other. And over all of that, she wore a mantled cloak of feathers, not too terribly unlike the ones we had seen in Nevada—but the colors were all in the rich, cool tones of the Winter Court: glacial blue, deep sea green, and twilight purple.

  She looked at me and said, “I’m waiting for you to say something about a Vegas showgirl.”

  It took me a moment to reconnect my mouth to my brain. “You look amazing,” I said.

  Her smile was slow and hot, with her dark eyes on mine.

  “Um,” I said. “But . . . it doesn’t look very practical.”

  Lea accepted Glenmael’s hand and exited the limo. She leaned over and murmured something into Susan’s ear.

  Susan arched an eyebrow, but then said, “Okaaay . . .” She closed her eyes briefly, frowning.

  And she vanished. Like, completely. Not behind a hard-to-pierce veil. Just gone.

  My godmother laughed and said, “The same as before, but red, child.”

  “Okay,” said Susan’s voice from empty air, and suddenly she was back again, smiling broadly. “Wow.”

  “The cloak will hide you from the eyes and other senses as well, child,” my godmother said. “And while you wear those shoes, your steps will leave no tracks nor make the smallest sound.”

  “Um, right,” I said. “But I’d feel better if she had some Kevlar along or something. Just in case.”

  “Glenmael,” said my godmother.

  The chauffeur calmly drew a nine-millimeter, pointed it at Susan’s temples from point-blank range, and squeezed the trigger. The gun barked.

  Susan jerked her head to one side and staggered, clapping one hand to her ear. “Ow!” she snarled, rising and turning on the young Sidhe. “You son of a bitch, those things are loud. That hurt. I ought to kick your ass up between your ears for you.”

  In answer, the Sidhe bent with consummate grace and plucked something from the ground. He stood and showed it to Susan, and then to me.

  It was a bullet. The nose was smashed in flat, until it vaguely resembled a small mushroom.

  Our eyes got kind of wide.

  Lea spread her hands and said calmly, “Faerie godmother.”

  I shook my head, stunned. It had taken me years to design, create, and improve my leather duster’s defensive spells, and even then, the protection extended only as far as the actual leather. Lea had whipped up a whole-body protective enchantment in minutes.

  I suddenly felt a bit more humble. It was probably good for me.

  But then I tilted my head, frowning. The power involved in my godmother’s gifts was incredible—but the universe just doesn’t seem to be willing to give you something for nothing. That was as true in magic as it was in physics. I could, with years of effort, probably duplicate what Lea’s gifts could do. The Sidhe worked with the same magic I did, though admittedly they seemed to have a very different sort of relationship. Still, that much power all in one spot meant that the energy cost for it was being paid elsewhere.

  Like maybe in longevity.

  “Godmother,” I asked, “how long will these gifts endure?”

  Her smile turned a little sad. “Ah, child. I am a faerie godmother, am I not? Such things are not meant to last.”

  “Don’t tell me midnight,” I said.

  “Of course not. I am not part of Summer.” She sniffed, rather scornfully. “Noon.”

  And that made more sense. My duster’s spells lasted for months, and I thought I’d worked out how to make them run for more than a year the next time I laid them down. Lea’s gifts involved the same kind of power output, created seemingly without toil—but they wouldn’t last like the things I created would. My self-image recovered a little.

  “Lea,” I asked, “did you bring my bag?”

  Glenmael opened the trunk and brought it over to me. The Swords in their scabbards were still strapped to the bag’s side. I picked it up and nodded. “Thanks.”

  He bowed, smiling. I was tempted to tip him, just to see what would happen, but then I remembered that my wallet had been in my blue jeans, and was now, presumably, part of the new outfit. Maybe it would reappear at noon tomorrow—assuming I was alive to need it, I mean.

  “I will wait here,” Lea said. “When you are ready to travel to the first Way, Glenmael will take us there.”

  “Right,” I said. “Let’s go, princess.”

  “Of course, Sir Knight,” Susan said, her eyes sparkling, and we went into the church.

  Chapter 39

  Sanya was guarding the door. He swung it open wide for us, and studied Susan with a grin of appreciation. “There are some days,” he said, “when I just love this job.”

  “Come on,” I said, walking past him. “We don’t have much time.”

  Sanya literally clicked his heels together, took Susan’s hand, and kissed the back of it gallantly, the big stupidhead. “You are beyond lovely, lady.”

  “Thank you,” Susan said, smiling. “But we don’t have much time.”

  I rolled my eyes and kept walking.

  There was a quiet conversation going in the living room. It stopped as I came through the door. I paused there for a second, and looked around at everyone who was going to help me get my daughter back.

  Molly was dressed in her battle coat, which consisted of a shirt of tightly woven metal links, fashioned by her mother out of titanium wire. The mail was then sandwiched between two long Kevlar vests. All of that was, in turn, fixed to one of several outer garments, and in this case she was wearing a medium-brown fireman’s coat. Her hair was braided tightly against the back of her head—and back to its natural honey brown color—and a hockey helmet sat on a table near her. She had half a dozen little focus items I’d shown her how to create, none of which were precisely intended for a fight. Her face was a little pale, and her blue eyes were earnest.

  Mouse sat next to her, huge and stolid, and rose to his feet and padded over to give me a subdued greeting as I came in. I knelt down and roughed up his ears for a moment. He wagged his tail, but made no more display than that, and his serious brown eyes told me that he knew the situation was grave.

  Next came Martin, dressed in simple black BDU pants, a longsleeved black shirt, and a tactical vest, all of which could have been purchased from any military surplus or gun store. He was in the midst of cleaning and inspecting two sets of weapons: assault rifles, tactical shotguns, and heavy pistols. He wore a machete in a scabbard on his belt. A second such weapon rested in a nylon sheath on the table, next to a blade-sharpening tool kit. He never looked up at me, or stopped reassembling the pistol he’d finished cleaning.

  A small chess set had been set up on the other end of the coffee table from Molly, next to Martin’s war gear. My brother sat there, with Martin (and, once he had finished greeting me, Mouse) between himself and the girl. He was wearing expensive-looking silk pants and a leather vest, both white. A gun belt bearing a large-caliber handgun and a sword with an inward-curving blade, an old Spanish falcata, hung over the corner of the couch, casually discarded. He lay lazily back on the couch, his eyes mostly closed, watching the move of his opponent.

  Murphy was decked out in black tactical gear much like Martin’s, bu
t more worn and better fitting. They don’t generally make gear for people Murph’s size, so she couldn’t shop off the shelf very often. She did have her own vest of Kevlar and mail, which Charity had made for her for Christmas the previous year, in thanks for the occasions when Murphy had gone out on a limb for them, but Murph had just stuck the compound armor to her tac vest and been done. She wore her automatic on her hip, and her odd-looking, rectangular little submachine gun, the one that always made me think of a box of chocolates, was leaned against the wall nearby. Murph was hunched over the chessboard, her nose wrinkled as she thought, and moved one of her knights into a thicket of enemy pieces before she turned to me.

  She took one look at me and burst out giggling.

  That was enough to set off everyone in the room except Martin, who never seemed to realize that there were other people there. Molly’s titters set off Thomas, and even Mouse dropped his jaws open in a doggy grin.

  “Hah, hah, hah,” I said, coming into the room, so that Susan and Sanya could join us. No one laughed at Susan’s outfit. I felt that the injustice of that was somehow emblematic of the unfairness in my life, but I didn’t have time to chase that thought down and feed it rhetoric until the lightbulb over my head lit up.

  “Well,” Murphy said, as the laughter died away. “I’m glad you got out all right. Went shopping after, did you?”

  “Not so much,” I said. “Okay, listen up, folks. Time is short. What else did we manage to find out about the site?”

  Murphy told Thomas, “Mate in six,” took a file folder from beneath her chair, and passed it to me.

  “You wish,” Thomas drawled lazily.

  I eyed him and opened the folder. There were multiple pages inside, color aerial and satellite photos of the ruins.