Proven Guilty

by Jim Butcher

Chapter 19~20

  Chapter Nineteen

  McAnally's pub is on the bottom floor of a building not too far from my office. Chicago being what it is-essentially a giant swamp with a city sinking into it-the building had settled over the years, and to enter the pub you had to come in the door and take a couple of steps down. It's a low-ceilinged room, or at least it's always felt that way to me, and it offers the added attraction of several whirling ceiling fans at my eye level, just as I come in the door, and after stepping down into the room they're still uncomfortably close to my head.

  There's a sign Mac's got hanging up at the door that reads ACCORDED NEUTRAL GROUND. It means that the place was supposed to be a no-combat zone, under the terms laid out in the Unseelie Accords, the most recent and influential set of principles agreed upon by most of the various nations of the supernatural maybe ten or twelve years ago. By the terms of the Accords, there's no fighting allowed between members of opposing nations in the bar, and we're not supposed to attempt to provoke anybody, either. If things do get hostile, the Accords say you have to take it outside or risk censure by the signatory nations.

  More importantly, at least to me, Mac was a friend. When I came to his place to eat, I considered myself a guest, and he my host. I'd abide by his declared neutrality out of simple respect, but it was good to know that the Accords were there in the background. Not every member of the supernatural community is as polite and neighborly as me.

  Mac's place is one big room. There are a baker's dozen of thick wooden support pillars spread through the room, each of them carved with figures from Old World nursery tales. There's a bar with thirteen stools, thirteen tables spread irregularly throughout the room, and the whole place has an informal, comfortable, asymmetrical sort of feel to it.

  I came through the door armed for bear and projecting an attitude to match. I bore my staff in my left hand, and I'd slipped my new blasting rod, a shaft of wood two feet long and as thick as my two thumbs together, through my belt. My shield bracelet hung on my left hand, my force ring was on my right, and Mouse walked on my right side on his lead, looking huge and sober and alert.

  A couple of people inside looked at my face and immediately tried to look like they had no interest in me. I wasn't in a bad mood, but I wanted to look that way. Since the war with the Red Court had gotten rolling, I had learned the hard way that predators, human and otherwise, sense fear and look for weakness. So I walked into the place like I was hoping to kick someone in the neck, because it was a hell of a lot easier to discourage potential predators ahead of time than it was to slug it out with them when they followed me out afterward.

  I crossed the room to the bar, and Mac nodded at me. Mac was a lean man somewhere between thirty and fifty. He wore his usual dark clothes and spotless white apron while simultaneously managing all the bartending and a big wood-burning grill where he cooked various dishes for the customers. The summer heat was fairly well blunted by the shade and the fans and the partially subterranean nature of the room, but there were still dark spots of sweat on his clothes and beading along the bare skin of his scalp.

  Mac knew what the tough-guy face was about, and it clearly didn't bother him. He nodded to me as I sat down on a stool.

  "Mac. You got any cold beer back there somewhere?"

  He gave me an unamused look.

  I leaned my staff on the bar, lifted both hands in a placating gesture, and said, "Kidding. But tell me you've got cold lemonade. It's a zillion degrees out there. "

  He answered with a glass of lemonade cooled with his patented lemonade ice cubes, so that you could drink it cold and not have it get watered down, all at the same time. Mac is pretty much a genius when it comes to drinks. And his steak sandwiches should be considered some kind of national resource.

  "Business?" he asked me.

  I nodded. "Meeting with Fix. "

  Mac grunted and went out to a corner table, one with a clear view of the door. He nudged it out a bit from the wall, polished it with a cloth, and straightened the chairs around it. I nodded my thanks to him and settled down at the table with my lemonade.

  I didn't have long to wait. A couple of minutes before noon, the Summer Knight opened the door and came in.

  Fix had grown, and I mean that literally. He'd been about five foot three, maybe an inch or so higher. Now he had towered up to at least five nine. He'd been a wiry little guy with white-blond hair, and most of that remained true. The wire had thickened to lean cable, but the shock of spikes he'd worn as a hairdo had gotten traded in on a more typical cut for faerie nobles-a shoulder-length do. Fix hadn't been a good-looking guy, and the extra height and muscle and the hair did absolutely nothing to change that. What had changed was his previous manner, which had been approximately equal parts nervous and cheerful.

  The Summer Knight projected confidence and strength. They shone from him like light from a star. When he opened the door, the dim shadows retreated somewhat, and a whispering breeze that smelled of pine and honeysuckle rolled through the room. The air around him did something to the light, throwing it back cleaner, more pure, more fierce than it had been before it touched him.

  Fix wasn't putting on a face, like I had. This was what he had become: the Summer Knight, mortal champion of the Seelie Court, a thunderstorm in blue jeans and a green cotton shirt. His gaze went first to Mac, and he gave the barkeep a polite little bow of respect. Then he turned to me, grinned, and nodded. "Harry. "

  "Fix," I said. "Been a while. You've grown. "

  He looked down at himself and looked briefly like the flustered young man I had first met. "It sort of snuck up on me. "

  "Life has a way of doing that," I agreed.

  "I hope you don't mind. Someone else wanted to speak to you, too. "

  He turned his head and said something, and a breath later the Summer Lady entered the tavern.

  Lily had never been hard on the eyes. The daughter of one of the Sidhe and a mortal, she'd had the looks usually reserved for magazines and movie stars. But, like Fix, she had grown; not physically, though a somewhat juvenile eye might have made certain comparisons to the past and somehow found them even more appealing. What had changed most was the bashful uncertainty that had filled her every word and movement. The old Lily had hardly been able to take care of herself. This was the Summer

  Lady, youngest of the Seelie Queens, and when she came in the room, the whole place suddenly seemed more alive. The lingering taste of lemonade on my tongue became more intensely sour and sweet. I could hear every whisper of wind around every lazily spinning fan blade in the room, and all of them murmured gentle music together. She wore a simple sundress of green, starkly contrasting the silken waterfall of purest white tresses that fell to her waist.

  More than that, she carried around her a sense of purpose, a kind of quiet, gentle strength, something as steady and warming and powerful as summer sunlight. Her face, too, had gained character, the awkward shyness in her eyes replaced with a kind of gentle perception; a continual, quiet laughter leavened with just a touch of sadness. She stepped forward, between two of the carved wooden columns, and the flowers wrought into the wood upon them twitched and then burst into sudden blooms of living color.

  Everyone there, myself included, stopped breathing for a second.

  Mac recovered first. "Lily," he said, and bowed his head to her. "Good to see you. "

  She smiled warmly at his use of her name. "Mac," she replied. "Do you still make those lemonade ice cubes?"

  "Two," Fix said, grinning more broadly. He offered his arm to Lily, and she laid her hand upon it, both gestures so familiar to them that they didn't need to think about them anymore. They came over to the table, and I rose politely until Fix had seated Lily. Then we mere menfolk sat down again. Mac came with drinks and departed.

  "So," Fix said. "What's up, Harry?"

  Lily sipped lemonade through a straw. I tried not to stare and drool. "Um. I've been asked to g
et in touch with you," I said. "After the Red Court's attack last year, when they encroached on Faerie territory, we were kind of expecting a response. We were wondering why there hadn't been one. "

  "We meaning the Council?" Lily asked quietly. Her voice was calm, but something just under its surface warned me that the answer might be important.

  "We meaning me and some people I know. This isn't exactly, ah, official. "

  Fix and Lily exchanged a look. She nodded once, and Fix exhaled and said, "Good. Good, I was hoping that would be the case. "

  "I am not permitted to speak for the Summer Court to the White Council," Lily explained. "But you have a prior claim of friendship to both myself and my Knight. And there is nothing to prevent me from speaking to an old friend regarding troubled times. "

  I glanced back and forth between them for a moment before I said, "So why haven't the Sidhe laid the smack down on the Red Court?"

  Lily sighed. "A complicated matter. "

  "Just start at the beginning and explain it from there," I suggested.

  "Which beginning?" she asked. "And whose?"

  I felt my eyebrows arch up. "Hell's bells, Lily. I wasn't expecting the usual Sidhe word games from you. "

  Calm, remote beauty covered her face like a mask. "I know. "

  "Seems to me that you're a couple of points in the red when it comes to favors given and received," I said. "Between that mess in Oklahoma and your predecessor. "

  "I know," she said again, her expression showing me less than nothing.

  I leaned back into my chair for a second, glaring at her, feeling that same old frustration rising. Damn, but I hated trying to deal with the Sidhe. Summer or Winter, they were both an enormous pain in the ass.

  "Harry," Fix said with gentle emphasis. "She isn't always free to speak. "

  "Like hell she isn't," I said. "She's the Summer Lady. "

  "But Titania is the Summer Queen," Fix told me. "And if you'll forgive me for pointing out something so obvious, it wasn't so long ago that you murdered Titania's daughter. "

  "What does that have to do with anything," I began, but snapped my lips closed over the last word. Of course. When Lily had become the Summer Lady, she got the whole package-and it went way beyond simply turning her hair white. She would have to follow the bizarre set of limits and rules to which all of the Faerie Queens seemed bound. And, more importantly, it meant she would have to obey the more powerful Queens of Summer, Titania and Mother Summer.

  "Are you telling me that Titania has ordered you both not to help me?" I asked them.

  They stared back at me with faerie poker faces that told me nothing.

  I nodded, beginning to understand. "You aren't permitted to speak officially for Summer. And Titania's laid some kind of compulsion on you both to prevent you from helping me on a personal level," I said. "Hasn't she?"

  Had there been crickets, I would have heard them clearly. Had my table companions been statues, I'd have gotten more reaction from them.

  "You're not supposed to help me. You're not supposed to tell me about the compulsion. " I followed the chain of logic a step further. "But you want to help, so here you are. Which means that the only way I could get information out of you is to approach it indirectly. Or else the compulsion would force you to shut up. Am I close?"

  Cheep-cheep. If it went on much longer, they'd have to worry about inbound pigeons.

  I frowned a little and thought about it for a minute. Then I asked, "Theoretically speaking," I said, "what kinds of things might prevent Winter and Summer from reacting to an incursion by another nation?"

  Lily's eyes sparkled, and she nodded to Fix. The little guy turned to me and said, "In theory, only a few things could do it. The simplest would be a lack of respect for the strength of the incurring nation. If the Queens considered them no threat, there would be no need to act. "

  "Uh-huh," I said. "Go on. "

  "A much more serious reason would be an issue of the balance of power between the Courts of Summer and Winter. Any reaction to the invasion would alter what resources one would have at hand. If one Court did not act in concert with the other, it would provide an ideal opportunity for a surprise assault while the other had its strategic back turned. "

  I rubbed my hands along my thighs, squinting one eye shut. "Let me see if I've put this together right. Summer's ready to throw down. But Winter isn't gonna help, because apparently they'd rather take a poke at you guys when you were focused on another threat. "

  I took Fix's silence as an affirmative.

  "That's insane," I said. "If that happens, both Courts are going to suffer. Both of you will be weakened. No matter who came out on top, they'd be easy pickings for the Reds. Theoretically speaking. "

  "An imbalance between Winter and Summer is nothing new," Lily said. "It has existed since the time when we first met you, Harry. It continues today because of the fate of the current Winter Knight. "

  I grimaced. "Christ. He's still alive? After. . . what, almost four years?"

  Fix shuddered. "I saw him once. The man was a psycho, a drug addict and a murderer-"

  "And a rapist," Lily interjected in a quiet, sad voice.

  "And that," Fix agreed, his expression grim. "I could break his neck and not lose a minute's sleep. But no one deserves. . . " He swallowed, his face going pale. "That. "

  "The moron betrayed Mab," I said quietly. "He knew the risks when he did it. "

  "No," Fix said, with another shudder. "Believe me, Harry. He didn't know what would happen to him. He couldn't have. "

  Fix's obvious discomfort made a certain impression on me, especially given that Mab had displayed an unnerving amount of interest in me, and that I still owed her a couple of favors. I shifted uneasily in my chair and tried to blow it off. "Whatever," I said. "There's a Summer Knight. There's a Winter Knight. What's unbalanced about that?"

  "He isn't exerting his power," Fix replied. "He's a prisoner, and everyone knows it. He has no freedom, no will. He can't stand on the side of Winter as its champion. So far as the tension between the Courts goes, the Winter Knight might as well not exist. "

  "All right," I murmured. "Mab's got a man in the penalty box. She wants to take the offensive before Summer pushes a power play, and she's looking for ways to even the odds. If Summer goes running off to take on the Reds, it will give her a chance to strike. " I shook my head. "I don't pretend to know Mab very well, but she isn't suicidal. If the imbalance is so dangerous, why is she keeping the Winter Knight alive to begin with? And she must see what the consequences of another Winter-Summer war would be. " I looked back and forth between them. "Right?"

  "Unfortunately," Lily said quietly, "our intelligence about the internal politics of Winter is very limited-and Mab is not the sort to reveal her mind to another. I do not know if she realizes the potential danger. Her actions of late have been. . . " She closed her eyes for a moment and then said, with some obvious effort, "Erratic. "

  I propped up my chin on the heel of my hand, thinking. "Mab's a lot of things," I said thoughtfully. "But she sure as hell isn't erratic. She's like some damned big glacier. Not a thing you can do to stop her, but at least you know just how she's going to move. What's the bard say? Constant as the northern star. "

  Fix frowned, as if struggling with an internal decision for a minute, then let out an exasperated sigh and said, "I think many who know the Sidhe would agree with you. "

  Which was neither a confirmation nor a denial-technically, at any rate. But then, Sidhe magic and bindings tended to lean heavily toward the technical details.

  I sat back slowly again, thoughts flickering over dozens of ideas and bits of information, putting them together into a larger picture. And it wasn't a pretty one. The last time one of the Faerie Queens had come a little bit unbalanced, the situation had become a potential global catastrophe on the same order of magnitude as a middling large meteor impact or a limited nuclear exchange. And th
at had been the youngest Queen of the gentler and more reasonable Summer, Lily's predecessor. Aurora. The late Aurora, I suppose.

  If Mab had blown a gasket, matters wouldn't be just as bad.

  They would be worse.

  A lot worse.

  "I've got to know more about this one," I told them quietly.

  "I know," Lily said. She lifted her hand to a temple and closed her eyes in a faint frown of pain. "But. . . " She shook her head and fell silent again as Titania's binding sealed her tongue.

  I glanced at Fix, who managed to whisper, "Sorry, Harry," before he too closed his eyes and looked vaguely ill.

  "I need answers," I murmured, thinking aloud. "But you can't give them to me. And there can't be all that many people who know what's going on. "

  Silence and faint expressions of pain. After a few seconds, Fix said, "I think we've done all we can here. "

  I racked my brains for a few seconds more and then said, "No, you haven't. "

  Lily opened her eyes and looked at me, arching a perfect, silver-white brow.

  "I need someone with the right information and who isn't under a compulsion not to help me. And I can only think of one person who fits the bill. "

  Lily's eyes widened a second after I got done speaking.

  "Can you do it?" I asked her. "Right now?"

  She chewed her lower lip for a second, then nodded.

  "Call her," I said.

  Fix looked back and forth between us. "I don't understand. What are you doing?"

  "Something stupid, probably," I said. "But this is too big. I need more information. "

  Lily closed her eyes and folded her hands on her lap, her expression relaxing into one of deep concentration. I could feel the subtle stir of energy around her.

  My stomach rumbled. I asked Mac to whip me up a steak sandwich and settled down to wait.

  It didn't take long. My sandwich wasn't halfway done when Mouse let out a sudden, rumbling growl of warning, and the temperature in the bar dropped about ten degrees. The whirling ceiling fans let out mechanical moans of protest and spun faster. Then the door opened and let in sunlight made wan by a patch of dreary grey clouds. The light cast a slender black silhouette.

  Fix's eyes narrowed. His hands slid casually out of sight beneath the table, and he said, "Oh. Her"

  The young woman who entered the bar could have been Lily's sister. She had the same exotic beauty, the same canted, feline eyes, the same pale, flawless skin. But this one's hair was worn in long, ragged strands of varying lengths, like a Raggedy Ann doll, each one dyed a slightly different color from frozen seas-pale blues and greens, as though each had borrowed its color from a different glacier. Her eyes were a cold, brilliant shade of green, almost entirely darkened by pupils dilated as though with drugs or arousal. A slender silver hoop gleamed at one side of her nose, and a collar of black leather studded with silver snowflakes encircled the graceful line of her slender throat. She wore sandals and cut-off blue jean shorts-very cut-off, and very tight. A tight, white T-shirt strained across her chest, and read, in pale blue letters stretched into intriguing curves, "YOUR BOYFRIEND WANTS ME. "

  She prowled across the room to us, all hips and lips and fascinating eyes, looking far too young to move with such wanton sensuality. I knew better. She could have been a century old. She chose to look the way she did because of what she was: the Winter Lady, youngest Queen of the Un-seelie Court, Mab's understudy in wickedness and power. When she walked by the flowers that had bloomed in Lily's presence, they froze over, withered, and died. She gave them no more notice than Lily had.

  "Harry Dresden," she said, her voice low, lulling, and sweet.

  And I said, "Hello, Maeve. "

  Chapter Twenty

  Maeve stared at me for a long minute and licked her lips. "Look at you," she all but purred. "All pent up like that. You haven't had a woman in ages, have you?"

  I hadn't. I really, really hadn't. But that wasn't the kind of thinking that a professional investigator allowed to clog up the gears in his brain. I could have said something back, but I decided that if I ignored the taunt, maybe she'd get bored and leave me alone. So instead of taking up the verbal epee, I rose and drew out a chair for her, politely. "Sit with us, Maeve?"

  Her head tilted almost all the way to her shoulder. She stared at me with those intense green eyes. "Just boiling over. Maybe you and I should have a private talk. Just the two of us. "

  My libido seconded the suggestion, and heartily.

  My libido and I generally don't see eye to eye. Dammit.

  "I'd rather just sit and have a nice chat," I said to her.

  "Liar," Maeve said, smiling.

  I sighed. "All right. There are a lot of things I'd love to do. But the only thing that's going to happen is a nice chat. So you might as well sit down and let me get you a drink. "

  Her head tilted the other way. Her hips shifted in a kind of counterpoint that drew the eye. "How long has it been for you, wizard? How long since you sated yourself. "

  The answer was depressing. "Last time I saw Susan, I guess. "

  Maeve made a disgusted sound. "No, not love, wizard. Need. Flesh. "

  "The two aren't mutually exclusive," I said.

  She waved that off with an expression of contempt. "I want an answer.

  "Looks to me like there's all kinds of things you want that you aren't going to get," I told her. I glanced at Fix and Lily, throwing a mute appeal into it.

  Fix gave me an apologetic shrug and Lily sighed. "You might as well indulge her, Harry. She's as stubborn as any of us, the only one who might give you the answers you need, and she knows it. "

  I looked back at Maeve, who gave me that same eerie, intensely sensual smile. "Tell me, mortal. When was the last time flesh, new and strange to your hand, lay quivering beneath you, hmm?" She leaned down until her eyes were inches from mine. I could smell winter mint and something lush and corrupt, like rotted flowers, on her breath. "When was the last time you could taste and feel some little lovely's cries?"

  I regarded her without any expression and said, in a gentle voice, "Technically? When I killed Aurora. "

  Maeve's expression flickered with an instant of uncertainty.

  "You remember Aurora," I told her quiedy. "The last Summer Lady. Your peer. Your equal. When she died, she'd been cut several dozen times with cold iron. She was bleeding out. But she was still trying to stick a knife in Lily. So I tackled her and held her down. She kept struggling until she lost too much blood. And then she died in the grass on the hill of the Stone Table. "

  Dead silence filled the whole place.

  "It sort of surprised me," I said, never putting any particular emotion on the words. "How fast it happened. It surprised her, too. She was confused when she died. "

  Maeve only stared at me.

  "I never wanted to kill her. But she didn't leave me any choice. " I let the silence fill the room for a moment and stared at Maeve's eyes.

  The Winter Lady swallowed and eased her weight a tiny bit away from me.

  Then I gestured with one hand at the chair I still held out for her and said, "Let's be polite to one another, Maeve. Please. "

  She took a slow breath, soulless, inhuman eyes on mine, and then said, "I know now why Mab wants you. " She straightened and gave me an odd little bow, which might have looked more courtly had she been wearing a gown. Then she sat and said, "Does the barkeep still have those sweet-lemon chips of ice?"

  "Of course," I said. "Mac. Another lemonade for the Lady, please?"

  Mac provided it in his usual silence. As he did, the few people who were in the place cleared out. Most of the magical community of Chicago knew the Ladies by reputation, if not on sight, and they wanted nothing to do with any kind of incident between Winter and Summer. They were safer if they were never noticed.

  Hell, if I could have snuck out, I would have led the way. When I'd defeated Au
rora, there had been a healthy chunk of luck involved. I caught her with a sucker punch. If she'd been focused on taking me out instead of finishing her scheme, I doubt I would have survived the evening. Sure, I might have stared Maeve down, but ultimately I was bluffing-trying to fool the oncoming shark into thinking I might be something that could eat it. If the shark decided to start taking bites anyhow, things would get unpleasant for me.

  But this time, at least, the shark didn't know that.

  Maeve waited for her lemonade, wrapped her lips idly around the straw, and sipped. Then she settled back into her seat, chewing. Crunching sounds came from her mouth. The lemonade had frozen solid when it passed her lips.

  Which made me feel pretty damned smart for avoiding the whole sexual temptation issue.

  Maeve looked at Lily steadily as she chewed, and then said, to me, "You know, my last Knight often dragged this one before the Court for performances. All kinds of performances. Some of them hurt. And some of them didn't. Though she still cried out prettily enough. " She smiled, her tone polite and conversational. "Do you remember the night he made you dance for me in the red shoes, Lily?"

  Lily's green eyes settled on Maeve, calm and placid as a forest pool.

  Maeve's smile sharpened. "Do you remember what I did to you after?"

  Lily smiled, a tired little expression, and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Maeve. I know how much pleasure you take in gloating, but you can't hurt me with that now. That Lily is no more. "

  Maeve narrowed her eyes, and then her gaze shifted to Fix. "And this one. I've seen this little man weeping like a child. Begging for mercy. "

  Fix sipped at his lemonade and said, "For the love of God, Maeve. Would you give the Evil Kinkstress act a rest? It gets tired pretty fast. "

  The Winter Lady let out an exasperated breath, put down her drink, and folded her arms sullenly across her chest. "Very well," Maeve said, her tone petulant. "What is it you wish to know, wizard?"

  "I'd like to know why Mab hasn't been striking back at the Red Court after they trespassed on Sidhe territory during the battle last year. "

  Maeve arched a brow at me. "That is knowledge, and therefore power. What are you prepared to trade for it?"

  "Forgetfulness," I said.

  Maeve tilted her head. "I can think of nothing in particular I would like to forget. "

  "I can think of something you want me to forget, Maeve. "

  "Can you?"

  I smiled, with teeth. "I'd be willing to forget what you did at Billy and Georgia's wedding. "

  "Pardon?" Maeve said. "I don't seem to recall being present. "

  She knew the score. She knew that I knew it, too. Her legality pissed me off. "Of course," I replied. "You weren't there. But your handmaiden was. Jenny Greenteeth. "

  Maeve's lips parted in sudden surprise.

  "I saw through her glamour. Didn't you know who shut her down?" I asked her, lifting my own eyebrows in faux innocence. "That was petty cruelty, Maeve, even for you. Trying to ruin their marriage. "

  "Your wolf children did me a petty wrong," Maeve replied. "They killed a favorite hireling of the Winter Court. "

  "They owed their loyalty to Dresden when they killed the Tigress," Lily murmured. "Even as did the Little Folk he used against Aurora. They acted with his consent and upon his will, Maeve. You know our laws. "

  Maeve gave Lily a dirty look that was almost human.

  "For what happened that night, they were mine. " I put my hands flat on the table and leaned a little toward Maeve, speaking with as much quiet intensity as I could. "I protect what is mine. You should know that by now. I have lawful reason for a quarrel with you. "

  Maeve's attention moved back to me, and her expression became remote and alien. "What is it you propose?"

  "I'm willing to let things go as they are, all accounts settled, in exchange for an honest answer to my question. " I settled back in my chair and asked, "Why hasn't Winter moved against the Red Court?"

  Maeve regarded me with an odd little twinkle in her eye, then nodded and said, "Mab has not allowed it. "

  Fix and Lily traded a quick look of surprise.

  "Sooth," Maeve said, nodding, evidently enjoying their reaction. "The Queen has readied her forces to strike at Summer, and has furthermore given specific orders preventing her captains from conducting operations against the Red Court. "

  "That's madness," Lily said quietly.

  Maeve folded her hands on the table, frowning at something far away, and said, "It may well be. Dark things stir in Winter's heart. Things even I have never before seen. Dangerous things. I believe they are a portent. "

  I tilted my head a little, focused on her. "How so?"

  "What Aurora attempted was insane. Even among the Sidhe," Maeve replied. "Her actions could have thrown enormous forces out of balance, to the ruin of all. "

  "Her heart was in the right place," Fix said, his tone mildly defensive.

  "Maybe," I told him, as gently as I could. "But good intent doesn't amount to much when the consequences are epically screwed up. "

  Maeve shook her head. "Hearts. Good. Evil. Mortals are always concerned with such nonsense. " She abruptly rose, her mind clearly elsewhere.

  Something in her expression or manner gave me a sudden sense that she was worried. Deeply, truly worried. Little Miss Overlord was frightened.

  "These mortal notions," Maeve said. "Good, evil, love. All those other things your kind natter on about. Are they perhaps contagious?"

  I rose with her, politely. "Some would say so," I told her.

  She grimaced. "In the time since her death, I have often thought to myself that Aurora was stricken with some mortal madness. I believe the Queen of Air and Darkness has been taken by a similar contagion. " She suddenly shuddered and said, voice curt, "I have answered you with truth, and more than needed be said. Does that satisfy the accounting, mortal?"

  "Aye," I told her, nodding. "Good enough for me. "

  "Then I take my leave. " She turned, took half a step, and there was a sudden gust of frozen air that knocked her mostly full glass of lemonade onto the floor. It froze in a lumpy puddle. Somewhere between tabletop and floor, Maeve vanished.

  The three of us sat there quietly for a moment.

  "She was lying," Fix said.

  "She can't lie," Lily and I said at exactly the same moment. Lily yielded the issue to me with a gesture of her hand, and I told Fix, "She can't speak an outright lie, Fix. None of the Sidhe can. You know that. "

  He frowned and made a frustrated, helpless little gesture with his hand. "But. . . Mab? Insane?"

  "It does fit with our concerns," Lily told him quietly.

  Fix looked a little green around the edges. "I loved her like a sister, but Aurora's madness was bad enough. If Mab sets out to send the world on a downward spiral. . . I mean, I can't even imagine the kind of things she could do. "

  "I can," I said quietly. "I would suggest that you relay word of this to Titania, Lady. And take that as official concern from the Council. Please also convey the message that the Council is naturally interested in preserving the balance in Faerie. It would be of value to all of us to cooperate in order to learn more. "

  Lily nodded once at me. "Indeed. I will do so. " She shivered and closed her eyes for a second, her expression distressed. "Harry, I'm very sorry, but the bindings on me. . . I stretch the bounds of my proper place. "

  Fix nodded decisively and rose. He took Lily's arm. "I wish we could have done more to help you. "

  "Don't worry about it," I said, rising politely to my feet again. "You did what you could. I appreciate it. "

  Lily gave me a strained smile. She and Fix departed, quick and quiet. The door never opened, but a breath later they were both gone. Mouse sat there next to the table, cocking his head left and right, his ears attentively forward, as though trying to figure that one out.

  I sat at the table and sipped lemonade
without much enthusiasm. More trouble in Faerie. Bigger trouble in Faerie. And I'd be willing to bet dollars to navel lint that I knew exactly which stupid son of a bitch the Council would expect to start poking his nose around in it.

  I put the lemonade down. It suddenly tasted very sour.

  Mac arrived. He took my lemonade. He replaced it with a beer. I flicked the top off with my thumb and put it away in a long pull. It was warm and it tasted too much, but the gentle bite of the alcohol in it was pleasant enough to make me want another.

  Mac showed up with another.

  Mac can sometimes be downright angelic.

  "They've changed," I told him. "Fix and Lily. It's like they aren't even the same people anymore. "

  Mac grunted once. Then he said, "They grew up. "

  "Maybe that's it. " I fell back into a brooding silence, and Mac left me to it. I finished the second beer more slowly, but I didn't have a lot of time to lose. I nodded my thanks to Mac, left money on the table, and took up Mouse's leash. We headed for the door.

  I had other business to take care of. Nebulous maybe-threats would have to wait for the monsters I was sure would show up in a few hours. At least I'd gotten out of the whole situation without someone trying to kill me or declaring war on the Council. I'd had a civil conversation with both Lady Winter and Lady Summer and come away from it unscathed.

  As I walked toward the door, though, an idle thought gnawed at me.

  It had hardly been like pulling out teeth at all.