by Jim Butcher
“No,” I told him. “Watch this.”
Binder was running as hard as he could, but I doubted he had been all that light on his feet when he was young, much less twenty years and forty pounds later. Murphy worked out practically every day.
She caught him about ten feet before the end of the row, timed her steps for a second, and then sharply kicked his rearmost leg just as he lifted it to take his next step. His foot got caught on the back of his own calf as a result, and he went down in a sprawl.
Binder came to his feet with an explosive snarl of rage and whirled on Murphy. He flung a handful of gravel at her face, and then waded in with heavy, looping punches.
Murph ducked her head down and kept the gravel out of her eyes, slipped aside from one punch, and then seized his wrist on the second. The two of them whirled in a brief half circle, Binder let out a yelp, and then his bald head slammed into the steel door of a storage unit. I had to give the guy credit for physical toughness. He rebounded from the door a little woozily, but drove an elbow back at Murphy’s head.
Murphy caught that arm and continued the motion, using her own body as a fulcrum in a classic hip throw—except that Binder was facing in the opposite direction than usual for that technique.
You could hear his arm come out of its socket fifty feet away.
And then he hit the gravel face-first.
Binder got extra points for brains in my book, after that: he lay still and didn’t put up a struggle as Murphy dragged his wrists behind his back and cuffed him.
I traded a glance with Mouse and said, wisely, “Hard-core.”
The police sirens were getting louder. Murphy looked up at them, and then down the row at me. She made an exasperated shooing motion.
“Come on,” I said to Mouse. The two of us hurried down the row to Morgan’s chair.
“I couldn’t shoot him with this scatter pipe with the two of you standing there,” Morgan complained as I approached. “Why didn’t you do it?”
“That’s why,” I said, nodding to the park entrance, where a patrol car was screeching to a halt, its blue bubbles flashing. “They get all funny about corpses with gunshot wounds in them.” I turned to scowl at Molly. “I told you to bug out at the first sign of danger.”
She took the handles of Morgan’s wheelchair and we all started back toward the storage unit and its portal. “We didn’t know what was going on until we heard them all start shrieking,” she protested. “And then Mouse went nuts, and started trying to dig his way through a metal door. I thought you might be in trouble. And you were.”
“That isn’t the point,” I said. I glanced at the circle drawn in the gravel as we crossed it, breaking it and releasing its power. “Whose idea was the circle?”
“Mine,” Morgan said calmly. “Circle traps are a standard tactic for dealing with rogue summoners.”
“I’m sorry it took so long to draw,” Molly said. “But I had to make it big enough to get them all.”
“Not a problem. He was happy to kill time running his mouth.” We all entered the storage bay, and I rolled the door closed behind us. “You did good, grasshopper.”
Molly beamed.
I looked around us and said, “Hey. Where’s Thomas?”
“The vampire?” Morgan asked.
“I had him watching the outside of the park, just in case,” I said.
Morgan gave me a disgusted look and rolled himself forward toward the prepared portal into the Nevernever. “The vampire goes missing just before a bounty hunter who couldn’t possibly know my location turns up. And you’re actually surprised, Dresden?”
“Thomas called me and told me there was trouble,” I said, my voice tight. “If he hadn’t, you’d have been drowning in grey suits by now.”
Molly chewed her lip worriedly and shook her head. “Harry . . . I haven’t seen him since he dropped us off.”
I glanced back toward the entrance of the park, clenching my teeth.
Where was he?
If he’d been able to do otherwise, Thomas would never have let Murphy and me fight alone against Binder’s minions. He would have been right in there beside us. Except he hadn’t been.
Why not? Had circumstances forced him to leave before I arrived? Or worse, had someone else involved in the current crisis decided to take measures against him? Psycho bitch Madeline came uncomfortably to mind. And the skinwalker had already demonstrated that it was happy to murder my allies instead of striking directly at me.
Or maybe he’d simply been overwhelmed by a crowd of grey-suited demons. Maybe his body was already cooling in some nook or cranny of the storage park. My mouth went dry at the thought.
Hell’s bells.
What had happened to my brother?
Morgan spoke a quiet word and opened a shimmering rectangular portal in the floor. Molly walked over to it and stared down, impressed.
“Dresden,” Morgan said. “We can’t afford to become entangled with the local authorities.”
I wanted to scream at him, but he was right. More sirens had closed in on the park. We had to leave. I grabbed the handles to Morgan’s chair, started for the portal, and said, “Let’s go, people.”
Dammit, Thomas, I snarled to myself. Where the hell are you?
Chapter Twenty
The portal in my hideaway opened three steps from the trail in the Nevernever, all right, but those three steps weren’t handicapped-accessible. Molly and I each had to get under one of Morgan’s arms and half carry him to the trail. I left Molly and Mouse with him, went back and got the wheelchair, and dragged it up the frozen slope to a path that was all but identical to the one I’d been on earlier.
We loaded Morgan into the wheelchair again. He was pale and shaking by the time we were finished. I laid a hand against his forehead. It was hot with fever.
Morgan jerked his head away from my fingers, scowling.
“What is it?” Molly asked. She had thought to grab both coats I’d had waiting, and had already put one of them on.
“He’s burning up,” I said quietly. “Butters said that could mean the wound had been infected.”
“I’m fine,” Morgan said, shivering.
Molly helped him into the second coat, looking around at the frozen, haunted wood with nervous eyes. “Shouldn’t we get him out of the cold, then?”
“Yeah,” I said, buttoning my duster shut. “It’s maybe ten minutes from here to the downtown portal.”
“Does the vampire know about that, too?” Morgan growled.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you’d be walking into an obvious trap, Dresden.”
“All right, that’s it,” I snapped. “One more comment about Thomas and you’re going body sledding.”
“Thomas?” Morgan’s pale face turned a little darker as he raised his voice. “How many corpses is it going to take to make you come to your senses, Dresden?”
Molly swallowed. “Harry, um, excuse me.”
Both of us glared at her.
She flushed and avoided eye contact. “Isn’t this the Nevernever?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Obviously,” Morgan said at the same time.
We faced each other again, all but snarling.
“Okay,” Molly said. “Haven’t you told me that it’s sort of dangerous?” She took a deep breath and hurried her speech. “I mean, you know. Isn’t it sort of dumb to be standing here arguing in loud voices? All things considered?”
I suddenly felt somewhat foolish.
Morgan’s glower waned. He bowed his head wearily, folding his arms across his belly.
“Yeah,” I said, reining in my own temper. “Yeah, probably so.”
“Not least because anyone who comes through the Ways from Edinburgh to Chicago is going to walk right over us,” Morgan added.
Molly nodded. “Which would be sort of . . . awkward?”
I snorted quietly. I nodded my head in the proper direction, and started pushing the whee
lchair down the trail. “This way.”
Molly followed, her eyes darting left and right at the sounds of movement in the faerie wood around us. Mouse fell into pace beside her, and she reached down to lay a hand on the dog’s back as she walked, an entirely unconscious gesture.
We moved at a steady pace and in almost complete silence for maybe five minutes before I said, “We need to know how they found out about you.”
“The vampire is the best explanation,” Morgan replied, his tone carefully neutral.
“I have information about him that you don’t,” I said. “Suppose it isn’t him. How did they do it?”
Morgan pondered that for a time. “Not with magic.”
“You certain?”
“Yes.”
He sounded like it.
“Your countermeasures are that good?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I thought about that for a minute. Then it dawned on me what Morgan had done to protect himself from supernatural discovery. “You called in your marker. The silver oak leaf. The one Titan—” I forced myself to stop, glancing uneasily around the faerie forest. “The one the Summer Queen awarded you.”
Morgan turned his head slightly to glance at me over his shoulder.
I whistled. I’d seen Queen Titania with my Sight once. The tableau of Titania and her counterpart, Mab, preparing to do battle with each other still ranked as the most humbling and awe-inspiring display of pure power I had ever witnessed. “That’s why you’re so certain no one is going to find you. She’s the one shielding you.”
“I admit,” Morgan said with another withering look, “it’s no donut.”
I scowled. “How’d you know about that?”
“Titania’s retainer told me. The entire Summer Court has been laughing about it for months.”
Molly made a choking sound behind me. I didn’t turn around. It would just force her to put her hand over her mouth to hide the smile.
“How long did she give you?” I asked.
“Sundown tomorrow.”
Thirty-six hours, give or take. A few hours more than I’d believed I had, but not much. “Do you have the oak leaf on you?”
“Of course,” he said.
“May I see it?”
Morgan shrugged and drew a leather cord from around his neck. A small leather pouch hung from the cord. He opened it, felt around inside, and came out with it—a small, exquisitely detailed replica of an oak leaf, backed with a simple pin. He held it out to me.
I took it and pitched it into the haunted wood.
Morgan actually did growl, this time. “Why?”
“Because the Summer Queen bugged them. Last year, her goon squad was using mine to track me down all over Chicago.”
Morgan frowned at me, and glanced out toward where I had thrown it. Then he shook his head and rubbed tiredly at his eyes with one hand. “Must be getting senile. Never even considered it.”
“I don’t get it,” Molly said. “Isn’t he still protected, anyway?”
“He is,” I said. “But that leaf isn’t. So if the Summer Queen wants him found, or if someone realizes what she’s doing and makes her a deal, she can keep her word to Morgan to hide him, and give him away. All she has to do is make sure someone knows to look for the spell on the oak leaf.”
“The Sidhe are only bound to the letter of their agreements,” Morgan said, nodding. “Which is why one avoids striking bargains with them unless there are no options.”
“So Binder could have been following the oak leaf?” Molly asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“It is still entirely possible that the Summer Queen is dealing in good faith,” Morgan said.
I nodded. “Which brings us back to the original question: how did Binder find you?”
“Well,” Molly said, “not to mince words, but he didn’t.”
“He would have found us in a matter of moments,” Morgan said.
“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “He knew you were in the storage park, but he didn’t know which unit, exactly. I mean, wouldn’t tracking magic have led him straight to you? And if Thomas sold you out, wouldn’t he have told Binder exactly which storage bay we were in?”
Morgan started to reply, then frowned and shut his mouth. “Hngh.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the grasshopper and gave her a nod of approval.
Molly beamed at me.
“Someone on the ground following us?” Morgan asked. “A tailing car wouldn’t have been able to enter the storage park without a key.”
I thought of how I’d been shadowed by the skinwalker the previous evening. “If they’re good enough, it would be possible,” I admitted. “Not likely, but possible.”
“So?” Morgan said. “Where does that leave us?”
“Baffled,” I said.
Morgan bared his teeth in a humorless smile. “Where to next, then?”
“If I take you back to my place, they’ll pick us up again,” I said. “If someone’s using strictly mortal methods of keeping track of our movements, they’ll have someone watching it.”
Morgan looked back and up at me. “I assume you aren’t just going to push me in circles around Chicago while we wait for the Council to find us.”
“No,” I said. “I’m taking you to my place.”
Morgan thought about that one for a second, then nodded sharply. “Right.”
“Where the bad guys will see us and send someone else to kill us,” Molly said. “No wonder I’m the apprentice; because I’m so ignorant that I can’t see why that isn’t a silly idea.”
“Watch and learn, grasshopper. Watch and learn.”
Chapter Twenty-one
We left the trail again, and for the second time in a day I emerged from the Nevernever into the alley behind the old meatpacking plant. We made two stops and then walked until we could flag down another cab. The cabbie didn’t seem to be overly thrilled with Mouse, or the wheelchair, or how we filled up his car, but maybe he just didn’t speak enough English to ably convey his enthusiasm. You never know.
“These really aren’t good for you,” Molly said through a mouthful of donut, as we unloaded the cab.
“It’s Morgan’s fault. He started talking about donuts,” I said. “And besides—you’re eating them.”
“I have the metabolic rate of youth,” Molly said, smiling sweetly. “You’re the one who needs to start being health-conscious, O venerable mentor. I’ll be invincible for another year or two at least.”
We wrestled Morgan into his chair, and I paid off the cabbie. We rolled Morgan over to the steps leading down to my apartment, and between the two of us managed to turn his chair around and get him down the stairs and into the apartment without dropping him. After that, I grabbed Mouse’s lead, and the two of us went up to get the mail from my mailbox, and then ambled around to the boardinghouse’s small backyard and the patch of sandy earth set aside for Mouse’s use.
But instead of loitering around waiting for Mouse, I led him into the far corner of the backyard, which is a miniature jungle of old lilacs that hadn’t been trimmed or pruned since Mr. Spunkelcrief died. They were in bloom, and their scent filled the air. Bees buzzed busily about the bushy plants, and as I stepped closer to them, the corner of the building cut off the traffic sounds.
It was the only place on the property’s exterior that was not readily visible from most of the rest of the buildings on the street.
I pressed past the outer branches of the lilacs and found a small and relatively open space in the middle. Then I waited. Within seconds, there was a buzzing sound, like the wings of a particularly large dragonfly, and then a tiny winged faerie darted through the lilacs to come to a halt in front of me.
He was simply enormous for a pixie, one of the Wee Folk, and stood no less than a towering twelve inches high. He looked like an athletically built youth dressed in an odd assortment of armor made from discarded objects and loose ends. He’d replaced his plastic bottle-c
ap helmet with one made of most of the shell of a hollowed-out golf ball. It was too large for his head, but that didn’t seem to concern him. His cuirass had first seen service as a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, and hanging at his hip was what looked like the blade to a jigsaw, with one end wrapped in string to serve as a grip. Wings like those of a dragonfly buzzed in a translucent cloud of motion at his back.
The little faerie came to attention in midair, snapped off a crisp salute, and said, “Mission accomplished, my lord of pizza!”
“That fast?” I asked. It hadn’t been twenty minutes since I’d first summoned him, after we’d gotten donuts and before we’d gotten into the cab. “Quick work, Toot-toot, even for you.”
The praise seemed to please the little guy immensely. He beamed and buzzed in a couple of quick circles. “He’s in the building across the street from this one, two buildings toward the lake.”
I grunted, thinking. If I was remembering right, that was another boardinghouse converted into apartments, like mine. “The white one with green shutters?”
“Yes, that’s where the rapscallion has made his lair!” His hand flashed to his waist and he drew his saw-toothed sword from its transparent plastic scabbard, scowling fiercely. “Shall I slay him for you, my lord?”
I very carefully kept the smile off of my face. “I don’t know if things have escalated to that level just yet,” I said. “How do you know this guy is watching my apartment?”
“Oh, oh! Don’t tell me this one!” Toot jittered back and forth in place, bobbing in excitement. “Because he has curtains on the windows so you can’t see in, and then there’s a big black plastic box with a really long nose poking through them and a glass eye on the end of the nose! And he looks at the back of it all the time, and when he sees someone going into your house, he pushes a button and the box beeps!”
“Camera, huh?” I asked. “Yeah, that probably makes him our snoop.” I squinted up at the summer sunshine and adjusted the uncomfortably warm leather duster. I wasn’t taking it off, though. There was too much hostility flying around for that. “How many of your kin are about, Toot?”
“Hundreds!” Toot-toot declared, brandishing his sword. “Thousands!”
