by Jim Butcher
So I played to my strengths. I let out a howl of my own to match the ogres‘, and when the one with the club drew near and swept it up over his head in a windup, I lunged, low and quick, and drove about a foot of cold steel into its danglies. I twisted the blade and rolled out to one side as I withdrew it. The club came down on the snow where I’d been. Fire fountained from the ogre’s pelvic region. The ogre screamed and ran around in a panicked agony, and the ogres coming behind it slowed their steps, their charge faltering, until the ogre keened and fell over into the snow, the fire of cold iron consuming it. They stared at their fallen comrade.
Hey. I don’t care what kind of faerie or mortal or hideous creature you are. If you’ve got danglies and can lose them, that’s the kind of sight that makes you reconsider the possible genitalia-related ramifications of your actions real damned quick.
I bared my teeth at them, and ogre blood sizzled on the steel of my borrowed sword. Never turning from them, I started walking back step by slow, cautious step, tight agony in a fiery band around my ribs reminding me of my injuries. I reached Thomas a second later, and he was just then sitting up. He’d crashed into a boulder, and there was a knot already forming just above one eye. He was still too disoriented to stand.
“Dammit, Thomas,” I growled. My left hand wasn’t strong enough to grab onto him and haul him up the hill. If I used my right, the sword would be in my weak hand, and I wouldn’t be able to defend either one of us. “Get up.”
The ogres began gathering momentum, coming for us again.
“Thomas!” I shouted, lifting my sword, staring at the ogres as my shadow abruptly flickered out over the ground between us.
Wait. My shadow did what?
I had part of a second to realize that a new source of light had cast the flickering shadows, and then a bead of intense fire, maybe the size of a Peanut M amp;M, flashed over my shoulder and splashed over the chest of the nearest ogre. Summer fire slammed the ogre to the ground before it could so much as scream, and began to rip its flesh from its bones.
“I’ve got him!” Fix called, and I saw him in my peripheral vision, sword in hand. He got a shoulder under Thomas’s arm and lifted him with more strength than I would have credited the little guy with. The ogres’ charge came to a complete halt. I shoved my staff through the belt tying up the bundle of mail Thomas had been carrying, lifted it awkwardly to my shoulder, and we fell back toward the rift, never turning our backs on the ogres. They hovered at the edge of visibility in the gusting snow, but did not menace us again.
“Watch your step,” Fix warned me.
Then I felt a rippling sensation around me, and then I stepped into an equatorial sauna.
I found myself on the thin stretch of stage before the screen in Pell’s dingy old theater. I stepped to one side, just as Fix came through with Thomas.
Lily stood on the floor, facing the rift. She looked weary and strained. As soon as Fix came through, she waved a hand as if batting aside an annoying fly. There was a rushing sound, and then the rift folded in on itself and vanished.
Silence fell on the dimly lit theater. Lily melted down onto her knees, one hand holding her up, white hair fallen around her head as she shivered, breathing hard. The ice and frozen snow that had been coating me, gathering in my hair and in the creases of my clothing, vanished, replaced by the usual residual ectoplasm.
“Mmmm,” Thomas observed in a slightly slurred voice. “Slime.”
Fix lowered him to the ground and went to Lily.
“Fix,” I said. “Did you hear what was happening out there?”
“Kicked a beehive, it sounded like.” He knelt beside Lily, providing her his support. “The castle’s garrison came out to meet you?”
“No,” I said. “That was every other Winterfae on the map, apparently.”
“What?” he demanded.
“I, uh, kind of threw a bunch of Summer fire around Mab’s playhouse, and blew up most of this frozen fountain thing.”
Fix’s mouth dropped open. “You what?”
“The Scarecrow was hiding behind the thing and so…” I put Charity’s sword down and waved a hand. “Kablooey.”
Fix stared at me as if I’d gone insane. “You poured Summer fire into Winter’s wellspring?”
“I can’t sleep well any night I haven’t inflicted a little property damage,” I said gravely. “Anyway, I did that, and all hell broke loose. My god-mother told me that anybody who was anybody in Winter had gotten their vengeance on and was coming to kill me.”
“My God,” Fix breathed. “That would do it all right. Where did you get Summer fire to…” His voice trailed off and he stared at Lily.
The Summer Lady looked up, her weary smile gorgeous. “I only provided a minor comfort and guide in order to repay my debt to the lady Charity,” she murmured, a small smile on her lips. “I had no way to know that the wizard would steal that power for his own use.” She drew in a deep breath and said, “Help me up. We must go.”
Fix did so. “Go where?”
I said, “All of those Winter forces are now at the heart of their own realm. Which means that they aren’t on the borders of Summer waiting to attack. Which means that Summer has forces that can be spared to assist the Council,” I said quietly.
“But it only took them a few minutes to show up,” Murphy pointed out. “Couldn’t they just run back and be there a few minutes from now?”
“No, Murph,” I said. “They planned for that. This whole raid was a setup from the get go.” I jerked my head at Lily. “Wasn’t it.”
“That is one way to describe it,” Lily said quietly. “I would not, myself, interpret it that way. I had no part in bringing the fetches here-but their presence and their capture of Lady Charity’s daughter presented us with an opportunity to temporarily neutralize the presence of Mab’s forces upon our borders.”
“We,” I murmured. “Maeve is working with you. That was why she showed up at McAnally’s so quickly.”
“Even so,” Lily said, bowing her head at me in a nod of what looked like respect.
Fix blinked at Lily. “You’re working with Maeve?”
“She couldn’t have altered the flow of time at the heart of Winter,” I said quietly. “Only one of the Winter Queens could do that.”
Fix blinked at Lily as if I hadn’t spoken. “Maeve’s working with you?”
Lily nodded. “Like us, she fears Mab’s recent madness.” She turned back to me. “I provided you with power enough to threaten the wellspring, in the hope that you would draw some portion of Winter back into its own demesnes. Once that was done, Maeve altered the passage of time relative to the mortal realms.”
I arched an eyebrow. “How long have we been gone?”
“It is nearly sunrise of the day after you departed,” she replied. “Though the passage of time was only altered in the last few moments of your escape. Maeve will not be able to hold it for long, but it will give us time enough to act.”
“What if I hadn’t realized it in time?” I asked her. “What if I hadn’t used your fire?”
She smiled at me, a little sad. “You would be dead, I suppose.”
I glared at her. “And my friends with me.”
“Even so,” she said. “Please understand. The compulsion my Queen has laid upon me permitted me few options. I could not make explanation of what I had in mind. Nor could I simply stand by and do nothing while the Council was in such desperate need.”
“But now you can tell me all about it?”
“Now we are discussing history,” she said. She inclined her head to me. Then to Charity. “I am glad, Lady, to see your daughter returned to you.”
Charity looked up at her long enough to give her a swift smile and a nod of thanks. Then she went back to holding her daughter.
“Lily,” I said.
She arched a brow, waiting.
She’d manipulated me, turned me into a weapon to use against Mab. She hadn’t exactly lied to me, but she had taken a
n awful gamble with my life. Worse, she’d done it with the lives of four of my friends. She had good intentions all the way down the line, I suppose. And she had faced limitations that my instincts told me I still did not fully appreciate or understand. But she hadn’t dealt with me head-on, open and honest.
But then, she was a Faerie Queen in her own right. What in the world had ever given me the impression that she would play her cards faceup?
I sighed. “Thank you for your help,” I said finally.
She smiled, though the sadness was still in it. “I have not been as much a friend to you and yours as you have been to me and mine, wizard. I am glad that I was able to lend you some help.” She bowed to me, from the waist this time. “And now I must take my leave and set things in motion to help your people.”
I returned the bow. “Thank you.”
She bowed again to the company, and Fix echoed her. Then they walked swiftly from the theater.
I dropped onto my ass at the edge of the stage, my feet waving.
Murphy joined me. After a moment, she said, “What now?”
I rubbed at my eyes. “Holy ground, I think. I don’t think we’re going to have any immediate fallout from this, but there’s no sense in taking chances now. We’ll get back to Forthill, make sure everyone is all right. Food. Sleep.”
Murphy let out a groan that was almost lustful. “I like this plan. I’m starving.”
I sat there watching Molly and Charity, and felt a twinge of nerves inside me. I’d been sent to find black magic. Molly was it. She’d used her power to renovate someone’s brain, and as benign as her intentions might have been, I knew that it hadn’t left her unstained. I knew better than anybody how much danger Molly was still in. How dangerous she might now be.
I’d saved her from the bad faeries, sure, but now she faced another, infinitely more dangerous threat.
The White Council. The Wardens. The sword.
It was only a matter of time before someone else managed to trace the black magic back to its source. If I didn’t bring her before the Council, someone else would, sooner or later. Even worse, if the mind-controlling magic she’d already used had begun to turn upon her, to warp her as well, she might be a genuine danger to herself and others. She could wind up as dangerous and crazy as the kid whose execution had served as a prelude to the past few days.
If I took her to the Council, I would probably be responsible for her death.
If I didn’t, I’d be responsible for those she might harm.
I wished I wasn’t so damned tired. I might have been able to come up with some options. I settled for banishing thoughts of tomorrow for the time being. I was whole, and alive, and sane, and so were the people who had stood beside me. We’d gotten the girl out in one piece. Her mom was holding her so ferociously that I wondered if I might not have been the catalyst for a reconciliation between the pair of them.
I might have healed the wounds of their family. And that was a damned fine thing to have done. I felt a genuine warmth and pride from it. I’d helped to bring mother and daughter back together. For tonight, that was enough.
Thomas sat down on my other side, wincing as he touched the lump on his head. “Harry,” Thomas said. “Remind me why we keep hurling ourselves into this kind of insanity.”
I traded a smile with Murphy and said nothing. We all three of us watched as Charity, on the floor in front of the first row of seats, clutched her daughter hard against her.
Molly leaned against her with a child’s gratefulness, need, and love. She spoke very quietly, never opening her eyes. “Mama.”
Charity said nothing, but she hugged her daughter even more tightly. “Oh,” Thomas said. “Right.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Right.”
Chapter Forty-one
Father Forthill received us in his typical fashion: with warmth, welcome, compassion, and food. At first, Thomas was going to remain outside Saint Mary’s, but I clamped my hand onto the front of his mail and dragged him unceremoniously inside with me. He could have gotten loose, of course, so I knew he didn’t really much mind. He growled and snapped at me halfheartedly, but nodded cautiously to Forthill when I introduced him. Then my brother stepped out into the hall and did his unobtrusive-wall-hanging act.
The Carpenter kids were sound asleep when we came in, but the noise made one of them stir, and little Harry opened his eyes, blinked sleepily, then let out a shriek of delight when he saw his mother. The sound wakened the other kids, and everyone assaulted Charity and Molly with happy shouts and hugs and kisses.
I watched the reunion from a chair across the room, and dozed sitting up until Forthill returned with food. There weren’t chairs enough for everyone, and Charity wound up sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, chomping down sandwiches while her children all tried to remain within touching distance.
I stuffed my face shamelessly. The use of magic, the excitement, and that final uphill hike through the cold had left my stomach on the verge of implosion. “Survival food,” I muttered. “Nothing like it.”
Murphy, leaning against the wall beside me, nodded. “Damn right.” She wiped at her mouth and looked at her watch. She tucked the last of her sandwich between her lips, and then started resetting the watch while she chewed.
“Gone almost exactly twenty-four hours. So we did some kind of time travel?” she asked.
“Oh, God no,” I said. “That’s on the list of Things One Does Not Do. It’s one of the seven Laws of Magic.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But however it happened, a whole day just went poof. That’s time travel.”
“People are doing that kind of time travel all the time,” I said. “We just pulled into the passing lane for a while.”
She finished setting the watch and grimaced. “All the same.”
I frowned at her. “You okay?”
She looked up at the children and their mother. “I’m going to have one hell of a time explaining where I’ve been for the past twenty-four hours. It isn’t as though I can tell my boss that I went time traveling.”
“Yeah, he’d never buy it. Tell him you invaded Faerieland to rescue a young woman from a monster-infested castle.”
“Of course,” she said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
I grunted. “Is it going to make trouble for you?”
She frowned for a moment and then said, “Intradepartmental discipline, probably. They couldn’t get me for anything criminal, so no jail.”
I blinked. “Jail?”
“I was in charge of things, remember?” Murphy reminded me. “I was pushing the line by laying that aside and coming to help you. Throw in that extra day and…” She shrugged.
“Hell’s bells,” I sighed. “I hadn’t realized.”
She shrugged a shoulder.
“How bad is it going to be?” I asked.
She frowned. “Depends on a lot of things. Mostly what Greene and Rick have to say, and how they say it. What other cops who were there have to say. A couple of those guys are major assholes. They’d be glad to make trouble for me.”
“Like Rudolph,” I said.
“Like Rudolph.”
I put on my Bronx accent. “You want I should whack ‘em for ya?”
She gave me a quick, ghostly smile. “Better let me sleep on that one.”
I nodded. “But seriously. If there’s anything I can do…”
“Just keep your head down for a while. You aren’t exactly well loved all over the department. There are some people who resent that I keep hiring you, and that they can’t tell me to stop because the cases you’re on have about a ninety percent likelihood of resolution.”
“My effectiveness is irrelevant? I thought cops had to have a degree or something, these days.”
She snorted. “I love my job,” she said. “But sometimes it feels like it has an unnecessarily high moron factor.”
I nodded agreement. “What are they going to do?”
“This will be my first of
ficial fuckup,” she said. “If I handle it correctly, I don’t think they’ll fire me.”
“But?” I asked.
She pushed some hair back from her eyes. “They’ll shove lots of fan counseling and psychological evaluation down my throat.”
I tried to imagine Murphy on a therapist’s couch.
My brain almost exploded out my ears.
“They’ll try every trick they can to convince me to leave,” she continued. “And when I don’t, they’ll demote me. I’ll lose SI.”
A lead weight landed on the bottom of my stomach. “Murph,” I said.
She tried to smile but failed. She just looked sickly and strained. “It isn’t anyone’s fault, Harry. Just the nature of the beast. It had to be done, and I’d do it again. I can live with that.”
Her tone was calm, relaxed, but she was too tired to make it sound genuine. Murphy’s command might have been a tricky, frustrating, ugly one, but it was hers. She’d fought for her rank, worked her ass off to get it, and then she got shunted into SI. Only instead of accepting banishment to departmental Siberia, she’d worked even harder to throw it back into the faces of the people who had sent her there.
“It isn’t fair,” I growled.
“What is?” she asked.
“Bah. One of these days I’m going to go downtown and summon up a swarm of roaches or something. Just to watch the suits run out of the building, screaming.”
This time, her smile was wired a little tight. “That won’t help me.”
“Are you kidding? We could sit outside and take pictures as they came running out and laugh ourselves sick.”
“And that helps how?”
“Laughter is good for you,” I said. “Nine out of ten stand-up comedians recommend laughter in the face of intense stupidity.”
