by Jim Butcher
Toot planted the eraser end of his spear on the ground, scowling suspiciously up at me. “Really?” he demanded.
“Really,” I said.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Super duper double dog promise spit swear?”
I nodded. “Super duper double dog promise spit swear,” I repeated gravely.
“Spit!” Toot demanded.
I spat on the ground.
“Oh. Well, then,” Toot said. He dropped his spear and darted over to the pizza, much to the consternation of the other little faeries, who let out piping shrills of protest and then followed him. The piece of pizza didn’t last long. It was like watching one of those nature shows, where the piranha devour some luckless thing that falls in the water—except here there were glittering wings and motes and puffs of glowing, colorful dust everywhere.
I watched, frowning, until Toot-toot flopped onto his back, his tummy slightly distended. He let out a contented sigh, and the other faeries followed suit.
“So, Harry,” Toot said, “who do you think is going to win the war?”
“The White Council,” I said. “The Red Court’s got no depth on the bench and nothing in the bullpen.”
Toot snorted and flipped his plastic bottle-cap helm off his head. His hair waved around in the breeze. “Just because they don’t have any cows doesn’t mean that they won’t win. But I don’t mean that war.”
I frowned. “You mean between the Courts.”
Toot nodded. “Yeah.”
“Okay. What’s with the armor and weapons, Toot?”
The faerie beamed. “Neat, huh?”
“Highly scary,” I said gravely. “But why do you have them?”
Toot folded his arms and said, with all the gravity that six inches of fluff and pixie dust can muster, “Trouble’s coming.”
“Uh-huh. I hear the Courts are upset.”
“More than just upset, Harry Dresden. The drawing of the wyldfae is beginning. I saw some dryads walking with a Sidhe Knight from Summer, and a canal nereid climbed up out of the water a couple of blocks over and went into a Winter building.”
“Drawing of the wyldfae. Like you guys?”
Toot nodded and propped his feet up on the legs of the Star Jump, who let out a surprisingly basso belch. “Not everyone plays with the Courts. We mostly just do our jobs and don’t pay much attention. But when there’s a war on, the wyldfae get Called to one side or another.”
“Who picks which way you go?”
Toot shrugged. “Mostly the nice wyldfae go to the Warm Queen and the mean ones go to Cold. I think it’s got something to do with what you’ve been doing.”
“Uh-huh. So have you been doing Warm or Cold things?”
Toot let out a sparkling laugh. “How should I remember all those things?” He patted his stomach and then rose to his feet again, eyes calculating. “Is that a pizza box you have there, Harry?”
I held the box out and opened it, showing the rest of the pizza. There was a collective “Ooooo” from the faeries, and they all pressed to the very edge of the circle, until it flattened their little noses, staring at the pizza in fascinated lust.
“You’ve sure given us a lot of pizza the past couple of years, Harry,” Toot said, with a swallow. He didn’t look away from the box in my hands.
“Hey, you gave me a hand when I needed it,” I said. “It’s only fair, right?”
“Only fair?” Toot spat, outraged. “It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s pizza, Harry.”
“I’m wanting some more work done,” I said. “I need information.”
“And you’re paying in pizza?” Toot asked, his tone hopeful.
“Yes,” I said.
“Wah-hoo!” Toot shouted and buzzed into the air in an excited spiral. The other faeries followed him with similar carols of happiness, and the blur of colors was dizzying.
“Give us the pizza!” Toot shouted.
“Pizza, pizza, pizza!” the other faeries shrilled.
“First,” I said, “I want some questions answered.”
“Right, right, right!” Toot screamed. “Ask already!”
“I need to talk to the Winter Lady,” I said. “Where can I find her, Toot?”
Toot tore at his lavender hair. “Is that all you need to know? Down in the city! Down where the shops are underground, and the sidewalks.”
I frowned. “In the commuter tunnels?”
“Yes, yes, yes. Back in the part the mortals can’t see, you can find your way into Undertown. The Cold Lady came to Undertown. Her court is in Undertown.”
“What?” I sputtered. “Since when?”
Toot whirled around in impatient loops in the air. “Since the last autumn!”
I scratched at my hair. It made sense, I supposed. Last autumn, a vengeful vampire and her allies had stirred up all sorts of supernatural mischief, creating turbulence in the border between the real world and the Nevernever, the world of spirit. Shortly after, the war between the wizards and the vampires had begun.
Those events had probably attracted the attention of all sorts of things.
I shook my head. “And what about the Summer Lady? Is she in town?”
Toot put his fists on his hips. “Well, obviously, Harry. If Winter came here, Summer had to come too, didn’t it?”
“Obviously,” I said, feeling a little slow on the uptake. Man, was I off my game. “Where can I find her?”
“She’s on top of one of those big buildings.”
I sighed. “Toot, this is Chicago. There are a lot of big buildings.”
Toot blinked at me, then frowned for a minute before brightening. “It’s the one with the pizza shop right by it.”
My head hurt some more. “Tell you what. How about you guide me to it?”
Toot thrust out his little chin and scowled. “And miss pizza? No way.”
I gritted my teeth. “Then get me someone else to guide me. You’ve got to know someone.”
Toot scrunched up his face. He tugged at one earlobe, but it evidently didn’t help him remember, because he had to rub one foot against the opposite calf and spin around in vacant circles for ten whole seconds before he whirled back to face me, the nimbus of light around him brightening. “Aha!” he sang. “Yes! I can give you a guide!” He jabbed a finger at me. “But only if that’s all the questions, Harry. Pizza, pizza, pizza!”
“Guide first,” I insisted. “Then pizza.”
Toot shook his arms and legs as though he would fly apart. “Yes, yes, yes!”
“Done,” I said. I opened the pizza box and set it on top of a discarded crate nearby. Then I stepped over to the circle, leaned down, and with a smudge of my hand and an effort of will broke it, freeing the energies inside.
The faeries chorused several pitches and variants of “Yahoo!” and streaked past me so quickly that they left a cone of wild air behind them, tossing my unruly hair and scattering lighter pieces of garbage around the alley. They tore into the pizza with much the same gusto they’d used on the one piece earlier, but there was enough of it now to keep them from mangling it in mere seconds.
Toot zipped over to hover in front of my face and held out his little palm. A moment later, something that looked like an errant spark from a campfire whirled down and lighted on his palm. Toot said something in a language I couldn’t understand, and the tiny light pulsed and flickered as though in response.
“Right,” Toot said, nodding to the light. I peered more closely at it, and could just barely make out a tiny, tiny form inside, no larger than an ant. Another faerie. The light pulsed and flickered, and Toot nodded to it before turning to me.
“Harry Dresden,” Toot-toot said, holding out his palm, “this is Elidee. She’s going to pay me back a favor and guide you to the Winter Lady and then to the Summer Lady. Good enough?”
I frowned at the tiny faerie. “Does she understand me?”
I barely saw Elidee stamp a tiny foot. The scarlet light around her flicker
ed sharply, twice.
“Yes,” Toot-toot translated. “Two lights for yes, and one light for no.”
“Two for yes, one for no,” I muttered.
Toot frowned. “Or is that one for yes and two for no? I can never keep it straight.” And with that, the little faerie blurred and zipped past me and away to join the swarm of softly flashing lights demolishing the pizza.
Elidee, for her part, recovered from the miniature cyclone that Toot-toot left in his wake, whirled around dizzily for a few moments, then spiraled down to me and settled on the bridge of my nose. My eyes crossed trying to look at her. “Hey,” I said, “do I look like a couch to you?”
Two flashes.
I sighed. “Okay, Elidee. Do you want any pizza before we go?”
Two flashes again, brighter. The tiny faerie leapt up into the air again and zoomed over to the cloud around the pizza.
Footsteps came down the alley, then Billy stepped out of the shadows, pulling his sweatshirt down over his muscular stomach. I felt a brief and irrational surge of jealousy. I don’t have a muscular stomach. I’m not overlapping my belt or anything, but I don’t have abs of steel. I don’t even have abs of bronze. Maybe abs of plastic.
Billy blinked at the pizza for a moment and said, “Wow. That’s sort of pretty. In a Jaws kind of way.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t look at it for too long. Faerie lights can be disorienting to mortals.”
“Gotcha,” Billy said. He glanced back at me. “How’d it go? You get what you needed?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You?”
He shrugged. “Alley isn’t the best place to pick up scents, but I should be able to recognize them again if I’m in my other suit. They didn’t smell quite normal.”
“Gee, what are the odds.”
Billy’s teeth showed in the dark. “Heh. So what are we waiting for?”
Elidee picked just then to glide back over to me and settle once more on the bridge of my nose. Billy blinked at her and said, “What the hell?”
“This is our guide,” I said. “Elidee, this is Billy.”
Elidee flashed twice.
Billy blinked again. “Uh, charmed.” He shook his head. “So? What’s the plan?”
“We go confront the Winter Lady in her underground lair. I do the talking. You stay alert and watch my back.”
He nodded. “Okay. You got it.”
I looked over to see the last piece of pizza lifted up into the air by greedy faerie hands. They clustered around it, tearing and ripping, and it was gone in seconds. With that, the faeries swarmed away like a squadron of potbellied comets and vanished from view.
Elidee fluttered off my nose and started drifting down the alley in the other direction. I followed her.
“Harry?” Billy asked, his voice a touch hopeful. “Are you expecting trouble?”
I sighed and rubbed at the space between my eyebrows.
Definitely getting a headache. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter Fourteen
Elidee led Billy and me through alleys, up a fire escape to the roof of a building and then down on the other side, and through a junk-cluttered abandoned lot on the way to the Pedway. It took us better than half an hour of scrambling after the tiny faerie through the muggy heat, and by the end of it I wished I’d told Toot-toot that we wanted someone who could read a street map and guide us there in a car.
Chicago’s commuter tunnels are fairly recent construction, compared to much of the rest of the city. The tunnels are a maze if you don’t know them—long stretches of identical overhead lights, drab, clean walls dotted with advertising posters, and intersections bearing plain and not always helpful directional signs. The tunnels closed after the workday and wouldn’t open up again until around six the next morning, but Elidee led us to an unfinished building at Randolph and Wabash. She flitted around in front of a service access door that proved to be unlocked and that led down to a similar door that opened onto a darkened section of the Pedway that looked as though it had been under construction but was abandoned when the building had shut down.
It was completely dark, so I slipped the silver pentacle off my neck, lifting it in my hand and focusing a quiet effort of will upon it. The five-pointed star has been a symbol of magic for centuries, representing the four elements and the power of spirit bound within the circle of will—primal power under the control of human thought. I held the pentacle before me, and as I concentrated it began to glow with a gentle blue light, illuminating enough of our surroundings that we could navigate through the dark, silent tunnels. The little faerie drifted in front of us down the tunnel, and we followed her without speaking. She took us to the intersection with the main tunnels of the Pedway and on a brief walk down another tunnel, to a section shut behind a rusting metal gate with a sign that read, DANGER KEEP OUT. The gate proved to be unlocked, and we went down the tunnel, into a damper section of tunnels, rife with the smell of mold, that was clearly not a part of the Pedway proper.
After another fifty or sixty feet we reached a place where the walls became rough and uneven and shadows lay thick and heavy, despite the glow of my wizard’s light.
Elidee drifted over to an especially dark section of wall and flew in a little circle in front of it.
“Okay,” I said. “I guess this is where we get in.”
“What is where we get in?” Billy asked, his voice skeptical. “Get into where?”
“Undertown,” I said. I ran my hands over the wall. To the casual touch it appeared to be bare, unfinished concrete, but I felt a slight unsteadiness when I pressed against it. It couldn’t have been solid stone. “Must be a panel here somewhere. Trigger of some kind.”
“What do you mean, ‘Undertown’? I’ve never heard of it before.”
“I was probably working here for five or six years before I did,” I said. “You have to understand the history of Chicago. How they did things here.”
Billy folded his arms. “I’m listening.”
“The city is a swamp,” I said, still searching for a means of opening the door with my fingertips. “We’re darn near level with Lake Michigan. When they first built the place, the town kept sinking into the muck. I mean, every year it sank lower. They used to build streets, then build a latticework of wood over them, and then another street on top of that, planning on them slowly sinking. They planned houses the same way. Built the front door on the second floor and called it a ‘Chicago entry,’ so when the house sank, the front door would be at ground level.”
“What about when the street sank?”
“Built another one on top of it. So you wound up with a whole city existing under the street level. They used to have a huge problem with rats and criminals holing up under the streets.”
“But not anymore?” Billy asked.
“The rats and thugs mostly got crowded out by other things. Became a whole miniature civilization down here. And it was out of sight of the sun, which made it friendly space for all the night-crawling critters around.”
“Hence, Undertown,” Billy said.
I nodded. “Undertown. There are a lot of tunnels around Chicago. The Manhattan Project was housed in them for a while during World War Two. Did all that atomic bomb research.”
“That’s cheerful. You come down here a lot?”
I shook my head. “Hell, no. All kinds of nastiness lives down here.”
Billy frowned at me. “Like what?”
“Lots of things. Stuff you don’t often see on the surface. Things even wizards know almost nothing about. Goblins, spirits of the earth, wyrms, things that have no name. Plus the usual riffraff. Vampires sometimes find lairs down here during the day. Trolls can hide here too. Molds and fungi you don’t get in most of the natural world. You name it.”
Billy pursed his lips thoughtfully. “So you’re taking us into a maze of lightless, rotting, precarious tunnels full of evil faeries and monsters.”
I nodded. “Maybe leftover radiation, too.”
“You’re the one who wanted in on the action.” My fingers found a tiny groove in the wall, and when I pressed against it a small, flat section of stone clicked and retracted. The switch had to have triggered some kind of release, because the section of wall pivoted in the center, turning outward, and forming a door that led into still more dank darkness. “Hah,” I said with some satisfaction. “There we go.”
Billy pressed forward and tried to step through the door, but I put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him. “Hang on. There are some things you need to know.”
Billy frowned, but he stopped, listening.
“These are faeries. We’ll probably run into a lot of the Sidhe, their nobles, hanging out with the Winter Lady. That means that they’re going to be dangerous and will probably try to entrap you.”
“What do you mean, entrap me?” Billy said.
“Bargains,” I said. “Deals. They’ll try to offer you things, get you to trade one thing for another.”
“Why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s in their nature. The concept of debt and obligation is a huge factor in how they behave.”
Billy lifted his eyebrows. “That’s why that little guy worked for you, right? Because he owed you for the pizza and he had a debt to you.”
“Right,” I said. “But it can work both ways. If you owe them something, they have a conduit to you and can use magic against you. The basic rule is not to accept any gifts from them—and for God’s sake, don’t offer them any gifts. They find anything other than an equal exchange to be either enticing or insulting. It isn’t a big deal with little guys like Toot, but if you get into it with a Sidhe Lord you might not live through it.”
Billy shrugged. “Okay. No gifts. Dangerous faeries. Got it.”
“I’m not finished. They aren’t going to be offering you wrapped packages, man. These are the Sidhe. They’re some of the most beautiful creatures there are. And they’ll try to put you off balance and tempt you.”
