by Jim Butcher
And there was a dreadful attraction in seeing that power, something in it that called to the magic in me, like to like, made me want to hurl myself into those flames, into that endless, icy cold. Moths look at bug zappers like I looked at the Queens of Faerie.
I tore my eyes away by hiding my face in my arms. I fell to my side on the ground and curled up, trying to shut the Sight, to force those images to stop flooding over me. I shook and tried to say something. I’m not sure what. It came out as stuttering, gibbering sounds. After that, I don’t remember much until cold rain started slapping me on the cheek.
I opened my eyes and found myself lying on the cold, wet ground on the shores of Lake Michigan, where I’d first called out to my godmother. My head was on something soft that turned out to be her lap. I sat up and away from her quickly. My head hurt, and the images the Sight had showed me made me feel particularly small and vulnerable. I sat shivering in the rain for a minute before I glanced back at my godmother.
“You should have warned me.”
Her face showed no remorse, and little concern. “It would have changed nothing. You needed to see.” She paused and then added, “I regret that it was the only way. Do you yet understand?”
“The war,” I said. “They’ll fight for control of the area around the Table. If Summer holds the space, it won’t matter if it’s Winter’s time or not. Mab won’t be able to reach the table, spill blood on it, and add the power of the Summer Knight to Winter.” I took a breath. “There was a sense to what they were doing. As though it was a ritual. Something they’d done before.”
“Of course,” Lea said. “They exist in opposition. Each wields vast power, wizard—power to rival the archangels and lesser gods. But they cancel one another flawlessly. And in the end, the board will be evenly divided. The lesser pieces will emerge and do battle to decide the balance.”
“The Ladies,” I said. “The Knights.”
“And,” Lea added, lifting a finger, “the Emissaries.”
“Like hell. I’m not fighting in some kind of fucked-up faerie battle in the clouds.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
I snorted. “But you didn’t help me. I needed to speak to them. Find out if one of them was responsible.”
“And so you did. More truly than if you’d exchanged words.”
I frowned at her and thought through what I knew, and what I’d learned on my trip to the Stone Table. “Mab shouldn’t be in any hurry. If Summer is missing her Knight, Winter has the edge if they wait. There’s no need to take the Table.”
“Yes.”
“But Summer is moving to protect the Table. That means Titania thinks someone in Winter did it. But if Mab is responding instead of waiting, it means . . .” I frowned. “It means she isn’t sure why Summer is moving. She’s just checking Titania’s advance. And that means that she isn’t sure whodunit, either.”
“Simplistic,” Lea said. “But accurate enough reasoning, poppet. Such are the thoughts of the Queens of the Sidhe.” She looked out across the lake. “Your sun will rise in some little time. When once again it sets, the war will begin. In a balanced Court, it would mean, perhaps, little of great consequence to the mortal world. But that balance is gone. If it is not restored, child, imagine what might happen.”
I did. I mean, I’d had an idea what might go wrong before, but now I knew the scale of the forces involved. The powers of Winter and Summer weren’t simply a bunch of electricity in a battery. They were like vast coiled springs, pressing against one another. As long as that pressure was equal, the energies were held in control. But an imbalance in one side or the other could cause them to slip, and the release of energies from either side would be vast and violent, and sure to inflict horrible consequences on anything nearby—in this case, Chicago, North America, and probably a good chunk of the rest of the world with it.
“I need to see the Mothers. Get me to them.”
Lea rose, all grace and opaque expression, impossible to read. “That, too, is beyond me, child.”
“I need to speak to the Mothers.”
“I agree,” Lea said. “But I cannot take you to them. The power is not mine. Perhaps Mab or Titania could, but they are otherwise occupied now. Committed.”
“Great,” I muttered. “How do I get to them?”
“One does not get to the Mothers, child. One can only answer an invitation.” She frowned faintly. “I can do no more to help you. The lesser powers must take their places with the Queens, and I am needed shortly.”
“You’re going?”
She nodded, stepped forward, and kissed my brow. It was just a kiss, a press of soft lips against my skin. Then she stepped back, one hand on the hilt of the knife at her belt. “Be careful, child. And be swift. Remember—sundown.” She paused and looked at me askance. “And consider a haircut. You look like a dandelion.”
And with that, she stepped out onto the lake, and her form melted into water that fell back into the storm-tossed waters with a splash.
“Great,” I muttered. I kicked a rock into the water. “Just great. Sundown. I know nothing. And the people I need to talk to screen all of their calls.” I picked up another rock and threw it as hard as I could over the lake. The sound of rain swallowed up the splash.
I turned and trudged back toward the Beetle through the thunder and the rain. I could see the shapes of the trees a bit better now. Dawn must be coming on, somewhere behind the clouds.
I sat down behind the wheel of the trusty Beetle, put the key in, and started the car.
The battered old Volkswagen wheezed once, lurched without being put into gear, and then started to fill with smoke. I choked and scrambled out of the car. I hit the release on the engine cover and opened it. Black smoke billowed out, and I could dimly see fire behind it, chewing up some part of the engine. I went back to the front storage compartment, got out the fire extinguisher, and put out the fire. Then I stood there in the rain, tired and aching and staring at my burnt engine.
Dawn. At Midsummer, that meant I had maybe fifteen hours to figure out how to get to the Mothers. Somehow, I doubted that their number was listed. Even if it had been, my visit to the battleground around the Stone Table had shown me that the Queens possessed far more power than I could have believed. Their sheer presence had nearly blown the top off my head from a mile away—and the Mothers were an order of magnitude above even Mab and Titania.
I had fifteen hours to find the killer and restore the Summer Knight’s mantle to the Summer Court. And then to stop a war happening in some wild nether-place between here and the spirit world that I had no idea how to reach.
And my car had died. Again.
“Over your head,” I muttered. “Harry, this is too big for you to handle alone.”
The Council. I should contact Ebenezar, tell him what was happening. The situation was too big, too volatile, to risk screwing it up over a matter of Council protocol. Maybe I’d get lucky and the Council would A, believe me, and B, decide to help.
Yeah. And maybe if I glued enough feathers to my arms, I’d be able to fly.
Chapter Twenty-four
I examined my car for a few minutes more, took a couple of things off it, and walked to the nearest gas station. I called a wrecker, then got a cab back to my apartment, paying for everything with Meryl’s advance.
Once there, I got a Coke out of the icebox, put out fresh food and water for Mister, and changed his kitty litter. It wasn’t until I had dug around under the kitchen sink, gotten out the bottle of dishwashing soap, and blown the dust off of it that I realized I was stalling.
I glowered at the phone and told myself, “Pride goeth before a fall, Harry. Pride can be bad. It can make you do stupid things.”
I took a deep breath and shotgunned the Coke. Then I picked up the phone and dialed the number Morgan had left me.
It barely rang once before someone picked up and a male voice said, “Who is calling, please?”
“Dresden. I need to speak to Ebenezar McCoy.”
“One moment.” Sound cut off, and I figured whoever answered must have put their hand over the mouthpiece. Then there was a rustle as the phone changed hands.
“You’ve failed, then, Dresden,” Morgan stated. His tone gave me a good mental picture of the smile on his smug face. “Stay where you are until the Wardens arrive to escort you to the Senior Council for judgement.”
I bit down on a creative expletive. “I haven’t failed, Morgan. But I’ve turned up some information that the Senior Council should have.” Pride goeth, Harry. “And I need help. This is getting too hot for one person to handle. I need some information and some backup if I’m going to sort this out.”
“It’s always all about you, isn’t it?” Morgan said, his voice bitter. “You’re the exception to every rule. You can break the Laws and mock the Council, you can ignore the trial set for you because you are too important to abide by their authority.”
“It’s got nothing to do with that,” I said. “Hell’s bells, Morgan, pull your head out of your ass. The faeries’ power structure has become unstable, and it looks like it might hit critical mass if something isn’t done. That’s bigger than me, and a hell of a lot more important than Council protocol.”
Morgan screamed at me, his voice so vicious that it made me flinch. “Who are you to judge that? You are no one, Dresden! You are nothing!” He took a seething breath. “For too long you have flouted the Council’s rule. No more. No more exceptions, no more delays, no more second chances.”
“Morgan,” I began, “I just need to speak to Ebenezar. Let him decide if—”
“No,” Morgan said.
“What?”
“No. You won’t evade justice this time, snake. This is your Trial. You will see it through without attempting to influence the Senior Council’s judgement.”
“Morgan, this is insane—”
“No. The insanity was in letting you live when you were a boy. DuMorne’s murderous apprentice. Insanity was pulling you from that burning house two years ago.” His voice dropped to an even more quiet register, the contrast to his previous tone unsettling. “Someone I dearly cared for was at Archangel, Dresden. And this time your lies aren’t going to get you out of what’s coming to you.”
Then he hung up the phone.
I stared at the receiver for a second before snarling with rage and slamming it down on the end table, over and over, until the plastic broke in my hands. It hurt. I picked up the phone and threw it against the stone of the fireplace. It shattered, its bell chiming drunkenly. I kicked at the heaped mess of my living room, scattering old boxes, empty cans of Coke, books, papers, and startled cockroaches. After a few minutes of that, I was panting, and some of the blind, frustrated anger had begun to recede.
“Bastard,” I growled. “That pigheaded, bigoted, self-righteous bastard.”
I needed to cool off, and the shower seemed as good a place as any. I got under the cold water and tried to wash off the sweat and fear of the past day. I half expected the water to burst into steam on contact with my skin, but instead I was able to let the anger slip away while focusing on the old shower routine—water, soap, rinse, shampoo, rinse. By the time I finished and stepped out shivering, I felt almost completely nonpsychotic.
I had no idea how to contact Ebenezar. If he was under Warden security, and I’m sure he and the rest of the Senior Council were, there would be no easy way. The best magical countermeasures in the world would create a maze of misleading results for any spell or supernatural being that tried to find him.
For a moment, I debated asking Murphy for help. The Council tended to overlook any method that didn’t involve the use of one kind of spell or another. Murphy’s contacts in the force might be able to find them by purely old-fashioned methods. I decided against it. Even if Murphy traced the phone number down, Ebenezar might not be at it, and if I showed up there trying to get past the Wardens to get to him, it would be just the excuse Morgan needed to chop my head off.
I mussed up my hair with the towel and threw it on my narrow bed. Fine. I would do it without the Council’s help.
I dressed again, putting on a pair of jeans and a white dress shirt still hanging in my closet. I rolled the sleeves up over my elbows. My sneakers were covered in muck, so I dragged my cowboy boots out of the closet and put them on. What the hell. Putting on the boots. Maybe it would do some good.
I got out my big sports bag, the kind you haul hockey gear around in. Into it went my blasting rod, my staff, and my sword cane, along with a backpack stocked with some candles, matches, a cup, a knife, a cardboard cylinder of salt, a canteen of blessed water, and various other bits of magical equipment I could use as needed. I threw in a box of old iron nails and a solid-steel Craftsman claw hammer with a black rubber grip, and put a couple of pieces of chalk in my pocket.
Then I slid the bag over my shoulder, went into the living room, and wrought the spell that would lead me to one of the very few only people who might help.
Half an hour later, I paid the cabbie and walked into one of the hotels surrounding O’Hare International Airport. The subtle tug of the spell led me to the hotel’s restaurant, open for breakfast and half full of mostly business types. I found Elaine at a corner table, a couple of buffet plates scattered with the remains of her breakfast. Her rich brown hair had been pulled back into a tight braid and coiled at the base of her neck. Her face looked pale, tired, with deep circles under her eyes. She was sipping coffee and reading a paperback novel. She wore a different pair of jeans, these a lot looser, and a billowy white shirt open over a dark tank top. She stiffened a beat after my eyes landed on her, and looked up warily.
I walked to her table, pulled out the chair next to her, and sat down. “Morning.”
She watched me, her expression opaque. “Harry. How did you find me?”
“I got to thinking that same thing last night,” I said. “How did you find me, that is. And I realized that you hadn’t found me—you’d found my car. You were inside it and nearly unconscious when I got back to it. So I looked around the car.” I pulled the cap to a tire’s air valve out of my pocket and showed it to her. “And I found that one of these was missing. I figured you were probably the one who took it, and used it to home in on the Blue Beetle. So I took one of its mates from the other tires and used it to home in on the missing one.”
“You named your car after a superhero on the Electric Company?” Elaine reached into a brown leather purse on the chair beside her and drew out an identical valve cap. “Clever.”
I looked at the purse. What looked like airline tickets was sticking out of it. “You’re running.”
“You are a veritable wizard of the obvious, Harry.” She started to shrug, and her face became ashen, her expression twisting with pain. She took a slow breath and then resumed the motion with her unwounded shoulder. “I feel well motivated to run.”
“Do you really think a plane ticket will get you away from the Queens?”
“It will get me away from ground zero. That’s enough. There’s no way to find out who did it in time—and I don’t feel like running up against another assassin. I barely got away from the first one.”
I shook my head. “We’re close,” I said. “We have to be. They took a shot at me last night too. And I think I know who did both.”
She looked up at me, sharply. “You do?”
I picked up a crust of toast she’d discarded, mopped it through some leftover eggs, and ate it. “Yeah. But you probably have to catch a flight.”
Elaine rolled her eyes. “Tell you what. You stay here and feel smug. I’ll get another plate and be back when you’re done.” She got up, rather stiffly, and walked over to the buffet. She loaded her plate up with eggs and bacon and sausage mixed in with some French toast, and came back to the table. My mouth watered.
She pushed the plate at me. “Eat.”
I did, but between bites I asked, “Can you tell me what happened to you?”
She shook her h
ead. “Not much to tell. I spoke with Mab and then with Maeve. I was on my way back to my hotel and someone jumped me in the parking lot. I was able to slip most of his first strike and called up enough fire to drive him away. Then I found your car.”
“Why did you come to me?” I asked.
“Because I didn’t know who did it, Harry. And I don’t trust anyone else in this town.”
My throat got a little tight. I borrowed her coffee to wash down the bacon. “It was Lloyd Slate.”
Elaine’s eyes widened. “The Winter Knight. How do you know?”
“While I was with Maeve, he came in carrying a knife in a box, and he’d been burned. It was coated in dried blood. Maeve was pretty furious that it wasn’t any good to her.”
Lines appeared between her eyebrows. “Slate . . . he was fetching my blood for her so that she could work a spell on me.” She tried to cover it, but I saw her shiver. “He probably tailed me out of that party. Thank the stars I used fire.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Dried out the blood, made it useless for whatever she wanted.” I shoveled down some more food. “Then last night I got jumped by a hired gun and a couple of faerie beasties.” I gave her the summary of the attack at Wal-Mart, leaving Murphy out of it.
“Maeve,” Elaine said.
“It’s about all I’ve got,” I said. “It doesn’t fit her very well, but—”
“Of course it fits her,” Elaine said absently. “Don’t tell me you fell for that psychotic dilettante nymphomaniac act she put on.”
I blinked and then said through a mouthful of French toast, “No. ’Course not.”
“She’s smart, Harry. She’s playing on your expectations.”
I chewed the next bite more slowly. “It’s a good theory. But that’s all it is. We need to know more.”
Elaine frowned at me. “You mean you want to talk to the Mothers.”
I nodded. “I figure they might let a few things slip about how things work. But I don’t know how to get there. I thought you might be able to ask someone in Summer.”
