Jim Butcher - Side Jobs

“Can you carry her?”

She gritted her teeth and nodded once.

I met her eyes for a dangerous second and asked, “Do you trust me?”

Fire crackled. Water boiled. Steam hissed.

“Yes, Harry,” she whispered.

I flashed her a grin. “Jump the fire. Run to her.”

“Run to her?”

“And hurry,” I said, lifting my left arm, focusing as my shield bracelet began to glow, blue-white energy swiftly becoming incandescent. “Now!”

Murphy broke into a run and hurtled over the wall of fire.

“ Forzare! ” I shouted, and extended my left arm and my will.

I reshaped the shield, this time forming it in a straight, flat plane about three feet wide. It shot through the wall of flame, over the water, to the stone upon which Georgia lay. Murphy landed on the bridge of pure force, kept her balance, and poured on the speed, sprinting over the water to the unconscious young woman.

Murphy slapped her gun back into its holster, grabbed Georgia, and, with a shout and a grunt of effort, managed to get the tall girl into a fireman’s carry. She started back, much more slowly than she’d gone forward.

The shellycobbs thrashed even more furiously, and the strain of holding both spells started to become a physical sensation, a spidery, trembling weakness in my arms and legs. I clenched my teeth and my will, focusing on holding the wall and the bridge until Murphy could return. My vision distorted, shrinking down to a tunnel.

And then Murphy shouted again and plunged through the fire, this time more slowly. She let out a gasp of pain as she got singed, then stumbled past me.

I released the bridge with a gasp of relief. “Go!” I said. “Come on, let’s go!”

Together, we were barely able to get Georgia lifted. I was only able to hold the wall of flame against the shellycobbs for about fifty feet when I had to release the spell or risk passing out. I guess the shellycobbs weren’t sprinters, because Murphy and I outran them, dragging the naked girl out of her Undertown prison and back to Murphy’s car.

In all that time, Georgia never stirred.

Murphy had a blanket in her trunk. I wrapped Georgia in it and got in the backseat with her. Murphy gunned the car and headed for the Lincolnshire Marriott Resort Hotel, twenty miles north of town and one of the most ostentatious places in the area to hold a wedding. Traffic wasn’t good, and according to the clock in Murphy’s car, we had less than ten minutes before the wedding was supposed to begin.

I struggled in the backseat, fumbling to keep Georgia from bouncing off the ceiling, to get my backpack open, and to ignore the cuts the shellycobb’s pincer left on my leg.

“Is that blood on her face?” Murphy asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Dried. But I figure it wasn’t hers. Bob said she wolfed out in the apartment. I think Georgia got her fangs into Jenny Greenteeth before she got grabbed.”

“Jenny who?”

“Jenny Greenteeth,” I said. “She’s one of the sidhe. Faerie nobility, sidekick to the Winter Lady.”

“Are her teeth green?”

“Like steamed spinach. I saw her leading a big old bunch of shellycobbs just like those guys, back at the faerie war. If Maeve wanted to lay out some payback for Billy and company, Jenny’s the one she’d send.”

“She’s dangerous?”

“You know the stories about things that tempt you down to the water’s edge and then drown you? Sirens that lure sailors to their deaths? Mermaids who carry men off to their homes under the sea?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s Jenny. Only she’s not so cuddly.”

I dug Bob out of my backpack. The skull took one look at the sleeping, naked Georgia and leered. “First you get demolition-level sex with the cop chick, and now a threesome, all in the same day!” he cried. “Harry, you have to write Penthouse about this!”

“Not now, Bob. I need you to identify the spell that’s been laid on Georgia.”

The skull made a disgusted sound but focused on the girl. “Oh,” he said after a second. “Wow. That’s a good one. Definitely sidhe work.”

“I figure it’s Jenny Greenteeth. Give me details.”

“Jenny got game. It’s a sleep spell,” he said. “A seriously good one, too. Malicious as hell.”

“How do I lift it?”

“You can’t,” Bob said.

“Fine. How do I break it?”

“You don’t understand. It’s been tied into the victim. It’s being fueled by the victim’s life force. If you shatter the spell ...”

I nodded, getting it. “I’ll do the same to her. Is it impossible to get rid of it?”

“No, not at all. I’m saying that you couldn’t lift it. Whoever threw it could do that, of course. But there’s another key.”

I grew wroth and scowled. “What key, Bob?”

“Uh,” he said, somehow giving the impression that he’d shrugged. “A kiss ought to do it. You know. True love, Prince Charming, that kind of thing.”

“That won’t be hard,” I said, relaxing a little. “We’ll definitely get to the wedding before he goes off alone with Jenny and gets drowned.”

“Oh, good,” Bob said. “Of course, the girl still kicks off, but you can’t save all the people, all the time.”

“What?” I demanded. “Why does Georgia die?”

“Oh, if the Werewolf kid goes through the ceremony with Jenny and plights his troth and so on, it’s going to contaminate him. I mean, if he’s married to another, it can’t really be pure love. Jenny’s claim on him would prevent the kiss from lifting the spell.”

“Which means Georgia won’t wake up,” I said, chewing on my lip. “At what point in the wedding does it happen, exactly?”

“You mean, when will it be too late?” Bob asked.

“Yeah, I mean, when they say, ‘I do,’ when they swap rings, or what?”

“Rings and vows,” Bob said, mild scorn in his voice. “Way overrated.”

Murphy glanced up at me in the rearview mirror and said, “It’s the kiss, Harry. It’s the kiss.”

“Buffy’s right!” Bob agreed cheerily.

I met Murphy’s eyes in the mirror for just a second and then said, “Yeah. I guess I should have figured.”

Murphy smiled a little.

“The kiss seals the deal,” Bob prattled. “If Billy kisses Jenny Greenteeth, the girl with the long legs ain’t waking up, and he ain’t long for the world, either.”

“Murph,” I said, tense.

She rolled down the car’s window, slapped a magnetic cop light on the roof, and started up the siren. Then she stomped on the gas and all but gave me whiplash.

UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, the trip to the resort would have taken half an hour. I’m not saying Murphy’s driving was suicidal. Not quite. But after the third near collision, I closed my eyes and fought off the urge to chant, “There’s no place like home.”

Murphy got us there in twenty minutes.

Tires screeched as she swung into the resort’s parking lot. “Drop me there,” I said, pointing. “Park behind the reception tent so folks won’t see Georgia. I’ll go get Billy.”

Clutching my blasting rod, I bailed out of the car, which never actually came to a full stop, and ran into the hotel. The concierge blinked at me from behind her desk.

“Wedding!” I barked at her. “Where?”

She blinked and pointed a finger down the hall. “Um. The ballroom.”

“Right!” I said, and sprinted that way. I could see the open double doors and heard a man’s voice over a loudspeaker saying, “Until death do you part?”

Eve McAlister stood at the doorway in her lavender silk outfit, and when she saw me, her eyes narrowed into sharp little chips of ice. “There, that’s him. That’s the man.”

Two big, beefy guys in matching badly fitted maroon dress coats appeared—hotel security goons. They stepped directly into my path, and the larger one said, “Sir, I’m sorry, but this is a private function. I’ll have to ask you to leave.”