Jim Butcher - Side Jobs

“Don’t I know it,” I replied. “But there are people in danger.”

“Ah,” Keef said. “The mortals you insist to defend. Unwise that battle is.”

“I need your help,” I said.

Keef eyed me and gave me a firm shake of his head. “The walking dead very dangerous are. My people’s blood it could cost. That I will risk not.”

“You owe me, Keef,” I growled.

“Our living. Not our lives.”

“Have it your way,” I said. Then I lifted up one of Sarah’s shoes and, without looking away from the little cobb, snapped the heel off.

“Ach!” Keef cried in horror, his little feet slipping off the metal grate. “Nein!”

There was a chorus of similar gasps and cries from inside Shoegasm.

I held up the other shoe and did it again.

Keef wailed in protest. All of a sudden, thirty of the little cobbs, male and female, pressed up to the security grate. All of them had the same frizzy white hair, all of them dressed like something from Oktoberfest, and all of them were horrified.

“ Nein! ” Keef wailed again. “Those are Italian leather! Handmade! What are you doing?”

I took a step to my left and held the broken shoes over a trash can.

The cobbler elves gasped, all together, and froze in place.

“Do not do this,” Keef begged me. “Lost all is not. Repaired they can be. Good as new we can fix them. Good as new! Do not throw them away.”

I didn’t waver. “I know things have been hard for your people since cobblers have gone out of business,” I said. “I got you permission for your clan to work here, fixing shoes, in exchange for taking what you need from the vending machine. True?”

“True,” Keef said, his eyes on the broken shoes in my hand. “Wizard, over the trash you need not hold them. If dropped they are, trash they become, and touch them we may not. Lost to all will they be. Anything we both will regret let us not do.”

Anxious murmurs of agreement rose from the other cobbs.

Enough of the stick—it was time to show them the carrot. I held up Molly’s battered old Birkenstocks. The sight made several of the more matronly cobbs cluck their tongues in disapproval.

“I helped set you up with a good deal here at Shoegasm,” I said. “But I can see you’re getting a little crowded. I can get you another good setup—a family, seven kids, mom and dad, all of them active.”

The cobbs murmured in sudden excitement.

Keef coughed delicately and said, staring anxiously at the broken heels in my hand, “And the shoes?”

“I’ll turn them over to you,” I said, “if you help me.”

Keef narrowed his eyes. “Slaves to you we are,” he snapped. “Threatened and bribed.”

“You know the cause I fight for,” I said. “I protect mortals. I’ve never tried to hide that, and I’ve never lied to you. I need your help, Keef. I’ll do what it takes to get it—but you know my reputation by now. I deal fairly with the Little Folk, and I always show gratitude for their help.”

The leader of the cobbs regarded me steadily for a moment. Nobody likes being strong-armed, not even the Little Folk, who are used to getting walked on, but I didn’t have time for diplomacy.

Keef’s gaze kept getting distracted by the shoes, dangling over the trash can, and he made no answer. The other cobbs all waited, clearly taking their cue from Keef.

“Show of good faith, Keef,” I said quietly. I took the broken shoes and set them gently on the ground in front of the shop. “I’ll trust you and your people to repair them and return them. And I’ll pay in pizza.”

The cobbs gasped, staring at me as if I’d just offered them a map to El Dorado. I heard one of the younger cobbs exclaim, “ True , it is!”

“Fleeting, pizza is,” Keef said sternly. “Eternal are shoes and leather goods.”

“Shoes and leather goods,” the rest of the cobbs intoned, their tiny voices solemn.

“Few mortals to the Little Folk show respect, these days,” Keef said quietly. “Or trust. True it is that beneath this roof we are crowded. And unto the wizard, debt is owed.” He gave the shoes a professional glance and nodded once. “Under your terms, and within our means, our aid is given. Your need unto us speak.”

“Scouts,” I said at once. “I know there are Black Court vampires in the mall. I need to know exactly how many and exactly where they are.”

“Done it will be,” Keef barked. “Cobbs!”

There was a little gust of wind, and I was suddenly alone. Oh, and both Sarah’s expensive heels and Molly’s clunky sandals were gone, the latter right out of my hands and so smoothly that I hadn’t even noticed them being taken. I checked, just to be careful, but my own shoes remained safely on my feet, which was a relief. You can’t ever be certain with cobbs. The little faeries, at times, could get awfully fixated upon whatever their particular area of concern might be, and messing around with it was more dangerous than most realized. Despite the metal screen between the cobbs and me, I’d been playing with fire when I held those Pradas over the trash can.

Another thing that most people don’t realize is just how much the Little Folk can learn, and how fast they can do it—especially when things are happening on their own turf. It took Keef and his people about thirty seconds to go and return.

“Four, there are,” Keef reported. “Three lesser, who of late this place did guard. One greater, who gave them not-life.”

“Four,” I breathed. “Where?”

“One outside near the group of cars waits and watches,” Keef said. “One outside the bistro where the mortals hide stands watch. One beside his mistress stands within.”

I got a sick little feeling in my stomach. “Has anyone been hurt?”

Keef shook his head. “Taunt them, she does. Frighten them.” He shrugged. “It is not as their kind often is.”

“No. She’s there for vengeance, not food.” I frowned. “I need you to get me something. Can you?”

I told him what I needed, and Keef gave me a mildly offended look. “Of course.”

“Good. Now, the one outside,” I said. “Can you show me a way I could get close to him without being seen?”

Keef’s eyes glittered with a sudden ferocity that was wholly at odds with his size and appearance. “This way, Wizard.”

I went at what was practically a run, but the tiny cobb had no trouble staying ahead of me. He led me through a service access door that required a key to open—until it suddenly swung open from the other side, a dozen young male cobbs dangling from the security bar and cheering. My amulet cast the only light as Keef led me down a flight of stairs and through a long, low tunnel.

“Access to the drains and watering system, this passage is,” Keef called to me. We stopped at a ladder leading up. A small paper sack sat on the floor by the ladder. “Your weapons,” he said, nodding at the bag. He pointed at the ladder. “Behind the vampire, this opens.”

I opened the bag and found two plastic cylinders. I didn’t want the crinkling paper, so I put one of them in my jacket pocket, kept the other in hand, and crept up the ladder. At the top was a hatch made of some kind of heavy synthetic, rather than wood or steel, and it opened without a sound. I poked my head up and looked cautiously around the parking lot.

The lights were out, but there was enough snow on the ground to bounce around plenty of light, giving the outdoors an oddly close, quiet quality, almost as if someone had put a roof overhead, just barely out of sight. Over by the last group of cars in the mall parking lot, next to the Blue Beetle in fact, stood the vampire.

He was little more than a black form, and though human in shape, he was inhumanly still, every bit as motionless as the other inanimate objects in the parking lot. Snow had begun to gather on his head and shoulders, just as it had on the roofs and hoods of the parked cars. He stood facing the darkened mall, where snow blew into the hole left by the thrown car. He was watching, I supposed, for anyone who might come running out, screaming.