Jim Butcher - Cold Days

“Extend a little trust, maybe,” I said. “That’s the illusion here, man. As far as I’m concerned, we don’t need to be enemies. We don’t need to be at war.”

Fix pursed his lips. Then he said, “Here’s the problem with that. You belong to Mab. I like Harry. Maybe I could even trust him. But I know what Mab is like—and Harry belongs to Mab now.”

“The hell I do,” I said. “Just because I took this job doesn’t mean I’m all cozy with her.”

“You, uh, looked kinda cozy, man. With Mab. On the stone table.”

Sealing a contract like the one with Mab isn’t something you do with an impersonal handshake. I felt my cheeks heat up. “Oh. You saw that.”

“All of Faerie did,” Fix said.

“God, that’s humiliating,” I muttered.

“I know what you mean,” he said. “At least it wasn’t on pay-per-view.”

I snorted.

“Okay,” I said finally. “I’m under some time pressure here, so I think you need to make a decision.”

“Yeah?”

I nodded. “Who is going to make this call? You? Or von Clausewitz?”

Fix looked away. Then he said, “I hate this kind of crap. This is the first time I’ve had a job I’ve held down for more than six months.”

“I hear you.”

He gave me another brief smile. “I want to believe you,” he said. Then he took a steadying breath and faced me, lowering his arms to his sides again. “But there are people depending on me to keep them safe. I can’t afford to do that.”

I stood up, very slowly and reluctantly. “Fix, I don’t want this fight.”

“And you’ll get a chance to avoid it,” he said. “I’m going to give you until noon to get out of town, Harry. If I see you after that, I’m not going to spend any more time talking, and I’m not going to challenge you to a fair fight. If you’re really serious about being your own man, if you really want to keep the peace between us—you’ll go.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” I said.

“I didn’t think you could,” he said quietly. “You have until noon.”

We exchanged a nod. Then he moved back to his SUV, never taking his eyes off me. Once he was in, he started it and drove away.

I sank back down onto the Hummer’s back bumper again and closed my eyes.

Great.

One more thing.

I liked Fix. He was a decent guy. He’d become the Summer Knight, and as far as I knew, he’d never abused his power. People in the supernatural community liked and respected him. I’d even seen him in action once. He was a hell of a lot more formidable than he’d been as the scared young man I’d first met.

I didn’t want to fight him.

He might not give me a choice.

Mab was not about puppies and kittens, and I’d known that when I signed on. Even if she wasn’t evil, exactly, she was vicious, violent, and ruthless. I had no doubt that Mab had done for a number of decent people in her time, one way or another. There were stories about the Winter Knight stretching back for centuries, and various vile personalities had held the title. Some of them had even been famous. Gilles de Rais. Andrei Chikatilo. John Haigh. Fritz Haarmann. If I were in Fix’s shoes, and he were in mine, I might well have pulled the trigger without thinking twice.

I leaned my head back against the truck with a little thunk.

Thomas sat down next to me, and the Hummer settled a little more. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“He going to back off?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said.

“Sure it does.”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter because he’s a decent guy, and I’m not going to hurt him.”

“He might not give you much choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” I said. “That’s the thing, man. There’s always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck , but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a choice.”

“You’d let him kill you?” Thomas asked.

I looked up at him. “No. But I won’t hurt him.”

My brother gave me a tight-lipped look and then got up and walked away.

There was a shimmer in the air, and Molly appeared, standing about ten feet behind what had been Fix’s position during our conversation. She watched Thomas go with an unhappy expression.

I blinked at her. “How long have you been standing there?”

“I got out of your side of the car when Thomas got in,” she said. “You know. Just in case something happened. It seemed like a good idea to make sure he went down quick if a fight broke out, so you wouldn’t have to kill him.”

I smiled at her. “Totally unfair.”

“I had this teacher who kept telling me that if I was ever in a fair fight, someone had made a mistake,” she said.

“Sounds like a jerk.”

“He has his moments,” she said. She squinted after Thomas and said, “He’s just afraid, you know. He doesn’t want to lose his brother twice.”

“I know,” I said.

“But I’m really proud of you, boss,” she said, her voice quieter. “I mean . . . I know you’ve had some hard calls to make lately. But my dad would say that you were right about this one. There’s always a choice.”

I grunted. “If I get into it with Fix,” I said, “I don’t want you to get involved.”

“Why not?”

“Because faeries keep score,” I said. “And they’ll never leave a score unsettled.”

“If I told you that, you’d tell me that wasn’t my choice to make.”

“And I’d be right,” I said, and sighed. “But I have enough worries already, grasshopper. Leave it alone. For me.”

She looked like I’d just asked her to swallow a bug. “I’ll try,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said, and extended my hand.

She helped me up. “What’s next?”

“A phone call. Let’s go.”

“Idon’t care how busy he is,” I said into the phone. “I need to talk with him. Period.”

We were in Thomas’s living room. Thomas was sprawled on a recliner. The hideous high-tech brushed-steel look that had been the place’s trademark had been softened with window dressings and various bits of decoration—Justine’s touch. Thomas, like most men, regarded a throw pillow as something to throw.

One bounced off of my chest. “Way to turn on the charm, Harry,” he murmured.

I covered the phone’s receiver with one hand. “Polite gets you nowhere with these people. Trust me.” I turned back to the phone. “No,” I said. “Not over this line. It’s bugged. Just tell him that Doughnut Boy needs to speak to him or an informed high-level operative in person, within the hour.”

Thomas mouthed the word operative at me, his fingers spread in a gesture meant to convey spooky importance. I kicked the pillow back at him.

“Don’t give me excuses,” I said. “He can get here if he damned well wants to and we both know it. Call me back at this number.” I thunked the phone down.

“Earlier today,” Molly said, from where she sat on the floor, “someone said something to me about not burning my bridges. Let me think. Who was that?”

“Ixnay,” I growled. “I know what I’m doing.” I turned to Thomas. “How many bugs does Lara have on this place?”

“Harry,” Thomas said in a scandalized tone—one that was just a little bit too well projected to be meant for me. “I’m her brother. She would never behave that way toward her own flesh and blood, her own kin, her own dear sibling.”

I growled. “How many?”

He shrugged. “It changes. New ones come in sometimes when I’m not home.”

I grunted. I put the phone on the counter, unplugged it, and grabbed a pepper shaker. I put a circle of pepper around the phone, and sealed it with a gentle effort of will. “You’re set for money, right?”