Jim Butcher - Cold Days

“The Summer Lady has granted your request for an audience,” said Cat Sith from the backseat.

Thomas nearly took the Hummer off the street and into a bus stop shelter. My heart leapt into my throat as if it had been given bionic legs and its own sound effects. Thomas regained control of the vehicle almost instantly, letting out a wordless snarl as he did.

“Sith,” I said, too loud. My heart was running at double time. I glared at him over the front seat. “Dammit.”

The malk’s too-long tail flicked back and forth in smug self-satisfaction. “Shall I interpret that as an order to burn something, Sir Knight? If you are to survive long in Winter, you must learn to be much more specific in your turns of phrase.”

“No, don’t burn anything,” I said, grouchily. I thought about giving the malk an order not to sneak up on me like that anymore, but thought better of it. That would be exactly the kind of order that Cat Sith would take grotesque amusement in perverting, and I wanted to avoid putting him into a playful mood. “What did Lily have to say?”

“That she would guarantee your safety from harm wrought by herself, her Court, and any in her employ or influence,” the malk said, “provided that you came alone and kept the peace.”

I grunted, thinking.

“Why would she want you alone?” Thomas asked. “Unless she planned on doing something to you.”

“Because the last time she saw the Winter Knight, he was murdering the previous Summer Knight?” I guessed aloud. “Because the last time she saw the corpse of the Summer Lady, I was the one who’d made it? Because I’m a known thug who wrecks things a lot?”

Thomas bobbed his head slightly to one side in acknowledgment. “Okay. Point.”

“Sith,” I asked, “where is the meeting?”

“A public venue,” Sith said, his eyes half-lidded. “Chicago Botanic Gardens.”

“See?” I said to Thomas. “That’s not a venue for an assassination—for either of us. There are too many people around. There are plenty of ways out for anyone who wants to leave. That’s a viable neutral location.”

“If I remember right,” Thomas said, “the last time the Summer Lady tried a hit on you, didn’t she animate a bunch of plants into a giant monster that tried to kill you in the garden center of a Walmart?”

I rode in silence for a few seconds and then said, “Yeah, but . . . it was dark. Not as many people around.”

“Oh,” Thomas said. “Okay.”

I held the back of my left fist up to him, then used my right fist to make a little circular cranking motion next to it, while slowly elevating the center finger of my left hand until it was fully extended. Then I turned to Sith.

“What do you think? Is the risk acceptable for a meeting in that location?”

“You would be foolish to meet with her at all,” Cat Sith replied. “However. Given her promise and her chosen location, I judge it to be at least possible that she may actually intend to treat with you.”

“Suppose she’s lying,” Thomas said.

“She can’t,” I told him. “None of the Sidhe or the greater powers of either court can tell an outright lie. Right, Sith?”

“Logically speaking, my answer to that question would be unsupportable as truth.”

I sighed. “Well, that’s how it is among them,” I said. “No falsehoods. They can twist words around, they can avoid answering, they can mislead you by drawing you to false conclusions, but they can’t blatantly tell a lie.”

Thomas shook his head as he pulled onto 94 and started north. “I still don’t like it. That crowd never gives you what you expect.”

“Think how boring it would be if they did,” I said.

We both considered that wistfully for a beat.

“You might have to go in alone,” Thomas said. “But I’m going to stay close. Things go bad, just make some noise and I’ll come in.”

“They aren’t going to go bad,” I said. “But even if they do, I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Summer’s weird, but they’re basically good neighbors. I don’t blame them for being jumpy.”

Sith made a disgusted sound.

“Problem?” I asked him.

“This . . . compassion,” the malk said. “If you prefer, I can slash your throat open now, Sir Knight, and save the vampire the cost of fuel.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “I want you to stay close to Thomas and alert him to any source of danger. If a fight breaks out, your goal is to assist in making sure that both he and I escape, without doing harm to any innocent bystanders, and without killing any mortals.”

Sith started making a sound like my cat always did right before he spit out a hairball.

“Hey,” Thomas said. “Those are custom leather seats!”

Sith spit out a glob the size of a small plum, but instead of a hairball it was actually a small collection of splintered chips of bone. He flicked his tail in scorn and then leapt lightly into the rear bed of the Hummer.

“Jerk,” Thomas muttered.

“Just drive,” I said.

He grimaced and did. After a few miles he asked, “You think this is going to work? This peaceful summit thing?”

“Sure,” I said. After a second, I added, “Probably.”

“Probably?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“We’re down to maybe now?”

I shrugged. “We’ll see.”

The Botanic Gardens of Chicago aren’t actually in Chicago, which always made them seem a little shady to me. Ba-dump-bump.

Rain was coming down in fitful little starts, averaging out to a mild drizzle. The air was cool, in the low fifties, and combined with the rain it meant that the gardens weren’t exactly crowded with ardent floraphiles. The weather didn’t bother me. In fact, I could have taken the jacket off and felt fine—but I didn’t.

My grandfather had taught me that magic wasn’t something you used in a cavalier fashion, and it wasn’t considered to be a seductive, corruptive force, the way black magic and the Winter Knight’s mantle were. I had an instinct that the more I leaned on Mab’s power, the more of an effect it would have on me. No sense flaunting it.

Once I was inside, I found myself in a setting of isolation that would be hard to duplicate anywhere else this close to the city. The gardens are the size of a moderate farm, more than three hundred acres. That wouldn’t mean much to city mice, but to translate that into Chicago units, it was a couple of dozen city blocks’ worth of garden. That’s a lot of space to wander in. You could walk the various paths for hours and hours without ever visiting the same place.

Most of those paths were grey and empty. I passed a retiree near the entrance, and a groundskeeper hurrying out of the rain toward what looked like a concealed toolshed, and other than that it seemed like I had the whole place to myself.

There were seasonal decorations out here and there—a lot of pumpkins and cornstalks, where they’d been planning on Halloween festivities. Apparently they were going to be hosting some kind of trick-or-treating function that afternoon, but for the time being the place did not teem with costumed children and bedraggled parents. It was a little eerie, really. The place looked like it should have been crowded, and felt like it was meant to be crowded, but my soft footsteps were the only sound other than the whisper of rain.

Yet I did not feel as though I were alone. You hear the phrase “I felt like I was being watched” all the time. There’s a good reason for that—it’s a very real feeling, and it has nothing to do with magic. Developing an instinct for sensing when a predator might be studying you is a fundamental survival trait. If you’re ever in a spooky situation and have a strong instinct that you are being watched, hunted, or followed, I advise you not to treat those instincts lightly. They’re there for a reason.