Jim Butcher - Cold Days

“Hngh,” Thomas said.

“What’s he got against you?” Molly asked.

“He was part of Lily and Fix’s crew, back when they were all just folks,” I said. “They were friends with Aurora and the last Summer Knight. When Mab hired me to find Ronald Reuel’s killer, Ace pitched in with this ghoul hitter and the Winter Knight to stop me. Betrayed his friends. Billy and his crew almost killed him, but I let him skate.”

“And he hates you for it?” Molly asked.

“I killed Aurora,” I said. “His friend Meryl died in that same fight. And you can be damned sure that Lily and Fix haven’t wanted anything to do with him since. So from where he’s standing, I killed one of his friends, got another one killed in battle, and took the ones who were left alive away from him. Then I beat him up in front of his dad. Guy’s got a forest of bones to pick with me.”

“Cheery image,” Thomas said.

I grunted. “What about your nutjob, Butters. What’s his name?”

“Gary.”

“Gary turn up anything else?”

“About twenty updates in all capital letters about boats, boats, boats.”

I thought about that one for a moment.

Then I said, “Hah.”

“We have to move, Harry,” Karrin said.

I grunted. “Gard still have her chopper?”

“Yes.”

“Right,” I said. I thumped my finger on the site on the far side of Lake Michigan. “Lacuna, what’s the word on this one?”

The little faerie was still flitting about in the air around the table, fairly bursting with impatience. “It’s behind big stone walls on a human’s private land, right where I marked it!”

I nodded. “Vikings get that site then. Get them moving.”

“Right,” Murphy said, and headed for the door, reaching for her phone on the way.

Thomas frowned. “We’re going to depend on Lara’s people to back us up?”

“Hell, no,” I said. “No offense, but I don’t trust your sister. Send her crew to the second site.”

“This is damned odd,” Butters muttered.

I looked down at him. “What?”

“The bleeding won’t stop,” he said. “It’s not really all that dangerous in a wound this small, but it isn’t clotting up. It’s like some kind of anticoagulant was introduced. Do you still have the dart?”

“Dart,” I said. I patted my pockets. “I guess not. It was in my hand when the warehouse dropped into the water.”

“Bah,” Butters said. “Inflammation in the skin around it. This hurt?”

He poked me. It did. I told him so.

“Huh,” he said. “I can’t be sure without tests but . . . I think this might be some kind of allergic reaction.”

“How?” I asked. “I’m not allergic to anything.”

“I’m just saying what it looks like on your skin,” Butters said. “The trickle factor seems to imply some kind of toxin, though. You need a hospital, tests.”

“Later,” I said. “Just get it wrapped up and keep it from running down my leg.”

Butters nodded.

“So,” Thomas asked, “if Lara’s crew has one site and Marcone’s the other, which one are we going to?”

“Neither.”

“What?”

“We’re not going to either one.”

“Why not?”

“Because all day long,” I said, “I’ve been moving in straight lines and it’s gotten me nothing but grief.” I pointed at the locations marked on the map. “See those? Those are the perfectly rational places for our bad guy to make something happen.”

Thomas rubbed at his chin and narrowed his eyes. “They’re a distraction?”

“It’s how the Sidhe think. How they move. How they are. They put pressure on you, get you to look over there, and then kapow. Sucker punch.”

“What if they’re expecting you to expect that?” Thomas asked.

“Gah,” I said, waving my hands on either side of my head as if brushing away wasps. “Stop it. If I’m wrong, we’ve got professional badasses to cover it. But I’m not wrong.”

“Didn’t you say that they required a ley line site to perform a ritual that big?” Butters asked. He had taped a pad over the little injury and was securing it with a roll of gauze.

“Yes,” I said.

“And the Little Folk cleared all of them but those two?”

“No,” I said. “They cleared almost all of them. There was one place the Little Folk couldn’t check.”

Thomas’s eyes widened as he got it. “Boats,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Boats.”

Thomas rose, glancing around the room, and said in a quiet voice, “She needs fuel. And I’d better talk to Lara about the second site.” But his eyes had drifted over to where Justine now sat by the fire, basking in warmth after our icy dunk and staring at it with a peaceful expression on her lovely face.

“Get moving,” I said. I lowered my voice. “You taking her with you?”

“You kidding? Bad guys have been all over us today. That creep took her right off the street in front of our apartment. I’m not letting her out of my sight .”

“Look, if you leave her here, the building has security that—”

“So does my building, and Cat Sith breezed right past all of it when he came in,” Thomas said. “I’m not letting her out of my sight until this thing is settled.”

I grimaced, but nodded. “All right. Go. We’ll be right behind you.”

My brother arched an eyebrow. “All of you?”

“We’ll see,” I said.

“Did you talk to her?” Thomas asked.

I gave him a steady look and said, “No. Maggie was out trick-or-treating.”

“Right. She’s what? Nine years old? She might as well have vanished into the Bermuda triangle. How could you possibly be expected to find her? Magic?” He gave me a sour look. “What about the other one?”

He meant Karrin. “We’ve both been kinda busy. Maybe later.”

“Later. Bad habit to get into,” Thomas said. “Life’s too short.”

“It almost sounded like you were attempting to enlighten me about bad habits.”

“The path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” he said, and turned for the door.

At the exact moment he moved, even though she was not looking at him, and though he said nothing to her, Justine rose from her seat by the fire and started toward the door. The pair of them met halfway there and she slipped herself beneath his arm and up close to him in a motion of familiar, unconscious intimacy. They left together.

My brother the vampire, whose kiss was a slow death sentence, had a stable and loving relationship with a girl who was crazy about him. By contrast, I could barely talk to a woman, at least about anything pertaining to a relationship. Given that my only long-term girlfriends had faked their own death, died, and broken free of enslaving enchantments to end the relationship, the empirical evidence seemed to indicate that he knew something I didn’t.

Keep your life tonight, Harry. Complicate it tomorrow.

Murphy came back in with a pair of EMTs I recognized, Lamar and Simmons. They got Andi loaded up onto a stretcher, and Lamar blinked when he saw me. He didn’t look as young as he had the last time I’d seen him—a few threads of silver in his hair stood out starkly against his dark hair and skin.

“Dresden,” he said. “That you?”

“Mostly.”

“I heard you were dead.”

“Close. It didn’t take.”

He shook his head and helped his partner secure Andi to the stretcher. They picked up the stretcher and toted her outside, with Butters hurrying along beside them, his hand on Andi’s arm.

Once they were gone, I stood in the room with the grasshopper, Karrin, and Mac. Mouse dozed on the floor near the door, but his ears twitched now and then and I doubted he was missing anything.