Jim Butcher - Changes

She looked at me and said, “I’m waiting for you to say something about a Vegas showgirl.”

It took me a moment to reconnect my mouth to my brain. “You look amazing,” I said.

Her smile was slow and hot, with her dark eyes on mine.

“Um,” I said. “But . . . it doesn’t look very practical.”

Lea accepted Glenmael’s hand and exited the limo. She leaned over and murmured something into Susan’s ear.

Susan arched an eyebrow, but then said, “Okaaay . . .” She closed her eyes briefly, frowning.

And she vanished. Like, completely. Not behind a hard-to-pierce veil. Just gone .

My godmother laughed and said, “The same as before, but red, child.”

“Okay,” said Susan’s voice from empty air, and suddenly she was back again, smiling broadly. “Wow.”

“The cloak will hide you from the eyes and other senses as well, child,” my godmother said. “And while you wear those shoes, your steps will leave no tracks nor make the smallest sound.”

“Um, right,” I said. “But I’d feel better if she had some Kevlar along or something. Just in case.”

“Glenmael,” said my godmother.

The chauffeur calmly drew a nine-millimeter, pointed it at Susan’s temples from point-blank range, and squeezed the trigger. The gun barked.

Susan jerked her head to one side and staggered, clapping one hand to her ear. “Ow!” she snarled, rising and turning on the young Sidhe. “You son of a bitch, those things are loud. That hurt . I ought to kick your ass up between your ears for you.”

In answer, the Sidhe bent with consummate grace and plucked something from the ground. He stood and showed it to Susan, and then to me.

It was a bullet. The nose was smashed in flat, until it vaguely resembled a small mushroom.

Our eyes got kind of wide.

Lea spread her hands and said calmly, “Faerie godmother.”

I shook my head, stunned. It had taken me years to design, create, and improve my leather duster’s defensive spells, and even then, the protection extended only as far as the actual leather. Lea had whipped up a whole-body protective enchantment in minutes .

I suddenly felt a bit more humble. It was probably good for me.

But then I tilted my head, frowning. The power involved in my godmother’s gifts was incredible—but the universe just doesn’t seem to be willing to give you something for nothing. That was as true in magic as it was in physics. I could, with years of effort, probably duplicate what Lea’s gifts could do. The Sidhe worked with the same magic I did, though admittedly they seemed to have a very different sort of relationship. Still, that much power all in one spot meant that the energy cost for it was being paid elsewhere.

Like maybe in longevity.

“Godmother,” I asked, “how long will these gifts endure?”

Her smile turned a little sad. “Ah, child. I am a faerie godmother, am I not? Such things are not meant to last.”

“Don’t tell me midnight,” I said.

“Of course not. I am not part of Summer.” She sniffed, rather scornfully. “Noon.”

And that made more sense. My duster’s spells lasted for months, and I thought I’d worked out how to make them run for more than a year the next time I laid them down. Lea’s gifts involved the same kind of power output, created seemingly without toil—but they wouldn’t last like the things I created would. My self-image recovered a little.

“Lea,” I asked, “did you bring my bag?”

Glenmael opened the trunk and brought it over to me. The Swords in their scabbards were still strapped to the bag’s side. I picked it up and nodded. “Thanks.”

He bowed, smiling. I was tempted to tip him, just to see what would happen, but then I remembered that my wallet had been in my blue jeans, and was now, presumably, part of the new outfit. Maybe it would reappear at noon tomorrow—assuming I was alive to need it, I mean.

“I will wait here,” Lea said. “When you are ready to travel to the first Way, Glenmael will take us there.”

“Right,” I said. “Let’s go, princess.”

“Of course, Sir Knight,” Susan said, her eyes sparkling, and we went into the church.

Sanya was guarding the door. He swung it open wide for us, and studied Susan with a grin of appreciation. “There are some days,” he said, “when I just love this job.”

“Come on,” I said, walking past him. “We don’t have much time.”

Sanya literally clicked his heels together, took Susan’s hand, and kissed the back of it gallantly, the big stupidhead. “You are beyond lovely, lady.”

“Thank you,” Susan said, smiling. “But we don’t have much time.”

I rolled my eyes and kept walking.

There was a quiet conversation going in the living room. It stopped as I came through the door. I paused there for a second, and looked around at everyone who was going to help me get my daughter back.

Molly was dressed in her battle coat, which consisted of a shirt of tightly woven metal links, fashioned by her mother out of titanium wire. The mail was then sandwiched between two long Kevlar vests. All of that was, in turn, fixed to one of several outer garments, and in this case she was wearing a medium-brown fireman’s coat. Her hair was braided tightly against the back of her head—and back to its natural honey brown color—and a hockey helmet sat on a table near her. She had half a dozen little focus items I’d shown her how to create, none of which were precisely intended for a fight. Her face was a little pale, and her blue eyes were earnest.

Mouse sat next to her, huge and stolid, and rose to his feet and padded over to give me a subdued greeting as I came in. I knelt down and roughed up his ears for a moment. He wagged his tail, but made no more display than that, and his serious brown eyes told me that he knew the situation was grave.

Next came Martin, dressed in simple black BDU pants, a longsleeved black shirt, and a tactical vest, all of which could have been purchased from any military surplus or gun store. He was in the midst of cleaning and inspecting two sets of weapons: assault rifles, tactical shotguns, and heavy pistols. He wore a machete in a scabbard on his belt. A second such weapon rested in a nylon sheath on the table, next to a blade-sharpening tool kit. He never looked up at me, or stopped reassembling the pistol he’d finished cleaning.

A small chess set had been set up on the other end of the coffee table from Molly, next to Martin’s war gear. My brother sat there, with Martin (and, once he had finished greeting me, Mouse) between himself and the girl. He was wearing expensive-looking silk pants and a leather vest, both white. A gun belt bearing a large-caliber handgun and a sword with an inward-curving blade, an old Spanish falcata, hung over the corner of the couch, casually discarded. He lay lazily back on the couch, his eyes mostly closed, watching the move of his opponent.

Murphy was decked out in black tactical gear much like Martin’s, but more worn and better fitting. They don’t generally make gear for people Murph’s size, so she couldn’t shop off the shelf very often. She did have her own vest of Kevlar and mail, which Charity had made for her for Christmas the previous year, in thanks for the occasions when Murphy had gone out on a limb for them, but Murph had just stuck the compound armor to her tac vest and been done. She wore her automatic on her hip, and her odd-looking, rectangular little submachine gun, the one that always made me think of a box of chocolates, was leaned against the wall nearby. Murph was hunched over the chessboard, her nose wrinkled as she thought, and moved one of her knights into a thicket of enemy pieces before she turned to me.