Jim Butcher - Proven Guilty

“Not if you aren’t ready,” I said.

“Harry, come on. So far we’ve been lucky. The Council hasn’t noticed me here. But with all of your Warden stuff, sooner or later somebody’s going to show up and find you rooming with a White Court vampire.”

I grimaced. “That would be a mess,” I agreed. “But I don’t mind chancing it if you need the time.”

“And I don’t mind getting out on my own to avoid making trouble for you with the Council,” he said. “Besides, I’m just covering my own ass. I don’t want to cross them, myself.”

“I wouldn’t let them-”

Thomas burst out in a brief, genuine laugh. “Christ, Harry. You’re my brother, not my mother. I’ll be fine. Now that I won’t be here to make you look bad, maybe you can finally start having girls over again.”

“Bite me, prettyboy,” I said. “You need any help moving or anything?”

“Nah.” He finished the beer. “I just have one box and one bag. Cab’s on the way.” He paused. “Unless you need my help with a case or something. I’ve got until Monday to move in.”

I shook my head. “I’m working with SI on this one, so I’ve got plenty of support. I think I can get things locked down by tonight.”

Thomas gave me a flat look. “Now you’ve done it.”

“What?” I asked.

“You predicted quick victory. Now it’s going to get hopelessly complicated. Jesus, don’t you know any better than that by now?”

I grinned at him. “You’d think that I would.”

I finished my beer and offered my brother my hand. He gripped it. “If you need anything, call me,” he said.

“Ditto.”

“Thank you, little brother,” he said quietly.

I blinked my eyes a couple of times. “Yeah. My couch is always open. Unless there’s a girl over.”

Outside, wheels crunched on gravel and a car horn sounded.

“There’s my ride,” he said. “Oh. Do you mind if I borrow the shotgun? Just until I can replace it.”

“Go ahead,” I told him. “I’ve still got my.44.”

“Thanks.” He bent over and swung the heavy footlocker onto one shoulder without effort. He picked up the sports bag, slung the strap over his other shoulder, and opened the door easily with one hand. He glanced back, winked at me, and shut the door behind him.

I stared at the closed door for a minute. Car doors opened and closed. Wheels crunched as the cab drove away, and my apartment suddenly seemed a couple of sizes too large. Mouse let out a long sigh and came over to me to nudge his head underneath my hand. I scratched his ears for a minute and said, “He’ll be all right. Don’t worry about him.”

Mouse sighed again.

“I’ll miss him too,” I told the dog. Then I shook myself and told Mouse, “Don’t get comfortable. We’re going to go visit Mac. You can meet the Summer Knight.”

I went around getting everything I needed for a formal meeting with the Summer Knight, called another cab, and sat in my too-quiet apartment wondering what it was my brother was hiding from me.

McAnally’s pub is on the bottom floor of a building not too far from my office. Chicago being what it is-essentially a giant swamp with a city sinking into it-the building had settled over the years, and to enter the pub you had to come in the door and take a couple of steps down. It’s a low-ceilinged room, or at least it’s always felt that way to me, and it offers the added attraction of several whirling ceiling fans at my eye level, just as I come in the door, and after stepping down into the room they’re still uncomfortably close to my head.

There’s a sign Mac’s got hanging up at the door that reads ACCORDED NEUTRAL GROUND. It means that the place was supposed to be a no-combat zone, under the terms laid out in the Unseelie Accords, the most recent and influential set of principles agreed upon by most of the various nations of the supernatural maybe ten or twelve years ago. By the terms of the Accords, there’s no fighting allowed between members of opposing nations in the bar, and we’re not supposed to attempt to provoke anybody, either. If things do get hostile, the Accords say you have to take it outside or risk censure by the signatory nations.

More importantly, at least to me, Mac was a friend. When I came to his place to eat, I considered myself a guest, and he my host. I’d abide by his declared neutrality out of simple respect, but it was good to know that the Accords were there in the background. Not every member of the supernatural community is as polite and neighborly as me.

Mac’s place is one big room. There are a baker’s dozen of thick wooden support pillars spread through the room, each of them carved with figures from Old World nursery tales. There’s a bar with thirteen stools, thirteen tables spread irregularly throughout the room, and the whole place has an informal, comfortable, asymmetrical sort of feel to it.

I came through the door armed for bear and projecting an attitude to match. I bore my staff in my left hand, and I’d slipped my new blasting rod, a shaft of wood two feet long and as thick as my two thumbs together, through my belt. My shield bracelet hung on my left hand, my force ring was on my right, and Mouse walked on my right side on his lead, looking huge and sober and alert.

A couple of people inside looked at my face and immediately tried to look like they had no interest in me. I wasn’t in a bad mood, but I wanted to look that way. Since the war with the Red Court had gotten rolling, I had learned the hard way that predators, human and otherwise, sense fear and look for weakness. So I walked into the place like I was hoping to kick someone in the neck, because it was a hell of a lot easier to discourage potential predators ahead of time than it was to slug it out with them when they followed me out afterward.

I crossed the room to the bar, and Mac nodded at me. Mac was a lean man somewhere between thirty and fifty. He wore his usual dark clothes and spotless white apron while simultaneously managing all the bartending and a big wood-burning grill where he cooked various dishes for the customers. The summer heat was fairly well blunted by the shade and the fans and the partially subterranean nature of the room, but there were still dark spots of sweat on his clothes and beading along the bare skin of his scalp.

Mac knew what the tough-guy face was about, and it clearly didn’t bother him. He nodded to me as I sat down on a stool.

“Mac. You got any cold beer back there somewhere?”

He gave me an unamused look.

I leaned my staff on the bar, lifted both hands in a placating gesture, and said, “Kidding. But tell me you’ve got cold lemonade. It’s a zillion degrees out there.”

He answered with a glass of lemonade cooled with his patented lemonade ice cubes, so that you could drink it cold and not have it get watered down, all at the same time. Mac is pretty much a genius when it comes to drinks. And his steak sandwiches should be considered some kind of national resource.

“Business?” he asked me.

I nodded. “Meeting with Fix.”

Mac grunted and went out to a corner table, one with a clear view of the door. He nudged it out a bit from the wall, polished it with a cloth, and straightened the chairs around it. I nodded my thanks to him and settled down at the table with my lemonade.

I didn’t have long to wait. A couple of minutes before noon, the Summer Knight opened the door and came in.

Fix had grown, and I mean that literally. He’d been about five foot three, maybe an inch or so higher. Now he had towered up to at least five nine. He’d been a wiry little guy with white-blond hair, and most of that remained true. The wire had thickened to lean cable, but the shock of spikes he’d worn as a hairdo had gotten traded in on a more typical cut for faerie nobles-a shoulder-length do. Fix hadn’t been a good-looking guy, and the extra height and muscle and the hair did absolutely nothing to change that. What had changed was his previous manner, which had been approximately equal parts nervous and cheerful.