JIM BUTCHER - SMALL FAVOR

Molly tittered. “Nickelheads.”

“I have a gift,” I said modestly. Then I added in a low voice, “And stop giggling. Wizards don’t giggle. Bad for the image.”

Molly buried her giggle in another mouthful of fries.

I slurped on my Coke and turned to Murphy. “So, what we need to do is figure out who’s going to backstab Marcone. Someone highly placed enough to know the location of the safehouse, and who will profit by Marcone’s absence.”

“You’re assuming the informant was complicit,” Murphy said. “That wouldn’t necessarily be true. Someone could have inadvertently given information away, or been compelled to cooperate.”

I paused to think about that. “True. So we’ll have to start by looking at who could have given away the safe house.”

Murphy raked her fingers through her dark-golden hair, frowning in thought. “To be honest, SI doesn’t cross trails with the outfit all that often. I’d have to make some calls to find out.”

Thomas drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “The FBI would have more, wouldn’t they?”

“And you know that guy Rick, right?” Molly said. “The one who was helping that jerk interrogate me?”

Murphy’s eyes narrowed. She made a noise that wasn’t quite an agreement, but wasn’t quite a denial, either. Murphy has issues with her ex-husband.

It took Molly about half a second to figure out the expression on Murphy’s face. She looked around the room somewhat desperately for a moment. “Uh, so, Harry, what’s with Mister? He’s been sleeping like a log the whole time we’ve been here.”

“Which brings us to the second part of the problem,” I said. “The hitters from the Summer Court. I think odds are good that they’ve got my place under surveillance.”

Thomas arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t sense anything coming in.”

“You didn’t sense anything walking through the front door of the pub, either,” Murphy said archly.

“I was circling the block,” Thomas said crossly. “Middle of a damned blizzard and you still can’t find a parking spot. I hate this town.”

“I’ve got warning spells spread out all around this place,” I said. “Anything gets within a block and I’ll probably know about it. And you’ve got to get up early in the morning to sneak past Mouse.”

Mouse, who was sitting in front of Molly making soulful eyes at her chicken sandwich, glanced at me and wagged his tail.

“If they were very close, I’d know it. They’re probably spread out in a loose ring, watching who comes and goes,” I said. “The gruffs don’t really want to kick my apartment door down-not yet, at any rate. They’d rather fight where there won’t be collateral damage. But I’ve got a feeling that they aren’t at their best in all this snow.”

Molly frowned. “You think Mab is influencing the weather for you?”

“Maybe the ongoing record snowfall is a coincidence,” I said. “But if so, it’s awfully convenient.”

“Nothing’s ever convenient with you, Dresden,” Murphy said.

“Exactly my point.” I rubbed at my jaw. I needed to shave, but my throbbing nose was bad enough without adding a couple of razor nicks to the mess. I didn’t trust my hands to be steady. There were too many scary things moving around, and if I stopped long enough to think about how far in over my head I was getting, I might just crawl into a hole and pull it in after me.

Don’t think, Harry. You know too much about what you’re up against.

Analyze, decide, and act.

“Okay. We can assume that the Summer crew saw us come in. As long as we don’t leave, they’ll assume that we’re still here.”

Molly said, “Aha. I wondered why you asked me along.”

I winked at her. “Know thyself, grasshopper. Yeah. When we leave, I want you to make sure that the gruffs and their crew don’t notice. Hopefully that will buy us some more time while they play patient hunter and wait for me to expose myself again.”

“Heh,” Thomas sniggered. “Expose yourself.”

Murphy tossed an onion ring at him, which he caught and popped in his mouth.

“Meanwhile, I’ve got a new toy for you to play with, Thomas.”

My brother arched his eyebrows and focused his attention on me.

I went into my tiny bedroom and came back out with a small figurine, a rough figure of clay that resembled Gumby more than anything. I lifted it to my mouth and breathed on it, then murmured a word and said, “Catch.”

I tossed it to Thomas. My brother caught it and-

- suddenly a tall man, too lanky to look altogether healthy and with too many rough edges to be handsome, sat in Thomas’s chair, dressed in his clothes. His hair had short waves in it, and looked perpetually rumpled. His eyes were a bit sunken in a permanent state of too little sleep, but the line of his chin, strong and clean, made him look harder and sharper than he might otherwise have appeared.

Hell’s bells. Did I really look like that? Maybe I needed a makeover or something.

Murphy sucked in a breath and looked back and forth between Thomas, in his new look, and me. Molly didn’t bother trying to hide her reaction, and just said, “ Cool .”

“What?” Thomas asked. Though the figure speaking looked like me, the sound of my brother’s voice was unchanged, and a spot of ketchup from his burger still speckled one side of his mouth. He looked around for a moment, then scowled, rose, and ducked into my bedroom to look at himself in the little shaving mirror in the drawer in my bathroom. “You’ve invented a doll that turns people into their ugly half brothers, eh?”

“Get over yourself, prettyboy,” I called.

“If you think I’m letting you break my nose to complete the look, you’re insane.”

I grunted. “Yeah, that’s a problem. I had to set it up to look like I looked the day I finished it.”

“It isn’t a problem,” Molly said at once. “I’ll get my makeup kit and fix up his eyes for him, at least. I don’t know what we can do for his nose, but from a distance he should look right.”

“If he looks like you, Harry,” Murphy said, “doesn’t that mean he’s going to be attracting some sort of hostile attention?”

Thomas snorted and appeared in the doorway to my bedroom, his face ketchup-free. “Harry walks around looking like this all the time . Now, that would be awful. I can handle it for a few hours.”

“Don’t get cute on me,” I said. “Give us two or three hours’ lead time, and then head out. Stay on the roads and keep moving. Don’t give them a chance to surround you. You’ve got your cell phone?”

“I suppose,” he said. “But given how much I’ve been hanging around you two and the bad weather, I’d say the odds were against its working.” I grunted and tossed him my leather duster and my staff. He caught them and frowned. “You sure you don’t want these?”

“Just don’t lose them,” I said. “If the gruffs saw a double of me who wasn’t wearing the coat, they’d know something was up in a heartbeat. The idea is to keep them from getting suspicious in the first place. The charm should be good for another six, maybe seven hours. Once it drops, get back here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Thomas said, sliding into my duster. The illusion magic didn’t make the thing fit him, and he had to fiddle with the sleeves, but it looked like it always did on me. “Karrin, don’t let him do anything stupid.”

Murphy nodded. “I’ll try. But you know how he is.” She picked up her coat and shrugged into it. “Where are we going?”

“Back to Gard,” I said. “The Carpenter place. I’m betting Marcone left her a sample of his hair to use to track him down, for just such an occasion as this.”