JIM BUTCHER - SMALL FAVOR

Standing between and slightly behind the two adults was a girl not much older than all the other children who had taken refuge in the Hall. She’d grown more than a foot since the last time I’d seen her, about five years ago. She still looked like a neatly dressed, perfectly groomed child-except for her eyes. Her eyes were creepily out of place in that innocent face, heavy with knowledge and all the burdens that come with it.

The Archive put a hand on Kincaid’s elbow, and the hired killer lowered his swords. The girl stepped forward and said, “Hello, Mister Dresden.”

“Hello, Ivy,” I responded, nodding politely.

“If these creatures were under your command,” the little girl said in a level tone, “I’m going to execute you.”

She didn’t make it a threat. There wasn’t enough interest in her voice for it to be that. The Archive just stated it as a simple and undeniable fact.

The scary part was that if she decided to kill me, there’d be little I could do about it. The child wasn’t simply a child. She was the Archive, the embodied memory of humanity, a living repository of the knowledge of mankind. When she was six or seven I’d seen her kill a dozen of the most dangerous warriors of the Red Court. It took her about as much effort as it takes me to open the wrapper on a stack of crackers. The Archive was Power with a capital P, and operated on an entirely different level than I did.

“Of course they weren’t under his command,” Luccio said. She glanced at me and arched an eyebrow. “How could you even suspect such a thing?”

“I find it unlikely that an attack of this magnitude could be anything but a deliberate attempt to abduct or assassinate me. Mab and Titania have involved themselves in this business,” the Archive said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Mister Dresden is currently Winter’s Emissary in this affair-and need I remind you that hobs are beholden to Winter-to Mab?”

She hadn’t needed to remind me, though I’d been putting that thought off for a while. The fact that the hobs were Mab’s subjects meant that matters were even murkier than I thought, and that now was probably a reasonably good time to start panicking.

But first things first: Prevent the scary little girl from killing me.

“I have no idea who was ordering these things around,” I said quietly.

The Archive stared at me for an endless second. Then that ancient, implacable gaze moved to Michael. “Sir Knight,” she said, her tone polite. “Will you vouch for this man?”

Maybe it was just my imagination that it took Michael a second longer to answer than he might have done in the past. “Of course.”

She stared at him as well, and then nodded her head. “Mister Dresden, you remember my bodyguard, Kincaid.”

“Yeah,” I said. My voice didn’t exactly bubble with enthusiasm. “Hi, tough guy. What brings you to Chicago?”

Kincaid showed me even more teeth. “The midget,” he said. “I hate the snow. If it was up to me, I’d much rather be somewhere warm. Say, Hawaii, for example.”

“I am not a midget,” the Archive said in a firmly disapproving tone. “I am in the seventy-fourth percentile for height for my age. And stop trying to provoke him.”

“The midget’s no fun,” Kincaid explained. “I tried to get her to join the Girl Scouts, but she wasn’t having any of it.”

“If I want to glue macaroni to a paper plate, I can do that at home,” said the Archive. “It’s hours past my bedtime, and I have no desire to entangle ourselves with the local authorities. We should leave.” She frowned at Kincaid. “Obviously our movements have been tracked. Our quarters here are probably compromised.” She turned her eyes back to me. “I formally request the hospitality of the White Council until such time as I can establish secure lodgings.”

“Uh,” I said.

Luccio made a quick motion with one hand, urging me to accept.

“Of course,” I said, nodding at the Archive.

“Excellent,” the Archive said. She turned to Kincaid. “I’m soaked. My coat and a change of clothes are in my bag on the train. I’ll need them.”

Kincaid gave me a skeptical glance but, tellingly, he didn’t argue with the Archive. Instead he vanished quickly down the stairs.

The Archive turned to me. “Statistically speaking, the emergency services of this city should begin to arrive in another three minutes, given the weather and the condition of the roads. It would be best for all of us if we were gone by then.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” I said. I grimaced. “Whoever did this is taking awful chances, moving this publically.”

The Archive’s not-quite-human gaze bored into me for a moment. Then she said, “Matters may be quite a bit worse than that. I’m afraid our troubles are just beginning.”

M ichael stopped in his tracks when he saw the gaping hole Tiny the gruff had left in the east wall of Union Station. “Merciful God,” he breathed. “Harry, what happened?”

“Little problem,” I said.

“You didn’t say anything to me.”

“You looked busy,” I told him, “and you already had a couple of hundred bad guys to handle.” I nodded at the hole. “I only had the one.”

Michael shook his head bemusedly, and I saw Luccio look at the hole with something like mild alarm.

“Did you get it?” Michael asked.

Luccio cocked her head at Michael when he spoke, and then looked sharply at me.

I gave Michael a level look and said, “Obviously.” Then I turned on my heel and whistled sharply. “Mouse!”

My dog, soggy but still enthusiastic, came bounding toward us over the water-coated marble floors. He slid to a stop, throwing up a little wave that splashed over my feet as he did. The Archive peered intently at Mouse as he arrived, and took a step toward him-but was prevented from going farther by Kincaid’s hand, which came to rest on her slender shoulder.

Michael frowned at the girl and then at the dog. “This,” he said, “brings up a problem.”

There was only so much room in the cab of Michael’s truck.

All of us were soaking wet, and there was no time to get dry before the authorities arrived. I didn’t think it completely fair that I got a number of less than friendly looks on the walk to the garage, after I explained that it had been me who set off the sprinkler system, but at least no one could claim that I hadn’t been willing to suffer the consequences right along with them.

The Archive might have been a creepy Billy Mumy-in- The Twilight Zone kind of child, but she was still a child. By general acclamation she was in the cab. Michael had to drive.

“I’m not letting her sit in there alone,” Kincaid stated.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “He’s a Knight of the freaking Cross. He isn’t going to hurt her.”

“Irrelevant,” Kincaid said. “What about when someone starts shooting at her on the way there? Is he going to throw his body in front of her to keep her from harm?”

“I-” Michael began.

“You’re damned right he will,” I growled.

“Harry,” Michael said, his tone placating, “I’d be glad to protect the child. But it would be somewhat problematic to do that and drive at the same time.”

Mouse let out a low, distressed sound, which drew my attention to the fact that the Archive had fallen uncharacteristically silent. She was standing beside Kincaid, shuddering, her eyes rolling back in her head.

“Dammit,” I said. “Get her into the truck. Go, Kincaid, Michael.”

Kincaid scooped her up at once, and he and Michael got into the cab of the truck.

“I-is y-your h-house far from here, Warden?” Luccio asked me.

She didn’t look good. Well, she looked good given the circumstances. But she also looked soaked and half-frozen already, kneeling to hug Mouse, ostensibly rubbing his fur to help dry it and fluff it out. I’d seen Luccio in action, as captain of the Wardens of the White Council, and I had formed my opinion of her accordingly. When I looked at the woman who’d faced Kemmler’s disciples without batting an eye, whom I’d once seen stand in the open under fire from automatic weapons to protect the apprentices under her care, I tended to forget that she was about five-foot-four and might have checked in at a hundred and thirty or forty pounds soaking wet.