JIM BUTCHER - SMALL FAVOR

I let him have it while he could.

I was going to have to take that dream away from him, dammit.

Whether he wanted to go along with the idea or not.

I slept in the cab of Michael’s truck all the way back to his place, leaning against the passenger-side window. Sanya had the middle seat. I was dimly aware that they were speaking quietly to each other on the way home, but their voices were just low rumbles, especially Sanya’s, and I tuned them out until the truck crunched to a halt.

“It doesn’t matter,” Michael was saying in a patient voice. “Sanya, we don’t recruit members. We’re not a chapter of the Masons. It’s got to be a calling.”

“We act in the interests of God on a daily basis,” Sanya said in a reasonable voice. “If He is being slow to call a new wielder for Fidelacchius , perhaps it is a subtle hint that He wishes us to take on the responsibility for ourselves.”

“Don’t you keep assuring me you are undecided on whether or not God exists?” Michael asked.

“I am speaking to you in your idiom, to make you comfortable,” Sanya said. “She would make a good Knight.”

Michael sighed. “Perhaps the reason no new wielder has been called is because our task is nearly complete. Perhaps one isn’t needed.”

Sanya’s voice turned dry. “Yes. Perhaps all evil, everywhere, is about to be destroyed forever and there will be no more need for the strength to protect those who cannot protect themselves.” He sighed. “Or perhaps…” he began, glancing at me. He saw me blinking my eyes open and hurriedly said, “Dresden. How are you feeling?”

“Nothing a few days in a hospital, a new set of lungs, a keg of Mac’s dark, and a pair of feisty redheads couldn’t cure,” I mumbled. I tried for cavalier, but it came out a little flatter and darker than I’d meant it to. “I’ll live.”

Michael nodded and parked the truck. “When do we go after them?”

“We don’t,” I said quietly. “They’ve developed some kind of stealth defense against being found or scried upon magically.”

Michael frowned. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure it’s really hard to defeat someone you can’t find , Michael.” I rubbed at my eyes and all but slapped my own hand away, it hurt so much. Ow. Stupid broken nose. Stupid Tessa tweaking it.

“You need to get some sleep, Harry,” Michael said quietly.

“And perhaps a shower,” Sanya suggested.

“You smell like dolphin water too, big guy,” I shot back.

“But not nearly so much,” he said. “And I didn’t throw up on myself.”

I glowered at him for a second. “Isn’t Sanya a girl’s name?”

Michael snorted. “Get some sleep first, Harry.”

“After,” I said. “First things first. War council in the kitchen. And if someone doesn’t make me a cup of coffee, I’m going to shimmy dry all over everything, like Mouse.”

“Mouse is too polite to do that in my house,” Michael said.

“Like somebody else’s dog then,” I said. “Crap, I forgot my staff.”

Michael swung out of the truck, reached into the bed of the pickup, and lifted my staff out of it. I got out, and he tossed it to me across the back of the truck. I caught it in my left hand and nodded to him. “Bless you. It’s a real pain to make one of these. Way harder to carve out than, uh…” I shook my head as my thoughts wandered off-track. “Sorry. Long day.”

“Get inside before you take a chill,” Michael said quietly.

“Good idea.”

We trooped in. The others arrived over the next twenty minutes or so. Gard had insisted on taking Kincaid by one of Marcone’s buildings-probably someplace where he kept medical supplies for those times when he didn’t want the police wondering why his employees came in with gunshot or knife wounds. To my amusement, Murphy had insisted on accompanying Kincaid-which meant that the cops were about to learn the location of another of Marcone’s secret stashes, maybe even the name of whatever doctor he had on his payroll. And since it was Murphy’s car, and Murphy was with me, and Gard needed my help, there wasn’t diddly Gard could do about it.

That’s my Murphy, manufacturing her own damned silver lining when the clouds didn’t cough one up.

Mouse was delighted to see me, and greeted me with much fond twitching and bumping against my legs and tail wagging. He, at least, thought I merely smelled interesting. Molly greeted us with only slightly less enthusiasm, and immediately set about making food for everyone. It turns out that Molly wasn’t her mother’s daughter in that respect. Charity was like the MacGyver of the kitchen. She could whip up a five-course meal for twelve from an egg, two spaghetti noodles, some household chemicals, and a stick of chewing gum. Molly…

Molly once burned my egg. My boiled egg. I don’t know how.

She could, however, make a mean cup of coffee.

Once Kincaid had been settled down on the guest bed in Charity’s sewing room, everyone else gathered in the kitchen. Murphy looked strained. I poured her a cup of joe, and she came to stand next to me. I offered Luccio one as well. She accepted with a small, grateful nod.

“How is he?” she asked Murphy.

“Sleeping,” Murphy said. “Gard got him some painkillers.”

I guzzled coffee, fighting off a round of chills. “Okay, people. Here’s the situation. We are bent over, greased up, and Nicodemus and his crew are about to drive one of those Japanese bullet trains right up our collective ass.”

The room went quiet.

“They took Ivy,” I said. “That’s bad.”

“Harry,” Murphy said, “I know I’m the new kid, but you’re going to have to explain this thing with the little girl to me again.”

“Ivy is the Archive,” I said quietly. “A long time ago-we don’t know when-somebody-we don’t know who-created the Archive. A kind of intellectual construct.”

“What?” Sanya asked.

“A kind of entity composed of pure information. Think of it as software for the brain,” Luccio said. “Like a very advanced database management system.”

“Ah,” Sanya said, nodding.

I arched an eyebrow at Luccio in surprise.

She shrugged, smiling a little. “I like computers. I read all about them. It’s…my hobby, really. I understand the theory behind them.”

“Right,” I said. “Ahem. Okay. The Archive is passed from one generation to the next, mother to daughter-all the memories of the previous bearers of the Archive, and all the facts they have gathered.

“All that knowledge makes the Archive powerful-and it was created as a repository of learning, a safeguard against the possibility of a cataclysm of civilization, a loss of all knowledge, the destruction of all learning. It was bound to neutrality, to the preservation and gathering of knowledge.”

“Gathering?” Murphy said. “So…the Archive reads a lot?”

“It goes deeper than that,” I said. “The Archive is a magic so complex that it’s practically alive-and it just knows . Anything that gets printed or written down, the Archive knows.”

Hendricks said a bad word.

“Sideways,” I agreed. “That’s what Nicky and the Nickelheads have taken.”

“With that kind of information at their disposal,” Murphy said, “they could…My God, they could blackmail officials. Control governments.”

“Launch nuclear warheads,” I said. “Stop thinking so small.” I nodded at Michael. “Remember, you told me that Nicodemus was playing Armageddon lotto. He makes big plans, but he plots them out so that he can make an incremental profit along the way. This was just one more scheme.”

Michael frowned. “He was after the Archive all along? He deliberately came here and provoked a confrontation to get you to call her in to arbitrate?”