JIM BUTCHER - SMALL FAVOR

“Could be real messy, Murph.”

She nodded. “I’ll worry about that after the girl is safe.”

There was a clock ticking quietly on the wall. “The meeting’s in an hour.”

Murphy nodded and reached for her coat. The tears were gone, and there was no evidence of them in the lines of her face. “You’d better excuse me, then. If we’re going to have an evening out, I need to change into something more comfortable.”

“I never tell a lady how to accessorize.”

Going forth to do battle with the forces of darkness is one thing. Doing it in a pair of borrowed sweatpants and an ill-fitting T-shirt is something else entirely. Fortunately, Molly had been thoughtful enough to drop my own clothes into the washer, bless her heart. I could forgive her for the pot roast.

In the laundry room I had skinned out of Michael’s clothes and was in the act of pulling up my jeans when Luccio opened the door and leaned in, her expression excited. “Dresden. I think I know wh-Oh.”

I jerked my jeans the rest of the way up and closed them as hurriedly as I could without causing any undue discomfort. “Oh. Um. Excuse me,” I said.

Luccio smiled, the dimples in her cheeks making her look not much older than Molly. She didn’t blush. Instead she folded her arms and leaned one shoulder on the door frame, her dark eyes taking me in with evident pleasure. “Oh, not at all, Dresden. Not at all.”

I paused and returned her look for a moment. “Aren’t you supposed to be embarrassed, apologize, and quietly leave?”

Her smile widened lazily, and she shrugged a shoulder. “When I was a girl, perhaps. But even then I had difficulty forcing myself to act awkward when looking at something that pleased me.” She tilted her head and moved toward me. She reached out and rested her fingertips very lightly against a scar on my upper arm. She traced its outline and glanced up at me, lifting an eyebrow.

“Bullet wound,” I said. “FBI werewolves.”

She nodded. Then her fingers touched the hollow of my throat and slid slowly down over my chest and belly in a straight line. A shuddering sensation of heat fluttered through my skin in the wake of her fingertips. She looked up at me again.

“Hook knife,” I said. “Sorcerer tried to filet me at the Field Museum.”

Her touch trailed down my bare arms, lingering on my forearms, near my wrists, avoiding the red, scalded skin around my left wrist.

“Thorn manacles,” I said. “From when Madrigal Raith tried to sell me on eBay.”

She lifted my scarred left hand between hers, fingers stroking over the maimed flesh. These days I could move it pretty well, most of the time, and it didn’t look like some kind of hideous, half-melted wax image of a hand anymore, but it still wasn’t pretty. “A scourge of Black Court vampires had a Renfield that got creative. Had a homemade flamethrower.”

She shook her head. “I know men centuries older than you who have not collected so many scars.”

“Maybe they lived that long because they were smart enough not to get them,” I said.

She flashed me that grin again. At close range it was devastating, and her eyes looked even darker.

“Anastasia,” I said quietly, “in a few minutes we’re going to go do something that might get us killed.”

“Yes, Harry. We are,” she said.

I nodded. “But that’s not until a few minutes from now.”

Her eyes smoldered. “No. No, it isn’t.”

I lifted my still-tingling right hand to gently cup the line of her jaw, and leaned down to press my mouth to hers.

She let out a quiet, satisfied little moan and melted against me, her body pressing full-length to mine, returning the kiss with slow, sensuous intensity. I felt her slide the fingers of one hand into my hair, while the nails of the other wandered randomly over my chest and arm, barely touching. It left a trail of fire in my flesh, and I found myself sinking the fingers of my right hand into the soft curls of her hair, drawing her more deeply into the kiss.

I don’t know how long that went on, but it wound down deliciously. By the time she drew her mouth away from mine, both of us were breathing harder, and my heart was pounding out a rapid beat against my chest. And against my jeans.

She didn’t open her eyes for five or ten seconds, and when she did, they were absolutely huge and molten with desire. Anastasia leaned her head back and arched in a slow stretch, letting out a long, low, pleased sigh.

“You don’t mind?” I asked her.

“Not at all.”

“Good. I just…wanted to see what that was like. It’s been a long time since I kissed anyone. Almost forgot what it was like.”

“You have no idea,” she murmured, “how long it has been since I’ve kissed a man. I wasn’t sure I remembered how .”

I let out a quiet laugh.

Her dimples returned. “Good,” she said, satisfaction in her tone. She looked me up and down, taking in the sights again. This time it didn’t make me feel self-conscious. “You have a good smile. You should show it more often.”

“Once we’re done tonight,” I said, “maybe we could talk about that. Over dinner.”

Her smile widened, and color touched her cheeks. “That would please me.”

“Good,” I said. I arched an eyebrow at her. “I’ll put my shirt on now, if that’s all right.”

Anastasia let out a merry laugh and stepped back from me, though she didn’t lift her fingertips from my skin until the distance forced her to do it. “Very well, Warden. As you were.”

“Why, thank you, Captain.” I tugged the rest of my clothes back on. “What were you going to tell me?”

“Hmmm?” she said. “Oh, ah, yes. Before I was so cleverly distracted. I think I know where the Denarians are holding the Archive.”

I blinked. “You got through with a tracking spell?”

She shook her head. “No, it failed miserably. So I was forced to resort to the use of my brain.” She opened a hard-sided leather case hanging from her sword belt. She withdrew a plastic tube from it, opened one end, and withdrew a roll of papers. She thumbed through them, found one, and put the rest back. She unfolded the paper into what looked like a map, and laid it out on the lid of the dryer.

I leaned over to look at it. It was indeed a map, but instead of being marked with state lines, highways, and towns, it was dominated by natural features-most prominent of which was the outlines of the Great Lakes. Rivers, forests, and swamps figured prominently as well. Furthermore, a webwork of intersecting lines flowed over the map, marked in various colors of ink in several different thicknesses.

Footsteps approached and Molly appeared, carrying a plastic laundry basket full of children’s clothing. She blinked when she saw us, but smiled and came over immediately. “What’s that?”

“It’s a map,” I replied, like the knowledgeable mentor I was supposed to be.

She snorted. “I can see that,” she said. “But a map of what?”

Then I got it. “Ley lines,” I said, looking up at Luccio. “These are ley lines.”

Molly pursed her lips and studied the paper. “Those are real?”

“Yeah, we just haven’t covered them yet. They’re…well, think of them as underground pipelines. Only instead of flowing with water, they flow with magic. They run all over the world, usually running between hot spots of supernatural energy.”

“Connect the dots with magic,” Molly said. “Cool.”

“Exactly,” Luccio said. “The only method that would have a chance of restraining the Archive’s power would be the use of a greater circle-and one that uses an enormous amount of energy, at that.”

I grunted acknowledgment. “It would have to be dead solid perfect, too, or she could break loose at the flaw.”