JIM BUTCHER - SMALL FAVOR

I wasn’t sure how long we went on like that in the dark. It seemed like an hour, but it couldn’t have been more than half that. The boat bounced across waves, whump, whump, whump , throwing up splashes of spray that coated the bow in a shining crust of ice. My stomach got a little queasy as I tried to anticipate the motion in the darkness and failed.

At length, the rumble of the boat’s engine died away, and then stopped altogether. The silence was disorienting. I’ve lived my entire adult life in Chicago. I’m used to the city, to its rhythms, its music. The hum and hiss of traffic, the clatter of elevated trains, the blaring radios, the beeping horns, cell phones, sirens, music, animals, and people, people, people.

But out here, in the center of the vast, empty cold of the lake, there was nothing. No heartbeat of the city, no voices, no nothing , except the glug and slap of water hitting the hull of the boat.

I waited for a couple of minutes while the boat was rocked by the waves of the lake. Now that we weren’t moving under power, I thought that they were rocking the boat to a really alarming degree, but I wasn’t going to be the one to start whimpering.

“Well?” Sanya demanded, about five seconds before I would have cracked. “What are we waiting for?”

“A signal,” Rosanna murmured. “I would as soon not tear out the boat’s bottom on rocks and drown us all, dear animal.”

I reached into my duster pocket and took out a chemical light. I tore it out of its package, snapped it, and shook it to life. Up sprang a greenish glow that lit up the immediate area well enough, considering how dark it had been for the past half an hour or so.

Rosanna turned to look at the light. Sometime during the trip her human form had changed, vanishing back into the shape of the scarlet-skinned, goat-legged, bat-winged demoness I had seen at the Aquarium. Her eyes, both the brown ones and the glowing green pair, focused on the chemical light, and she smiled, revealing white, delicately pointed fangs. “No magic, wizard? Are you so fearful about husbanding your strength?”

Out this far from shore, floating over this much water, it would have been difficult to put together a spell of any complexity-but I was sure Rosanna knew that as well as I did, if the flames I’d seen her tossing around back at the Shedd were any indication. It would have been a waste of energy I might need later. But I reminded myself about the ice water alleged to be in my veins.

“Mostly I just think the glow lights are fun,” I said. “Did you know that they used these things for the blood of the Predator in that movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

The smile faltered. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s the problem with you nearly immortal types,” I said. “You couldn’t spot a pop culture reference if it skittered up and implanted an embryo down your esophagus.”

At the back of the boat, Sanya started coughing.

Rosanna stared at him for a moment, her eyes unreadable. Then the barest shadow of something mournful touched her features, and she turned away from him. She walked to the front of the boat and stood facing east into the darkness, her arms folded across her body in a posture of tightly closed insecurity, her wings wrapping around her like a blanket.

Sanya didn’t miss it. He’d been forcing himself to conceal a grin, but it faded into uneasy discomfort at Rosanna’s reaction. He looked like he was about to say something, then frowned and shook his head. He turned his face to stare out over the water. Large flakes of snow continued to drift down, flickers of crystalline green in the glow light. Michael started humming contentedly-“Amazing Grace.” He must have learned the song from some Baptists somewhere. He had a nice voice, rich and steady.

I stepped up next to Rosanna and said in a quiet voice, “Tell me something. This maiden-of-sorrow thing you’ve got going-how many Knights have you killed with it?”

Her eyes, both pairs, flicked aside to glance at me for a second, then back out at the night. “What do you mean?”

“You know. You’ve got that beautiful sad aura going. You look mournful and tragic and pretty. Radiate that ‘save me, save me’ vibe. Probably get all kinds of young men who want to carry you off on a white horse.”

“Is that what you think of me?” she asked.

“Lady,” I said, “a year or three ago, I’d have been the first in line. Hell, if I thought you were serious about getting out, I’d probably still help you. But I don’t think you want out. I think that if you were all that pathetic, you wouldn’t be controlling your Fallen-it would be controlling you. I think you’re Tessa’s trusted lieutenant for a reason. Which means that either this tragic, trapped-lady routine is a bunch of crocodile tears, or else it’s hypocrisy on such an epic scale that it probably qualifies as some kind of psychological dysfunction.”

She stared out into darkness and said nothing.

“You never did answer my question,” I said.

“Why not say it louder?” she asked me in a bitter undertone. “If that is what you think of me, then your friends need to be forewarned of my treachery.”

“Right,” I said. “I do that, and then your eyes well up with tears, and you turn away from me. You let them see one tear fall down your cheek, then turn your head enough to let the wind carry your hair over the rest. Maybe let your shoulders shake once. Then it’s the big bad suspicious wizard, who doesn’t forgive and doesn’t understand, picking on the poor little girl who is trapped in her bad situation and really just wants to be loved. Give me some credit, Rosanna. I’m not going to help you set them up.”

The glowing green eyes turned to examine me, and Rosanna’s mouth moved, speaking in an entirely different, feminine voice. “Lasciel taught you something of us.”

“You might say that,” I replied.

Ahead of us and slightly to the right a light flared up in the darkness-a bonfire, I thought. I couldn’t tell how far away it was, given the night and the falling snow.

“There,” Rosanna murmured. “That way. If you would excuse me.”

As she walked back to the wheel of the boat, a breath of wind sighed over the lake. In itself that wasn’t anything new. Wind had been blowing all the way through the snowstorm. Something about this breeze, though, caught my attention. It wasn’t right.

It took me another three or four seconds to realize what was wrong.

This was a south wind. And it was warm.

“Uh-oh,” I said. I held up the chemical light and started scanning the waters all around us.

“Harry?” Michael said. “What is it?”

“Feel that breeze?” I asked.

“ Da ,” Sanya said, confusion in his voice. “Is warm. So?”

Michael caught on. “Summer is on the way,” he said.

Rosanna shot a glance over her shoulder at us. “What?”

“Get us to shore,” I told her. “The things coming after me might not give a damn if they take you out along with me.”

She turned back to the wheel and turned the ignition. The boat’s engine stuttered and wheezed and didn’t turn over.

The breeze picked up. Instead of snowflakes, thick, slushy drops of half-frozen sleet began to fall. More ice began forming on the boat, thickening almost visibly in the green glow of my light. The waves began to grow steeper, rocking the boat more and more severely.

“Come on,” I heard myself saying. “Come on .”

“Look there!” Sanya called, pointing a finger down at the water beside the boat.

Something long, brown, fibrous, and slimy lashed up out of the water and wrapped around the Russian knight’s arm from wrist to elbow.