JIM BUTCHER: SMALL FAVOR

“Then I was right,” I said, accepting it. “You took it. And you took the memory of it happening.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I deemed it proper,” she replied, as if speaking to a rather slow-witted child. “You would have risked your own life-and my purpose-to protect your precious mortals had I not taken your fire from you. Summer would have tracked and killed you two days ago.”

“Not having it could have gotten me killed, too,” I said. “And then you’d have wasted all that time you’ve put in trying to recruit me to be the next Winter Knight.”

“Nonsense,” Mab said. “If you died, I would simply recruit your brother. He would be well motivated to seek revenge upon your killers.”

A little cold feeling shot through me. I hadn’t realized that Mab knew who he was. But I guess it made sense. My godmother, the Leanansidhe, had been tight with my mother, one way or another. If Lea had known, then it might make sense that Mab did, too. “He isn’t a mortal,” I said quietly. “I thought the Knights had to be mortals.”

“He is in love,” Grimalkin mrowled for Mab. “That is more than mortal enough for me.” She tilted her head. “Though I suppose I might make him an offer, while you yet live. He would give much to hold his love again, would he not?”

I fixed her with a hard gaze and said, “You will stay away from him.”

“I will do as I please,” she said. “With him-and with you.”

I scowled at her. “You will not. I do not belong to y-”

The next thing I knew I was on my knees in the center aisle, and Mab was walking away from me, toward the door. “Oh, but you do, mortal. Until you have worked off your debt to me you are mine. You owe one favor more.”

I tried to get up, and I couldn’t. My knees just wouldn’t move. My heart beat far too hard, and I hated how frightened I felt.

“Why?” I demanded. “Why did you want the Denarians stopped? Why send the hobs to kill the Archive? Why recruit me to save the Archive and Marcone in the event that the hobs failed?”

Mab paused, turned, casually showing off the gorgeous curves of her calves, and tilted her head at me. “Nicodemus and his ilk were clearly in violation of my Accords, and obviously planning to abuse them to further his ambition. That was reason enough to see his designs disrupted. And among the Fallen was one with much to answer for to me, personally, for its attack upon my home.”

“The Black Council attack on Arctis Tor,” I said. “One of them used Hellfire.”

Mab showed me her snow-white teeth. “The Watchman and I,” Grimalkin mewled for her, “had a common enemy this day. The enemy could not be allowed to gain the power represented by the child Archive.”

I frowned and thought of the silver hand that had batted the fallen angel and his master sorceries around as if he’d been a stuffed practice dummy. “Thorned Namshiel.”

Mab’s eyes flashed with sudden, cold fury and frost literally formed over every surface of the chapel, including upon my own eyelashes.

“There are others yet who will pay for what they have done,” Mab snarled in her own voice. It sounded hideous-not unmelodious, because it was as rich and full and musical as it ever had been. But it was filled with such rage, such fury, such pain and such hate that every vowel clawed at my skin, and every consonant felt like someone taking a staple gun to my ears.

“I am Sidhe,” she hissed. “I am the Queen of Air and Darkness. I am Mab.” Her chin lifted, her eyes wide and white around the rippling colors of her irises-utterly insane. “And I repay my debts, mortal. All of them.”

There was an enormous crack, a sound like thick ice shattering on the surface of a lake, and Mab and her translator were gone.

I knelt there, shaking in the wake of hearing her voice. I realized a minute later that I had a nosebleed. A minute after that, I realized that there was a trickle of blood coming out of my ears, too. My eyes ached with strain, as if I’d been outdoors in bright sunlight for too many hours.

It took me still another minute to get my legs to start moving again. After that I staggered to the nearest bathroom and cleaned up. I spent a little while poking at my memory and trying to see if there were any holes in it that hadn’t been there before. Then I spent a while more wondering if I’d be able to tell if she had taken something else.

“Jesus Christ,” I breathed, shivering.

Because though I hadn’t been in on the original attack on Mab’s tower, and when I did attack it I had been unwittingly serving Mab’s interests, the fact remained that I had indeed offered her the same insult as Thorned Namshiel. The lacerating fury that turned her voice into razor blades could very well be directed at me in the near future.

I hurried out of the chapel and went down to the cafeteria.

Being bullied into eating dinner sounded a lot more pleasant than it had a few minutes ago.

The doctor came into the waiting room at ten seventeen that night.

Charity came to her feet. She’d spent much of the day with her head bowed, praying quietly. She was beyond tears, at least for the moment, and she put a sheltering arm around her daughter, pulling Molly in close to her side.

“He’s in recovery,” the doctor said. “The procedures went…” The doctor sighed. He looked at least as tired as either of the Carpenter women. “As well as could be expected. Better, really. I hesitate to make any claims at this point, but he seems to be stable, and assuming there are no complications in the next hour or two, I think he’ll pull through.”

Charity bit her lip hard. Molly threw her arms around her mother.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Charity whispered.

The doctor smiled wearily. “You should realize that…the injuries were quite extensive. It’s unlikely that he’ll be able to fully recover from them. Brain damage is a possibility-we won’t know until he wakes up. Even if that isn’t an issue, the other trauma was severe. He may need assistance, possibly for the rest of his life.”

Charity nodded calmly. “He’ll have it.”

“That’s right,” Molly said.

“When can I see him?” Charity asked.

“We’ll bring him up in an hour or two,” the doctor said.

I cleared my throat. “Excuse me, Doc. Is he going to be on a respirator?”

“For the time being,” the doctor said. “Yes.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

The doctor nodded to us, and Charity thanked him again. He left.

“Okay, grasshopper,” I said. “Time for us to clear out.”

“But they’re going to bring hi- Oh,” Molly said, crestfallen. “The respirator.”

“Better not to take any chances, huh?” I asked her.

“It’s all right, baby,” Charity said quietly. “I’ll call home as soon as he wakes up.”

They hugged tightly. Molly and I started walking out.

“Oh,” Molly said, her voice very tired. “I did that homework.”

I felt pretty tired, too. “Yeah?”

She nodded and smiled wearily up at me. “Charlemagne.”

I called Thomas, and he gave me and Molly a ride to Murphy’s place.

The night was clear. The cloud cover had blown off, and the moon and the stars got together with the snow to turn Chicago into a winter wonderland months ahead of schedule. The snow had stopped falling, though. I suppose that meant Mab had turned her attention elsewhere. Thomas dropped me off a short distance away, and then left to drive the grasshopper back to her home. I covered the last hundred yards or so on foot.

Murphy lives in a teeny little house that belonged to her grandmother. It was just a single story, with two bedrooms, a living room, and a little kitchen. It was meant for one person to live in, or possibly a couple with a single child. It was certainly overloaded by the mob of Wardens who had descended on the place. Luccio’s reinforcements had arrived.