Cold Days

high that they needed to wear oxygen tanks. He was smiling, and there was something particularly vulpine in it. His canines were just a little too large, a little too sharp. “What a pleasure it is to speak with you.”

“You aren’t going to think so in a minute,” I said. “Let her go.”

He leaned in closer to her and inhaled through his nose. “Odd,” he said. “I don’t smell you on her. You haven’t claimed her as your own.”

“She’s not yours, either,” I said. “Let her go. Don’t make me say it again.”

“She’s just a mortal,” he said, smiling. “A mortal of no station here in Arctis Tor, at court. This place is not meant for mortals. Her body, her mind, and her life are all forfeit, should we decide to take them.”

“We just decided to let. Her. Go.” I began walking toward him.

Something feverish came into his eyes and I could suddenly see every bone and tendon in his hand, tight against his skin. His nails seemed a little too long, a little too heavy, and a little too sharp to be normal. Sarissa tried to speak, but only made a choking sound and went silent.

“You keep coming,” the Sidhe said, “and I’ll keep squeezing. This game is terribly interesting. I wonder how hard I’ll have to squeeze to crush her windpipe.”

I stopped, because I knew the answer to his question: not very hard. It’s only a little more pressure than you need to crush an empty beer can. It’s sort of scary how easy it is to kill someone once you know how to get it done.

“What about Mab’s law?” I said.

“I’ll not shed a drop of her blood,” he replied smoothly. “When I cut off her air or break her neck, she’ll simply cease—which is a waste, but the law is the law.”

And I got a sudden sinking feeling that the Sidhe in front of me, in his black leather jacket and his red cap, knew how to get it done. “You’re not a Cincinnati fan, are you?”

“Ah!” the Sidhe said, smiling. “You see, Sarissa, he’s worked it out. It took a while, but he got there.”

“You’re a redcap,” I said.

“Not a redcap,” he said, snapping annoyance in his voice. “The Redcap, little Knight.”

The Redcap was one of those figures I had hoped was a story. According to what I knew of legend, he got his name by greeting travelers in a friendly fashion, and then murdering them horribly. Once that was done, he would dye his cap freshly scarlet by dipping it in their cooling blood. Odds seemed reasonable that he was a badass. Legend was about as reliable as every other rumor mill on the planet, but looking at the guy, I got the impression that he would smile and have an erection the whole time he murdered Sarissa. Or me.

He certainly expected me to react with fear and caution. Which just goes to show you that no matter how old something is, centuries don’t necessarily make it all that bright.

“The big bad Redcap,” I drawled. “And when you were picking a red cap for tonight to emblemize your power and skill, you went with Cincinnati over Philly? Or Boston? Seriously?”

The Redcap apparently didn’t know what to make of that. He just stared at me, trying to decide whether he’d been insulted or not.

“Man, you Sidhe are a crowd of poseurs. Did you know that? You try to do and say the things you think will push our buttons—but you just don’t get it, do you? Have you even been to a ball game? I caught one with Gwynn ap Nudd a few years back. Decent guy. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

“Do you think your allies frighten me, wizard?” the Redcap demanded.

“I think you’re an opportunist,” I said.

“A what?”

“You heard me. You jump people traveling alone, people who don’t have a chance in hell of defending themselves against you. Especially not when you make nice and put them off their guard first.” I gave him a toothy smile. “I’m not off my guard, Red. And I’m not someone who doesn’t have a chance against you.”

“Touch me and I will kill her,” he snarled, giving Sarissa a little jerk by way of demonstration.

I looked at Sarissa and hoped that she could read deeper than the surface. “That’s bad, but there’s not much I can do about it if you decide to kill her now,” I said. “Of course, after you do that . . . I don’t really like your chances, Red. If she dies, you’ll join her.”

“You wouldn’t break Mab’s law,” he sneered.

“You’re right,” I said. “So I figure I’ll just open a Way back to the mortal world, drag you through it, and after that . . . well, I’ve always been partial to fire.”

Evidently that line of possibility had not occurred to the Redcap. “What?”

“I know it’s not thematically in tune with my new job and all, but I find it effective. Build a man a fire and he’s warm for a day,” I said. “But set a man on fire and he’s warm for the rest of his life. Tao of Pratchett. I live by it. You wanted to face me down in front of everyone, get props for tweaking my nose on my first night here? Well, congratulations, Red. You’re the man.”

The Redcap’s eyes narrowed, gleaming bright, and his foxlike smile widened. “You think I’m afraid of you.”

“The last time somebody swiped my date to a party, it got a little messy,” I said in a very mild voice. “Ask the Red Court about it. Oh, wait.”

The Redcap actually laughed at that, and it was hurtful. Literally. My ears rang painfully at the sharpness of the sound. “It is nothing to me how many cockroaches or vampires you have ended, mortal. I am Sidhe.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Killed some of them, too.”

“Yes,” the Redcap said, and there was an ugly, hungry heat in his tone. “The Lady of Summer. I was in that battle, mortal. I saw her blood flow.”

I nodded and said, “And what makes you think I won’t do it again?”

The Redcap jerked his chin a little to one side and said, “They do.”

I froze.

Dammit, Harry, I chided myself. You’re dealing with faeries. There is always a scam with faeries. There is always a sucker punch on the way. I’d gotten too forward- focused. The Redcap hadn’t been a challenger.

He was the bait.

As if on cue, the wild dancing turned to stillness. The music died. All motion in the chamber, as far as I could tell, ceased entirely, and suddenly I stood in a small glade within a forest of lean, wickedly beautiful figures and weirdly sparkling eyes.

Two beings emerged from that forest, shambling out from the crowd of Sidhe, one on either side of me, maybe fifteen feet away.

The first, on my right, was a huge figure, shuffling forward with its form doubled over beneath a tattered grey cloak that could have covered a small truck. Its legs took strides that were two or three times as long as mine, and when it came to a halt, its long arms spread out to either side of it and rested on the floor. Beneath its hood, I could make out a flat, broad head, as stark as a skull and colored red and glistening. Its arms ended in hands with only three fingers, but they were proportionally too thick and a couple of feet long. They, too, were red and glistening, as if something had been built on a bone framework with flesh and muscle added on over it, but then whoever had made it had forgotten to put the skin on. It dripped little patters of ichor onto the floor and stared at me with very wide, very white eyes that contained only tiny pinpoints of black.

I recognized the thing. It was a rawhead, a creature that assembled itself out of the discarded bones and flesh of slaughtered hogs and cattle. Then they started eating whatever they could catch, usually starting with pets, then working their way up to schoolchildren, and finally hunting down adults. If you caught them early, you should shut them down hard—but no one had caught this one.

As I watched, it rose, slowly, up to its full height of well over ten feet. Its jaws had come from more than a couple of different creatures, and they spread open in a slow, wide gape, into a mouth as wide as a waterslide tunnel. More liquid pattered down out of the rawhead’s jaws onto the floor, and its breath rasped in and out in a slow, enormous wheeze.

On the left, the second figure drew back its hood. It was maybe only eight feet tall, and mostly human- looking, except for the thick coat of yellow-white fur that covered it. It was layered in so much muscle that it could be seen even through its pelt, and its eyes were burning, bloodshot orbs shining out from beneath a cavernous brow ridge. It was the Winter Court’s version of an ogre, it was a great deal stronger than it looked, and if it wanted to, it