the blobby, mud-covered face.
Thomas.
Maeve snarled and stepped toward me, bringing her right hand out from behind her back. She gripped a tiny little automatic in her fingers, though God only knew where she’d been concealing it. She half lifted it, but before she could shoot, gunshots rang out, sharp and clear. One of them hit the ground maybe three feet away, and Maeve bolted aside, vanishing behind a veil as she went.
The smallest mud figure came to my side, lowering a mud-covered P90. She hooked a little hand beneath one of my arms, her blue eyes reddened and blinking rapidly. With surprising strength, she dragged me back from the rawhead while Thomas and Mouse fought it.
The others hurried up to join Karrin, and while Karrin covered us, muddy Mac got a shoulder underneath me and with a grunt of effort picked me up in a fireman’s carry.
“Come on,” Karrin said. “The cottage.”
While she kept her P90 at the ready and Mac toted me, the other two mud figures, Sarissa and Justine, hurried along beside us. A moment later Mac dumped me gently, more or less, onto the floor of the cottage. Karrin kept her gun pointed at the door.
“Karrin,” I managed to gasp.
Her eyes didn’t waver from the door. “Got tired of waiting on you. I’m here.”
I spit the nail out of my mouth and into my hand.
“Everywhere,” she confirmed. “Nostrils, eyes, ears, everywhere the light could touch. We figured out that if you completely covered something, it could make it through that wall. God, I’m going to shower for a week.”
Oh, that was clever. The defense mechanism wasn’t a thinking being, capable of making judgment calls. It was simply a machine, albeit one made of magic, a combination detector and bug zapper. By covering themselves with mud, they’d tricked it into thinking they were of the island.
Outside the cottage, the rawhead bellowed, and Mouse’s snarling battle bark rang out defiantly.
“This is insane,” Sarissa breathed.
“The stones of the cottage have protections on them,” I said. “Not sure how well they work, but they should help.” I looked back at Karrin. “Where’s Molly?”
“Out there, playing Invisible Girl.”
There was the sound of a heavy impact, and Mouse let out a terrible, pained-sounding yelp.
Then it was quiet.
Karrin’s breathing started coming faster. She resettled her grip on the weapon.
“Oh, God,” Sarissa said. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.”
I would have gotten terrified, too, but I was just too tired for it to stick.
There was no warning, nothing at all. The rawhead shoved its arm into the cottage, seized Karrin by the gun, and hauled her out. The weapon barked several times as she went.
And then it got quiet again.
“We have to run,” Sarissa said in a whisper. “Harry, please, we should run. Open a Way into the Nevernever. Get us out of here.”
“I’ve got a feeling we wouldn’t like the part of the Nevernever this place borders,” I said.
“Oh, Sir Knight,” Maeve called from outside. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, you and everyone with you. Or I’m going to start playing with your friends.”
“Hey, why don’t you come in here, Maeve?” I called back. “We’ll talk about it.”
I waited for an answer. I got one a minute later. Karrin let out a pained, gasping sound.
“Dammit,” I muttered. Then I started to climb to my feet again. “Come on.”
“What?” Sarissa asked. “No. I can’t go out there.”
“You’re about to,” I said quietly. “Mac.”
“We go out,” Mac said, “she’ll kill us.”
“If we don’t, she’ll kill us anyway. Starting with Karrin,” I said. “Maeve likes hurting people. Maybe we can string her along until . . .”
“Until what?” Sarissa asked. “Sunrise? That’s hours away.”
Justine put her hand on Sarissa’s shoulder. “But we’ll stay alive a little longer. Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
“You don’t understand,” Sarissa said. “Not for me. Not for me.”
Karrin let out another gasp of pain and I ground my teeth.
“Sarissa,” I said, “we don’t have a choice. Lily just about roasted the top off the hill in a moment of pique. Maeve can do worse. If we stay in here, she will.”
“Die now, or be tortured to death in a few hours,” she said. “Those are our choices?”
“We buy time,” I said. “We buy time so that I can think and maybe figure some way for us to get out of this clusterfuck. Now get up, or so help me I’ll carry you out there.”
A flash of anger went through Sarissa’s eyes. But she got up.
“All right, Maeve!” I called. “You win! We’re coming out!”
I held up my hands, palms out, and walked out of the meager makeshift protection of the ruined cottage.
Chapter Fifty-one
Maeve was enjoying her victory tremendously.
She stood on a pile of stone fallen from the lighthouse, next to the Summer Lady and her coterie, who were still focused upon restraining Demonreach. On the ground in front of her lay Thomas, Karrin, and Mouse. Mouse had been hog-tied and his muzzle held shut with thick bands of what looked like black ice. He wasn’t struggling, but his deep, dark eyes were tracking everyone who moved. Karrin sat with her hands tied behind her back, scowling so ferociously that I could see the expression even through the mud. And my brother lay on the ground, bound up like Mouse was, but it didn’t look like he was conscious.
The rawhead loomed over them, minus one of its arms. The arm lay over on the ground, a jumble of brittle, cracked bones held together by withered strands of some kind of reddish fiber. The rawhead didn’t have an expression to read, but I thought the glow of its eyes looked sullen and satisfied. The Redcap was standing off to one side. Half of his face was a bloody mess, and he had only one good eye now. He was holding Karrin’s P90 casually, with much of the mud knocked off of it. Next to him, two of the Sidhe held Fix’s arms behind his back. The Summer Knight had a bruise blackening the entire left side of his face, running right to the hairline.
But Molly was not visible.
So. I might have been dealt a bad hand, but I still had a hole card out there somewhere.
Maeve hopped down from the fallen stones, still holding that little automatic in her hand, and smiling widely. “You made it interesting, Dresden. I’ll give you that. Your merry band is just so”—she kicked Karrin in the small of the back, drawing nothing but a hard exhale—“feisty.” She eyed the people standing with me. “Now let’s see. Who do we have here?”
Maeve made a gesture with one hand, and the air suddenly felt thick. Mud started plopping off of everyone covered in it, as if it had begun to rain again and gotten wetter and runnier. “Let’s see, let’s see,” she murmured. “Ah, the bartender. Irony, there. Getting a good view, are you?”
Mac stared at Maeve without speaking.
“Please allow me to make sure you don’t get bored. This is a participation sport,” Maeve said, and shot him in the stomach.
Mac grunted and rocked back onto his heels. He stared at Maeve, his expression completely impassive. Then he exhaled a groan and fell to one knee.
“Oh,” Maeve said, her eyes glittering. “That just never gets old.”
Justine made a quiet sound and went to Mac’s side.
Maeve’s eyes fastened on her. “And the vampire’s crumpet. Luscious little thing, aren’t you? And so close to
