Cold Days

building.

I winced a little as we went by them. Dammit. I hadn’t wanted to turn even the gentlest of Cat Sith’s attentions upon any of my fellow Chicagoans, but I hadn’t worded my command to him tightly enough. Of course, that was a rabbit hole I didn’t want to start down—experience has taught me that you do not win against supernatural entities at lawyering. It just doesn’t happen. I didn’t even want to think about what Sith might have done if I hadn’t forbidden him the use of deadly force.

Maybe this was the malk’s way of telling me to beware the consequences if I kept giving him commands like a common servant. Or maybe this was his idea of playing nice. After all, he hadn’t slashed up the cop and every passerby. For all I knew, he thought he’d been a perfect gentleman.

Molly checked out the parking garage from beneath a veil while Thomas and I waited. Once she pronounced the garage villain-free, we got into my brother’s troop transport and left.

* * *

In Chicago, you can’t swing a cat without hitting an Irish pub (and angering the cat), but McAnally’s place stands out from the crowd. It’s the favored watering hole for the supernatural scene of Chicago. Normals never really seem to find their way in, though we get some tourists once in a while. They rarely linger.

Morning traffic was roaring at full steam, and even though Mac’s wasn’t far, it took us a little time to get there. Clouds had swallowed up the bright dawn, thick and grey. A light rain was falling. Occasionally I could see flashes of distant lightning glowing through the clouds overhead, or hear a subtle growl of low thunder.

“And it was supposed to be nice today,” Molly murmured.

I smiled a little, but didn’t say anything.

Thomas pulled into the little parking lot adjacent to Mac’s, parking his Hummer next to an old white Trans Am. He stopped, frowning at it.

“I thought Mac usually opened up at noon,” he said.

“Eleven,” I said. My old office building hadn’t been far away. I’d eaten many a lunch at Mac’s place. “Guess he came in early today.”

“That’s handy,” Thomas said.

“Where does that saying come from?” I asked.

“Uh,” Thomas said. “Handy?”

I blinked as we walked. “Well, yeah, that one, too, but I was thinking of the phrase, ‘You can’t swing a cat without hitting something around here.’”

Thomas gave me a steady look. “Don’t you have important things to be thinking about right now?”

I shrugged. “I wonder about these things. Life goes on, man. If I stop thinking about things just because some psycho or crew of psychos wants me dead, I’ll never get to think about anything, will I?”

Thomas bobbed his head to one side in acknowledgment of my point.

About thirty feet from the door, Molly abruptly stopped in her tracks and said, “Harry.”

I paused and looked back at her.

Her eyes were wide. She said, “I sense . . .”

I narrowed my eyes. “Say it. You know you want to say it.”

“It is not a disturbance in the Force,” she said, her voice half-exasperated. “There’s a . . . a presence here. Something powerful. I felt it in Chichén Itzá.”

“Good,” I said, nodding. “He’s here. Seriously, neither of you guys knows where that saying comes from? Damn.”

I hate not knowing things. It’s enough to make a guy wish he could use the Internet.

* * *

Mac’s pub was all but empty. It’s a place that looks pretty spacious when empty, yet it’s small enough to feel cozy when it’s full. It’s a study in deliberate asymmetry. There are thirteen tables of varying sizes and heights scattered irregularly around the floor. There are thirteen wooden columns, placed in similarly random positions, their faces carved with scenes from old-world nursery tales. The bar kind of meanders, and there are thirteen stools spaced unevenly along it. Just about everything is made from wood, including the paneled walls, the hardwood floors, and the paneled ceiling. Thirteen ceiling fans hang suspended from the ceiling, ancient things that Mac manages to keep running despite the frequent presence of magical talents.

The decor is a kind of feng shui, or at least something close to it. All that imbalance is intended to scatter the random outbursts of magical energy that cause problems for practitioners. It must work. The electric fans and the telephone hardly ever melt down.

Mac stood behind the bar, a lean man a little taller than average, his shaven head gleaming. I’ve patronized his establishment for most of my adult life and he still looked more or less like he had when I first met him: neat, dressed in dark pants, a white shirt, and a pristine white apron that proved its ongoing redundancy by never getting messy. Mac was leaning on the bar, listening to something the pub’s only other occupant was saying.

The second man was well over six feet tall, and built with the kind of broad shoulders and lean power that made me think of a long-distance swimmer. He wore a dark grey business suit, an immaculate European number of some kind, obviously custom-made. His hair was the color of old steel, highlighted with sweeps of silver, and his sharp chin and jawline were emphasized by the cut of a short silver-white beard. The man wore a black eye patch made of silk, and even against the backdrop of that suit, it gave him a piratical aura.

The man in the eye patch finished saying whatever it was, and Mac dropped his head back and let out a short, hefty belly laugh. It lasted only a second, and then it was gone, replaced with Mac’s usual calm, genial expression, but the man in the suit sat back with an expression of pleasure on his face at the reaction.

“It’s him,” Molly said. “Who is that?”

“Donar Vadderung,” I told her.

“Whoa,” Thomas said.

Molly frowned. “The . . . the security company guy?”

“CEO of Monoc Securities,” I said, nodding.

“Empty night, Dresden,” Thomas said. “You just demanded that he come to see you?”

“Is that bad?” Molly asked him.

“It’s . . . glah,” Thomas said. “Think of doing that to Donald Trump or George Soros.”

Molly winced. “I’m . . . not sure I can do that.”

Thomas glared at me. “You set up Lara’s surveillance crew to go up against his guys?”

I smiled.

“Balls,” Thomas said. “She’s going to rip mine off.”

“Tell her it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have stopped me. She’ll get it,” I said. “You guys sit down; get some food or something. This shouldn’t take long.”

Molly blinked, then looked at Thomas and said, “Wait a minute. . . . We’re his flunkies.”

“You, maybe,” Thomas said, sneering. “I’m his thug. I’m way higher than a flunky.”

“You are high if you think I’m taking any orders from you,” Molly said tartly.

The two of them went to a far table, bickering cheerfully, and sat down, passing by the real reason we were meeting here—a modest wooden sign with simple letters burned into it: ACCORDED NEUTRAL TERRITORY.

The Unseelie Accords had supported the various supernatural political entities over the past few turbulent decades. They were a series of agreements that, at the end of the day, were basically meant to limit conflicts between the various nations to something with a definite structure. They defined the rights of those lords who held territory, as well as the infractions that could be committed against those lords by other lords. Think of them as the Geneva Conventions of the spooky side. That’s kind of close.

Mac had somehow gotten his place declared neutral ground. It meant that whenever any signatory of the Accords was here, he was obligated to be a good guest, to offer no harm or violence to any other signatory, and to take any violence that might erupt outside. It was a meeting ground, where there was at least a fair chance that you might actually get to finish a meal without being murdered by someone who might otherwise be a mortal