Cold Days

Calls it observing the supernatural through statistics. Sends me a regional status update every day, and my spam blockers just cannot keep him out.”

“Hngh,” I said, as if I knew what a spam blocker was. “What’s he got to say about today?”

“That boat rentals this morning were four hundred percent higher today than the median for this time of year, and dark forces are bound to be at work.”

“Boat rentals,” I muttered.

“He’s a little weird, Harry,” Butters said. “I mean, he has a little head-shot photo tree of the people responsible for the Cubs’ billy goat curse. That kind of odd. He blows the curve.”

“Tell him to take the tree down. The billy goat curse was a lone gunman,” I said. “But paranoid doesn’t necessarily equal wrong. Boats . . .”

I bowed my head and closed my eyes for a moment, thinking, but if Butter’s paranoid basement freak was right, then the puzzle piece he’d handed me was woefully unhelpful. I needed more pieces. “Okay,” I said. “Right. Get more data.” I looked up, jerked my head at Thomas, and headed for the kitchen. “Let’s go talk to our guest about his boss.”

* * *

I leaned down to look into the oven through the glass door. There was no light inside, but I could make out Captain Hook’s armored form huddled disconsolately on a coated cookie sheet. I knocked on the glass, and Captain Hook’s helmet turned toward me.

“I want to talk to you,” I said. “You’re my prisoner. Don’t try to fight me or run away or I’ll have to stop you. I’d rather just have a nice conversation. Do you understand me?”

Hook didn’t give me any indications either way. I took silence as assent.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to open the door now.” I cracked open the oven door and opened it slowly, doing my best not to loom. Tough to do when you’re the size of a building relative to the person over whom you are standing. “Now just take it easy and we will—”

I’d opened the door maybe six inches when Captain Hook all but vanished in a blur of speed. I swiped an arm at him about a second and a half too late, but I didn’t feel too bad about missing, because Thomas tried to snatch the little maniac, too, and missed completely.

Hook, who worked for our enemies, and who had been right there in the kitchen the whole time we’d been scheming, shot toward a vent on one wall, crossing the room in the blink of an eye, and none of us could react in time to stop him.

Chapter Twenty-nine

None of us but the major general.

Toot dropped down from where he’d been crouched atop a bookcase, intercepting Hook’s darting black form, and tackled the other little faerie to the floor in the middle of the living room. They landed with a thump on the carpeting, wings still blurring in fits and starts, and tumbled around the floor in irregular bursts and hops, sometimes rolling a few inches, sometimes bounding up and coming down six feet away.

Toot had planned for this fight. He’d tackled Hook into the carpet, where the hooks on his armor would get tangled and bind him, slowing him down. Furthermore, Toot’s hands were wrapped in cloth until it looked like he was wearing mittens or boxing gloves, and he managed to seize Hook by the hooks on the back of his armor. He swung the other little faerie around in a circle and then with a high-pitched shout flung him into the wall.

Captain Hook slammed into the wall, putting gouges in the freshly painted drywall, then staggered back and fell to the ground. Toot bore down with a vengeance, drawing his little sword, and the armored figure held up a mailed fist. “Invocation!” he piped in a high, clear voice. “I am a prisoner! I invoke Winter Law!”

Toot’s sword was already in midswing, but at those last two words he checked himself abruptly, pulling the weapon back. He hovered there over Hook with his feet an inch off the ground, gritting his teeth, but then he buzzed back from Hook and sheathed the sword.

“Uh,” I said. “Toot? What just happened?”

Toot-toot landed on the kitchen counter next to me and stomped around in a circle, clearly furious. “You opened your big fat mouth!” he screamed. After a moment, he added, sullenly, “My lord.”

I frowned at Toot and then at Hook. The enemy sprite just sat there on the floor, making no further effort to escape. “Okay,” I said. “Explain that.”

“You offered to take him prisoner,” Toot said. “By Winter Law, if he accepts your offer he may not attempt escape or offer any further resistance to you for as long as you see to his needs. Now you can’t kill him or beat him up or anything! And I was winning!”

I blinked. “Yeah, okay, fine. So let’s make with the questions already.”

“You can’t!” Toot wailed. “You can’t try to make him betray his previous covenants or terror-gate him or anything!”

I frowned. “Wait. He’s a guest?”

“Yes!”

“By Winter Law?” I asked.

“Yes! Sort of.”

“Well,” I said, starting toward Hook. “I never signed on to that treaty. So screw Winter Law—”

And abruptly, as if someone had just slammed a row of staples into my skin, the mantle of the Winter Knight vanished completely. Pain soared back into my body, inflamed tissue crying out, my bruises throbbing, the edemas beneath my skin pounding with a horrible tightness. Fatigue hit me like a truck. The sensations were so intense, the only way I could tell that I had fallen to the floor was by looking.

And my body abruptly went numb and useless from my stomach down.

That scared the hell out of me and confirmed one of my worst fears. When I’d consented to serve Mab, my back had been broken, my spine damaged. Taking up the mantle had covered what would probably have been a crippling and long-term injury. But without it, my body was only mortal. Better than most at recovering over time, but still human. Without the mantle, I wouldn’t have legs, bladder or bowel control, or, most important, independence.

I was on the ground like that for a subjective week, but it could have been only a few seconds before Thomas reached my side, with Murphy, Butters, and Molly right behind him. I knew they were there because I could see them, but their voices swam down to me from what seemed like a great distance among the cacophony of raking sensations scouring my nervous system. They lifted me to a sitting position—and then abruptly the pain was gone, and my legs started moving again, jerking in a single, gentle spasm.

The mantle had been restored.

“Okay,” I said in a ragged voice. “Uh. Maybe we won’t screw Winter Law.”

“Harry,” Thomas said, as if he’d said my name several times already. “What happened?”

“Uh,” I said. “I think it’s . . . a side effect. Fallout from defying the order of things.”

“What?” he asked.

“Faeries,” I said. “They’re kind of insane, and mischievous, and dangerous as hell, but they all share one trait—they’re good to their word. They obey what they recognize as law. Especially Mab.”

“You aren’t making much sense right now,” Thomas said.

“The mantle of power comes from Mab. And now it’s in me. But it’s still a piece of her. If I go violating her own realm’s laws, it looks like the mantle isn’t going to have my back.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I’d better figure out what the laws are pretty damned quick,” I replied. “Help me up.”

Thomas hauled me to my feet and I looked at Toot. “You know the Winter Law?”

“Well,” Toot said as if I were an idiot, “of course.”

“Where can I learn it?”

Toot tilted his head. “What?”

“Winter Law,” I said. “Where can I learn it?”