Cold Days

Molly frowned at that; I could see the gears whirling in her brain.

“Okay,” I said. “Plan B. Lacuna, come here, if you please.”

After a moment, a little voice said from the direction of my room, “What if I don’t please?”

“You come here anyway,” I stated. “It’s a human thing.”

She made a disgusted noise and came zipping out of the room on her blurring wings. “What do you want me to do?”

“You can read,” I said. “Can you read a map? Write?”

“Yes.”

“You’re on house duty, then,” I said. “If any of the Little Folk come back with a location where a rite is taking place, I want you to write down their descriptions and mark the location on the map. Can you do that?”

Lacuna looked dubiously at the maps spread out on the table. “I think so. Probably. Maybe.”

“And no fighting or duels.”

“What about when I’m done writing things?”

“No.”

Lacuna folded her little arms and scowled at me. “You aren’t fun at all.”

“Your breath smells like celery,” I replied. “Molly, how are those spells coming along?”

“I think there’s some kind of counterspell hiding them,” she said. “It’s tricky, so stop bumping my elbow. I’m concentrating over here.”

I let out an impatient breath and fought against a surge of anger. She was the apprentice and I was the wizard. There were wizards who would have beaten unconscious any apprentice who spoke to them like that. I’d always been kind to her—maybe too kind—and this disrespect was what I got in return? I should educate her to respect her betters.

I made a low growling sound in my chest and clenched my fists. That impulse wasn’t mine. It was Winter’s. Molly and I had a relationship built on structure, trust, and respect—not fear. We had always bantered back and forth like that.

But something in me wanted to . . . I don’t know. Put her in her place. Take out my frustrations on her. Show her which of us was the strongest. And it had a really primitive idea of how to make that happen.

But that was unthinkable. That was the mantle talking. Loudly.

Hell’s bells. As if I didn’t have enough trouble thinking my way past the influence of my own glands already.

I heard a slight sound behind me and turned in time to see Sarissa vanish into the bathroom, moving in absolute silence. The rabbit had given up the statue routine and bolted.

Sarissa had good instincts when it came to predators.

I turned back to Molly to find her looking at me, her eyes wide. Molly was a psychic sensitive. She could feel emotions the way most of us can feel the temperature of a room. Sometimes she could even pluck someone’s thoughts out of the air.

She knew exactly what I was feeling. She had all along.

And she hadn’t run.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.

“It’s nothing,” I said. I forced myself to think my way past the mantle’s influence. “Find a steel needle to use as the focus,” I said. “Should give you an edge against whatever magic the Sidhe are using.”

“Should have thought of that,” Molly chided herself.

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” I turned and walked away from my apprentice to let her work without the distraction of my tangle of Winter’s urges blaring into her skull like an airhorn.

I rummaged around in her fridge and made a sandwich from a bagel I split down the middle and a small mountain of two different-colored deli meats. I wolfed it down. Less than five minutes later, Molly tied a needle onto a piece of wood with one of each of the human hairs. She then placed it gently into a bowl of water, and performed the tracking spell without a hitch.

The needle slowly swung around to point east, directly toward my abducted friends. Probably. There were ways to futz about with tracking spells, but it appeared that the addition of steel to our own spell had overcome whatever the Redcap had cooked up. I extended my senses and checked the tracking spell. It was as solid as one of my own.

“Good work,” I said. Then I walked over to the bathroom door and knocked gently. “Sarissa,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“We’re going out,” I said. “I hope we won’t be gone long. You should be safe here, but you’re free to leave if you want to do so. I think you might be followed if you do, but you aren’t a prisoner or anything. Okay?”

There was a hesitant moment of silence and then she said, “I understand.”

“There’s food in the fridge,” Molly called. “And you can sleep in my room if you’re tired. The door has a lock.”

There was no answer.

“Let’s get moving,” I said to Molly. “I want to make a stop before we track them down.”

* * *

The svartalves’ security guy stopped us before we could leave and informed us that my car had been repaired and delivered, and that they would bring it around for me. Molly and I traded a glance.

“Um. How sure are you that the vehicle is secure?” Molly asked.

“Mr. Etri personally requested a security sweep,” the guard said. “It’s already been screened for weapons, explosives, toxins, and any kind of enchantment, Miss Carpenter. Right now, they’re running it under a waterfall to wash away any tracking spells that might be on it. It’s the same procedure Mr. Etri uses to secure his own cars, miss.”

“Who brought it?” Molly asked.

The guard took a small notebook from his pocket and checked it. “A local mechanic named Mike Atagi. Think there’s a picture . . .” He thumbed through the pages, and then held up a color printout that had been folded into the notebook. “This is him.”

I leaned forward to peer at the photo. Well, son of a gun. It was my old mechanic, Mike. Mike had been a miracle worker when it came to repairing the Blue Beetle, working with a talent that was the next-best thing to sorcery to bring the car back from the dead over and over again.

“Did he say who delivered it to him?” I asked.

The guard checked his notes. “Here. That it was waiting at his shop when he got there, along with a deposit and a rush order, reading, ‘Repair this for Harry Dresden and return it to the following address or suffer, mortal smith.’”

“Cat Sith,” I said. “Well, at least he was on the job while we were out at the island.”

There was a low growling sound and the Munstermobile came gliding up out of the parking garage, dripping water from its gleaming surface like some lantern-eyed leviathan rising from the depths. There were still a few dents and dings in it, but the broken glass had all been replaced, and the engine sounded fine.

Okay, I’m not like a car fanatic or anything—but the guitar riff from “Bad to the Bone” started playing in my head.

“Wheels,” I said. “Excellent.”

The Munstermobile came gliding up to us and stopped, still dripping water, and another security guy got out of it, left the driver door open, and came around to open the passenger door for Molly.

I touched Molly’s shoulder to stop her from moving to get in immediately, and spoke to her very quietly. “How much do you trust your friend Mr. Etri?”

“Etri might oppose you,” Molly said. “He might break your bones. He might cut your throat in your sleep or make the ground swallow you up. But he will never, ever lie about his intentions. He’s not a friend, Harry. But he is my ally. He’s good at it.”

I wanted to say something smart-ass about not trusting anyone who lived anywhere near the Faerie realms, but I held back. For one thing, svartalves take paranoia to an art form, and I had no doubt they would be listening