Cold Days

smartphone, her thumbs flicking over its surface.

Thomas took note of the car as it pulled up, and nudged Karrin. She looked up, then did a double take at the Munstermobile. She rolled her eyes, then apparently turned the phone off and slipped it into a case on her belt.

I stopped the car and rolled down the window.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Karrin said, eyeing the car. “This?”

“I think it’s a company car,” I said.

Karrin leaned down and looked at everyone in the back. “What happened?”

“Inside—I’ll explain.”

We got parked and everyone made their way to Molly’s place, some of them more slowly than others.

“You’re limping,” Thomas noted, walking beside me. “And bleeding.”

“No, I’m . . .” I began. Then I sighed. “Yeah. Redcap shot me with some kind of dinky dart. Maybe poisoned. Or something.”

Thomas made a low growling sound in his chest. “I’m just about done with that clown.”

“Tell me about it.”

Molly opened the door, and the moment I stepped in, Lacuna came zipping over to me. The little armored faerie hovered in the air near my face, her dark hair flying wildly in the turbulence of her own beating wings. “You can’t do it!” she cried. “You can’t just give them all that pizza! Do you have any idea how much harm you’re doing? Can I please fight now?”

“Whoa,” I said, leaning back and holding up my hands.

“Hey, shortcake,” my brother snapped. “Back off.”

“You aren’t important,” Lacuna declared to Thomas, evidently dismissing him entirely as she turned back to me. “I wrote down everything just like you said and now they’re going to get that awful pizza all over themselves without the least regard for properly protecting themselves, and I’m going to fight them for the pizza!”

“In the first place, that is not a fight you are going to win,” I said, “and in the second place—they found something?”

“And I wrote it down like you said and now I want to duel them!”

“No duels!” I said, and headed for the dining table. Sure enough, Lacuna had drawn precise little Xs at all of the sites marked on the map. Most of them had been done with a green pen, but two locations were marked in red. One of them was next to one of the primary sites I’d marked earlier, on this side of the lake, north of town. The next was at one of the secondary sites, a little farther inland and on the far side of the lake.

“Lacuna, were they sure that ritual preparation was under way at both of these locations?”

“And the others were clear,” the little faerie replied impatiently. “Yes, yes, yes.”

“Crap,” I muttered. “Molly, time?”

“Twenty-five minutes to sundown, more or less,” she replied. She came to the table with a first-aid kit in her hands. “Waldo, can you take a look at this?”

“The minute I’m sure Andi isn’t bleeding into her brain,” Butters snapped.

“I’ve already sent for an ambulance,” Molly said back in a calm, iron tone that sounded creepily like her mother. “Andi will die with all of the rest of us if Harry doesn’t stop things from going boom, so get over here and see to him.”

Butters turned toward Molly with absolute murder in his eyes. But then he looked at me, and back to the dazed Andi in her chair. Mac was supporting her. The bartender looked up at Butters and nodded.

“I hate this,” Butters said, his voice boiling with anger. But he came over to the table, grabbed the kit, and said, “Try to hold still, Harry.”

I planted my foot and kept standing still as he started cutting away my jeans at the knee. “Okay,” I said. Karrin was already standing beside me, and Thomas joined us across the table. “What’s the word from Marcone’s Vikings?”

“Strike team standing by,” Murphy said, “waiting for my word.”

I grunted. “Thomas?”

“Lara’s team is ready, too,” he said.

“Butters, what do we have from the Paranet?”

“Dammit, Dresden, I’m a medical examiner, not an intelligence analyst.” He gave the little wound a prod with something and a white-hot needle went up my leg to the hip.

“Nngh,” I said. “Nothing?”

He took a wipe to the wound, and that didn’t feel very good either. “About half a dozen sightings of the Little Folk all over.”

“Aren’t those yours?” Murphy asked.

“Some, probably,” I said. “But I think they’re the rest of Ace’s crew.”

Murphy grunted. “I thought the prisoner wouldn’t tell you anything about him.”

I shrugged. “I figure it was Ace who threw the explosives at the Munstermobile last night, when the Little Folk jumped me afterward. He showed up right when Lacuna ambushed me at the Botanic Gardens. Then when I go to get my friends back from his dad, something else blows up.”

“He’s learned to play with explosives,” Karrin said.

“Yeah, but you’ve barely seen this guy,” Thomas said.

“It makes sense,” I said. “Especially if he’s playing smart—which he is, just by rounding up a group of the Little Folk as allies. He knows he couldn’t handle a straight fight—so he’s kept his distance. We’ve barely seen him, and he’s nearly killed me three times in the past sixteen hours.”

“Hngh,” Thomas said.

“What’s he got against you?” Molly asked.

“He was part of Lily and Fix’s crew, back when they were all just folks,” I said. “They were friends with Aurora and the last Summer Knight. When Mab hired me to find Ronald Reuel’s killer, Ace pitched in with this ghoul hitter and the Winter Knight to stop me. Betrayed his friends. Billy and his crew almost killed him, but I let him skate.”

“And he hates you for it?” Molly asked.

“I killed Aurora,” I said. “His friend Meryl died in that same fight. And you can be damned sure that Lily and Fix haven’t wanted anything to do with him since. So from where he’s standing, I killed one of his friends, got another one killed in battle, and took the ones who were left alive away from him. Then I beat him up in front of his dad. Guy’s got a forest of bones to pick with me.”

“Cheery image,” Thomas said.

I grunted. “What about your nutjob, Butters. What’s his name?”

“Gary.”

“Gary turn up anything else?”

“About twenty updates in all capital letters about boats, boats, boats.”

I thought about that one for a moment.

Then I said, “Hah.”

“We have to move, Harry,” Karrin said.

I grunted. “Gard still have her chopper?”

“Yes.”

“Right,” I said. I thumped my finger on the site on the far side of Lake Michigan. “Lacuna, what’s the word on this one?”

The little faerie was still flitting about in the air around the table, fairly bursting with impatience. “It’s behind big stone walls on a human’s private land, right where I marked it!”

I nodded. “Vikings get that site then. Get them moving.”

“Right,” Murphy said, and headed for the door, reaching for her phone on the way.

Thomas frowned. “We’re going to depend on Lara’s people to back us up?”

“Hell, no,” I said. “No offense, but I don’t trust your sister. Send her crew to the second site.”

“This is damned odd,” Butters muttered.

I looked down at him. “What?”