Proven Guilty

Chapter Thirty-four

I turned away from the table and hauled myself laboriously up the ladder to my living room.

Charity sat on the edge of the couch with her head bowed, her lips moving. As I emerged, she stood up and faced me, tension quivering through her. Thomas, who had a kettle on my little wood-burning stove, glanced over his shoulder.

I shook my head at them.

Charity’s face went white and she slowly sat down again.

I went to the kitchen, found my bottle of aspirin, and chewed up three of them, grimacing at the taste. Then I drank a glass of water. “You make those calls?” I asked Thomas.

“Yeah,” he said. “In fact, Murphy should be here in a minute.”

I nodded at him and walked over to settle into one of the easy chairs by the fireplace with my glass of water, and told Charity, “I thought I could find her. I’m sorry. I…” I shook my head and trailed off into silence.

“Thank you for trying, Mister Dresden,” she said quietly. She didn’t look up.

“It was the baby hair,” I said to Charity. “It didn’t work. Hair was too old. I couldn’t…” I sighed. “Just too tired to think straight, maybe,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Charity looked up at me. I expected fear, anger, maybe a little bit of contempt in her features. But none of that was there. There was instead something that I’d seen in Michael when the situation was really, really bad. It was a kind of quiet calm, a surety totally at odds with the situation, and I could not fathom its source or substance.

“We will find her,” she told me quietly. “We’ll bring her home.” Her voice held the solid confidence of someone stating a fact as simple and obvious as two plus two is four.

I didn’t quite break out into a bitter laugh. I was too tired to do that. But I shook my head and stared at the empty fireplace.

“Mister Dresden,” she said quietly. “I don’t pretend to know as much about magic as you do. I’m quite certain you have a great deal of power.”

“Just not enough,” I said. “Not enough to do any good.”

In the corner of my eye, I saw Charity actually smile. “It’s difficult for you to realize that you are, at times, as helpless as the rest of us.”

She was probably right, but I didn’t say as much out loud. “I made a mistake, and Molly might be hurt because of it. I don’t know how to live with that.”

“You’re only human,” she said, and there was a trace of pensive reflection in her voice. “For all of your power.”

“That answer isn’t good enough,” I said quietly. I glanced at her, to find her watching me, her dark eyes intent. “Not good enough for Molly.”

“Have you done all that you can to help her?” Charity asked me.

I racked my brain for a useless moment and then said, “Yeah.”

She spread her hands. “Then I can hardly ask you for more.”

I blinked at her. “What?”

She smiled again. “Yes. It surprises me to hear myself say it, as well. I have not been tolerant of you. I have not been pleasant to you.”

I waved a tired hand. “Yeah. But I get why not.”

“I realize that now,” she said. “You saw. But it took all of this to make me see it.”

“See what?”

“That much of the anger I’ve directed at you was not rightfully yours. I was afraid. I let my fear become something that controlled me. That made me harm others. You.” She bowed her head. “And I let it worsen matters with Molly. I feared for her safety so much that I went to war with her. I drove her toward what I most wished her to avoid. All because of my fear. I have been afraid, and I am ashamed.”

“Everyone gets scared sometimes,” I said.

“But I allowed it to rule me. I should have been stronger than that, Mister Dresden. Wiser than that. We all should be. God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of love, of power, and of self-control.”

I absorbed that for a moment. Then I asked, “Are you apologizing to me?”

She arched an eyebrow and then said, her tone wry, “I am not yet that wise.”

That actually did pull a quiet laugh from me.

“Mister Dresden,” she said. “We’ve done all that we can do. Now we pray. We have faith.”

“Faith?” I asked.

She regarded me with calm, confident eyes. “That a hand mightier than yours or mine will shield my daughter. That we will be shown a way. That He will not leave his faithful when they are in need.”

“I’m not all that faithful,” I said.

She smiled again, tired but unwavering. “I have enough for both of us.” She met my eyes steadily and said, “There are other powers than your magic, or that of the dark spirits that oppose us. We are not alone in this fight, Mister Dresden. We need not be afraid.”

I averted my eyes before a soulgaze could get going. And before she could see them tear up. Charity, regardless of how she’d treated me in the past, had been there when the chips were down. She’d cared for me when I’d been injured. She’d supported me when she didn’t have to do so. As abrasive, accusatory, and harsh as she could be, I had never for an instant doubted her love for her husband, for her children, or the sincerity of her faith. I’d never liked her too much-but I had always respected her.

Now more than ever.

I just hoped she was right, when she said we weren’t in this alone. I wasn’t sure I really believed that, deep down. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got nothing against God, except for maybe wishing He was a little less ambiguous and had better taste in hired help. People like Michael and Charity and, to a lesser extent, Murphy, had made me take some kind of faith under consideration, now and again. But I wasn’t the sort of guy who did well when it came to matters of belief. And I wasn’t the sort of guy who I thought God would really want hanging around his house or his people.

Hell. There was a fallen angel in my brain. I counted myself lucky that I hadn’t met Michael or one of the other Knights from the business end of one of the Swords.

I looked at the gift popcorn tin in the corner by the door, where my staff and rod were settled, along with my practice fighting staff, an unearned double of my wizardly tool, my sword cane, an umbrella, and the wooden cane sheath of Fidelacchius, one of the three swords borne by Michael and his brothers in arms.

The sword’s last wielder had told me that I was to keep it and pass it on to the next Knight. He said I would know who, and when. And then the sword sat there in my popcorn tin for years. When my house had been in-vaded by bad guys, they’d overlooked it. Thomas, who had lived with me for almost two years, had never touched it or commented on it. I wasn’t sure that he’d ever noticed it, either. It just sat there, waiting.

I glanced at the sword, and then up at the roof. If God wanted to throw a little help our way, now would be a good time to get that foreordained knowledge of who to give the sword to, at least. Not that it would do us all that much good, I supposed. With or without Fidelacchius, we had a fair amount of power of the ass-kicking variety. What we needed was knowledge. Without knowledge, all the ass kicking in the world wouldn’t help.

I watched the sword for a minute, just in case.

No light show. No sound effects. Not even a burst of vague intuition. I guess that wasn’t the kind of help Heaven was dishing out at the moment.

I settled back in my chair. Charity had returned to her quiet prayers. I tried to think thoughts that wouldn’t clash, and hoped that God wouldn’t hold it against Molly that I was on her side.

I glanced back over my shoulder. Thomas had listened to the whole thing with an almost supernatural quality of noninvolvement. He was watching Charity with troubled eyes. He traded a glance with me that seemed to mirror most of what I was feeling. Then he brought everyone a cup of tea, and faded immediately back to the kitchen alcove again while Charity prayed.

Maybe ten minutes later, Murphy knocked at the door and then opened it. Besides Thomas, she was the only person I’d entrusted with an amulet that would let her through my wards without harm. She wore one of her usual work outfits: black jacket, white shirt, dark pants, comfortable shoes. Grey predawn light backlit her. She took a look around the place, frowning, before she shut the door. “What’s happened?”

I brought her up to speed, finishing with my failure to locate the girl’s trail.

“So you’re trying to find Molly?” Murphy asked. “With a spell?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I thought that was pretty routine for you,” Murphy said. “I mean, I can think of four or five times at least you’ve done that.”

I shook my head. “That’s tracking down where something is. I’m looking for where Molly’s been. It’s a different bag of snakes.”

“Why?” Murphy asked. “Why not go straight to her?”

“Because the fetches have taken her back home with them,” I said. “She’s in the Nevernever. I can’t zero in on her there. The best I can do is to try to find where they crossed over, follow them across, and use a regular tracking spell once I’m through.”

“Oh.” She frowned and walked over to me. “And for that you need her hair?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Which we don’t have. So we’re stuck.”

She chewed on her lip. “Couldn’t you use something else?”

“Nail clippings,” I said. “Or blood, if it was fresh enough.”

“Uh-huh,” Murphy said. She nodded at Charity. “What about her blood?”

“What?” I said.

“She’s the girl’s mother,” Murphy said. “Blood of her blood. Wouldn’t that work?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh,” Murphy said. “Why not?”

“Because…” I frowned. “Uh…” I looked up at Charity for a moment. Actually, there was a magical connection between parents and children. A strong one. My mother had worked a spell linked to Thomas and me that would confirm to us that we were brothers. The connection had been established, even though she had been the only common parent between us. The blood connection was the deepest known to magic. “It might work,” I said quietly. I thought about it some more and breathed, “Stars and stones, not just work. Actually, for this spell, it might work better.”

Charity said nothing, but her eyes glowed with that steady, unmovable strength. I thought to myself, That’s what faith looks like.

I nodded my head to her in a bow of acknowledgment.

Then I turned to Murphy and gave her a jubilant kiss on the mouth.

Murphy blinked in total surprise.

“Yes!” I whooped, laughing. “Murphy, you rock! Go team Dresden!”

“Hey, I’m the one who rocks,” she said. “Go team Murphy.”

Thomas snorted. Even Charity had a small smile, though her eyes were closed and her head was bowed again, murmuring thanks, presumably to the Almighty.

Murphy had asked the exact question I’d needed to hear to tip me off to the answer. Help from above? I was not above taking help from on high, and given whose child was in danger it was entirely possible that divine intervention was precisely what had happened. I touched the brim of my mental hat and nodded my gratitude vaguely heavenward, and then turned to hurry back to the lab. “Charity, I presume you’re willing to donate for the cause?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Then we’re in business. Get ready to move, people. This will only take me a minute.”

I stopped and put a hand on Charity’s shoulder. “And then we’re going to get your daughter back.”

“Yes,” she murmured, looking up at me with fire in her eyes. “Yes, we are.”

This time, the spell worked. I should have known where the fetches had found the swiftest passage from their realm to Chicago. It was one of those things that, in retrospect, was obvious.

Charity’s minivan pulled into the little parking lot behind Clark Pell’s rundown old movie theater. It was out of view of the street. The sun had risen on our way there, though heavy cloud cover and grumbling thunder promised unusually bad weather for so early in the day. That shouldn’t have surprised me either. When the Queens of Faerie were moving around backstage, the weather quite often seemed to reflect their presence.

Murphy pulled her car in right behind the minivan and parked beside it.

“All right Murph, Thomas,” I said, getting out of the van. “Faerie Fighting 101.”

“I know, Harry,” Thomas said.

“Yeah, but I’m going to go over it anyway, so listen up. We’re heading into the Nevernever. We’ve got some wicked faeries to handle, which means we have to be prepared for illusions.” I rummaged in my backpack and came out with a small jar. “This is an ointment that should let you see through most of their bullshit.” I went to Thomas and slapped some on him, then did Murphy’s eyes, and then did my own. The ointment was my own mixture, based on the one the Gatekeeper used. Mine smelled better, but stained the skin it touched with a heavy brown-black tone. I started to put the jar away. “After we-”

Charity calmly took the jar from my hands, opened it, and put ointment on her own eyes.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

“I’m preparing to take back my daughter,” she said.

“You aren’t going with us,” I told her.

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not. Charity, this is seriously dangerous. We can’t afford to babysit you.”

Charity put the lid back on the jar and dropped it into my backpack. Then she opened the sliding door on the minivan and drew out a pair of heavy-duty plastic storage bins. She opened the first, and calmly peeled out of her pullover jersey.

I noted a couple of things. First, that Charity had won some kind of chromosomal lottery when it came to the body department. She wore a sports bra beneath the sweater, and she looked like she could have modeled it if she cared to do so. Molly had definitely gotten her looks from her mother.

The second thing I noticed was Charity’s arms. She had broad shoulders, for a woman, but her arms were heavy with muscle and toned. Her forearms, especially, looked lean and hard, muscles easily seen shifting beneath tight skin. I traded a glance with Murphy, who looked impressed. I just watched Charity for a minute, frowning.

Charity took an arming jacket from the first tub. It wasn’t some beat-up old relic, either. It was a neat, quilted garment, heavy black cotton over the quilting, which was backed by what looked a lot like Kevlar ballistic fabric. She pulled it on, belted it into place, and then withdrew an honest-to-God coat of mail from the tub. She slipped into it and fastened half a dozen clasps with the swift assurance of long practice. A heavy sword belt came next, securing the mail coat. Then she pulled on a tight-fitting cap made in the same manner as the jacket, tucking her braided hair up into it, and then slipped a ridged steel helmet onto her head.

She opened the second tub and drew out a straight sword with a cruciform hilt. The weapon was only slightly more slender and shorter than Michael’s blessed blade, but after she inspected the blade for notches or rust, she flicked it around a few times as lightly as she would a rolled-up newspaper, then slid the weapon into the sheath on the sword belt. She tucked a pair of heavy chain gloves through the belt. Finally, she took a hammer from the big tub. It had a steel-bound handle about four feet long, and mounted a head almost as large as a sledgehammer’s, backed by a wicked-looking spike.

She put the hammer over her shoulder, balancing its weight with one arm, and turned to me. She looked ferocious, so armed and armored, and the heavy black stain around her eyes didn’t do anything to soften the image. Ferocious, hell. She looked competent-and dangerous.

Everyone just stared at her.

She arched a golden eyebrow. “I make all of my husband’s armor,” she said calmly, “as well as his spare weaponry. By hand.”

“Uh,” I said. No wonder she was buff. “You know how to fight, too?”

She looked at me as though I was a dim-witted child. “My husband didn’t become a master swordsman by osmosis. He works hard at it. Who did you suppose he’s practiced against for the last twenty years?” Her eyes smoldered again, a direct challenge to me. “These creatures have taken my Molly. And I will not remain here while she is in danger.”

“Ma’am,” Murphy said quietly. “Practice is very different from the real thing.”

Charity nodded. “This won’t be my first fight.”

Murphy frowned for a moment, and then turned a troubled glance to me. I glanced at Thomas, who was facing away, a little apart from the rest of us, staying out of the decision-making process.

Charity stood there with that warhammer over one shoulder, her weight planted, her eyes determined.

“Hell’s bells,” I sighed. “Okay, John Henry, you’re on the team.” I waved a hand and went back to the briefing. “Faeries hate and fear the touch of iron, and that includes steel. It burns them and neutralizes their magic.”

“There are extra weapons in the tub, as well as additional coats of mail,” Charity offered. “Though they might not fit you terribly well, Lieutenant Murphy.”

Charity had thought ahead. I was glad one of us had. “Mail coat is just the thing for discouraging nasty faerie beasties with claws.”

Murphy looked skeptical. “I don’t want to break up the Battle of Hastings dress theme, Harry, but I find guns generally more useful than swords. Are you serious about this?”

“You might not be able to rely on your guns,” I told her. “Reality doesn’t work the same way in the Nevernever, and it doesn’t always warn you when it’s changing the rules. It’s common to find areas of Faerie where gunpowder is noncombustible.”

“You’re kidding,” she said.

“Nope. Get some steel on you. There’s not a thing the faeries can do about that. It’s the biggest edge mortals have on them.”

“The only edge,” Charity corrected. She passed me a sleeveless mail shirt, probably the only one that would fit me. I dumped my leather duster, armored myself, and then put the duster back on over the mail. Murphy shook her head, then she and Thomas collected mail and weaponry of their own.

“Couple more things,” I said. “Once we’re inside, don’t eat or drink anything. Don’t accept any gifts, or any offers from a faerie interested in making a deal. You don’t want to wind up owing favors to one of the Sidhe, believe you me.” I frowned, thinking. Then I took a deep breath and said, “One thing more. Each of us must do everything possible to control our fear.”

Murphy frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

“We can’t afford to carry in too much fear with us. The fetches feed on it. It makes them stronger. If we go in there without keeping our fear under control, they’ll sense a meal coming. We’re all afraid, but we can’t let it control our thoughts, actions, or decisions. Try to keep your breathing steady and remain as calm as you can.”

Murphy nodded, frowning faintly.

“All right, then. Everyone hat up and sing out when you’re good to go.”

I watched as Murphy got her gear into place. Charity helped her secure the armor. Her mail was a short-sleeved shirt, maybe one of Charity’s spare suits. She’d compensated for the oversize armor by belting it in tight, but the short sleeves fell to her elbows, and the hem reached most of the way to her knees. Murphy looked like a kid dressing up in an adult’s clothes.

Her expression grew calm and distant as she worked, the way it did when she was focused on shooting, or in the middle of one of her five trillion and three formal katas. I closed my eyes and tentatively pushed my magical senses toward her. I could feel the energy in her, the life, pulsing and steady. There were tremors in it, here and there, but there was no screaming beacon of violent terror that would trumpet our approach to the bad guys.

Not that I thought there would be. What she lacked in height, she more than made up for in guts. On the other hand, Murphy had never been in the Nevernever, and even though Faerie was as normal a place as you can find there, it could get pretty weird. Despite training, discipline, and determination, novice deepwater divers can never be sure that they will remain free from the onset of the condition called “pressure sickness.” The Nevernever was much the same. You can’t tell how someone is going to react the first time they fall down the rabbit hole.

Thomas, being Thomas, made the mail into a fashion statement. He wore black clothing, black combat boots, and the arming jacket and mail somehow managed to go with the rest of his wardrobe. He had his saber on his belt on his left side, carried the shotgun in his right hand, and made the whole ensemble look like an upper-class version of The Road Warrior.

I checked on Thomas with my wizard’s senses, too. His presence had never been fully human, but like the other members of the White Court the vampiric aspects of him were not obvious to casual observation, not even to wizards. There was something feline about his aura, the same quality I would expect in a hungry leopard waiting patiendy for the next meal to approach; enormous power held in perfect balance. There was a darker portion of him, too, the part I’d always associated with the demonic presence that made him a vampire, a black and bitter well of energy, equal parts lust, hunger, and self-loathing. Thomas was no fool-he was certainly afraid. But the fear couldn’t be sensed under that still, black surface.

Charity, after she finished helping Murphy, stepped back from her and went to her knees in the parking lot. She folded her hands in her lap, bowed her head, and continued praying. Around her I felt a kind of ambient warmth, as though she knelt in her own personal sunbeam, the same kind of energy that had always characterized her husband’s presence. Faith, I suppose. She was afraid, too, but it wasn’t the primitive survival fear the fetches required. Her fear was for her daughter; for her safety, her future, her happiness. And as I watched her, I saw her lips form my name, then Thomas’s, then Murphy’s.

Charity was more afraid for us than herself.

Right there, I promised myself that I would get her back home with her daughter, back to her family and her husband, safe and sound and whole. I would not, by God, hesitate for a heartbeat to do whatever was necessary to make my friend’s family whole again.

I checked myself out, taking inventory. Leather duster, ill-fitting mail shirt, staff, and blasting rod, check. Shield bracelet and amulet, check. My abused left hand ached a little, and what I could feel of it felt stiff-but I could move my fingers. My head hurt. My limbs felt a little bit shaky with fatigue. I had to hope that adrenaline would kick in and make that problem go away when it counted.

“Everyone good to go?” I asked.

Murphy nodded. Thomas drawled, “Yep.”

Charity rose and said, “Ready.”

“Let me sweep the outside of the building first,” I said. “This is their doorway home. It’s possible that they’ve got the place booby-trapped, or that they’ve set up wards. Once I clear it, we’ll go in.”

I trudged off to walk a slow circle around Pell’s theater. I let my fingertips drag along the side of the building, closed my eyes most of the way, and extended my wizard’s senses into the structure. It wasn’t a quick process, but I tried not to dawdle, either. As I walked, I sensed a kind of trapped, suffocated energy bouncing around inside the building-leakage from the Nevernever probably, from when the fetches took Molly across. But several times I also felt tiny, malevolent surges of energy, too random and mobile to be spells or wards. Their presence was disturbingly similar to that of the fetch I’d destroyed in the hotel.

I came back to where I’d begun about ten minutes later.

“Anything?” Thomas asked.

“No wards. No mystic land mines,” I told him. “But I think there’s something in there.”

“Like what?”

“Like fetches,” I said. “Smaller than the big ones we’re after, and probably set to guard the doorway between here and the Nevernever.”

“They’ll try to ambush us when we go in,” Murphy said.

“Probably,” I said. “But if we know about it, we can turn it against them. When they come, hit them fast and hard, even if it seems like overkill. We can’t afford any injuries.”

Murphy nodded.

“What are we waiting for?” Thomas asked.

“More help,” I replied.

“Why?”

“Because I’m not strong enough to open a stable passage to deep Faerie,” I said. “Even if I wasn’t tired, and I managed to get it open, I doubt it would stay that way for more than a few seconds.”

“Which would be bad?” Murphy asked.

“Yeah.”

“What would happen?” Charity asked quietly.

“We’d die,” I said. “We’d be trapped in deep Faerie, near the strongholds of all kinds of trouble, with no way to escape but to try to find our way to the portions of Faerie that are near Earth. The locals would eat us and spit out the bones before we got anywhere close to escape.”

Thomas rolled his eyes and said, “This isn’t exactly helping me keep my mind off my fear, man.”

“Shut up,” I told him. “Or I’ll move to my second initiative and start telling you knock-knock jokes.”

“Harry,” Murphy said, “if you knew you couldn’t open the door long enough to let us get the girl, how did you plan to manage it?”

“I know someone who can help. Only she’s totally unable to help me.”

Murphy scowled at me, then said, “You’re enjoying this. You just love to dance around questions and spring surprises when you know something the rest of us don’t.”

“It’s like heroin for wizards,” I confirmed.

An engine throbbed nearby, and tires made a susurrus on asphalt. A motorcycle prowled around the theater to its rear parking lot, bearing two helmeted riders. The rearmost rider swung down from the bike, a shapely woman in leather pants and a denim jacket. She reached up, took off her green helmet, and shook out her snow-white hair. It fell at once into a silken sheet without the aid of a brush or a comb. The Summer Lady, Lily, paused to give me a slight bow, and she smiled at me, her green eyes particularly luminous.

The bike’s driver proved to be Fix. The Summer Knight wore close-fitting black pants and a billowing shirt of green silk. He bore a rapier with a sturdy guard on his hip, and the leather that wrapped its handle had worn smooth and shiny. Fix put both helmets on a rack on the motorcycle, nodded at us, and said, “Good morning.”

I made introductions, though I went into few details beyond names and titles. When that was done, I told Lily, “Thank you for coming.”

She shook her head. “I am yet in your debt. It was the least I could do. Though I feel I must warn you that I may not be able to give you the help that you require.”

Meaning Titania’s compulsion to prevent Lily from helping me was still in force. But I’d thought of a way to get around that.

“I know you can’t help me,” I said. “But I wish to tell you that the onus of your debt to me has been passed to another in good faith. I must redress a wrong I have done to the girl named Molly Carpenter. To do so, I offer her mother your debt to me as payment.”

Fix barked out a satisfied laugh. “Hah!”

Lily’s mouth spread into a delighted smile. “Well done, wizard,” she murmured. Then she turned to Charity and asked, “Do you accept the wizard’s offer of payment, Lady?”

Charity looked a little lost, and she glanced at me. I nodded my head at her.

“Y-yes,” she said. “Yes.”

“So mote it be,” Lily said, bowing her head to Charity. “Then I owe you a debt, Lady. What may I do to repay it?”

Charity glanced at me again. I nodded and said, “Just tell her.”

Charity turned back to the Summer Lady. “Help us retrieve my daughter, Molly,” she said. “She is a prisoner of the fetches of the Winter Court.”

“I will be more than happy to do all in my power to aid you,” Lily said.

Charity closed her eyes. “Thank you.”

“It will not be as much help as you might desire,” Lily told her, her voice serious. “I dare not directly strike at the servants of Winter acting in lawful obligation to their Queen, except in self-defense. Were I to attack, the consequences could be grave, and retaliation immediate.”

“Then what can you do?” Charity asked.

Lily opened her mouth to answer, but then said, “The wizard seems to have something in mind.”

“Yep,” I said. “I was just coming to that.”

Lily smiled at me and bowed her head, gesturing for me to continue.

“This is where they took the girl across,” I told Lily. “Must be why they attacked Pell first-to make sure the building was shut down and locked up, so that they would have an immediate passage back, if they needed it. I’m also fairly sure they left some guardians behind.”

Lily frowned at me and walked over to the building. She touched it with her fingers, and her eyes closed. It took her less than a tenth of the time it had me, and she never moved from the spot. “Indeed,” she said. “Three lesser fetches at least. They cannot sense us yet, but they will know when anyone enters, and attack.”

“I’m counting on it,” I said. “I’m going to go in first and let them see me.”

Fix lifted his eyebrows. “At which point they tear you to bits? This is a craftier plan than I had anticipated.”

I flashed him a grin. “Wouldn’t want you to feel left out, Fix. I want Lily to hold a veil over everyone else. Once the fetches show up to rip off my face, Lily drops the veil, and the rest of you drop them.”

“Yeah, that’s a much better plan,” Fix drawled, his fingertips tracing over the hilt of his sword. “And I can cut up vassals of Winter, so long as it is no inconvenience to you, of course, m’lady.”

Lily shook her head. “Not at all, sir Knight. And I will be glad to veil you and your allies, Lady Charity.”

Charity paused and said, “Wait a minute. Do I understand this situation correctly? You are not allowed to assist Harry, but because Harry has… what? Passed his debt to me?”

“Banks buy and sell mortgages all the time,” I said.

Charity arched a brow. “And because he’s given me your debt to him, you’re doing whatever you can to help?”

Fix and Lily exchanged a helpless glance.

“They’re also under a compulsion that prevents them from directly discussing it with anyone,” I filled in. “But you’ve got the basics right, Charily.”

Charity shook her head. “Aren’t they going to be in trouble for this? Won’t… who commands her?”

“Titania,” I said.

Charity blinked at me, and I could tell she’d heard the name before. “The… the Faerie Queen?”

“One of them,” I said. “Yeah.”

She shook her head. “I don’t… enough people are already in danger.”

“Don’t worry about us, ma’am,” Fix assured her, and winked. “Titania has already laid down the law. We’ve obeyed it. Not our fault if what she decreed was not what she wanted.”

“Translation,” I said. “We got around her fair and square. She won’t like it, but she’ll accept it.”

“Oh yeah,” Thomas muttered under his breath. “This isn’t coming back to bite anyone in the ass later.”

“Ixnay,” I growled at him, then turned and walked toward the theater’s rear entrance. I took up my staff in a firm grip and put its tip against the chains holding the door shut. I took a moment to slow my breathing and focus my thoughts. This wasn’t a gross-power exercise. I wouldn’t have to put nearly as much oomph into shattering the chain if I kept it small, precise, focused. Blasting a door down was a relatively simple exercise for me. What I wanted here was to use a minimum of power to snap a single link in the chain.

I brought my thoughts to a pinpoint focus and muttered, “Forzare.”

Power lashed through the length of the staff, and there was a hiss and a sharp crack nearly as loud as a gunshot. The chain jumped. I lowered my staff, to find one single link split into two pieces, each broken end glowing with heat. I nudged the heated links to the ground with the tip of my staff, faintly surprised and pleased with how little relative effort it had taken.

I reached out and tried the doorknob.

Locked.

“Hey, Murph,” I said. “Look at that zeppelin.”

I heard her sigh and turn around. I popped a couple of stiff metal tools out of my duster’s pocket and started finagling the lock with them. My left hand wasn’t much help, but it was at least able to hold the tool steady while my right did most of the work.

“Hey,” Thomas said. “When did you get those?”

“Butters says it’s good for my hand to do physical therapy involving the use of manual dexterity.”

Thomas snorted. “So you started learning to pick locks? I thought you were playing guitar.”

“This is simpler,” I said. “And it doesn’t make dogs start howling.”

“I might have killed you if I’d heard ‘House of the Rising Sun’ one more time,” Thomas agreed. “Where’d you get the picks?”

I glanced over my shoulder at Murphy and said, “Little bird.”

“One of these days, Dresden,” Murphy said, still stubbornly faced away.

I got the tumblers lined up and twisted with slow, steady pressure. The dead bolt slid to, and I pulled the door slightly ajar. I rose, put the tools away, and took up my staff again, ready for instant trouble. Nothing happened for a moment. I Listened at the door for half a minute, but heard not a sound.

“All right,” I said. “Here we go. Everyone ready to-”

I glanced over my shoulder and found the parking lot entirely empty except for me.

“Wow,” I said. “Good veil, Lily.” Then I turned back around just as if my nerves weren’t jangling like guitar strings and said, “Ding, ding. Round one.”