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I scratched at my beard and nodded. ‘I’ve been distracted lately. Maybe I should clean up first.’ ‘Might be good,’ Billy agreed. I sighed. ‘I’m an ass sometimes.’ Billy laughed. ‘Sometimes. You’re human like the rest of us.’
I looked up at her, pain and sudden anger making my voice into a low, harsh growl. ‘Who are you?’ The woman ran an opalescent fingernail through the blood on my desk. She lifted it to her lips and idly touched it to her tongue. She smiled, slower, more sensual, and every bit as alien. ‘I have many names,’ she murmured. ‘But you may call me Mab. Queen of Air and Darkness. Monarch of the Winter Court of the Sidhe.’
I hate being afraid. I hate it more than anything in the whole world. I hate being made to feel helpless. I hate being bullied, too, and Mab might as well have been ramming her fist down my throat and demanding my lunch money.
And the fae have a way of making sure that further bargains only get you in deeper, instead of into the clear. Just like credit card companies, or those student loan people. Now there’s evil for you.
to make the mistakes of youth is no crime, but not to learn from them is.
‘Hoss, this is out of your depth.’ ‘Looks like it’s sink or swim, then,’ I said.
He leaned forward, cool eyes looking past me and into my apartment. ‘Dresden, Am I interrupting anything?’ ‘Well, I was going to settle down with a porn video and a bottle of baby oil, but I really don’t have enough for two.’ Morgan’s expression twisted in revulsion, and I felt an absurd little burst of vindictive satisfaction. ‘You disgust me, Dresden.’ ‘Yeah, I’m bad. I’m a bad, bad, bad man. I’m glad we got that settled. Good-bye, Morgan.’
Morgan looked at me with flat eyes. ‘You think you’re funny.’ ‘Oh, I know I’m funny. Unappreciated, but funny.’ Morgan shook his head. ‘Do you know what I think, Dresden?’ ‘You think?’ Morgan didn’t smile. Like I said, unappreciated.
The five-pointed star has been a symbol of magic for centuries, representing the four elements and the power of spirit bound within the circle of will – primal power under the control of human thought.
She looked up at me and nodded. ‘You see. You’ve been badly wounded, Mister Dresden, and you have found neither rest nor respite from your pains.’ ‘I’ll live.’ ‘True,’ she said. ‘But this is where it always begins. Monsters are born of pain and grief and loss and anger. Your heart is full of them.’
She closed her eyes tightly. ‘I’m scared. So scared I’m sick.’ ‘You’ll get through it.’ ‘What if I don’t?’ I squeezed her fingers. ‘Then I will personally make fun of you every day for the rest of your life,’ I said. ‘I will call you a sissy girl in front of everyone you know, tie frilly aprons on your car, and lurk in the parking lot at CPD and whistle and tell you to shake it, baby. Every. Single. Day.’ Murphy’s breath escaped in something like a hiccup. She opened her eyes, a mix of anger and wary amusement easing into them in place of the fear. ‘You do realize I’m holding a gun, right?’
The Sidhe crowd thinks you’re an interesting mortal pet of Mab’s. The vampire wanna-be crowd thinks you’re some kind of psychotic vigilante with a penchant for vengeance and mayhem. Sort of a one-man Spanish Inquisition. Most of the magical crowd thinks you’re distant, dangerous, but smart and honorable. Crooks think you’re a hit man for the outfit, or maybe one of the families back East. Straights think you’re a fraud trying to bilk people out of their hard-won cash, except for Larry Fowler, who probably wants you on the show again.’
She put them all on, then looked at my gym bag. ‘Still going with the phallic foci, eh? Staff and rod?’ ‘They make me feel all manly.’
‘You foil a Faerie Queen,’ I panted to myself. ‘Survive your own execution. Get away from certain death. And get stuck up a freaking tree.’ I struggled some more, just as uselessly. One mud-covered boot fell off and hit the ground with a soggy plop. ‘God, I hope no one sees you like this.’
I stretched out my hand, adrenaline and pain giving me plenty of fuel for the magic, and called, ‘Ventas servitas!’ Wind leapt out in a sudden spurt, seizing the Unraveling and tearing it from Aurora’s fingers, sending it spinning through the air toward me. I caught it, stuck my tongue out at Aurora, yelled, ‘Meep, meep!’ and ran like hell.
‘The only people who never hurt are dead.’
