Summer Knight (The Dresden Files, #4)

by Jim Butcher

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.

“You don’t exactly look like a shining example of young wizardry. And you’re not going to make much of an impression wearing that.” I scowled, defensive, and draped the stole of rich blue silk over my head. “Hey, I’m supposed to wear a robe. We all are.” Ebenezar gave me a wry look and turned to the pickup. He dragged a suit carrier out of the back and pulled out a robe of opulent dark fabric, folding it over one arm. “Somehow I don’t think a plaid flannel bathrobe is what they had in mind.” I tied the belt of my old bathrobe and tried to make the stole look like it should go with it. “My cat used my good robe as a litter box. Like I said, it’s been a long day, sir.”

I tripped over my own staff and fell down. I scrambled over on my back to put my legs between my face and whatever snarling thing might be coming for me, drawing back one foot to kick. I needn’t have bothered. A raccoon, and a fairly young one at that, stood up on its hind legs and chittered at me in annoyance, soft grey fur bristling wildly as though it had been fit for an animal several sizes larger. The raccoon gave me what I swore was an irritated look, eyes glittering within the dark mask of fur around them, then ran over to Injun Joe’s feet and neatly scaled the old man’s wooden staff. It swarmed up Injun Joe’s arm to perch on his shoulder, still chittering and squeaking. “Uh,” I managed, “how do you do.” The raccoon chirruped again, and Injun Joe tilted his head to one side, then nodded. “Good. But Little Brother is irritated with you. He thinks anyone with that much food should share it.” I frowned, then I remembered the half-eaten stale candy bar in my pocket. “Oh, right.” I pulled it out, broke it in half, and held it out to the raccoon. “Peace?” Little Brother let out a pleased squeak and darted back down Injun Joe’s arm and staff to my hand. He snatched the candy and then retired a few feet away to eat it.

“Thanks, uh, Listens to Wind.” Ebenezar interjected, “Injun Joe.” Injun Joe winked one grave eye at me. “The redneck hillbilly doesn’t read. Otherwise he’d know that he can’t call me that anymore. Now I’m Native American Joe.”

“I see someone had a nice big bowl of Fanatic-Os this morning,”

Ebenezar squinted up at me. “Well. First you said, ‘I am a sorry excuse, Merlin, a sad long day held me. I need me a different laundress.” ’ I blinked. “What?” “That’s what the Merlin said. Then you said ‘Excuses to you for my being dressed and I also make lately.” ’ I felt my face heat up. Most of the room was still staring at me as though I was some sort of raving lunatic, and it dawned on me that many of the wizards in the room probably did not speak English. As far as they were concerned, I probably sounded like one. “Goddamned correspondence course. Maybe you should translate for me,” I said.

I lowered the blasting rod, too stunned to speak, my heart lurching in my chest. She lowered her hands and closed the distance between us. She lifted herself onto her toes, but she was tall enough that it wasn’t much of an effort for her to kiss my cheek. She smelled like wildflowers and sun-drenched summer afternoons. She drew back enough to focus on my face and my eyes, her own expression gentle and concerned. “Hello, Harry.” And I said, in a bare whisper, fighting through the shock, “Hello, Elaine.”

Titania, the Summer Queen,

My pen scratched on the paper until Bob blurted, “Mab? The Mab, Harry?” “Yeah.” “Queen of Air and Darkness? That Mab?” “Yeah,” I said, impatient. “And she’s your client?” “Yes, Bob.” “Here’s where I ask why don’t you spend your time doing something safer and more boring. Like maybe administering suppositories to rabid gorillas.” “I live for challenge,” I said.

I need to know why Reuel would have been knocked off.” “Gee whiz, Harry,” Bob said. “Maybe because he was the Summer Knight?”

“A Sidhe Knight is mortal,” Bob said. “A champion of one of the Sidhe Courts. He gets powers in line with his Court, and he’s the only one who is allowed to act in affairs not directly related to the Sidhe.” “Meaning?” “Meaning that if one of the Queens wants an outsider dead, her Knight is the trigger man.”

“That’s so typical. You won’t steal a baby, but you’re too lazy to conjugate.” “Hey,” I said, “my sex life has nothing to do with—” “Conjugate, Harry. Conju—oh, why do I even bother?

The Queen is just the Queen. Queen Titania, Queen Mab. The Queen Who Was is called the Mother. The Queen Who Is to Come is known as the Lady. Right now, the Winter Lady is Maeve. The Summer Lady is Aurora.”

Toot stood about six inches tall. He had a mane of dandelion-fluff hair the color of lilacs and a pair of translucent dragonfly wings rising from his shoulders. Otherwise he looked almost human, his beauty a distant echo of the lords of Faerie, the Sidhe. On his head he wore what looked like a plastic Coke bottle cap. It was tied into place with a piece of string that ran under his chin, and his lilac hair squeezed out from beneath it all the way around, all but hiding his eyes. In one hand he carried a spear fashioned from a battered old yellow Number 2 pencil, some twine, and what must have been a straight pin, and he wore a little blue plastic cocktail sword through another piece of twine on his belt.

“Is that a pizza box you have there, Harry?” I held the box out and opened it, showing the rest of the pizza. There was a collective “Ooooo” from the faeries, and they all pressed to the very edge of the circle, until it flattened their little noses, staring at the pizza in fascinated lust.

Footsteps came down the alley, then Billy stepped out of the shadows, pulling his sweatshirt down over his muscular stomach. I felt a brief and irrational surge of jealousy. I don’t have a muscular stomach. I’m not overlapping my belt or anything, but I don’t have abs of steel. I don’t even have abs of bronze. Maybe abs of plastic.

“What was that all about?” Billy murmured. “Asking it the same thing three times, I mean.” “It’s a binding,” I murmured in reply. “Faeries aren’t allowed to speak a lie, and if a faerie says something three times, it has to make sure that it is true. It’s bound to fulfill a promise spoken thrice.”

I reached out with a shaking hand to the crystal ewer on the table. I clenched it. It clinked and rattled against the glass as I poured cool, sparkling water into it. Maeve’s smile grew sharper. “Harry,” Billy said, his voice uncertain. “Didn’t you just say something bad about—you know, taking food or drink from fa—uh, from these people?” I put the pitcher down and picked up the glass of water. Jen rubbed her cheek against Maeve’s thigh and murmured, “They never really change, do they?” “No,” Maeve said. “The males all fall to the same thing. Isn’t it delicious?” I unbuttoned the fly in my jeans, undid the zipper a little, and dumped the cold water directly down my pants.

Talos regarded me with that same quiet, opaque expression. “She will be here when she will be here. I cannot hurry the sunrise, nor the Lady.” I started to tell him where he could stick his sunrise,

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.”

I guess the ghoul shouldn’t have laughed. Murphy’s eyes cleared and hardened. The gun steadied, and she said, “Taste this, bitch.” Murphy started shooting.

The plant monster— No, wait. I couldn’t possibly refer to that thing as a “plant monster.” I’d be a laughingstock. It’s hard to give a monster a cool name on the spur of the moment, but I used a name I’d heard Bob throw out before. The chlorofiend

The chlorofiend screamed in protest and frustration, lifting the stumps (hah hah, get it, stumps?) of its arms in feeble defense.

The last thing the twenty-first century wants to admit is that it might not know everything.”

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.” I regarded her, frowning. “And what do you think?” “I think you need a haircut.”

“And consider a haircut. You look like a dandelion.”

“Bite me, faerie fruitcake.”

“Just like old times,” I wheezed. “Yeah, just like old times, Elaine. You backbiting, poisonous, treacherous . . .” And then a thought hit me. Just like old times. “. . . deceitful, wicked, clever girl. If this works I’ll buy you a pony.”

“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.”

The Gatekeeper turned his head toward me and became still for a moment. Then he reached his other gloved hand into his hood. He made a strangled, muffled sound. “Hi,” I said. King of wit, that’s me.

That was me on the staircase to Chicago-Over-Chicago. Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces. But all I could think to say, between panting breaths, was, “Yeah. Sure. They couldn’t possibly have made this an escalator.”

“Okay, folks!” I shouted. “We run forward and get to the river! Don’t stop to slug it out with anyone! Don’t stop until you’re standing in the water!” Or, I thought, until some faerie soldier rips your legs off.

She was also mad. Loopy as a crochet convention.

The noise was deafening, and no one could have heard me anyway as I let out my own battle cry, which I figured was worth a shot. What the hell. “I don’t believe in faeries!”

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.

“What could you possibly know that matters now?” I gave her a cold smile and said, “The phone number to Pizza Spress.” I opened the bag and snarled, “Get her, Toot!”

“And what can this little thing do?” Toot blew another little blast on his trumpet and shouted, voice shrill, “In the name of the Pizza Lord! Charge!” And the valise exploded in a cloud of crimson sparkles as a swarm of pixies, all armed with cold steel blades sheathed in orange plastic, rose up and streaked toward Aurora in a cloud of red sparkles and glinting knives. She met my eyes as the pixies came for her, and I saw the sudden fear, the recognition of what was coming for her. She lifted a hand, golden power gathering there, but one of the pixies reached her, box knife flashing, and ripped across her hand with its blade. She screamed, blood flowing, and the golden light dimmed.

“Wait. You don’t understand. I just wanted it to stop. Wanted the hurting to stop.” I smoothed a bloodied lock of hair from her eyes and felt very tired as I said, “The only people who never hurt are dead.”

“I died,” I said. “I died and someone made a clerical error and this is heaven.”