Small Favor (The Dresden Files, #10)

by Jim Butcher

“Per diem?” I told her. “Hell, my bank account is thinner than a tobacco lobbyist’s moral justification. I’ll go hourly.”

It’s hard to think when someone’s trying to kill you. We human beings aren’t wired to be rational and creative when we know our lives are in danger of a swift and violent end. The body has definite ideas of which survival strategies it prefers to embrace, and those are generally limited to “rip threat to pieces” or “run like hell.” No thinking need be involved, as far as our instincts are concerned.

What they say is true: There’s nothing as exhilarating as being shot at and missed. When the shooter happens to be a fairy-tale hit man, it just adds to the zest.

Typically the vocabulary of thugs holding guns to your head ran a little light on courtesy phrases like please.

I gave her a bottle, took mine, and we drank. She paused after the first taste and blinked at the bottle before drinking again more deeply. “This beer,” she pronounced after that, “just saved your life.” “Mac’s a master beeromancer,” I replied.

Given half a chance, the average human being would rationalize the most bizarre of encounters down to “unusual but explainable” events. They are referred to as herd animals by a lot of the things that prey on them, and often toyed with and tormented. On the other hand, no one wants to get them stirred up, either. Humanity, when frightened and angry, is a force even the supernatural world does not wish to reckon with. The torches and pitchforks are just as deadly, in their numbers and their simple rage, as they ever were—and it was my opinion that most of the supernatural crowd had very little appreciation for just how destructive and dangerous mankind had grown in the past century.

There were too many scary things moving around, and if I stopped long enough to think about how far in over my head I was getting, I might just crawl into a hole and pull it in after me.

We’re always disappointed when we find out someone else has human limits, the same as we do. It’s stupid for us to feel that way, and we really ought to know better, but that doesn’t seem to slow us down.

Playing cat and mouse is generally only fun for the cat.

It’s easier and safer to shut the door, be quiet, and turn up the TV. We’re ostriches and the whole world is sand.

Hell, the more I learned as I got older, the more I wished I were ignorant again. Well. Innocent, anyway. I remembered what it was like, at least.

Muscle doesn’t do you any good in free fall, no matter how many Fallen angels you’ve got inside you. Unless you’ve got some wings to put it to use, you’re in the hands of Mother Earth and Sir Isaac Newton.

Tell me where the little girl is.” “I wish I knew,” I panted. “That way I could exercise free will while telling you to go fuck yourself.”

That’s my Murphy, manufacturing her own damned silver lining when the clouds didn’t cough one up.

I made a sandwich out of things. I’m an American. We can eat anything as long as it’s between two pieces of bread. With enough mustard I almost couldn’t taste the roast.

She shook her head. “I know men centuries older than you who have not collected so many scars.” “Maybe they lived that long because they were smart enough not to get them,” I said.

“So,” he said, starting down the street. “What’s the plan?” I told him. “That is a bad plan,” he said. “There wasn’t time for a good one.”

“You’re cutting it a little fine, aren’t you?” “Punctuality is for people with nothing better to do,” I said. “Or for those who have already taken care of the other details,” murmured a woman’s voice.

The next few minutes were intense, and I didn’t dare let it show. If I’d been completely wrong in my deductions—which was possible; God knew it had happened before—then Michael, Sanya, and I were about to walk into the lion’s den together. Granted, that worked out for Daniel, but he was the exception to the rule. Most of the time it works out well only for the lions. That’s why the Persians used it as a means of execution.

“Mostly I just think the glow lights are fun,” I said. “Did you know that they used these things for the blood of the Predator in that movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger?” The smile faltered. “What are you talking about?” “That’s the problem with you nearly immortal types,” I said. “You couldn’t spot a pop culture reference if it skittered up and implanted an embryo down your esophagus.”

Dammit. That’s the thing I hate most about Marcone. Every once in a while he says or does something that makes it difficult to label him “scum, criminal” and file him neatly away in a drawer somewhere.

That was the damnedest thing about these demonic collaborator types. Even though they didn’t work out and practice, they still got to run faster than we dedicated roadsters who actually sweated and strained for our ability to haul ass. Jerks.

Setting realistic goals has always been the key to my success. I didn’t have to win a fight with this thing. I just had to survive long enough to run away.

Hospital waits are bad ones. The fact that they happen to pretty much all of us, sooner or later, doesn’t make them any less hideous. They’re always just a little bit too cold. It always smells just a little bit too sharp and clean. It’s always quiet, so quiet that you can hear the fluorescent lights—another constant, those lights—humming. Pretty much everyone else there is in the same bad predicament you are, and there isn’t much in the way of cheerful conversation.

All those stars and all those worlds,” I continued, maybe sounding more bitter than I had intended. “Probably so many different kinds of people out there that we couldn’t count them all. How could God really care about what’s happening to one little person on one little planet among a practically infinite number of them?”

seems to me that you assuming something you shouldn’t assume.” “What’s that?” I asked. “That God sees the world like you do. One thing at a time. From just one spot. Seems to me that He is supposed to be everywhere, know everything.” He put the lid back on the trash can. “Think about that. He knows what you’re feeling, how you’re hurting. Feels my pain, your pain, like it was His own.” Jake shook his head. “Hell, son. Question isn’t how could God care about just one person. Question is, how could He not

There is a reason that the historical record for many soothsayers and oracles presents them as being madwomen. The Pythia, and many, many others, were simply the Archive, using her vast knowledge of the past to build models to predict the most probable future. She was a madwoman—but she was also the Archive.

The reward for work well-done is more work. “Ain’t that the truth,” I muttered.