Chapter Forty #2
Her expression didn’t overtly change. But I could feel the rage rolling off her. Good Lord. She was boiling.
My own rage leapt up, snarling in answer.
I took another deep breath.
“Look,” I said quietly. “Today will go better for everyone if you stand down.”
“There are five of us and three of you,” Ilyana noted.
“And all eight of us are on a public street, in a town full of people who have recently been traumatized by supernatural violence,” I said. “This could go sideways in about a million ways.”
Ilyana’s pale brows beetled. “The full weight of the White Council is behind us.”
Molly stepped up next to me, smiling a little too wide with a few too many teeth. “Oh, darling. Are we having a size contest now?”
Ilyana’s cold eyes swept to Molly.
“This city is not recognized territory of the White Council,” Molly said. “It is an independent barony. I trust you have a letter of permit from the local Accorded lord to exercise force in his territory?”
Of course she wouldn’t. The White Council was used to going where it wanted to go, and for the most part nobody wanted out-of-control warlocks running around their territories, so they’d let the White Council come clean them up for centuries, even before the Accords came into being.
Bear moved suddenly and swept the four-bore out from under her long coat, staring hard at one of the Wardens in the rear rank, one of the older members, a grizzled man with what looked like a dueling scar on his cheek. One of his hands was behind his back. He froze. Then stared hard at Bear.
“Easy,” I said quietly, to everyone. “We’re just talking right now.”
“If you do not carry a letter of permission,” Molly continued, “then since Baron Marcone is an Accorded member in good standing, under the Accords, the Winter Court will defend his territory against official incursion from another Accorded nation.”
“You expect me to believe you’d start a war,” Ilyana snarled, “over a handful of petty warlocks?”
“I’ve started a war for one soul,” I said gently. “You think I won’t fight for half a dozen?”
Ilyana blinked, but the older Wardens behind her rocked gently at the statement. They traded uneasy glances, and I could feel their resolve wavering.
“And what makes you think there’s only three of us?
” Molly asked merrily, her smile getting wider and more unsettling.
She walked forward a few slow steps, and while I couldn’t see her face, I could see Ilyana swallow in reaction.
“Do you honestly think the Winter Lady travels anywhere without an escort detail? Whether you can see them or not.”
Molly snapped her fingers, and there came a low round of snickering laughter from an alleyway behind the Wardens, and another across the street.
Shadowy figures moved in the latter. Goblins.
Which are not at all like the things you may have seen in certain films or games.
They are to be feared, and the faces of the more experienced Wardens standing behind Ilyana told me that they knew it.
Ilyana stared up at Molly for a moment. Then her pale face turned scarlet and she drew in a breath.
“Ilyana,” the scarred Warden said.
She shot a furious glance over her shoulder, and then glared at Molly, and then at me.
“This will be reported to the Senior Council,” she snarled.
“Tell them the Winter Knight sends his greetings,” I said.
“This isn’t over.”
“You know where to find me,” I said.
Ilyana snarled again, spun on a heel, stalked through the group of Wardens, and slashed at the air with a hand and a word infused with her will.
She opened a Way to the Nevernever, the world of spirit existing beside the natural world, tearing open a seam in the fabric of reality like a band of dim red light, and stepped through it without slowing down.
The Wardens followed her, two of them leaving while two watched us, and then those two bailed as well, vanishing on the open street, in front of God and everybody.
I glanced around. There were maybe a half dozen people in sight. All of them were walking away. Briskly. Scared. And they’d go home and not want to talk to anyone about what they’d seen for fear of being reported as exposed and shipped off to an HBGB treatment center.
Secrets. Fear. Lies. All boiling under the surface.
Fantastic. Just what the town needed.
The alleyways had fallen silent and still again, nothing evident moving in them. “You brought goblins along?” I asked Molly.
She turned slowly back to face us after watching the Wardens go and said, “Did I?”
Molly was hell on wheels with illusion, her absolute specialty of magic.
If she wanted to make you see something, or not see it, she could probably arrange to do so.
Of course, she could also whistle up an army of angry and dangerous Fae if she needed to and had done so during the battle last year.
Which had given today’s bluff a solidity most sane people would be reluctant to call.
If it was a bluff.
Maybe she was just running around with a bodyguard of maniacal super-ninjas these days. Hell. I had a seven-foot, four-hundred-pound Valkyrie with a gun the size of a light pole walking next to me.
Times had changed.
The door to Bock Ordered Books opened, the little bell mounted on it jingling.
Artemis Bock came out and walked over to me. As he did, several of the folks from the ritual I’d disrupted appeared, though they lingered near the doorway like rabbits ready to dive back into their warren.
Bock looked past me to where the portal to the Nevernever had faded, leaving a smear of rapidly dissolving ectoplasm on the sidewalk.
“My God,” he said. “Those were the Wardens?”
“Yeah.”
He swallowed.
“You stopped them,” he said.
“Today.”
He looked down. His scalp was pink beneath thinning hair.
“Would they have…?”
“Probably,” I said.
He folded his arms over his chest and nodded.
“Continue the purification rituals,” I said quietly. “And keep your nose clean. Next time I might not hear about it in time.”
“Yeah,” he said, without looking up. He looked back at his people and then looked up at me for a second. “Thank you. If you need anything…”
I sighed impatiently. The anger that was surging around my chest was disappointed the situation had ended without violence.
“Why?” Bock asked me.
“Why what?”
“You came down here. Stood up for us. Why?”
I scowled.
“Someone stood up for me once,” I said. “Or I wouldn’t be here.”
Molly stepped up and got in Bock’s face. Her expression wasn’t kindly. “He wasn’t the only one who stood up for you, Bock,” she said. “Winter did as well. And now you are in Winter’s debt.”
Bock looked up, his eyes wide, face bloodless.
“You people harmed my little brother,” Molly snarled.
Bock swallowed and shrank back a little. He had a good idea who the Winter Lady was, and what she might do.
“Molls,” I said.
She glanced at me, then rose away from Bock slowly and said, “I suggest you follow the advice of the Winter Knight,” she said in a low, hard voice. “Or I may come collect from you sooner and more dearly than otherwise. Am I understood?”
Bock looked down, jerking his head in a quick nod.
“Enough,” I said gently. My head twinged with the beginning of a headache, a very vague sensation behind the pain-masking effect of the Winter mantle, though it still managed to be almost as annoying as the real thing. “I bought you a little time today, Bock. Use it wisely.”
Bock nodded jerkily. Then he and his folk hurried back inside.
“Well,” Molly murmured, after they’d gone. “You and I have just assisted a batch of warlocks in covering up their use of black magic from duly appointed Wardens of the White Council.”
“Feels good,” I said.
Her face spread into a merry smile. “It does, doesn’t it.”
“Could be it isn’t the best idea,” I said. “Black magic. You know what it can do to someone.”
She nodded once and spoke in a cool tone. “Which is why I wanted to scare them a bit. Winter’s honor is involved in this now. Winter will keep an eye on them.”
“It will, huh?”
Molly nodded. Her voice softened slightly, though her eyes stayed hard. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to them, either, Harry. But I don’t want them to hurt anyone else like they did Daniel. They aren’t playing softball.”
I looked back at the door to Bock Ordered Books. Someone reached up and flipped the sign from reading Open to Closed.
“No,” I said quietly. “They’re not.”