Cold Days (52 page)

   Chapter   

Fifty-two

I
t’s impossible to know how something is going to arrive when you summon it.

Sometimes it’s huge and dramatic, like it was with Titania. Sometimes they come in a burst of thunder or flame. Once, this thing I’d summoned arrived in a shower of rotting meat, and it took me a month to get the smell out of my old lab. Less often, they simply appear, like a slide-show image suddenly projected on the wall, drama-free.

Mab came in a bell tone of sudden, awful, absolute silence.

There was a flash—not of light, but of sudden snow, of frost that abruptly blanketed everything on the hilltop and gathered thick on my eyelashes. I reached up a hand to flick the snowflakes out of my eyes, and when I lowered it, Mab was there, again in her crow black dress, with her midnight eyes and ebon hair, floating three feet off the ground. The frost was spreading from her, covering the hilltop, and the temperature dropped by twenty degrees.

In the same instant, everything on the hilltop ceased moving. There was no wind. There were no fitful drops of rain. Just pure, brittle, crystalline silence and a sudden bleak black presence that made me feel like hiding behind something, very quietly.

Mab’s dark, bleak gaze took in the hilltop at a glance, and stopped on Lily and her supporting coterie. Mab’s left eye twitched once. And she spoke in a low, dreadfully precise voice. “Cease. This. Rudeness. At once.”

Lily suddenly stared at Mab with wide eyes, like a teenager who had been walked in upon while making out in the living room. The confidence of her stance faltered, and she abruptly lowered her hand. There was a sigh, as of completed labor, from her crew. I checked Demonreach. The guardian spirit had ceased to look slow-motion windblown, and simply stood in the opening to the lighthouse, motionless.

Lily stared at Mab for a few seconds. Then she lifted her chin in defiance and took a few steps, until she stood shoulder to shoulder with Maeve.

Mab made a low, disgusted sound and turned to face me. “I have heeded your summons; yet I would not enter this domain unless specifically bidden. Have I your permission to do so?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, you do.”

Mab nodded her head slightly, and descended to the ground. From me, she turned to Demonreach. “I thank you for your patience and your assistance in this matter. You could have reacted differently but chose not to. I am aware of the decision. It will not be forgotten.”

Demonreach bowed its head, barely, a gesture of acknowledgment, not cooperation or compliance.

Once she had seen that, something seemed to ease out of Mab. It was hard to say what gave me that impression, yet I had the same sense of relief I would have felt upon seeing someone remove his hand from the grip of a firearm.

Mab turned back to me and eyed me up and down. She quirked one eyebrow, very slightly, somehow conveying layers of disapproval toward multiple aspects of my appearance, conduct, and situation, and said, “Finally.”

“There’s been a lot on my mind,” I replied.

“It seems unlikely that your cares will lighten,” Queen Mab replied. “Improve your mind.”

I was going to say something smart-ass, but said mind noted that maybe I could wait until my bacon was entirely out of the fire before I did. I decided to pay attention to my mind and bowed my head in Mab’s direction instead. I felt like I’d gotten a little smarter already. Baby steps.

Then Mab turned to Maeve.

The Winter Lady faced the Queen of Air and Darkness with cold fury in her eyes and a smile on her lips. “So,” Maeve said. “You come in black. You come as a judge. But then, you always did that with me. But it’s just a game.”

“How a game?” Mab asked.

“You have already judged. Passed sentence. And dispatched your executioner.”

“You have duties. You have neglected them. What did you expect?”

“From you?” Maeve said bitterly. “Nothing.”

“Nothing is precisely what I have done,” Mab said. “For too long. Yet to lose you presents a danger of its own. I would prefer it if you allowed me to assist you to return to your duties.”

“I’m sure you
would
,” Maeve sneered. “I’m sure you would enjoy torturing me to the brink of sanity to make me a good little automaton again.”

Mab’s reply was a second slower coming than it should have been. “No, Maeve.”

Maeve ground her teeth. “No one controls
Maeve
.”

Frost formed on Mab’s soot black lashes. “Oh, child.”

The words had weight to them, and finality—like the lid to a coffin.

“I will
never
be your good little hunting falcon again,” Maeve continued. “I will never bow my knee to anyone again, especially not to a jealous hag who envies everything she sees in me.”

“Envy?” Mab asked.

Maeve cut loose with another one of those lithium-laced laughs. “Envy! The great and mighty
Mab
, envious of her little girl. Because I have something you will
never
have, Mother.”

“And what is that?” Mab asked.

“Choice,”
Maeve snarled.

“Stop,” Mab snapped—but not in time.

Maeve bent her elbow to point her little gun casually across her body and, without looking, put a bullet into Lily’s left temple.

“No!” Fix blurted, suddenly struggling against the Sidhe holding him.

Lily froze into absolute stillness for a second, her beautiful face confused.

Then she fell like the petal of a dying flower.

“Lily!” Fix screamed, his face contorted with agony. He fought wildly, though he couldn’t escape, lunging toward Maeve, paying no attention whatsoever to his captors. For their part, Winter and Summer fae alike seemed stunned into near-paralysis, eyes locked onto Lily’s fallen form.

Mab stared at Lily for a long second, her eyes wide with an echo of the same shock. “What have you
done
?”

Maeve threw back her head and howled mocking, triumphant laughter, lifting her hands into the air.

“Did you think I did not
know
why you prepared Sarissa, hag?” she half sang. “You wrought her into a vessel of Faerie. Rejoice! Thy will is done!”

I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about for a second—but then I saw it.

Fire flickered to life over the late Summer Lady. It did not consume Lily. Rather, it gathered itself into green and gold light, a shape that vaguely mirrored Lily’s own, arms spread out as she lay prostrate upon the frost-covered earth. Then, with a gathering shriek, the fire suddenly condensed into a form, the shape of something that looked like an eagle or a large hawk. Blinding light spread over the hilltop, and the hawk suddenly flashed from Lily’s fallen form.

Directly into Sarissa.

Sarissa’s eyes widened in horror, and she lifted her arms in an instinctive defensive gesture. The hawk-shaped Summer fire, the mantle of the Summer Lady, plunged through Sarissa’s upraised arms and
into
her chest, at the heart. Her body arched into a bow. She let out a scream, and green and gold light shone from her opened mouth like a spotlight, throwing fresh, sharp shadows across the hilltop.

Then her scream faded into a weeping, gurgling moan, and she fell to the earth, body curling into a shuddering fetal position.

“Mantle passed.” Maeve tittered. “Nearest vessel filled. The seasons turn and turn and turn.”

Mab’s eyes were wide as she stared at Maeve.

“Oh,
oh
!” Maeve said, her body twisting into a spontaneous little dance of pure glee. “You never saw that coming, did you, Mother? It never even
occurred
to you, did it?” Her own eyes widened in lunatic intensity. “And how will you slay me now? Whither would
my
mantle go? Where is the nearest vessel
now
? Some hapless mortal, perhaps, ignorant of its true nature? The instrument of some foe of yours, in alliance with me, ready to steal away the mantle and leave you vulnerable?” Maeve giggled. “I can play chess
too
, Mother. Better now than
ever
you could. And I am now less a liability to you alive than dead.”

“You do not understand what you have done,” Mab said quietly.

“I know
exactly
what I have done,” Maeve snarled. “I have
beaten
you. This was never about the sleepers, or this accursed isle, or the lives of mortal insects. This was about beating
you
, you hidebound hag. About using your own games against you. Kill me now, and you risk destroying the balance of Winter and Summer forever, throwing all into chaos.”

Sarissa lay on the ground, moaning.

“And it was about taking
her
away from you,” Maeve gloated. “How many mortal caterwauls or sporting events will the Winter Queen attend with the Summer Lady? And every time you think of her, you remember her, you will know that
I
took her from you.”

Mab’s black eyes went to Sarissa for a moment.

“The blame for this lies with me,” Mab said quietly. “I cared too much.”

I realized something then, in that moment when Mab spoke. She wasn’t reacting as she should have been. Cold rage, seething anger, megalomaniacal outrage—any of those would have been something I would have considered utterly within her character. But there was none of that in her voice or face.

Just . . . regret. And resolution.

Mab knew something—something Maeve didn’t.

“Remember that when this world is in ashes, Mother,” Maeve said, “for you cannot risk my death this night, and I will not lift a
finger
to aid you in the Night to come. Without the Winter Lady’s power, your downfall is simply a matter of time—and not much of that. After this night, you will not see me again.”

“Yes,” Mab said, though to which statement was unclear.

“I have choice, Mother, while you will be destroyed in your shackles,” Maeve said. “You will die, and I will have freedom. At
last
.”

“To fulfill one’s purpose is not to be a slave, my daughter,” Mab said. “And you are not free, child, any more than a knife is free because it leaves its sheath and is thrust into a corpse.”

“Choice is
power
,” Maeve spat in reply. “Shall I make more choices this night, to demonstrate?”

She lifted the little pistol again and pointed it at me.

Karrin drew a sharp breath.

And I suddenly understood what was happening; I understood what Mab knew that Maeve didn’t.

Sarissa wasn’t the only Faerie vessel on the hilltop. She was simply the one Maeve had been
meant
to see.

There was one other person there who had been spending time with a powerful fae.

Who had a relationship with one that was deeper and more significant than a casual or formal acquaintance.

Whose life had been methodically, deliberately, and covertly reshaped for the purpose.

Who had been extensively prepared by one of the Sidhe.

“Maeve,” I said in a panic. “Don’t! You’re killing yourself. You haven’t won. You just can’t see it.”

Maeve cackled in delight. “Can’t I?”

“Being able to choose to tell lies isn’t a freaking superpower, Maeve,” I said. “Because it means you can always make the
wrong
choice. It means you can lie to
yourself
.”

Maeve’s smile turned positively sexual, her eyes bright and shining.

“Two plus two is
five
,” she said, and rotated the gun sideways, the barrel still pointed at my eye.

Mab moved her little finger.

Karrin’s hands flew out from behind her back in a shower of broken chips of black ice. She tore her little holdout gun from a concealed ankle holster.

“No!” I shouted.

Two shots rang out, almost simultaneously.

Something hissed spitefully past my ear.

A neat, round black hole appeared just to the side of Maeve’s nose, at the fine line of her cheekbone.

Maeve blinked twice. Her face fell into what was almost precisely the same expression of confusion Lily’s had. A trickle of blood ran from the hole.

And then she fell, like an icicle in a warm sunbeam.

“Dammit, no,” I whispered.

Deep blue fire gathered over the fallen Winter Lady. It coalesced with an ugly howl into the outline of a serpent, which coiled and then lashed out in a strike that carried its blazing form fifteen feet, to the nearest corner of the ruined cottage . . .

. . . where Molly, behind her veil, had been crouched and waiting for a chance to aid me.

The serpent of Winter cold plunged into her chest, shattering her veil as it struck, and my apprentice’s expression was twisted in startled horror. She didn’t even have time to flinch. It struck, and she fell back against the side of the cottage, her legs buckling as if the muscles in them had forgotten how to move.

Molly looked up at me, her expression bewildered, confused, and she barely managed to gasp out, “Harry?”

And then she, too, collapsed to the ground, shuddering and unconscious.

“Oh, God,” I breathed. “Oh, God.”

Molly.

   Chapter   

Fifty-three

T
wo Queens of Faerie lay dead.

Long live the Queens.

Everyone was shocked, still.

I turned to the retinues of the fallen Queens and said, “Let Fix go. Now.”

They released the smaller man, and he went at once to Lily’s side, his face still wrenched with grief.

“You will put down anything you took from my friends,” I told the fae in a level voice. “Then you will withdraw as far down the hill as the wall will allow. If I see any of you try anything violent, you will never leave this island. Am I understood?”

I didn’t look like much, but Mab was looming right over one of my shoulders, and Demonreach over the other, so they took me seriously—even the rawhead. They all moved away, breaking into two groups as they went.

“Harry,” Karrin said. “What just happened? Is Molly all right?”

I stared hard at Mab. “I don’t know,” I said to Karrin. “Can you and Justine get them both into the cottage? Just . . . make sure they don’t swallow their own tongues or something.” I looked over at Justine. “How you doing, Mac?”

Mac gave me a weary, shaky thumbs-up.

Justine looked up from tending to him. “I don’t think there’s too much bleeding. But we need to get this dirt washed off of him.”

“There’s a pump by the door to the cottage,” I said. I looked around and frowned at Demonreach. “Hey, make yourself useful and help them carry the wounded inside.”

Demonreach eyed me.

But it did so, lumbering forward to pick Molly and then Sarissa up, very carefully, the way a person would carry an infant, one in each arm. Then it walked over to the cottage, carrying them. Karrin, meanwhile, went to Justine, and between the two of them, they were able to get Mac on his feet and hobbling into the cottage. I went and managed to drag Thomas over my shoulder. I toted his unconscious form to the cottage, too, and told Mouse, “Stay with him, boy.”

Mouse made a distressed noise, and looked over at Molly. He sat down on the floor halfway between the two of them, and looked back and forth.

“Just have to have a little campout until dawn,” I said. “We’ll take care of them.”

Mouse sighed.

“Harry,” Karrin began.

“Gun,” I said quietly, and held out a hand.

She blinked at me, but she checked it, engaged the safety, and handed it over.

“Stay here,” I said, moving toward the door.

“Harry, what are y—”

“Stay
here
,” I snarled, furious. I took the safety off and left the cottage to stalk over to Mab.

As I crossed to her, her black gown and hair became storm-cloud grey, then silver, then white again.

“Yes, my Knight?” she asked me.

I started walking around the base of the tower, away from the cottage. “Could you please come this way?”

She arched a brow but did, moving over the ground with the same approximate weight as moonlight.

I walked until we were out of sight of the cottage and the fae down the hill. Then I thumbed back the hammer on the little gun, spun, and put the barrel against Mab’s forehead.

Mab stopped and regarded me with luminous unblinking eyes. “What is the meaning of this?”

“It’s still Halloween,” I said, shaking with exhaustion and rage. “And I am in
no
mood for games. I want answers.”

“I have turned villages to stone for gestures less insulting than this one,” Mab said in a level tone. “But I am your guest here. And you are clearly overwrought.”

“You’re goddamned right I’m overwrought,” I growled. “You set me up. That’s one thing. I walked into it with open eyes. I get it, and I’ll deal with it. But you set
Molly
up. Give me one good reason not to put a bullet through your head right now.”

“First,” Mab said, “because you would not survive to finish pulling the trigger. But as threatening your life has never been a successful way to pierce your skull, I will provide you with a second. Miss Carpenter will have difficulty enough learning to cope with the Lady’s mantle without you handing her mine as well. Don’t you think?”

Right. I hadn’t thought about that part. But I wasn’t feeling terribly rational.

“Why?” I demanded. “Why did you do it to her?”

“It was not my intention for her to replace Maeve,” Mab said. “Frankly, I would have considered her a better candidate for Summer.”

“You still haven’t told me
why
,” I said.

“I meant Sarissa to take Maeve’s place,” Mab said. “But one does not place all one’s hopes with any one place, person, or plan. Like chess, the superior player does not plan to accomplish a single gambit, a particular entrapment. She establishes her pieces so that regardless of what her enemy does, she has forces ready to respond, to adapt, and to destroy. Molly was made ready as a contingency.”

“In case something happened to your own daughter?” I asked.

“Something had
already
happened to my daughter,” Mab said. “It was my intention to make Sarissa ready for her new role, much as I made you ready for yours.”

“
That’s
why you exposed her to all of those things alongside me?”

“I have no use for weakness, wizard. The situation here developed in a way I did not expect. Molly had originally been positioned with another purpose in mind—but her presence made it possible to defeat the adversary’s gambit.”

“Positioned,” I spat. “Gambit. Is that what Molly is to you? A pawn?”

“No,” Mab said calmly, “not anymore.”

That rocked my head back as surely as if she’d punched me in the nose. I felt a little bit dizzy. I lowered the gun.

“She’s a kid,” I said tiredly. “She had her whole life ahead of her, and you did
this
to her.”

“Maeve was always overly dramatic, but in this instance she was quite correct. I could not risk killing her if I did not have a vessel on hand to receive her mantle—and the lack of the Winter Lady’s strength would have been critical. It is one of the better plays the adversary has made.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” I said.

“I do not,” she said. “I do not see how what I have done is substantially different from what you have been doing for many years.”

“What?”
I asked.

“I gave her power,” she said, as if explaining something simple to a child.

“That is
not
what I have been doing,” I spat.

“Is it not?” Mab asked. “Have I misunderstood? First you captured her imagination and affection as an associate of her father’s. You made her curious about what you could do, and nurtured that curiosity with silence. Then when she went to explore the Art, you elected not to interfere until such time as she found herself in dire straits—at which point your aid placed her deep within your obligation. You used that and her emotional attachment to you to plant and reap a follower who was talented, loyal, and in your debt. It was actually very well-done.”

I stood there with my mouth open for a second. “That . . . that isn’t . . . what I did.”

Mab leaned closer to me and said, “That is
precisely
what you did,” she said. “The only thing you did not do is admit to yourself that you
were
doing it. Which is why you never availed yourself of her charms. You told yourself lovely, idealistic lies, and you had a powerful, talented, loyal girl willing to give her life for yours who
also
had nowhere else to turn for help. As far as your career as a mentor goes, you grew into much the same image as DuMorne.”

“That . . . that isn’t what I did,” I repeated, harder. “What you’re doing to her will change her.”

“Did she not change after you began to indoctrinate her?” Mab asked. “You were perhaps too soft on her during her training, but had she not already begun to become a different person?”

“A person she
chose
to be,” I said.

“Did she choose to be born with her gift for the Art? Did she choose to become someone so sensitive that she can hardly remain in a crowded room? I did not do that to her—you did.”

I ground my teeth.

“Consider,” Mab said, “that I have done something for her that you never could have.”

“What’s that, exactly?”

“I have put her beyond the reach of the White Council and their Wardens,” Mab said, again as if explaining something to an idiot. “While they might howl and lecture as much as they wish about an apprentice wizard, they can do nothing at all to the Winter Lady.”

I took a deep breath.

That . . . was also true.

“You’ve made her life so much harder,” I said quietly. I wasn’t saying it to Mab, really. I was just sounding out loud the chain of argument in my head. “But so have I. Especially after Chichén Itzá.”

“You trusted her with your mind and your life,” Mab said. “I took that as a statement of confidence in her abilities. You will be working frequently with the Winter Lady. It seems to me that this would be a most appropriate match.”

“And her duties?” I asked. “What is the purpose of the Winter Lady?”

“That is for her to know,” Mab said. “Know this, my Knight: Had I not considered her an excellent candidate, I would never have had her prepared. She has the basic skills she will need to master the power of the mantle—especially if one she trusts is there to advise and reassure her.”

“You should have spoken to me about this first,” I said. “You should have spoken to her.”

Mab moved so quickly that I literally never saw it. The gun was suddenly, simply gone from my hand and was being pushed into my face—in exactly the same spot where Maeve had been shot.

“I,” Mab said coolly, “am not
your
servant, Dresden. You are mine.”

“Demonreach,” I said. “If our guest pulls that trigger, take her below and keep her there.”

The guardian spirit’s vast shadow fell over us even though there was nothing actually casting it, and Mab’s eyes widened.

“Servant,” I said. “I don’t like that word. I suggest that you consider where you stand and choose a different term. My Queen. And you will be gentle with that girl, or so help me I will make you regret it.”

Mab’s mouth quirked very slightly—her eyes more so. She looked up at me almost fondly, exhaled, and said, “Finally, a Knight worth the trouble.” She lowered the gun and calmly passed it back to me.

I took it from her.

“Have you any other questions?” she asked.

I frowned, thinking. “Yeah, actually. Someone called Thomas and told him to be ready at the boat when I first got back to town. Do you know anything about that?”

“I arranged it, of course,” Mab said, in a voice that sounded exactly like Molly’s. “As a courtesy to the ancient one, just before your party started.”

At that, I shuddered. Molly’s voice coming from that inhumanly cold face was . . . just wrong.

“Lily,” I said. “She waved her hand over my chest, as if she could detect the influence of the adversary.”

Mab’s lips pressed into a firm line. “Yes.”

“Could she?” I asked.

“Of course not,” Mab said. “Were it so simple a task, the adversary would be no threat. Not even the Gatekeeper, at the focus of his power, can be absolutely certain.”

“Then why would she think she could?” I asked. Then I answered my own question. “Because Maeve led her to believe that she could. All Maeve had to do was lie, and maybe sacrifice a couple of the adversary’s pawns to make it seem real. Then she could have Lily wave her hands at her, and ‘prove’ to her that Maeve was clean of any taint. And Lily wasn’t experienced enough to know any better. After that, Lily would have bought just about anything Maeve was selling.”

“Obviously,” Mab said, her tone mildly acidic. “Have you any questions you cannot answer for yourself?”

I clenched my jaw and relaxed it a couple of times. Then I asked, “Was it hard for you? Tonight?”

“Hard?” Mab asked.

“She was your daughter,” I said.

Mab became very silent, and very still. She considered the ground around us, and paced up and down a bit, slowly, frowning, as if trying to remember the lyrics of a song from her childhood.

Finally she became still again, closing her eyes.

“Even tonight, with everything going to hell, you couldn’t hurt her,” I said.

Mab opened her eyes and stared down through a gap in the trees at the vast waters of Lake Michigan.

“A few years back, you got angry. So angry that when you spoke it made people bleed from the ears. That was why. Because you figured out that the adversary had taken Maeve. And it hurt. To know that the adversary had gotten to her.”

“It was the knife,” Mab said.

“Knife?”

“Morgana’s athame,” Mab said in a neutral tone—but her eyes were far away. “The one given her by the Red Court at Bianca’s masquerade. That was how the Leanansidhe was tainted—and your godmother spread it to Maeve before I could set it right.”

“Oh,” I said. I’d been at that party.

Mab turned to me abruptly and said, “I would lay them to rest upon the island, the fallen Ladies, if that does not offend you.”

“It doesn’t,” I said. “But check with the island.”

“I shall. Please excuse me.” She turned and began walking away.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

She stopped, her back straight.

“Was it hard for you to kill Maeve?”

Mab did not turn around. When she spoke, her voice had something in it I had never heard there before and never heard again—uncertainty. Vulnerability.

“I was mortal once, you know,” she said, very quietly.

And then she kept walking toward her daughter’s body, while I stared angrily . . . sadly . . . thoughtfully after her.

* * *

The rest of the night passed without anyone getting killed. I sat down with my back against the outside wall of the cottage, to keep an eye on my “guests” down the hill, but when I blinked a few seconds later, my eyes stuck shut, and then didn’t open again until I heard, distantly, a bird twittering.