The Dresden Files Collection 13-15 by Jim Butcher

Author:Jim Butcher [Butcher, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Twenty-five

This day had begun so simply: I’d nearly been killed at my birthday party and Mab had ordered me to kill an immortal. I’d survived the first, and if I’d had the good sense to shut up and do the second without asking questions, I might be somewhere reading a nice book or something, and waiting out the clock until it was Maeve-whacking time.

Instead I had this.

“I love watching him think,” Maeve told Lily. “You can almost hear that poor little hamster running and running on its wheel.”

“You clubbed him over the head with it,” Lily said. “What did you expect?”

“Oh, this,” Maeve said, her eyes sparkling. “Wizards are always so sure of themselves. I love seeing them off balance. This one in particular.”

“Why me?” I said. I wasn’t really participating in their conversation.

“You did kill my cousin, wizard,” Maeve said. “Aurora was a prissy little bint, but she was family. It makes me happy when you suffer.”

I glowered at Maeve and said, “One of these days, you and I are going to disagree.” I turned to Lily. “You say Mab wants to hold an Armageddon-thon, fine. How is she going to do it?”

“We aren’t completely certain,” Lily said, her eyes earnest.

“It’s something to do with that island,” Maeve said carelessly.

Gulp.

Wrecking someone’s powerful and deadly ritual wasn’t such a scary concept. I’d done that before, more than once. But somehow, knowing that it was Mab’s ritual I was supposed to derail made this situation a whole lot worse. I’d Seen Mab before, with the unadulterated perception of my Sight, and I remembered the kind of might she wielded with absolute clarity. Mab had the kind of power you had to describe using exponents. I felt like a man with a shovel and a couple of gunnysacks who has just been told to stop an oncoming tsunami.

And Mab knew the place. She’d taken care of me for months there. She knew Demonreach’s strengths, its defenses, and its potential. Hell, I’d been her ticket through the door—in fact, I was the only one who could have gotten her onto that island.

“You know,” I said aloud, “it’s just possible that I made a mistake in taking Mab’s deal.”

The two Ladies gave me level gazes. Neither of them said, “Obviously,” but it hung on the spell-muffled air nonetheless.

Then I had a thought. Cat Sith had lied to me very effectively only moments ago, because I assumed reasonable things and he allowed me to charge off down that line of thinking. This was no time to make a rookie mistake like that.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to do something I know you both hate. I’m going to get direct. And I’m going to get direct answers from you, answers that convince me that you aren’t trying to hide anything from me and aren’t trying to mislead me. I know you both have to speak the truth. So give me simple, declarative answers, or I assume you’re scheming and walk away right now.”

That made Lily press her lips together and fold her arms.

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