Dangerous Women

I narrowed my eyes. Harry’s Faerie Godmother had taken over as my mentor when Harry died, but she wasn’t exactly one of the good faeries. In fact, she was the second in command to Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, and she was a bloodthirsty, dangerous being who divided her enemies into two categories: those who were dead, and those in which she had not yet taken pleasure. I hadn’t known that she knew about Harry and Thomas—but it didn’t shock me.

Lea was a murderous, cruel creature—but as far as I knew, she had never lied to me. Technically.

“Come,” said the Leanansidhe. She turned and walked briskly toward the far end of the alley, gathering a seeming and a veil around her as she went, to hide herself from notice.

I glanced back toward the building where Thomas was being held, ground my teeth, and followed her, merging my veil with hers as we left.

We walked Chicago’s streets unseen by thousands of eyes. The people we passed all took a few extra steps to avoid us, without really thinking about it. It’s important to lay out an avoidance suggestion like that when you’re in a crowd. Being unseen is kind of pointless if dozens of people keep bumping into you.

“Tell me, child,” Lea said, shifting abruptly out of her archaic dialect. She did that sometimes, when we were alone. “What do you know of svartalves?”

“A little,” I said. “They’re from northern Europe, originally. They’re small and they live underground. They’re the best magical craftsmen on earth; Harry bought things from them whenever he could afford it, but they weren’t cheap.”

“How dry,” the faerie sorceress said. “You sound like a book, child. Books frequently bear little resemblance to life.” Her intense green eyes glittered as she turned to watch a young woman with an infant walk by us. “What do you know of them?”

“They’re dangerous,” I said quietly. “Very dangerous. The old Norse gods used to go to them for weapons and armor and they didn’t try to fight them. Harry said he was glad he never had to fight a svartalf. They’re also honorable. They signed the Unseelie Accords and they uphold them. They have a reputation for being savage about protecting their own. They aren’t human, they aren’t kind, and only a fool crosses them.”

“Better,” the Leanansidhe said. Then she added, in an offhand tone, “Fool.”

I glanced back toward the building I’d found. “That’s their property?”

“Their fortress,” Lea replied, “the center of their mortal affairs, here at the great crossroads. What else do you recall of them?”

I shook my head. “Um. One of the Norse goddesses got jacked for her jewelry—”

“Freya,” Lea said.

“And the thief—”

“Loki.”

“Yeah, him. He pawned it with the svartalves or something, and there was a big to-do about getting it back.”

“One wonders how it is possible to be so vague and so accurate at the same time,” Lea said.

I smirked.

Lea frowned at me. “You knew the story perfectly well. You were … tweaking my nose, I believe is the saying.”

“I had a good teacher in snark class,” I said. “Freya went to get her necklace back, and the svartalves were willing to do it—but only if she agreed to kiss each and every one of them.”

Lea threw her head back and laughed. “Child,” she said, a wicked edge to her voice, “remember that many of the old tales were translated and transcribed by rather prudish scholars.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“That the svartalves most certainly did not agree to give up one of the most valuable jewels in the universe for a society-wide trip to first base.”

I blinked a couple of times and felt my cheeks heat up. “You mean she had to …”

“Precisely.”

“All of them?”

“Indeed.”

“Wow,” I said. “I like to accessorize as much as the next girl, but that’s over the line. Way over. I mean, you can’t even see the line from there.”

“Perhaps,” Lea said. “I suppose it depends upon how badly one needs to recover something from the svartalves.”

“Uh. You’re saying I need to pull a train to get Thomas out of there? ’Cause … that just isn’t going to happen.”

Lea showed her teeth in another smile. “Morality is amusing.”

“Would you do it?”

Lea looked offended. “For the sake of another? Certainly not. Have you any idea of the obligation that would incur?”

“Um. Not exactly.”

“This is not my choice to make. You must ask yourself this question: Is your untroubled conscience more valuable to you than the vampire’s life?”

“No. But there’s got to be another way.”

Lea seemed to consider that for a moment. “Svartalves love beauty. They covet it the way a dragon lusts for gold. You are young, lovely, and … I believe the phrase is ‘smoking hot.’ The exchange of your favors for the vampire, a straightforward transaction, is almost certain to succeed, assuming he still lives.”

“We’ll call that one plan B,” I said. “Or maybe plan X. Or plan XXX. Why not just break in and burgle him out?”

“Child,” the Leanansidhe chided me. “The svartalves are quite skilled in the Art, and this is one of their strongholds. I could not attempt such a thing and leave with my life.” Lea tilted her head to one side and gave me one of those alien looks that made my skin crawl. “Do you wish to recover Thomas or not?”

“I wish to explore my options,” I said.

The faerie sorceress shrugged. “Then I advise you to do so as rapidly as possible. If he yet lives, Thomas Raith might count the remainder of his life in hours.”

I opened the door to Waldo’s apartment, shut and locked it behind me, and said, “Found him.”

As I turned toward the room, someone slapped me hard across the face.

This wasn’t a “Hey, wake up” kind of slap. It was an openhanded blow, one that would have really hurt if it was delivered with a closed fist. I staggered to one side, stunned.

Waldo’s girlfriend, Andi, folded her arms and stared at me through narrowed eyes for a moment. She was a girl of medium height, but she was a werewolf and she was built like a pinup model who was thinking about going into professional wrestling. “Hi, Molly,” she said.

“Hi,” I said. “And … ow.”

She held up a pink plastic razor. “Let’s have a talk about boundaries.”

Something ugly way down deep inside me somewhere unsheathed its claws and tensed up. That was the part of me that wanted to catch up to Listen and do things involving railroad spikes and drains in the floor. Everyone has that inside them, somewhere. It takes fairly horrible things to awaken that kind of savagery, but it’s in all of us. It’s the part of us that causes senseless atrocities, that makes war hell.

No one wants to talk about it or think about it, but I couldn’t afford that kind of willing ignorance. I hadn’t always been this way, but after a year fighting the Fomor and the dark underside of Chicago’s supernatural scene, I was somebody else. That part of me was awake and active and constantly pushing my emotions into conflict with my rationality.