Thomas, being Thomas, made the mail into a fashion statement. He wore black clothing, black combat boots, and the arming jacket and mail somehow managed to go with the rest of his wardrobe. He had his saber on his belt on his left side, carried the shotgun in his right hand, and made the whole ensemble look like an upper-class version of The Road Warrior.
I checked on Thomas with my wizard’s senses, too. His presence had never been fully human, but like the other members of the White Court the vampiric aspects of him were not obvious to casual observation, not even to wizards. There was something feline about his aura, the same quality I would expect in a hungry leopard waiting patiendy for the next meal to approach; enormous power held in perfect balance. There was a darker portion of him, too, the part I’d always associated with the demonic presence that made him a vampire, a black and bitter well of energy, equal parts lust, hunger, and self-loathing. Thomas was no fool-he was certainly afraid. But the fear couldn’t be sensed under that still, black surface.
Charity, after she finished helping Murphy, stepped back from her and went to her knees in the parking lot. She folded her hands in her lap, bowed her head, and continued praying. Around her I felt a kind of ambient warmth, as though she knelt in her own personal sunbeam, the same kind of energy that had always characterized her husband’s presence. Faith, I suppose. She was afraid, too, but it wasn’t the primitive survival fear the fetches required. Her fear was for her daughter; for her safety, her future, her happiness. And as I watched her, I saw her lips form my name, then Thomas’s, then Murphy’s.
Charity was more afraid for us than herself.
Right there, I promised myself that I would get her back home with her daughter, back to her family and her husband, safe and sound and whole. I would not, by God, hesitate for a heartbeat to do whatever was necessary to make my friend’s family whole again.
I checked myself out, taking inventory. Leather duster, ill-fitting mail shirt, staff, and blasting rod, check. Shield bracelet and amulet, check. My abused left hand ached a little, and what I could feel of it felt stiff-but I could move my fingers. My head hurt. My limbs felt a little bit shaky with fatigue. I had to hope that adrenaline would kick in and make that problem go away when it counted.
“Everyone good to go?” I asked.
Murphy nodded. Thomas drawled, “Yep.”
Charity rose and said, “Ready.”
“Let me sweep the outside of the building first,” I said. “This is their doorway home. It’s possible that they’ve got the place booby-trapped, or that they’ve set up wards. Once I clear it, we’ll go in.”
I trudged off to walk a slow circle around Pell’s theater. I let my fingertips drag along the side of the building, closed my eyes most of the way, and extended my wizard’s senses into the structure. It wasn’t a quick process, but I tried not to dawdle, either. As I walked, I sensed a kind of trapped, suffocated energy bouncing around inside the building-leakage from the Nevernever probably, from when the fetches took Molly across. But several times I also felt tiny, malevolent surges of energy, too random and mobile to be spells or wards. Their presence was disturbingly similar to that of the fetch I’d destroyed in the hotel.
I came back to where I’d begun about ten minutes later.
“Anything?” Thomas asked.
“No wards. No mystic land mines,” I told him. “But I think there’s something in there.”
“Like what?”
“Like fetches,” I said. “Smaller than the big ones we’re after, and probably set to guard the doorway between here and the Nevernever.”
“They’ll try to ambush us when we go in,” Murphy said.
“Probably,” I said. “But if we know about it, we can turn it against them. When they come, hit them fast and hard, even if it seems like overkill. We can’t afford any injuries.”
Murphy nodded.
“What are we waiting for?” Thomas asked.
“More help,” I replied.
“Why?”
“Because I’m not strong enough to open a stable passage to deep Faerie,” I said. “Even if I wasn’t tired, and I managed to get it open, I doubt it would stay that way for more than a few seconds.”
“Which would be bad?” Murphy asked.
“Yeah.”
“What would happen?” Charity asked quietly.
“We’d die,” I said. “We’d be trapped in deep Faerie, near the strongholds of all kinds of trouble, with no way to escape but to try to find our way to the portions of Faerie that are near Earth. The locals would eat us and spit out the bones before we got anywhere close to escape.”
Thomas rolled his eyes and said, “This isn’t exactly helping me keep my mind off my fear, man.”
“Shut up,” I told him. “Or I’ll move to my second initiative and start telling you knock-knock jokes.”
“Harry,” Murphy said, “if you knew you couldn’t open the door long enough to let us get the girl, how did you plan to manage it?”
“I know someone who can help. Only she’s totally unable to help me.”
Murphy scowled at me, then said, “You’re enjoying this. You just love to dance around questions and spring surprises when you know something the rest of us don’t.”
“It’s like heroin for wizards,” I confirmed.
An engine throbbed nearby, and tires made a susurrus on asphalt. A motorcycle prowled around the theater to its rear parking lot, bearing two helmeted riders. The rearmost rider swung down from the bike, a shapely woman in leather pants and a denim jacket. She reached up, took off her green helmet, and shook out her snow-white hair. It fell at once into a silken sheet without the aid of a brush or a comb. The Summer Lady, Lily, paused to give me a slight bow, and she smiled at me, her green eyes particularly luminous.
The bike’s driver proved to be Fix. The Summer Knight wore close-fitting black pants and a billowing shirt of green silk. He bore a rapier with a sturdy guard on his hip, and the leather that wrapped its handle had worn smooth and shiny. Fix put both helmets on a rack on the motorcycle, nodded at us, and said, “Good morning.”
I made introductions, though I went into few details beyond names and titles. When that was done, I told Lily, “Thank you for coming.”
She shook her head. “I am yet in your debt. It was the least I could do. Though I feel I must warn you that I may not be able to give you the help that you require.”
Meaning Titania’s compulsion to prevent Lily from helping me was still in force. But I’d thought of a way to get around that.
“I know you can’t help me,” I said. “But I wish to tell you that the onus of your debt to me has been passed to another in good faith. I must redress a wrong I have done to the girl named Molly Carpenter. To do so, I offer her mother your debt to me as payment.”
Fix barked out a satisfied laugh. “Hah!”
Lily’s mouth spread into a delighted smile. “Well done, wizard,” she murmured. Then she turned to Charity and asked, “Do you accept the wizard’s offer of payment, Lady?”
Charity looked a little lost, and she glanced at me. I nodded my head at her.
“Y-yes,” she said. “Yes.”
“So mote it be,” Lily said, bowing her head to Charity. “Then I owe you a debt, Lady. What may I do to repay it?”
Charity glanced at me again. I nodded and said, “Just tell her.”
Charity turned back to the Summer Lady. “Help us retrieve my daughter, Molly,” she said. “She is a prisoner of the fetches of the Winter Court.”