Small Favor

So was the silver oak leaf pin. Just gone from my fingers, and I hadn’t felt a thing. Give it up for the fae; they can do disappearing like nobody’s business.

Maybe I should have taken some lessons. It might have helped me get out of this mess alive.

I made my way carefully back across the creaking floor to the body of the young man. He looked relaxed in death, peaceful. I had the impression that whatever Eldest Gruff had done to him, it had been painless. It seemed like the sort of thing the old faerie would do. I reached down with my gloved left hand and grasped the tag containing the blackened denarius of Magog. I jerked it sharply, pulling it off the collar, and pocketed it, careful not to let it touch skin. I was getting to be kind of blasй about handling these coins, but it was difficult to keep getting terrified over and over again, especially given the circumstances. The risk of once more exposing my immortal soul to a fiendish presence seemed only a moderate danger, compared to what still stalked the night outside the old building.

Speaking of which…I took a deep breath and made my way quietly back out to the street. I could still hear shouting from farther up the hillside. I heard the sound of a boat’s engine on the far side of the island. There must have been other vessels docked elsewhere along the shore.

Well, I’d known about only the one, and it was close. I slipped back out of the cannery and hurried down the street as quickly and quietly as I could.

Down past the bottom of the rough stone staircase the boat still floated, tied beside the broken stump of an old wooden column. I restrained the urge to let out a whoop, and settled for hustling down the frozen stones as fast as I could without breaking my neck. The water was viciously cold, but I still wasn’t feeling it-which probably wasn’t a good thing. There was going to be hell to pay in afterthought pain when this was over. But compared to the other problems I’d had recently, that one was a joy to think about.

I got to the boat, tossed my staff in, and clambered aboard. I heard a shout up the hillside and froze. A flashlight swept back and forth up in the trees, but then moved off in another direction. I hadn’t been seen. I grinned like a fool and crept up to the driver’s seat. Once I got the engine started it would attract attention, but all I had to do was drive west as fast as I could until I hit ground. The whole western shoreline hereabouts was heavily occupied, and it should be no problem to get to a spot public enough to avoid any further molestation.

I eased into the driver’s seat and reached for the ignition key.

But it was gone.

I felt around for it. Rosanna had left it in the ignition. I specifically remembered that she had done so.

The shadows rippled away from the passenger seat opposite the driver’s seat, revealing Nicodemus. He sat calmly in his black silk shirt and dark trousers, the grey noose worn like a tie around his throat, a naked sword across his lap, his left elbow resting on his left knee. In the fingertips of his left hand he held a key ring, dangling the grease-smeared ignition key of the boat.

"Good evening, Dresden," he said. "Looking for this?"

Chapter Forty-five

T he sleet had stopped coming down in favor of large, wet flakes of snow again. The boat rocked gently on the troubled waters of the lake. Water slapped against the sides and gurgled around the curve of the hull. Ice had begun to form all along the sides and front of the boat. I think there are boat words for all the pieces that were being covered, like prow and gunwale, but I’m only vaguely aware of them.

"Harry Dresden speechless," Nicodemus said. "I can’t imagine this happens every day."

I just stared at him.

"In the event that you hadn’t worked it out for yourself yet," Nicodemus said, "this is endgame, Dresden." The fingers of his right hand stroked the hilt of his sword. "Can you puzzle out the next part, or must I explain it to you?"

"You want the coins, the sword, the girl, the money, and the keys to the Monte Carlo," I said. "Or you shoot me and drop me over the side."

"Something like that," he said. "The coins, Dresden."

I reached into the pocket of my duster and…

"What the hell," I said.

The Crown Royal bag was gone.

I checked my other pockets, careful of the coin I’d taken from Magog-and careful not to reveal its presence to Nicodemus. No bag. "It’s gone."

"Dresden, don’t even try such a pathetic lie on m-"

"It’s gone!" I told him with considerable heat, none of it feigned. Eleven coins. Eleven freaking cursed coins. The last time I remembered definitely having them had been up at the tower, when I’d jingled them for Nicodemus.

He stared at me for a moment, his eyes searching, and then murmured something under his breath. Whispers rolled from the shadows around him. I didn’t recognize the language, but I did recognize the tone. I wondered if the angelic tongue had swear words, or if they just said nice words backward or something. Doog! Teews doog!

Nicodemus’s sword came up as swiftly as a flickering snake’s tongue and came to rest against my throat. I didn’t have time to flinch; it was that fast. I sucked in a quick breath and held very, very still.

"These marks," he murmured. "Thorned Namshiel’s strangler spell." His eyes drew a line from the last apparent mark on my neck down to the duster pocket that the bag of coins had been in. "Ah. The strangulation was the distraction. He picked your pocket with one of the other wires before he was incapacitated. He did that to Saint…someone-or-other, in Glasgow in the thirteenth century."

There’s nothing like getting taken with an old trick, I guess. But that meant that Namshiel had been working together with someone else-someone else who had to have been hanging around to collect the coins after he’d taken them from my pocket and tossed them off to the side in the confusion. Someone who hadn’t been pulling a fade after all.

"Tessa and Rosanna," I said quietly. "They got their collection of thugs back. They bailed at just the right moment to ruin your plan, too."

"Deceitful bitches," Nicodemus murmured. "One of them is our own Judas; I was sure of it."

I lifted my eyebrows. "What?"

"That’s why I let them handle the more, shall we say, memorable aspects of the Archive’s initiation to our world," Nicodemus said. "I suppose now that the child is free, she’ll have some rather unpleasant associations with those two."

"And you’re telling me this why?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "It’s somewhat ironic, Dresden, that I can talk to you about this particular aspect of family business. You’re the only one that I’m sure hasn’t gone over to this new force-this Black Council of yours."