Small Favor

It didn’t.

It terrified me.

It terrified me because I could also see her eyes. They were wide, feline eyes, vertically slitted like a cat’s. They shifted color in time with her gems-or, more likely, the gems changed color in time with her eyes. And though they, too, were beautiful beyond the bounds of mortality, they were cold eyes, inhuman eyes, filled with intelligence and desire, but empty of compassion or pity.

I knew those eyes. I knew her.

If fear hadn’t taken the strength from my limbs, I would have run.

A second form appeared from the darkness behind her and hovered in the shadows at her side like an attendant. It resembled the outline of a cat-if any domestic cat ever grew so large. I couldn’t see the color of its fur, but its green-gold eyes reflected the cold blue light, luminous and eerie.

"And well should you bow, mortal," mewled the feline shape. Its voice was damned eerie, throbbing in strange cadences while producing human sound from an inhuman throat. "Bow before Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness. Bow before the monarch of the Unseelie fae, the Winter Court of the Sidhe."

Chapter Six

I gritted my teeth and tried to summon up a salvo of snark. It wouldn’t come. I was just too scared-and with good reason.

Think of every fairy-tale villainess you’ve ever heard of. Think of the wicked witches, the evil queens, the mad enchantresses. Think of the alluring sirens, the hungry ogresses, the savage she-beasts. Think of them and remember that somewhere, sometime, they’ve all been real.

Mab gave them lessons.

Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d set up some sort of certification process, just to make sure they were all up to snuff.

Mab was the ruler of fully half of the realm of Faerie, those areas of the Nevernever, the spirit world, closest to our own, and she was universally respected and feared. I’d seen her, seen her in the merciless clarity of my wizard’s Sight, and I knew-not just suspected, but knew-exactly what kind of creature she was.

Fucking terrifying, that’s what. So terrifying that I couldn’t summon up a single wiseass comment, and that just doesn’t happen to me.

I couldn’t talk, but I could move. I pushed myself to my feet. I shook with the cold and the fear, but faced the Faerie Queen and lifted my chin. Once I’d done that, proved that I knew where my backbone was, I was able to use it as a reference point to find my larynx. My voice came out coarse, rough with apprehension. "What do you want with me?"

Mab’s mouth quivered at the corners, turning up into the tiniest of smiles. The feline voice spoke again as Mab tilted her head. "I want you to do me a favor."

I frowned at her, and then at the dimly seen feline shape behind her. "Is that Grimalkin back there?"

The feline shape’s eyes gleamed. "Indeed," Grimalkin said. "The servitor behind me bears that name."

I blinked for a second, confusion stealing some of the thunder from my terror. "The servitor behind you? There’s no one behind you, Grimalkin."

Mab’s expression flickered with annoyance, her lips compressing into a thin line. When Grimalkin spoke, his voice bore the same expression. "The servitor is my voice for the time being, wizard. And nothing more."

"Ah," I said. I glanced between the two of them, and my curiosity took the opportunity to sucker punch terror while confusion had it distracted. I felt my hands stop shaking. "Why would the Queen of Air and Darkness need an interpreter?"

Mab lifted her chin slightly, a gesture of pride, and another small smile quirked her mouth. "You are already in my debt," the eerie, surrogate voice said for her. "An you wish an answer to that question, you would incur more obligation yet. I do not believe in charity."

"There’s a shock," I muttered under my breath. Whew. My banter gland had not gone necrotic. "But you missed the point of the question, I think. Why would Mab need such a thing? She’s an immortal, a demigod."

Mab opened her mouth as Grimalkin said, "Ah. I perceive. You doubt my identity." She let her head drift back a bit, mouth open, and an eerie little laugh drifted up from her servitor. "Just as you did in our first meeting."

I frowned. That was correct. When Mab first walked into my office in mortal guise years ago, I noticed that something was off and subsequently discovered who she really was. As far as I knew, no one else had been privy to that meeting.

"Perhaps you’d care to reminisce over old times," mewled the eerie voice. Mab winked at me.

Crap. She’d done that the last time I’d bumped into her. And once again, no one else knew anything about it. I’d been indulging in wishful thinking, hoping she was fake. She was the real Mab.

Mab showed me her teeth. "Three favors you owed me," Mab said-sort of. "Two yet remain. I am here to create an opportunity for you to remove one of them from our accounting."

"Uh-huh," I said. "How are you going to do that?"

Her smile widened, showing me her delicately pointed canines. "I am going to help you."

Yeah.

This couldn’t be good.

I tried to keep my voice steady and calm. "What do you mean?"

"Behold." Mab gestured with her right hand, and the layer of snow on the ground stirred and moved until it had risen into a sculpture of a building, about eighteen inches high. It was like watching a sand castle melt in reverse.

I thought I recognized the building. "Is that…?"

"The building the lady knight asked you to examine," confirmed Mab’s surrogate voice. It’s amazing what you can get used to if your daily allowance of bizarre is high enough. "As it was before the working that rent it asunder."

Other shapes began to form from the snow. Rather disconcertingly detailed shapes of cars rolled smoothly by beside the building, typical Chicago traffic-until one of them, an expensive town car, turned down the alley beside the building, the one I’d walked down not an hour before. I had to take a couple of steps to follow it as it came to a halt and stopped. The snow car’s doors opened, and human shapes the size of the old Star Wars action figures came hurrying out of the vehicle.

I recognized them. The first was a flat-top, no-neck bruiser named Hendricks, Marcone’s personal bodyguard and enforcer. His mother was a Kodiak bear; his father was an Abrams tank, and after he got out of the car, he reached back into it and came out with a light machine gun that he carried in one hand.

While Hendricks was doing that, a woman got out of the other side of the car. Gard was tall, six feet or so, though Hendricks made her look petite. She wore a smart business suit with a long trench coat, and as I watched she opened the car’s trunk and removed a broadsword and an all-metal shield maybe two feet across. She passed her hand over the surface of the shield, and then quickly covered it with a section of cloth that had apparently been cut to fit it.