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It would have been incredibly impolite to refuse a lady.
So I went.
6
I might have been feeling pretty smug on my way back to the car.
But my babysitter had an early morning, so as pleasant as it sounded, there would be no staying around for more. I had to go do the responsible dad thing.
I was whistling as I got in the Munstermobile and got it to roar to life. The car was an old hearse from the forties, painted in shades of dark blue and purple, with flames on the hood and front fenders. It was not subtle. It was not anywhere close to subtle. But I figured that since I wasn’t, either, that made it an entirely appropriate vehicle for me.
The car growled its way to life, and I turned and put one arm on the backrest of the front seat, to look behind me as I pulled out of Karrin’s driveway, and nearly had a freaking heart attack.
Two monsters sat in the backseat.
My reflexes kicked in as I flinched, twisting at the waist to bring up my left hand, the one with my makeshift shield bracelet. I let out a garbled, incoherent cry as my will slammed through it and the copper band exploded with a small cloud of green-yellow sparks as the shield came up between me and the threat. My right hand locked into a rigid claw and a small sphere of the same color of green-yellow energy gathered within the cage of my fingers, spitting and hissing with vicious heat.
The wavering, unsteady light flickered and flashed with manic irregularity, and I got a chance to process the threat.
Neither of the monsters was moving, and both of them were beautiful.
The one on my left was a woman who looked like she had come to a glorious autumn of youthful beauty. Her hair was darker than an undertaker’s grave, and her silver-grey eyes threw back the light of my readied magic in flashes of green and gold. Her teeth were white and perfect, and her smile looked sharp enough to cut a throat. She was wearing a white suit and sat with her legs crossed, gorgeously, and her hands folded in her lap.
“New colors,” she said, her voice velvety smooth and calm. “The shield used to be blue. What changed?”
“He made an alliance with a powerful guardian entity,” said the second monster, a woman seated beside the first. She was as lean as a rod of rebar, but colder and harder, and her opalescent green eyes were too big to be strictly human. Silver-white hair fell to her shoulders, today in a fine silken sheet. Her voice sounded calm and precise, and she wore a glacier blue dress that belonged on a runway. “It does not interfere with his duties.”
I looked back and forth between the two women. My heart rate began to slow as my conscious mind started to catch on to the fact that I was not, apparently, under attack.
Which was not to say that I was not in danger.
I silently counted to five while I took a slow breath and decided to be calm and cautious—and polite. “Lara Raith,” I said to the first monster, inclining my head slightly. Then I turned to the second and did the same, only a shade more deeply. “Queen Mab.”
“So nice to see you again, Harry,” Lara said, her sharp smile widening as she tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “I love your hair. You look absolutely wolfish. How long has it been?”
“Since that mess on the island,” I said. “How’s the Vampire Queen business?”
There was something merry in her eyes as she widened them. “Booming. I sometimes think I might be about to explode at the prospect of all the marvelous opportunities that have been opening to me.”
“As long as you don’t do it in my car,” I said. “Hi, Mab.”
The second monster stared at me for a silent moment. Mab was the OG wicked faerie, the Queen of Air and Darkness, and her tolerance for my usual insouciance had limits. It had such limits that I still had a small lump on my skull that hadn’t gone away, ever since she’d smashed my noggin against the inside of an elevator. She stared at me the way a cat stares at any creature of about the right size to be eaten, and said, “It is, in fact, my car.”
“Ah,” I said. “Right. Well. It’s a company car.”
Mab continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “And Ms. Raith is welcome to explode within it or not, as she sees fit.”
“Uh,” I said, “I think she was employing a metapho—”
“Particularly during such a shocking display of bad grace as you are engaging in at the moment.” She gave my hands a pointed look and then stared back at my eyes. “Do you mean to attack my person and my guest or not, my Knight?”
I twitched and remembered that my shield and the energy for an offensive strike were still glowing and pulsing between us. I relaxed my will and let the spells fade out, until there was nothing left but a drizzle of inefficiently transferred energies falling as campfire sparks from my bracelet. “Oh, right,” I said. “Um. Excuse me.”
“I regret my Knight’s … excessive impulse-control issues,” Mab said, turning to Lara. “I trust it has not cast a sour tone upon this meeting.”
“On the contrary,” Lara said. “I find it rather charming.”
Mab’s expression was entirely unreadable. “Your response does nothing to increase my good opinion of you, Ms. Raith. My Knight needs no encouragement.”
“Hey!” I said.
Lara’s eyes wrinkled at the corners. “Think of it as you would someone who had encountered a novel kind of food.” She looked at me, and her eyes turned a few shades paler. “Something substantial and rarely obtained.”
Mab considered that for a moment. Then she smiled. Her scary smile. I mean, most of what Mab does is sort of scary, but her smile is just unnerving. “Just so long as you understand that my Knight is a part of my house. Do not attempt to eat my porridge, Ms. Raith. You will find it neither hot nor cold nor just right, because, unlike Goldilocks, the bears will have eaten you. Am I understood?”
“Entirely,” Lara said, inclining her head to Mab. Her eyes lingered on me for a moment. “Are you sure what I ask isn’t too much trouble?”
“Such things are part and parcel of his duties,” Mab said. “Assuming you find him acceptable.”
“Oh my,” Lara said, glancing at me again. “Oh yes.”
I didn’t much like the sound of where this conversation was going, so I cleared my throat and said, “Ladies. I’m sitting right here. I can hear you.”
“Then you shall have no trouble understanding your orders,” Mab said. “Ms. Raith is owed three favors by the Winter Court.”
“Three?” I blurted. “I had to fight for my life through Arctis Tor and slug it out with an Elder Phobophage just to earn one favor!”
Mab’s eyes swiveled to me. “And you were repaid appropriately for your deeds.”
“I got a doughnut!”
“It is hardly my concern if you wasted your favor upon something so frivolous,” Mab said.
I scowled. “What the hell did she do?”
“She used her mind,” Mab said. “Unlike some.”
“Hey!” I said.
“She has indicated that she wishes to collect upon these favors,” Mab said. “I have already agreed to one. I place the responsibility for providing the substance of the remaining two in your hands.”
