As it happened, that was pretty close to the truth.
There was a little guardhouse on the drive in, a fairly recent feature, and a bland-looking man in a bland and expensive fitted suit and dark sunglasses looked up from his book. We stopped at the window and I said, “The purple mustang flies tonight.”
The guard stared at me.
“ Uh … hang on,” I said, and racked my brain. “Sad Tuesdays present no problem to the local authorities?”
He kept staring at me. “State your names, please.”
“Oh come on, Austri,” I said. “Do we have to do this dance every single morning? You know who I am. Hell, we watched the kids play together for an hour last night.”
“I wasn’t on duty then,” Austri said, his tone entirely neutral, his eyes flat. “State your names, please.”
“Once,” I said. “Just once, would it kill you to let security protocol slide?”
He gave me more of that blank stare, a slow blink, and said, “Potentially. Which is why we have security protocols.”
I gave him my most wizardly glower, to no avail. Then I grumbled under my breath, making mostly Yosemite Sam noises, and started fumbling around in my gym bag. “My name is Harry Dresden, Winter Knight, vassal to Molly Carpenter, Lady Winter of the Sidhe Court, and under the protection of her guest-right. This is Thomas Raith, also her guest, friend to Lady Evanna.”
“He is one of Evanna’s lovers,” Austri corrected me meticulously. He nodded at Thomas.
“ ’Sup, Austri,” my brother said.
“Duty,” Austri said seriously, and opened a folder, flipping through a number of profile pages with photographs in the top corner. He stopped on my page, carefully compared the image to me, and then another to Thomas, and nodded. “Passphrase, please.”
“Yeah, one second.” I finally found the folded-up piece of paper with the weekly passphrases on it in the depths of the gym bag. I unfolded it, shook sand off it, consulted it, and read, “ ‘All of my base are belong to me.’ What does that even mean?”
Austri stared at me in frustration for a moment and sighed. Then he looked at Thomas. “And yours?”
“ ‘The itsy-bitsy spider went up the waterspout,’ ” Thomas said promptly, without referencing a cheat card. Because he has nothing better to do with his time than memorize random passphrases.
Austri nodded approvingly, flipped the folder closed, and put it away. “Please wait,” he said. He hit a button and muttered a nearly silent word, which I knew would disarm about two thousand lethal magical wards between me and the front door. Then he nodded at me and said, “You may enter.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He leaned back in his chair a bit, relaxing, and the illusion of unremarkable humanity that covered the svartalf went liquid and translucent. Austri had grey skin with a gymnast’s muscles beneath, a head a little too big for the rest of him, and absolutely enormous black eyes, like that alien in the autopsy video. Beneath the surface illusion, his expression was relaxed and pleasant. “My Ingri would like another playdate with Maggie and Sir Mouse.”
“Maggie would enjoy that as well. I’ll contact Mrs. Austri?”
He nodded. “That is her designated area of responsibility. Cards again tonight?”
“I’d like to, but I can’t commit to it,” I said.
He frowned slightly. “I prefer being able to plan my evening activities.”
“Duty,” I explained.
His frown vanished, and he picked up his book again. “That is different, of course. Please let me know when your duties permit you to spare the time.”
I gave him a nod and went forward.
Austri was the svartalves in a nutshell. Anal-retentive, a ferocious stickler, inhumanly disciplined, inflexibly dedicated to his concepts of honor and duty—but good people once you got to know him. It takes all kinds, you know?
We passed through two more security checkpoints, one in the building’s lobby and another at the elevator that led down to the embassy’s large subterranean complex. One of the other svartalves peered at my driver’s license, then at me, and insisted on measuring my height and taking my fingerprints to further verify that it was actually me and not an impostor wearing a Harry suit.
I guess I shouldn’t have minded it so much. Adding more checks did mean more security, even if it was occasionally applied somewhat maliciously by guys like Gedwig here. Still, the svartalves’ particular blend of paranoia and punctiliousness meant that my daughter would be that much safer under their roof. But some days it chafed, and this was one of them.
We slipped into the apartment and found it still dim and dark and cool. I stopped for a moment to marvel at the miracle of air-conditioning in the summer. Magic and technology don’t get along, and the aura of energy around a wizard like me plays merry hell with pretty much anything developed after the Second World War. I’d never lived in a place whose AC survived more than a few days, but the svartalves had constructed this apartment especially for Molly. It had lights that worked, and a radio that worked, and hot water that worked, and an AC that worked, and I had no idea how the clever folk had managed that. The svartalves were famous craftsmen. Word was, if you wanted something made, they could make it.
Maybe I should get Molly to ask for a TV. Or an Internet … thing. Device. One of those Internet thingies. I figure everyone is so insane about the Internet, there must be something cool there.
Anyway, when we finally came all the way into the living room, Mister, my big grey tomcat, appeared as he always did and flung himself at my shins in a welcome-home shoulder block. I leaned down to rub the base of his ears the way he liked, which he received with great magnanimity, before dismissing me to continue my day. He walked by Thomas, rubbing his cheek against my brother’s leg once and once only to mark him as Mister’s property; then he walked off in regal disinterest. Mister wasn’t as young as he used to be, but he still knew who ruled the apartment.
My daughter was still sleeping on the couch, covered by a heavy blanket. Next to her lay a shaggy grey behemoth about the size of a Budweiser horse, my Temple dog, Mouse. He didn’t even lift his head or open his eyes when we came in. He just yawned and wriggled into a slightly more comfortable position before huffing out a breath and going back to sleep. Maggie’s breathing caught in a little hitch; then she put out her hand and sank it into the dog’s fur. They both sighed in their sleep and went motionless again.
I stood there for a moment, just looking down at them.
Thomas usually busied himself with coffee in the kitchen at moments like this. But today, he stepped up beside me and stood there, looking at the girl and the dog.
“Damn,” he said.
I nodded. “Big responsibility.”
“Yeah.”
“You can do it.”
I turned to look at him. There was some expression I couldn’t define on his face, some mix of longing and gentle, exquisite pain.
“I don’t think so, Harry,” he said.
“Don’t be a dope,” I said. “You love her. You’ll love the kid. Of course you can.”
A faint sad smile mixed in with the other expressions on his face.
We both turned back to the sleeping child.