Cold Days (The Dresden Files 14)

If we weren't all inside the stupid circle, at least I could send out a message, a psychic warning. I was sure I could get it to my grandfather, to Elaine, and maybe to Warden Luccio. But while I was sure a mud coating could get us out of the circle, there was no way the fae would give us time to coat ourselves and do it. We were effectively trapped in the circle until sunrise, just like a being summoned from the Nevernev-

Wait a minute.

Circles could be used for several different things. They could be used to focus the energy of a spell, shielding it from other energies. They could be used to cut off energy flows, to contain or discorporate a native being of the Nevernever.

And if you were a mortal, a genuine native of the really real world, they could be used for one thing more: summoning.

The hilltop was one enormous circle: one enormous summoning circle.

"She is not here," Maeve was ranting. "She sends her hand to deal with me? So be it. Let me send her a message in reply!" The little automatic swiveled toward my head.

I shouted as swiftly as I could, putting whatever will I had left into the shortest and most elemental summons there is: "Mab! Mab! Mab! I summon thee!"

Chapter Fifty-two

It's impossible to know how something is going to arrive when you summon it.

Sometimes it's huge and dramatic, like it was with Titania. Sometimes they come in a burst of thunder or flame. Once, this thing I'd summoned arrived in a shower of rotting meat, and it took me a month to get the smell out of my old lab. Less often, they simply appear, like a slide-show image suddenly projected on the wall, drama-free.

Mab came in a bell tone of sudden, awful, absolute silence.

There was a flash-not of light, but of sudden snow, of frost that abruptly blanketed everything on the hilltop and gathered thick on my eyelashes. I reached up a hand to flick the snowflakes out of my eyes, and when I lowered it, Mab was there, again in her crow black dress, with her midnight eyes and ebon hair, floating three feet off the ground. The frost was spreading from her, covering the hilltop, and the temperature dropped by twenty degrees.

In the same instant, everything on the hilltop ceased moving. There was no wind. There were no fitful drops of rain. Just pure, brittle, crystalline silence and a sudden bleak black presence that made me feel like hiding behind something, very quietly.

Mab's dark, bleak gaze took in the hilltop at a glance, and stopped on Lily and her supporting coterie. Mab's left eye twitched once. And she spoke in a low, dreadfully precise voice. "Cease. This. Rudeness. At once."

Lily suddenly stared at Mab with wide eyes, like a teenager who had been walked in upon while making out in the living room. The confidence of her stance faltered, and she abruptly lowered her hand. There was a sigh, as of completed labor, from her crew. I checked Demonreach. The guardian spirit had ceased to look slow-motion windblown, and simply stood in the opening to the lighthouse, motionless.

Lily stared at Mab for a few seconds. Then she lifted her chin in defiance and took a few steps, until she stood shoulder to shoulder with Maeve.

Mab made a low, disgusted sound and turned to face me. "I have heeded your summons; yet I would not enter this domain unless specifically bidden. Have I your permission to do so?"

"Yes," I said. "Yes, you do."

Mab nodded her head slightly, and descended to the ground. From me, she turned to Demonreach. "I thank you for your patience and your assistance in this matter. You could have reacted differently but chose not to. I am aware of the decision. It will not be forgotten."

Demonreach bowed its head, barely, a gesture of acknowledgment, not cooperation or compliance.

Once she had seen that, something seemed to ease out of Mab. It was hard to say what gave me that impression, yet I had the same sense of relief I would have felt upon seeing someone remove his hand from the grip of a firearm.

Mab turned back to me and eyed me up and down. She quirked one eyebrow, very slightly, somehow conveying layers of disapproval toward multiple aspects of my appearance, conduct, and situation, and said, "Finally."

"There's been a lot on my mind," I replied.

"It seems unlikely that your cares will lighten," Queen Mab replied. "Improve your mind."

I was going to say something smart-ass, but said mind noted that maybe I could wait until my bacon was entirely out of the fire before I did. I decided to pay attention to my mind and bowed my head in Mab's direction instead. I felt like I'd gotten a little smarter already. Baby steps.

Then Mab turned to Maeve.

The Winter Lady faced the Queen of Air and Darkness with cold fury in her eyes and a smile on her lips. "So," Maeve said. "You come in black. You come as a judge. But then, you always did that with me. But it's just a game."

"How a game?" Mab asked.

"You have already judged. Passed sentence. And dispatched your executioner."

"You have duties. You have neglected them. What did you expect?"

"From you?" Maeve said bitterly. "Nothing."

"Nothing is precisely what I have done," Mab said. "For too long. Yet to lose you presents a danger of its own. I would prefer it if you allowed me to assist you to return to your duties."

"I'm sure you would," Maeve sneered. "I'm sure you would enjoy torturing me to the brink of sanity to make me a good little automaton again."

Mab's reply was a second slower coming than it should have been. "No, Maeve."

Maeve ground her teeth. "No one controls Maeve."

Frost formed on Mab's soot black lashes. "Oh, child."

The words had weight to them, and finality-like the lid to a coffin.

"I will never be your good little hunting falcon again," Maeve continued. "I will never bow my knee to anyone again, especially not to a jealous hag who envies everything she sees in me."

"Envy?" Mab asked.

Maeve cut loose with another one of those lithium-laced laughs. "Envy! The great and mighty Mab, envious of her little girl. Because I have something you will never have, Mother."

"And what is that?" Mab asked.

"Choice," Maeve snarled.

"Stop," Mab snapped-but not in time.

Maeve bent her elbow to point her little gun casually across her body and, without looking, put a bullet into Lily's left temple.

"No!" Fix blurted, suddenly struggling against the Sidhe holding him.

Lily froze into absolute stillness for a second, her beautiful face confused.

Then she fell like the petal of a dying flower.

"Lily!" Fix screamed, his face contorted with agony. He fought wildly, though he couldn't escape, lunging toward Maeve, paying no attention whatsoever to his captors. For their part, Winter and Summer fae alike seemed stunned into near-paralysis, eyes locked onto Lily's fallen form.