Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(22)

I arched an eyebrow. “Wait. You’re saying that you couldn’t go get her.”

Evanna shrugged a slender shoulder. “The Guardian seemed very determined.”

I walked a few steps, thinking. She was right about Mouse. He was a good dog. Or maybe even a Good dog. But he had an unerring ability to determine when someone or something was hostile. He’d die before he let any harm come to Maggie.

Which meant that if Mouse was defending her from the svartalves …

I had to consider that they might be up to something he considered to be no good. They were a very insular people, and they weren’t human. They might not necessarily think or feel about things the way I would expect them to. I’d lived among them for a time now, and while I was comfortable interacting with them, I wasn’t fool enough to think that I knew them.

Evanna stared at up my face as I thought, and I suddenly realized that she was reading my expression. Her own face went completely blank, completely empty of any emotion, as she regarded me.

“What’s going on here?” I asked her carefully.

“You tell me,” she said.

I made an exasperated sound. “Hell’s bells, Evanna, how should I know? I’ve been at my girlfriend’s all evening. I just got here.”

She turned abruptly, in front of me, confronting me exactly as if I wasn’t two feet taller and two hundred pounds heavier than her. “Stop,” she said firmly.

I did.

She narrowed her eyes and said, “Say that again.”

“Why is everyone so shocked that I have a girlfriend?” I asked.

She closed her eyes for a moment, as if silently counting to three, and opened them again. “Not that part. Your explanation of events.”

“Oh,” I said. I began to speak but stopped myself at the last second and took a moment to think. I’d only met Evanna in passing, but she was looking remarkably intense by svartalf standards—which is to say, she was working as hard as she could to give away nothing by her expression or body language. I had to wonder what else she was concealing.

I looked around us. Then I focused and used my wizard senses, looking deeper. I could feel the energy moving around us, feel the disturbances in the stone beneath my feet, in several discrete locations.

Evanna wasn’t alone. There were half a dozen of the embassy’s security personnel shadowing us, earthwalking through the safety of the stone.

The svartalves were being polite about it and had sent a pretty and charming captor to round me up—but subtle or not, I suddenly realized that I was a prisoner being escorted. And that my next words were going to count for more than most.

In moments like this, I generally try to tell the truth, because I don’t have the intellectual horsepower to keep track of very many lies. They add up.

“I’ve been at my girlfriend’s all evening,” I said. “I just got here. I don’t know what’s going on.”

As I spoke, her eyes closed. She opened them again slowly after I finished speaking and said quietly, “You speak the truth.”

“No kidding!” I blurted. “Evanna, I know that I’m a guest, but you are officially starting to freak me out. I want to see my daughter, please.”

“You are under guest-right,” she said quietly. Then she nodded once and said, “This way.”

We went up the stairs, down a hall, and through a set of doors and were suddenly in territory I recognized—the hall outside of the apartment. There were a number of svartalf security staff gathered outside the door, and they were talking among themselves as Evanna and I approached.

“… doesn’t make any sense,” one of them said. “The lock is disengaged. It should open.”

“It must be a spell holding the lock closed,” said another.

The first twisted the doorknob by way of demonstration. It turned freely the way unlocked doorknobs do. “Behold.”

“A ram, then,” said the second.

“You’d ruin the wood,” I told them as we approached. “And you still wouldn’t be able to get past.”

The second svartalf rounded on me with a scowl. “You installed additional security precautions without notifying security?”

“Clearly.”

“That is explicitly against our corporate policy!”

“Oh, get over it, Gedwig,” I said. “For a guy who puts magical land mines all over his lawn, you’re being awfully sensitive.”

“You could have threatened the safety of everyone here.”

I shook my head. “It’s a completely passive plane of force. Extends across the walls on either side, too. Won’t hurt anyone, and you’d need a tank to break it down.” And it had cost me a very long weekend of work installing it.

Gedwig scowled. “This display of your distrust could be considered an insult to svartalf hospitality.”

“My distrust!?” I blurted. “Are you freaking kidding m—” I cocked an eyebrow, turned to Evanna, and asked, “By any chance, does your people’s tongue not have a word for irony?”

“Peace, Gedwig,” Evanna said. “Mister Dresden, can you open the door?”

“It’s easy if you have the key,” I said. I produced the metal door key from my pocket and flipped it around so that she could see the pentacle inscribed on its base. “I think it would be best if I went in alone to talk to Mouse. All right?”