Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(55)

And, being a wizard, I felt guilty as hell for walking her into that. I hadn’t had much choice, if I wanted to save my daughter’s life, but though the cost was worthy, it still had to be paid—and Molly had laid down cold, hard cash.

So cold and so hard that Mab had wound up choosing her to be the new Winter Lady, in fact.

Suddenly I wondered if maybe I hadn’t been hard enough on myself. I mean, hell, at least when I’d become the Winter Knight, I’d made a choice. My back had been to a wall and my options had all sucked, but I’d at least sought out my bargain with Mab.

Molly hadn’t been consulted, and Mab’s policy on dissenting opinion was crystalline: Deal with it or die.

Of course, for inveterate dissenters like myself, it created a pretty simple counterpolicy for when I was tired of Mab’s crap: Deal with it or kill me. Mab was a lot of things, but irrational wasn’t one of them, and as long as it was easier to put up with me than replace me, we had attained a state of balance. I imagined that Molly had come to similar arrangements.

I put my hand on her shoulder, squeezed slightly, and gave her another smile. “Hey. It was hard, for everyone. But we came through it. And with all these scars, we have to have learned a lesson somewhere, right?”

“I’m not sure how well that logic holds up,” she said, giving me a wry smile.

“I think of it as the idiot’s version of optimism,” I said. I eyed the lightening sky. “How up are you on current events?”

She glanced that way as well. “I’ve been working in eastern Russia for two weeks,” she said. “I’m busy as hell.”

“Okay,” I said, and I caught her up on recent events. Everything. Except for Butters and Andi and Marci because Butters had asked me and because I wasn’t quite sure what to think about that myself.

“Before we go any further and just to be clear,” she asked, “did my apartment actually burn down?”

“No.”

She nodded and exhaled. “ So … let’s see …” She closed her eyes and thought for a moment about what I had told her. “Oh God, you’re going to go get Thomas, aren’t you?”

“I’m exhausting all possibilities for a diplomatic solution first,” I said.

She gave me a wary look.

“I like the svartalves,” I explained. “They’re good people. And they’ve got kids. I’m not going to wade into them, guns blazing.”

Her eyebrows went up. “And you think I can get something done?”

“The svartalves like you,” I said. “As far as I can tell, you’re an honorary svartalf. And every single one of them is a sucker for pretty girls, and that’s you also.”

A flicker of her hand acknowledged fact without preening. “I think you’re overestimating my influence in the face of events like this,” she said. “Etri and his people are old-school. Blood has been spilled. There’s going to be an accounting, period, and they are not going to be interested in mercy.”

“You underestimate how much faith I have in your creativity, intelligence, and resourcefulness, Molly.”

She grimaced. “You understand that if it comes to that, I can’t directly help you get him out. If a Faerie Queen violated the Accords so blatantly, they would collapse. It would mean worldwide havoc.”

“I figured,” I said.

Her expression turned into a lopsided smile. “You don’t ask for much, do you?”

“This can’t possibly be more difficult to handle than moving back into your parents’ place after you got all the piercings and tattoos.”

She bobbed her head to one side to acknowledge the point. “That seemed pretty impossible at the time, I suppose.”

“Help me,” I said. I helpfully bent down and picked up the can of Dr Pepper, offering it to her. “I got you Nutella and everything.”

“All that did was give me an excuse not to bitch-slap you for daring to summon me,” she said frankly. “Honestly, I do have a job, you know. It’s kind of important. I really can’t afford to encourage people to interrupt me all the time.”

She took the soda and sipped.

“It’s Thomas,” I said.

“It’s Thomas,” she agreed. She exhaled. “You understand that you’ve asked for my help. You know what that means, right?”

“Obligation,” I said.

“Yes. You’ll owe me. And those scales will have to be balanced. It’s … like an itch I can’t scratch until they are.”

“You’re still you, grasshopper.”

She regarded me for a moment, her maybe-not-quite-as-human eyes huge, luminous, and unsettlingly, unnervingly beautiful in her gaunt face. Her voice came out in a whisper I had last heard in a greenly lit root-lined cavern on the island. “Not always.”

I felt a little chill slide around inside me.

She shook her head and was abruptly the grasshopper again. “I’m willing to do whatever I can to help you. Are you willing to balance whatever I offer up?”

“He’s my brother,” I said. “Duh.”

She nodded. “What is it you want?”

I told her.

She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “Tricky. Difficult.”