“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.”

“If I could do it myself, I wouldn’t be asking you, grasshopper. Can you do it?”

She sipped more of the drink, her eyes sparkling as they narrowed. “Are you questioning my phenomenal cosmic powers?”

“Well, you’ve been so busy globet-rotting doing Winter Lady stuff,” I drawled. “Let’s just say I’m curious if you’ve kept your wizard muscles in shape.”

“Hah!” she said, grinning. Then her expression sobered. “I’ve done some work like it lately. The skills aren’t the issue.” She leaned toward me a little, her eyes intent. “Harry. I need you to be absolutely sure. Once a bargain is done, there’s no going back. And I will hold you to it.” Her expression flickered, for just a second suddenly looking much less sure. “I don’t get a choice about that.”

“He’s my brother,” I said. “I’m sure.”

The Winter Lady nodded, her eyes suddenly luminous, suddenly something a man could drown in. Then she stepped over to me, stood on tiptoe, reached up, and drew my mouth down to hers. She gave me a soft kiss on the mouth that was about ninety-nine percent sisterly, and murmured, “Done.”

There was a sensation of something setting firmly into place, somewhere inside me, as if I’d been made of Legos, one of them had come loose, and Molly had just pressed it solidly back into position. It sent a little frisson through me, and I shivered as the bargain was forged.

And, Hell’s bells, did Molly have soft, lovely lips, which did not bear thinking on.

She stepped away from me much more slowly, her eyes down. She brushed her hand over her mouth and muttered, “Mab’s going to be furious if I don’t get the leshyie numbers up, but …” She nodded. “I’ll build your toy for you.”

“You’re the best.”

“I’m awesome,” she agreed. “But this is a mess. I don’t know how much direct help I’ll be able to give.”

“At this point,” I said, “I’ll take whatever I can get.”

17

I drove Molly back to town and dropped her off at the svartalf embassy, where the security guard, a conspicuously unfamiliar face, welcomed her at once and with tremendous deference. I still wasn’t clear on what the grasshopper had done for the svartalves to make them so gaga over her, but it was clear that whatever she’d done, she had impressed them with the fact that she was more than a pretty face.

I watched her go in and made sure she was safely in the building, as if I were a teenager dropping off his date five minutes early, and then started driving.

I felt awful.

I felt really, really awful.

And I wanted to go home.

Home, like love, hate, war, and peace, is one of those words that is so important that it doesn’t need more than one syllable. Home is part of the fabric of who humans are. Doesn’t matter if you’re a vampire or a wizard or a secretary or a schoolteacher; you have to have a home, even if only in principle—there has to be a zero point from which you can make comparisons to everything else. Home tends to be it.

That can be a good thing, to help you stay oriented in a very confusing world. If you don’t know where your feet are planted, you’ve got no way to know where you’re heading when you start taking steps. It can be a bad thing, when you run into something so different from home that it scares you and makes you angry. That’s also part of being human.