Side Jobs by Jim Butcher

a steady gaze.
    Everyone shut up.
    I headed out with Molly and Sarah in tow, and as we stepped out of the bistro, there was an enormous crashing sound, and a car came flying sideways through the glass wall of the entranceway about eight feet off the ground. It hit the ground, broken glass and steel foaming around it like crashing surf, bounced with a shockingly loud crunch, and tumbled ponderously toward us, heralded by a rush of freezing air.
    Molly was already moving, but Sarah only stood there staring incredulously as the car came toward us. I grabbed her around the waist and all but hauled her off her feet, dragging her away. I ran straight away from the oncoming missile, which was not the smartest way to go—but since a little perfume kiosk was blocking my path, it was the only way.
    I was fast, and we got a little bit lucky. I pulled Sarah past the kiosk just as the car hit it. The vehicle’s momentum was almost gone by the time it hit, and the car crashed to a halt, a small wave of safety glass washing past our shoes. Sarah wobbled and nearly fell. I caught her and kept going. She started to scream or shout or ask a question—but I clapped my hand over her mouth and hissed, “Quiet!”
    I didn’t stop until we were around the corner and the crashing racket was coming to a halt. Then I stopped with my back against the wall and got Sarah’s attention.
    I didn’t speak. I raised one finger to my lips with as much physical emphasis as I could manage. Sarah, trembling violently, nodded at me. I turned to give the same signal to Molly, who looked pale but in control of herself. She nodded as well, and we turned and slipped away from that arm of the mall.
    I listened as hard as I could, which was actually quite hard. It’s a talent I seem to have developed, maybe because I’m a wizard, and maybe just because some people can hear really well. It was difficult to make out anything at all, much less any kind of detail, but I was sure I heard one thing—footsteps, coming in the crushed door of the mall, crunching on broken glass and debris.
    Something fast enough to snap a man’s neck with the whiplash of its passage and strong enough to throw that car through a wall of glass had just walked into the mall behind us. I figured it was a very, very good idea not to let it know we were there and sneaking away.
    We got away with it, walking slowly and silently out through the mall, which yawned all around us, three levels of darkened stores, deserted shops, and closed metal grates and doors. I stopped a dozen shops later, after we’d gone past the central plaza of the mall and were far enough away for the space to swallow up quiet conversation.
    “Oh my God,” Sarah whimpered, her voice a strangled little whisper. “Oh my God. What is happening? Is it terrorists?”
    I probably would have had a more suave answer if she hadn’t been pressed up against my side, mostly naked from the hips up, warm and lithe and trembling. The adrenaline rush that had hit me when the car nearly smashed us caught up to me, and I suddenly found it difficult to keep from shivering, myself. I had a sudden, insanely intense need to rip off the strings on that red bikini top and kiss her, purely for the sake of how good it would feel. All things considered, though, it would have been less than appropriate. “Uh,” I mumbled, forcing myself to look back the way we’d come. “They’re . . . bad guys of some kind, yeah. Are you hurt?”
    “No,” Sarah said.
    “Molly?” I asked.
    “I’m fine,” my apprentice answered.
    “The security office,” I said.
    Sarah stared at me for a second, her eyes intense. “But . . . but I don’t understand why—”
    I put my hand firmly over her mouth. “Sarah,” I said, meeting her eyes for as long as I dared, “I’ve been in trouble before, and I know what I’m doing. I need you to trust me. All right?”
    Her eyes widened for a second. She reached up to lightly touch my wrist, and I let her