Small Favor by Jim Butcher Page A

you any promises.”
    “We’re playing for opposite teams,” I said. “Nothing personal. But we’ll do what we have to do.”
    Fix nodded.
    We didn’t speak for almost a minute.
    Then I laid the shotgun down in the snow, nodded, and got back into Thomas’s truck. I gave the huge automatic back to my brother. Fix made no move toward the shotgun.
    “Harry,” he said, as the truck started to pull out. His mouth twitched a few times before he blurted, “Remember the leaf Lily gave you.”
    I frowned at him, but nodded.
    Thomas got the truck moving again and started driving. Windshield wipers squeaked. Snow crunched beneath tires, a steady white noise.
    “Okay,” Thomas said. “What was that all about? Guy’s supposed to be a friend, and he screwed you over. I thought you were going to pistol-whip him for a minute. Then you start getting all teary-eyed.”
    “Metaphorically speaking,” I said tiredly.
    “You know what I mean.”
    “He’s under a geas, Thomas.”
    Thomas frowned. “Lily’s got him in a brain-lock?”
    “I doubt she’d do that to Fix. They go back.”
    “Who, then?”
    “My money is on Titania, the Summer Queen. If she told him to keep his mouth shut and not to help me, he wouldn’t get a choice in the matter. Probably why he showed up armed and tried to intimidate me. He wouldn’t be able to speak to me outright, but if he’s delivering a threat in order to further Titania’s plans, it might let him get around the geas.”
    “Seems pretty thin to me. You believe him?”
    “Titania’s done it to him before. And she doesn’t really like me.”
    “You kill someone’s daughter, that happens,” he said.
    I shrugged wearily, tired to my bones. The combination of pain, cold, and multiple bursts of adrenaline had worn me down a lot more than I had realized. I couldn’t stop another yawn.
    “What was he talking about as we pulled out?”
    “Oh,” I mumbled. “After that mess at Arctis Tor, Lily gave me a silver pin in the shape of an oak leaf. It makes me an Esquire of Summer. Supposedly I can use it to whistle up help from Titania’s Court. It’s their way of balancing the scales for what we did.”
    “Never a bad thing to be owed a favor,” Thomas agreed. “You got it on you?”
    “Yeah,” I said. It was, in fact, in a little ring box within the inner coat of my duster. I got it out and showed it to Thomas.
    He whistled. “Gorgeous work.”
    “The Sidhe know pretty,” I agreed.
    “Maybe you can use it and get them to back off.”
    I snorted. “It’s never that simple. Titania could decide that the best way to help me would be to break my back, paralyze me from the waist down, and dump me into a hospital bed so her gruffs won’t have to kill me.”
    Thomas grunted. “Then why would Fix mention it?”
    “Maybe he was compelled to,” I said. “Maybe Titania’s hoping I’ll call for help and she’ll have a chance to squash me personally. Or maybe…”
    I let my voice trail off for a moment, while I kicked my punch-drunk brain in the stomach until it threw up an idea.
    “Or maybe,” I said, “because he wanted to warn me about it. The gruffs have found me twice now, and they haven’t been physically tailing or tracking me. Neither location was one of my regular hangouts. And how did Fix find me just now, in the middle of a blizzard? He sure as hell didn’t coincidentally pick a random IHOP.”
    Thomas’s eyes widened in realization. “It’s a tracking device.”
    I scowled at the beautiful little silver leaf and said, not without a certain amount of grudging admiration, “Titania. That conniving bitch.”
    “Damn,” Thomas said. “I feel a little bad for pointing a gun at the shrimp, now.”
    “I probably would, too,” I said, “if I wasn’t so weirded out by the fact that Fix is starting to be as crabwise and squirrelly as the rest of the Sidhe.”
    Thomas grunted. “Better get rid of that thing before more of them show up.”
    He hit the control