can get to help.” I nodded at the pizza. “Standard rates.”
“Very good, my liege,” Toot said, saluting. His eyes slid down again. “Maybe someone ought to check the pizza. You know. For poison and things. It would look real bad if someone poisoned your vassals, you know.”
I eyed him askance. Then I held up a finger and said, “All right. One piece. And after—Ack!”
Toot hit the pizza box like a great white shark taking a seal. He slammed into it, one bright sword slashing the top off of the box. Then he seized the largest piece and began devouring with a will.
Sanya and I both stood there, fascinated. It was like watching a man try to eat a pizza slice the size of a small car. Pieces flew up and were skewered on his blade. Sauce got everywhere, and it gave me a gruesome little flashback to the Stone Table.
“Harry?” Sanya asked. “Are you all right?”
“Will be soon,” I said.
“This creature serves you?” Sanya asked.
“This one and about a hundred smaller ones. And five times that many part-timers I can call in once in a while.” I thought about it. “It isn’t so much that they serve me as that we have a business arrangement that we all like. They help me out from time to time. I furnish them with regular pizza.”
“Which they . . . love,” Sanya said.
Toot spun in a dizzy, delighted circle on one heel, and fell onto his back with perfectly unself-conscious enthusiasm, his tummy sticking out as far as it could. He lay there for a moment, making happy, gurgling sounds.
“Well,” I said. “Yes.”
Sanya’s eyes danced, though his face was sober. “You are a drug dealer. To tiny faeries. Shame.”
I snorted.
“What was that he said about Winter?” Sanya asked.
“Harry’s the new Winter Knight!” Toot-toot burbled. “Which is fantastic! The old Winter Knight mostly just sat around getting tortured. He never went on adventures or anything.” He paused and added, “Unless you count going crazy, I guess.”
“Toot,” I said. “I’m . . . kind of trying to keep the Winter Knight thing low-profile.”
“Okay,” Toot said. “Why?”
I glanced from the little faerie to Sanya. “Look, I, uh . . . It’s personal, okay, and—”
“Because every creature in Faerie got to see the ceremony,” Toot said proudly. “Mab made sure of it! It was reflected in all the streams and ponds and lakes and puddles and every little drop of water!”
I stared at the engorged faerie, at something of a loss for words. “Um,” I said. “Oh. How . . . very, very disturbing.”
“Did it hurt when you kissed Mab?” Toot asked. “Because I always thought her lips looked so cold that they would burn. Like streetlamps in winter!” Toot sat up suddenly, his eyes wide. “Ooooooh. Did your tongue get stuck to her, like on that Christmastime show?”
“Okayyyyy,” I said with forced cheer, clapping my hands. “Way, way too personal. Um. The job. I have a job for you.”
Toot-toot leapt up to his feet. His stomach was already constricting back toward its normal size. “Yes, my liege!”
Where the hell did he put it all? I mean . . . it just wasn’t possible for him to eat that much pizza and then . . . I shook my head. Now wasn’t the time.
I produced my picture of Susan. “This human is somewhere in Chicago. I need your folk to find her. She’s probably accompanied by a human man with blond hair, about the same size she is.”
Toot took to his wings again and zoomed down to the picture. He picked it up and held it out at arm’s length, studying it, and nodded once. “May I have this, my lord, to show the others?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Be careful with it, though. I want it back.”
“Yes, my liege!” Toot said. He brandished his sword with a flourish, sheathed it, and zipped straight up into the October sky.
Sanya stood looking steadily at me.
I coughed. I waited.
“So,” he said. “Mab.”
I grunted vaguely in reply.
“You hit that,” Sanya said.
I did not look at him. My face felt red.
“You”—he scrunched up his nose, digging in his memory—“tapped that ass. Presumably, it was phat.”
“Sanya!”
He let out a low, rolling laugh and shook his head. “I saw her once. Mab. Beautiful beyond words.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And dangerous.”
“Yes,” I said, with emphasis.
“And you are now her champion,” he said.
“Everybody’s gotta be something, right?”
He nodded. “Joking about it. Good. You will need that sense of humor.”