I looked around us. Then I focused and used my wizard senses, looking deeper. I could feel the energy moving around us, feel the disturbances in the stone beneath my feet, in several discrete locations.
Evanna wasn’t alone. There were half a dozen of the embassy’s security personnel shadowing us, earthwalking through the safety of the stone.
The svartalves were being polite about it and had sent a pretty and charming captor to round me up—but subtle or not, I suddenly realized that I was a prisoner being escorted. And that my next words were going to count for more than most.
In moments like this, I generally try to tell the truth, because I don’t have the intellectual horsepower to keep track of very many lies. They add up.
“I’ve been at my girlfriend’s all evening,” I said. “I just got here. I don’t know what’s going on.”
As I spoke, her eyes closed. She opened them again slowly after I finished speaking and said quietly, “You speak the truth.”
“No kidding!” I blurted. “Evanna, I know that I’m a guest, but you are officially starting to freak me out. I want to see my daughter, please.”
“You are under guest-right,” she said quietly. Then she nodded once and said, “This way.”
We went up the stairs, down a hall, and through a set of doors and were suddenly in territory I recognized—the hall outside of the apartment. There were a number of svartalf security staff gathered outside the door, and they were talking among themselves as Evanna and I approached.
“… doesn’t make any sense,” one of them said. “The lock is disengaged. It should open.”
“It must be a spell holding the lock closed,” said another.
The first twisted the doorknob by way of demonstration. It turned freely the way unlocked doorknobs do. “Behold.”
“A ram, then,” said the second.
“You’d ruin the wood,” I told them as we approached. “And you still wouldn’t be able to get past.”
The second svartalf rounded on me with a scowl. “You installed additional security precautions without notifying security?”
“Clearly.”
“That is explicitly against our corporate policy!”
“Oh, get over it, Gedwig,” I said. “For a guy who puts magical land mines all over his lawn, you’re being awfully sensitive.”
“You could have threatened the safety of everyone here.”
I shook my head. “It’s a completely passive plane of force. Extends across the walls on either side, too. Won’t hurt anyone, and you’d need a tank to break it down.” And it had cost me a very long weekend of work installing it.
Gedwig scowled. “This display of your distrust could be considered an insult to svartalf hospitality.”
“My distrust!?” I blurted. “Are you freaking kidding m—” I cocked an eyebrow, turned to Evanna, and asked, “By any chance, does your people’s tongue not have a word for irony?”
“Peace, Gedwig,” Evanna said. “Mister Dresden, can you open the door?”
“It’s easy if you have the key,” I said. I produced the metal door key from my pocket and flipped it around so that she could see the pentacle inscribed on its base. “I think it would be best if I went in alone to talk to Mouse. All right?”
Evanna nodded once. “So be it.”
“But, my lady,” Gedwig began.
She flicked a hand up, palm toward him, and the guard shut his mouth instantly.
I nodded and touched the key to the doorknob. The energy bound in the key was conducted through the metal into the plane of force beyond it, disrupting its flow and shorting out its field. “Be right back,” I said, and opened the door while watching the two security guys. Gedwig looked like he wanted to push in past me, but he held his position behind Evanna as I entered and shut the door behind me.
My daughter was sitting on the dinner table, as close to the middle of it as she could get, and her babysitter, Hope Carpenter, sat next to her with an arm protectively around her shoulders. Mouse was pacing steadily around the table, his head down, nose whuffling. He glanced up at me once and shook his ears a little by way of greeting before returning to his rounds.
“Harry,” Hope said. She was a very serious young woman to whom adolescence had been uncommonly generous. Having become an expert father and all, over the past three or four months, I had new insights into how worried Michael would be about how his lovely dark blond daughter might be treated, especially given that …