grunted. “He made his bed, and I should let him lie in it?”
“Something like that,” Thomas said. “And don’t forget that Murphy and the police aren’t going to be thrilled with a ‘Save the Kingpin’ campaign.”
“I know,” I said, “and I’d love to stand back and see what happens. But this isn’t about Marcone anymore.”
“Then what is it about?”
“Mab skinning me alive if I don’t give her what she wants.”
“Come on, Harry,” Thomas said. “You can’t really think that Mab’s motives and plans are that direct, that cut-and-dried.” He adjusted the setting of the Hummer’s wipers. “She wants Marcone for a reason. You might not be doing him any favors by saving him on Mab’s behalf.”
I scowled out at the night.
He held up a hand, ticking off fingers. “And that’s assuming that, one, he’s alive at all right now. Two, that you can find him. Three, that you can get him out alive. And four, that the opposition doesn’t cripple or kill you.”
“What’s your point?” I asked.
“That you’re playing against a stacked deck, and that you have no idea if Mab is going to be there to cover your bets when the bad guys call.” He shook his head. “It would be smarter for you to skip town. Go someplace warm for a few weeks.”
“Mab might take that kinda personal,” I said.
“Mab’s a businesswoman,” Thomas said. “Creepy and weird, but she’s cold, too. Calculating. As long as you still represent a potential recruit to her, I doubt she’d elect to depreciate your value prematurely.”
“Depreciate. I like that. You might be right—unless, to return to the original metaphor, Mab isn’t playing with a full deck. Which the evidence of recent years seems to imply with increasing frequency.” I nodded out the window. “And I’ve got a feeling that I’d have had even more trouble with the gruffs I’ve seen so far if we weren’t in the middle of a freaking blizzard. If I waltz off to Miami or somewhere warm, I’ll be putting myself that much nearer to the agents of Summer—who are also planning my murder.”
Thomas frowned and said nothing.
“I could run, but I couldn’t hide,” I said. “Better to face it here, on my home ground, while I’m still relatively rested”—I let out a huge and genuine yawn—“instead of waiting for faerie goons from one Court or the other to, ah, depreciate me by surprise after I’ve been on the run for a few weeks.”
“What about the Council?” Thomas demanded. “You’ve been wearing the grey cloak for how long, now? And you’ve fought for them how many times?”
I shook my head. “Right now the Council is still stretched to the limit. We might not be in open battle with the Red Court at the moment, but the Council and the Wardens have got years of catch-up work to do.” I felt my jaw tighten. “Lot of warlocks have come up in the past few years. The Wardens are working overtime to get them under control.”
“You mean kill them,” Thomas said.
“I mean kill them. Most of them teenagers, man.” I shook my head. “Luccio knows my feelings on the matter. She refuses to assign any of it to me. Which means that other Wardens are forced to pick up the slack. I’m not going to add to their workload by dragging them into this mess.”
“You don’t seem to mind adding to mine,” Thomas noted.
I snorted. “That’s because I respect them.”
“So long as we have that clear,” he said.
We drove past a city snowplow. It had foundered in a deep drift, like some kind of metallic Ice Age beast trapped in a tar pit. I watched it with bemusement as Thomas’s truck crunched slowly, steadily on by.
“By the way,” he asked, “where do you want to go?”
“First things first,” I said. “I need food.”
“You need sleep.”
“Tick-tock. Food will do for now.” I pointed. “There, an IHOP.”
He hauled the big truck into a slow, steady turn. “Then what?”
“I ask people impertinent questions,” I said. “Hopefully turning up pertinent answers.”
“Assuming someone doesn’t kill you while you do.”
“That’s why I’m bringing my very own vampire bodyguard.”
Thomas parked across three spaces in the tiny, otherwise unoccupied lot of an International House of Pancakes.
“I like the scarf,” I said. I leaned over and inhaled through my nose as best I could. It stung, but I detected a faint whiff of vanilla and strawberries. “She make it for you?”
Thomas nodded without saying anything. The leather-gloved fingers of one hand traced over the soft, simple yarn. He looked