Summer Knight (The Dresden Files #4) - Jim Butcher Page 0,4

clan. Theyre working with the Red Court, and they dont much like me."

"Why dont they like you?"

"Ive given them headaches a few times."

Billy lifted a corner of his shirt to hold against the cuts on his face. "I didnt expect the claws."

"Theyre sneaky that way."

"Ghoul, huh. Is it dead?"

I shook my head. "Theyre like cockroaches. They recover from just about anything. Can you walk?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Lets get out of here." We headed toward the Beetle. I picked up the cloth sack of toads on the way and started shaking them back out onto the ground. I put the toad Id nearly squished down with them, then wiped my hand off on the grass.

Billy squinted at me. "Why are you letting them go?"

"Because theyre real."

"How do you know?"

"The one I was holding crapped on my hand."

I let Billy into the Blue Beetle and got in the other side. I fetched the first aid kit from under my seat and passed it over to him. Billy pressed a cloth against his face, looking out at the toads. "So that means things are in a bad way?"

"Yeah," I confirmed, "things are in a bad way." I was silent for a minute, then said, "You saved my life."

He shrugged. He didnt look at me.

"So you set up the appointment for three oclock, right? What was the name? Sommerset?"

He glanced at me and kept the smile from his mouthbut not from his eyes. "Yeah."

I scratched at my beard and nodded. "Ive been distracted lately. Maybe I should clean up first."

"Might be good," Billy agreed.

I sighed. "Im an ass sometimes."

Billy laughed. "Sometimes. Youre human like the rest of us."

I started up the Beetle. It wheezed a little, but I coaxed it to life.

Just then something hit my hood with a hard, heavy thump. Then again. Another heavy blow, on the roof.

A feeling of dizziness swept over me, a nausea that came so suddenly and violently that I clutched the steering wheel in a simple effort not to collapse. Distantly, I could hear Billy asking me if I was all right. I wasnt. Power moved and stirred in the air outsidehectic disruption, the forces of magic, usually moving in smooth and quiet patterns, suddenly cast into tumult, disruptive, maddening chaos.

I tried to push the sensations away from me, and labored to open my eyes. Toads were raining down. Not occasionally plopping, but raining down so thick and hard that they darkened the sky. No gentle laundry-chute drop for these poor things, either. They fell like hailstones, splattering on concrete, on the hood of the Beetle. One of them fell hard enough to send a spider-web of cracks through my windshield, and I dropped into gear and scooted down the street. After a few hundred yards we got away from the otherworldly rain.

Both of us were breathing too fast. Billy had been right. The rain of toads meant something serious was going on, magically speaking. The White Council was coming to town tonight to discuss the war. I had a client to meet, and the vampires had evidently upped the stakes (no pun intended), striking at me more openly than they had dared to before.

I flipped on the windshield wipers. Amphibian blood left scarlet streaks on the cracked glass.

"Good Lord," Billy breathed.

"Yeah." I said. "It never rains, it pours."

Chapter Two

I dropped Billy off at his apartment near campus. I didnt think the ghoul would be filing a police report, but I wiped down the shotgun anyway. Billy wrapped it in a towel I had in the backseat of the Beetle and took it with him, promising to dispose of the weapon. His girlfriend, Georgia, a willowy girl a foot taller than him, waited on the apartments balcony in dark shorts and a scarlet bikini top, displaying a generous amount of impressively sun-bronzed skin in a manner far more confident and appealing than I would have guessed from her a year before. My, how the kids had grown.

The moment Billy got out of the car, Georgia looked up sharply from her book and her nostrils flared. She headed into the house and met him at the door with a first aid kit. She glanced at the car, her expression worried, and nodded to me. I waved back, trying to look friendly. From Georgias expression, I hadnt managed better than surly. They went into the apartment, and I pulled away before anyone could come out to socialize with me.

After a minute I pulled over, killed the engine, and squinted up at