We loaded Morgan into the wheelchair again. He was pale and shaking by the time we were finished. I laid a hand against his forehead. It was hot with fever.
Morgan jerked his head away from my fingers, scowling.
"What is it?" Molly asked. She had thought to grab both coats I'd had waiting, and had already put one of them on.
"He's burning up," I said quietly. "Butters said that could mean the wound had been infected."
"I'm fine," Morgan said, shivering.
Molly helped him into the second coat, looking around at the frozen, haunted wood with nervous eyes. "Shouldn't we get him out of the cold, then?"
"Yeah," I said, buttoning my duster shut. "It's maybe ten minutes from here to the downtown portal."
"Does the vampire know about that, too?" Morgan growled.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"That you'd be walking into an obvious trap, Dresden."
"All right, that's it," I snapped. "One more comment about Thomas and you're going body sledding."
"Thomas?" Morgan's pale face turned a little darker as he raised his voice. "How many corpses is it going to take to make you come to your senses, Dresden?" Morgan's pale face turned a little darker as he raised his voice. "How many corpses is it going to take to make you come to your senses, Dresden?"
Molly swallowed. "Harry, um, excuse me."
Both of us glared at her.
She flushed and avoided eye contact. "Isn't this the Nevernever?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Obviously," Morgan said at the same time.
We faced each other again, all but snarling.
"Okay," Molly said. "Haven't you told me that it's sort of dangerous?" She took a deep breath and hurried her speech. "I mean, you know. Isn't it sort of dumb to be standing here arguing in loud voices? All things considered?"
I suddenly felt somewhat foolish.
Morgan's glower waned. He bowed his head wearily, folding his arms across his belly.
"Yeah," I said, reining in my own temper. "Yeah, probably so."
"Not least because anyone who comes through the Ways from Edinburgh to Chicago is going to walk right over us," Morgan added.
Molly nodded. "Which would be sort of ... awkward?"
I snorted quietly. I nodded my head in the proper direction, and started pushing the wheelchair down the trail. "This way."
Molly followed, her eyes darting left and right at the sounds of movement in the faerie wood around us. Mouse fell into pace beside her, and she reached down to lay a hand on the dog's back as she walked, an entirely unconscious gesture.
We moved at a steady pace and in almost complete silence for maybe five minutes before I said, "We need to know how they found out about you."
"The vampire is the best explanation," Morgan replied, his tone carefully neutral.
"I have information about him that you don't," I said. "Suppose it isn't him. How did they do it?"
Morgan pondered that for a time. "Not with magic."
"You certain?"
"Yes."
He sounded like it.
"Your countermeasures are that that good?" I asked. good?" I asked.
"Yes."
I thought about that for a minute. Then it dawned on me what Morgan had done to protect himself from supernatural discovery. "You called in your marker. The silver oak leaf. The one Titan-" I forced myself to stop, glancing uneasily around the faerie forest. "The one the Summer Queen awarded you."
Morgan turned his head slightly to glance at me over his shoulder.
I whistled. I'd seen Queen Titania with my Sight once. The tableau of Titania and her counterpart, Mab, preparing to do battle with each other still ranked as the most humbling and awe-inspiring display of pure power I had ever witnessed. "That's why you're so certain no one is going to find you. She's the one shielding you."
"I admit," Morgan said with another withering look, "it's no donut."
I scowled. "How'd you know about that?"
"Titania's retainer told me. The entire Summer Court has been laughing about it for months."
Molly made a choking sound behind me. I didn't turn around. It would just force her to put her hand over her mouth to hide the smile.
"How long did she give you?" I asked.
"Sundown tomorrow."
Thirty-six hours, give or take. A few hours more than I'd believed I had, but not much. "Do you have the oak leaf on you?"
"Of course," he said.
"May I see it?"
Morgan shrugged and drew a leather cord from around his neck. A small leather pouch hung from the cord. He opened it, felt around inside, and came out with it-a small, exquisitely detailed replica of an oak leaf, backed with a simple pin. He held it out to me.
I took it and pitched it into the haunted wood.
Morgan actually did did growl, this time. "Why?" growl, this time. "Why?"
"Because the Summer Queen bugged them. Last year, her goon squad was using mine to track me down all over Chicago."
Morgan frowned at me, and glanced out toward where I had thrown it. Then he shook his head and rubbed tiredly at his eyes with one hand. "Must be getting senile. Never even considered it."
"I don't get it," Molly said. "Isn't he still protected, anyway?"
"He is," I said. "But that leaf isn't. So if the Summer Queen wants him found, or if someone realizes what she's doing and makes her a deal, she can keep her word to Morgan to hide him, and and give him away. All she has to do is make sure someone knows to look for the spell on the oak leaf." give him away. All she has to do is make sure someone knows to look for the spell on the oak leaf."
"The Sidhe are only bound to the letter of their agreements," Morgan said, nodding. "Which is why one avoids striking bargains with them unless there are no options."
"So Binder could have been following the oak leaf?" Molly asked.
I shrugged. "Maybe."
"It is still entirely possible that the Summer Queen is dealing in good faith," Morgan said.
I nodded. "Which brings us back to the original question: how did Binder find you?"
"Well," Molly said, "not to mince words, but he didn't."
"He would have found us in a matter of moments," Morgan said.
"That's not what I mean," she said. "He knew you were in the storage park, but he didn't know which unit, exactly. I mean, wouldn't tracking magic have led him straight to you? And if Thomas sold you out, wouldn't he have told Binder exactly which storage bay we were in?"
Morgan started to reply, then frowned and shut his mouth. "Hngh."
I glanced over my shoulder at the grasshopper and gave her a nod of approval.
Molly beamed at me.
"Someone on the ground following us?" Morgan asked. "A tailing car wouldn't have been able to enter the storage park without a key."
I thought of how I'd been shadowed by the skinwalker the previous evening. "If they're good enough, it would be possible," I admitted. "Not likely, but possible."
"So?" Morgan said. "Where does that leave us?"
"Baffled," I said.
Morgan bared his teeth in a humorless smile. "Where to next, then?"
"If I take you back to my place, they'll pick us up again," I said. "If someone's using strictly mortal methods of keeping track of our movements, they'll have someone watching it."
Morgan looked back and up at me. "I assume you aren't just going to push me in circles around Chicago while we wait for the Council to find us."
"No," I said. "I'm taking you to my place."
Morgan thought about that one for a second, then nodded sharply. "Right."
"Where the bad guys will see us and send someone else to kill us," Molly said. "No wonder I'm the apprentice; because I'm so ignorant that I can't see why that isn't a silly idea."
"Watch and learn, grasshopper. Watch and learn."
Chapter Twenty-one
We left the trail again, and for the second time in a day I emerged from the Nevernever into the alley behind the old meatpacking plant. We made two stops and then walked until we could flag down another cab. The cabbie didn't seem to be overly thrilled with Mouse, or the wheelchair, or how we filled up his car, but maybe he just didn't speak enough English to ably convey his enthusiasm. You never know.
"These really aren't good for you," Molly said through a mouthful of donut, as we unloaded the cab.
"It's Morgan's fault. He started talking about donuts," I said. "And besides-you're eating them."
"I have the metabolic rate of youth," Molly said, smiling sweetly. "You're the one who needs to start being health-conscious, O venerable mentor. I'll be invincible for another year or two at least."
We wrestled Morgan into his chair, and I paid off the cabbie. We rolled Morgan over to the steps leading down to my apartment, and between the two of us managed to turn his chair around and get him down the stairs and into the apartment without dropping him. After that, I grabbed Mouse's lead, and the two of us went up to get the mail from my mailbox, and then ambled around to the boardinghouse's small backyard and the patch of sandy earth set aside for Mouse's use.
But instead of loitering around waiting for Mouse, I led him into the far corner of the backyard, which is a miniature jungle of old lilacs that hadn't been trimmed or pruned since Mr. Spunkelcrief died. They were in bloom, and their scent filled the air. Bees buzzed busily about the bushy plants, and as I stepped closer to them, the corner of the building cut off the traffic sounds.
It was the only place on the property's exterior that was not readily visible from most of the rest of the buildings on the street.
I pressed past the outer branches of the lilacs and found a small and relatively open space in the middle. Then I waited. Within seconds, there was a buzzing sound, like the wings of a particularly large dragonfly, and then a tiny winged faerie darted through the lilacs to come to a halt in front of me.
He was simply enormous for a pixie, one of the Wee Folk, and stood no less than a towering twelve inches high. He looked like an athletically built youth dressed in an odd assortment of armor made from discarded objects and loose ends. He'd replaced his plastic bottle-cap helmet with one made of most of the shell of a hollowed-out golf ball. It was too large for his head, but that didn't seem to concern him. His cuirass had first seen service as a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, and hanging at his hip was what looked like the blade to a jigsaw, with one end wrapped in string to serve as a grip. Wings like those of a dragonfly buzzed in a translucent cloud of motion at his back.
The little faerie came to attention in midair, snapped off a crisp salute, and said, "Mission accomplished, my lord of pizza!"
"That fast?" I asked. It hadn't been twenty minutes since I'd first summoned him, after we'd gotten donuts and before we'd gotten into the cab. "Quick work, Toot-toot, even for you."
The praise seemed to please the little guy immensely. He beamed and buzzed in a couple of quick circles. "He's in the building across the street from this one, two buildings toward the lake."
I grunted, thinking. If I was remembering right, that was another boardinghouse converted into apartments, like mine. "The white one with green shutters?"
"Yes, that's where the rapscallion has made his lair!" His hand flashed to his waist and he drew his saw-toothed sword from its transparent plastic scabbard, scowling fiercely. "Shall I slay him for you, my lord?"
I very carefully kept the smile off of my face. "I don't know if things have escalated to that level just yet," I said. "How do you know this guy is watching my apartment?"
"Oh, oh! Don't tell me this one!" Toot jittered back and forth in place, bobbing in excitement. "Because he has curtains on the windows so you can't see in, and then there's a big black plastic box with a really long nose poking through them and a glass eye on the end of the nose! And he looks at the back of it all the time, and when he sees someone going into your house, he pushes a button and the box beeps!"
"Camera, huh?" I asked. "Yeah, that probably makes him our snoop." I squinted up at the summer sunshine and adjusted the uncomfortably warm leather duster. I wasn't taking it off, though. There was too much hostility flying around for that. "How many of your kin are about, Toot?"
"Hundreds!" Toot-toot declared, brandishing his sword. "Thousands!"
I arched an eyebrow. "You've been splitting the pizza a thousand ways?"