The Dresden Files is copyright Jim Butcher. This story is licensed under the Creative Commons as derivative, noncommercial fiction.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro Inc. No copyright infringement is intended.

[NB for Dresden Files reference: This story takes place a moderate period of time after the events of Ghost Story, (probably after Cold Days as well, hard to tell yet) but also assumes (approximately) the events of LogicMouse's earlier fanfic, "New Car Smell." (Which can be found by Googling "nine muses the archive".) Because she liked them, so there. So Clyde, the fancy new tools, and Harry's new coat are in no way canon, but we're going to use them anyway. But you can still read this story without knowing anything more about that one.]

New Business

I was feeling unreasonably happy with my lot in life as Clyde and I roared into the parking lot of my new office that morning. I slid the flashy white Charger into one of the half-dozen spots in the microscopic area of pavement that I was pleased to call my own. He shut off his engine analogue—or at least cut the sound effects—and I swung open the door and got out almost before we'd completely stopped moving. It was a gorgeous late spring day, the sun was shining, my new office was finally renovated to my liking, and I thought I had glimpsed someone standing by the front door waiting for me, so I might even have a paying customer.

Don't get me wrong; if you're going to be stuck being a kept man, you could do way worse than being beholden to one of the faerie queens. As ruler of all the Winter fae, the resources Mab has at her fingertips are almost unimaginable, and if you've got even a little bit of leverage against her, she'll go along with some surprisingly big requests simply because it's less trouble than saying no. But still. It'd be a wonderful feeling to be supplying my own pocket money again for a change, not to mention making paying my taxes significantly less tricky. The IRS doesn't appreciate it when you try to claim thousands of dollars worth of income earned from "Consultant work for the Queen of Air and Darkness."

I shrugged to settle the armored leather duster more comfortably across my shoulders, hefted my newly finished staff in my right hand and swung the car door closed with my left—offering Clyde an affectionate pat as I did—then turned to pace around the sidewalk to the front of the building.

As much as I had loved the Maltese Falcon-esque charm of my old office in the corner of a high-rise building in downtown Chicago, it was a simple fact that the entire building no longer existed as a direct result of my decision to put my office there. As far as I knew, no innocents had died in the explosion that destroyed the building, but that could easily have been otherwise. And even without any loss of life, the loss of property, records and livelihood to hundreds of innocent people was not something I could entirely forgive myself for.

So the new place was significantly different. It was a freestanding structure for one thing, on a quiet corner at the edge of two and a half blocks of fading business district in an otherwise residential neighborhood. But the whole thing wasn't much bigger than my old office had been. I smiled up at the gleaming white walls, miniature towers, and crenellations of the structure—not even thirty feet on a side—stretching out my wizardly senses to brush gently against the newly finished wards that coated its ceramic and steel walls like an extra, invisible layer of paint, and resisted the impulse to start whistling. Nothing good could come of that.

I swung around the front corner into view of the theoretical client. The silver charm bracelet with a dozen tiny shields that hung around my left wrist thrummed softly with the energy I had begun to run through it, and the spirals of carved symbols that curled around my staff—inlaid with three distinct types of metal—gleamed just a little brighter than the sunny day could account for. A would-be client would be wonderful, but to be honest, the way my life tends to go, she was more likely a would-be assassin.

The young woman who stood on the sidewalk a few feet from my door was cute, in a nervously slender, coltish way. She was a bit under average height for a woman, almost definitely legal to drive, definitely not to drink. I couldn't quite decide whether they'd let her vote yet. She had loose, shoulder-length hair dyed a deep indigo and set off with a single pink and purple stripe that fell artlessly over one ear. Her clothes were an odd blend of nerdy-chic and goth-chic. On one hand, a white collared shirt topped with a lavender sweater vest straight out of some extra-cutesy boarding school; on the other, loose black cargo pants, pockets bulging, tucked into knee-high black boots whose boxy design and exaggerated elevator soles left them more suited for the big top than a stroll down main street. I guess those are fashionable these days, for folks who don't naturally brain themselves in doorways.

She had a huge, old leather-bound book tucked under one arm and no purse in sight, although those pockets most likely made up the cubic yardage for her. As I approached, I noticed there was something odd about her face. I did my best to study it without appearing to, and without meeting her eyes for too long. It's just not good business practice to allow unintentional soulgazes with potential clients. Especially when they haven't even offered to pay you yet.

Her chin was dainty and distinctly pointed, and her eyes—a vibrant purple I had previously thought only to be found on the heroines in Bob's romance novels—were just a bit larger than you normally see on people over the age of six. The combination gave her an exaggeratedly youthful, vulnerable appearance and combined with her apprehensive expression to set all my most archaic protective instincts a-jangle. I'd need to watch out for that, in case what she was going to lie to me about turned out to be deadly.

She straightened up when she saw me, hugging the tome closer to her chest and wobbling on those oversized heels to the point where she had to throw her free hand out to the side for balance. "Mister Dresden, sir?"

I gave her a warm smile, and came to a stop at well over arm's length from her, grounding the staff more-or-less innocuously between us. "That's me. And you are?"

"My name is Twilight Sp–er. Just call me Twilight." She blinked and tilted her head back to look me in the eye. I looked her in the hair stripe. Even with the platform heels, the top of her head hardly reached my collar-bone. "Wow. You're tall."

"Why yes, I'm tall." Who are you weird little wonders? I managed to complete the thought in silence, for a change. Score one for the self-control of the broke-ass wizard. "You ever need something off the top shelf, you know who to call." That got a little laugh out of her, but didn't loosen the tension in her shoulders as much as I might have liked. "Are you in need of a private investigator?"

She coughed, shifting her weight and nearly stumbling over her shoes again. The heels made a sharp, oddly hollow tock against the concrete. "No. Actually. I need a wizard."

I grunted something that might almost have been a laugh. "Well, then you came to the right place. No point discussing important things out here, eh?" I turned away from her, up two little steps, and unlocked the Lexan-and-steel front door of my office with its simple logo in neat black lettering; "Harry Dresden, Wizard." She was almost certainly hiding something from me, but by this point my instincts were pretty sure that it wasn't murderous intent. Nevertheless, I opened the door quickly, muttering the wards around it from active burglar alarm to low key detection mode under my breath and giving the surprisingly heavy door a shove that was just enough to allow me to enter.

Under normal circumstances, I'm an old-fashioned guy. I love few things more than showing respect and courtesy to a lady, with things like paying for meals and holding open doors. But I've gotten to be pretty damned cynical over the last few years, and the door itself was in the nature of a test. I strode forward into the front room of the office, watching carefully in the dark-tinted mirror on the far wall for her reaction.

She stepped up to the closing door and pushed it open in a perfectly normal manner, looking very slightly miffed. She neither made an effort to avoid the door's steel frame nor showed any sign of discomfort or pain when her bare hand touched it. My tightly wound nerves loosened slightly. So. She was neither faerie nor fomor, neither of which can easily stand the touch of cold iron, including steel. Of course there were still a literally infinite number of nasty, inhuman things she could be, but I had special reasons to worry about those two.

The frame of the mirror gave off a flash of soft, dull orange and green light for a split second as she stepped through the doorway. It was brief enough, dim enough, that you wouldn't likely notice if you weren't specifically looking. But I was, and it was more than enough to give me an idea of what I was dealing with.

I swept around the side of the desk, stopping to lean my staff in the corner and hang the heavy, white leather duster up on its specially reinforced coat hook. I had finished working the same defensive spells into it as my old duster had been laced with a few months ago, but after brief consideration had decided not to bother removing the bulky, mundane chain mail, kevlar, and ceramic armor that lined it. I could handle the weight fine these days, and I've never yet found myself in the position of having too much protection.

I settled myself into the office chair behind my new desk, gesturing her into one of the two on the other side. My old office had been entirely furnished with hand-me-downs and Salvation Army finds; dark, creaky and comfortable. All the furniture in the new office was brand new, and even matched, if only because each piece was representative of the cheapest variation Ikea sold. It was the product of a compromise between myself and my 'design consultant'—also known as my fairy godmother, Lea. I'm still not sure why Mab assigned her to help me get settled back in the real world, but I'd been surprised at the vehemence with which she'd insisted on upgrading my usually eclectic style. The place wasn't precisely me, but it was still a much closer fit than my luxurious apartment in the walls of Arctis Tor.

"So, Twilight–" I paused, frowning. "You don't look old enough to have hippie parents."

She gave me a blank look. "I'm sorry?"

I shook my head a little, and folded my hands on the desk. "Uh. Never mind. Mind wanders when you get to be my age. So. You find yourself in need of a wizard, eh? Tell me about it."

She licked her lips, briefly looking even more uncomfortable. "I was referred to you—by a rather roundabout method—but the last link told me to give you this, first thing." She wriggled around, reaching into one of the roomy pockets of her pants, and came out with a small, octahedral gemstone, deep purple in color, which she held out to me.

My eyes narrowed. So much for no fairy involvement. I reached out to accept the gem from her, deliberately brushing her fingers with mine in passing. Instantly, I felt a sharp sting like a big old static shock, but indicating in this case the same thing as the green flash had. The girl flinched and lost her grip on the gem, but I caught it neatly, frowning again.

I reached out to the gem with a delicate tendril of will, and was rewarded with the cool, calculating tone of Mab's voice resonating in my head as if my skull were a struck bell. The problem this child brings you is of interest to me. Solve it for her, my Knight.

The crystal dissolved into a scattering of purple fairy dust and I frowned, shaking off the lingering resonance of the queen's words and trying to think.

Stranger and stranger. The girl currently massaging her shocked hand and glaring at me was a mortal practitioner, and an unusually strong one—maybe close to as strong as I had been at her age—but she came bearing a message token from my boss, Queen Mab. And she wasn't from around here. The orange flash had said that she was under the influence of some sort of shapeshifting effect, although not an innately malevolent one, like a Hexenwulf belt. That would have been red.

"Don't tell me you weren't expecting that," I growled.

"What? No, what– That hurt!" she said, shaking out her zapped hand with a puzzled frown. My brows rose.

"You've really never touched another practitioner before?" I said, probably sounding more than a little skeptical. "Wait, are you here for training? Because I don't exactly have time to take on another apprentice these days." Or any desire for one. My track record in that department was less than stellar.

"Wha–No!" she snapped, sounding insulted enough to put my back up. Hey, full wizard of the White Council over here, more than qualified to teach anybody I choose about magic. "Sel–I already have the most wonderful teacher possible, thank you!" She clutched the book more closely to her chest, staring at me warily for a moment. "What's a practitioner?"

My jaw dropped. "Wizard. Witch. Magician. Magus. Shaman. Miracle worker? What do you call someone who can tap into the essential forces of the universe?"

"Um. Okay." She shrugged slender shoulders from behind her book shield and said apologetically, "We just say they have a gift for magic. It's not that big a deal."

I took a deep breath to smooth out my irritation at this half-incomprehensible conversation before it could develop into a full-on angry outburst. "Okay. So have you never touched someone else who had a gift for magic?"

"Sure, plenty of times! But nothing like that ever happened!"

"You're really not from around here, are you?"

"Not even close." Her response was instantaneous and relieved. "This place is so weird. And this disguise is just…I can't even put it into words. So uncomfortable."

I grunted. "We're safe enough here. You can drop it."

"Oh, I–I can't. Celestia put it on me before I left."

"Celestia." I nodded thoughtfully. "Your teacher?" She bobbed an eager nod. "She's not human, is she?"

"No, of course not!"

Right, neither was the kid, obviously. Wrong question, Harry. "Sorry. Celestia isn't a mortal, is she?"

Twilight shook her head, looking mollified at that. I nodded. Maybe the teacher was the fae in the picture. That could explain Mab giving the girl a token promising my help, as well as how the teacher could transform her student without blatantly breaking one of the Laws of Magic. Faeries tap into the same kind of magic that we mortals do, but they don't seem to be subject to the Laws in the same way. They have laws of their own, instead. Far twistier, more incomprehensible, and therefore more dangerous laws.

"Right. You and your mentor are from somewhere in the deep Nevernever. I'm assuming the problem is back home?"

She sobered. "Something is killing p–people along the border, and three of my friends disappeared when we tried to stop it. Celestia says we just aren't built to handle this. Her contact thinks that you are." She narrowed her eyes and peered at me, apparently trying to read the truth of the claim off of my face.

I scowled, shaking my head. If the situation called for some creative mayhem and magical head-busting, then it was pretty well guaranteed to be more up my alley than that of this bookish little girl. Still. The whole set-up was creeping me out. If it weren't for Mab's directions, I might have turned down the job on general principle, but while I may have come to a sort of wary detente with my new boss, outright flaunting of her orders was not on the menu at this point in time.

"Yeah, okay. No point dragging our feet." I stood and gathered up my coat, tossing one wistful glance at the coffeemaker before I swung it on and took up my staff again. "I take it you can provide transportation?" She nodded firmly. "What facilities do you need?"

She licked her lips once. "Just some flat open space. A circle a little wider than you are tall."

I nodded. "Come on. We can use the parking lot."

I flipped the closed sign, locked the door and returned the wards to high alert, then led her around to the back of the building, where Clyde waited patiently. I gestured to the bare, recently resurfaced asphalt just past him and stood back to watch, sticking my hands in my pockets.

Twilight pulled chalk, candles and a half-dozen props of various description out of her cargo pants' capacious pockets and set to work, carefully referring to several pages in the book each step of the way. She started with a basic circle, maybe seven feet across, measuring it out with a piece of string held at the center point to get it as even as possible. I smiled, remembering a time when I was green enough to bother with something like that. My eyeballed circles are pretty darned accurate these days, and I have the skill and concentration not to worry too much about the loss of efficiency caused by a little imperfection. Still, it was good to see someone trying to keep up the standards.

Once the circle was laid out, she filled in a pair of inverted triangles—the shape of a traditional Star of David—and laid her six focus items just outside the circle, at each point of the figure. Then she began carefully copying a long piece of text out of her book along the inside curve of the circle, and then across each interior line. The alphabet was unfamiliar to me; blocky and repetitive, somehow reminiscent of cuneiform but maybe based on a different shape of stylus.

I peered at her foci while I waited for her to finish, and found myself metaphorically scratching my head. When I set up a serious piece of thaumaturgy like this, I use props representing the five senses, the four physical elements, and the three human aspects of mind, spirit and body. I seriously could not figure out what Twilight's props could be intended to represent. There were only the six of them, for starters, and a more eclectic bunch I'd never seen. A clear crystal prism sat across from a deeply toned purple jewel—amethyst, I thought, though I'm no gemologist—and next to a fresh, perfect, bright red apple. They were joined by a high quality brass astrolabe, a carefully preserved dried wildflower and—most confusing of all—a bright pink polka-dotted party horn.

I sighed and backed carefully away from her workspace, to lean against Clyde's back fender with my arms crossed. Oh, well. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Once the girl had her ritual space prepared, and six white candles lit at the corners of the figure, she knelt down in front of the astrolabe, weight neatly balanced on her knees and toes, hands resting loosely on top of her thighs. "Once the gate is open, we'll need to go through fairly quickly, so be ready, Mr. Dresden," she murmured.

"Roger Wilco, hon." I said. She threw a puzzled look at me over her shoulder, and I hurried to add, "I understand." She nodded, settled herself again, eyes closed, and sank into the focused calm required of a big working. I lifted my hips away from Clyde's warm fender and muttered, "Time for off-road mode, Clyde. You heard the client, we don't want to waste time."

I hadn't finished flapping my jaws before I felt a brief, focused flash of magic from behind me, and Clyde returned to his natural (or at least preferred) form. The huge grey horse turned around and leaned his chin on my shoulder, hooves clopping gently against the asphalt.

Twilight startled at the first tock of hoof on pavement, twisting around so violently that she nearly fell over onto her carefully drawn circle. Her eyes wide, she windmilled in place until she could regain her feet. "Where did you come from?" she gasped.

Clyde's warm, slightly rotten-smelling breath rolled across my face and chest, and I reached up to scratch his forelock, wrinkling my nose at the smell. "Just an associate of mine. Twilight, this is Clyde. Clyde, Twilight. Be nice."

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr. Clyde," Twilight said, and bowed slightly, for all the world as if she expected a reply. Well, I suppose one never knows for sure when dealing with wizards.

My mount just snorted heavily, probably objecting to the restriction.

Clyde looks more or less like a draft horse, complete with broad muscular haunches and a back I need to tilt my chin up to see, but he's really a steed of the Winter fae, and a very old and powerful one at that. His dental cutlery rivals a freaking grizzly bear's, and as far as I know he only eats the flesh of other faerie creatures. And probably mortal creatures too, if I'd let him get away with it.

Clyde and I have a kind of detente going on too. He does what I expect of him and I don't bind him into absolute, abject slavery. I could. It's apparently one of the perks of my new position. One of many I have no intention of taking advantage of.

"He's not much of a conversationalist," I said, once the silence had had a chance to settle.

"Oh."

"Time's a wasting, eh?"

"Oh! Yes. Sorry." After one more searching glance at Clyde, the girl finally turned back to her diagram.

It didn't take more than about five minutes for the indigo girl to get her act together. Purple-white lines of light rose up from the six corners of her design, arcing in to meet at the center point of the circle, then flaring into a solid dome of lightning-colored light. I stretched out my wizard's senses to examine the construct. The flavor was more… pastel than I was used to, but the basis was very similar to one of my Nevernever gates.

As soon as it had settled in, Twilight wobbled to her feet, even more off-balance than before. I closed the distance and was gently stabilizing her elbow before she could fall, and she glanced up at me with a combination of surprise and gratitude. I nodded, and let go as soon as I was sure she wasn't going to topple over.

She gave a sharp nod of her own, and used a brief two-handed gesture—a little reminiscent of a conductor calling the orchestra to order—to gather up her book and focus items with a tidy little whisk of a force evocation. She was stepping through the gate before she'd even gotten them all put away.

"All-righty, Clyde. Our turn." And I started to stride through the gate after her when a shrill, protesting neigh rang out behind me. I turned with one hand nearly touching the surface of the dome to see Clyde, nose lowered to the level of his knees, shaking his head and neck violently back and forth and backing slowly away from me. "What the hell, boy? We need to go. You've used portals with me plenty of times. This is no different." In answer, he threw his head back, baring those tremendous fangs—the ones he'd tried to take my face off with the first time we met—and screamed an even more impassioned denial, then started bouncing stiffly on his forelegs as though about to rear. At my back, I felt the purple gateway beginning to waver already. "Okay, okay, fine. You don't have to come. Just stay here, stay camouflaged and don't hurt anybody without a really good reason." He fell back to all fours and dropped his head, snorting a more characteristically ill-tempered acknowledgement.

There was no time to figure out what was bugging him just now, so I turned to hurry through the portal after my client. But Clyde wasn't generally an alarmist, so I started prepping my shield bracelet again while I did it. Better safe, etc.

When I passed the horizon of the spell's dome, I found myself not within another landscape but just on the inside of the diagram, whose light had changed from a bright, pure, purple-white to a gaudy rainbow of hues, swirling and shifting along lines that reflected its original, six pointed pattern. The girl waited for me at the far edge of the space, clutching her tome with an air of impatience. "Good," she said as soon as she saw me come through, and turned to step over the circle's edge and out. I followed quickly, ducking my head to avoid touching the arc of magic too soon.

Now we found ourselves at our destination, or so I supposed. This time I stepped through the effervescent curtain of magic into bright afternoon sunlight just a touch gentler than what shone on my office today, and the broad open space of what could only be a grand hall. The room around us echoed the basic shape of Twilight's transportation dome, but on the scale of a small sports stadium, decorated in a gold-accented rainbow of pastel colors. The curving walls were almost entirely composed of huge panels of stained glass, each a tranquil if oversimplified outdoor scene dominated by a different hue. The floor was patterned like a huge checkerboard, and what wall space there was between windows was shaded an oddly restful grey-violet color.

We had arrived at the edge of an inlaid golden circle in the exact center of the room, and we were entirely alone, at least for the moment. I heard Twilight sigh behind me, and murmur, "Oh, it's good to be home." I turned to make some comment in response, but the instant I saw her, the words fell right out the bottom of my brain, along with the tattered remains of my sanity.