Fix stared at me down the barrel of the shotgun. Then he lowered it abruptly and said, “Touché.”

Thomas produced from nowhere a semiautomatic pistol scaled to fit his truck, and had it trained on Fix’s head before the other man had finished speaking the second syllable of the word.

Fix’s eyes widened. “Holy crap.”

I sighed and took the gun gently from Thomas’s grip. “Now, now. Let’s not give him the wrong idea about the nature of this conversation.”

Fix let out a slow breath. “Thank you, Harry. I—”

I pointed the gun at Fix’s head, and he froze with his mouth partly open.

“Lose the shotgun,” I told him. I made no effort to sound friendly.

His mouth closed and his lips pressed into a thin line, but he obeyed.

“Step back,” I said.

He did it.

I got out of the car, carefully keeping the gun trained on his head. I recovered the shotgun and passed it back to Thomas. Then I faced the silver-haired Summer Knight in dead silence while the snow fell.

“Fix,” I said quietly, after a moment had passed. “I know you’ve been spending a lot of time in the supernatural circles lately. I know that plain old things like guns don’t seem like a significant threat, in some ways. I know that you probably meant it as a message, that you weren’t coming after me with everything you could bring to bear, and that I was supposed to consider it a token of moderation.” I squinted down the sight of Thomas’s gun. “But you crossed a line. You pointed a gun at my head. Friends don’t do that.”

More silence and snowfall.

“Point another weapon at me,” I said quietly, “and you’d damned well better pull the trigger. Do you understand me?”

Fix’s eyes narrowed. He nodded once.

I let him look down the gun’s barrel for a few more seconds and then lowered it. “It’s cold,” I said. “What do you want?”

“I came here to warn you, Harry,” Fix said. “I know Mab has chosen you to act as her Emissary. You don’t know what you’re getting into. I came to tell you to stand clear of it.”

“Or what?”

“Or you’re going to get hurt,” Fix said quietly. He sounded tired. “Maybe killed. And there’s going to be collateral damage along the way.” He held up a hand and continued, hurriedly, “Please understand. I’m not threatening you, Harry. I’m just telling you about consequences.”

“I’d have an easier time believing that if you hadn’t opened the conversation by threatening to kill me,” I said.

“The last Summer Knight was murdered by his Winter counterpart,” Fix replied. “In fact, that’s how most of them die. If you’d taken service with Mab, I wouldn’t stand a chance in a fair fight against you, and we both know it. I did what I had to in order to warn you and still protect myself.”

“Oh,” I said. “It was a precautionary shotgun aimed at my skull. That makes it different.”