Warns Harry of gruffs

So, instead of bothering with a simple bait-and-snare, I braced my feet, held out my right hand palm up, placed the doughnut upon it like an offering, and murmured a Name.
Names, capital N, have power. If you know something's Name, you automatically have a conduit with which you can reach out and touch it, a way to home in on it with magic. Sometimes that can be a really bad idea. Speak the Name of a big, bad spiritual entity and you might be able to touch it, sure-but it can touch you right back, and the big boys tend to do it a lot harder than any mortal. It's worth as much as your soul to speak the Name of beings like that.
But the Nevernever is a big place, and not to mix metaphors, but there are plenty of fish in that sea. There are literally countless beings of far less metaphysical significance, and it really isn't terribly difficult to get one of them to do your bidding by invoking its Name.
(People have Names, too. Sort of. Mortals have this nasty habit of constantly reassessing their personal identity, their values, their beliefs, and it makes it a far more slippery business to use a mortal's Name against them.)
I know a few Names. I invoked this one as lightly and gently as I could in an effort to be polite.
It didn't take me long, maybe a dozen repetitions of the Name before the entity it summoned appeared. A basketball-sized globe of blue light dived out of the snow overhead and hurtled down the alley toward my face.
I stood steady as it came on. Even with relatively minor summonings, you never let them see you flinch.
The globe snapped to an instant halt about a foot away from the doughnut, and I could just make out the luminous shape of the tiny humanoid figure within. Tiny, but not nearly so tiny as the last time I had seen him. Hell's bells, he must have been twice as tall as the last time we'd spoken.
"Toot-toot," I said, nodding to the pixie.
Toot snapped to attention, piping, "My lord!" The pixie looked like an athletically slender youth, dressed in armor made of discarded trash. His helmet had been made from the cap to a three-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, and tufts of his fine lavender hair drifted all around its rim. He wore a breastplate made from what looked like a carefully reshaped bottle of Pepto-Bismol, and carried a box knife sheathed in orange plastic on a rubber-band strap over one shoulder. Rough lettering on the box knife's case, written in what looked like black nail polish, proclaimed, Pizza or Death! A long nail, its base carefully wrapped in layers of athletic adhesive tape, was sheathed in the hexagonal plastic casing of a ballpoint pen at his side. He must have lifted the boots from a Ken doll, or maybe a vintage GI Joe.
"You've grown," I said, bemused.
"Yes, my lord," Toot-toot barked.
I arched an eyebrow. "Is that the box knife I gave you?"
"Yes, my lord!" he shrilled. "This is my box knife! There are many who like it, but this one is mine!" Toot's words were crisply precise, and I realized that he was imitating the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. I throttled the sudden smile trying to fight its way onto my face. It looked like he was taking it seriously, and I didn't want to crush his tiny feelings.
What the hell. I could play along. "At ease, soldier."
"My lord!" he said. He saluted by slapping the heel of his hand against his forehead and then buzzed a quick circle around the doughnut, staring at it intently. "That," he declared, in a voice much more like his usual one, "is a doughnut. Is it my doughnut, Harry?"
"It could be," I said. "I'm offering it as payment."
Toot shrugged disinterestedly, but the pixie's dragonfly wings buzzed in excitement. "For what?"
"Information," I said. I jerked my head at the fallen building. "There was a seriously large sigil-working done in and around that building several hours ago. I need to know anything the Little Folk know about what happened." A little flattery never hurt. "And when I need information from the Little Folk, you're the best there is, Toot."
His Pepto-armored chest swelled up a bit with pride. "Many of my people are beholden to you for freeing them from the pale hunters, Harry. Some of them have joined the Za-Lord's Guard."
"Pizza Lord" was the title some of the Little Folk had bestowed upon me-largely because I provided them with a weekly bribe of pizza. Most don't know it, even in my circles, but the Little Folk are everywhere, and they see a lot more than anyone expects. My policy of mozzarella-driven goodwill had secured the affections of a lot of the locals. When I'd demanded that a sometime ally of mine set free several score of the Folk who had been captured, I'd risen even higher in their collective estimation.
Even so, "Za-Lord's Guard" was a new one on me.
"I have a guard?" I asked.
Toot threw out his chest. "Of course! Who do you think keeps the Dread Beast Mister from killing the brownies when they come to clean up your apartment? We do! Who lays low the mice and rats and ugly big spiders who might crawl into your bed and nibble on your toes? We do! Fear not, Za-Lord! Neither the foulest of rats nor the cleverest of insects shall disturb your home while we draw breath!"
I hadn't realized that in addition to the cleaning service, I'd acquired an exterminator too. Handy as hell, though, now that I thought about it. There were things in my lab that wouldn't react well to becoming rodent nest material.
"Outstanding," I told him. "But do you want the doughnut or not?"
Toot-toot didn't even answer. He just shot off down the alleyway like a runaway paper lantern, but so quickly that he left falling snow drifting in contrail spirals in his wake.
Typically speaking, faeries get things done in a hurry-when they want to, at any rate. Even so, I'd barely had time to hum through "When You Wish upon a Star" before Toot-toot returned. The edges of the sphere of light around him had changed color, flushing into an agitated scarlet.
"Run!" Toot-toot piped as he streaked down the alley. "Run, my lord!"
I blinked. Of all the things I'd imagined hearing from the little fae on his return, that had not been on my list.
"Run!" he shrilled, whirling in panicked circles around my head.
My brain was still processing. "What about the doughnut?" I asked, like an idiot.
Toot-toot zipped over to me, set his shoulders against my forehead and pushed for all he was worth. He was stronger than he looked. I had to take a step back or be overbalanced. "Forget the doughnut!" he shouted. "Run, my lord!"
Forget the doughnut?
That, more than anything, jarred me into motion. Toot-toot was not the sort to give in to panic. For that matter, the little fae had always seemed to be...not ignorant so much as innocent of the realization of danger. He'd always been oblivious to danger in the past, when there was mortal food on the line.
In the silence of the snowy evening I heard a sound coming from the far end of the alley. Footsteps, quiet and slow.
A quivering, fearful little voice in my head told me to listen to Toot, and I felt my heart speed up as I turned and ran in the direction he'd indicated.
I cleared the alley and turned left, slogging through the deepening snow. There was a police station only two or three blocks from here. There would be lights and people there, and it would probably serve as a deterrent to whatever was after me. Toot flew beside me, just over my shoulder, and he'd produced a little plastic sports whistle. He blew on it in a sharp rhythm, and through the falling snow I dimly saw half a dozen spheres of light of various colors, all smaller than Toot's, appear out of the night and begin to parallel our course.
I ran for another block, then two, and as I did I became increasingly certain that something was following in my wake. It was a disturbing sensation, a kind of crawly tingle on the back of my neck, and I was sure that I had attracted the attention of something truly terrible. Mounting levels of fear followed that realization, and I ran for all I was worth.
I turned right and spotted the police station house, its exterior lighting a promise of safety, its lamps girded with haloes in the falling snow.
Then the wind came up and the whole world turned frozen and white. I couldn't see anything, not my own feet as I struggled through the snow, and not the hand I tried holding up in front of my face. I slipped and went down, and then bounced back to my feet in a panic, certain that if my pursuer caught me on the ground, I would never stand again.

Small Favor Chapter 5, Page 33-38


Mab glanced up, as if consulting the stars through the still-falling snow. "Time, time, time. Will there never be an end to it?" She shook her head. "Wizard child, the hour has nearly passed. I have duties upon which to attend-as do you. You should rise and leave this place immediately."
"Why?" I asked warily. I got to my feet.
"Because when your little retainer warned you of danger, wizard child, he was not referring to me."
On the street outside the alley, the gale-force wind and the white wall of blowing snow both died away. On the other side of the street, two men in long coats and big Stetson hats stood facing the alley. I felt the sudden weight of their attention, and got the impression that they had been surprised to see me.
I whirled to speak to Mab-only to find her gone. Grimalkin, too, both of them vanished without a trace or a whisper of power to betray it.
I turned back to the street in time to see the two figures step off the sidewalk and begin moving toward me with long strides. They were both tall, nearly my own height, and thickly built. The snowfall hadn't lightened, and the street was a smooth pane of unbroken snow.
They were leaving cloven footprints on it.
"Crap," I spat, and fled back down the narrow, featureless alley.

Small Favor Chapter 6, Page 49