The Dresden Files Collection 7-12

by Jim Butcher

  “Ah,” I said. “Let me guess. You were still wearing the Gothy McGoth outfit instead of what your mom saw you leave the house in.”

  Her cheeks flushed pink. “Yes. Only she wasn’t running errands. Gran had borrowed the van and taken the little ones to get haircuts because Mom was sick. I was in the living room and I hadn’t changed back. All I wanted was to sink into the floor so she wouldn’t see me.”

  “What happened?”

  Molly shrugged. “I closed my eyes. Mom came in. She sat down on the couch and turned on the TV, and never said a word. I opened my eyes and she was sitting there, three feet away, and hadn’t even seen me. I walked out really quietly, and she never even glanced at me. I mean, at first I thought she’d gone crazy or into denial or something. But she really hadn’t seen me. So I snuck back to my room, changed clothes, and she was none the wiser.”

  I lifted my eyebrows, impressed. “Wow. Really?”

  “Yes.” She peered up at me. “Why?”

  “Your first time out you called up a veil on nothing but instinct. That’s impressive, kid. You’ve got a gift.”

  She frowned. “Really?”

  “Absolutely. I’m a full wizard of the White Council, and I can’t do a reliable veil.”

  “You can’t? Why not?”

  I shrugged. “Why are some people wonderful singers, even without training, and other people can’t carry a tune in a bucket? It’s something I just don’t have. That you do…” I shook my head. “It’s impressive. It’s a rare talent.”

  She frowned over that, her gaze turning inward for a moment. “Oh.”

  “Bet you got one hell of a headache afterward.”

  She nodded. “Yes, actually. Like an ice-cream headache, only two hours long. How did you know?”

  “It’s a fairly typical form of sensory feedback for improperly channeled energy,” I said. “Everyone who does magic winds up with one sooner or later.”

  “I haven’t read about anything like that.”

  “Is that what you did next? You figured out you could become the invisible girl, and went and studied books?”

  She was quiet for a moment, and I thought she was about to close up again. But then she said, quietly, “Yes. I mean, I knew how hard my Mom would be on me if I was…showing interest in that kind of thing. So I read books. The library, and a couple others that I got at Barnes and Noble.”

  “Barnes and Noble,” I sighed, shaking my head. “You didn’t head into any of the local occult shops?”

  “Not then,” she said. “But…I tried to meet people. You know? Like, Wiccans and psychics and stuff. That was how I met Nelson, at a martial arts school. I’d heard the teacher knew things. But I don’t think he did. Some of Nelson’s friends were into magic, too, or thought they were. I never saw any of them do anything.”

  I grunted. “What did all those people tell you about magic?”

  “What didn’t they tell me,” she said. “Everyone thinks magic is something different.”

  “Heh,” I said. “Yeah.”

  “And it wasn’t like I could just go running around all the time. Not with school and the little ones to watch and my Mom looking over my shoulder. So, you know. Mostly books. And I practiced, you know? Tried little things. Little, teeny glamours. Lighting candles. But a lot of the things I tried didn’t work.”

  “Magic isn’t easy,” I said. “Not even for someone with a strong natural talent. Takes a lot of practice, like anything else.” I walked quietly for a few steps and then said, “Tell me about the spell you used on Rosie and Nelson.”

  She paused, staring at nothing, the blood draining from her face. “I had to,” she said.

  “Go on.”

  Her pretty features were bleak. “Rosie had…she’d already had a miscarriage, because she kept getting high. And when she lost the baby, she went to the hard stuff. Heroin. I begged her to go into rehab, but she was just…too far gone, I guess. But I thought maybe I could help her. With magic. Like you help people.”

  Hooboy. I kept the dismay off my face and nodded for her to continue.

  “And one day last week, Sandra Marling and I had a talk. And during it, she told me how they were discovering that the presence of a very strong source of fear could bypass all kinds of psychological barriers. Things like addiction. That the fear could drive home a lesson, reliably and quickly. I didn’t have much time. I had to do it to save Rosie’s child.”

  I grunted. “Why do Nelson, too?”

  “He was…he was using too much. He and Rosie sort of reinforced each other. And I wasn’t sure what might happen, so I tried the spell out before I used it on her, too.”

  “You tested it on Nelson?” I asked. “Then did the same one on Rosie?”

  She nodded. “I had to scare them away from the drugs. I sent them both a nightmare.”

  “Stars and stones,” I muttered. “A nightmare.”

  Molly’s voice became defensive. “I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit there.”

  “Do you have any idea how much you hurt them both?” I asked.

  “Hurt them?” she said, apparently bewildered. “They were fine.”

  “They weren’t fine,” I said quietly. “But the same spell should have done more or less the same thing to both of them. It acted differently on Nelson than Rosie.” And then I put two and two together again and said, “Ah. Now I get it.”

  She didn’t look up at me.

  “Nelson was the father,” I said quietly.

  She shrugged. A tear streaked down her cheek. “They probably didn’t even know what they were doing when it happened. The pair of them were just…” She shook her head and fell silent.

  “That explains why your spell damaged Nelson so much more severely.”

  “I don’t understand. I never hurt him.”

  “I don’t think you did it on purpose.” I waved a hand, palm up. “Magic comes from a lot of places. But especially from your emotions. They influence almost anything you can do. You were angry at Nelson when you cast the spell. Contaminated the whole thing with your anger.”

  “I did not hurt them,” she said stubbornly. “I saved their lives.”

  “I don’t think you realize the ramifications,” I said.

  She spun to me and shrieked, “I did not hurt them!”

  The air suddenly crackled with tension; vague, unfocused energy centered on the screaming girl. There was enough energy to manage something unfortunate, and it was clear that the kid wasn’t in anything like control of her power. I shook my head and swung my left hand in a half circle, palm faced out, and simply drew in the magical energy her emotions had generated and grounded it into the earth before somebody got hurt.

  A tingle of sensation washed up my arm, surprisingly intense. Her talent was not a modest one. I started to snap a reprimand for her carelessness, but aborted it before the first word. In the first place, she was ignorant of what she’d done. Not innocent, but not wholly at fault, all the same. In the second place, she’d just been through a nightmarish ordeal at the hands of wicked faeries. She probably couldn’t have controlled her emotions, even if she wanted to.

  She stared at me in surprise as the energy she had raised vanished. The rage and pain in her stance and expression faded to uncertainty.

  “I didn’t hurt them,” she said in a rather small voice. “I saved them.”

  “Molly, you need to know the facts. I know you’re tired and scared. But that doesn’t change a damned thing about what you did to them. You fucked around with their minds. You used magic to enslave them to your will, and the fact that you meant well by it doesn’t matter at all. Somewhere inside of them both, they know what you’ve done to them, subconsciously. They’ll try to fight it. Regain control of their own choices. And that struggle is going to tear their psyches to shreds.”

  More tears fell from her eyes. “B-but…”

  I went on in a steady voice. “Rosie was better off. She might recover from it in a few years. But Nel
son is probably insane already. He might not ever make it back. And doing it to them has screwed around with your own head. Not as bad as Rosie and Nelson, but you damaged yourself, too. It’ll make it harder for you to control impulses and your magic. Which makes you a lot more likely to lose control and hurt someone else. It’s a vicious cycle. I’ve seen it in action.”

  She shook her head several times. “No. No, no, no.”

  “Here’s another truth,” I said. “The White Council has seven Laws of Magic. Screwing around in other people’s heads breaks one of them. When the Council finds out what you’ve done, they’ll put you on trial and execute you. Trial, sentence, and execution won’t take an hour.”

  She fell silent, staring at me, crying harder. “Trial?” she whispered.

  “A couple of days ago I watched them execute a kid who had broken the same law.”

  Her shocked expression could not seem to recover. Her eyes roamed randomly, blurred with tears. “But…I didn’t know.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “I never meant to hurt anyone.”

  “Ditto.”

  She broke out into a half-hysterical sob and clutched at her stomach. “But…but that’s not fair.”

  “What is?” I said quietly. “One more hard truth for you. I’m a Warden of the Council now, Molly. It’s my job to take you to them.”

  She only stared. She looked wracked with pain, helpless, alone. God help me, she looked like the little girl I’d first met at Michael’s house years before. I had to remind myself that there was another, darker portion of the girl behind those blue eyes. The snarling rage, the denial, they both belonged to the parts of her mind that had been twisted as she twisted others.

  I wished that I hadn’t seen flashes of that other self in her, because I did not want to follow the chain of consequence that sprang from it. Molly had broken the Laws of Magic. She’d inflicted incalculable harm on others. Her damaged psyche could collapse on her, leaving her insane.

  All of which meant that she was dangerous.

  Ticking-bomb dangerous.

  It did not matter to the Laws that she had meant well. She had become exactly the kind of person that the Laws of Magic—and their sentence—were created to deal with.

  But when the law fails to protect those it governs, it’s up to someone else to pick up the slack—in this case, me. There was a chance that I could save her life. It wasn’t an enormous chance, but it was probably the best shot she was going to get. Assuming, of course, that she was not already too far around the bend.

  I only knew one sure way to find out.

  I stopped in the darkened hall and turned to her. “Molly. Do you know what a soulgaze is?”

  “It…I read in a book that it’s when you look into someone’s eyes. You see something about who they are.”

  “Close enough,” I agreed. “You ever done it?”

  She shook her head. “The book said it could be dangerous.”

  “Can be,” I confirmed. “Though probably not for the reasons you’d think. When you see someone like that, Molly, there’s no hiding the truth about who you are. You see it all, good and bad. No specifics, usually, but you get a damned good idea about what kind of person they are. And it’s for keeps. Once you’ve seen it, it stays in your head, fresh, period. And when you look at them, they get the same look at you.”

  She nodded. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’d like to gaze on you, if you’re willing to permit it.”

  “Why?”

  I smiled a little, though my reflection in a passing window looked mostly sad. “Because I want to help you.”

  She turned away, as if to start walking again, but only swayed in place, her torn skirts whispering. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you, kid. But I need you to trust me for a little while.”

  She nodded, biting her lip. “Okay. What do I do?”

  I stopped and turned to face her. She mirrored me. “This might feel a little weird. But it won’t last as long as it seems.”

  “Okay,” she said, that lost-child tone still in her voice.

  I met her eyes.

  For a second, I thought nothing had happened. And then I realized that the soulgaze was already up and running, and that it showed me Molly, standing and facing me as nothing more than she seemed to be. But I could see down the hall behind her, and the church’s windows held half a dozen different reflections.

  One was an emaciated version of Molly, as though she’d been starved or strung out on hard drugs, her eyes aglow with an unpleasant, fey light. One was her smiling and laughing, older and comfortably heavier, children surrounding her. A third faced me in a grey Warden’s cloak, though a burn scar, almost a brand, marred the roundness of her left cheek. Still another reflection was Molly as she appeared now, though more secure, laughter dancing in her eyes. Another reflection showed her at a desk, working.

  But the last…

  The last reflection of Molly wasn’t the girl. Oh, it looked like Molly, externally. But the eyes gave it away. They were flat as a reptile’s, empty. She wore all black, including a black collar, and her hair had been dyed to match. Though she looked like Molly, like a human being, she was neither. She had become something else entirely, something very, very bad.

  Possibilities. I was looking at possibilities. There was definitely a strong presence of darkness in the girl, but it had not yet gained dominion over her. In all the potential images, she was a person of power—different kinds of power, certainly, but she was strong in all of them. She was going to wind up with power of her own to use or misuse, depending on what choices she made.

  What she needed was a guide. Someone to show her the ropes, to give her the tools she would need to deal with her newfound power, and all the baggage that came with it. Yes, that kernel of darkness still burned coldly within her, but I could hardly throw stones there. Yes, she had the potential to go astray on an epic scale.

  Don’t we all.

  I thought of Charity and Michael, Molly’s parents, her family. Her strength had been forged and founded in theirs. They both regarded the use of magic as something suspect at best, and if not inherently evil, then inherently dangerous. Their opposition to the power that Molly had manifested might turn the strength they’d given their daughter against her. If she believed or came to believe that her power was an evil, it could push her faster down the left-hand path.

  I knew something of how much Michael and Charity cared for their daughter.

  But they couldn’t help her.

  One thing was certain, though, and gave me a sense of reassurance. Molly had not yet indelibly stained herself. Her future had yet to be written.

  It was worth fighting for.

  The gaze ended, and the various images in the windows behind Molly vanished. The girl herself trembled like a frightened doe, staring up at me with her eyes wide and huge.

  “My God,” she whispered. “I never knew…”

  “Easy,” I told her. “Sit down until things stop spinning.”

  I helped her settle to the floor with her back to the wall, and I did the same beside her. I rubbed at a spot between my eyebrows that began to twinge.

  “What did you see?” she whispered.

  “That you’re basically a decent person,” I told her. “That you have a lot of potential. And that you’re in danger.”

  “Danger?”

  “Power’s like money, kid. It isn’t easy to handle well, and once you start getting it, you can’t have enough. I think you’re in danger because you’ve made a couple of bad choices. Used your power in ways that you shouldn’t. Keep it up, and you’ll wind up working for the dark side.”

  She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. “Did…did you get what you needed?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You have a couple of choices to make, Molly. Starting with whether or not you want to turn yourself in to the Council.”

  She roc
ked back and forth, a nervous motion. “Why would I?”

  “Because they’re going to find you, sooner or later. If that happens, if they think you’re trying to avoid them, they’ll probably kill you out of hand. But if you’re willing to cooperate and face up to what you’ve done, and if someone intercedes on your behalf, the Council might withhold a death sentence.”

  “Aren’t you just going to turn me in anyway?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s about choices, Molly. This one is yours. I’ll respect what you want to do.”

  She frowned. “Would you get in trouble with them for that?”

  I shrugged. “Not sure. They might kill me for being in collusion with an evil wizard.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

  “They aren’t exactly overflowing with tolerance and forgiveness and agape love,” I told her. “They’ve almost pulled the trigger on me a couple of times. They’re dangerous people.”

  She shivered. “You’d…you’d risk that for me?”

  “Yep.”

  She frowned, chewing that over. “And if I turn myself in?”

  “Then we’ll explain what happened. I’ll intercede for you. If the Council accepts that, then I’ll be held responsible for your training and your use of magic.”

  She blinked. “You mean…I’d be your apprentice?”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “But you have to understand something. It would mean that you agree to accept my leadership. If I tell you to do something, you do it. No questions, no delays. What I can teach you is no damn game. It’s the power of life and death, and there’s no room for anyone who doesn’t work hard to control it. If you go to the Council with me, you’re accepting those terms. Got it?”

  She shivered and nodded.

  “Next, you have to decide what you want to do with your power.”

  “What are my choices?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “You’ve got the juice to make the White Council, eventually, if that’s what you want. Or you can find something worth supporting with your talents. I’ve heard of a couple of wizards who have made stupid amounts of money with their skills. Or hell, maybe after you learn to control yourself, you just set them aside. Let them fade.” Like your mom did.