by Jim Butcher
"I really can't stick around," I said, but I stepped through the door anyway. She had half a dozen candles lit on the end table beside her couch, and there was a mussed blanket on the couch next to a paperback novel.
Shiela's long, dark hair was piled up into bun and held in place with a couple of chopsticks, leaving her ears and the smooth skin of her neck intriguingly bare. She was wearing a Bears football jersey made of soft cotton that hung to her knees, and she wore pink slippers on her feet. The jersey was loose on her, but she had the curves to make it look more appealing than it had any right to be. I could see her calves, and they did a wonderful job of blending softness and strength.
Shiela saw me looking, and her cheeks turned a little pink. "Hi," she said, her voice quiet.
"Hi," I said back, and smiled at her. "Hey, I thought you had a party tonight?"
She shook her head. "I was walking. I didn't want to walk in the rain, and I couldn't call anyone to get me a ride, so I'm home." She tilted her head to one side and frowned at me. "You seem… I'm not sure. Tense. Angry."
"Both," I said. "There are some things happening."
She nodded, her dark eyes serious. "I've heard that there's something bad brewing. It's what you're working on, isn't it?"
"Yes."
She fretted at her lower lip. "Then why are you here?"
She looked beautiful like that, in a sleepshirt in the candlelight. She wasn't wearing any makeup, but she looked deliriously soft and feminine. I thought about kissing her again, just to make sure that the first one hadn't been some sort of anomaly. Then I shook my head and reminded myself that tonight was about business. "I just needed to make sure that you were all right."
Her eyes widened. "Am I in some kind of danger?"
I lifted my hand placatingly. "I don't think you are now. But I was followed today. I had to be sure that you were safe. Have you seen anyone? Maybe felt nervous or anxious for no reason?"
"No more than any other day," she said. Thunder rumbled, and the rain kept drumming on her windows. "Honestly."
I let out my breath and felt myself relax a little. "Okay, good. I'm glad."
Thunder rumbled again and we both just stood there, staring at each other. Both of us glanced, just for a second, at the other's eyes, then pulled away before anything could happen.
"Harry," she said quietly. "Is there anything I can do to help you?"
"You already have," I said.
She took a step closer, and her dark eyes looked huge. "Are you sure?"
My heart sped up again, but I took a little step back from her. "Yeah. Shiela, I knew I wouldn't be able to focus on the rest of tonight if I didn't look in on you first."
She nodded then, and folded her arms. "All right. But when you're finished with this, there's something I'd like to talk to you about."
"What?" I asked.
She shook her head and put her hand on my arm. "It would take some time to explain it. If you think you need your focus for tonight, I don't want to distract you with anything."
I looked at her, and then deliberately down her, and said, "That's probably best. I'm finding you very distracting right now."
She flushed brighter. "No. That's just you reacting to being in danger. You're afraid that you're going to die, and sex is very life affirming."
"Is that what it is?" I drawled.
"Among other things," she said.
For a few seconds my hormones did their best to lobby for overcoming distraction by means of indulgence, but I reined them in. Shiela was right: I was in pain and in fear and in danger, and those kinds of circumstances have a tendency to make you pay attention to different things- the soft shine of candlelight on Shiela's hair, for example, or the soft scent of rose oil and flowered soap on her skin-and Shiela had been in danger for part of that time as well.
I didn't want to take advantage of that. And I didn't want to start anything with her that I wasn't going to be able to finish. For all I knew I'd be dead before another day was out, and it wouldn't be right to allow things to go any further just because I was afraid.
On the other hand, though, there was nothing wrong with savoring life while you still had it.
I leaned down to her, lifted her chin gently with my right hand, and kissed her mouth again. She quivered and returned it with a slow, hesitant shyness. I stayed like that for a moment, tasting her lips, my fingertips light on her chin, and then straightened, breaking it off very slowly.
She opened her eyes a moment later, her breathing a little fast.
I touched her cheek with my fingertips and smiled at her. "I'll call you soon."
She nodded, her eyes clouding with concern. "Be careful."
"Harry?" called a voice.
I blinked and looked around.
"Harry!" he called again, and I recognized Butters's voice. There was a curious quality to the acoustics of his voice-as if he were standing in an empty room, with no furniture or carpeting to absorb any sound.
Shiela froze, looking toward her door, and then said, "Dammit."
I blinked at her. "What?"
"I didn't want this to distract you," she said, and her tone was enigmatic.
I frowned at her for a moment and then opened the door to the apartment. Butters stood in the hall. He'd improvised a lead for Mouse out of what looked like the torn hem of his scrubs tunic, and my big shaggy dog headed for me, nose to the ground, pulling Butters along the way. Butters, for his part, stumbled along uncertainly, as if he'd had a little too much to drink and couldn't get his balance.
"Butters?" I said. "What's up?"
"The car died," he said. "And there were some guys who looked like they didn't like me on the street, so I came to find you."
Butters stopped, or tried to. Mouse chuffed out a breath in greeting and headed straight for me. I leaned down to scratch at Mouse's ears. "Hey, Mouse. Shiela, this is my dog, Mouse. And this is Waldo Butters. He's a friend of mine."
Shiela blinked her eyes closed slowly and looked away.
Butters peered and squinted, looking around him. "What?"
I frowned at him and touched his arm. "Are you okay?"
He flinched a little when I touched him, then clapped a hand down on my arm as if using it to orient on me. "Harry?" he asked. "Don't you have a light?"
I lifted my eyebrows at him and lifted my pentacle, willing it to light. "Here," I said. "Shiela, I hope you don't mind if they come in?"
Butters peered up at me and then around him.
"Harry?" he asked.
"Yeah?"
"Um, who are you talking to?"
I stared at him for a silent second.
And then a few details floated together in my mind, and the bottom dropped all the way out of my stomach.
I closed my eyes for a moment, and opened my inner vision, my wizard's Sight, and turned to face Shiela.
The little apartment simply dissolved, sliding away like paint being washed away by a stream of falling water. In its place I could see a dimly lit, gutted building. Studs stood naked where the drywall had been removed. There were piles of scrap wiring, half-rotted-looking ducts, and similar refuse, which had been removed from the building and thrown aside into refuse piles. The place had been prepared for renovation-but it was empty. The only window I could see was broken. Thunder rumbled, the sound slightly different than it had been a moment before. The driving rain gained a couple of notches of volume, beating hollowly on the old apartment building.
I stared at Shiela with my Sight, and she stood there unchanged- except that I could see a faint tint of light around her, subtle but definite. It meant that she was either a noncorporeal presence or an illusion of thought and energy rather than a reality. But if she'd been an illusion, she should have faded away entirely, as the apartment had done.
I released my Sight again. My stomach twisted on itself, a burning, bitter feeling. "Shiela," I said quietly. "Stars and stones, it's all but your real name, isn't it? Lasciel."
"It's
close," Shiela agreed quietly.
"Harry?" Butters whispered. His eyes were very wide. "Who are you talking to?"
"Shut up a minute, Butters," I said, staring at her. She regarded me quietly, her eyes now steady on mine. "That's what Billy was talking about. Bock started looking awfully odd when I was speaking to you at the bookstore. And you never interacted with anyone else. Never opened any doors in the store. Didn't pick up the book when I was looking for it." I glanced down at my hand, where she'd written her number in permanent ink. It was now gone. "Illusions," I said.
"Yes," she said calmly. "Some of appearance only. Some of seeming."
"Why?"
"To help you," she said. "I told you that I could not make open contact with your conscious mind. That is why I created Shiela." She gestured down at herself. "I wanted to help you, but I couldn't do it directly. So I tried to do it this way."
"So you lied to me," I said.
She arched a brow. "I had little choice in the matter."
"What about after you made contact with me?" I said, and my voice was bitter too. "I used the Hellfire and you came to me in a dream."
"That was after you met Shiela, if you will recall," she said.
"But you didn't need Shiela anymore."
"No," she said. "I didn't. But I found that I…" She rolled her shoulders in a shrug. "That I enjoyed being Shiela. That I enjoyed interacting with you as one person to another. Without being regarded with fear and suspicion. I know that you understand what it is like. You've felt it often enough in your own life."
"But oddly enough," I said, "I haven't gone off and pretended to be someone else to gain another's trust."
"You've felt that isolation for less than two score years, my host. I've lived with it for millennia."
"Yeah? How long were you planning on stringing me along?"
Her soft mouth turned into a firm line. "I was going to tell you once the night's business was done-assuming you lived through it."
"Sure you were," I said.
"I told you," she said. "I didn't want it to become a distraction for you."
I barked out a harsh little laugh. "And why should I believe that?"
"Because your death would mean the death of this part of me," she said, gesturing down at herself again. "The thought shadow of Lasciel would not survive your death-and the true Lasciel, my true self, would remain trapped for who knows how long. You have no idea of what it is to be trapped without sound, sight, or senses, waiting for someone to bring you forth from oblivion."
I stared hard at her. "I don't believe you."
"You need not, my host," she said, and gave me a little bow. "But that makes it no less true."
"You kissed me," I said.
Shiela- Lasciel's eyebrows lifted and she gave me an almost whimsical smile. "When I said that it has been a long time since I was close to anyone, I meant it. I enjoyed that contact, my host. As, I think, did you."
"Oh, let me guess," I said. "You did that for me, too. Because you wanted to help me."
"I kissed you because I desired it and because it was pleasurable. If you will recall, my host, I did help you. I gave you the summons to call the Erlking, did I not?"
I opened my mouth and then closed it again, struggling to find something to say.
"I have never wished you ill, my host," she said. "In fact, I have done all that I can to assist you."
I suddenly felt very tired and rubbed at my forehead. I reminded myself that Lasciel was a fallen angel. That she was one of the thirty demons of the Order of the Blackened Denarius. That she was known as the Temptress and the Webweaver, and that she was ancient, powerful, and deadly dangerous at the art of manipulation. She could not be trusted; nor could her little carbon copy that had taken up residence in my head.
But she had helped me. And she had kissed me. Sure, a kiss was just a kiss, but her desire for it, her hesitation, the sense of yearning to her had been genuine. She had wanted to do it. She had enjoyed it. She was one hell of a good kisser.
Hell being the operative word, I reminded myself.
"I can still help you, my host," she said. "You are a powerful mortal, but your foes are more formidable still. They will kill you." Her face took on an expression of frustrated protest. "Let me help you survive. Give me the chance to preserve myself. Please."
I stared at her for a moment. She looked lovely and sincere and afraid.
She looked exactly like the kind of woman in trouble whom I could never turn away.
"I have no intention of dying," I said quietly. "But you aren't going to be part of the equation."
"If you don't-"
"Save it," I told her quietly. "I know how this works. First I allow you to help with this problem. Then with the next one. Then with the one after that. And at some point I'll need more power for what will probably look like a very good reason and dig up the coin. And then you'll be able to do pretty much anything you want with me." I shook my head. "That's one big, long, slippery slope. No."
She clenched her jaw, her expression frustrated. "But I do not wish you any harm."
"Maybe," I said. "But there's no way for me to know that."
She arched one dark eyebrow at me.
Then, as quickly as blinking, the building was on fire. It rose up in a sudden explosion of heat and flame that engulfed the bare studs on the walls and chewed at the floor. Vicious heat assaulted my back, a searing pain that left me with no choice but to move forward. Behind me the fire roared up higher, and I looked around frantically, suddenly panicked. The only portion of the building that wasn't being swallowed by rising, hungry flame led to the broken window. I sprinted to it, spotted the old iron of a fire escape lattice beneath it, and ducked down to go through onto the fire escape before I was burned to charcoal.
And then the flames vanished, the air became cool once more, and the beat of rain replaced the roar of flame. I stood at the window, one leg raised onto the sill, the rain soaking my chest and my jeans.
And there was no fire escape outside the window.
There was only a long, long drop to the sidewalk beneath.
I swallowed and drew back from the window, shaking. The whole thing had happened so fast. My reaction to the fire had been sheer and naked terror, and even now my hand throbbed with the pain of illusory burns. Ever since that fire I'd had nightmares of more. The illusion of fire had cut straight through to my pain and terror and utterly bypassed my brain.
Which was exactly what Lasciel meant it to do.
"Harry?" Butters called, his voice high and thready. I couldn't see him. He stood back in the darkness of the empty building, and in my mindless panic I had allowed the light of my mother's pentacle to go out.
"I'm okay," I told him. "Just stay where you are. I'm coming."
I lit the pentacle again, and found Lasciel standing next to me, one eyebrow still raised. "That is how you know," she said. "If I wished to kill you, my host, your blood would be seeping from your broken corpse and mixing with the rain on the sidewalk."
There wasn't much I could say to that.
"Let me help you," she urged me. "I can help you defend yourself against the disciples of Kemmler. I can teach you magics you have never considered. I can show you how to make yourself stronger, swifter. I can show you how you might heal the damage to your hand, if you have enough discipline. There wouldn't even be a scar."
I turned my back on her. My heart pounded against my chest as I walked back to Butters.
She was lying to me. She had to be. That's what the Denarians did. They lied and manipulated their way into a mortal's good graces, gradually giving them more power while they fell more deeply under their demonic influence.
But she was telling the truth about one thing, for sure: She could make me stronger. Even the weakest Denarian I had seen, Quintus "Snakeboy" Cassius, had been a certifiable nightmare. With Hellfire to supplement my magic and an enormously powerful being to serve as a tutor and consultant, my abilities could grow to
epic proportions.
If I had power like that, I could protect my friends-Murphy, Billy, and the others. I could turn my power against the Red Court and help save the lives of the Wardens and the Council. I could do a lot of things.
And her kiss… The illusion had all been in my head, but it had been so utterly real. Every detail. Shiela herself had been so thoroughly genuine that I would never have guessed she was an illusion. Indeed, there was little difference, from my own perspective, between that complex an illusion and reality. The feel of her, the scent, everything had been there.
And she had been just as convincingly real in her blond-goddess form beside the hot tub in my dream. Her appearance had to be malleable. She could appear to me as anything.
As anyone.
Some darker, baser part of my nature toyed with that notion for a moment. But only for a moment. I didn't dare let that thought flow through my head for long. Her touch had been too soft, too gentle, too warm. Too good. I'd been without female company for years, and more of that warmth, that pleasing contact, was a temptation too great to allow myself to dwell upon.
I turned slowly and faced Lasciel.
She lifted her eyebrows, leaning a little forward in anticipation of my answer.
I knew how to manipulate and control my dreams-and this manifestation of Lasciel's shadow was nothing more than a waking dream.
"This is my mind," I told her quietly. "Get thee behind me."
I focused my thoughts and my power and brought forth my own illusion of imagination and thought. Silver manacles appeared from nowhere, manifested from my focus and desire, and locked themselves around Lasciel's wrists and ankles. I gestured sharply and visualized her being lifted through the air. Then I opened my hand, my spread fingers out, palm to the floor, and she fell into an iron cage that appeared from my concentrated effort. The door slammed and locked behind her.
"Fool," she said in a quiet voice. "We will die."
I closed my eyes and with a last effort of imagination and will summoned a heavy tarp that fell over the cage, covering it and blocking Lasciel from sight and sound.