by Jim Butcher
I’d saved her from the bad faeries, sure, but now she faced another, infinitely more dangerous threat.
The White Council. The Wardens. The sword.
It was only a matter of time before someone else managed to trace the black magic back to its source. If I didn’t bring her before the Council, someone else would, sooner or later. Even worse, if the mind-controlling magic she’d already used had begun to turn upon her, to warp her as well, she might be a genuine danger to herself and others. She could wind up as dangerous and crazy as the kid whose execution had served as a prelude to the past few days.
If I took her to the Council, I would probably be responsible for her death.
If I didn’t, I’d be responsible for those she might harm.
I wished I wasn’t so damned tired. I might have been able to come up with some options. I settled for banishing thoughts of tomorrow for the time being. I was whole, and alive, and sane, and so were the people who had stood beside me. We’d gotten the girl out in one piece. Her mom was holding her so ferociously that I wondered if I might not have been the catalyst for a reconciliation between the pair of them.
I might have healed the wounds of their family. And that was a damned fine thing to have done. I felt a genuine warmth and pride from it. I’d helped to bring mother and daughter back together. For tonight, that was enough.
Thomas sat down on my other side, wincing as he touched the lump on his head. “Harry,” Thomas said. “Remind me why we keep hurling ourselves into this kind of insanity.”
I traded a smile with Murphy and said nothing. We all three of us watched as Charity, on the floor in front of the first row of seats, clutched her daughter hard against her.
Molly leaned against her with a child’s gratefulness, need, and love. She spoke very quietly, never opening her eyes. “Mama.”
Charity said nothing, but she hugged her daughter even more tightly.
“Oh,” Thomas said. “Right.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Right.”
Chapter
Forty-one
Father Forthill received us in his typical fashion: with warmth, welcome, compassion, and food. At first, Thomas was going to remain outside Saint Mary’s, but I clamped my hand onto the front of his mail and dragged him unceremoniously inside with me. He could have gotten loose, of course, so I knew he didn’t really much mind. He growled and snapped at me halfheartedly, but nodded cautiously to Forthill when I introduced him. Then my brother stepped out into the hall and did his unobtrusive-wall-hanging act.
The Carpenter kids were sound asleep when we came in, but the noise made one of them stir, and little Harry opened his eyes, blinked sleepily, then let out a shriek of delight when he saw his mother. The sound wakened the other kids, and everyone assaulted Charity and Molly with happy shouts and hugs and kisses.
I watched the reunion from a chair across the room, and dozed sitting up until Forthill returned with food. There weren’t chairs enough for everyone, and Charity wound up sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, chomping down sandwiches while her children all tried to remain within touching distance.
I stuffed my face shamelessly. The use of magic, the excitement, and that final uphill hike through the cold had left my stomach on the verge of implosion. “Survival food,” I muttered. “Nothing like it.”
Murphy, leaning against the wall beside me, nodded. “Damn right.” She wiped at her mouth and looked at her watch. She tucked the last of her sandwich between her lips, and then started resetting the watch while she chewed.
“Gone almost exactly twenty-four hours. So we did some kind of time travel?” she asked.
“Oh, God no,” I said. “That’s on the list of Things One Does Not Do. It’s one of the seven Laws of Magic.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But however it happened, a whole day just went poof. That’s time travel.”
“People are doing that kind of time travel all the time,” I said. “We just pulled into the passing lane for a while.”
She finished setting the watch and grimaced. “All the same.”
I frowned at her. “You okay?”
She looked up at the children and their mother. “I’m going to have one hell of a time explaining where I’ve been for the past twenty-four hours. It isn’t as though I can tell my boss that I went time traveling.”
“Yeah, he’d never buy it. Tell him you invaded Faerieland to rescue a young woman from a monster-infested castle.”
“Of course,” she said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
I grunted. “Is it going to make trouble for you?”
She frowned for a moment and then said, “Intradepartmental discipline, probably. They couldn’t get me for anything criminal, so no jail.”
I blinked. “Jail?”
“I was in charge of things, remember?” Murphy reminded me. “I was pushing the line by laying that aside and coming to help you. Throw in that extra day and…” She shrugged.
“Hell’s bells,” I sighed. “I hadn’t realized.”
She shrugged a shoulder.
“How bad is it going to be?” I asked.
She frowned. “Depends on a lot of things. Mostly what Greene and Rick have to say, and how they say it. What other cops who were there have to say. A couple of those guys are major assholes. They’d be glad to make trouble for me.”
“Like Rudolph,” I said.
“Like Rudolph.”
I put on my Bronx accent. “You want I should whack ’em for ya?”
She gave me a quick, ghostly smile. “Better let me sleep on that one.”
I nodded. “But seriously. If there’s anything I can do…”
“Just keep your head down for a while. You aren’t exactly well loved all over the department. There are some people who resent that I keep hiring you, and that they can’t tell me to stop because the cases you’re on have about a ninety percent likelihood of resolution.”
“My effectiveness is irrelevant? I thought cops had to have a degree or something, these days.”
She snorted. “I love my job,” she said. “But sometimes it feels like it has an unnecessarily high moron factor.”
I nodded agreement. “What are they going to do?”
“This will be my first official fuckup,” she said. “If I handle it correctly, I don’t think they’ll fire me.”
“But?” I asked.
She pushed some hair back from her eyes. “They’ll shove lots of fun counseling and psychological evaluation down my throat.”
I tried to imagine Murphy on a therapist’s couch.
My brain almost exploded out my ears.
“They’ll try every trick they can to convince me to leave,” she continued. “And when I don’t, they’ll demote me. I’ll lose SI.”
A lead weight landed on the bottom of my stomach. “Murph,” I said.
She tried to smile but failed. She just looked sickly and strained. “It isn’t anyone’s fault, Harry. Just the nature of the beast. It had to be done, and I’d do it again. I can live with that.”
Her tone was calm, relaxed, but she was too tired to make it sound genuine. Murphy’s command might have been a tricky, frustrating, ugly one, but it was hers. She’d fought for her rank, worked her ass off to get it, and then she got shunted into SI. Only instead of accepting banishment to departmental Siberia, she’d worked even harder to throw it back into the faces of the people who had sent her there.
“It isn’t fair,” I growled.
“What is?” she asked.
“Bah. One of these days I’m going to go downtown and summon up a swarm of roaches or something. Just to watch the suits run out of the building, screaming.”
This time, her smile was wired a little tight. “That won’t help me.”
“Are you kidding? We could sit outside and take pictures as they came running out and laugh ourselves sick.”
“And that helps how?”
“Laughter is good for you,” I said. “Nine
out of ten stand-up comedians recommend laughter in the face of intense stupidity.”
She let out a tired, quiet chuckle. “Let me sleep on that one, too.” She pushed away from the wall, drawing her keys from her pocket. “I’ve got an appointment with the spin doctor,” she said. “You want a ride home?”
I shook my head. “Few things I want to do first. Thanks, though.”
She nodded and turned to go. Then she paused. “Harry,” she said quietly.
“Hmm?”
“What I said in the elevator.”
I swallowed. “Yeah?”
“I didn’t mean it to come out so harsh. You’re a good man. Someone I’m damned proud to call my friend. But I care too much about you to lie to you or lead you on.”
“It’s no one’s fault,” I said quietly. “You had to be honest with me. I can live with that.”
One corner of her mouth quirked into a wry half grin. “What are friends for?”
I sensed a change in tone as she asked the question, a very faint interrogative.
I stood up and put my hand on her shoulder. “I’m your friend. That won’t change, Karrin. Ever.”
She nodded, blinking several times, and for a moment rested her hand on mine. Then she turned to leave. Just then, Thomas poked his head in from the hallway. “Harry, Karrin. You leaving?”
“I am,” she said.
Thomas glanced at me. “Uh-huh. Think I can bum a ride?”
Her car keys rattled. “Sure,” she said.
“Thanks.” He nodded to me. “Thank you for another field trip, Harry. Kind of bland, though. Maybe next time we should bring some coffee or something, so we don’t yawn ourselves to death.”
“Beat it before I kick your whining ass,” I said.
Thomas sneered at me in reply, and he and Murphy left.
I ate the rest of my sandwich, idly noting that I had reached one of those odd little mental moments where I felt too tired to go to sleep. Across the room, Charity and her children had all fallen asleep where she sat on the floor, the children all leaning upon their mother and each other like living pillows. Charity looked exhausted, naturally, and I could see care lines on her face that I’d never really noticed before.
She could be a pain in the ass, but she was one gutsy chick. Her kids were lucky to have a mother like her. A lot of moms would say that they would die for their children. Charity had placed herself squarely in harm’s way to do exactly that.
I regarded the kids for a moment, mostly very young children’s faces, relaxed in sleep. Children whose world had been founded in something as solid as Charity’s love for them would be able to do almost anything. Between her and her husband, they could be raising an entire generation of men and women with the same kind of power, selflessness, and courage. I’m a pessimist of the human condition, as a rule, but contemplating the future and how the Carpenter kids could contribute to it was the kind of thought that gave me hope for us all, despite myself.
Of course, I suppose someone must once have looked down upon young Lucifer and considered what tremendous potential he contained.
As that unsettling thought went through my head, Molly shifted herself out from under her mother’s arm, removed her leg very gently from beneath a little brother’s ear, and extracted herself from the slumbering dogpile. She moved quietly for the exit until she glanced up, saw me watching her, and froze for half a step.
“You’re awake,” she whispered.
“Too tired to sleep,” I said. “Where are you going?”
She rubbed her hands on her torn skirts and avoided my eyes. “I…what I put them through. I thought it would be better if I just…”
“Left?” I asked.
She shrugged a shoulder, and didn’t lift her eyes. “It won’t work. Me staying at home.”
“Why not?” I asked.
She shook her head tiredly. “It just won’t. Not anymore.” She walked out past me.
I moved my right hand smoothly, gripping her hand at the wrist, skin-to-skin contact that conducted the quivering, tingling aura of power of a practitioner of the Art up through my arm. She’d avoided direct contact before, though I hadn’t had a reason to think she would at the time.
She froze, staring at my face, as she felt the same presence of power in my own hand.
“You can’t stay because of your magic. That’s what you mean.”
She swallowed. “How…how did you know?…”
“I’m a wizard, kid. Give me some credit.”
She folded her arms beneath her breasts, her shoulders hunched. “I should g-go…”
I stood up. “Yeah, you should. We need to talk.”
She bit her lip and looked up at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you’ve got some tough choices to make, Molly. You’ve got the power. You’re going to have to figure out whether you want to use it. Or whether you’re going to let it use you.” I gestured with a hand for her to accompany me and walked out, slowly. We weren’t going anywhere. What was important was the walk. She kept pace with me, her body language as closed and defensive as you please.
“When did it start for you?” I asked her quietly.
She chewed her lip. She said nothing.
Maybe I had to give a little to get a little. “It’s always like that for people like us. Something happens, almost like it’s all by itself, the first time the magic bubbles over. It’s usually something small and silly. My first time…” I smiled. “Oh, man. I haven’t thought about that in a while.” I mused for a moment, thinking. “It was maybe two weeks before Justin adopted me,” I said. “I was in school, and small. All elbows and ears. Hadn’t hit my growth spurt yet, and it was spring, and we were having this school Olympics. Field day, you know? And I was entered in the running long jump.” I grinned. “Man, I wanted to win it. I’d lost every other event to a couple of guys who liked to give me a hard time. So I ran down the blacktop and jumped as hard as I could, yelling the whole time.” I shook my head. “Must have looked silly. But when I shouted and jumped, some of the power rolled out of me and threw me about ten feet farther than I should have been able to jump. I landed badly, of course. Sprained my wrist. But I won this little blue ribbon. I still have it back at home.”
Molly looked up at me with a little ghost of a smile. “I can’t imagine you being smaller than average.”
“Everyone’s little sometime,” I said.
“Were you shy, too?”
“Not as much as I should have been. I had this problem where I gave a lot of lip to older kids. And teachers. And pretty much everyone else who tried to intimidate me, whether or not it was for my own good.”
She let out a little giggle. “That I can believe.”
“You?” I asked gently.
She shook her head. “Mine is silly, too. I walked home from school one day about two years ago and it was raining, so I ran straight inside. It was errands day, and I thought Mom was gone.”
“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 n
othing 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.”