by Jim Butcher
The value of what the Red Court had controlled was almost literally incalculable.
And I had thrown it all up in the air and declared one giant game of finders, keepers.
“Oops,” I said.
“Things . . . are bad,” Murphy said. “Not so much here in Chicago. We’ve repulsed the worst incursions—mostly from some gang of arrogant freaks called the Fomor. And the Paranet has been a huge help. It’s saved literally hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.”
In my peripheral vision, I saw Abby’s spine straighten and her eyes flash with a strength and surety I had never seen in her before.
“South America has the worst of it, by a long ways,” Murphy said. “But every two-bit power and second-rate organization in the supernatural world sees a chance to found an empire. Old grudges and jealousies are getting dusted off. Things are killing one another as well as mortals, all over the world. When one big fish shifts its power base to South America, dozens of little fish left behind try to grow enough to fill the space. So there’s fighting everywhere.
“The White Council, I hear, is running its tubby ass off, trying to hold things together and minimize the impact on regular folks. But we haven’t seen them here, apart from a couple of times when Warden Ramirez came by, hunting for Molly.”
“Molly,” I said. “How is she?” I dimly heard Mort relaying my words. I noted that he was doing a credible job of mirroring my tone of voice. I guess he really had done a lot of this kind of thing before.
“She’s still recovering from the wounds she took at Chichén Itzá,” Murphy said. “She says they were as much psychic as physical. And that hit to her leg was pretty bad. I don’t understand how your disappearance makes her a criminal to the White Council, but apparently it has. Ramirez has told us that the Wardens are looking to pass sentence on her—but he didn’t seem to be working his ass off to find her, either. I know what it looks like when a cop is slacking.”
“How is she?” I asked again. “Murph, it’s me. How’s she doing?”
She looked down and swallowed. “She . . . she isn’t right, Harry.”
“What do you mean?”
Murphy looked up at me again, her jaw set. “She talks to herself. She sees things that aren’t there. She has headaches. She babbles.”
“Sounds like me,” I said, at approximately the same time Will said, “Sounds like Harry.”
“This is different,” Murphy said to Will, “and you know it. Dresden was in control of it. He used the weirdness to make him stronger. Were you ever afraid of him?” Murphy asked. “Outright afraid?”
Will frowned and looked down at his hands. “He could be scary. But no. I never thought he’d hurt me. By accident or otherwise.”
“How do you feel about Molly coming over?” Murphy asked.
“I would like to leave,” Will replied frankly. “The girl ain’t right.”
“Apparently,” Murphy continued, turning back to me, “the presence of a wizard in a city, any city, all around the world, is an enormous deterrent. Weird things are afraid of the Council. They know that the White Council can come get you fast, out of nowhere, with overwhelming force. Most of the scary-bad things around, the ones with any brains, at least, avoid White Council territory.
“Only with you gone and the White Council having its hands full . . .” Murphy shook her head. “God. Even the vanilla news is starting to notice the weirdness in town. So. Molly wouldn’t stay with anyone. She’s always moving. But she got it into her head that Chicago didn’t need an actual White Council wizard to help calm things down—the bad guys just had to think one was here. So she started posting messages whenever she dealt with some wandering predator, and called herself the Ragged Lady, declaring Chicago protected territory.”
“That’s crazy,” I said.
“What part of she isn’t right didn’t you understand?” Murphy replied to Morty, her voice sharp. She took a breath and calmed herself again. “The craziest part is that it worked. At least partly. A lot of bad things have decided to play elsewhere. College towns out in the country are the worst. But . . . things have happened here.” She shivered. “Violent things. Mostly to the bad guys. But sometimes to humans. Gangers, mostly. The Ragged Lady’s calling card is a piece of cloth she tears off and leaves on her enemies. And there are lots and lots of pieces of cloth being found these days. A lot of them on corpses.”
I swallowed. “You think it’s Molly?”
“We don’t know,” Murphy replied in her professionally neutral voice. “Molly says she isn’t going after anything but the supernatural threats, and I’ve got no reason to disbelieve her. But . . .” Murphy showed her hands.
“So when you said Raggedy Ann,” I said, “you meant Molly.”
“She’s like this . . . battered, stained, torn-up doll,” Murphy said. “Believe me. It fits.”
“Battered, torn-up, scary doll,” Will said quietly.
“And . . . you just let her be that way?” I demanded.
Murphy ground her teeth. “No. I talked to her half a dozen times. We tried an intervention to get her off the street.”
“We shouldn’t have,” Will said.
“What happened?” Mort asked.
Will apparently assumed it had been my question. “She hammered us like a row of nails on balsa wood is what happened,” he said. “Lights, sound, images. Jesus, I’ve got a picture in my head of being dragged off into the Nevernever by monsters that I still can’t get rid of. When she gave it to me, all I could do was curl up into a ball and scream.”
Will’s description made me feel sick to my stomach. Which was ridiculous, because it wasn’t like I ate food anymore—but my innards hadn’t gotten the memo. I looked away, grimacing, tasting bitter bile in my mouth.
“Memories are weapons,” Sir Stuart said quietly. “Sharp as knives.”
Murphy held up her hand to cut Will off. “Whether or not she’s going too far, she’s the only one we have with a major-league talent. Not that the Ordo hasn’t done well by us, Abby,” she added, nodding toward the blond woman.
“Not at all,” Abby replied, undisturbed. “We aren’t all made the same size and shape, are we?” Abby looked at me, more or less, and said, “We built the wards around Karrin’s house. Three hundred people from the Paranet, all working together.” She put a hand on an exterior wall, where the power of the patchwork ward hummed steadily. “Took us less than a day.”
“And two hundred pizzas,” Murphy muttered. “And a citation.”
“And well worth it,” Abby said, arching an eyebrow that dared Murphy to disagree.
Murphy shook her head, but I could see her holding off a smile. “The point is, we’re waiting for Molly to confirm your bona fides, Harry.”
“Um,” Morty said. “Is . . . is that safe, Ms. Murphy? If the girl was his apprentice, won’t her reaction to his shade likely be . . . somewhat emotional?”
Will snorted. “The way nitroglycerin is somewhat volatile.” He took a breath and then said, “Karrin, you sure about this?”
Murphy looked around the room slowly. Abby’s eyes were on the floor, but her usally rosy cheeks were pale, and Toto’s ears drooped unhappily. Will’s expression was steady, but his body language was that of a man who thinks he might need to dive through a closed window at any second. Forthill was watching the room at large, exuding calm confidence, but his brow was furrowed, and the set of his mouth was slightly tense.
With the exception of Forthill, I’d seen them all react to direct danger.
They were all scared of Molly.
Murphy faced them. She was the smallest person in the room. Her expression was as smooth and expressive as a sheet of ice, her body posture steady. She looked as though she felt she was ready for just about anything.
But I’ve been in more than one fur ball with Murph, and I saw through her outer shell to the fear that was driving her. She didn’t know if I was real. For all she knew, I might be some kind of boogeyman from the nightmar
e side of the street, and that was unacceptable. She had to know.
The problem was that no matter what answer she got, it was going to hurt. If Molly pegged me as a bad guy, the knowledge that the real Harry Dresden was still missing and presumed dead, after the flash of contact Mort had provided, would be like a frozen blade in the guts. And if she learned that it really was my shade . . . it would be even worse.
“Molly will be fine,” Murphy said. “We need her. She’ll come through.” She passed her hand over her brush of hair. Her voice turned into something much smaller, weighed down by pain. “No offense to Mr. Lindquist. No offense to Mister. But I . . . We have to know.”
Paranoid? Probably.
But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there isn’t a wizard’s ghost standing beside you with tears in his eyes.
Chapter
Eleven
Not long after, something scratched at the front door, and Will opened it to admit a grey-brown-furred wolf. The wolf trotted over to where Marci’s dress lay folded on the sofa, took it in her teeth, and vanished into the kitchen. Marci appeared a few seconds later, settling the dress around her slender form, and said, “She’ll be here any moment. I already told Andi and Eyes.”
“Thank you, Marci.” Murph looked at everyone and said, “Settle down, people. You look like you’re expecting Hannibal Lecter to come through the door.”
“I could handle Hannibal,” Will said. “This is different.”
Murphy put a fist on her hip and said, “Will. Molly is one of us. And you aren’t going to help her by looking nervous. If you can’t settle down and relax, get out of here. I don’t want you upsetting her.”
Will grimaced. Then he went into the kitchen, and a moment later a large wolf with fur the same color as Will’s hair padded back into the room. He went to a corner, turned around three times, and settled down on the floor. Toto let out a sharp little bark of greeting and hopped down to hurry over to Will. The little dog sniffed Will, then turned around three times and settled down next to him, their backs touching. The big wolf took a deep breath and exhaled it into a very human-sounding sigh of resignation.
“Thank you,” Murphy said. She glanced at Mort. “There’s a circle made out of copper wire in the kitchen. If it gets hot in here, you can run for it. You know how to empower a circle?”
“Yes, of course.” He licked his lips and said, “Though I can’t imagine running for my life and stopping in the kitchen. Meaning no offense to your protective ability, but I’ll stop when I’m home, thank you.”
“God,” Murphy said. “If only more people had as much sense as you.”
Murphy’s radio chirped, and Eyes started to say something. His voice drowned an instant later in a burst of static.
That ratcheted more tension in everyone. Wizards and their major magical talent are tough on hardware. The more complex a machine is, the more disruptive a wizard’s presence becomes, and electronics are nearly always the first to malfunction when a wizard is nearby. The wonky radio warned us of Molly’s approach every bit as clearly as a sentry shouting, “Who goes there?”
“Huh,” I said.
Mort glanced at me. “What?”
“The technology disruption a practitioner causes is relative to his—or her—strength.”
“I knew that, actually,” Mort said. “It’s why I have to keep replacing my cell phone. So?”
“So Molly was not a heavyweight in terms of raw power. She had to be practically close enough to touch something to hex it down that fast.” I narrowed my eyes. “She’s gotten stronger. Either that or . . .”
“She’s already in the room,” Mort said.
Murphy looked up sharply at that. “What?”
The house lights flickered for a second and then went out.
They weren’t gone long—the space of a heartbeat or two. But when they came back up, Murphy had her gun in hand, Marci had become a wolf with a sundress hanging around her neck, and a young woman wrapped in layers and layers of cast-off clothing sat on the sofa between Abby and Mort, not six inches away from either of them.
Molly was tall and built like a pinup model, with long, long legs and curves that not even the layers of clothing could hide. Her face was lovely and devoid of makeup, and her cheekbones pressed out harshly against her skin. Her hair was dirty, stringy, tangled, and colored a shade of purple so dark as to be nearly indistinguishable from black. A wooden cane stained the same color of deep purple leaned against her knees, and an old military-issue canvas knapsack covered with buttons and drawings in Magic Marker rested between her hiking boots. From Abby’s and Mort’s reactions, it must have smelled like it had been at least several days since her last shower.
But it was her eyes that were the worst.
My apprentice’s blue eyes were sunken, surrounded by shadows of stress and fatigue, and an odd light glittered there in the glassy shine I’d seen mostly in people recovering from anesthesia.
“It’s interesting that you would notice me,” Molly said to Mort, as if she’d been politely participating in the conversation all along.
The ectomancer twitched, and I saw him fight off the desire to get up and sprint for his car.
Molly nodded and looked around the rest of the room, person by person, until she got to Murphy. “I hope we’re planning a civil discussion this time, Karrin.”
Murph put her gun away, giving Molly a mild glance by way of reprimand. “We were being civil last time. We’re your friends, Molly, and we’re worried about you.”
My apprentice shrugged. “I don’t want anyone like friends anywhere near me. If you include yourself among them, you should leave me the hell alone.” Her voice had turned into a snarl by the end of the sentence, and she paused to take a slow, deliberate breath and calm down. “I don’t have the patience or the time for a group-therapy session. What do you want?”
Murphy seemed to consider her answer for a moment. She wound up going for brevity. “We need you to verify something for us.”
“Do I look like a fact-checker to you, Karrin?”
“You look like a homeless scarecrow,” Murphy said, her tone matter-of-fact. “You smell like a gutter.”
“I thought you used to be a detective,” Molly said, rolling her eyes. “See above, regarding not wanting anyone around me. It’s not all that hard to understand.”
“Miss Carpenter,” said Father Forthill in a sudden tone of gentle authority. “You are a guest in this woman’s home. A woman who has put her own life in danger to save others—including you.”
Molly turned an absolutely arctic look onto Father Forthill. Then she said, in a quiet, flat monotone, “I don’t particularly care to be spoken to as if I am still a child, Father.”
“If you wish to be respected as an adult, you should comport yourself as one,” Forthill replied, “which includes behaving with civility toward your peers and respect toward your elders.”
Molly glowered for a moment more, but then turned back to Murphy. “All things considered, it’s stupid for me to be here. And I’m a busy woman, Ms. Murphy—nothing but customers, customers, customers. So I’m out the door in five seconds unless you give me a good reason to stay.”
“This is Mort Lindquist, ectomancer,” Murphy said promptly. “He says he’s here to speak to us on behalf of Harry’s ghost, who is with him.”
Molly absolutely froze in place. Her face blanched beneath the grime.
“I’d like it if you could verify for us whether or not it’s true,” Murphy said, her voice gentle. “I need to know if he’s really . . . if it’s really his ghost.”
Molly stared at her for a second, then shivered and looked down at her hands. “Um.”
Murphy leaned a little closer to Molly. “You could tell. Couldn’t you?”
Molly shot her a wide-eyed glance and looked down again. She muttered something before she said, “Yes. But . . . not with so many people in the room.”
“Why not?”
Molly
’s voice turned into a bitter snarl. “Do you want my help or not?”
Murphy folded her arms for a long moment. Then she said, “Time for another stroll in the evening air, people. Mr. Lindquist, please stay. Everyone else, out.”
Mort was trying very hard not to look like a man who wanted to run for the door, and getting mixed results. “I . . . Of course, Ms. Murphy.”
Murphy had to urge the werewolves to leave and help Marci get untangled from her dress. Forthill and Abby looked at each other and left the room without a murmur. Molly sat completely still during this, staring down at her folded hands.
“You don’t have clue one, do you?” she asked Murphy quietly. “You don’t have any idea what you’re asking me to go through.”
“If I could do it myself, I would.”
Molly looked up sharply at that. Her smile was unpleasant. Bordering on creepy.
“Easy words,” she said. “Easy words. They leave little trails of slime on your lips when they pass them. But it doesn’t make them go down any more smoothly.”
“Molly . . .” Murphy sighed and sat down and spread her hands. “You won’t let us help you. You won’t talk to us. But this is something I literally cannot ask of anyone else.”
“You always asked him,” Molly said, her tone spiteful.
“There’s a boiler about to burst,” Sir Stuart murmured to me.
“Shut your mouth,” I said quietly, coming automatically to her defense. But he was right. The kid was teetering on a cliff as I sat there looking at her.
I stared at Molly and felt absolutely wretched. She was my apprentice. I was supposed to have taught her to survive without me. Granted, I hadn’t planned on taking a bullet in the chest, but then, who does? Or was her condition simply symptomatic of the world she lived in?
Murphy regarded the younger woman for a long moment and then nodded. “Yes. I know enough to know when I’m out of my depth. My instincts say Mort isn’t trying to con me, but we’ve got to have more than just my intuition. I need your help. Please.”