by Jim Butcher
“I guess,” I said. “So?”
“So,” he said. “You have more choices. Which means that you have much improved odds of making mistakes. You’re only human. Once in a while, you’re going to screw the pooch.”
“I don’t mind that,” I said. “When I’m the only one who pays for it.”
“But that isn’t in your control,” he said. “You cannot see all outcomes. You couldn’t have known that those creatures would go to the Carpenter house.”
I ground my teeth. “So? Daniel’s still hurt. Molly could be dead.”
“But their condition was not yours to ordain,” Forthill said. “All power has its limits.”
“Then what’s the point?” I snarled, suddenly furious. My voice bounced around the chapel in rasping echoes. “What good is it to have power enough to kill my friend’s family, but not power enough to protect them? What the hell do you expect from me? I’ve got to make these stupid choices. What the hell am I supposed to do with them?”
“Sometimes,” he replied, his tone serious, “you just have to have faith.”
I laughed, and it came out loud and bitter. Mocking echoes of it drifted through the vast chamber. “Faith,” I said. “Faith in what?”
“That things will unfold as they are meant to,” Forthill said. “That even in the face of an immediate ugliness, the greater picture will resolve into something all the more beautiful.”
“Show me,” I spat. “Show me something beautiful about this. Show me the silver fucking lining.”
He pursed his lips and mused for a moment. Then he said, “There’s a quote from the founder of my order: There is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“That the good that will come is not always obvious. Nor easy to see. Nor in the place we would expect to find it. Nor what we personally desire. You should consider that the good being created by the events this night may have nothing to do with the defeat of supernatural evils or endangered lives. It may be something very quiet. Very ordinary.”
I frowned at him. “Like what?”
He finished off the little flask and then rose. He put it away and put his collar back on. “I’m afraid I’m not the one you should ask.” He put a hand on my shoulder and nodded toward the altar. “But I will say this: I’ve been on this earth a fair while, and one way or another, this too shall pass. I have seen worse things reverse themselves. There is yet hope for Molly, Harry. We must strive to do our utmost, and to act with wisdom and compassion. But we must also have faith that the things beyond our control are not beyond His.”
I sat quietly for a minute. Then I said, “You almost make me believe.”
He arched an eyebrow. “But?”
“I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if it’s possible for me.”
The corners of his eyes wrinkled. “Then perhaps you should try to have faith that you might one day have faith.” His fingers squeezed and then released my shoulder. He turned to go.
“Padre,” I said.
He paused.
“You…won’t tell Charity?”
He turned his head, and I could see sadness in his profile. “No. You aren’t the only one too afraid to believe.”
Sudden footsteps clattered into the chapel, and Alicia hurried in, accompanied by Mouse. The big grey dog sat down and stared up at the balcony. Alicia, panting, looked up. “Father?”
“Here,” Forthill said.
“Come quick,” she said. “Mama said to tell you Daniel’s awake.”
Chapter Thirty-one
We listened to Daniel’s recounting of the attack. It was simple enough. He’d heard Molly moving around downstairs and had come down to talk to his sister. There had been a knock at the door. Molly had gone to answer it. There had been an exchange of words, and then Molly had screamed and slammed the door.
“She came running into the living room,” Daniel said. “And they broke down the door behind her and came in.” He shivered. “They were going upstairs and Molly said we had to distract them, so I grabbed the poker from the fireplace and just sort of jumped them.” He shook his head. “I thought they were just costumes. You know. Like…really stupid burglars or something. But the Reaper grabbed me. And he was going to…you know. Cut me with that curved knife.” He gestured vaguely at his wounded arm. “Molly hit him and he dropped me.”
“With what?” I asked him.
He shook his head. His thin, awkward, adolescent features were hollow with pain, weariness, and a kind of lingering disbelief. His words were all slightly stiff, wooden, as if reporting events in an unappealing motion picture, rather than actual experiences. “I couldn’t see. I think she must have had a bat or something. He dropped me.”
“Then what?” I asked him.
He swallowed. “I fell, and bumped my head on the floor. And they grabbed her. The Reaper and the Scarecrow. And they carried her out the door. She was screaming…” He bit his lip. “I tried to stop them, but Hammerhand chased me. So I ran out the back and up into the tree house, cause I figured, you know. He doesn’t have any hands. Just hammers. So how’s he going to climb up after me?”
He looked to Charity and said, shame in his voice, “I’m sorry, Mom. I wanted to stop them. They were just…too big.” Tears welled up in his eyes and his thin chest heaved. Charity caught him in a fierce hug, squeezing him hard and whispering to him. Daniel broke down, sobbing.
I got up and walked to the far side of the room. Forthill joined me there.
“These creatures,” I told him quietly, “inflict more than simple physical damage. They rip into the psyches of those they attack.”
“This happened to Daniel?” Forthill asked.
“I’d have to take a closer look to be certain, but it’s probable. Kid’s gonna have it tough for a while,” I said. “It’s like emotional trauma. Someone dying, that kind of thing. It tears people up the same way. They don’t get over it fast.”
“I’ve seen it too,” Forthill said. “I haven’t brought this up yet, but I thought you should know that Nelson came to me earlier this evening.”
I nodded at the cot that had been occupied when we came in. “That him?”
“Yes.”
“How’d he strike you?” I asked.
Forthill pursed his lips. “If I didn’t know you sent him, I would have thought he was having a bad reaction to drugs. He was almost incoherent. Very agitated. Terrified, in point of fact, though he would not or could not explain why. I managed to get him calmed down and he all but fainted.”
I frowned, running the fingers of my right hand back through my hair. “Did you have the sense that anyone was following him?”
“Not at all. Though I might have missed something.” He essayed a tired smile. “It’s late. And I’m not as spry as I used to be, after ten o’clock or so.”
“Thank you for helping him,” I said.
“Of course. Who is he?”
“Molly’s boyfriend,” I said. I glanced across the room, at the mother holding her son. “Maybe Charity doesn’t need to know that part, either.”
He blinked and then sighed, “Oh, dear.”
“Heh. Yeah,” I said.
“May I ask you a question?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“These creatures, these phages. If they are what you say, beings of the spirit world, then how did they manage to cross the house’s threshold?”
“Traditional way,” I said. “They got an invitation.”
“From whom?”
“Probably Molly,” I said.
He frowned. “I have difficulty believing that she would do such a thing.”
I felt my mouth tighten. “She probably didn’t know they were monsters. They’re shapeshifters. They probably appeared to her as someone she knew, and would invite in.”
Forthill said, “Ah. I see. Someone such as you, p
erhaps.”
“Perhaps,” I said quietly. “Makes it the second time someone has used my face to get a shot at Michael’s family.”
Forthill said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “It occurs to me that these creatures killed without compunction in your previous encounters. Why would they carry Molly away instead of simply murdering her?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I don’t know how my spell managed to bring them to Molly. I don’t know precisely what these things are, or where they hail from. Which means I can’t figure out why they’ve been showing up, or where they might have taken the girl.” I waved a hand in a frustrated gesture. “It’s driving me insane. I’ve got tons of facts and none of them are lining up.”
“You’re tired,” Forthill said. “Perhaps some rest—”
I shook my head. “No, Padre. The things that took her won’t rest. The longer she’s in their hands, the less likely it is we’ll ever see her again.” I rubbed at my eyes. “I need to rethink it.”
Forthill nodded at me and rose. On the other side of the room, Charity was covering her exhausted son with a blanket. Even Alicia had surrendered to fatigue, and now only the adults were awake. “I’ll leave you to it then. Have you eaten recently?”
“Sometime in the Mesozoic Era,” I said.
“Sandwich?”
My stomach made a gurgling noise. “Only if you insist.”
“I’ll see to it,” Forthill said. “Excuse me.” He went over to Charity and took her arm, leading her out as he spoke quietly to her. Now that her children had been cared for, she looked like she might come apart at the seams. They left the room together, leaving me in the dimness with Mouse and a lot of sleeping kids.
I thought. I thought some more. I picked up all the facts I knew, turning them every which way, trying to figure out something, anything, that would let me put a stop to this insanity.
The phages. The answer was in the phages. Once I knew their identity, I could begin to work out who might be using them, and what I might do to learn more about them. There had to be a commonality to them, somewhere; something that linked them together, some fact that could provide me a context in which to judge their motivations and intentions.
But what the hell could they have in common, other than being monsters who fed on fear? They’d shown up randomly in a bathroom, a kitchen, a parking lot, a conference room. Their victims had been disparate, seemingly random. They had all appeared as figures from horror movies, but that fact seemed fairly unremarkable, relatively speaking. Try as I might, I could find nothing to join them together, to let me recognize them.
Frustrated, I rose and went over to Daniel’s cot. I called up my Sight. It took me longer than normal. I braced myself and regarded the boy.
I’d been right. He’d taken a psychic flogging. The phage had been worrying at his mind, his spirit, even as it had threatened his flesh. I could see the wounds as long, bleeding tears in his flesh. Poor little guy. It would haunt him. I hoped he would be able to get a little rest before the nightmares woke him up.
I stared at him for a good while, making sure his suffering was burned indelibly into my head. I wanted to remember for the rest of my life what the consequences of my screw-ups might be.
I heard a sound to the side and glanced up without thinking, turning my Sight upon the source of the sound—a restlessly stirring Nelson.
If little Daniel had been the recipient of a savage beating, Nelson’s spirit had been in the hands of Hell itself. His entire upper body was disfigured under my Sight, covered in hideous, festering boils and raw, bleeding burns. The damage was worst around his head, and faded gradually as it descended his torso.
And each of his temples bore tiny, neat holes, sharp and cauterized, as if by a laser scalpel.
Just like Rosie.
Chains of logic cascaded through my brain. My head swam. I shoved the Sight away from me, and my ass fell straight down to the floor.
I knew.
I knew why my spell had sent the phages after the Carpenters.
I knew why Molly had been taken. I could make a good guess at where.
I knew what the phages all had in common.
I knew who had sent them. The realization terrified me with a fear so cold and sharp that it literally paralyzed me. I could barely clap my hand over my mouth to keep from making whimpering sounds.
It took me a while to force myself to calm down. By the time I did, Forthill had returned bearing sandwiches. He settled down on a cot, clearly exhausted, and went to sleep.
I ate my sandwiches. Then I went looking for Charity.
I found her in the chapel, sitting up high in the balcony. She stared down at the altar, and did not react when I came up the steps to her and settled down on the bench beside her. I sat with her in silence for a minute.
“Charity,” I whispered. “I need to ask you something.”
She sat in stony silence. Her chin moved a fraction of a degree up and down.
“How long?” I murmured.
“How long since what?” she asked.
I took a deep breath. “How long has it been since you’ve used your magic?”
Chapter Thirty-two
I couldn’t have gotten more of a reaction if I’d shot her.
Charity’s face turned sheet white, the blood draining from it. She froze in place grasping the edge of the wooden pew in front of her with both hands. Her knuckles turned white, and the wood creaked. She gnashed her teeth and bowed her head.
I didn’t push. I waited.
She opened her eyes again, and she wasn’t hard to read. Her thoughts and emotions were clear on her face. Panic. Desperation. Self-loathing. Her eyes flicked from one possibility to another. She considered denying it. She considered lying to me. She considered simply walking away.
“Charity,” I told her. “Tell me the truth.”
Her breathing quickened. I saw her desperation growing.
I reached out with one hand and turned her face toward me. “Your daughter needs you. If we don’t help her, she’s going to die.”
Charity flinched and pulled away from me. Her shoulders shook with a silent sob. She fought to control her breathing, her voice, and whispered, “A lifetime.”
I felt some tension ease in me. Her reaction confirmed that I was on the right track.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“Just putting lots of little things together,” I said. “Please, Charity. Tell me.”
Her voice was rough, half strangled, as though the breath that carried her words had been tainted with something rotten. “I had some talent. It showed just before my sixteenth birthday. You know how awkward that kind of thing can be.”
“Yeah,” I said. “How’d your family take it?”
Her mouth twisted. “My parents were wealthy. Respectable. When they had time to notice me, they expected me to be normal. Respectable. They found it easier to believe that I was a drug addict. Emotionally unbalanced.”
I winced. There were a lot of situations that could meet someone with a burgeoning magical talent. Charity’s was one of the worst.
“They sent me away to schools,” she said. “And to hospitals disguised as schools.” She waved a hand. “I eventually left them. Just left them. I struck out on my own.”
“And fell in with a bad crowd,” I said quietly.
She gave me a bitter smile. “You’ve heard this story before.”
“It isn’t uncommon,” I said quietly. “Who was it?”
“A…coven, of sorts, I suppose,” she said. “More of a cult. There was a young man leading it. Gregor. He had power. He and the others, all young people, mixed in religion and mysticism and philosophy and…well. You’ve probably seen such things before.”
I nodded. I had. A charismatic leader, dedicated followers, a collection of strays and homeless runaways. It rarely developed into something positive.
“I wasn’t strongly gifted,” she said. “Not like you. But I learned abo
ut some of what happens out there. About the White Council.” The bitter smile returned. “Everyone was terrified of them. A Warden visited us once. He delivered a warning to Gregor. He’d been toying about with some kind of summoning spells, and the Wardens got wind of it. They interviewed each of us. Evaluated us. Told us the Laws of Magic, and told us never to break them if we wished to live.”
I nodded and listened. She spoke more quickly now, the words coming out in a growing rush. They had been pent up a long time.
“Gregor resented it. He grew distant. He began practicing magic that walked the crumbling edges of the Council’s Laws. He had us all doing it.” Her eyes grew cold. “The others began disappearing. One by one. No one knew where they had gone. But I saw what was happening. I saw Gregor growing in power.”
“He was trading them,” I said.
She nodded once. “He saw my face, when I realized it. I was the next one to go. He came to take me away, and I fought him. Tried to kill him. Wanted to kill him. But he beat me. I remember only parts of it. Being chained to an iron post.”
“The dragon,” I said.
She nodded. Some of the bitterness faded from her smile. “And Michael came. And he destroyed the monster. And saved me.” She looked up at me. Tears filled her eyes and streaked down her cheeks, but she did not blink. “I swore to myself that I would leave that behind me. The magic. The power. I had…urges.” She swallowed. “To do things only…only a monster would do. When Siriothrax died, Gregor went mad. Utterly mad. But I wanted to turn my power against him anyway. I couldn’t think of anything else.”
“Hard to do,” I said quietly. “You were a kid. No real training. Exposed to some nasty uses of power.”
“Yes,” she said. “Without Michael, I would never have been able to leave it behind me. He never knew. He still doesn’t know. He remained near me, in my life. Making sure that I was all right. And…he was such a good soul. When he smiled at me, it was like all the light in the world was shining out at me. I wanted to be worthy of that smile.
