by Jim Butcher
He shook his head. “No.”
“Then odds are pretty good no one has scrambled my noggin,” I said. “Besides which, it isn’t the sort of thing one tends to overlook, and as a grade-A wizard of the White Council, I assure you that nothing like that has happened to me.”
For a second he looked like he wanted to speak, but he didn’t.
“Which brings us back to the only real issue here,” I said. “Do you think I’ve gone over to them? Do you think I could do such a thing, after what I’ve seen?”
My friend sighed. “No, Harry.”
I stepped up to him and put my hand on his shoulder. “Then trust me for a little longer. Help me for a little longer.”
He searched my eyes again. “I will,” he whispered, “if you answer one question for me.”
I frowned at him and tilted my head. “Okay.”
He took a deep breath and spoke carefully. “Harry,” he said quietly, “what happened to your blasting rod?”
For a second the question didn’t make any sense. The words sounded like noises, like sounds infants make before they learn to speak. Especially the last part of the sentence. “I…I’m sorry,” I said. “What did you say?”
“Where,” he said gently, “is your blasting rod?”
This time I heard the words.
Pain stabbed me in the head, ice picks plunging into both temples. I flinched and doubled over. Blasting rod. Familiar words. I fought to summon an image of what went with the words, but I couldn’t find anything. I knew I had a memory associated with those words, but try as I might, I couldn’t drag it out. It was like a shape covered by some heavy tarp. I knew an object was beneath, but I couldn’t get to it.
“I don’t…I don’t…” I started breathing faster. The pain got worse.
Someone had been in my head.
Someone had been in my head.
Oh, God.
I must have fallen at some point, because the workshop’s floor was cold underneath one of my cheeks when I felt Michael’s broad, work-calloused hand gently cover my forehead.
“Father,” he murmured, humbly and with no drama whatsoever. “Father, please help my friend. Father of light, banish the darkness that he may see. Father of truth, expose the lies. Father of mercy, ease his pain. Father of love, honor this good man’s heart. Amen.”
Michael’s hand felt suddenly red-hot, and I felt power burning in the air around him—not magic, the magic I worked with every day. This was something different, something more ancient, more potent, more pure. This was the power of faith, and as that heat settled into the spaces behind my eyes, something cracked and shattered inside my thoughts.
The pain vanished so suddenly that it left me gasping, even as the image of a simple wooden rod, a couple of feet long, heavily carved with sigils and runes, leapt into the forefront of my thoughts. Along with the image of the blasting rod came thousands of memories, everything I had ever known about using magic to summon and control fire in a hurry, evocation, combat magic, and they hit me like a sledgehammer.
I lay there shuddering for a minute or two as I took it all back in. The memories filled a hole inside me I hadn’t even realized was there.
Michael left his hand on my head. “Easy, Harry. Easy. Just rest for a minute. I’m right here.”
I decided not to argue with him.
“Well,” I rasped weakly a moment later. I opened my eyes and looked up to where Michael sat cross-legged on the floor beside me. “Somebody owes somebody here an apology.”
He gave me a small, concerned smile. “You don’t owe me anything. Perhaps I should have spoken sooner, but…”
“But confronting someone who’s had his brain twisted out of shape about the fact can prove traumatic,” I said quietly. “Especially if part of the twisting was making damned sure that he didn’t remember any such thing happening.”
He nodded. “Molly became concerned sometime yesterday. I asked her to have a look at you while you were sleeping earlier. I apologize for that, but I didn’t know any other way to be sure that someone had tampered with you.”
I shivered. Ugh. Molly playing in my head. That wasn’t necessarily the prettiest thing to think about. Molly had a gift for neuromancy, mind magic, but she’d used it to do some fairly nasty things to people in the past—for perfectly good reasons, true, but all the same it had been honest-to-evilness black magic. It was the kind of thing that people got addicted to, and it wasn’t the kind of candy store that I would ever want that kid to play in.
Especially considering that the inventory was me.
“Hell’s bells, Michael,” I murmured. “You shouldn’t have done that to her.”
“It was her idea, actually. And you’re right, Harry. We can’t afford to be divided right now. What can you remember?”
I shook my head, squinting while I sorted through the dump-truckload of loose memories. “The last time I remember having it was right after the gruffs attacked us here. After that…nothing. I don’t know where it is now. And no, I don’t remember who did it to me or why.”
Michael frowned but nodded. “Well. He doesn’t always give us what we want. Only what we need.”
I rubbed at my forehead. “I hope so,” I said sheepishly. “So. Um. This is a little awkward. After that thing with putting your Sword to my throat and all.”
Michael let his head fall back and belted out a warm, rich laugh. “You aren’t the sort of person to do things by halves, Harry. Grand gestures included.”
“I guess not,” I said quietly.
“I have to ask,” Michael said, studying me intently. “Lasciel’s shadow. Is it really gone?”
I nodded.
“How?”
I looked away from him. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
He frowned but nodded slowly. “Can you tell me why not?”
“Because what happened to her wasn’t fair.” I shook my head. “Do you know why the Denarians don’t like going into churches, Michael?”
He shrugged. “Because the presence of the Almighty makes them uncomfortable, or so I always supposed.”
“No,” I said, closing my eyes. “Because it makes the Fallen feel, Michael. Makes them remember. Makes them sad.”
I felt his startled glance, even with my eyes closed.
“Imagine how awful that would be,” I said, “after millennia of certainty of purpose. Suddenly you have doubts. Suddenly you question whether or not everything you’ve done has been one enormous, futile lie. If everything you sacrificed, you sacrificed for nothing.” I smiled faintly. “Couldn’t be good for your confidence.”
“No,” Michael said thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose it would be.”
“Shiro told me I’d know who to give the Sword to,” I said.
“Yes?”
“I threw it into the deal with Nicodemus. The coins and the Sword for the child.”
Michael drew in a sharp breath.
“He would have walked away otherwise,” I said. “Run out the clock, and we’d never have found him in time. It was the only way. It was almost like Shiro knew. Even back then.”
“God’s blood, Harry,” Michael said. He pressed a hand to his stomach. “I’m fairly sure that gambling is a sin. And even if it isn’t, this probably should be.”
“I’m going to go get that little girl, Michael,” I said. “Whatever it takes.”
He rose, frowning, and buckled his sword belt around his hips.
I held up my right hand. “Are you with me?”
Michael’s palm smacked solidly into mine, and he hauled me to my feet.
Chapter Thirty-nine
As war councils go, our meeting was fast and dirty. It had to be.
Afterward I tracked down Murphy. She’d gone back to Charity’s sewing room to check on Kincaid.
I stood quietly in the door for a minute. There wasn’t much room to be had in there. It was piled high with plastic storage boxes filled with fabric and craft materials. There was a sewin
g machine on a table, a chair, the bed, and just enough floor space to let you get to them. I’d been laid up in this room before. It was a comforting sort of place, awash in softness and color, and it smelled like detergent and fabric softener.
Kincaid looked like the Mummy’s stunt double. He had an IV in his arm, and there was a unit of blood suspended from a small metal stand beside his bed—courtesy of Marcone’s rogue medical facilities, I supposed.
Murphy sat beside the bed, looking worried. I’d seen the expression on her face before, when I’d been the one lying horizontal. I expected to feel a surge of jealousy, but it didn’t happen. I just felt bad for Murph.
“How is he?” I asked her.
“This is his third unit of blood,” Murphy said. “His color’s better. His breathing is steadier. But he needs a doctor. Maybe we should call Butters.”
“If we do, he’s just going to look at us, do his McCoy impersonation, and tell you, ‘Dammit, Murphy. I’m a medical examiner, not a pasta chef.’”
Murphy choked out a little sound that was as much sob as chuckle.
I stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “Michael says he’s going to make it.”
She sat stiffly underneath my hand. “He isn’t a doctor.”
“But he has very good contacts.”
Kincaid shuddered, and his breath rasped harshly for several seconds.
Murphy’s shoulder went steely with tension.
The wounded man’s breathing steadied again.
“Hey,” I said quietly. “Easy.”
She shook her head. “I hate this.”
“He’s tougher than you or me,” I said quietly.
“That’s not what I mean.”
I remained silent, waiting for her to speak.
“I hate feeling like this. I’m fucking terrified, and I hate it.” The muscles in her jaw tensed. “This is why I don’t want to get involved anymore. It hurts too much.”
I squeezed her shoulder gently. “Involved, huh?”
“No,” she said. Then she shook her head. “Yes. I don’t know. It’s complicated, Harry.”
“Caring about someone isn’t complicated,” I said. “It isn’t easy. But it isn’t complicated, either. Kinda like lifting the engine block out of a car.”
She gave me an oblique glance. “Leave it to a man to describe intimate relationships in terms of automotive mechanics.”
“Yeah. I was kinda proud of that one, myself.”
She huffed out a quiet breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and leaned her cheek down onto my hand. “The stupid part,” she said, “is that he isn’t interested in…in getting serious. We get along. We have fun together. For him, that’s enough. And it’s so stupid for me to get hung up on him.”
I didn’t think it was all that stupid. Murph didn’t want to get too close, let herself be too vulnerable. Kincaid didn’t want that kind of relationship either—which made him safe. It made it all right for her to care.
It also explained why she and I had never gotten anywhere.
In the event that you haven’t figured it out, I’m not the kind of person to be casually involved in much of anything.
I couldn’t fit any of that into words, though. So I just leaned down and kissed the top of her head gently.
She shivered. Her tears made wet, cool spots on the back of my hand. I knelt. It put my head more or less on level with hers, where she sat beside the bed. I put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against me. I still didn’t say anything. For Murph, that would be too much like I was actually in the room, seeing her cry. So she pretended that she wasn’t crying and I pretended that I didn’t notice.
She didn’t cry for long. A couple of minutes. Then her breathing steadied, and I could feel her asserting control again. A minute more and she sat up and away from me. I let her.
“They said you were under the influence,” she said, her tone calmer, more businesslike. “That someone had done something to your head. Your apprentice said that. But Michael didn’t want to say anything in front of the other wizard, I could tell. And no one wanted to say anything in front of me.”
“Secrets get to be a habit,” I said quietly. “And Molly was right.”
Murphy nodded. “She said that we should listen for the first words out of your mouth when you woke up. That if something had messed with your mind, your subconscious might be able to communicate that way, while you were on the edge of sleep. And you told us to listen to her.”
I thought about it and pursed my lips. “Huh. I did. Guess I’m smarter than I thought.”
“They shouldn’t have suspected you,” Murphy said. “I’m a paranoid bitch, and I gave up suspecting you a long time ago.”
“They had a good reason,” I said. I took a slow breath. It was hard, but I forced the words out. “Nicodemus threw one of those coins at Michael’s kid. I grabbed it before the kid could. And I had a photocopy of a Fallen angel living in my head for several years, trying to talk me into picking up the coin and letting the rest of it into me.”
Murphy glanced obliquely at me. “You mean…you could have become one of those things?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Couple of times, it was close.”
“Is it still…Is that what…?”
I shook my head. “It’s gone now. She’s gone now. I guess the whole time she was trying to change me, I was trying to change her right back. And in the Raith Deeps last year, she took a psychic bullet for me—at the very end, after everyone else had gotten out.” I shrugged. “I had…We’d sort of become friends, Murph. I’d gotten used to having her around.” I glanced at her and gave her a faint smile. “Crazy, huh? Get all broken up over what was essentially my imaginary friend.”
Her fingers found my hand and squeezed tight once. “We’re all imaginary friends to one another, Harry.” She sat with me for a moment, and then gave me a shrewd glance. “You never told Michael the details.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know why.”
“I do,” she said. “You remember when Kravos stuck his fingers in my brain?”
I shuddered. He’d been impersonating me when he did it. “Yeah.”
“You said it caused some kind of damage. What did you call it?”
“Psychic trauma,” I said. “Same thing happens when a loved one dies, during big emotional tragedies, that kind of thing. Takes a while to get over it.”
“But you do get over it,” Murph said. “Dresden, it seems to me that you’d lock yourself up pretty tight if someone took a regular bullet for you with a regular body. Much less if you were under psychic attack and this imaginary friend died right inside your own brain. Something like that happens, shouldn’t you have expected to be a basket case, at least for a little while?”
I frowned, staring down at my hands. “I never even considered that.”
She snorted gently. “There’s a surprise. Dresden forgets that he’s not invincible.”
She had a point there.
“This plan of yours,” she said. “Do you really think it’s going to work?”
“I think I’ve got to try it.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t think you should be involved in this one, Murph. The Denarians have human followers. Fanatic ones.”
“You think we’re going to have to kill some of them,” Murphy said.
“I think we probably won’t have much choice,” I said. “Besides that, I wouldn’t put it past them to send someone here for spite, win or lose.”
Murphy glanced up at me rather sharply.
I shrugged. “They know that Michael and Sanya and I are going to be out there. They’ll know that there will be someone here, unprotected. Whether or not they get the coins, Nicodemus might send someone here to finish off the wounded.”
Murphy stared at me for a second, then looked back at Kincaid. “You bastard,” she said without emphasis.
“I’m not playing big brother with you, Karrin,” I replied. “But we are dealing with some very bad people. Molly’s s
taying with Kincaid. I’m leaving Mouse here too. I’d appreciate it if someone with a little more experience was here to give the kid some direction, if it was needed.”
She scowled at Kincaid. Then she said, “Trying to guilt me into playing worried girlfriend, domestic defender, and surrogate mother figure, eh?”
“I figured it would work better than telling you to shut up and get into the kitchen.”
She took a deep breath, studying the sleeping man. Then she reached out and touched his hand. She stood and faced me. “No. I’m coming with you.”
I grunted, rising. “You sure?”
“The girl is important to him,” Murphy said. “More important to him than anything has been for a long time, Harry. He’d die to protect her. If he was conscious, he’d be demanding to go with you. But he can’t do that. So I’ll have to do it for him.”
“Could be real messy, Murph.”
She nodded. “I’ll worry about that after the girl is safe.”
There was a clock ticking quietly on the wall. “The meeting’s in an hour.”
Murphy nodded and reached for her coat. The tears were gone, and there was no evidence of them in the lines of her face. “You’d better excuse me, then. If we’re going to have an evening out, I need to change into something more comfortable.”
“I never tell a lady how to accessorize.”
Going forth to do battle with the forces of darkness is one thing. Doing it in a pair of borrowed sweatpants and an ill-fitting T-shirt is something else entirely. Fortunately, Molly had been thoughtful enough to drop my own clothes into the washer, bless her heart. I could forgive her for the pot roast.
In the laundry room I had skinned out of Michael’s clothes and was in the act of pulling up my jeans when Luccio opened the door and leaned in, her expression excited. “Dresden. I think I know wh—Oh.”
I jerked my jeans the rest of the way up and closed them as hurriedly as I could without causing any undue discomfort. “Oh. Um. Excuse me,” I said.
Luccio smiled, the dimples in her cheeks making her look not much older than Molly. She didn’t blush. Instead she folded her arms and leaned one shoulder on the door frame, her dark eyes taking me in with evident pleasure. “Oh, not at all, Dresden. Not at all.”
