Jim Butcher: Odd jobs

“Meg!” Yardly screamed, and started forward.

I caught his arm. “Don’t break the circle!” I shouted. “Get the kids out of here! Get the kids!”

He only hesitated for a second before he seized Tamara and Joey and hauled them out of the room, one under each arm.

I went to the edge of the circle and debated what to do. Dammit, what had this thing been eating? If I broke the circle, it would be free to escape-and it was freaking supercharged on the dark spiritual equivalent of adrenaline. It would fight like hell to escape and come back the next night, bigger and hungrier than ever.

Nasty as the thing was, Megan still ought to be able to beat it. She was a sensitive, feeling the emotions and pieces of the thoughts of others thanks to a naturally developed talent, something that would manifest as simple intuition. It would mean that she would have developed a certain amount of defensive ability, just to keep from going nuts in a crowd.

“Megan!” I said. “You can beat this thing! Think of your kids!”

“They’re hurting!” she screamed. “I can feel them!”

“Your brother has them, they’re fine!” I called back. “That’s a lie it’s trying to push on you! Don’t let it trick you!”

Megan glanced up at me, desperate, and I saw her face harden. She turned her face back into the shadowy assault of the flailing boggart and her lips peeled back from her teeth with a snarl.

“They’re mine,” she spat, the words sizzling with vitriol. “My babies. And you can’t touch them anymore!”

“Begone!” I called to her. “Tell it to begone!”

“Begone!” Megan screamed. “Begone! BEGONE!”

There was a surge of sound, a thunderous non-explosion, as if all the air in the room had suddenly rushed into a ball just in front of Megan’s pain-twisted face. Then there was a flash of light, a hollow-sounding scream, and a shockwave lashed out, scattering the salt of the circle, rattling toys, and pushing against my chest. I staggered back against the wall and turned my face away as a fine cloud of salt blasted out and rattled against the walls with a hiss.

Megan fell to her knees and started sobbing. I reached out around me with my senses, but felt no inexplicable absence in the aura of the house. The boogeyman was gone.

I went to Megan’s side at once and crouched down to touch her shoulder. She flung herself against me, still sobbing.

Ben Yardly appeared in the doorway to the room a few moments later. He had Joey in one arm, and Tamara in the other. Kat stood so close she was practically in his pocket, holding onto the hem of his jacket as if he was her own personal teddy bear.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “It’s okay. The thing is gone. Your mom stopped it.”

Kat stared at me for a moment, tears in her eyes, and then ran to Megan and flung herself against her mother. That drove Joey and Tamara into motion, and they both squirmed out of Yardly’s arms and ran to their mother.

“Thank you,” Megan said. She freed one hand from her children long enough to touch my arm. “Wizard. Thank you.”

I felt a little bit sick. But I gave her my best, modest smile.

I finished the recounting for the young Wardens and let the silence fall.

“What was my mistake?” I asked.

No one said anything.

“I trusted the process too much,” I said. “I thought I had already analyzed the whole situation. Found the problem. Identified the source of the danger. But I was wrong. You all know what I did. What happened?”

No one said anything.

“The boggart I’d identified wasn’t the source of the attacks. It was just feeding on the fear they generated in the kids. It hadn’t needed to expend any energy at all to generate nightmares and fear in them. All it had to do was feed. That’s why it was so large.

“The source of the attacks wasn’t an attack at all,” I said. “Ben Yardly’s job had exposed him to some pretty bad things-memories and images that wouldn’t go away. Some of you who fought in the war know what I’m talking about.”

McKenzie, Ilyana, and a few others gave me sober nods.

“Kat Yardly was the eldest daughter of her mother, a fairly gifted sensitive. She was twelve years old.”

“Damn,” McKenzie said, his eyes widening in realization.

“Yes, of course,” Ilyana said. The other students turned to look at her. “The eldest daughter was a sensitive, too-perhaps a skilled one. She had picked up on those images in her uncle’s mind and was having nightmares about them.”

“What about the little girl?” I asked.

McKenzie took over. “Kat must have been a pusher, too,” he said, using the slang for someone who could broadcast thoughts or emotions to others. “She was old enough to be a surrogate mother to the younger daughter. They were probably linked somehow.”

“Exactly, Warden McKenzie,” I said quietly. “All the pieces were in front of me, and I just didn’t put them together. I figured the situation for a simple boogeyman infestation. I set up Megan to do the heavy lifting because I thought it would be relatively safe and would work out the best for the family. I was wrong.”

“But it did work out,” Ilyana said, something tentative in her voice for the first time that day.

“You kidding?” I asked. “That big boggart inflicted mental trauma on Megan that took her most of a year to recover from. She had her own nightmares for a while.” I sighed. “I went back to her and gave her and her daughter some exercises to do that would help insulate them both. Kat’s problems improved, and everything worked out fine-but it almost didn’t. If Yardly had panicked and used his gun, if someone had broken the circle, or if Megan Yardly hadn’t bought my lie about the boggart pushing a falsehood on her, it might have ripped out her sanity altogether. I might have put three kids into the foster care system.

“Arrogance,” I said quietly, and wrote it on the board, beneath the rest. “That’s the fifth A. We carry it around with us. It’s natural. We know a lot more than most people. We can do a lot more than most people. There’s a natural and understandable pride in that. But when we let that pride get in the way, and take the place of truly seeing what is around us, there can be horrible consequences. Watch out for that fifth A, children. The Yardlys turned out all right mostly out of pure luck. They deserve better from me. And from you.

“Always keep your eyes open. Learn all that you can-and then try to learn some more.”

I took a deep breath and then nodded. “Okay. We’ll break for lunch, and then we’ll look at another case I didn’t screw up quite as badly. Back here in an hour. Dismissed.”

The young Wardens got up and dispersed-except for McKenzie and Ilyana. The two came down to stand beside me.

“Commander,” McKenzie said. “This girl, Kat. Most of the talented mortals only demonstrate a single talent. She demonstrated at least two.”

“I’m aware,” I said.

“This girl,” Ilyana said. “Her talents were born in trauma and fear. This is one of the warning signs of a potential warlock.”

“Yeah,” I said. My talents had started in a similar fashion. “I heard that once.”

“So… she is under surveillance?” Ilyana asked.

“I drop in on her once in a while,” I said.

“That poor kid,” McKenzie said. “What do we do?”

I spread my hands. “It’s an imperfect world, Wardens. We do what we always do.” I smiled at them lopsidedly. “Whatever we can.”

They both looked down, frowning, concerned-concerned for a little girl who had no idea of what might be waiting for her.

Excellent.

The lesson hadn’t been wasted.

“Okay, guys,” I said. “Burger King?”