Jim Butcher - Changes

“Yeah, well. I nearly wound up there myself.”

“La,” she said, smiling. “My guardians were created to attack any intruder—including one that looked like you. We couldn’t have some clever shapeshifter slipping by, now, could we?” She sighed. “You took a terrible toll on my primroses. Honestly, child, there are elements other than fire, you know. You really ought to diversify. Now I have two gaping maws to feed instead of one.”

“I’ll . . . be more careful next time,” I said.

“I should appreciate such a thing.” She studied me quietly. “It has been true for your entire lifetime, child. I have followed you in the spirit world. Created guardians and defenses ’pon the other side to ward your sleep, to stand sentinel over your home. And you still have only the beginnings of an idea of how many have tried.” She smiled, showing her delicately pointed canine teeth again. “Tried, and failed.”

Which also explained how she was always near at hand whenever I had entered the Nevernever. How she would be upon my trail in seconds whenever I went in.

Because she had been there, protecting me.

From everything but herself.

“Now, then,” she said, her tone businesslike. “You left a considerable trove of equipment in my garden for safekeeping.”

“It was an emergency.”

“I had assumed that,” she said. “I will, of course, safeguard it or return it, as you wish. And, should you perish, I will deliver it to an heir of your designation.”

I let out a weary laugh. “You . . . Of course you will.” I eyed Mouse. “What do you think, boy?”

Mouse looked at me, and then at Lea. Then he sat down—but still kept watching her carefully.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think that, too.”

The Leanansidhe smiled widely. “It is good that you have taken my lessons to heart, child. It is a cold and uncaring universe we live in. Only with strength of body and mind can you hope to control your own fate. Be wary of everyone. Even your protector.”

I sat there for a moment, thinking.

My mother had prepared protection for me with considerable foresight. She had anticipated my eventually looking for and finding my half brother, Thomas. Had she prepared other things for me, as well? Things I hadn’t yet guessed at?

How would I pass on a legacy to my child if I knew that I wasn’t going to be alive to see it happen? What kind of legacy did I have, other than a collection of magical gear that anyone could probably accumulate without help, in time?

My only real treasure was knowledge.

Ye gods and little fishes, but knowledge was a dangerous legacy. I imagined what might have happened if, at the age of fifteen, I had learned aspects of magic that had not come to me on their own until I was over thirty. It would have been like handing a child a cocked and loaded gun.

A safety mechanism was needed—something that would prevent the child from attaining said store of knowledge until she was mature enough to handle it wisely. Something simple, but telling, for a child. A wizard child.

I smiled. Something like being able to admit one’s own ignorance. Expressed in the simplest possible form: asking a question. And, as I now knew, my mother had not been called “LeFay” for nothing.

“Godmother,” I asked calmly. “Did my mother leave anything for you to give me when I was ready for it? A book? A map?”

Lea took a very slow, deep breath, her eyes luminous. “Well,” she murmured. “Well, well, well.”

“She did, didn’t she.”

“Yes, indeed. But I was told to give you fair warning. It is a deadly legacy. If you accept it, you accept what comes with it.”

“Which is?” I asked.

She shrugged a shoulder. “It varies from one individual to the next. Your mother lost the ability to sleep soundly. It might be worse for you. Or it might be nothing.”

I thought about that for a moment, and then nodded. “I want it.”

Lea never took her eyes off me. She lifted her empty palm, closed her fingers over it, and opened them again.

A small, gleaming ruby, bright as a drop of blood, carved in a pentagon, lay in her hand.

“It is the sum of her knowledge of the Ways,” Lea said quietly. “Every path, every shortcut, every connection. She developed enough skill at searching them out that she was eventually able to predict them. Ways may change from decade to decade, but your mother knew where they were and where they would be. Very few of mine own kind can say as much.” She narrowed her eyes. “That knowledge is the burden I hold in my hand, child. Mine own belief is that it will destroy thee. The choice must needs be thine.”

I stared at the gem for a long moment, forcing myself to breathe slowly. All the Ways. The ability to travel around the world without concern for geography. Knowledge like that could have won the war with the Red Court almost before it began. Whoever possessed that knowledge could regard laws with utter impunity, avoid retribution from mortal authorities or supernatural nations alike. Go anywhere. Escape from damned near anything. Gather more information than anyone else possibly could.

Hell’s bells. That gleaming little gem was a subtle strength that had the potential to be as potent as any I had seen. Such power .

Such temptation.

I wondered if I’d be able to handle it. I am not a saint.

At the same time, I had never seen a tool so obviously intended to help a man Show Up for his little girl. No matter where she was, I could go to her. Go to her and get away clean.

Maggie.

I reached out and took the gem from my godmother’s hand.

“Harry,” Molly called from up in the living room. “I think they’re waking up.”

I grunted and lifted my pentacle necklace to examine it. The little pentagonal ruby had been quite obviously cut for this particular piece of jewelry. Or it had been before I’d been forced to use the necklace as a silver bullet. My little pentacle, the five-pointed star within a circle, had been warped by the extremes of stress I’d subjected it to. I’d been straightening it out with the set of jeweler’s tools I used to update Little Chicago.

The jewel abruptly snapped into the center of the pentacle as if into a socket. I shook the necklace several times, and the gem stayed put. But there was no point in taking chances. I turned it over and smeared the whole back with a big blob of adhesive. It might not look pretty from the front after it had dried, but I was pressed for time.

“That’ll do, pig,” I muttered to myself. I looked up to Bob’s shelf, where Mister was sprawling, using a couple of paperbacks for pillows while he amused himself dragging his claws through the mounded candle wax. I reached up to rub his ears with my fingertips, setting him to purring, and promised myself I would get Bob back soon: For the time being, he was, like the Swords, too valuable and too dangerous to leave unguarded. In Lea’s bloodthirsty garden, they were probably safer than they had been in my apartment in the first place.

I left my mother’s amulet and the glittering ruby sitting on my worktable so that the glue could dry, and padded up the stepladder.

I had hefted Susan up onto the sofa and fetched a pillow for her head, and a blanket. Molly had managed to roll Martin onto a strip of camping foam, and given him a pillow and a blanket, too. Mouse had settled down on the floor near Martin to sleep. Even though his eyes were closed and he was snoring slightly, his ears twitched at every sound.

While I had been in the lab, Molly had been cleaning up. She probably knew where all the dishes went better than I did. Or she was reorganizing them completely. Either way, I was sure that the next time I just wanted to fry one egg, I wouldn’t be able to find the little skillet until after I had already used the big skillet and cleaned it off.