Jim Butcher: Proven Guilty

His expression grew more sober. “And if you should fall to temptation. If you should embrace the Fallen or become ensnared by its will…” He touched the hilt of the great sword, and his face became bedrock granite, Old Testament determination that made Morgan’s fanaticism look like a wisp of steam. “If you change. I will also be there.” Fear hit me in a cold wave. Holy crap.

I swallowed, and my hands shook on the Beetle’s steering wheel. There wasn’t any attempt at menace in Michael’s voice, or his face. He was simply stating a fact.

The mark on my palm burned, and for the first time I gave serious consideration to the notion that maybe I was overconfident of my ability to deal with Lasciel. What if Michael was right? What if I screwed something up and wound up like that poor bastard Rasmussen? A demonically supercharged serial killer?

“If that happens,” I told him, and my voice was a dry whisper, “I want you to.”

I could see in his eyes that he didn’t like the thought any more than I did-but he was fundamentally incapable of being anything less than perfectly honest with me. He was my friend, and he was worried. If he had to do harm to me, it would rip him apart.

Maybe the words had been his own subconscious way of begging me to get rid of the coin. He could never stand aside and do nothing while bad things happened, even if meant that he had to kill his friend.

I could respect that. I understood it, because I couldn’t do it, either. I couldn’t stand aside, abandon my magic, and cut myself loose of the responsibility to use it for good.

Not even if it killed me.

Life can be confusing. Good God, and how. Sometimes it seems like the older I get, the more confused I become. That seems ass-backwards. I thought I was supposed to be getting wiser. Instead, I just keep getting hit over the head with my relative insignificance in the greater scheme of the universe. Confusing, life.

But it beats the hell out of the alternative.

I went back to my place. I let the kid sleep until we got there, and then touched her shoulder with one hand. She jerked awake at once, blinking in weary confusion.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“My place,” I said. “We need to talk.”

She blinked her eyes several more times and then nodded. “Why?”

“Because you need to understand something. Come on.”

We got out of the car. I led her down the steps to my door and said, “Come stand next to me.” She did. I took her left hand and told her, “Spread your fingers and close your eyes.” She did that too. I held her left palm up about two inches from the door. “Now, focus. See what you can feel.”

Her face scrunched up. “Um,” she said, shifting her weight back and forth restlessly. “There’s… pressure? Um, or maybe a buzzing. Like high-power lines.”

“Close enough,” I said, and released her wrist. “What you’re sensing are some of the energies that I used to ward my apartment. If you try to come in without disabling them, you’ll take a jolt of electricity that wouldn’t leave much more of you than a smudge on the ground.”

She blinked at me, then twitched and pulled her hand sharply away.

“I’ll give you an amulet that will let you get through, until I’m sure you can disable them, go in, and start them up again. But for tonight, just don’t try to open the door. In or out. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said quietly.

We went in. My cleaning service had come through. Molly had left a bag with clothes and sundries spread over half of one of my apartment’s couches. Now the bag was neatly closed, and suspiciously nonbulgy. I’m sure the cleaning service had folded and organized the bag so that everything fit in without strain.

Molly looked around, blinking. “How does your maid get in?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, because you can’t talk about faerie housekeepers or they go away. I pointed at the couch next to her bag and said, “Sit.”

She did, though I could tell that my peremptory tone did not thrill her.

I sat down in a chair across from the couch. As I did, Mister drifted in from the bedroom and promptly wound himself around one of Molly’s legs, purring a greeting.

“Okay, kid,” I said. “We survived. I only had some very limited plans to cover this contingency.”

She blinked at me. “What?”

“I didn’t think I’d pull this off. I mean, raiding a faerie capital? Standing up to the Senior Council? All those movie monsters? Your mom? Hell, I’m shocked I survived at all, much less got you out of it.”

“B-but…” She frowned. “You never seemed like… I mean, you just went through it all like you had everything under control. You seemed so sure what was going to happen.”

“Rule number one of the wizarding business,” I said. “Never let them see you sweat. People expect us to know things. It can be a big advantage. Don’t screw it up by looking like you’re as confused as everyone else. Bad for the image.”

She smiled at me a little. “I see,” she said. She reached down to stroke Mister and mused, “I must look horrible.”

“Been a rough day,” I said. “Look. We’ll need to talk about where you’re going to live. I take it that you had already decided to break things off with Nelson. I kind of picked up that vibe when we bailed him out.”

She nodded.

“Well. Inappropriate to stay with him, then. To say nothing of the fact that he’s going to need time to recover.”

“I can’t stay at home,” she said quietly. “After all that’s happened… and my mom will never understand about the magic. She thinks it’s all bad, every bit of it. And if I’m there, it’s just going to confuse and frighten all the little Jawas, Mom and me arguing all the time.”

I grunted and said, “You’ll have to stay somewhere. We’ll work that out soonest.”

“All right,” she said.

“Next thing you need to know,” I said. “As of now, you get no slack. You aren’t allowed any mistakes. You don’t get to say ‘oops.’ The first time you screw up and slip deeper into bad habits, it kills both of us. I’m going to be tough on you sometimes, Molly. I have to be. It’s as much for my survival as yours. Got it?”

“Yes,” she said.

I grunted, got up, and went to my tiny bedroom. I rooted around in my closet and found an old brown apprentice robe one of the shiny new Wardens had left at my place after a local meeting. I brought it out and handed it to Molly. “Keep this where you can get to it. You’ll be with me at any Council meetings, and it is your formal attire.” I frowned and rubbed at my head. “God, I need aspirin. And food. You hungry?”

Molly shook her head. “But I’m a mess. Do you mind if I clean up?”

I eyed her and sighed. Then I said, “No. Go ahead and get it out of the way.” I stood up and went to the kitchen, muttering a minor spell and flicking several candles into light, including one near the girl. She took the robe and the candle, grabbed her bag, and vanished into my room.

I checked the icebox. The faeries usually brought some kind of food to stock the icebox and the pantry when they cleaned, but they could have mighty odd ideas about what constituted a healthy diet. One time I’d opened the pantry and found nothing but boxes and boxes and boxes of Froot Loops. I had a near-miss with diabetes, and Thomas, who never was quite sure where the food came from, declared that I had clearly been driven Froot Loopy.

Usually it wasn’t that bad, though there was always a high incidence of frozen pizza, for which my housekeepers maintained the ice in my icebox with religious fervor. I often left most of a pizza lying around uneaten when I figured they’d be coming to visit, and thus continued my policy of shamelessly bribing my way into the Little Folk’s good graces.