Jim Butcher: Proven Guilty

I was too tired to cook anything, and nothing was going to taste good anyway, so I slapped several hot dogs between two pieces of bread along with a couple of lettuce leaves and wolfed them down.

I got out some of my ice and dumped it in a pitcher, then filled the pitcher up. I got down a glass and filled it with ice water. Then I and my glass and my pitcher moseyed over to my fireplace. I set the pitcher on the mantel, idly flipped the neatly laid fire to life with my ignition spell, and then waited for the inevitable while sipping cold water and staring down at the fire. Mister kept me company from his spot on top of a bookcase.

It took her a little while to work up to it, but not as long as I had expected. My bedroom door opened and Molly appeared.

She had showered. Her candy-colored hair hung limp and clinging. She’d washed away the makeup entirely, but there were spots of pink high on her cheeks that I figured had little to do with cosmetics. The various piercings I could see caught the firelight in a deep, burned orange glow. She was also barefoot. And wearing her brown robe. I arched an eyebrow at her and waited.

She flushed more deeply and then walked over to me, quite slowly, until she stood not a foot away.

I gave her nothing to work with. No expression. No words. Just silence.

“You looked into me,” she whispered quietly. “And I looked into you.”

“That’s how it works,” I confirmed in a quiet, neutral voice. She shivered. “I saw what kind of man you are. Kind. Gentle.” She looked up and met my eyes. “Lonely. And…” She flushed a shade pinker. “And hungry. No one has touched you in a very long time.”

She lifted a hand and put it on my chest. Her fingers were very warm, and a rippling flush of purely biological reaction bypassed my silly brain and raced through me in a wave of pleasure-and need. I looked down at Molly’s pale hand. Her palm glided over my chest, barely touching, a slow, focused circle. I felt faintly disgusted with myself for my reaction. Hell. I’d known this kid before she’d had to worry about feminine hygiene products.

I managed to thwart my hormones’ lobby to start growling or drooling, but my voice had gotten a shade or two huskier. “Also true.”

She looked up at me again, her eyes wide and deep and blue enough to drown in. “You saved my life,” she said, and I heard her voice shaking. “You’re going to teach me. I…” She licked her lips and moved her shoulders. The brown robe slipped down them to the floor.

The tattoo that began on her neck went all the way down to her pierced navel. She had several other studs and fine rings in places I had suspected (but never confirmed) they would be. She shivered and took swifter breaths. The firelight played merrily with her shifting contours.

I’d seen better. But mostly that had been from someone using her looks to get something out of me, and the difference had largely been one of presentation. Molly didn’t have much experience in displaying herself for a man, or in playing the coquette. She should have stood differently, arched her back, shifted her hips, worn an expression of thickly sensual interest, daring me to come after her. She would have looked like the patron goddess of corrupted youth.

Instead, she stood there, uncertain and frightened and too naive (or maybe honest) to be anything but totally sincere-and vulnerable. She was afraid, uncertain, the lost princess helpless in a dark wood.

It was worse than if she’d vamped onto me like a trained courtesan. What I saw in her was honest and hopeful, trusting and terrified. She was real, and fragile and precious. My emotions got together with my glands and they ganged up on me, screaming that she needed acceptance and that the kindest thing I could possibly do would be to give her a hug and tell her everything was going to be all right-and that if something followed, who would blame me?

I would. So I just watched her with a straight face.

“I want to learn from you,” she said. “I want to do everything I can to help you. To thank you. I want you to teach me things.”

“What things?” I asked in a quiet, measured tone.

She licked her lips. “Everything. Show me everything.”

“Are you sure?” I asked her.

She nodded, her eyes huge, pupils dilated until only a bare ring of blue remained around them.

“Teach me,” she whispered.

I touched her face with the fingers of my right hand. “Kneel down,” I told her. “Close your eyes.”

Trembling, she did, her breathing becoming faster, more excited.

But that stopped once I picked up the pitcher of ice water from the mantel and dumped it over her head.

She let out a squeal and fell over backward. It took her maybe ten seconds to recover from the shock of the cold, and by then she was gasping and shivering, her eyes wide with surprise and confusion-and with some kind of deep, heavy pain.

I faced her and squatted down onto my haunches to meet her eyes. “Lesson one. This isn’t going to happen, Molly,” I said in exactly the same calm, gentle voice. “Get that through your head right now. It isn’t ever going to happen.”

Her lower lip trembled, and she bowed her head, shoulders shaking.

I gave myself a mental kick in the head and snagged a blanket from the couch. I went to her and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Get over by the fire and warm up.”

It took her a moment to collect herself, but she did. She hunched her shoulders beneath the blanket, shivering and humiliated. “You knew,” she said in a shaking voice. “That I would… do this.”

“I was pretty sure,” I agreed.

“Because of the soulgaze,” she said.

“Nothing to do with that, really,” I replied. “I figured there had to be a reason that you didn’t come to me for help when you came into your powers. I figure you’ve been interested in me for a while. That you wouldn’t want to come up to your favorite rock star and start fumbling around on a guitar so that the first thing he thinks about you is that you’re incompetent.”

She shivered and blushed even more. “No. It wasn’t like that…”

Sure it was. But I’d hammered her hard enough for the time being. “If you say so,” I answered. “Molly, you may fight with your mom like cats and dogs, but the two of you are more alike than you know.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s trite but true that a lot of young women look for a man who reminds them of their dad. Your dad fights monsters. I fight monsters. Your dad rescued your mom from a dragon. I rescued you from Arctis Tor. Seeing the pattern here?”

She opened her mouth and then frowned at the fire-not an angry frown. A pensive one.

“Plus, you’ve just been scared real good. You don’t have any place to stay. And I’m the guy who is trying to help you.” I shook my head. “But even if there wasn’t magic involved, it still wouldn’t happen. I’ve done some things I’m not proud of. But I’m never going to take advantage of your trust.

“What we’re going to have is not a relationship of equals. I teach. You learn. I tell you to do something, you damned well do it.”

A touch of sullen teenager-ness gleamed in her eyes.

“Don’t even think it,” I said. “Molly, getting pierced and dyed and tattooed just because you want to break the rules is one thing. But what we’re dealing with now isn’t the same thing. A botched dye job affects you. You botch the use of magic and someone-maybe a lot of someones-gets hurt. So you do what I say, when I say it, and you do it because you don’t want to kill someone. Or you can die. That was our deal, and you agreed to it.”

She said nothing. Her anger had faded from her face, but that sullen trace of rebellion remained.