Jim Butcher - Proven Guilty

“Thank you.” I took it and headed for my apartment, the two of them following after me. “I’ll be working downstairs. The two of you should stay in the living room. Please be as quiet as you can and don’t walk around too much.”

“Why?” Charity asked.

I shook my head tiredly and waved a hand. “No, no questions right now. I’ll need everything I’ve got to find where they took Molly, and I’m already rushing this thing. Let me concentrate. I’ll explain it later.” If I survive it , I thought.

I felt Charity’s eyes on me, and I glanced back at her. She gave her head a brief, stiff nod. I took down the wards and we went inside. Mister came over and rammed his shoulder against my legs, then wound his way around between Thomas’s legs, accepting a few token pats from my half brother. Then he surprised me by giving Charity the same treatment.

I shook my head. Cats. No accounting for taste.

Charity looked around my apartment, frowning, and said, “It’s very well kept up. I had expected more… debris.”

“He cheats,” Thomas said, and headed for the refrigerator.

I ignored them. There wasn’t time for the full ritual cleansing and meditation, but my day had exposed me to all kinds of stains, external and otherwise, and I considered the shower to be the most indispensable portion of the preparation. So I went into my room, stripped, lit a candle, and got into the shower. Cool water sluiced over me. I scrubbed my skin until it was pink, and washed my hair until it got sore.

The whole while I sought out a quiet place in my mind, somewhere sheltered from pain and guilt, from fear and anger. I pushed out every sensation but for the bathing, and without conscious effort my motions took on the steady rhythm of ritual, something commonplace transformed into an act of art and meditation, like a Japanese tea ceremony.

I longed for my bed. I longed for sleep. Warmth. Laughter. I pinned down those longings one at a time and crucified them, suspending them until such time as my world was a place that could afford such desires. One last emotion was too big for me, though. Try though I might, I could not keep fear from finding a way to slither into my thoughts. Little Chicago’s maiden run was an enormous unknown quantity. If I’d done it all right, I would have myself one hell of a tool for keeping track of things in my town.

If I’d made even a tiny mistake, Molly was dead. Or worse than dead. And I’d get to find out what the light at the end of the long tunnel really was.

I couldn’t escape the fear. It was built in to the situation. So instead I tried to make my peace with it. Fear, properly handled, could be turned into something useful. So I made a small, neat place for its use in my head, a kind of psychic litter box, and hoped that the fear wouldn’t start jumping around at the worst possible moment.

I got out of the shower, dried, and slipped into my white robe again. I kept my thoughts focused, picked up my backpack and the white envelope, and went down to the basement lab. I shut the door behind me. If Little Chicago went nova, preventative spells I’d laid to keep energies from escaping the lab should mitigate the damage significantly. It wasn’t a perfect plan, by any means, but I’m only human.

Which was a disturbing thought as I stared at the model on the table. Even a tiny mistake. Only human.

I set the envelope at the edge of the table, my backpack on a shelf, and went around the basement lighting candles with a match. A spell would have been faster and neater, but I wanted to save every drop of power for managing the divination. So I made lighting each candle a ritual of its own, focusing on my movements, on precision, on nothing but the immediate interplay of heat and cold, light and darkness, fire and shadow.

I lit the last candle and turned to the model city.

The buildings shone silver in the candlelight, and the air quivered with the power I’d built into the model. Some tiny voice of common sense in my head told me that this was a horribly bad idea. It told me that I was making decisions because I was in pain and exhausted, and that it would be far wiser to get some sleep and attempt the spell when I stood a reasonable chance of pulling it off.

I crucified that little voice, too. There was no room for doubts. Then I turned to the table, and to the elongated circle of silver I’d built into its surface.

Lasciel appeared between me and the table, in her usual white tunic, her red hair pulled back into a tight braid. She held up both hands and said, quietly, “I cannot permit you to do this.”

“You,” I said in a quiet, distant voice, “are almost as annoying as a sudden phone call.”

“This is pointless,” she said. “My host, I beg you to reconsider.”

“I don’t have time for you,” I said. “I have a job to do.”

“A job?” she asked. “Evading your responsibilities, you mean?”

I tilted my head slightly. In my current mental state, the emotions I felt seemed infinitely far away and all but inconsequential. “How so?”

“Look at yourself,” she replied, her voice that low, quiet, reasonable tone one uses around madmen and ugly drunks. “Listen to yourself. You’re tired. You’re injured. You’re wracked by guilt. You’re frightened. You will destroy yourself.”

“And you with me?” I asked her.

“Correct,” she said. “I do not fear the end of my existence, my host but I would not be extinguished by one too self-deluded to understand what he was about.”

“I’m not deluded,” I said.

“But you are. You know that this effort shall probably kill you. And once it has done so, you will be free from any onus of what happened to the girl. After all, you heroically died in the effort to find her and retrieve her. You won’t have to attend her funeral. You won’t have to explain yourself to Michael. You won’t have to tell her parents that their daughter is dead because of your incompetence.”

I did not reply. The emotions grew a little closer.

“This isn’t anything more than an elaborate form of suicide, chosen during a moment of weakness,” Lasciel said. “I do not wish to see you destroy yourself, my host.”

I stared at her.

I thought about it.

She might be right.

It didn’t matter.

“Move,” I murmured. “Before I move you.” Then I paused and said, “Wait a minute. What am I thinking? It isn’t as though you can stop me.” Then I simply stepped through Lasciel’s image to the table, and reached for the white envelope.

The white envelope began to spin in place on the table, and abruptly became dozens of envelopes, each identical, each whirling like a pinwheel.

“But I can,” Lasciel said quietly. I looked up to find her standing on the opposite side of the table from me. “I witnessed the birth of time itself. I watched the mortal coil spring forth from perfect darkness. I watched the stars form, watched this world coalesce, watched as life was breathed into it and as your kind rose to rule it.” She put both hands on the table and leaned toward me, her blue eyes cold and hard. “Thus far, I have behaved as a guest ought. But do not mistake propriety for weakness, mortal. I beg you not to oblige me to take further action.”

I narrowed my eyes and reached for my Sight.

Before I could use it, my left hand exploded into flame.

Pain, pain, PAIN. Fire, scorching, parboiling my hand as I tried to hold it back with my shield bracelet. The memory of my injury in that vampire-haunted basement came rushing back to me in THX, and my nerve endings were listening.

I fought down a scream, breathing, my teeth snapping together so suddenly and sharply that a fleck of one of my molars chipped away.