Jim Butcher - Proven Guilty

I shook my head at them.

Charity’s face went white and she slowly sat down again.

I went to the kitchen, found my bottle of aspirin, and chewed up three of them, grimacing at the taste. Then I drank a glass of water. “You make those calls?” I asked Thomas.

“Yeah,” he said. “In fact, Murphy should be here in a minute.”

I nodded at him and walked over to settle into one of the easy chairs by the fireplace with my glass of water, and told Charity, “I thought I could find her. I’m sorry. I…” I shook my head and trailed off into silence.

“Thank you for trying, Mister Dresden,” she said quietly. She didn’t look up.

“It was the baby hair,” I said to Charity. “It didn’t work. Hair was too old. I couldn’t…” I sighed. “Just too tired to think straight, maybe,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Charity looked up at me. I expected fear, anger, maybe a little bit of contempt in her features. But none of that was there. There was instead something that I’d seen in Michael when the situation was really, really bad. It was a kind of quiet calm, a surety totally at odds with the situation, and I could not fathom its source or substance.

“We will find her,” she told me quietly. “We’ll bring her home.” Her voice held the solid confidence of someone stating a fact as simple and obvious as two plus two is four.

I didn’t quite break out into a bitter laugh. I was too tired to do that. But I shook my head and stared at the empty fireplace.

“Mister Dresden,” she said quietly. “I don’t pretend to know as much about magic as you do. I’m quite certain you have a great deal of power.”

“Just not enough,” I said. “Not enough to do any good.”

In the corner of my eye, I saw Charity actually smile. “It’s difficult for you to realize that you are, at times, as helpless as the rest of us.”

She was probably right, but I didn’t say as much out loud. “I made a mistake, and Molly might be hurt because of it. I don’t know how to live with that.”

“You’re only human,” she said, and there was a trace of pensive reflection in her voice. “For all of your power.”

“That answer isn’t good enough,” I said quietly. I glanced at her, to find her watching me, her dark eyes intent. “Not good enough for Molly.”

“Have you done all that you can to help her?” Charity asked me.

I racked my brain for a useless moment and then said, “Yeah.”

She spread her hands. “Then I can hardly ask you for more.”

I blinked at her. “What?”

She smiled again. “Yes. It surprises me to hear myself say it, as well. I have not been tolerant of you. I have not been pleasant to you.”

I waved a tired hand. “Yeah. But I get why not.”

“I realize that now,” she said. “You saw. But it took all of this to make me see it.”

“See what?”

“That much of the anger I’ve directed at you was not rightfully yours. I was afraid. I let my fear become something that controlled me. That made me harm others. You.” She bowed her head. “And I let it worsen matters with Molly. I feared for her safety so much that I went to war with her. I drove her toward what I most wished her to avoid. All because of my fear. I have been afraid, and I am ashamed.”

“Everyone gets scared sometimes,” I said.

“But I allowed it to rule me. I should have been stronger than that, Mister Dresden. Wiser than that. We all should be. God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of love, of power, and of self-control.”

I absorbed that for a moment. Then I asked, “Are you apologizing to me?”

She arched an eyebrow and then said, her tone wry, “I am not yet that wise.”

That actually did pull a quiet laugh from me.

“Mister Dresden,” she said. “We’ve done all that we can do. Now we pray. We have faith.”

“Faith?” I asked.

She regarded me with calm, confident eyes. “That a hand mightier than yours or mine will shield my daughter. That we will be shown a way. That He will not leave his faithful when they are in need.”

“I’m not all that faithful,” I said.

She smiled again, tired but unwavering. “I have enough for both of us.” She met my eyes steadily and said, “There are other powers than your magic, or that of the dark spirits that oppose us. We are not alone in this fight, Mister Dresden. We need not be afraid.”

I averted my eyes before a soulgaze could get going. And before she could see them tear up. Charity, regardless of how she’d treated me in the past, had been there when the chips were down. She’d cared for me when I’d been injured. She’d supported me when she didn’t have to do so. As abrasive, accusatory, and harsh as she could be, I had never for an instant doubted her love for her husband, for her children, or the sincerity of her faith. I’d never liked her too much-but I had always respected her.

Now more than ever.

I just hoped she was right, when she said we weren’t in this alone. I wasn’t sure I really believed that, deep down. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got nothing against God, except for maybe wishing He was a little less ambiguous and had better taste in hired help. People like Michael and Charity and, to a lesser extent, Murphy, had made me take some kind of faith under consideration, now and again. But I wasn’t the sort of guy who did well when it came to matters of belief. And I wasn’t the sort of guy who I thought God would really want hanging around his house or his people.

Hell. There was a fallen angel in my brain. I counted myself lucky that I hadn’t met Michael or one of the other Knights from the business end of one of the Swords.

I looked at the gift popcorn tin in the corner by the door, where my staff and rod were settled, along with my practice fighting staff, an unearned double of my wizardly tool, my sword cane, an umbrella, and the wooden cane sheath of Fidelacchius , one of the three swords borne by Michael and his brothers in arms.

The sword’s last wielder had told me that I was to keep it and pass it on to the next Knight. He said I would know who, and when. And then the sword sat there in my popcorn tin for years. When my house had been in-vaded by bad guys, they’d overlooked it. Thomas, who had lived with me for almost two years, had never touched it or commented on it. I wasn’t sure that he’d ever noticed it, either. It just sat there, waiting.

I glanced at the sword, and then up at the roof. If God wanted to throw a little help our way, now would be a good time to get that foreordained knowledge of who to give the sword to, at least. Not that it would do us all that much good, I supposed. With or without Fidelacchius , we had a fair amount of power of the ass-kicking variety. What we needed was knowledge. Without knowledge, all the ass kicking in the world wouldn’t help.

I watched the sword for a minute, just in case.

No light show. No sound effects. Not even a burst of vague intuition. I guess that wasn’t the kind of help Heaven was dishing out at the moment.

I settled back in my chair. Charity had returned to her quiet prayers. I tried to think thoughts that wouldn’t clash, and hoped that God wouldn’t hold it against Molly that I was on her side.

I glanced back over my shoulder. Thomas had listened to the whole thing with an almost supernatural quality of noninvolvement. He was watching Charity with troubled eyes. He traded a glance with me that seemed to mirror most of what I was feeling. Then he brought everyone a cup of tea, and faded immediately back to the kitchen alcove again while Charity prayed.

Maybe ten minutes later, Murphy knocked at the door and then opened it. Besides Thomas, she was the only person I’d entrusted with an amulet that would let her through my wards without harm. She wore one of her usual work outfits: black jacket, white shirt, dark pants, comfortable shoes. Grey predawn light backlit her. She took a look around the place, frowning, before she shut the door. “What’s happened?”