Fool Moon (The Dresden Files #2)

by Jim Butcher

‘You ain’t much of a liar, Dresden. I don’t think you could keep a straight face about something like this. I believe you.’ ‘But you don’t believe me when I say I’m a wizard?’ I asked. Carmichael grimaced and looked away. ‘Do I look like a fucking moron to you? Huh?

He’d named me after three magicians, after all, the first of which was Houdini himself. And one of Houdini’s first rules was that the means to escape was always within your grasp. Positive attitude. It’s a fact that a human being can escape from just about everything, given enough time.

I might not have any magic available to me, but that didn’t make me any less of a wizard, one of the magi, the wise. That’s the true power of a wizard. I know things. Knowledge is power. With power comes responsibility.

I had never much believed in God. Well, that’s not quite true. I believed that there was a God, or something close enough to it to warrant the name – if there were demons, there had to be angels, right? If there was a Devil, somewhere, there had to be a God.

Magic comes from the heart, from your feelings, your deepest expressions of desire. That’s why black magic is so easy – it comes from lust, from fear and anger, from things that are easy to feed and make grow. The sort I do is harder. It comes from something deeper than that, a truer and purer source – harder to tap, harder to keep, but ultimately more elegant, more powerful.