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When’s the last time you saw Susan?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I responded. ‘Couple weeks ago. We’re both pretty busy with work.’ Bob heaved a sigh. ‘A gorgeous woman like that, and here you are, down in your musty old lab, getting ready to do more ridiculous nonsense.’ ‘Precisely,’ I said. ‘Now, shut up and let’s get to work.’
Magic was more than just an energy source, like electricity or petroleum. It was power, true, but it was a lot of other things as well. It was all that was deepest and most powerful in nature, in the human heart and soul. The ways in which I applied it were crude and clumsy in comparison to magic in its pure form. There’s more magic in a baby’s first giggle than in any firestorm a wizard can conjure up, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.
Magic comes from what is inside you. It is a part of you. You can’t weave together a spell that you don’t believe in.
There was power to be had in hatred, too, in anger and in lust, in selfishness and in pride. And I knew that there was some dark corner of me that would enjoy using magic for killing – and then long for more. That was black magic, and it was easy to use. Easy and fun. Like Legos.
‘Why should I believe you?’ I asked him. He looked back at me. ‘You have seen the deepest reaches of my soul, Mr Dresden. You know me in a way so profound and intimate that I cannot yet fathom its significance. Just as I know you. You should know that I have every reason to help you, and that the information is good.’ He smiled again, wintry. ‘Just as you should know that it was unwise to make an enemy of me. It need not have been this way.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘If you know me so well, you should know that there’s no other way it could be.’
But to know that the man I knew, the tiger-souled predator, the businessman killer – to know that he was frightened of what I was about to go up against: That scared the hell out of me, and added an element of intimidation to the work I was doing that hadn’t been present before. That didn’t change anything, either. It’s all right to be afraid. You just don’t let it stop you from doing your job.
I have felt low before in my life, have experienced events that left me broken and groveling and wishing I was dead. That was pretty much how I felt now, too. It wasn’t that I hadn’t found the killer – I’ve been beaten before, taken the blow on the chin, and come out fighting the next round. I can roll with the punches as well as anyone. But I hated feeling that I had betrayed a friend.
Tera shrugged. ‘Pain is to be endured. It ends or it does not.’
‘Bastard chewed up my good boot,’ I muttered, and for some reason, the statement struck me as incredibly funny. Maybe I had just seen too much for the evening, but whatever had caused it, I sailed into panting, wheezing gales of laughter.
He stared at me. ‘Wh-what did you say?’ ‘A stuffed animal, man!’ I roared at him. ‘Don’t mess with a wizard when he’s wizarding!’ I let out a cackle that threatened to bring the wild hysteria that still lurked inside of me back in full force, and banished it with a ferocious scowl. Poor Rudolph bore the brunt of both expressions, got a little more pale than he already was, and took a couple of steps back from me.
Ease up on yourself, man. You can’t change the past.’ ‘Easy for you to say,’ I snarled. ‘No, it isn’t,’ my double said quietly. ‘Concentrate on what you will do, not what you should have done.
The lead car was a two-ton pickup, one of the really big ones, and Parker sat behind the wheel, looking around wildly until his eyes lit upon me, standing there in the tall weeds beside the road. I smiled at him and contemplated his shocked expression to my own satisfaction. Then I drew in a breath, and my renewed will with it, lifted the rod in my right hand, murmured a phrase in a language I didn’t know, and blew the tires off his fucking truck.
My own hands weren’t clean – but they were free. Things were desperate, and getting worse the longer I waited. Maybe I could pull off enough magic to get myself out of this.
It couldn’t possibly get any worse than this, I thought. I cowered in the corner, clutching my captured wrench like a child’s teddy bear, with no way out, and full of the knowledge that my magic had failed me. Oddly, that thought troubled me more than probable death. A lot more. Death was something that happened to everyone – only the timing is different, for each of us. I knew that I would, eventually, die. Hell, I even knew that I might die horribly. But I had never thought that the magic would fail me. More accurately, I had never guessed that I might fail
It might not ever come back. It was a loss of identity. I was a wizard. It was more than just a job, more than just a title. Wizardry was at the core of my being. It was my relationship with my magic, the way I used it, the things it let me do that defined me, shaped me, gave me purpose.
I’d flailed around in the dark and been helpless and ineffective for way too long. Too many people had been hurt, too much suffering caused by creatures of magic and the night, things that I should have been handling. It didn’t matter to me, at that moment, that I couldn’t work any of my spells against them. 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.
‘Why tell me?’ the kid asked. ‘Why warn us?’ I stared down at him for long seconds before I answered him in a quiet voice. ‘Because I don’t like what you’re doing. What you are. You aren’t using the power you’ve been given. It’s using you. You’re turning into animals. You’re using savagery and fear to try to uphold the peace. Now it’s your turn to see what it’s like to be afraid.’
I don’t want anyone to get killed. Not us, and not them. Maybe they deserve it. Maybe not. The power they grabbed has turned into a drug for them, and they’re not really in control of themselves anymore. I just don’t think we’d be much different than them if we went in there planning to wipe them out. It isn’t enough to stand up and fight darkness. You’ve got to stand apart from it, too. You’ve got to be different from it.’
‘You do know that it’s right beneath you now, don’t you, John?’ I asked. ‘Mr Dresden,’ Marcone said crossly. ‘I’ve asked you not to call me that.’ ‘Whatever,’ I said, but I had to admire the raw courage of the man to banter while dangling up there like a ripe peach.
I hurt. I was weary. I felt as though I had betrayed myself, given myself over to the darkness I’d tried so hard to resist by donning the evilly enchanted wolf belt – because let there be no mistaking, that is evil. Anything with that much power and that little control, that utter lack of concern for anything but self is evil in the most effective sense of the word. There was nothing left inside of me. But I had to find it. I had to find enough magic to stop this bloodletting, once and forever.
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.
They’re just itching for me to lead them in some meaningful crusade against evil. Hell, I have trouble just paying the bills.
