Proven Guilty (10 page)

Michael winced.

The look Charity turned on me could have withered the life from small animals and turned potted flowers black. “Excuse me, Mister Dresden,” she said, words clipped. “I do not recall speaking to you.”

“Beg pardon,” I said, and gave her my sweetest smile. “Don’t mind me. Just thinking out loud.”

Molly turned to glare at me, too, but hers was a pale imitation of her mother’s. “I do not need you to defend me.”

Charity’s attention shifted back to her daughter. “You will
not
speak to an adult in that tone of voice so long as you are in this house, young lady.”

“Not a problem,” Molly shot back, and then she whirled on her heel and opened the door.

Michael put his hand out, not with any particular effort, and the door slammed shut again with a sharp, booming impact.

Sudden silence fell over the Carpenter household. Both Molly and Charity stared at Michael with expressions of utter shock.

Michael took a deep breath and then said, “Ladies. I try not to involve myself in these discussions. But obviously your conversation this evening is unlikely to resolve the differences you’ve had.” He looked at them in turn, and his voice, while still gentle, became something more immovable than a mountain’s bones. “I don’t have any feeling that my trip will be an extended one,” he said, “but we never know what He has planned for us. Or how much time is left to any of us. This house has been upset long enough. The strife is hurting everyone. Find a way to resolve your troubles before I return.”

“But…” Molly began.

“Molly,” Michael said, his tone of voice inexorable. “She is your mother. She deserves your respect and courtesy. You will give them to her for the length of a conversation.”

Molly set her jaw, but looked away from her father. He stared at her for a moment, until she gave him a brief nod.

“Thank you,” he said. “I want you both to make an effort to set the anger aside, and talk. By God, ladies, I will not go forth to answer the call only to come home to more conflict and strife. I get enough of that while I’m gone.”

Charity stared at him for a second longer, and then said, “But Michael… surely you aren’t going to leave now. Not when…” She gestured vaguely at me. “There will be trouble.”

Michael stepped over to his wife and kissed her gently. Then he said, “Faith, my love.”

She closed her eyes and looked away from him after the kiss. “Are you sure?”

“I’m needed,” he said with quiet certainty. He touched her face with one hand and said, “Harry, would you walk me to the car?”

I did. “Thank you,” I said, once we were outside. “I’m glad to get out of there. Tension, knife.”

Michael nodded. “It’s been a long year.”

“What happened to them?” I asked.

Michael tossed his case and his bag into the back of his white pickup truck. “Molly was arrested. Possession.”

I blinked at him. “She was possessed?”

He sighed and looked at me. “Possession. Marijuana and Ecstasy. She was at a party and the police raided it. She was caught holding them.”

“Wow,” I said, my voice subdued. “What happened?”

“Community service,” he said. “We talked about it. She was clearly repentant. I thought that the humiliation and the sentence of the law were enough to settle matters, but Charity thought we were being too gentle. She tried to restrict which people Molly was allowed to spend time with.”

I winced. “Ah. I think I can see how this played out.”

Michael nodded, got into his truck, and leaned on the open window, looking up at me. “Yes. Both of them are proud and stubborn. Friction rose until it exploded this spring. Molly left home, dropped out of school. It’s been… difficult.”

“I can see that,” I said, and sighed. “Maybe you should pitch in with Charity. Maybe the two of you could sit on her until she gets back on the straight and narrow.”

Michael smiled a little. “She’s Charity’s daughter. A hundred parents sitting on her couldn’t make her surrender.” He shook his head. “A parent’s authority can only go so far. Molly has to start thinking and choosing for herself. At this point, twisting her arm until she cries uncle isn’t going to help her do that.”

“Doesn’t seem like Charity agrees with you,” I said.

Michael nodded. “She loves Molly very much. She’s terrified of the kinds of things that could happen to her little girl.” He glanced at the house. “Which brings me to a question for you.”

“Yeah?”

“Is there some kind of dangerous situation developing?”

I chewed on my lip and then nodded. “It seems probable, but I don’t have anything specific yet.”

“Is my daughter involved in it?”

“Not to my knowledge,” I told him. “Her boyfriend got arrested tonight. She talked me into bailing him out.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed a little, but then he caught himself, and I saw him force the angry expression from his face. “I see. How in the world did you get her to come here?”

“It was what I charged for my help,” I said. “She tried to back out, but I convinced her not to.”

Michael grunted. “You threatened her?”

“Politely,” I said. “I’d never hurt her.”

“I know that,” Michael said, his tone gently reproving. Behind us, the front door opened. Molly stepped out onto the porch, hugging herself with her arms. She stood that way for a moment, ignoring us. A few seconds later, a light on the second floor came on. Charity, presumably, had gone back upstairs.

Michael watched his daughter for a moment, pain in his eyes. Then he took a deep breath and said, “May I ask a favor of you?”

“Yes.”

“Talk to her,” Michael said. “She likes you. Respects you. A few words from you might do more than anything I could tell her right now.”

“Whoa,” I said. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to negotiate a treaty,” Michael said, smiling. “Just ask her to talk to her mother. To be willing to give a little.”

“Compromise has to work both ways,” I said. “What about Charity?”

“She’ll come around.”

“Am I the only one who has noticed that Charity really doesn’t regard me with what most of the world thinks of as fairness? Or fondness? I am the last person in the world likely to get her to sit down for a reconciliation talk.”

He smiled. “Have a little faith.”

“Oh, please.” I sighed, but there wasn’t any real feeling behind it.

“Will you try to help?” Michael asked.

I scowled at him. “Yes.”

He smiled at me, mostly in his eyes. “Thank you. I’m sorry you walked into the cross fire tonight.”

“Molly told me there had been trouble at home. Bringing her here seemed like the right thing to do.”

“I appreciate it.” Michael frowned, his eyes distant for a moment, then said, “I’ve got to get moving.”

“Sure,” I said.

He met my eyes and said, “If something arises, will you keep an eye on them for me? It would make me feel a lot better to know you were watching over them until I return.”

I glanced back at his house. “What happened to having faith?”

He smiled. “Seems a bit lazy to expect the Lord to do all the work, doesn’t it?” His expression grew serious again. “Besides. I do have faith, Harry. In Him—and in you.”

Demon-infested me writhed in uncomfortable guilt on the inside. “I’ll keep an eye on them, of course.”

“Thank you,” Michael said, and put the truck in gear. “When I get back, I need to talk business with you, if you have the time.”

I nodded. “Sure. Good hunting.”

“God be with you,” he replied with a deep nod, and then he pulled out and left. Have sword, will travel. Hi-yo, Silver, away.

Get Molly and Charity to sit down and talk things out. Right. I had about as much chance to do that as I did of backpacking my car to the top of Mount Rushmore. I was gloomily certain that even if I did manage to get them together, it would only make things go more spectacularly wrong once they were there. The whole house would probably go up in an explosion when mother met antimother.

No good could come of this one. Why in the world had I agreed to it?

Because Michael was my friend, and because I was in general too stupid to turn down people in need. And maybe because of something more. Michael’s house had always been fulll of hectic life, but it had been a place, in general, of talk and warmth and laughter and good food. The ugly shouts and snarls of Molly and Charity’s quarrel had stained the place. They didn’t belong there.

I had never had a home like that, growing up. Even now that Thomas and I had found one another, when I thought of a family, I thought of the Carpenter household. I had never had that kind of intimacy, closeness. Those who have such a family seldom realize how rare and precious it is. It was something worth preserving. I wanted to help.

And Michael had a point. I might have a chance to get through to Molly. That was only half the battle, so to speak, but it was probably more than he could manage from his own position.

But whatever higher power arranged these things had a demented sense of timing, given how much I had on my plate already. Hell’s bells.

Molly came over to me after Michael’s truck had vanished. She stood beside me in the quiet summer evening, silent.

“I guess you need a ride back to your place,” I said.

“I don’t have any money,” she replied quietly.

“Okay,” I said. “Where do you need to go?”

“The convention,” she replied. “I have friends there. A room for the weekend.” She glanced over her shoulder at the house.

“The rug rats seemed glad to see you,” I observed.

She smiled fleetingly and her voice warmed. “I didn’t realize how much I missed them. Dumb little Jawas.”

I thought about nudging her toward her mother for a second, and decided against it. She might decide to do it if she wasn’t pressured, but the second she thought I was trying to force her into something, she’d dig in her heels. So all I said was, “They’re cute kids.”

“Yes,” she replied quietly.

“I’m heading for the convention anyway,” I told her. “Get in the cab.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

Chapter Eleven

When people say the word “convention,” they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they are in fact enjoying a free trip somewhere, time off work, and the opportunity to flirt with strangers, drink, and otherwise indulge themselves.

The first major difference between a business convention and a fan-dom convention is that fandom doesn’t bother with the pretenses. They’re just there to have a good time. The second difference is the dress code— the ensembles at a fan convention tend to be considerably more novel.

SplatterCon!!! (apparently the name of the con was misspelled if the three exclamation points were left out) had populated the hotel with all kinds of costumed fans, unless maybe the costumes were actually clothing trends. Once in a while, it gets hard to tell make-believe and avant-garde fashion apart. The hotel had an entry atrium, which in turn branched off into a pair of long, wide hallways leading to combination ball- and dining rooms, the ones with those long, folding partitions that can be used to break the larger rooms up into smaller halls for seminars and talk panels and so on. There were a couple hundred people in sight, and I could see more entering and leaving various panel rooms.

“I kind of expected a few more people to be here,” I said to Molly. I had stopped at my apartment to grab my stuff and drop off Mouse.

“It’s Thursday night,” she said, as if that should be significant. “And it’s getting late, at least for a weeknight. We have more than three thousand people already registered.”

“Is that a lot?”

“For a first-year convention? It’s a Mongol horde.” There was pride in her voice as she spoke. “And we have a really young staff, to boot. But old hands at putting conventions together.” She went on like that for a few moments, naming names and citing their experience as though she expected me to whip out a licensing manual or something to make sure the convention was up to code.

Two girls, both too young for me to think adult thoughts about, sidled by in black-and-purple clothing and makeup that left a lot of skin bare, their faces painted pale, trickles of fake blood at the corners of their mouths. One of them smiled at me, and she had fangs.

I had my hand on my staff and the harsh, clear scent of wood smoke filled my nose before I stopped myself from unleashing an instant, violent, and noisily pyrotechnic assault upon the vampire five feet from me. A second’s study showed irregular lumps and finger marks on the teeth—the girls had probably made them with their own fingers from craft plastic. I let out my breath in a steady exhalation and relaxed again, releasing the power I’d begun to channel through my staff.

Relax, Harry. Hell’s bells, that would be a great story for the papers. Professional Wizard Incinerates Amateur Vampire. News at ten.

The two girls went on by, none the wiser, and even Molly only frowned at them and then back at me for a second, her face tilted into an expression of silent inquiry.

I shook my head. “Sorry, sorry. Been a long day already. Look, I need to get a look at the bathroom where this theater owner was attacked.”

“All right,” Molly said. “But first we’ll get you a name tag at registration.”

“We will?” I asked. “Why?”

“Because you’re not supposed to have access to the convention if you haven’t registered for it,” she said. “Con security and hotel security might get confused. It would be inconvenient for you.”

“Right,” I said. “Good thinking. I’m not sure how I’d react to inconvenience.”

I followed her over to a set of tables set up to receive dozens or hundreds of people at once, each designated with white paper signs marked with “A-D,” “E-J,” and so on down the alphabet. A tired-looking, brown-haired woman of early middle age sat behind the first table, doing some kind of paperwork.

“Molly,” she said, and her voice warmed with tired but genuine pleasure. “Who is your friend?”