him, a little voice whispered inside my head.
The full, round moon emerged from behind the clouds and bathed the whole Valley of the Stone Table in clear, cold light. The runes upon the table and the menhirs blazed into glittering, cold light.
“Wizard,” whispered Mab’s appropriated voice, seemingly directly into my ear. “The time has come.”
My heart began pounding very hard, and I felt sick to my stomach.
“Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden,” Mab’s voice said, almost lovingly. “Choose.”
31
I stared at the broken man. It was easy enough to envision my own mutilated face, looking blindly up from the table’s surface. I took one step toward the table. Then two. Then I was standing over Lloyd Slate’s broken form.
If it was a fight, I wouldn’t think twice. But this man was no threat to me. He was no threat to anyone anymore. I had no right to take his life, and it was pure, overwhelming, nihilistic arrogance to say otherwise. If I killed Slate, how long would it take for my turn to come? I could be looking at myself, months or years from now.
I couldn’t, any more than I could cut my own throat.
I felt my hand drop back to my side, the knife too heavy to hold before me.
Mab suddenly stood at the opposite end of the Stone Table, facing me. Her right hand moved in a simple outward motion, and the mists over the Table suddenly thickened and swirled with color and light. For a few seconds, the image was hazy. Then it snapped into focus.
A little girl crouched in the corner of a bare stone room. There was hay scattered around, and a wool blanket that looked none too clean. She had dark hair that had been up in pigtails, but wasn’t anymore. One of the little pink plastic clips had evidently been lost or stolen, and now she had only one pigtail. Her face was red from crying. She’d evidently been wiping her nose on the knees of her little pink overalls. Her shirt, white with yellow flowers and a big cartoon bumblebee on it, showed stains of dirt and worse. She crouched in the tiniest ball she could make of her body, as if hoping that if something should come for her, she might be overlooked.
Her big brown eyes were quietly terrified—and I could see something familiar in them. It took me a moment to realize they reminded me of my reflection in a mirror. Other features showed themselves to me, muted shapes that maturity would bring forth eventually. The same chin and jawline Thomas and I shared. The same mouth as her mother’s. Susan’s straight, shining black hair. Her hands and her feet looked a little too large for her, like a puppy’s paws.
Dimly, as if from a great distance, I heard the cry of a Red Court vampire in its true form, and she flinched and started crying again, her entire body trembling in terror.
Maggie.
I remembered when Bianca and her minions had kept me prisoner.
I remembered the things they had done to me.
But it didn’t look like they had harmed my child—yet.
“Yes,” said Mab’s cold voice, empty of emotion. The image began to slowly fade away. “It is a true seeing of your child, as she is even now. I give you my word. No tricks. No deceptions. This is.”
I looked through the translucent image to where Mab and my godmother waited. Lea’s face was somber. Mab’s eyes were narrowed to glowing green slits within her hooded cloak.
I faced them both for a moment. The cold wind gusted over the hilltop and stirred the cloaks of the two Sidhe. I stared at them, at ancient eyes full of the knowledge of dark and wicked things. I knew that neither the child in the image nor the man on the table meant anything to them. I knew that if I went forward with Mab’s bargain, I would probably end up on the table myself.
Of course, that was why Mab had shown me Maggie: to manipulate me.
No. There was a distinction in what she had done. She had shown me Maggie to make perfectly clear exactly what choice I was about to make. Certainly, it might influence my decision, but when a stark naked truth stares you in the face . . . shouldn’t it?
I’m not sure it’s possible to manipulate someone with candor and truth.
I think you call that enlightenment.
And as I stared at my daughter’s fading image, my fear vanished.
If I wound up like Slate,