Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files #8) - Jim Butcher Page 0,187

youre going to live. I take it that you had already decided to break things off with Nelson. I kind of picked up that vibe when we bailed him out.

She nodded.

Well. Inappropriate to stay with him, then. To say nothing of the fact that hes going to need time to recover.

I cant stay at home, she said quietly. After all thats happenedhellip; and my mom will never understand about the magic. She thinks its all bad, every bit of it. And if Im there, its just going to confuse and frighten all the little Jawas, Mom and me arguing all the time.

I grunted and said, Youll have to stay somewhere. Well work that out soonest.

All right, she said.

Next thing you need to know, I said. As of now, you get no slack. You arent allowed any mistakes. You dont get to say oops. The first time you screw up and slip deeper into bad habits, it kills both of us. Im going to be tough on you sometimes, Molly. I have to be. Its as much for my survival as yours. Got it?

Yes, she said.

I grunted, got up, and went to my tiny bedroom. I rooted around in my closet and found an old brown apprentice robe one of the shiny new Wardens had left at my place after a local meeting. I brought it out and handed it to Molly. Keep this where you can get to it. Youll be with me at any Council meetings, and it is your formal attire. I frowned and rubbed at my head. God, I need aspirin. And food. You hungry?

Molly shook her head. But Im a mess. Do you mind if I clean up?

I eyed her and sighed. Then I said, No. Go ahead and get it out of the way. I stood up and went to the kitchen, muttering a minor spell and flicking several candles into light, including one near the girl. She took the robe and the candle, grabbed her bag, and vanished into my room.

I checked the icebox. The faeries usually brought some kind of food to stock the icebox and the pantry when they cleaned, but they could have mighty odd ideas about what constituted a healthy diet. One time Id opened the pantry and found nothing but boxes and boxes and boxes of Froot Loops. I had a near-miss with diabetes, and Thomas, who never was quite sure where the food came from, declared that I had clearly been driven Froot Loopy.

Usually it wasnt that bad, though there was always a high incidence of frozen pizza, for which my housekeepers maintained the ice in my icebox with religious fervor. I often left most of a pizza lying around uneaten when I figured theyd be coming to visit, and thus continued my policy of shamelessly bribing my way into the Little Folks good graces.

I was too tired to cook anything, and nothing was going to taste good anyway, so I slapped several hot dogs between two pieces of bread along with a couple of lettuce leaves and wolfed them down.

I got out some of my ice and dumped it in a pitcher, then filled the pitcher up. I got down a glass and filled it with ice water. Then I and my glass and my pitcher moseyed over to my fireplace. I set the pitcher on the mantel, idly flipped the neatly laid fire to life with my ignition spell, and then waited for the inevitable while sipping cold water and staring down at the fire. Mister kept me company from his spot on top of a bookcase.

It took her a little while to work up to it, but not as long as I had expected. My bedroom door opened and Molly appeared.

She had showered. Her candy-colored hair hung limp and clinging. Shed washed away the makeup entirely, but there were spots of pink high on her cheeks that I figured had little to do with cosmetics. The various piercings I could see caught the firelight in a deep, burned orange glow. She was also barefoot. And wearing her brown robe. I arched an eyebrow at her and waited.

She flushed more deeply and then walked over to me, quite slowly, until she stood not a foot away.

I gave her nothing to work with. No expression. No words. Just silence.

You looked into me, she whispered quietly. And I looked into you.

Thats how it works, I confirmed in a quiet, neutral voice. She shivered. I saw what kind of