in my own body, which stood over the table like Godzilla, murmuring the words of the spell.
I closed my eyes and thought of Molly, my blood touched upon her lock of hair, and to my utter surprise I shot off down the street with no more effort than it took to peddle a bicycle. The streets beneath me and the buildings around me glowed with white energy, the whole of the place humming like high-power tension lines.
Stars and stones, Little Chicago worked. It worked well. A surge of jubilation went through me, and my speed increased in proportion. I flashed through the streets, seeing faint images of people, like ghosts, the unsteady reflections of those now moving through the real Chicago around me. But then the spell wavered, and I found myself moving in a circle like a baffled hound trying to pick up a scent trail.
It didn’t work.
I made an effort and stood back in my own body, staring down at Little Chicago, badly fatigued.
Exhausted, I reached for my backpack, sat down, and fumbled Bob into my lap.
His eyes lit up at once and he said, “Don’t get me wrong, big guy, I like you. But not that way.”
“Shut up,” I growled at him. “Just tried to use Little Chicago to find Molly’s trail. It fizzled.”
Bob blinked. “It worked? The model actually worked? It didn’t explode?”
“Obviously,” I said. “It worked fine. But I used a simple tracking spell, and it couldn’t pick up her trail. So what’s wrong with the damned thing?”
“Put me on the table,” Bob said.
I reached up and did so. He was quiet for a minute before he said, “It’s fine, Harry. I mean, it’s working just fine.”
“Like hell,” I growled. “I’ve done that tracking spell hundreds of times. It must be the model.”
“I’m telling you, it’s perfect,” Bob said. “I’m looking at the darn thing. If it wasn’t your spell, and it wasn’t the model… Hey, what did you use to focus the tracking spell?”
“Lock of her hair.”
“That’s baby hair, Harry.”
“So?”
Bob let out a disgusted sound. “So it won’t work. Harry, babies are like one big enormous blank slate. Molly has changed quite a bit since that lock was taken. She doesn’t have much to do with the person it got snipped from. Naturally the spell couldn’t track her.”
“Dammit!” I snarled. I hadn’t thought of that, but it made sense. I hadn’t ever used a lock of baby hair in the spell before, except once, to find a baby. “Dammit, dammit, dammit.”
A tiny mistake.
I was only human.
And I had failed Molly.
Chapter Thirty-four
I turned away from the table and hauled myself laboriously up the ladder to my living room.
Charity sat on the edge of the couch with her head bowed, her lips moving. As I emerged, she stood up and faced me, tension quivering through her. Thomas, who had a kettle on my little wood-burning stove, glanced over his shoulder.
I shook my head at them.
Charity’s face went white and she slowly sat down again.
I went to the kitchen, found my bottle of aspirin, and chewed up three of them, grimacing at the taste. Then I drank a glass of water. “You make those calls?” I asked Thomas.
“Yeah,” he said. “In fact, Murphy should be here in a minute.”
I nodded at him and walked over to settle into one of the easy chairs by the fireplace with my glass of water, and told Charity, “I thought I could find her. I’m sorry. I…” I shook my head and trailed off into silence.
“Thank you for trying, Mister Dresden,” she said quietly. She didn’t look up.
“It was the baby hair,” I said to Charity. “It didn’t work. Hair was too old. I couldn’t…” I sighed. “Just too tired to think straight, maybe,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Charity looked up at me. I expected fear, anger, maybe a little bit of contempt in her features. But none of that was there. There was instead something that I’d seen in Michael when the situation was really, really bad. It was a kind of quiet calm, a surety totally at odds with the situation, and I could not fathom its source or substance.
“We will find her,” she told me quietly. “We’ll bring her home.” Her voice held the solid confidence of someone stating a fact as simple and obvious as two plus two is four.
I didn’t quite break out into a bitter laugh. I was too tired to do that. But I shook my head and stared at the empty fireplace.
“Mister Dresden,” she