Building Faith

By Ellf

Fools Rush In 6

Disclaimer: Jim Butcher owns the Dresden Files, any other works of fiction mentioned are not owned by me.

After Lieutenant Murphy finally let go of me, she made some excuse about needing to go to the morgue, and she left me in front of Harry's place. She also had told me to have Harry call SI if he managed to get in touch with us. Maroni must not have died in a natural or normal unnatural way, given that the case was hers. I knew that Murphy told me to stay away from the case, but… if Harry wasn't back in time to help her, maybe it would be possible for us to do something. Harry'd mentioned a particular Medical Examiner tended to work Special Investigations cases at the morgue and the one he'd mentioned sounded a lot like Polka Man. I couldn't, for the life of me, remember Polka Man's real name, but I'd called him that in my head since I first saw him at the comics and game shop at seven… Okay, Molly and I both called him that. There were probably more unflattering things we could have called the man, given his scrawniness, wild black hair and glasses, but the one thing that always stuck out was the fact that whenever his car drove up, you could hear polka blasting from its speakers. The man would hum polka as he walked through the store and picked up his weekly comic supply.

He went to HVB on Saturdays. I'd have to make sure I was there, ready to ask him some questions about what happened to Maroni. I thought I'd seen him wearing a City Morgue ID badge before, but I wasn't completely sure. He'd stopped coming to the shop for a few months a few years back, but he'd started right back up again at the end of that hiatus. Every week, in and out like clockwork.

I shook my head and looked at the stairs down to Harry's place. We'd been lucky enough that there hadn't been any major snows the past couple weeks, so Harry's apartment's walk remained shoveled. I stopped about three feet from the entrance and reached out with my left hand. Yep, there they were, a light hum against my senses, like electricity traveling through a live wire. Harry'd rigged his place with wards that were of the nastiest sort. Anyone trying to break into his apartment would get one hell of a jolt, and if they were supernatural, that hell of a jolt would be so much more. Luckily, I knew how to disable his wards; it had been one of the first things that Harry taught us. I just needed to apply power in this sort of pattern and… There! Disabled for now, indicating that someone was actually home.

Harry lived in the basement of his apartment building, in a basement apartment. I opened the door to the apartment, and the moment the door opened, I felt the slamming of a small head into the back of my calf. I looked down to see the thirty-pound bundle of feline imperiousness that was Harry's cat, Mister. The grey-furred bobtailed tom slunk against my leg before slipping inside the apartment, and batting at something beyond the door. I heard a sliding sound of fur on stone as I stepped inside the dark apartment.

"Mister," I scolded. "Don't hit the puppy."

Mister, as was his right, looked imperiously away from me and stalked across the living room toward the area where Harry's bedroom was. It was still too dark to see in here, so I used a little bit more of my energy.

"Flickum Bicus," I waved my right hand and flames lit a number of candles that looked like they'd recently been replaced. Harry's apartment wasn't really all that big. His kitchen is more or less an alcove with a sink and a fridge. His furniture is an eclectic combination of secondhand chic, comfortable to sit in, but definitely not matching. His floor is smooth grey stone, but a good portion of it is covered with throw rugs so as to not offend the sensibilities of bare feet this time of year. Bookshelves line the walls, for the most part, and where they don't, he hangs tapestries, except for the one corner where Harry put a Star Wars movie poster, you know one of the original ones that had Leia clinging to Luke's leg. Back before they were brother and sister.

Near one of the couches was a suitcase with a pile of neatly folded clothing stacked next to it. Thomas had been living with Harry for the past few months, ever since he and his father had a nearly lethal disagreement. He'd finally told Harry about their relationship, and Harry claimed to have been overjoyed at the revelation. Finally, Harry had some family to spend time with after spending so much of his life as an only child. Harry'd been hurt that week too, had his left hand nearly burned off by a vampire of the Black Court. He covered it with a glove, but we knew it'd hurt him.

I glanced down at the best thing to come out of that adventure that Harry and Thomas had managed to have while Molly and I were on vacation with the family as he shrugged himself out from under a rug. A grin came to my face, and I bemoaned the lack of ability to record this moment so I could share it with someone. Mouse was so cute as he came over to me, nuzzling at my leg. He'd grown a bit since Harry'd gotten him, and I had no doubt that he'd grow bigger than the fifteen to twenty pounds he already was.

"Hey there Mouse." I knelt down on one knee and removed the glove from my left hand so I could scratch his ears. "I guess Thomas went out. Did he at least walk you before doing so?"

Mouse chuffed, and the feeling that came off of him seemed to almost be an affirmative.

"Well, that's good. Molly's not back yet though," I said, and I moved over to the couch. Mouse followed me and when I sat down, he hopped up and placed his head in my lap. I glanced to the fireplace, and I grimaced. Lighting candles and blowing things up were one thing, but lighting a fireplace required a bit more fire movement than I had energy for. Damn. I'd have to leave it as I contacted my sister. "So Mouse, Mister giving you much trouble?"

Mouse looked past me to something on the edge of the couch, and I looked over. Mister apparently wanted pets too as he slammed into my shoulder before hopping down onto my lap, intentionally placing his butt in Mouse's face. Cats. As cute as they can be sometimes, other times they're just assholes. Still, I reached up with my right hand, and, after carefully moving Mister away from Mouse, I started petting behind his ears too. Once he started purring, I felt fine to make my contact.

Hey Moll… I sent out to my sister. I'm back at Harry's.

Fai, what happened? Molly's 'voice' tinged with worry and relief simultaneously. There's so many ambulances around the police station. Are you okay?

Moll, please don't tell me you and Thomas were going to try and break me out of the station. God, that would have been a shitstorm, even without the ghouls.

Okay, I won't tell you. Wait. No. She really couldn't be…

Margaret Katherine Amanda Carpenter, I sent, putting appropriate emphasis on each name. You better not have.

Geeze, sis. How is it you manage to sound like Mom through this? Molly teased. Drew and I spoke to Thomas, and he said he'd try to get something worked out with his sister to get you free. But then something happened at the station, but it was over before Drew and I could try and help.

Ghouls, I sent. Now I was the one sending emotion through. God, they were… Just… please come back here, Moll. I'm going to do some work in the lab… I just… I need to take my mind off of what happened.

Okay, Fai. Molly sent a comforting feeling along with that. We'll be there soon. Don't blow up the lab without me.

I snorted. I'll try. But if that skull tries to get me to flash him again…

I felt Molly's laughter well up at that as her presence faded away. She must have been relaying to Drew what I wanted, and… Hmm, I guess they were probably going to bring some food back. That'd be good. I stretched and scratched the ears of the two animals on me.

"Okay guys, I've got some studying to do," I said, mostly to Mouse. Mister probably didn't care what I had to say, but he'd accept me stopping my petting for now. Of course, as soon as I spoke, the cat bounded off after some speck of something. Maybe he was chasing a pixie of some sort or something. Harry did tend to have some interesting beings that hung around his apartment. How else could it have been this clean when it was as dirty as it was when we left earlier? Of course, Harry would never give away his secret.

I made my way to a throw-rug that had obviously been moved many a time before, and I moved it, revealing the trapdoor-style hatch that opened into Harry's basement's basement, better known as a subbasement. I grabbed one of the candle holders with lit candles, placing the copy of Die Lied der Erlking under my arm, and I pulled the hatch open. Carefully I climbed down into the room below, where Harry's lab was located. Calling it a lab is perhaps a bit generous, as it is little more than a concrete box in the ground with a ladder leading up and out of it. The walls are lined with white wire shelving, the cheap kind that you usually see coming from Wal-Mart. The shelves have so many containers of different kinds from microwave-safe containers, wooden boxes, plastic dinnerware, plastic zipper bags, and there's even a sealed lead box on one of the shelves. I asked Harry what was in that box once, and he mentioned depleted uranium and ghosts, which had me questioning just how he'd managed to get that. He'd told me not to worry, that he hadn't messed with any Libyans. I'm not sure if that made me worry more or less. The rest of the shelves contain books, notebooks, envelopes, paper bags, pencils, and many other random objects that fight for space on them. Molly and I had managed to clear some space for our stuff, but Harry still took up the bulk of everything. The only shelf that remains uncluttered is a lone plain, obviously homemade wooden shelf, which currently held only candles at either end, three bodice-ripper romance novels, what looked like the Victoria's Secret Christmas catalog, and a bleached white human skull.

A couple tables take up the center of the room, leaving an area on the other side of them clear of any other clutter. Inlaid in the floor over there was a brass ring, Harry's summoning circle, which unfortunately wouldn't be conducive to… Never mind. Molly and I each had our own workspaces, on what had once been an extremely cluttered work table, and we each had our own projects that we were working on. A glance at Molly's showed that she was working on a new wand of some sort, possibly to help her focus her capabilities a bit more to compliment the one she had already. My project, however, was something a little odder.

Sitting in the middle of my workspace was a small chisel, a mallet, and a solid single crystal of clear quartz. Next to it I had some jeweler's wire, a soldering iron, a roll of copper wire, and a small spool of gold-lined thread. The bottom of the quartz crystal had the designs I'd been trying for before we got interrupted by Venatori business, but I still needed to finish the project tonight anyway. Besides, working on this would help get my mind off both the case and the… ghouls. I laid the book down on the table nearby.

I eyed the skull. I needed a little bit of guidance, a little bit of help. "Bob, would you please wake up?"

Orange lights formed in the skull's eye sockets, and it turned to me, giving an exaggerated yawn. "Well, you're politer than Harry is when he asks for help, I'll give you that." The skull spoke with an English accent, and it seemed to grin at me. "But would it kill you to wear something a little more revealing? A V-neck, perhaps? Maybe some stockings and a really short skirt?"

Bob wasn't really a skull. He was a spirit of intellect that resided within the arcane protections that the skull provided. From what Harry told us when he introduced the spirit to us, Bob knew far more about magic than most people would ever learn in their lifetimes. From what I remembered about Bob in my past life, he was someone we really didn't want falling into the wrong hands if it could be avoided. Bob was special in that if you controlled the skull, he had to follow you. He also adapted to what you thought he should be, which meant that Bob as he was now was somehow related to what Harry thought he should be when he got him. Teenage boys are perverts, I swear.

"Bob, I'm not going to strip down for you," I said.

"Not for me, Faith or Molly, probably Faith," Bob said. "For Harry. I've seen the way you and your sister look at him, and you two nubile young apprentices are just what he needs to get out of his funk since Susan!"

"Don't you dare tell Molly that, Bob," I said, ignoring his comments about Harry. He couldn't lie, but he could be mistaken. I sighed. "I need a bit of help. I'm not sure I'm doing this right."

Bob looked me over. "Doing what right, exactly?"

I picked up the crystal, running my hand down the designs on the bottom so that Bob could see them. "I'm trying to make this. I'd seen it in Harry's notes before, but I want to make sure I'm doing it right."

"Hmm, yes, it looks like you're getting close there. You might want to adjust the line third from the right by your pinky though. It should be a little thicker for this. A shadow capture crystal, right?" Bob looked at me.

"Yes, it seemed like something interesting to make," I said.

"No, that's not it, Faith. Why would you want to make a shadow capture crystal? You want to use it. For what?"

I pursed my lips. On the one hand, if I told Bob what I was planning, he'd probably tell Harry unless I got him to promise not to. On the other hand, if I didn't tell Bob, there was the chance I wouldn't get the help I needed to make sure the crystal worked right. Damned if I did and damned if I didn't.

"I'm going to use it in a summoning," I said. "As one of the five for my target."

"What are you planning on summoning?" Bob asked.

I'd been planning this for nearly two long years. I wasn't going to let this get held back now. "Mab, Bob. I'm planning on summoning the Queen of Air and Darkness."