"Shiitake mushrooms."
I blinked once in confusion, staring at my warped reflection in the side of a steel refrigerator. It didn't look quite right, but maybe that was just my sluggish brain talking. My eyelids felt heavy, like I'd surfaced from a deep sleep and was only now waking. Strange. Sunlight was slanting in from the kitchen windows, a smooth, buttery yellow glow filtering through the gauzy curtains Mom had sewn years ago. The stitching was superb. A casual observer wouldn't be able to pick them out of the pack if you hung them in a home décor store. She was just that good with a needle and thread.
I turned in the direction of the voice, finding myself face to face with a familiar, beloved face. Her flyaway hair looked like it had never made the acquaintance of a brush and framed a delicate, heart-shaped face like a ginger halo. Her skin was paler than mine, though it was hard to tell under the riot of freckles that ran over her skin, especially thick on her shoulders and arms, where she caught the most sunlight. She couldn't tan worth a damn. The Scots-Irish blood was strong on her mother's side.
A name bubbled lazily to the surface of my mind. Mercy. Mercy Sheila Carpenter. My...cousin. She stared expectantly back, an amused smile playing over her full lips.
"What?" I asked thickly. My tongue didn't want to cooperate either.
She gestured at the table in front of me, hand clenched around a paring knife, her smile blooming into the genuine article. It lit her face, giving her a rather puckish look. It fit. She'd been a troublemaker for as long as we'd known each other. Which had been somewhere close to forever. There were photos of us playing together while we were both still in diapers.
"The mushrooms. Are you done with them? I think the soup is almost ready, and I'd like to give them to Aunt Charity."
"You don't have to call her that," I said, the words coming quickly, almost rote at this point. "It's been a year and a half. You can just call her Charity if you want."
Her face fell a little, and I regretted the words instantly. I hadn't meant to bring up her parents' deaths. It was her birthday, for Pete's sake. I'd managed to remind her why she was sitting in our kitchen, instead of the one she'd been used to her whole life. When she'd found what was left of Uncle David and Aunt Allison on their kitchen table after letting something big and nasty from the spooky side past their threshold. Open mouth, insert shoe. Way to go, Molly.
"Sorry," I muttered. "I didn't mean..."
"It's fine," she said too quickly, turning her attention back to the chives she'd been dicing. She already had a neat little pile in the corner of her own cutting board. "I know you didn't mean by it. And I know I should try to call her that. It's just hard you know? I never thought..."
That her parents would die horribly. That she barely escaped the same fate. That my father and Chicago's resident wizard would be the ones who caught the rawhead that did it. That she'd be here, living in our house until she turned eighteen and either moved out or went to college. Unlikely now, given how prone we both were to foul up technology. It didn't fare well in the presence of one wizard, let alone two. Displaced, full to the brim with power and pubescent hormones and no outlets, she was prone to outbursts. Together we'd managed to fry the television, computers, CD players, and the microwave, making the process of food prep that much harder. Poor Mom.
"It's your birthday," I sighed. "It was a dumb thing to say."
Her smile returned, a ghostly remnant of its former self. "Make it up to me by handing over the mushrooms. I think you've diced them well enough. Aunt Charity is almost done frying the tofu."
"Hippie food," I muttered, pulling a face. "It's your birthday. Do you have to have spinach and tofu? Indulge a little. Order a pizza."
She sniffed. "A wizard's life span is kind of pointless if I clog my arteries. Eat some spinach, it won't kill you."
"Blech."
She laughed. "I think Uncle Michael is bringing fortune cookies to go with the birthday dinner. You can gorge yourself on those."
"Halleluiah."
Though that plan hinged on the hope he'd arrive home in time. SI's detectives worked odd hours at the best of times, and it was worse when he was on a case. There was a chance he wouldn't come home tonight. Or ever again. It was a thought that kept me up at night. But that's just what you got when your dad was a cop.
My heart performed an odd, slow-motion lurch. Cop? No. My dad was a carpenter. And...a knight...right?
"Molly?"
Mercy's voice drew my eyes up. They'd dropped to the inexpertly chopped fungi on the cutting board. My vision swam. I felt dizzy and my head ached. Would she mind if I just laid my cheek on the table while she talked?
"What?" I asked.
She took stock of my expression and her eyes softened. "It's happening again, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?"
"You're having an attack. Do you at least remember who I am and where we are?"
"You're Mercy Carpenter. And this is my house...I think."
Though if I was being honest, I wasn't sure when I'd gotten here. I could have sworn I'd been somewhere else only a few minutes ago. Somewhere dark with a monster lurking nearby.
"Good," she said in the soothing tones you'd use on a spooked animal. "That's good. Sometimes you don't. Harry said some memory loss is normal after what you went through. Psychic damage heals slowly. It'll stop...eventually."
"Psychic damage?" I echoed. That sounded familiar. The inside of my head was a travesty.
"From the Elder Fetch. It took you into the heart of Arctis Tor. Harry, Uncle Michael, and Detective Murphy went in after you. It got your dad into trouble, which is why he's in Special Investigations instead of homicide." Mercy's eyes filled with tears, her expression so tragic it deserved its own play. "It should have been me," she whispered. "It was my idea to compel Nelson and Rosanna. I came up with the idea to use fear. That's what drew them. It's my fault you're hurt."
Reality reasserted itself with a vengeance. She was right. I remembered the biting cold of Arctis Tor. The helplessness and fear I'd felt at the hands of the Fetch. The bone-deep certainty that it would hollow me out, bite by bite until I was nothing but a husk. I'd never seen anything quite as beautiful as my dad breaching the door, guns blazing.
Sword. He uses a sword, my wayward thoughts insisted.
No, he doesn't, I thought back. He was a retired marine and police detective. He'd been busting heads long before I was born. Uncle David's death had been the rude awakening to all things supernatural, and his introduction to Harry Dresden. He'd taken an oath to protect and serve, and he didn't take it any less seriously now that the foes weren't human.
"You helped a little, but I was the one who actually did the tampering," I said quietly. "We're both guilty, and we're paying for it. Only fifteen and we're both on probation. Yuck."
Fifteen? I wasn't fifteen, was I?
Of course I was. Stupid, psychically battered brain.
Mom bustled back into the kitchen, trailed by Amanda and Little Harry. The former was begging for cake and ice cream, while the latter tugged on the hem of Mom's sundress, whining in hopes of being picked up. She flipped the browned tofu onto a plate and called over to us in a slightly harassed tone, "It's almost ready. Drag Matthew and your sisters out of their rooms to set the table. Go, both of you."
"Yes, Aunt Charity," Mercy said, smiling beatifically at her. She turned to me and offered a hand. "In case you get dizzy. It happens sometimes after an attack."
I took it and she pulled me to my feet. We had to weave through toys to reach the stairs. Mercy went up first, curls bouncing a little as she bounded up the steps to the landing. Her room was the closest to the stairs. She'd plastered a hand-drawn 'Keep Out' sign onto the door, complete with a cartoonish skull and danger sign on the lined paper. She thought it was funny. I thought it was a bit theatrical, but didn't tease her. It made her happy, and that was good enough for me.
The door was slightly ajar, and I caught a glimpse of the untidy bedroom. She'd painted it blue and pinned posters of her celebrity crush to the walls. Textbooks were stacked haphazardly near the nightstand, threatening to collapse onto her freshly laundered school uniform. For an instant, the world tilted off its axis, and I was seeing double. The room as it was, and a ghostly afterimage. The room was a muted brown, similarly unkempt, but plastered with praise band posters instead, Casting Crowns chief among them. There was scorch on the white area rug where we'd had an incident with matches. Academic team trophies crowded together on top of the dresser. Boxer lolled out of the underwear drawer like a dog's tongue. It was definitely a boy's room.
Daniel's room.
And then the image was gone, walls fading back to their original blue. The dizziness passed, and I relaxed my grip on the railing. That was bizarre.
And who the hell was Daniel?