Six Mollies

A gust of wind, channeled through the lower street, rushed by, tugging at her ragged clothes, pulling her long coattails out like a flag beside her—and then she exploded.
It happened so fast that I could barely understand what was happening, much less anticipate what would come next. Where my apprentice had been standing suddenly became half a dozen identical, leanly ragged figures darting in every direction.
One Molly flew sideways, both arms extended in front of her, firing a pair of 1911 Colts, their hammering wham-wham-wham as recognizable as familiar music. Another flipped into a cartwheel and tumbled out of sight behind a parked car. Two more ran to each door, virtually mirror images of each other, swiping a card key and slamming into the buildings. A fifth Molly ducked behind a mound of snow and emerged with a shotgun, which she began emptying at the turtlenecks. The sixth ran to the motorcycle, picked it up as if it had been a plastic toy, and flung it toward her attackers.
My jaw dropped open. I mean, I had known the kid was good with illusions, but Hell’s bells. I might have been able to do one of the illusions Molly had just wrought. Once, I had managed two, under all kinds of mortal pressure. She had just thrown out six. Simultaneously. And at the drop of a hat, to boot.
My gast was pretty well flabbered.
The turtlenecks clearly didn’t know how to react, either. The ones with guns returned fire, and they all scattered for cover. The motorcycle didn’t hit anyone as it tumbled past the group, though the crashing sound it made when it landed was so convincing that it made me doubt my such-as-they-were senses. The guns barked several times as the illusionary Mollys all sought cover behind the snow mounds and cars.
I gritted my teeth. “You aren’t one of the rubes, Dresden. You’ve got a backstage pass.” I bent my head, touched my fingers to my forehead for a moment, and opened up my own Sight.
The scene changed colors wildly, going from a dull winter monochrome to an abstract done in smearing, interweaving watercolor. The blurs of magic in the air were responsible for all the tinting—Molly had unleashed a hell of a lot of energy in very little time, and she’d done so from the point of exhaustion. I’d been there enough times to know the look.
Now I could see the illusions for what they were—which was the single largest reason why the wizards of the White Council didn’t put much stock in illusion magic: It could be easily nullified by anyone with the Sight, which was the same thing as saying “anyone on the Council.”
But against this band of hipster, emo, mooklosers? It worked just fine.
Molly, behind an almost perfect magical veil, was standing precisely where she had been at the beginning of the altercation. She hadn’t moved a muscle. Her hands were extended at her sides, fingers twitching, and her face was still and expressionless, her eyes shifted out of focus. She was running a puppet show, and the illusions were her marionettes, dancing on strings of thought and will.
The illusionary versions of Molly were very slightly transparent and grainy, like I remembered movies being when I was a kid. The motorcycle had never moved from where it was parked—an illusion had flown through the air, and a short-term veil was now hiding the bike.
The turtlenecks, though, weren’t going to be shut down by half a dozen young women, even if they had just appeared out of nowhere and apparently were possessed of weapons and superhuman strength. At barked orders from their leader, they came bounding over parked cars and mounds of snow in teams of five, moving with the light, lithe grace rarely seen outside of the Olympics and martial arts movies. They advanced with the kind of frighteningly focused purpose you see only in veterans. These men knew how to survive a battle: Kill before you are killed.
If even one of them closed in on Molly, it was over.
I thought of what it might be like to watch my apprentice die with my Sight open, and almost started gibbering. If that happened, if I saw that horror with eyes that would make sure I could never, ever forget it or distance myself from it, there wouldn’t be anything left of me. Except guilt. And rage.
I shut away my Sight.
“It must be difficult,” said my godmother, standing suddenly beside me, “to watch something like this without being able to affect the outcome.”
“Glah!” I said, or something close to it, jumping a few inches to one side out of sheer nerves. “Stars and stones, Lea,” I said between my gritted teeth a moment later. “You can see me?”
“But of course, Sir Knight,” she replied, green eyes sparkling. “My duty to oversee my godson’s spiritual growth and development would be entirely futile could I not perceive and speak to a spirit such as thee.”
“You knew I was there a moment ago. Didn’t you?”
Her laugh was a bright, wicked sound. “Your grasp of the obvious remains substantial—even though you do not.”
A curtain of green-blue fire about seven feet high sprang up and swept rapidly across the width of the parking lot, between the position of the various Mollys and the turtlenecks. The flames emitted eerie shrieking sounds, and the faces of hideous beings danced about inside them.
I just blinked. Holy crap.
I hadn’t taught the kid that.
“Tsk,” Lea said, watching the scene. “She has an able mind, but she is filled with the passions of youth. She rushes to her finale without building anything like the tension required for something so . . . overt . . . to prove effective.”
I wasn’t sure what my godmother was talking about, but I didn’t have time to try to pry an explanation out of her. . . .
Except that I did.
I mean, what else was I going to do, right?
“Whatever do you mean?” I replied in a polite tone. I almost managed not to grit my teeth.
“Such an”—her mouth twisted in distaste—“overt and vulgar display as that wall of fire is worthy only of frightening children or appearing in something produced by Hollywood. It might yield a short-lived panic reaction, if built up and timed properly, but it is otherwise useless. And, of course, in very bad taste.” She shook her head in disapproval. “True terror is much more subtle.”
I gave my godmother a sharp look. “What?”
“Veils are of limited utility with snow upon the ground,” she explained. “The footprints, you see. It’s quite difficult to hide so many individual disruptions of the environment. Thus, she must work in another medium to survive.”
“Stop this. You’re going to get her killed,” I said.
“Oh, child,” the Leanansidhe said, smiling. “I’ve been doing this for a very long time. All teaching involves an element of risk.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and look at what happened to your last student.”
Her eyes glinted. “Yes. From nothing more than a terrified child, in a mere score of years he grew into a weapon that all but utterly destroyed a world power. The Red Court lies in ruins because of my student. And it was, in part, my hand that shaped him.”
I clenched my teeth harder. “And you want to do the same thing to Molly.”
“Potentially. She has a talent for verisimilomancy—”
“Versa what?”
“Illusion, child,” Lea clarified. “She has a talent, but I despair of her ever truly understanding what it is to cause terror.”
“That’s what she’s learning from you? Fear?”
“In essence.”
“You aren’t teaching her, Godmother. Teachers don’t do that.”
“What is teaching but the art of planting and nurturing power?” Lea replied. “Mortals prattle on about lonely impulses of delight and the gift of knowledge, and think that teaching is a trade like metalsmithing or healing or telling lies on television. It is not. It is the dissemination of power unto a new generation and nothing less. For her, as for you, lessons demand real risk in order to attain their true rewards.”
“I won’t let you turn her into a weapon, Godmother.”
Lea arched a red-gold eyebrow, showing her teeth again. “You should have thought of that before dying, child. What, precisely, will you do to stop me?”
I closed my hands into impotent fists.
The turtlenecks had been briefly stymied, but not stopped, by the wall of flame. It wasn’t high enough. I saw three of them moving together. Two of them linked their hands while a third backed off, then sprinted toward the other two. The runner planted his foot on the linked hands of his supporters, and then both men lifted while the runner leapt. They flung him a good twenty feet up and over the wall of flame.
The runner flipped neatly at the top of his arc and landed in a crouch, holding a machete in his right hand, a pistol in his left. He calmly put two rounds directly into the shotgun-wielding Molly, and two more into the pistol-packing version. Before the last shot rang out, a second turtleneck had gone over the wall and landed beside the first—the leader, I noted. He carried no obvious weaponry, though his belt had been hung with several seashells in a manner that suggested they were dangerous equipment. He remained in a crouch when he landed, looking around with sharp, steady eyes, while his partner covered him.
Shotgun Molly crumpled slowly to the ground, still fumbling at a pocket for more shells for the weapon, while scarlet blood stained the fresh layer of thin snow. Two-Gun Molly’s head snapped back as a dark hole appeared in her forehead, and her body dropped to the snow like a rag doll. Motorcycle-Chucking Molly screamed and snatched up her fallen sister’s guns.
The turtleneck on lookout raised his weapon, but Captain Turtleneck moved his hand in a sharp, negative gesture, and the man lowered the weapon again. Both did nothing as the newly armed Molly aimed the guns and began to fire. Puffs of snow flitted up from the ground a couple of times, but neither was hit.
Captain Turtleneck nodded to himself and smiled.
Crap. He’d figured it out. Coordinated squads of bad guys are one thing. Coordinated squads of bad guys being led by someone who remained observant and cool in the middle of combat chaos were far, far worse.
“Ah, disbelief,” Lea murmured. “Once the mark begins to suspect illusion is at work, there’s little point in continuing.”
“Stop them,” I said, to Lea. “Godmother, please. Stop this.”
She turned to blink at me. “And why should I?”
Captain Turtleneck scanned the ground, and I saw his eyes trace the line of footsteps Molly had made when she had backed into the center of parking lot, when the confrontation had begun. His eyes flicked around and I could practically see the thoughts going through his head. A trail of messy, backward tracks suddenly ended in two clear boot prints. The only Molly in sight had proven to be an illusion—and therefore the real Molly must be nearby, supporting the still-active illusions around him. Where would she be standing?
That last set of boot prints seemed a logical place to look.
Captain Turtleneck drew one of the seashells from his belt, murmured something to it, and gave it an expert, effortless flick. It sailed through the air and landed only inches from my invisible apprentice’s toes.


Ghost Story Chapter 22, Page 243-250