Rosie Nightmares

I shied away from staring at her lest I make eye contact for too long- but that smile, at least, was something I wouldn't mind remembering. Rosie was another story.
The physical Rosie was a small, slight, pale young woman with thin, frail features. The Rosie my Sight revealed to me was entirely different. Pale skin became a pallid, dirty, leathery coating. Large dark eyes looked even bigger, and flicked around with darting, avian jerks. They were furtive eyes, giving her the dangerous aspect of a stray dog or maybe some kind of rat-the eyes of a craven, desperate survivor.
Winding veins of some kind of green-black energy pulsed beneath her skin, particularly around the inside bend of her left arm. The writhing strings of energy ended at the surface of her skin, in dozens of tiny, mindlessly opening and closing little mouths-the needle tracks I'd seen the night before. Her right hand kept darting back and forth over the other arm as if trying to scratch a persistent itch. But her fingers couldn't touch. There was a kind of sheath of sparkling motes around her hands, almost like mittens, and she couldn't actually touch those mindlessly hungry mouths. Worse, there were what looked almost like burn marks on her temples- small, black, neat holes, as if someone had bored a hot needle through the skin and skull beneath. There was a kind of phantom blood around the injuries, but her eyes were wide and vague, as if she didn't even notice them. What the hell? I had seen the victims of spiritual attacks before, and they'd never been pretty. Usually they looked like the victim of a shark attack, or someone who had been mauled by a bear. I hadn't ever seen someone with damage like Rosie's. It looked almost like some kind of demented surgeon had gone after her with a laser scalpel. That pushed the weirdometer a couple of clicks beyond the previous record.
My head started pounding and I pushed the Sight away. I leaned my hip against the wall for a second and rubbed at my temples until the throbbing subsided and I was sure that my normal vision had returned.
"Rosie," I said, cutting into the middle of one of Murphy's questions. "When was your last fix?"
Murphy glanced over her shoulder at me, frowning. Behind her, the girl gave me a guilty look, her eyes shifting to one side. "What do you mean?" Rosie asked.
"I figure it's heroin," I said. I kept my voice pitched to the barest level needed to be audible. "I saw the tracks on you last night."
"I'm diab-" she began.
"Oh please," I said, and let the annoyance show in my voice. "You think I'm that stupid?"
"Harry," Murphy began. There was a warning note in her voice, but my head hurt too much to let it stop me.
"Miss Marcella, I'm trying to help you. Just answer the question."
She was silent for a long moment. Then she said, "Two weeks."
Murphy arched a brow, and her gaze went back to the girl.
"I quit," she said. "Really. I mean, once I heard that I was pregnant... I can't do that anymore."
"Really?" I asked.
She looked up and her eyes were direct, though nothing like confident. "Yes. I'm done with it. I don't even miss it. The baby's more important than that."
I pursed my lips and then nodded. "All right."
"Miss Marcella," Murphy said, "thank you for your time."
"Wait," she said, as Murphy turned away. "Please. No one will tell us anything about Ken. Do you know how he's doing? What room he's in?"
"Ken's your boyfriend?" Murphy asked in a careful tone.
"Yes. I saw them load him in the ambulance last night. I know he's here..." Rosie stared at Murphy for a second, and then her face grew even more pale. "Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no."
I was glad I'd gotten a gotten a look at her before she found out about her boyfriend. My imagination provided me with a nice image of watching the emotional wounds open up as though an invisible sword had begun slicing into her, but at least I didn't have to see it with my Sight, too.
"I'm very sorry," Murphy said quietly. Her voice was steady, her eyes compassionate.
Molly picked that moment to return with a cup of coffee. She took one look at Rosie, put the coffee down, and then hurried to her. Rosie broke down in choking sobs. Molly immediately sat on the bed beside her, and hugged her while she wept.
"We'll be in touch," Murphy said quietly. "Come on, Harry."
Mouse stared at Rosie with a mournful expression, and I had to tug on his leash a couple of times to get him moving. We departed and headed for the nearest stairwell. Murphy headed for ICU, which was in the neighboring building.
"I didn't see the track marks on her last night," she said after a minute. "You pushed her pretty hard."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because it might mean something. I don't know what, yet. But we didn't have time to waste listening to her denial."
"She wasn't straight with you," Murphy said. "No one kicks heroin that fast. Two weeks. She should still be feeling some of the withdrawal."
"Yeah," I said. We went outside to go to the other building. Bright morning sunlight made my head hurt even more, and the sidewalk began revolving. I stopped to wait for my eyes to adjust to the light.

Proven Guilty Chapter 16, Page 111-112


I nodded, and told Charity about the attacks at the convention, and about how Molly had gotten me involved. "I examined the victims of the first two attacks," I said quietly. "One of them, a girl named Rosie, showed evidence of a land of psychic trauma. At the time, I attributed it to the phage's attack on her."
Charity frowned. "It wasn't?"
I shook my head. "I found an identical trauma on Nelson." I took a deep breath and said, "Molly is the link between them. They're both her friends. I think she was the one who hurt them. I think she used magic to invade their minds."
Charity stared at me, her expression sickened. "What? No..." She shook her head. "No, Molly wouldn't..." Her face grew even more pale. "Oh, God. She's broken one of the Council's Laws." She shook her head more violently. "No, no, no. She would not do such a thing."
I grimaced and said, "I think I know what she did. And why she did it."
"Tell me."
I took a deep breath. "Rosie is pregnant. And she showed physical evidence of drug addiction, but none of the psychological evidence of withdrawal. I think Molly took steps when she found out her friend was pregnant-to force her away from the drugs. I think she did it to protect the baby. And then I think she did the same thing to Nelson. But something went wrong. I think what she did to him broke something." I shook my head. "He got paranoid, erratic."
Charity stared down at the altar below, shaking her head. "Is it the Council then, that took her?"
"No," I said. "No. What she did to Rosie and Nelson left a kind of mark on her. A stain. I think she forced Rosie and Nelson to feel fear whenever they came near their drugs. Fear is a powerful motivator and it's easy to exploit. She wanted them to be afraid of the drugs. She had good intentions, but she wanted her friends to be frightened."

Proven Guilty Chapter 32, Page 254-255


"Magic isn't easy," I said. "Not even for someone with a strong natural talent. Takes a lot of practice, like anything else." I walked quietly for a few steps and then said, "Tell me about the spell you used on Rosie and Nelson."
She paused, staring at nothing, the blood draining from her face. "I had to," she said.
"Go on."
Her pretty features were bleak. "Rosie had... she'd already had a miscarriage, because she kept getting high. And when she lost the baby, she went to the hard stuff. Heroin. I begged her to go into rehab, but she was just... too far gone, I guess. But I thought maybe I could help her. With magic. Like you help people."
Hooboy. I kept the dismay off my face and nodded for her to continue.
"And one day last week, Sandra Marling and I had a talk. And during it, she told me how they were discovering that the presence of a very strong source of fear could bypass all kinds of psychological barriers. Things like addiction. That the fear could drive home a lesson, reliably and quickly. I didn't have much time. I had to do it to save Rosie's child."
I grunted. "Why do Nelson, too?"
"He was... he was using too much. He and Rosie sort of reinforced each other. And I wasn't sure what might happen, so I tried the spell out before I used it on her, too."
"You tested it on Nelson?" I asked. "Then did the same one on Rosie?"
She nodded. "I had to scare them away from the drugs. I sent them both a nightmare."
"Stars and stones," I muttered. "A nightmare."
Molly's voice became defensive. "I had to do something. I couldn't just sit there."
"Do you have any idea how much you hurt them both?" I asked.
"Hurt them?" she said, apparently bewildered. "They were fine."
"They weren't fine," I said quietly. "But the same spell should have done more or less the same thing to both of them. It acted differently on
Nelson than Rosie." And then I put two and two together again and said, "Ah. Now I get it."
She didn't look up at me.
"Nelson was the father," I said quietly.

Proven Guilty Chapter 41, Page 339-341