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- He searched my eyes again. "I will," he whispered, "if you answer one question for me."
- I frowned at him and tilted my head. "Okay."
- He took a deep breath and spoke carefully. "Harry," he said quietly, "what happened to your blasting rod?"
- For a second the question didn't make any sense. The words sounded like noises, like sounds infants make before they learn to speak. Especially the last part of the sentence. "I...I'm sorry," I said. "What did you say?"
- "Where," he said gently, "is your blasting rod?"
- This time I heard the words.
- Pain stabbed me in the head, ice picks plunging into both temples. I flinched and doubled over. Blasting rod. Familiar words. I fought to summon an image of what went with the words, but I couldn't find anything. I knew I had a memory associated with those words, but try as I might, I couldn't drag it out. It was like a shape covered by some heavy tarp. I knew an object was beneath, but I couldn't get to it.
- "I don't...I don't..." I started breathing faster. The pain got worse.
- Someone had been in my head.
- Someone had been in my head.
- Oh, God.
- I must have fallen at some point, because the workshop's floor was cold underneath one of my cheeks when I felt Michael's broad, work-calloused hand gently cover my forehead.
- "Father," he murmured, humbly and with no drama whatsoever. "Father, please help my friend. Father of light, banish the darkness that he may see. Father of truth, expose the lies. Father of mercy, ease his pain. Father of love, honor this good man's heart. Amen."
- Michael's hand felt suddenly red-hot, and I felt power burning in the air around him-not magic, the magic I worked with every day. This was something different, something more ancient, more potent, more pure. This was the power of faith, and as that heat settled into the spaces behind my eyes, something cracked and shattered inside my thoughts.
- The pain vanished so suddenly that it left me gasping, even as the image of a simple wooden rod, a couple of feet long, heavily carved with sigils and runes, leapt into the forefront of my thoughts. Along with the image of the blasting rod came thousands of memories, everything I had ever known about using magic to summon and control fire in a hurry, evocation, combat magic, and they hit me like a sledgehammer.
- I lay there shuddering for a minute or two as I took it all back in. The memories filled a hole inside me I hadn't even realized was there.
- Small Favor Chapter 38, Page 310-312
- Mab stared at me with iridescent eyes. "That is a question only you can answer. But I can say this much: He has given you the potential to be more of what you are."
- "Huh?"
- She smiled, reached to the bench on the other side of her body, and produced my blasting rod. "The return of your property," the malk said. "The need to keep it from you has passed."
- "Then I was right," I said, accepting it. "You took it. And you took the memory of it happening."
- "Yes."
- "Why?"
- "Because I deemed it proper," she replied, as if speaking to a rather slow-witted child. "You would have risked your own life-and my purpose-to protect your precious mortals had I not taken your fire from you. Summer would have tracked and killed you two days ago."
- "Not having it could have gotten me killed, too," I said. "And then you'd have wasted all that time you've put in trying to recruit me to be the next Winter Knight."
- Small Favor Chapter 46, Page 401
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