"Don't shoot, don't shoot!" squeaked the voice, considerably more panicked. There was a flickering, and then Molly appeared in my backseat, legs curled up against her chest, her eyes wide, her face very pale.
"Molly!" I shouted. "Dammit, what do you think you're doing?"
"I came to help. I was good enough to track down your car, wasn't I?"
"I told you to stay home!"
"Because of the stupid bracelet?" she demanded. "That has got to be the lamest scam ever. Yoda never gave anybody a bracelet that - "
I whirled in pure frustration and snarled, "Fuego!"
My raw anxiety and rage lashed from the tip of my blasting rod in a lance of blinding scarlet fire. It blasted into a metal trash can in front of Marcone's building and... well, it would be bragging to say that it vaporized the trash can. Even I would have trouble with that. It did, however, slag the thing into a shower of molten metal as it gouged a two-foot-deep, coffin-length furrow in the concrete of the sidewalk behind it. Chunks of heated concrete and globs of molten metal hit the building's exterior, cracking several thick panes of glass, pocking stone walls, and leaving several wooden planters on fire. The concussion rattled every window within a hundred yards, and shattered the casing of the nearest streetlight, so that it cast out fractured illumination. Half a dozen car alarms went off.
I turned back to Molly and found her staring at me with her mouth open until my shadow, cast by the rising fires and crippled streetlight, fell across her. My voice came out in a growl. "I. Am not. Yoda."
I stripped the glove off my left hand and held it up, my fingers spread. It didn't look as horrific as it used to, but it was plenty ugly enough to make an impression on a nineteen-year-old girl. "This isn't a goddamn movie, Molly. Screw up here and you don't vanish and leave an empty cloak. You don't get frozen in carbonite. And you should damned well know that by now."
She looked shocked. I'll curse from time to time, but I don't generally indulge in blasphemy - at least, not around Michael or his family. I don't think God is terribly threatened by my occasional slip of the tongue, but I owe enough to Michael to respect his wishes regarding that particular shade of profanity. Mostly.
Hell, the whole practice of invective was developed to add extra emphasis when the mere meaning of words alone just wasn't enough. And I was feeling plenty emphatic.
Snarling, I cupped my left hand, focused my ongoing anger, and a sudden sphere of light and heat blossomed to life. It wasn't big - about the diameter of a dime. But it was as bright as a tiny sun.
"Harry," Murphy said. Her voice was a little shaky. "We don't have time for this."
"You think you're ready?" I told Molly. "Show me."
I blew on the sphere and it wafted out of my hand and glided smoothly into the open door of the Beetle and toward Molly's face.
"Wh-what?" she said.
"Stop it," I said, my voice cold. "If you can."
She swallowed and raised a hand. I saw her try to control her breathing and focus her will, her lips blurring over the steps I'd taught her.
The sphere drifted closer.
"Better hurry," I added. I did nothing to hide the anger or the taint of derision in my voice.
Beads of sweat broke out on her skin. The sphere slowed, but it had not stopped.
"It's about twelve hundred degrees," I added. "It'll melt sand into glass. It doesn't do much for skin, either."
Molly lifted her left hand and stammered out a word, but her will fluttered and failed, amounting to nothing more than a handful of sparks.
"Bad guys don't give you this much time," I spat.
Molly hissed - give the kid credit, she didn't let herself scream - and pressed herself as far as she could from the fire. She threw up an arm to shield her eyes.
For a second, I felt a mad impulse to let the fire continue for just a second more. Nothing teaches like a burned hand, whispered a darker part of my self. I should know.
But I closed my fingers, willed the ending of the spell, and the sphere vanished.
Murphy, standing across the car, just stared at me.
Molly lowered her hand, her arm moving in frightened little jerks. She sat there shivering and staring. Her tongue piercing rattled against her teeth.
I looked at both of them and then shook my head. I got control of my rampaging temper. Then I leaned down and stuck my head in the car, looking Molly in the eyes.
"We play for keeps, kid," I said quietly. "I've told you before: Magic isn't a solution to every problem. You still aren't listening."
Molly's eyes, frightened and angry, filled with tears. She turned her head away from me and said nothing. She tried not to make any noise, but it's tough to keep a good poker face when a snarling madman nearly burns it off. There wasn't any time to waste - but I gave the kid a few seconds of space while I tried to let my head cool off.
The door to Marcone's building opened. Hendricks came out.
Marcone followed him a moment later. He surveyed the damage. Then he glanced at me. Marcone shook his head, took a cell phone from his suit pocket, and went back inside, while Hendricks kept me pinned down with his beady-eyed scowl.
What I'd seen soulgazing Helen Beckitt was still glaringly fresh in my mind - just as it always would be. Marcone had looked a lot younger when he wore his hair longer, less neat, and dressed more casually. Or maybe he'd just looked younger before he'd seen Helen's daughter die.
The thought went utterly against the pressure of the rage inside me, and I grabbed hold of myself while I had the chance. I took a deep breath. I wouldn't do anyone any good if I charged in full of outrage and absent of brains. I took another deep breath and turned to find Murphy on the move.
She walked around the car and faced me squarely.
"All done?" Murphy asked me, her voice pitched low. "You want to smoke a turkey or set fire to a playground or anything? You could terrorize a troop of Cub Scouts as an encore."
"And after that, I could tell you all about how to do your job, maybe," I said, "right after we bury the people who get killed because we're standing here instead of moving."
She narrowed her eyes. Neither one of us met each other's gaze or moved an inch. It wasn't a long standoff, but it was plenty hard.
"Not now," she said. "But later. We'll talk. This isn't finished."
I nodded. "Later."
We got in the Beetle and Murphy started it up and got moving. "Ask you questions as we go?"
I calculated distances in my head. The communion spell with Elaine had been created to reach over a couple of yards at the most. It had mostly been used at, ahem, considerably shorter range than that. I could extend the range, I thought, to most of a mile - maybe. It wasn't as simple as just pouring more power into the spell, but it was fairly simple. That gave me a couple of minutes to steady my breathing while Murphy drove. I could talk while that happened. It would, in fact, help me keep my mind off my fear for Elaine. Ah, reason, banisher of fear - or at least provider of a place to stick my head in the sand.