Read Online Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher - Free Book Online Page B

screamed in sudden frustration. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!”
    Mouse looked up from his lazy drowse and tilted his head to one side, ears up and forward.
    “What are you looking at?” I snarled.
    Mouse’s jaw dropped open into a grin, and his tail wagged.
    I rubbed my hand at my face while the phone kept on ringing. It had been a while since I’d done any seriously focused magic like that, and granted, I really don’t get very many calls, but all the same I should have remembered to unplug the phone. Four hours of preparation gone to waste.
    The phone kept ringing, and my head pounded in time with it. I ached. Stupid phone. Stupid car crash. I tried to think positive, because I read somewhere that it’s important to do that at times of stress and frustration. Whoever wrote that was probably selling something.
    I picked up the phone and growled, “Screw thinking positive,” into the handset.
    “Urn,” said a woman’s voice. “What did you say?”
    “Screw thinking positive!” I half shouted. “What the hell do you want?”
    “Well. Maybe I have the wrong number. I was calling to speak to Harry Dresden?”
    I frowned, my mind taking in details despite my temper’s bid to take over the show. The voice was familiar to me; rich, smooth, adult—but the speaker’s speech patterns had an odd hesitancy to them. Her words had an odd, thick edge on them, too. An accent?
    “Speaking,” I said. “Annoyed as hell, but speaking.”
    “Oh. Is this a bad time?”
    I rubbed at my eyes and choked down a vicious response. “Who is this?”
    “Oh,” she said, as if the question surprised her. “Harry, it’s Molly. Molly Carpenter.”
    “Ah,” I said. I clapped one palm to my face. My friend Michael’s oldest daughter. Way to role-model, Harry. You sure do come off like a calm, responsible adult. “Molly, didn’t recognize you at first.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    The “s” sound was a little bit thick. Had she been drinking? “Not your fault,” I said. Which it hadn’t been. For that matter, the interruption might have been a stroke of luck. If my head was still too scrambled from that afternoon’s automobile hijinks to remember to unplug the phone, I didn’t have any business trying to cast that spell. Probably would have blown my own head off. “What do you need, Molly?”
    “Urn,” she said, and there was nervous tension in her voice. “I need… I need you to come bail me out.”
    “Bail,” I said. “You’re being literal?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re in jail ?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Oh my God,” I said. “Molly, I don’t know if I can do that. You’re sixteen.”
    “Seventeen,” she said, with sparks of indignation and another thick “s.”
    “Whatever,” I said. “You’re a juvenile. You should call your parents.”
    “No!” she said, something near panic in her voice. “Harry, please. I can’t call them.“
    “Why not?”
    “Because I only get the one call, and I used it to call you.”
    “Actually, I don’t think that’s exactly how it works, Molly.” I sighed.
    “In fact, I’m surprised that…” I frowned, thinking. “You lied about your age.”
    “If I hadn’t, Mom and Dad would be here already,” she said. “Harry, please. Look, there’s… there’s a lot of trouble at home right now. I can’t explain it here, but if you’ll come get me, I swear, I’ll tell you all about it.”
    I sighed again. “I don’t know, Molly…”
    “Please?” she said. “It’s just this once, and I’ll pay you back, and I’ll never ask something like this of you again, I promise.”
    Molly had long since earned her PhD in wheedling. She managed to sound vulnerable and hopeful and sad and desperate and sweet all at the same time. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t need half that much effort to wrap her father around a finger. Her mother, Charity, was probably a different story, though.
    I sighed. “Why me?” I asked.
    I hadn’t been talking to Molly, but she