Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher Page A

some of the psychotics could have, I guess.”
    “If that’s meant to be flattering, you need some practice.”
    “What am I if not good for your ego, boss?” The skull turned slowly, left to right, candleflame eyes studying the model city—not its physical makeup, I knew, but the miniature ley lines that I’d built into the surface of the table, the courses of magical energy that flowed through the city like blood through the human body.
    “It looks…” He made a sound like someone idly sucking a breath through his teeth. “Hey, it looks not bad, Harry. You’ve got a gift for this kind of work. That model of the museum really altered the flow around the stadium into something mostly accurate, speaking thaumaturgically.”
    “Is that even a real word?” I asked.
    “It should be,” he said with a superior sniff. “Little Chicago might be able to handle something if you want to give it a test run.” The skull spun around to face me. “Tell me that this doesn’t have something to do with the bruises on your face.”
    “I’m not sure it does,” I said. “I got word today that the Gatekeeper—”
    Bob shivered.
    “—thinks that there’s black magic afoot in town, and that I need to do something about it.”
    “And you want to try to use Little Chicago to find it?”
    “Maybe,” I said. “Do you think it will work?”
    “I think that the Wright Brothers tested their new stuff at Kitty Hawk instead of trying it over the Grand Canyon for a reason,” Bob said. “Specifically, because if the plane folded due to flawed design, they might survive it at Kitty Hawk.”
    “Or maybe they couldn’t afford to travel,” I said. “Besides, how dangerous could it be?”
    Bob stared at me for a second. Then he said, “You’ve been pouring energy into this thing every night for six months, Harry, and right now it’s holding about three hundred times the amount of energy that kinetic ring you wear will contain.”
    I blinked. At full power, that ring could almost knock a car onto its side. Three hundred times that kind of energy translated to… well, something I’d rather not experience within the cramped confines of the lab. “It’s got that much in it?”
    “Yes, and you haven’t tested it yet. If you’ve screwed up some of the harmonics, it could blow up in your face, worst-case scenario. Best case, you only blow out the project and set yourself back to ground zero.”
    “To square one,” I corrected him. “Square one is the beginning of a project. Ground zero is the area immediately under a bomb blast.”
    “One may tend to resemble the other,” Bob said sourly.
    “I’ll just have to live with the risk,” I said. “That’s the exciting life of a professional wizard and his daring assistant.”
    “Oh, please. Assistants get paid.”
    In answer, I reached down to a paper bag out of sight below the table and withdrew two paperback romances.
    Bob let out a squeaking sound, and his skull jounced and jittered on the blue-painted surface of the table that represented Lake Michigan. “Is that it, is that it?” he squeaked.
    “Yes,” I said. “They’re rated ‘Burning Hot’ by some kind of romance society.”
    “Lots of sex and kink!” Bob caroled. “Gimme!”
    I dropped them back into the bag and looked from Bob to Little Chicago.
    The skull spun back around. “You know what kind of black magic?” he asked.
    “No clue. Just black.”
    “Vague, yet unhelpful,” Bob said.
    “Annoyingly so.”
    “Oh, the Gatekeeper didn’t do it to annoy you,” Bob said. “He did it to prevent any chance of paradox.”
    “He…” I blinked. “He what?”
    “He got this from hindsight, he had to,” Bob said.
    “Hindsight,” I murmured. “You mean he went to the future for this?”
    “Well,” Bob hedged. “That would break one of the Laws, so probably not. But he might have sent himself a message from there, or maybe gotten it from some kind of prognosticating spirit. He might even have