White Night (The Dresden Files 9)

And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last - and yet will remain with you for life.

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

Adding pain to that image of Elaine wasn't a process of imagining horrors, fantasizing violence, speculating upon suffering. It was no different from an artist mixing in new color, adding emphasis and depth to the image that, while bright, was not true to itself or to life. So I took the girl I knew and added in the pains the woman I was reaching for had been forced to face. She'd stepped into a world she'd left behind for more than a decade, and found herself struggling to face life without relying upon anyone else. She'd always had me, and Justin - and when we'd gone away, she'd leaned upon a Sidhe woman named Aurora for help and support. When that had vanished, she had no one - I had given my love to someone else. Justin had been dead for years.

She'd been alone in a city, different from everyone around, struggling to survive and to build a life and a home.

So I added in all the pains I'd learned. Cooking blunders I'd had to eat anyway. Equipment and property constantly breaking down, needing repairs and attention. Tax insanity, and rushing around trying to hack a path through a jungle of numbers. Late bills. Unpleasant jobs that gave you horribly aching feet. Odd looks from people who didn't know you, when something less than utterly normal happened. The occasional night when the loneliness ached so badly that it made you weep. The occasional gathering during which you wanted to escape to your empty apartment so badly you were willing to go out the bathroom window. Muscle pulls and aches you never had when you were younger, the annoyance as the price of gas kept going up to some ridiculous degree, the irritation with unruly neighbors, brainless media personalities, and various politicians who all seemed to fall on a spectrum somewhere between the extremes of "crook" and "moron."

You know.

Life.

And the image of her in my mind deepened, sharpened, took on personality. There's no simple way to describe it, but you know it when you see it, and the great artists can do it, can slip in the shades of meaning and thought and truth into something as simple as a girl named Mona's smile, even if they can't tell you precisely how they managed it.

The image of Elaine gained shadows, flaws, character, and strength. I didn't know the specifics of what she'd been through - not all of them, anyway - but I knew enough, and could make good guesses about plenty more. That image in my mind drew me in as I focused on it, just as I once had focused on that younger image of Elaine unrealized. I reached out with my thoughts and touched that image, breathing gentle life into it as I whispered her True Name, freely given to me when we were young, within the vaults of my mind.

Elaine Lilian Mallory.

And the image came to life.

Elaine's face bowed forward, her hair falling around it, not quite hiding the expression of bone-deep weariness and despair.

Elaine, I whispered to her. Can you hear me?

Her thoughts came to me in an echoing blur, like when they want to confuse you at the movies and they muck around with a voice-over... believe I could make a difference. One person doesn't. One person can't ever make a difference. Not in the real world. God, what arrogance. And they paid for it.

I put more will into my thoughts. Elaine !

She glanced up for a moment, looking dully around the room. The image of her was filling in, slowly. She was in well-lit room without many features. Most of it seemed to be white. Then her head bowed again.

Trusting me to keep them safe. I might as well pull the trigger myself. Too cowardly for that, though. I just sit here. Set things up so that I don't have to fail. I don't have to try. I don't have to worry about being nothing. All I have to do is sit.

I didn't like the sound of that at all. Within the senseless vaults of my mind, I screamed, Elaine!

She looked up again, blinking her eyes slowly. Her mouth began moving in time with her audible thoughts. "Don't know what I thought I could do. One woman. One woman who spent her whole life running away. Being broken. I would have served them better to end it before I ever left, rather than dragging them down with me."

Her lips stopped moving, but, very faintly, I heard her thoughts call, Harry?

And suddenly I could hear a difference in the other thoughts.

"Just sit," she mumbled. "Almost over now. I won't be useless anymore. Just sit and wait and I won't have to hurt anymore. Won't fail anyone else. It will all be over and I can rest."

It didn't sound like Elaine's voice. There were subtle differences. It sounded... like someone doing an impersonation. It was close, but it wasn't her. There were too many small inconsistencies.

Then I got it.

That was the Skavis, whispering thoughts of despair and grief into her mind, just as the Raiths would whisper of lust and need.

She was under attack.

Elaine Lilian Mallory! I called, and in my head, my voice rumbled like thunder. I am Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, and I bid thee hear me! Hear my voice, Elaine!

There was a shocked silence, and then Elaine's thought-voice said, more clearly, Harry?

And her lips moved, and the not-Elaine voice said, "What the hell?"

Elaine's eyes snapped to mine, suddenly meeting them, and the room around her clarified into crystalline relief.

She was in the bathroom of the hotel, in the tub, naked in the bath.

The air was thick with steam. She was bleeding from a broad cut across one wrist. The water was red. Her face was god-awful pale, but her eyes weren't fogged over and hazed out. Not yet.

Elaine! I thundered. You are under a psychic attack! Priscilla is the Skavis!

Elaine's eyes widened.

Someone slapped me hard on the face and screamed, "Harry!"

The world flew sideways and expanded in a rush of motion and sound as my denied senses came crashing back in upon me. The Beetle was sitting sideways across several parking spaces in the motel's little lot, both doors open, and Murphy, gun in one hand, had a hold of my duster with the other and was shaking me hard. "Harry! Get up!"