Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files 8)

And Michael had a point. I might have a chance to get through to Molly. That was only half the battle, so to speak, but it was probably more than he could manage from his own position.

But whatever higher power arranged these things had a demented sense of timing, given how much I had on my plate already. Hell's bells.

Molly came over to me after Michael's truck had vanished. She stood beside me in the quiet summer evening, silent.

"I guess you need a ride back to your place," I said.

"I don't have any money," she replied quietly.

"Okay," I said. "Where do you need to go?"

"The convention," she replied. "I have friends there. A room for the weekend." She glanced over her shoulder at the house.

"The rug rats seemed glad to see you," I observed.

She smiled fleetingly and her voice warmed. "I didn't realize how much I missed them. Dumb little Jawas."

I thought about nudging her toward her mother for a second, and decided against it. She might decide to do it if she wasn't pressured, but the second she thought I was trying to force her into something, she'd dig in her heels. So all I said was, "They're cute kids."

"Yes," she replied quietly.

"I'm heading for the convention anyway," I told her. "Get in the cab."

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome," I said.

Chapter Eleven

When people say the word "convention," they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they are in fact enjoying a free trip somewhere, time off work, and the opportunity to flirt with strangers, drink, and otherwise indulge themselves.

The first major difference between a business convention and a fan-dom convention is that fandom doesn't bother with the pretenses. They're just there to have a good time. The second difference is the dress code- the ensembles at a fan convention tend to be considerably more novel.

SplatterCon!!! (apparently the name of the con was misspelled if the three exclamation points were left out) had populated the hotel with all kinds of costumed fans, unless maybe the costumes were actually clothing trends. Once in a while, it gets hard to tell make-believe and avant-garde fashion apart. The hotel had an entry atrium, which in turn branched off into a pair of long, wide hallways leading to combination ball- and dining rooms, the ones with those long, folding partitions that can be used to break the larger rooms up into smaller halls for seminars and talk panels and so on. There were a couple hundred people in sight, and I could see more entering and leaving various panel rooms.

"I kind of expected a few more people to be here," I said to Molly. I had stopped at my apartment to grab my stuff and drop off Mouse.

"It's Thursday night," she said, as if that should be significant. "And it's getting late, at least for a weeknight. We have more than three thousand people already registered."

"Is that a lot?"

"For a first-year convention? It's a Mongol horde." There was pride in her voice as she spoke. "And we have a really young staff, to boot. But old hands at putting conventions together." She went on like that for a few moments, naming names and citing their experience as though she expected me to whip out a licensing manual or something to make sure the convention was up to code.

Two girls, both too young for me to think adult thoughts about, sidled by in black-and-purple clothing and makeup that left a lot of skin bare, their faces painted pale, trickles of fake blood at the corners of their mouths. One of them smiled at me, and she had fangs.

I had my hand on my staff and the harsh, clear scent of wood smoke filled my nose before I stopped myself from unleashing an instant, violent, and noisily pyrotechnic assault upon the vampire five feet from me. A second's study showed irregular lumps and finger marks on the teeth-the girls had probably made them with their own fingers from craft plastic. I let out my breath in a steady exhalation and relaxed again, releasing the power I'd begun to channel through my staff.

Relax, Harry. Hell's bells, that would be a great story for the papers. Professional Wizard Incinerates Amateur Vampire. News at ten.

The two girls went on by, none the wiser, and even Molly only frowned at them and then back at me for a second, her face tilted into an expression of silent inquiry.

I shook my head. "Sorry, sorry. Been a long day already. Look, I need to get a look at the bathroom where this theater owner was attacked."

"All right," Molly said. "But first we'll get you a name tag at registration."

"We will?" I asked. "Why?"

"Because you're not supposed to have access to the convention if you haven't registered for it," she said. "Con security and hotel security might get confused. It would be inconvenient for you."

"Right," I said. "Good thinking. I'm not sure how I'd react to inconvenience."

I followed her over to a set of tables set up to receive dozens or hundreds of people at once, each designated with white paper signs marked with "A-D," "E-J," and so on down the alphabet. A tired-looking, brown-haired woman of early middle age sat behind the first table, doing some kind of paperwork.

"Molly," she said, and her voice warmed with tired but genuine pleasure. "Who is your friend?"

"Harry Dresden," Molly said. "This is Sandra Marling. She's the convention chair."

"You're a horror fan?" Sandra Marling asked me.

"My life is all about horror, these days."

"You should find plenty here to entertain you," she assured me. "We're showing movies in several rooms as well as in the theater, and there's the vendors' room, and some autograph signings tomorrow, and of course there are several parties active already, and the costume contests are always fun to watch."

"Isn't that something," I said, and tried not to drown in my enthusiasm.

"Sandy," Molly said, stepping in, "I want to use my freebie for Harry, here."

Sandra nodded. "Oh, Rosanna was looking for you a few minutes ago. Have you spoken to her yet?"

"Not since this afternoon," Molly said, and fretted at her lower lip. "Did she remember to take her vitamins?"

"Rest easy, girl. I reminded her for you."

Molly looked visibly relieved. "Thank you."

Sandra, meanwhile, had me filling out a registration form, which I scribbled through fairly quickly. At the end, she passed me a plastic badge folded around a card that said, SPLATTERCON!!! HI, I'm... She gave me a black ink marker to go with it and said, "Sorry, the printer's been off-line all day. Just write your name in."