Wait, the Black Circle and the Black Council are synonymous. The Outsiders are the Outsiders, they are not the same as the Black Council.

They may work together on occasion, but they are not the same, as far as I know.

7 ASF, May:  White Night.  Marcone becomes the first vanilla human freeholding lord under the Unseelie Accords.  Molly is 19, somehow having celebrated two birthdays in the ten months between this book and Proven Guilty, in which she was 17.

First Issue of Down Town. Harry says White Night was a few months ago, yet he also says that Molly is 20 and there is snow on the ground [at least near Harry's house]. Snow or not, it is clearly cold.

For Molly to be 20, it would have to be 2008 (8 ASF). Is this set in January 2008? Does this mean that Mollys' Birthday is in January?

Not for ALL of them, so no I thought we agreed that Harry could NOT use LC unless a tracking spell would have worked.  He doesn't run home and use LC at all times.  He uses it with convenience or when he wants more out of a tracking spell other than a triangulation.   Remember when he tracked Thomas in WN?

The car analogy is this.  If a tracking spell will not work, then neither will LC.  He can do whatever he wants and LC sits there dead as a lump.  The moment a tracking spell WILL work then LC will do things.  So why would Harry use it if he had already tried tracking and it didn't work?

So, let me repeat...if a tracking spell that does not use LC would not track a target then LC does nothing.  You can do whatever you want to LC at that point and it is just a model sitting on a desk.  What LC does is allow the tracking spells to do more in Chicago than just triangulate.   The reason that LC is not useful in finding Thomas without a tracking spell is quite obvious...you would still have to cover every square inch of Chicago and then you still might not find him (because he would not be in Chicago).

If Harry felt it was worth trying a tracking spell, succeed or not, and he was home, he'd go straight for LC in a situation like that. The more he knew about the location where Shaggy was holding Thomas, the better chance Harry had to rescue him.

Using a regular tracking spell, assuming it works, means he might find himself in a dangerous place with no idea of what lie in wait for him.

The issue is not if the tracking spell would work or not, the issue is that if Harry was home and was going to try an tracking spell anyway, he'd use his best tool to do so, LC.

We know from Proven Guilty that using LC does NOT make a tracking spell work.  It simply makes a workable tracking spell more useful (remember Harry needed more than Baby Hair?).  And there is no proof that a headache makes a suppression by Mab or that it made him forget Mouse.  So, my assertion is that making Harry not use LC was like a null...it made him use something that would not work.

You're missing the point. We have to assume that Harry would have used LC because he has done it before and he is satisfied enough with how well it works that he keeps going back to it. Would have, that is, if he had remembered to do so.

It's not for us to judge how effective LC is. If Harry thought it was a waste of time he would have dismantled it long time ago. Obviously he thinks it's worthwhile to keep and to use.

And it is fairly clear that someone didn't want Harry to use Mouse either. Tie those two together, along with, admittedly circumstantial evidence, and it clearly points to someone tampering with Harry in some way.

We Know that Mab has the power and the opportunity to do so. But, if it wasn't Mab we'd have to ask who else coudl it have been?

If it was just LC, or Just Mouse alone it wouldn't be so significant.

If it was important enough in the Plot for Harry to have his memory if it tampered with about it, then it's no where near Null.

We've seen Harry use locator spells before.  and it requires triangulation.  he ends up running around rechecking his results.  but little Chicago tells your where someone or something is exactly.  that's how they located Pell's theater as the nearest point to Molly's location.  he didn't project himself astrally to do that.

my issue with him not using little Chicago is that it's obviously the most efficient tool to find him if Thomas is being held in Chicago.  not using it at all, or even mentioning considering it or specifying why he's not, is extremely odd. 

I get that using little Chicago takes effort.  but was finding Thomas not worth the effort when other things failed?  when he started growing desperate from lack of options?

I agree with this. We don't know for sure what would have happened if Harry had tracked down Thomas earlier, but best case scenario would have been that Harry rescues Thomas before Shagnasty really starts torturing him.

Uriel had said to Harry that it wasn't his fault Thomas got tortured.....perhaps it's fair to say that it was Mab's fault.

Ah, ok.  For some reason I thought he used the amulet to find Elaine earlier, and got confused.

Of course, that also means that Harry didn't need LC to find Thomas via the Amulet in the first place.

As I said, Harry did need LC in TC. Thomas wasn't wearing his amulet because Shaggy took it from him.

What's to say that Mab didn't nudge shagnasty after Morgan? Its a variable outcome to know if Thomas would be kidnapped, but just brining shaggy into play increases the odds, especially when Mab knows about Thomas and that is a hot button when it comes to Harry.

Mab didn't really need shagnasty, she could have found another, maybe someone from Winter, to kidnap Thomas. Not unlike the fetches kidnapping Molly. In theory anyway.

Hey, maybe Mab hired Shagnasty to kidnap Thomas. Maybe Shagnasty owed her a favor and this was his way of repaying the debt.