Nice foreshadowing. I'd forgotten about Harry speculating Bob might want to concieve, but I think it was just an example of Harry's subconscious trying to get Harry to consider the idea as he was already pregnant.Query and statement, Q: is Bonie uh... Soulfilled vs Bob? He's an intellect spirit sure, but different origins wthi her's being mortal and angelic.
ID Harry confirms Bonnea's conception was the act of love taking a bullet for Harry psychicly and that Harry able to play the guitar perfectly was a symptom of Bonnea's presence.
harry being able to play the gutar was the seed but I still think that it was Uriel intervening that allowed this to take place. Dresden's mind was heeling and if lash had remained lash when nicodemus commanded her to stop Dresden as lashiels shadow she would f had to listen. I am convinced that Uriel played a visit to bob and intervened with bob. the act of thinking aout children and bob allowed for the interactionLash was gone when Nic *tried* to command her in SmF. Bonie was growing, but no where near complete.
and if lash had remained lash when nicodemus commanded her to stop Dresden as lashiels shadow she would f had to listen.
correct me if i wrong but did lash said healing from the wound but takes time so my theory is lash is still in the harrys mind but way to deep that no one knows where she is except bonnie which she move to new home
Tangential but related to the thread topic: how did Bob miss Bonnie's presence? He gives Harry an examination at the end of Small Favor and remarks that bits of his soul are missing from using Soulfire. Shouldn't he have seen another entity growing in his head? Especially if she's like Bob, and kind of tuned into the same wavelength?
The act of creation was at the point where Harry was held fast by the will of the Outsiders in the Grotto and Lash sacrificed herself to allow him to act. It was her one act of selfless love -- and thus the spark of creation in this matter. Whether Uriel helped or not is irrelevant in my mind. She choose.
There is pretty good evidence that Mab had messed with Bob's head in SmF as well as Harry's. Or at least that Bob was playing along with Mab. There's an excellent theory somewhere on the forum which makes a very compelling case that Mab masked Harry's memory of Little Chicago just like she did with his blasting rod. The key bit of evidence is that both are described as being under tarps when Harry tries to recall / interacts with them. Harry was down in his lab beating himself senseless over how he could find Thomas, and never thinks to try Little Chicago. And Bob was there helping him. and never suggests it. That to me suggests either that Bob got his mind messed with too, or at least that he's in on it, like his conversation with Thomas in Backup.
There's a second possibility too. Harry got "ice picks" to the temples when he interacts with Mouse in the same period. Mouse also could have found Thomas (This is confirmed by Mouse later on). In both cases, Harry's mind has been altered to keep him from finding Thomas without having to go to Demonreach. The rationale goes that Mab wanted to get the Harry and the island acquainted for things down the road. But "ice picks" is the telltale sign most associated with Bonnie. Perhaps Bonnie was already working with Mab back then. Or maybe Id Harry already was, he was wearing that snowflake lapel pin by the next time we saw him (albiet after Harry becomes the WK).
So, if some combination of Bob, Id Harry and Bonnie have been compelled by / bargained with Mab to keep Bonnie's presence secret, that would explain why Bob doesn't remark on her. Either she's actively hiding, perhaps with Id Harry's help, or Bob is willfully choosing not to comment on her presence. Or some combination of all three.
Harry isn't looking for Thomas in Small Favor because he's off pretending to be Harry most of the time; he's looking for him in the next book, Turn Coat. Harry uses Little Chicago shortly after Mab messes with his head, to send the Gruffs on the wild goose chase with Mister's help, so I don't think they could've removed that. What led him to the island was Nicodemus setting the meet there.
There's no real need to use Little Chicago in Turn Coat; Harry finds out that Thomas is missing, gets the lead from Vince Graver, follows it directly to the lawyer, soulgazes her, finds out that the White Court was involved, and heads to see Lara with Luccio. That's when the Skinwalker tells him that he's got Thomas, and gives him all the contact information he needs to set a meeting later on. He mentions that it would be near impossible to find the skinwalker with magic as a handwave, and has Lara try to trace the cell phone instead. Meanwhile, Harry's balancing dealing with Morgan and keeping him alive while finding the traitor. Little Chicago would just have taken him valuable time (I recall it taking him something like an hour or two to get ready to use it each time) when he's got other stuff to do.
I'm not saying it's totally impossible, but that the motivation and means behind it is sketchy, in my opinion.
Small Favor
Now this is where life gets interesting. Mab outright (she admits it) takes Harry’s blasting rod and then makes him forget she took it. What she leaves behind is the image of a tarp, and a splitting headache. SF 212:
Quote
Quote“pain stabbed into my head, ice picks plunging into both temples. I flinched and doubled over. Blasting rod. Familiar words. I fought to summon an image of what went with the words, but I could not find anything. I knew the memory associated with those words, but try as I might, I couldn’t drag it out. It was like a shape covered by some heavy tarp…”The second thing that happens in this book is Harry meets the isle for the first time. There is also a small in-joke here; when researching gruff, harry find a Calvin and Hobbes book. For the non fans, the last strip of the comic had Calvin ( the too bright smart alleck) and Hobbes ( his wiser but snarky and horny friend only he can talk too) head off into a eternal winter wonderland of snow, magic, and snow goons. (yes, Mab left him a book)(that has a beware of Hobbes in joke)
Turn Coat and the two clue bats:
The first clue is on page 211
After Thomas is taken, Harry searched for him magically, but never uses or mentions Little Chicago. (although damaged in WN, it is fixed by this time, note SJ).. all he describes is:
QuoteQuote“a long table in the center of the room is covered by a canvas tarp..
Now it is important that not only does he not mention it ( he does in every other book, whether he uses it or not, he is very proud of it.) but Bob does not mention it either. And almost the very first thing he mentions in the books is his splitting blinding headache.
The second clue is on page 215
Mouse come over to talk to him, gets Harrys attention, and then when Harry bends down, harry gets a second blinding headache, and loses his train of thought. This is important because it is shown later that Mouse could have found Thomas, and he certainly believed he was a match for shaggy, or at least that harry and he together were.So someone covered the table, removed the memory from Harry and Bob, and gave Harry a headache just in time to prevent him from rescuing Thomas.
Why would Mab do this?
Two possible reasons: First, she believes Harry and Mouse were not a match for shaggy, or she needed Harry to bond with Demonreach for another later purpose, and Thomas being in trouble was the goad she used to get harry to do something this drastic.
The clue bat is a tough thing to guesstimate. I mean, I hit y'all with at least two other major things in this book that no one seems to have picked up on at all, so far. :)
Two hours and a half a dozen attempted tracking spell later, I snarled and slapped a stack of notepads off a corner of a table in my sub-basement laboratory. They thwacked against a wall beneath Bob the Skulls's shelf, and fell to the concrete floor. "It was to be expected." Bob the Skull said very quietly.
...snip...
Does he even mention Little Chicago in Changes or beyond? During Changes, he mentions the new summoning ring, but I don't remember specifically if he describes the giant model in the middle of the room. After Changes, he laments the loss of a lot of his stuff, but I can't recall if he brings that up specifically. In fact, given the amount of energy it contained, wasn't that in danger of exploding with all the fire? If he'd stopped maintaining it to the point that the power drained out over time, that would indicate that this is correct—that Mab took the memories from he and Bob and never returned them.
I spent a little while poking at my memory, and trying to see if there were any if there were any holes in it that hadn't been there before. Then I spent a while more wondering if I'd be able to tell if she had taken something else. "Jesus Christ" I breathed.
I just checked, and Harry does in fact note Little Chicago in his run-down of the lab in Changes, right before the FBI chases him out. So it wasn't deleted from his mind permanently. I like the thought that the magic on it degraded during that time, preventing a huge boom during the fire. We've got precedent for that kinda thing not being an issue though. In SmF, Harry comments that the Denarian's circle to contain the Archive could have "blown the top off of Demonreach" if something had gone wrong during set up, but he's able to smash it to bits with no such explosion. Apparently, for whatever reason, the energy of a working does not release quite so violently when it's being unmade, compared to when it's being built and not yet stable.
Let us not forget the text Jim spends after Harry's talk with Mab at the end SmF, where he ponders whether or not Mab just took something else from him:
Jim wouldn't spend text on this without paying it off. In his own words, he's too lazy. But it can't actually have happened right then, because LC gets mentioned in the short stories in between SmF and TC. There are a couple ways to explain this. Either Id Harry / Bonnie did it without Mab's direct intervention during TC, or Mab did it at some point around TC and took the memory of the entire encounter along with the memory of LC.
Mab getting to Bob is no problem, she had free access to the lab whenever she wanted, since Lea was a Sidhe-sicle during this period. What I would need to listen back for is if Molly presents a problem to this theory, if she was in the lab at all during TC, and was in a position to somehow bring LC up with Harry. The lab is only in one scene in the whole book I believe, so I'd guess not, but I'm unsure.
Heh. Maybe Molly messed with his head.
Doesn't Harry mention having a headache in Ghost Story, then insisting that he's allowed to have headaches anyway? Maybe that was another memory gap he stumbled upon that carried over to his soul walkabout.
I'm still not sure why this would happen in Turn Coat without Mab's direction. Bonnie would have to not only be aware of the situation, but be able to steer Harry toward Demonreach. Why would Bonnie even want to do that, assuming she had the ability to do it at all? It just seems like she's limiting Harry's options and putting him (and herself, by extension) in further danger, and I don't see the gain behind it, unless Mab (or Uriel, or someone) is cluing her into the whole situation, which I don't see happening.
I'm just not sure when Mab would've done this to him during Turn Coat. I haven't found any time that's unaccounted for yet. The only thing that makes sense is the nascent Bonnie's complicity, but that would require motive.