Jumat, 10 Februari 2017

yorkie teeth fell out

penguin audio presents... white night by jim butcher read by james marsters chapter one many things are not as they seem: the worstthings in... thumbnail 1 summary
yorkie teeth fell out

penguin audio presents... white night by jim butcher read by james marsters chapter one many things are not as they seem: the worstthings in life never are. i pulled my battle-scarred, multicolored oldvolkswagen beetle up in front of a run-down chicago apartment building,not five blocks from my own rented basement apartment. usually, by the time the cops call me, thingsare pretty


frantic; there's at least one corpse, severalcars, a lot of flashing blue lights, yellow-and-black tape, and membersof the press—or at least the promise of the imminent arrival of same. this crime scene was completely quiet. i saw no marked police cars, and only one ambulance, parked, its lights off. a young mother went by, one child in a stroller, the other toddling along holdingmommy's hand. an elderly man


walked a labrador retriever past my car. no one was standing around and gawking or otherwise doing anything at allout of the ordinary. odd. a creepy shiver danced over the nape of myneck, even though it was the middle of a sunny may afternoon. normally, i didn't start getting wigged out until i'd seen at least one nightmarish thingdoing something graphic and murderous.


i put it down to the paranoia of advancingage. it isn't like i'm all that old or anything, especially for a wizard,but age is always advancing and i'm fairly sure it's up to no good. i parked the blue beetle and headed into theapartment building. i went up several flights of stairs that needed theirold tile replaced, or at least scrubbed and shined. i left them to find a hallway carpeted ina low, grey-


blue pile that had been crushed down to shinysmoothness in the middle. the apartment doors were battered, old, but madeof thick oak. i found murphy waiting for me. at five feet and small change, a hundred andnot much, she didn't exactly look like a tough chicago cop who could facedown monsters and maniacs with equal nerve. chicks like that aren't supposed to be blondor have a cute


nose. sometimes i think murphy became that toughcop she didn't look like purely for the sake of contrariness—no amountof sparkling blue eyes or seeming harmlessness could hide the steelin her nature. she gave me her we're-at-work nod, and a terse greeting. "dresden." "lieutenant murphy," i drawled, with an elaboratebow and flourish of one hand, deliberately at odds with her brusquedemeanor.


i wasn't doing it out of pure contrariness. i'm not like that. "i am dazzled by your presence once more." i expected a snort of derision. instead, she gave me a polite, brittle little smile and corrected me in a gentletone: "sergeant murphy." open mouth, insert foot.


way to go, harry. the opening credits aren't done rolling on this case, and you've already remindedmurphy of what it cost her to be your friend and ally. murphy had been a detective lieutenant, andin charge of special investigations. si was chicago pd's answer to problems thatdidn't fall within the boundaries of "normal." if a vampire slaughtered a transient, if


a ghoul killed a graveyard watchman, or ifa faerie cursed someone's hair to start growing in instead of out , someonehad to examine it. someone had to look into it and reassure the government andthe citizenry that everything was normal. it was a thankless job, but si handled itthrough sheer guts and tenacity and sneakiness and by occasionallycalling in wizard harry dresden to give them a hand. her bosses got real upset about her abandoningher duties in a time of


crisis, while she helped me on a case. she'd already been exiled to professional siberia, by being put in chargeof si. by taking away the rank and status she had worked her ass off to earn,they had humiliated her, and dealt a dreadful blow to her pride and hersense of self-worth. "sergeant," i said, sighing. "sorry, murph. i forgot."


she shrugged a shoulder. "don't worry about it. i forget some-times, too. when i answer the phone at work, mostly." "still. i should be less stupid." "we all think that, harry," murphy said, andthumped me lightly on the biceps with one fist. "but no one blames you."


"that's real big of you, mini mouse," i replied. she snorted and rang for the elevator. on the way up, i asked her, "it's a lot quieter than most crime scenes, isn'tit?" she grimaced. "it isn't one." "it isn't?" "not exactly," she said. she glanced up at me.


"not officially." "ah," i said. "i guess i'm not actually consulting." "not officially," she said. "they cut stallings's budget pretty hard. he can keep the equipment functional and the paycheckssteady, barely, but…" i arched a brow. "i need your opinion," she said.


"about what?" she shook her head. "i don't want to prejudice you. just look and tell me what you see." "i can do that," i said. "i'll pay you myself." "murph, you don't need to—" she gave me a very hard look.


sergeant murphy's wounded pride wouldn't allowher to take charity. i lifted my hands in mock surrender, relenting. "whatever you say, boss." "damn right." she took me to an apartment on the seventhfloor. there were a couple of doors in the hall standing slightly open,and i caught furtive looks from their residents from the corner of my eyeas we walked past.


at the far end of the hall stood a pair of guys who lookedlike medtechs—bored, grouchy medtechs. one of them was smoking, the other leaningagainst a wall with his arms crossed and his cap's bill down overhis eyes. murphy and the two of them ignored one another as murphy openedthe apartment door. murphy gestured for me to go in and plantedher feet, clearly intending to wait.


i went into the apartment. it was small, worn, and shabby, but it wasclean. a miniature jungle of very healthy green plantscovered most of the far wall, framing the two windows. from the door, i could see a tiny television on a tv stand, an old stereo, and a futon. the dead woman lay on the futon. she had her hands folded over her stomach. i didn't have the experience to


tell exactly how long she'd been there, butthe corpse had lost all its color and its stomach looked slightly distended,so i guessed that she died at least the day before. it was hard to guess at her age, but she couldn't have been much more than thirty. she wore a pink terry-cloth bathrobe, a pair of glasses, and had her brown hair pulledup into a bun. on the coffee table in front of the futonthere was a prescription bottle, its top off, empty.


a decanter of golden brown liquid, dustedfor prints and covered by a layer of plastic, sat besideit, as did a tumbler that was empty but for a quarter inch of water stillin its bottom, enough for a melted ice cube or two. next to the tumbler there was a handwrittennote, also inside in a plastic bag, along with a gel-tip pen. i looked at the woman. then i went over to the futon and read thenote: i'm so tired of being afraid.


there's nothing left. forgive me. janine. i shuddered. i'd seen corpses before; don't get me wrong. in fact, i'd seen crime scenes that looked like photos of hell's slaughterhouse. i'd smelled worse, too— believe you me, an eviscerated body puts offa stench of death and rot so


vile that it is almost a solid object. by comparison to some of my previous cases, this one was quite peaceful. well organized. tidy, even. it looked nothing like the home of a deadwoman. maybe that's what made it feel so creepy. except for janine's corpse, the apartmentlooked like its


owners had just stepped out for a bite toeat. i prowled around, careful not to touch anything. the bathroom and one of the bedrooms were like the living room: neat,a little sparse, not rich, but obviously well cared for. i hit the kitchen next. dishes were soaking in now-cold water in the sink. in the fridge, chicken was marinating in some


kind of sauce, its glass bowl covered withsaran. i heard a quiet step behind me, and said,"suicides don't usually leave a meal marinating, do they? or dishes soaking to be cleaned? or their glasses on?" murphy made a noncommittal noise in her throat. "no pictures up anywhere," i mused. "no family portraits, graduation shots,


pictures of everyone at disneyland." i added up some other things as i turned toward the second bedroom. "no hair in the sink or bathroom trash can. no computers." i opened the door to the master bedroom andclosed my eyes, reaching out with my senses to get a feel of the room. i found what i expected.


"she was a practitioner," i said quietly. janine had set up her temple on a low woodentable against the east wall. as i drew near it, there was a sense of gentleenergy, like heat coming up from a fire that had burned down to mostly ashes. the energy around the table had never been strong, and it was fading, andhad been since the woman's death. within another sunrise, it would be completelygone. there were a number of items on the table,carefully arranged: a bell, a


thick, leather-bound book, probably a journal. there was also an old pewter chalice, very plain but free of tarnish, anda slender little mahogany wand with a crystal bound to its end with copperwire. one thing was out of place. an old, old knife, a slender-bladed weaponfrom the early renaissance called a misericord, lay on the carpet in front ofthe shrine, its tip pointing at an angle toward the other side of the bedroom. i grunted.


i paced around the room to the knife. i hunkered down, thinking, then looked up the blade of the knife to itshilt. i paced back to the bedroom door and peered at the living room. the hilt of the knife pointed at janine'sbody. i went back to the bedroom and squinted downthe knife toward its tip. it was pointed at the far wall. i glanced back at murphy, now standing inthe doorway.


murphy tilted her head. "what did you find?" "not sure yet. hang on." i walked over to the wall and held up my handabout half an inch from its surface. i closed my eyes and focused on a very faint trace of energy left there. after several moments of concentration, i


lowered my hand again. "there's something there," i said. "but it's too faint for me to make it out without usingmy sight. and i'm getting sick of doing that." "what does that mean?" murphy asked me. "it means i need something from my kit.


be right back." i went outside and down to my car, where i kept a fisherman'stackle box. i snagged it and went back up to the dead woman's bedroom. "that's new," murphy said. i set the box on the floor and opened it. "i've been teaching my apprentice thaumaturgy.


we have to go out to the country sometimes,for safety's sake." i rummaged through the box and finally drewout a plastic test tube full of metallic grains. "i just tossed things into a grocery sackfor the first couple of weeks, but it was easier to puttogether a more permanent mobile kit." "what's that?" murphy asked. "copper filings," i said.


"they conduct energy. if there's some kind of pattern here, i might be able to make it out." "ah. you're dusting for prints," murphy said. "pretty much, yeah." i pulled a lump of chalk out of my duster'spocket and squatted to draw a very faint circle on thecarpet. i willed it closed as i


completed the circle, and felt it spring tolife, an invisible screen of power that kept random energies away fromme and focused my own magic. spell was a delicate one, for me anyway, andtrying to use it without a circle would have been like trying to lighta match in a hurricane. i closed my eyes, concentrating, and pouredan ounce or two of copper filings into my right palm. i willed a whisper of energy down into the filings, enough to create a magical chargein them that would draw them toward the faint energy on the wall.


when they were ready, i murmured, "illumina magnus." then i broke the circle with my foot, releasingthe spell, and cast the filings outward. they glittered with little blue-white sparks,crackling audibly as they struck the wall and stayed there. the scent of ozone filled the air. i leaned forward and blew gently over thewall, clearing any stray filings that might have clung to the wall on theirown.


then i stepped back. the copper filings had fallen into definiteshapes—specifically, letters: exodus 22:18. murphy furrowed her brow and stared at it. "a bible verse?" "yeah." "i don't know that one," she said. "do you?" i nodded.


"it's one that stuck in my head: 'suffer nota witch to live.’” chapter two "murder, then," murphy said. "looks like." "and the killer wanted you to know it." she came to stand beside me, frowning up at the wall. "a cop couldn't have found this." "yeah," i said.


the empty apartment made a clicking noise,one of those settling-building, homey sounds that wouldhave been familiar to the victim. murphy's tone became lighter. "so, what are we looking at here? some kind of religious wacko? salem witch trials aficionado? the inquisitor reborn?" "and he uses magic to leave a message?"


i asked. "wackos can be hypocrites." she frowned. "how did the message get there? did a practitioner have to do it?" i shook my head. "after they killed her, they probably justdipped their finger in the water in the chalice, used itto write on the wall.


water dried up, but a residue of energy remained." "from water?" "blessed water from the cup on her shrine,"i said. "think of it as holy water. it's imbued with positive energy the sameway." murphy squinted at me and then at the wall. "holy?


i thought magic was just all about energy and math and equations andthings. like electricity or thermodynamics." "not everyone thinks that," i said. i nodded at the altar. "the victim was a wiccan." murphy frowned.


"a witch?" "she was also a witch," i said. "not every wiccan has the innate strengthto be a practitioner. for most of them, there's very little actualpower involved in their rites and ceremonies." "then why do them?" "dearly beloved, we are gathered here to jointhis man and this woman in holy matrimony."


i shrugged. "every faith has its ceremonies, murph." "this was about a conflict of religion, then?" murphy said. "it's sort of difficult for sincere wiccansto conflict with other religions. wicca itself is really fluid. there are some basic tenets that ninety-nine percent of all wiccans follow,but at its core the faith is


all about individual freedom. wiccans believe that as long as you aren't hurting anyone else by doing it, you shouldbe free to act and worship in whatever way you'd like. so everyone's beliefs are a little bit different. individualized." murphy, who was more or less catholic, frowned. "seems to me that christianity has a few things to say aboutforgiveness and tolerance and


treating others the way you'd like to be treated." "uh-huh," i said. "then came the crusades, the inquisition…" "which is my point," murphy said. "regardless of what i think about islam or wicca or any other religion, the fact is thatit's a group of people. every faith has its ceremonies. and since it's made up of people, every faithalso


has its assholes." "you only need one side to start a fight,"i agreed. "kkk quotes a lot of scripture. so do a lot of reactionary religious organizations. a lot of times, they take it out of context." i gestured at the wall. "like this."


"i dunno. 'suffer not a witch to live.' seems fairly clear." "out of context, but clear," i said. "keep in mind that this appears in the same book of the bible that approves the deathsentence for a child who curses his parents, owners of oxen who injuresomeone through the owner's negligence, anybody who works or kindles afire on sunday, and anyone who has sex with an animal."


murphy snorted. "also keep in mind that the original textwas written thousands of years ago. in hebrew. the actual word that they used in that versedescribes someone who casts spells that do harm to others. there was a distinction, in that culture, between harmful and beneficialmagic. "by the time we got to the middle ages, thegeneral attitude within the


faith was that anyone who practiced any kindof magic was automatically evil. there was no distinction between white andblack magic. and when the verse came over to english, king james hada thing about witches, so 'harmful caster of spells' just got translatedto 'witch.'" "put that way, it sounds like maybe someonetook it out of context," murphy said. "but you'd get arguments from all kinds ofpeople that the bible has


got to be perfect. that god would not permit such errors to bemade in the holy word." "i thought god gave everyone free will," isaid. "which presumably—and evidently—includes the freedom to be incorrectwhen translating one language into another." "stop making me think," murphy said. "i'm believing over here."


i grinned. "see? this is why i'm not religious. i couldn't possibly keep my mouth shut long enough to get along with everyoneelse." "i thought it was because you'd never respectany religion that would have you." "that too," i said. neither one of us, during this conversation,looked back toward the body in


the living room. an uncomfortable silence fell. the floorboards creaked. "murder," murphy said, finally, staring atthe wall. "maybe someone on a holy mission." "murder," i said. "too soon to make any assumptions. what made you call me?"


"that altar," she said. "the inconsistencies about the victim." "no one is going to buy magic writing on awall as evidence." "i know," she said. "officially, she's going down as a suicide." "which means the ball is in my court," i said. "i talked to stallings," she said. "i'm taking a couple of days of personal leave, starting tomorrow.


i'm in." "cool." i frowned suddenly and got a sick little feelingin my stomach. "this isn't the only suicide, is it." "right now, i'm on the job," murphy said. "that isn't something i could share with you. the way someone like butters might." "right," i said.


with no warning whatsoever, murphy moved,spinning in a blur of motion that swept her leg out in a scything, ankle-heightarc behind her. there was a thump of impact, and the sound of somethingheavy hitting the floor. murphy —her eyes closed—sprang onto somethingunseen, and her hands moved in a couple of small, quick circles, fingers grasping. then murphy grunted, set her arms, and twisted her shoulders a little.


there was a young woman's high-pitched gaspof pain, and abruptly, underneath murphy, there was a girl. murphy had her pinned on her stomach on the floor, one arm twisted behind her, wristbent at a painful angle. the girl was in her late teens. she wore combat boots, black fatigue pants, and a tight, cutoff grey t-shirt. she was tall, most of a foot taller than murphy, and built like a brick house.


her hair had been cut into a short, spiky style and dyed peroxide white. a tattoo on her neck vanished under her shirt, reappeared for a bit on her bared stomach,and continued beneath the pants. she had multiple earrings, a nose ring, aneyebrow ring, and a silver stud through that spot right under her lowerlip. on the hand murphy had twisted up behind her back, she wore a braceletof dark little glass beads.


"harry?" murphy said in that tone of voice that, whilepolite and patient, demanded an explanation. i sighed. "murph. you remember my apprentice, molly carpenter." murphy leaned to one side and looked at herprofile. "oh, sure," she said. "i didn't recognize her without the pink-and-bluehair.


also, she wasn't invisible last time." she gave me a look, asking if i should lether up. i gave murphy a wink, and squatted down onthe carpet next to the girl. i gave her my best scowl. "i told you to wait at the apartment and practice your focus." "oh, come on," molly said.


"it's impossible. and boring as hell." "practice makes perfect, kid." "i've been practicing my ass off!" molly protested. "i know fifty times as much as i did last year." "and if you keep up the pace for another sixor seven years," i said, "you might—you might —be ready to go it alone.


until then, you're the apprentice, i'm the teacher, and you do what i tell you." "but i can help you!" "not from a jail cell," i pointed out. "you're trespassing on a crime scene," murphytold her. "oh, please," molly said, both scorn and protestin her voice. (in case it slipped by, molly has authorityissues.) it was probably the worst thing she couldhave said. "right," murphy said.


she produced cuffs from her jacket pocket,and slapped them on molly's pinned wrist. "you have the right to remain silent." molly's eyes widened and she stared up atme. "what? harry…" "if you choose to give up that right," murphycontinued, chanting it with the steady pace of ritual, "anything you saycan and will be used against you in a court of law."


"sorry, kid. this is real life. look, your juvenile record is sealed, and you'll be tried as an adult. first offense, i doubt you'll do much more than… murph?" murphy took a break from the miranda chant. "thirty to sixty days, maybe."


then she resumed. "there, see? no big deal. see you in a month or three." molly's face got pale. "but… but…" "oh," i added, "beat someone up on the firstday. supposed to save you a lot of trouble."


murphy dragged molly to her feet, her handsnow cuffed. "do you understand your rights as i have conveyed them to you?" molly's mouth fell open. she looked from murphy to me, her expression shocked. "or," i said, "you might apologize." "i-i'm sorry, harry," she said. "not to me, kid.


it isn't my crime scene." "but…" molly swallowed and looked at murphy. "i was just's-standing there." "you wearing gloves?" "no." "shoes?" "yes." "touch anything?"


"um." molly swallowed. "the door. just pushed it a little. and that chinese vase she's planted her spearmint in. the one with a crack in it." "which means," murphy said, "that if i canshow that this is a murder, a full forensic sweep could pick up your fingerprints,the imprint of your


shoes, and, as brittle as your hairdo is,possibly genetic traces if any of it broke off. since you aren't one of the investigatingofficers or police consultants, that evidence would place youat the scene of the crime and could implicate you in a murder investigation." molly shook her head. "but you just said it would be called a suic—" "even if it is, you don't know proper procedure,the way harry does, and your presence here might contaminate the sceneand obscure evidence about


the actual killer, making the murderer evenmore difficult to find before he strikes again." molly just stared at her. "that's why there are laws about civiliansand crime scenes. this isn't a game, miss carpenter," murphy said, her voicecool, but not angry. "mistakes here could cost lives. do you understand me?"


molly glanced from murphy to me and back,and her shoulders sagged. "i didn't mean to… i'm sorry." i said in a gentle voice, "apologies won'tgive life back to the dead, molly. you still haven't learned to consider consequences,and you can't afford that. not anymore."


molly flinched a little and nodded. "i trust that this will never happen again,"murphy said. "no, ma'am." murphy looked skeptically at molly and backto me. "she means well," i said. "she just wanted to help." molly gave me a grateful glance. murphy's tone softened as she took the cuffsoff. "don't we all."


molly rubbed at her wrists, wincing. "um. sergeant? how did you know i was there?" "floorboards creaking when no one was standingon them," i said. "your deodorant," murphy said. "your tongue stud clicked against your teethonce," i said. "i felt some air move a few minutes ago,"murphy said.


"didn't feel like a draft." molly swallowed and her face turned pink. "oh." "but we didn't see you, did we, murph?" murphy shook her head. "not even a little." a little humiliation and ego deflation, nowand then, is good for apprentices.


mine sighed miserably. "well," i said. "you're here. might as well tag along." i nodded to murphy and headed for the door. "where are we going?" molly asked. both bored medtechs blinked and stared as


molly followed me out of the apartment. murphy came out behind us and waved them in to carry the body out. "to see a friend of mine," i said. "you like polka?" chapter three i hadn't been back to the forensic instituteon west harrison since that mess with necromancers-r-us nearly two yearsbefore. it wasn't an


unpleasant-looking place, despite the factthat it was the repository for former human beings awaiting examination. it was in a little corporate park, very clean, with green lawns and neat bushesand fresh-painted lines on the spaces in the parking lots. the buildings themselves were quietly unassuming, functional and tidy. it was one of those places that show up alot in my nightmares. it wasn't like i'd ever been a fan of viewingcorpses, but a man i knew had


been caught in the magical cross fire, andwound up an animated supercorpse who had nearly torn my car apart with hisbare hands. i hadn't come back since then. i had better things to do than revisit scenes like that. but once i was there and parked and headingfor the doors, it wasn't as bad as i thought it would be, andi went in without hesitation. this was molly's first visit. at my request, she had ditched much of the


facial jewelry and wore an old cubs baseballhat over her per-oxide locks. even so, she didn't exactly cut a respectablebusinesslike figure, but i was content with damage control. of course, my outfit barely qualified for business casual, and the heavy leather coatin the too-warm weather probably gave me a distinctive aura of eccentricity. or at least it would have, if i made more money. the guard sitting at the desk where phil hadbeen murdered was expecting me,


but not molly, and he told me she would haveto wait. i said i'd wait, too, until butters verified her. the guard looked sullen about being forcedto expend the enormous effort it took to punchan intercom number. he growled into the phone, grunted a few times, thenthumped a switch and the security door buzzed. molly and i went on through.


there are several examination rooms at themorgue, but it's never hard to figure out which one butters is inside. you just listen for the polka. i homed in on a steady oom-pah, oom-pah ofa tuba, until i could pick up the strains of clarinet and accordion skirlingalong with it. exam room three. rapped briefly on the door and opened it withoutactually stepping inside. waldo butters was bent over his desk, squintingat his computer's screen, while his butt and legs shuffled back andforth in time to the polka music.


he muttered something to himself, nodded,and hit the space bar on his keyboard with one elbow in time with his tappingheels, without looking up at me. "hey, harry." i blinked. "is that 'bohemian rhapsody'?" "yankovic. man's a freaking genius," he replied. "give me a sec to power


down before you come all the way in." "no problem," i told him. "you've worked with him before?" molly asked quietly. "he's clued." butters waited until his printer started rattling,then shut down the computer and walked to the printer to pickup a couple of pages and staple them together. then he dropped the pages onto a small stackof them and


bound them with a large rubber band. "okay, that should do it." he turned to face me with a grin. butters was an odd little duck. he wasn't much taller than murphy, and she probably had more muscle than he did. his shock of black hair resembled nothing so much as an explosion in a steelwool factory.


he was all knees and elbows, especially in the surgical greenshe was wearing, his face was lean and angular, his nose beaky, and hiseyes were bright behind the prescription glasses. "harry," he said, offering his hand. "long time, no see. how's the hand?" i traded grips with him. butters had long, wiry fingers, very preciseand


not at all weak. he wasn't anyone's idea of dangerous, butthe little guy had guts and brains. "only three months or so. and not too bad." i held my gloved left hand up and wiggled all the fingers. my ring and pinkie fingers moved with little trembles and twitches, butby god they moved when i told


them to. the flesh of my left hand had practicallymelted in an unanticipated conflagration during a battle with a scourgeof vampires. the doctors had been shocked that they didn't have to amputate,but told me i'd never use it again. butters had helped me work out a regimen ofphysical therapy, and my fingers were mostly functional, though myhand still looked pretty horrible —but even that had begun to change, at leasta little.


the ugly little lumps of scar tissue and flesh had begun to fade,and my hand looked considerably less like a melted wax model than it had before. the nails had grown back in, too. "good," butters said. "good. you still playing guitar?" "i hold it.


it makes noise. might be a little generous to call it playing." i gestured to molly. "waldo butters, this is molly carpenter, my apprentice." "apprentice, eh?" butters extended an amiable hand. "pleased to meetcha," he "so does he turn you into squirrels and fishesand stuff, like in the


sword in the stone?" molly sighed. "i wish. i keep trying to get him to show me how tochange form, but he won't." "i promised your parents i wouldn't let youmelt yourself into a pile of goo," i told her. "butters, i assume someone—and i won't nameany names—told you i'd be dropping by?"


"yowsa," the little me said, nodding. he held up a finger, went to the door, and locked it, before turning to lean hisback against it. "look, dresden. have to be careful what kind of informationi share, right? it comes with the job." "sure." "so you didn't hear it from me."


i looked at molly. "who said that?" "groovy," butters said. he walked back over to me and offered me thepacket of papers. "names and addresses of the deceased," hesaid. i frowned and flipped through them: columnsof text, much of it technical; ugly photographs. "the victims?"


"officially, they're the deceased." his mouth tightened. "but yeah. i'm pretty sure they're victims." "why?" he opened his mouth, closed it again, andfrowned. "you ever see something out of the corner of your eye?


but when you look at it, there's nothing there? or at least, it doesn't look like what youthought it was?" "same thing here," he said. "most of these folks show classic, obvious suicides. there are just a few little details wrong. you know?" "no," i said.


"enlighten me." "take that top one," he said. "pauline moskowitz. thirty-nine, mother of two, husband, two dogs. she disappears on a friday night and opensup her wrists in a hotel bathtub around three a.m. saturday morning." i read over it.


"am i reading this right? she was on antidepressants?" "uh-huh," butters said, "but nothing extreme,and she'd been on them and stable for eight years. never showed suicidal tendencies before, either." i looked at the ugly picture of a very ordinary-lookingwoman lying naked and dead in a tub of cloudy liquid. "so what's got your scalpel in a knot?" "the cuts," butters said.


"she used a box knife. it was in the tub with her. she severed tendons in both wrists." "so?" "so," butters said. "once she'd cut the tendons on one wrist,she'd have had very little controlled movement with the fingersin that hand. so what'd she do to cut them both?


use two box knives at the same time? where's the other knife?" "maybe she held it with her teeth," i said. "maybe i'll close my eyes and throw a rockout over the lake and it will land in a boat," butters said. "it's technically possible, but it isn't really likely. the second wound almost certainly wouldn'tbe as deep or as


clean. i've seen 'em look like someone was cuttingup a block of parmesan into slivers. these two cuts are almost identical." "i guess it's not conclusive, though," i said. "i've been hearing that a lot today." i frowned. "what's brioche think?" at the mention of his boss, butters grimaced.


"occam's razor, to use his own spectacularly insensitive yet ironic phrasing. they're suicides. end of story." "but your guess is that someone else was holdingthe knife?" the little me's face turned bleak, and henodded without speaking. "good enough for me," i said. "what about the body today?"


"can't say until i look," butters said. he gave me a shrewd glance. "but you think it's another murder." "i know it is," i replied. "but i'm the only one, until murphy's offthe clock." "right." butters sighed.


i flipped past mrs. moskowitz's pages to thenext set of ugly pictures. also a woman. the pages named her maria casselli. maria had been twenty-three when she washed down thirty valium with abottle of drain cleaner. "another hotel room," i noted quietly. molly glanced over my shoulder at the printoutof the photo at the scene. she turned pale and took several steps awayfrom me.


"yeah," butters said, concerned eyes on myapprentice. "it's a little unusual. most suicides are at home. they usually go somewhere else only if they need to jump off a bridge or drive theircar into a lake or something." "ms. casselli had a family," i said. "husband, her younger sister living with her."


"yeah," butters said. "you can guess what brioche had to say." "she walked in on her hubby and baby sister,decided to end it all?" "uh-huh." "uh," molly said. "i think—" "outside," butters provided, unlocking thedoor. "first door on the right." molly hurried from the room, down to the bathroombutters had directed her


to. "jesus, harry," butters said. "kid's a little young for this." i held up the picture of maria's body. "lot of that going around." "she's actually a wizard? like you?" "someday," i said. "if she survives."


i read over the next two profiles, both of women in their twenties, both apparentsuicides in hotel rooms, both of them with housemates of one sort or another. the last profile was different. i read over it and glanced up at butters. "what's with this one?" "fits the same general profile," butters said. "women, dead in hotel rooms." i frowned down at the papers.


"where's the cause of death?" "that's the thing," butters said. "i couldn't find one." i lifted both eyebrows at him. he spread his hands. "harry, i know my trade. i like figuring this stuff out. and i haven't got the foggiest why the womanis dead.


every test i ran came up negative; every theory i put togetherfell apart. medically speaking, she's in good shape. it's like her whole system just… got the switch turned off. everything at once. never seen anything like it." "jessica blanche."


i checked the profiles. "nineteen. and pretty. or at least prettyish." "hard to tell with dead girls," butters said. "but yeah, that was my take." "but not a suicide." "like i said.


dead, and in hotel rooms." "then what's the connection to the other deaths?" "little things," butters said. "like, she had a purse with id in it, butno clothes." "meaning someone had to have taken them away." i rolled up the papers into a tube and thumped them against my leg, thoughtfully. the door opened, and


molly came back in, wiping at her mouth witha paper towel. "this girl still here?" butters lifted his eyebrows. "yeah. miss blanche. why?" "i think maybe molly can help." molly blinked and looked up at me.


what?" "i doubt it's going to be pleasant, molly,"i told her. "but you might be able to read something." "off of a dead girl?" "you're the one who wanted to come along,"i said. she frowned, facing me, and then took a deepbreath. "yes. um.


yes, i was. mean, yes, i will. try." "will you?" "you sure? won't be fun. but if it gets us more information, it could save someone's life." i watched her for a moment, until her expressionset in determination and


she met my eyes. she straightened and nodded once. "all right," i said. "get yourself set for it. butters, we need to give her a few minutes alone. can we go get miss blanche?" "um," butters said. "what's this going to entail, exactly?"


"nothing much. i'll explain it on the way." he chewed on his lip for a moment, and thennodded once. "this way." he led me down the hall to the storage room. it was another exam room, like the one we'd just been in, but it also featureda wall of body-sized refrigerated storage units like morgues aresupposed to have. this was the


room we'd been in when a necromancer and agaggle of zombies had put a bullet through the head of butters's capacityto ignore the world of the supernatural. butters got out a gurney, consulted a recordsheet on a clipboard, and wheeled it over to the fridges. "i don't like to come in here anymore. not since phil." "me either," i said.


he nodded. "here, get that side." i didn't want to. i am a wizard, sure, but corpses are inherentlyicky, even if they aren't animated and trying to killyou. but i tried to pretend we were sliding a heavy load of groceries ontoa cart, and helped him draw a body, resting upon a metal tray and coveredin a heavy cloth, onto the gurney.


"so," he said. "what is she going to do?" "look into its eyes," i said. he gave me a somewhat skeptical look. "trying to see the last thing impressed on her retinas or something? you know that's pretty much mythical, right?" "other impressions get left on a body," isaid.


"final thoughts, sometimes. emotions, sensations." "technically, those kinds of impressions can get left on almost any kindof inanimate object. you've heard of object reading, right?" "that's for real?" he asked. but it's an easy sort of thing to contaminate,and it can be tricky as hell—and entirely apart from that, it'sextremely difficult to do."


"oh," butters said. "but you think there might be something lefton the corpse?" "maybe." "that sounds really useful." "potentially." "so how come you don't do it all the time?"he asked. "it's delicate," i said. "when it comes to magic, i'm not much for


delicate." he frowned and we started rolling the gurney. "but your only half-trained apprentice is?" "the wizarding business isn't standardized,"i said. "any given wizard will have an affinity for different kinds of magic,due to their natural talents, personalities, experiences. each has different strengths."


"what are yours?" he asked. "finding things. following things. blowing things up, mostly," i said. "i'm good at those. redirecting energy, sending energy out intothe world to resonate with the energy of what i'm tryingto find. moving energy around or


redirecting it or storing it up to use later." "aha," he said. "none of which is delicate?" "i've practiced enough to handle a lot ofdifferent kinds of delicate magic," i said. "but… it's the difference between me strummingpower chords on a guitar and me playing a complex classicalspanish piece." nutters absorbed that and nodded. "and the kid plays spanish guitar?"


"close enough. she's not as strong as me, but she's got agift for the more subtle magic. especially mental and emotional stuff. it's what got her in so much trouble with…" i bit my tongue and stopped in midsentence. it wasn't my place to discuss molly's violations of the white council'slaws of magic with others.


she would have enough trouble getting past thehorrible acts she'd committed in innocence without me painting her as a psychomonster-in-training. butters watched my face for a few seconds,then nodded and let it pass. "what do you think she'll find?" "no clue," i said. "that's why we look." "could you do this?" he said. "i mean, if you had to?"


"i've tried it," i hedged. "but i'm bad about projecting things ontothe object, and i can barely ever get somethingintelligible out of it." "you said it might not be pleasant for her,"butters said. "because if something's there, and she cansense it, she gets to experience it. first person. like she's living it herself." butters let out a low whistle.


"oh. yeah. i guess that could be bad." we got back to the other room, and i peeredin before opening the door. molly was sitting on the floor with her eyesclosed, her legs folded lotus- style, her head tilted slightly up. her hands rested on her thighs, the tips of her thumbs pressed lightly against thetips of her middle fingers. "quietly," i murmured.


"no noise until she's finished. okay?" butters nodded. i opened the door as silently as i could. we brought the gurney into the room, left it in front ofmolly, and then at my beckon, butters and i went to the far wall and settledin to wait. it took molly better than twenty minutes tofocus her mind for the comparatively simple spell.


focus of intention, of will, is integral toany use of magic. i'd drawn myself up to focus power so oftenand for so long that i only had to actually make a consciouseffort to do it when a spell was particularly complex, dangerous, or wheni thought it wise to be slow and cautious. most of the time, it took me less than a secondto gather up my will—which is critical in any situationwhere speed is a factor. drooling


abominations and angry vampires don't giveyou twenty minutes to get a punch ready. molly, though she was learning quickly, hada long damned way to go. when she finally opened her eyes, they weredistant, unfocused. she rose to her feet with slow, careful movements, anddrifted over to the gurney with the corpse. she pulled the sheet down, revealing the deadgirl's face. then


molly leaned down, her expression still distant,and murmured quietly beneath her breath as she opened the corpse'seyelids. she got something almost instantly. her eyes flew open wide, and she let out ashort gasp. her breath rasped in and out frantically several times before hereyes rolled back up into her head. she stood frozen and rigid for a pair of quiveringseconds, and then her breath escaped in a low, rough cry andher knees buckled.


she did not fall to the floor so much as melt down ontoit. then she lay there, breathing hard and letting out a continuousstream of guttural whimpers. her breathing continued, fast and hard, hereyes unfocused. her body rippled with several slow, undulating motions thatdrew the eye to her hips and breasts. then she slowly went limp, her panting graduallyeasing, though


little, unmistakably pleased sounds slitheredfrom her lips on every exhalation. i blinked at her. well. i hadn't been expecting that. butters gulped audibly. then he said, "uh. did she just do what i think she just did?"


i pursed my lips. maybe." "what just happened?" "she, um." i coughed. "she got something." "she got something, all right," butters muttered. he sighed. "i haven't


gotten anything like that in about two years." for me, it had been more like four. "i hear you," i said, more emphatically than i meant to. "is she underage?" he asked. "legally speaking?" "okay. i don't feel quite so… nabokovian, then."


he raked his fingers back through his hair. "what do we do now?" i tried to look professional and unfazed. "we wait for her to recover." he looked at molly and sighed. "i need to get out more." me and you both, man. "butters, is there any way you could get hersome


water or something?" "sure," he said. "you?" "nah." "right back." butters covered up the corpse and slippedout. i went over to the girl and hunkered downby her. "hey, grasshopper. can you


hear me?" it took her longer than it should have toanswer, like when you're on the phone with someone halfway around the world. i… i hear you." "you okay?" "oh, god." she sighed, smiling. i muttered under my breath, rubbed at theincipient headache beginning


between my eyes, and thought dark thoughts. dammit all, every time i'd opened myself up to some kind of horriblepsychic shock in the name of investigation, i'd gotten another nightmareadded to my collection. her first time up to bat, and the grasshoppergot… what had she gotten? "i want you to tell me what you sensed, rightaway. sometimes the details


fade out, like when you forget parts of adream." "right," she murmured in a sleepy-soundingdrawl. "details. she…" molly shook her head. "she felt good. really, really good." "i gathered that much," i said.


"what else?" molly kept shaking her head slowly. "nothing else. just that. it was all sensation. ecstasy." she frowned a little, as if struggling toorder her thoughts.


"as if the rest of her senses had been blindedby it, somehow. don't think there was anything else. not sight nor sound nor thought nor memory. nothing. she didn't even know it when she died." "think about it," i said quietly. "absolutely anything you can remember could be important."


butters came back in just then, carrying abottle of water beaded with drops of condensation. he tossed it to me, and i passed the colddrink to molly. "here," i told her. "drink up." "thanks." she opened the bottle, turned on her side,and started guzzling it without even sitting up. the pose did a lot to make her clothing look


tighter. butters stared for a second, then sighed andquite evidently forced himself to go over to his desk and start sharpeningpencils. "so what do we know?" "looks like she died happy," i said. "did you run a toxicology check on her?" some residual thc, but she could have gottenthat from the contact high at a concert.


otherwise she was clean." "damn," i said. "can you think of anything else that woulddo… that to a victim?" "nothing pharmacological," butters said. "maybe if someone ran a wire into the pleasure centers of her brain and keptstimulating them. but, uh, there's no evidence of open-skull surgery.


i would have noticed something like that." "so it must be something from the spooky side,"butters said. "could be." i consulted my packet again. "what did she do?" "no one knew," butters said. "no one seemed to know anything about her. no


one came to claim the body. we couldn't find any relations. it's why she's still here." "no local address, either," i said. "no, just the one on an indiana driver's license,but it dead-ended. much else in her purse." "and the killer took her clothes." "apparently," butters said.


"but why?" "must have been something on them he didn'twant found." pursed my lips. "or something on them he didn't want me tofind." molly abruptly sat up straight. "harry, i remember something." "yeah?" "sensation," she said, resting one hand overher belly button. "it was like…


i don't know, like hearing twenty differentbands playing at the same time, only tactile. but there was a prickling sort of sensationover her stomach. like one of those medical pinwheel things." "a wartenberg pinwheel," butters supplied. "eh?" i said. "like the one i use to test the nerves onyour hand, harry," butters supplied.


"oh, ow, right." i frowned at molly. "how the hell do you know what one of those feels like?" molly gave me a lazy, wicked smile. "this is one of those things you don't want me to explain." butters let out a delicate cough. "they are sometimes used recreationally,


harry." my cheeks felt warm. right. butters, you got a felt-tip marker?" he got one out of his desk and tossed it tome. i passed it to molly. "show me where." she nodded, lay back down on her back, andpulled her shirt up from her


stomach. then she closed her eyes, took the lid offthe marker, and traced it slowly over the skin of her abdomen, hereyebrows furrowed in concentration. when she was finished, the black ink spelledout clear, large letters: ex 22:18. exodus again. "ladies and gentlemen," i said quietly. "we have a serial killer."


chapter four molly said little on the way back. she just leaned against the window with half-closed eyes, probably basking in theafterglow. "molly," i told her in my gentlest voice. "heroin feels good, too, ask rosy and nelson." the little smile of pleasure faded into blankness,and she stared at me for a while.


by degrees, her expression changed to a frownof consideration, and then to a nauseated grimace. "it killed her," she said finally. "it killed her. i mean, it felt so good… but it wasn't." "she never knew it. she never had a chance." molly looked queasy for a


minute. "it was a vampire, right? from the white court? i mean, they use sex to feed on life energy, right?" "that's one of the things it could be," isaid quietly. "there are plenty of demonic creatures in the nevernever that grooveon the succubus routine, though."


"and she was killed in a hotel," she said. "where there was no threshold to protect her from a demon." "very good, grasshopper," i said. "once you consider that the other victims weren't done white court style, it means thateither there is more than one killer or the same one is varying his techniques. it's too early for anything but wild guesses."


"what are you going to do next?" i thought about it for a minute. "i've got to figure out what all of the killer's victims have in common, if anything." "they're dead?" molly offered. i smiled a little. "besides that." "okay," she said.


"so what do you do?" i nodded to the papers butters had given me,now resting on the dashboard. "i start there. see what i can extrapolate from the data i'vegot. then i look people up and ask questions." "what do i do?" she asked. "that depends. how many beads can you move?"


i asked her. she glowered at me for a minute. then she unbound the bracelet of dark beads from her left wrist and held it up. the beads all slipped down to the bottom of the bracelet, leaving three or four inchesof bare cord. molly focused on the bracelet, a device i'dcreated to help her practice focusing her mind and stilling her thoughts. focus and stillness are


important when you're slinging magic around. it's a primal force of creation, and it responds to your thoughtsand emotions—whether you want it to or not. if your thoughts get fragmented or muddled,or if you aren't paying complete attention to what you're doing,the magic can respond in any number of unpredictable and dangerous ways. molly was still learning about it. she had some real talent, don't get me


wrong, but what she lacked was not ability,but judgment. that's what i'd been trying to teach her over the past yearor so—to use her power responsibly, cautiously, and with respectfor the dangers the art could present. if she didn't get a more solid head on hershoulders, her talent with magic was going to get her killed—probablytaking me with her. molly was a warlock. she'd used magic to tinker with the mindsof two of her friends in an effort


to free them from drug addiction, but hermotives had been mixed, and the results were moderately horrific. one of the kids still hadn't recovered enough to function on his own. the other had pulled through, but was still facing a lot of problems. normally, the white council of wizards killsyou for breaking one of the laws of magic. practically the only time they didn't waswhen a wizard of


the council offered to take responsibilityfor the warlock's future conduct, until they could satisfy the council thattheir intentions were good, their ways mended. if they could, fine. if not, the warlock died. so did the wizard who had taken responsibility for him. i'd been a warlock. hell, plenty of the council wondered if istill was a


ticking bomb getting ready to blow. when molly had been bound and hooded and dragged before the council for trial, i'dstepped in. i had to. sometimes i regretted the hell out of thatdecision. once you've felt the power of dark magic, it could be awfully hardto resist using it again, and molly's errors tended to run in that direction. the kid was good at heart,


but she was just so damned young. she'd grown up in a strict household; she'd gone insane with freedom the minuteshe ran away and got out on her own. she was back home now, but she was still tryingto find the balance and self-discipline she'd need to survive in thewizarding business. teaching her to throw a gout of fire at atarget really wasn't terribly difficult. the hard part was teaching her why to do it,why not to do it,


and when she should or should not do it. molly saw magic as the best solution to any given problem. it wasn't, and she had to learn that. to that end, i'd made her the bracelet. she stared at it for a long minute, and oneof the beads slid up the string and stopped when it touched her finger. a moment later, the second bead joined the first.


the third quivered for several seconds beforeit moved. the fourth took even longer. the fifth bead jumped and twitched for several moments before molly let out her breath ina snarl, and the others once more succumbed to gravity. "four of thirteen," i noted, as i pulled intoa driveway. "not bad. but you aren't ready yet."


she glared at the bracelet and rubbed at herforehead for a moment. "i got six last night." "keep working," i said. "it's about focus, stillness, and clarity." molly demanded in exasperation. "that you have more work to do." she sighed and got out of the car, glancingup at her family's home. it was


a gorgeous place, white picket fence and everything,somehow preserving a suburban appearance despite the city all aroundus. "you aren't explaining it very well." "maybe," i said. "or maybe you aren't learning it very well." she gave me a glower, and what might havebeen a hot answer came to her lips—but she shut them and shook her headin irritation. "i'm sorry.


for putting up that veil and trying to followyou. no disrespect intended." "none taken. i've been where you are. i don't expect you to be perfect all the time, kid." she smiled a little. "what happened today…"


"happened," i said. "it's done. besides, it worked out. i don't know if i could have read anything at all from thatvictim, the way you did today." she looked hopeful. "what you found might be a big help. you did good. thanks."


she practically glowed. once or twice, after a compliment, she'd literally glowed, but we'd gotten that under controlwithin a month or two. she gave me a smile that made her look even youngerthan she was, and then pelted up the front steps and into the house. that left me there alone with pages and pagesof dead women. i wanted to know more about them almost as much as i wantedto shove my manly parts into


a radioactive wood chipper. i had to get closer to this, but i could atleast do it with a drink in my hand. so i went to mcanally's. mac's pub—and make no mistake, it was apub, not a bar—was one of those few places in chicago frequented almost entirelyby the supernatural scene. it didn't have a sign outside. i had to walk down a flight of stairs to getto


the unmarked front door. inside, it's all low ceilings, a crooked bar,and irregularly spaced, hand-carved wooden columns. mac manages to keep electricity moving through the bar despiteall the magical types wandering through—partly because it's rare for anythingbut a full-blown wizard, like me, to cause the inevitable failure of anynearby technology, and partly because he does a ton of preventive maintenance. he still didn't bother with


electric lights—it costs too much to keepreplacing bulbs—but he was able to keep a bunch of ceiling fans whirling andmaintain a functional telephone. on the wall beside the door was a wooden signthat stated, simply, accorded neutral ground. that meant that mac had declared the placea nonpartisan location, according to the terms set up bythe unseelie accords—sort of the geneva convention of the supernatural world. it meant that any member of the signatory nations was free to enter peaceably,and remain unmolested by any


other member. the neutral ground had to be respected byall parties, who were obligated to take outside any fight thatmight begin and respect the pub's neutral status. oaths and the rights and obligations of hospitality were very nearly a force of nature in thesupernatural world. it meant that, in chicago, there was always a place'to setup a meeting with a reasonable expectation of a civilized outcome.


all the same, it also meant that you mightfind yourself in bad company when you went to mac's place. i always sit with my back to a smoke-stainedwall. it was late afternoon and the place was busierthan it should have been. of the thirteen tables, only two were open, andi took the one farther away from the rest of the room, tossing the papersand my coat on it. i went to the bar, suppressing an instinctto duck every time i walked under one of the too-low-for-towering-wizards ceilingfans.


i nodded to mac. he's a spare man, a little taller than average,his head shaved bald. he could be anywhere between thirty and fifty. he wore jeans, a white shirt, and a white apron, and despite the fact that his wood-fueledgrill was up and running, there wasn't a spot or stain anywhere on hisclothes. "mac," i said, "beer


me." mac slid over a dark brown bottle of his homebrew. i opened it, chugged it, and passed him a twenty with the empty. "keep 'em coming." mac let out a grunt of surprise, and his eyebrowswent up. "don't ask," i told him. he folded his arms and nodded. "keys."


i glared at him for a second, but i was halfheartedabout it. i tossed the keys to the blue beetle onto the bar. mac gave me another beer, and i went to thetable, drinking on the way. by the time i'd circled the carved column shapedlike one enormous, ugly giant, except for the carved figures of faerie knightsattacking its ankles, and sat down at my table, the beer was mostlygone. i don't usually go through them like that.


i should have been more cautious, but i really, really didn't want to dig intothat material sober. i figured that if my brain was mushy enough, maybe allthe bad i was about to drag through it wouldn't leave as deep an impression. i settled down and read through the informationbutters had given me on the dead women, pausing every so often for morebeer. i read the words, but there was an odd sense of blankness inside.


i read them, i understood them, but they somehow didn't seem relevant, vanishinglike pebbles dropped in a well—there was a little ripple, then nothing. i thought i recognized two of the victims,though not by name. i'd probably seen them around, maybe even there at mcanally's. i didn't recognize the others, but it wasn't like i knew every facein the community. i stopped reading for a few minutes, and dranksome more.


i didn't want to keep going. i didn't want to see any of this. i didn't want to get involved. i'd seen more than enough of people beinghurt and killed. i'd seen too many dead women. i wanted to burn the papers, walk out thedoor, and just keep walking.


instead, i went back to reading. by the time i finished, i had found no obviousconnection between the victims, i was emptying my fifth bottle, andit was dark outside. the bar had grown quiet. i looked up to see that, except for mac, ihad the place entirely to myself. that was odd. mac's place isn't usually packed, but it'sbusy in the evening.


i couldn't remember the last time i'd seenit empty around dinnertime. mac came over to me with another bottle, puttingit down just as i finished the previous. he glanced from the fresh bottle to all theempties, standing in a row. "i use up my twenty?" i asked him. i grunted, got out my wallet, and put anothertwenty on the table.


he frowned at it, then at me. "i know," i said. "i don't usually drink this much." he snorted quietly. mac isn't big on verbalization. i waved a hand vaguely at the papers. "hate seeing women get hurt. i should hate seeing anyone get hurt, but it's worsewith women.


or kids." i glared down at the paperwork, then around at thenow-empty bar, adding two and two. "get another," i told him. "sit down." mac's eyebrows went up. then he went over to the bar, got himselfa beer, and came over to sit down with me. he casually opened both bottles with a


deft twist of his hand and no bottle opener. mac is a professional. he pushed my bottle over to me and lifted hisown. i nodded at him. we clinked bottles and drank. "so," i said quietly. "what gives?" mac set his beer down and surveyed the emptypub.


"where'd everyone go?" "away," mac said. if scrooge had hoarded words instead of money,mac would have made him look like monty hall. mac didn't use rhetorical phrasing. "away," i said. "away from me, you mean." "they're scared. "grey cloak."


i exhaled slowly. i'd been a warden of the white council fornearly two years. wardens were the armed forces of the whitecouncil, men and women who were accustomed to violence and conflict. normally, wardens existed to police wizards, to make sure that they didn'tuse their power against the rest of humanity in violation of the lawsof magic. things weren't normal.


for years, the council had been engaged ina war against the vampire courts. most of the wardens had been killed in battle,and they'd gotten desperate for new wizards to take up the grey cloakof their office—desperate enough to ask me to join them, despite my checkeredpast. plenty of people in the world had talent ofone kind or another. very few had the kind of power and talent it took tobe recognized as a member of the white council. for the others, contact with the council'swardens was mostly


limited to one of them showing up to delivera warning about any potential abuse of magic. but when anyone broke the laws of magic, thewardens appeared to apprehend, try, convict, and probably execute. wardens were scary, even to someone like me, who is more or less in their weight class. for the minor talents, like most of the crowd at mac's place, the wardensoccupied a position somewhere between avenging angel and bogeyman.


apparently, they had begun to see me in thelatter role, which was going to be a problem in my hunt for the exodus-quotingkiller. the victims were probably members of the local supernaturalcommunity, but a lot of wiccans can be ticklish about talking about theirbeliefs, or identifying their fellow believers as members of the faith:part of it is a basic respect for personal freedom and privacy endemic to thefaith. part of it is a kind of theologically hereditary caution.


both of those factors were going to make ithard to get anyone to talk to me. if people thought the wardens were a partof the killings, they'd shut me out faster than you can say, "burn thewitch." "there's no reason for anyone to be afraid,"i said. "these women are officially suicides. i mean, if murphy's instincts hadn't pickedup on something, we wouldn't even know there wasa killer loose."


mac sipped his beer in silence. "unless," i said, "some other factor i don'tknow about made it obvious to everyone in our crowd that the victims weren'tsuicides." mac put his beer down. "they're linked," i said quietly. "the victims. there's a connection between them that the police files don't show. the magic folks know it.


that's why they're scared." mac frowned at the beer. then he looked over at the neutral groundsign by the door. "i know," i said quietly. "you don't want to get involved. but someone out there is killing women.


they're leaving calling cards for me, specifically. whoever is doing it is going to keep on doingit until i find them." mac did not move. i kept the quiet pressure on him. "a lot of people come in here. they eat and drink. and they talk. you stand over there running the grill andpouring


drinks and you might as well be invisible. but i know you hear a lot more than most people realize, mac. i figure you know something that might help he gazed at me for a moment, his expressionunreadable. then he asked, "is it you?" i almost barked out a bit of laughter, untili realized that he was serious. it took me a minute to get my head aroundthat one.


since i had gone into business in chicago, i had spent a lot oftime trying to help the supernatural community. i did exorcisms here and there, helped withghost problems, taught young and out-of-controltalents enough discipline to restrain themselves. i've done other things too, smaller, not necessarily directly involving magic: giving advice onhow to handle problems dealing with friendly but inhuman beings that mingledwith magically aware mortals,


helping parents to deal with the fact thattheir kid was suddenly able to set the cat on fire, and otherwise tryingto help. despite all of that, the same folks i'd triedto help were afraid of me. even mac. i guess i couldn't blame them. i wasn't as accessible as i used to be, what with the war and my new warden duties, andteaching my apprentice. practically the only times i had appearedin public, things had gotten messy, and people had died.


i sometimes forgot how scary the supernatural could be. i lived in a state of relative power. i'm not under any illusions that i can take out anything that messes withme, but i am not a pansy, and with the right planning and leverage i canbe a threat to even awfully powerful beings. those folks couldn't. they were the have-nots of the supernaturalworld, and


they didn't have the options that my powergave me. and after all, i was supposed to be the one protecting folks fromsupernatural threats. if they truly believed that the women had been murdered,then either i was cruel enough to do the deed, or uncaring and/orincompetent enough to allow it to happen. either way, it didn't paint a flattering pictureof me. add in the


growing sense of fear, and it was understandable. but it still hurt. "it's not me," i said quietly mac studied my features for a moment, thennodded. "needed to hear it." "sure," i said. "i don't know who is behind it. but i give you my word that when i catch up to whoever is doing this,i'm going to take him down,


regardless of who he is or who he works for. my word, mac." he took another sip of beer, stalling. i reached out and started flipping throughthe pages, one by one, reviewing the horrible photos. mac saw them too. he let out a breath barely tinged with a throaty growl, and leaned back in hischair, away from the images. i put my last beer on the table and spreadmy hands.


"help me, mac. please." mac stared down at his bottle for a moment. then he looked at his sign then he reached out and took the top sheetof paper from the stack. he flipped it over, produced a pencil fromhis apron pocket, and wrote on the page before passing it back to me. it read: anna ash, ordo lebes, four p.m. tomorrow "what's this?"


he picked up his bottle and rose. "a start." chapter five "ordo lebes," murphy said. she took the lid off her coffee and blew some steam away from its surface. "my latin is a little rusty." "that's because you aren't a master of arcanelore, like me." she rolled her eyes.


"lebes means a large cooking pot," i toldher. i tried to adjust the passenger seat of her car, but couldn't manageto make it comfortable. saturn coupes were not meant for people myheight. "translates out to the order of the large cooking pot." "or maybe order of the cauldron?" murphy suggested. "since it sounds so much


less silly and has a more witchy connotationand all?" "well," i said, "i suppose." murphy snorted at me. "master of the arcane lore." "i learned latin through a correspondencecourse, okay? we should have taken my car." "the interior of a volkswagen beetle is smallerthan this one." "but i know where it all is," i said, tryingto untangle my right foot from


where it had gotten wedged by the car's frame. "do all wizards whine this much?" murphy sipped her coffee. "you just want to be the one driving. i think you have control issues." "control issues?" "control issues," she said. "you're the one who wouldn't find the woman'saddress unless i let you


drive, and i'm the one with issues?" "with me, it's less an issue and more a factof life,"'she said calmly. "besides, that clown car of yours doesn'texactly blend in, which is what you're supposed to do on a stakeout." i glowered out the front window of her carand looked up at the apartment building where one anna ash was presumablyhosting a meeting of the order of the large cooking po—er, uh, cauldron. murphy had found a spot on the street, which made me wonder if she didn'thave some kind of magical talent


after all. only some kind of precognitive esp could havegotten us a parking space on the street, in the shadow of a building,with both of us in sight of the apartment building's entrance. "what time is it?" "five minutes ago it was three o'clock," murphysaid. "i can't be certain, but i theorize that it must now be about three-oh-five." i folded my arms.


"i don't usually do stakeouts." "i thought it might be a nice change of pacefor you. all that knocking down of doors and burning down of buildings mustget tiring." "i don't always knock down doors," i said. "sometimes it's a wall." "but this way, we get a chance to see who'sgoing into the building. we might learn something."


i let out a suspicious grunt. "learn something, huh?" "it'll only hurt for a minute." murphy sipped at her coffee and nodded ata woman walking toward the apartment building. she wore a simple sundress with a man's white cotton button-down shirt wornopen atop it. she was in her late thirties, maybe, with pepper-and-salthair worn in a bun.


she wore sandals and sunglasses. "how about her?" "recognize her. seen her at bock ordered books a few times." the woman entered the building at a brisk,purposeful pace. murphy and i went back to waiting. over the next forty-five minutes, four other women arrived.


i recognized two of them. murphy checked her watch—a pocket watchwith actual clockwork and not a microchip or battery to be found. "almost four," she said. "half a dozen at most?" "looks that way," i agreed. "and you didn't see any obvious bad guys." "the wacky thing about those bad guys is thatyou can't count on them to be


obvious. they forget to wax their mustaches and goatees,leave their horns at home, send their black hats to the drycleaner's. they're funny like that." murphy gave me a direct and less-than-amusedlook. "should we go on up?" "give it another five minutes. no force in the known universe can make a


gang of folks naming their organization inlatin do much of anything on time. if they're all there by four, we'll know there'ssome kind of black magic involved." murphy snorted, and we waited for a few minutesmore. "so," she said, filling time. "how's the war going?" she paused for a beat, and said, "god,


what a question." "slowly," i said. "since our little visit to arctis tor, andthe beating the vampires took afterward, things have beenpretty quiet. i went out to new mexico this spring." "helping luccio train baby wardens," i said. "you've got to get way out away from civilization when you're teaching groupfire magic.


so we spent about two days turning thirty acres of sand andscrub into glass. then a couple of the red court's ghouls showed up and killedtwo kids." murphy turned her blue eyes to me, waiting. i felt my jaw tighten, thinking back on it. it wouldn't do those two kids any good, going over it again. so i pretended i didn't realize she was


giving me a chance to talk about it. "there haven't been any more big actions, though. just small-time stuff. the merlin's trying to get the vamps to the table to negotiate a peace." "doesn't sound like you think much of theidea," murphy noted. "the red king is still in power," i said. "the war was his idea to begin


with. if he goes for a treaty now, it's only goingto be so that the vamps can lick their wounds, get their numbers upagain, and come back for the sequel." "kill them all?" she asked. "let god sort them out?" chapter six "i don't like this," murphy said.


"helen beckitt has got plenty of reasons to dislike you." i snorted. "who doesn't?" "i'm serious, harry." the elevator doors closed and we started up. building was old, and the elevator wasn'tthe fastest in the world. "if what you said about people beginning tofear you is true, then there's got to be a reason forit.


maybe someone is telling stories." "and you like helen for that?" "she already shot you, and that didn't work. maybe she figured it was time to get nasty." "sticks and stones and small-caliber bulletsmay break my bones," i said. "words will never, et cetera." "it's awfully coincidental to find her here.


she's a con, harry, and she wound up in jail because of you. i can't imagine that she's making nice with the local magic community for the camaraderie." "i didn't think cops knew about big wordslike 'camaraderie,' murph. are you sure you're a real policeperson?" she gave me an exasperated glance. "do you ever stop joking around?"


"i mutter off-color limericks in my sleep." "just promise me that you'll watch your back,"murphy said. "there once was a girl from nantucket," isaid. "her mouth was as big as a bucket." murphy flipped both her hands palms up ina gesture of frustrated surrender. "dammit, dresden." i lifted an eyebrow. "you seem worried about me."


"there are women up there," she said. "you don't always think very clearly where women are concerned." "so you think i should watch my back." i turned to her and looked down at her andsaid, more quietly, "golly, murph. why did you think i wanted you along?" she looked up and smiled at me, the cornersof her eyes wrinkling, though her voice remained tart.


"i figured you wanted someone along who could notice things more subtle than a flashingneon sign." "oh, come on," i said. "it doesn't have to be flashing." the elevator doors opened and i took the leaddown the hall to anna ash's apartment—and stepped into a tingling curtainof delicate energy four or five feet shy of the door. i drew up sharply, and murphy had to put ahand against my back to keep from bumping intome.


"what is it?" she asked. i held up my left hand. though my maimed hand was still mostly numbto conventional stimuli, it had never had anytrouble sensing the subtle patterns of organized magical energy. i spread out my fingers as much as i could, trying to touch the largest possiblearea as i closed my eyes and focused on my wizard's senses. "it's a ward," i said quietly.


"like on your apartment?" she asked. "it's not as strong," i said, waving my handslowly over it. "and it's a little cruder. i've got bricks and razor wire. this is more like aluminum siding and chicken wire. but it has a decent kick. fire, i think."


squinted up and down the hall. "huh. i don't think there's enough there to kill outright, but it would hurt like hell." "and a fire would set off the building's alarms,"murphy added. "make people start running out. summon the authorities." "discouraging your average prowler, supernaturalor not.


it's not meant to kill." i stepped back and nodded to murphy. "go ahead and knock." she gave me an arch look. "that's a joke, right?" "if this ward isn't done right, it could reactwith my aura and go off." "can't you just take it apart?" "whoever did this was worried enough to investa lot of time and effort to


make this home safer," i said. "kinda rude to tear it up." murphy tilted her head for a second, and thenshe got it. "and you'll scare them if you just walk through it like it wasn'tthere." "yeah," i said quietly. "they're frightened, murph. i've got to be gentle, or they won't give me anything that can helpthem."


murphy nodded and knocked on the door. she rapped three times, and the doorknob wasalready turning on the third rap. a small, prettily plump woman opened the door. she was even shorter than murphy, mid-forties maybe, with blond hairand rosy, cherubic cheeks that looked used to smiling. she wore a lavender dress and carried a smalldog, maybe a yorkshire terrier, in her arms.


she smiled at murphy and said, "of course, sergeant murphy, i know who you are." maybe half a second after the woman startedspeaking, murphy said, "hello, my name is sergeant murphy, and i'm a detectivewith the cpd." murphy blinked for a second and fell silent. "oh," the woman said. "i'm sorry; i forget sometimes." she made an airy little gesture with one hand.


"such a scatterbrain." i started to introduce myself, but beforei got my mouth open, the little woman said, "of course, we all know who youare, mister dresden." she put her fingers to her mouth. they were shaking a little. i forgot again. excuse me. i'm abby."


"pleased to meet you, abby," i said quietly,and extended my hand, relaxed, palm down, to the little yorkie. the dog sniffed at my hand, quivering with eagerness as he did, and his tail startedwagging. "heya, little dog." "toto," abby said, and before i could respondsaid, "exactly, a classic. if it isn't broken, why fix it?" she nodded to me and said, "excuse me; i'll


let our host speak to you. i was just closest to the door." she shut the door on us. "certainly," i said to the door. murphy turned to me. "weird." "at least the dog liked me." "she knew what we were going to say beforewe said it, harry."


"i noticed that." "is she telepathic or something?" "not in the way you're thinking. she doesn't exactly hide what she's doing, and if she was poking aroundin people's heads, the council would have done something a long timeago. "then how did she know what we were aboutto say?" "my guess is that she's prescient," i said. "she can see the future.


probably only a second or two, and she probablydoesn't have a lot of voluntary control over it." murphy made a thoughtful noise. "could be handy." "in some ways," i said. "but the future isn't written in stone." "like, what if i'd decided to tell her myname was karrin murphy instead of sergeant, at the last second?" she'd have been wrong.


people like her can sense a… sort of a cloud of possible futures. we were in a fairly predictable situationhere even without bringing any magical talents intoit, basic social interaction, so it looked like she saw exactly what was coming. but she didn't. she got to judge what was most probable, and it wasn'thard to guess correctly in this particular instance."


"that's why she seemed so distracted," murphysaid thought fully. she was keeping track of what was happening,what was likely to happen, deciding what wasn't likely to happen,all in a window of a few seconds." "it's a lot worse if they can see any farther than a second or two." "because the farther you can see, the morepossibilities exist," i said. "think of a chess game. a beginning player is doing well if he cansee four


or five moves into the game. ten moves in holds an exponentially greater number of possible configurations the boardcould assume. master players can sometimes see even further than that—andwhen you start dealing with computers, the numbers are even bigger. it's difficult to even imagine the scope of it." "and that's in a closed, simple environment,"murphy said, nodding.


"the chess game. there are far more possibilities in the realworld." "the biggest game." "it's a dangerous talent to have. can leave you subject to instabilities ofone kind or another as side effects. doctors almost always diagnose folks likeabby with epilepsy, alzheimer's, or one of a number of personalitydisorders.


i got five bucks that says that medical bracelet on her wristsays she's epileptic—and that the dog can sense seizures coming and warnher." "i didn't see the bracelet," murphy admitted. "no bet." while we stood there talking quietly for maybefive minutes, a discussion took place inside the apartment. low voices came through the door in tense, muffled tones that eventually cut off whena single voice, louder than the


rest, overrode the others. a moment later, the door opened. the first woman we'd seen enter the apartmentfaced me. she had a dark complexion, dark eyes, short, dark straighthair that made me think she might have had some native americans in thefamily a generation or three back. she was maybe five foot four, late thirties. she had a serious kind of


face, with faint, pensive lines between herbrows, and from the way she stood, blocking the doorway with solidly plantedfeet, i got the impression that she could be a bulldog when necessary. "no one here has broken any of the laws, warden,"she said in a quiet, firm voice. "gosh, that's a relief," i said. "anna ash?" she narrowed her eyes and nodded. "i'm harry dresden," i said.


she pursed her lips and gave me a speculativelook. "are you kidding? i know who you are." "i don't make it a habit to assume that everyonei meet knows who i am," i said, implying apology in my tone. "this is karrin murphy, chicago pd." anna nodded to murphy and asked, in a neutral,polite tone, "may i see your identification, ms. murphy?"


murphy already had her badge on its leatherbacking in hand, and she passed it to anna. her photo identification was on the reverseside of the badge, under a transparent plastic cover. anna looked at the badge and the photo, andcompared it to murphy. passed it back almost reluctantly, and thenturned to me. "what do you want?" "to talk," i said.


"the ordo lebes," i said. "and what's happened to several practitioners lately." her voice remained polite on the surface,but i could hear bitter undertones. "i'm sure you know much more about it thanus." "not especially," i said. "that's what i'm trying to correct." she shook her head, suspicion written plainlyon her face.


"i'm not an idiot. the wardens keep track of everything. everyone knows that." "yeah, but i forgot to take my george orwell-shapedmultivitamins along with my breakfast bowl of big brotheros this morning. i was hoping you could just talk to me for a little while,the way you would with a human being."


she eyed me a bit warily. lots of people react to my jokes like that. "why should i?" "because i want to help you." "of course you'd say that," she said. "how do i know you mean it?" "ms. ash," murphy put in quietly, "he's onthe level. we're here to help, if


we can." anna chewed on her lip for a minute, lookingback and forth between us and then glancing at the room behind her. finally, she faced me and said, "appearances can be deceiving. i have no way of knowing if you are who—and what—you say you are. i prefer to err on the side of caution." "never hurts to be cautious," i agreed.


"but you're edging toward paranoid, ms. ash." she began to shut the door. "this is my home. and i'm not inviting you inside." "groovy," i said, and stepped over the thresholdand into the apartment, nudging her gently aside before she couldclose the door. as i did, i felt the pressure of the threshold,an aura of protective


magical energy that surrounds any home. the threshold put up a faintly detectable resistance as my own aura of powermet it—and could not cross it. if anna, the home's owner, had invited mein, the threshold would have parted like a curtain. she hadn't, and as a result, if i wanted tocome inside, i'd have to leave much of my powerat the door. if i had to work any forces while i was in there, i'd be crippledpractically to the point of


total impotence. i turned to see anna staring at me in blanksurprise. she was aware of what i had just done. "there," i told her. "if i was of the spirit world, i couldn'tcross your threshold. if i had planned on hurting someone in here,would i have disarmed myself?


stars and stones, would i have shown up witha cop to witness me doing it?" murphy took her cue from me, and entered thesame way. "i…" anna said, at a loss. "how… how did you know the ward wouldn'tgo off in your face?" "judgment call," i told her. "you're a cautious person, and there are kids


in this building. i don't think you'd have slapped up somethingthat went boom whenever anyone stepped through the doorway." she took a deep breath and then nodded. "you wouldn't have liked what happened if you'd tried to force the door,though." "i believe you," i told her. and i did. "ms. ash, i'm not here to threaten


or harm anyone. i can't make you talk to me. if you want me to go, right now, i'll go," i promised her. "but for your own safety, please let me talk to you first. a few minutes. that's all i ask." "anna?"


came abby's voice. "i think you should hear them out." "yes," said another woman's voice, quiet andlow. "i agree. and i know something of him. if he gives you his word, he means it." thinking on it, i hadn't ever really heardhelen beckitt's voice before, unless you counted moans.


but its quiet solidity and lack of inflectionwent perfectly with her quasi-lifeless eyes. i traded an uneasy glance with murphy, thenlooked back to anna. "ms. ash?" "give me your word. swear it on your power." that's serious, at least among wizards inmy league. promises have power. one doesn't swear by one's magical talentand break the oath lightly—to do


so would be to reduce one's own strength inthe art. i didn't hesitate to answer. "i swear to you, upon my power, to abide asa guest under your hospitality, to bring no harm to you or yours,nor to deny my aid if they would suffer thereby." she let out a short, quick breath and nodded. "very well. i promise to


behave as a host, with all the obligationsthat apply. and call me anna, please." she pronounced her name with the old worldemphasis: ah-nah. beckoned with one hand and led us into theapartment. "i trust you will not take it amiss if i do not make a round ofintroductions." understandable. a full name, given from one's own lips, couldprovide a


wizard or talented sorcerer with a channel,a reference point that could be used to target any number of harmful, evenlethal spells, much like fresh blood, nail clippings, or locks of hair couldbe used for the same. all but impossible to give away your fullname accidentally in a conversation, but it had happened, and ifsomeone in the know thought a wizard might be pointing a spell their way,they got real careful, real fast, when it came to speaking their own name. "no problem," i told her. anna's apartment was nicer than most, andevidently had received almost a


complete refurbishing in the past year orthree. she had windows with a reasonably good view, and her furnishingswere predominantly of wood, and of excellent quality. five women sat around the living area. abby sat in a wooden rocking chair, holding her bright-eyed little yorkie in herlap. helen beckitt stood by a window, staring listlessly out at the city.


two anna lifted a hand in a gesture beseeching helen for silence. "at least two more reliable witnesses have reported that the last time they sawsome of the folk who had disappeared, they were in the company of thegrey-cloaked man. several others have reported sightings of the beautifuldark-haired man instead." "and you thought the guy in the cloak wasme?" "how many tall, grey-cloaked men move in ourcircles in chicago, sir?"


priscilla said, her voice frosty. "you can get grey corduroy for three dollarsa yard at a surplus fabric store," i told her. "tall men aren't exactly unheard of in a cityof eight million, either." priscilla narrowed her eyes. "who was it, then?" abby tittered, which made toto wag his tail. i pursed my lips in a moment of thought.


"i'm pretty sure it wasn't murphy." helen beckitt snorted out a breath throughher nose. "this isn't a joking matter," priscilla snapped. sorry. given that i only found out about a grey cloaksighting about two seconds ago, i had assumed the questionwas facetious." i turned to face anna. "it wasn't me.


and it wasn't a warden of the council—orat least, it damned well better not have been a wardenof the council." "and if it was?" anna asked quietly. "i'll make sure he never hurts anyone. ever again." murphy stepped forward and said, "excuse me. you said that three members of the order had died.


what were their names, please?" "maria," anna said, her words spaced withthe slow, deliberate beat of a funeral march. "janine. pauline." i saw where murphy was going. "what about jessica blanche?" she asked- anna frowned for a moment and then shook herhead. "i don't think i've heard


the name." "so she's not in the order," murphy said. "and she's not in the, ah, community?" "not to my knowledge," anna replied. she looked around the room. "does anyone here know her?" silence.


i traded a glance with murphy. "some of these things are not like the others." "some of these things are kind of the same,"she responded. "somewhere to start, at least," i said. someone's watch started beeping, and the girlon the couch beside priscilla sat up suddenly. she was young, maybe even still in her teens,with the rich, smoke-colored skin of regions of easternindia.


she had heavy-lidded brown eyes, and wore a bandanna tied overher straight, glossy black hair. she was dressed in a lavender ballet leotardwith cream-colored tights covering long legs, and she had the muscled,athletic build of a serious dancer. she wore a man's watch that looked huge againsther fine-boned wrist. she turned it off and then glanced up at anna,fidgeting. "ten


minutes." anna frowned and nodded at her. she started toward the door, a gracious hostess politely walking us out. "is there anything else we can do for you, warden? ms. murphy?" in the investigating business, when someonestarts trying to rush you out in order to conceal some kind of informationfrom you, it is what we


professionals call a clue. "gee," i said brightly. "what happens in ten minutes?" anna stopped, her polite smile fading. "we have answered your questions as best we could. you gave me your word, warden, to abide bymy hospitality. not to abuse it."


"answering me may be for your own good," ireplied. "that's your opinion," she said. "in my opinion, it is no business of yours." i sighed and nodded acquiescence. i handed her a business card. "there's my number. in case you change your mind."


"thank you," anna said politely. murphy and i left, and were silent all theway down in the elevator. scowled up a storm on the way, and brooded. it had never solved any of my problems in the past, but there's always afirst time. chapter seven there was no time to do anything. even if i'd been crouched, tense, and holding defensive magic ready to go, i wouldn'thave beaten the explosion to


the punch. it was instant, and violent, and did not atall care whether i was on my guard or not. something that felt vaguely like an enormousfeather pillow swung by the incredible hulk slammedinto my chest. it lifted me up off the ground and dumpedme on the sidewalk several feet later. my shoulder clipped a mailbox as i went byit, and then i had a good, steady view of the clear summer sky aboveme as i lay on my back and ached.


i'd lived, which was always a good start inthis kind of situation. couldn't have been a very big explosion, then. it had to have been more incendiary than concussive, a big old rollingball of flame that would have shattered windows and burned things and setthings on fire, and pushed a whole lot of air out of the way along withone harry dresden, wizard, slightly used. i sat up and peered at the rolling cloud ofblack smoke and red flame where murphy's saturn was, which bore out my suppositionpretty well.


i squinted to one side and saw murphy sitting slowlyback up. she had a short, bleeding cut on her upper lip. she looked pale and shaken. i couldn't help it. i started laughing like a drunk. "under the circumstances, i'm forced to concludethat you were right.


i am a control freak and you were one hundredpercent right to be the one driving the car. thank you, murph." she gave me a slow, hard stare, drew in a deepbreath, and said, through clenched teeth, "no problem." i grinned at her and slumped back down onto my back. she dabbed at the blood on her lip with onehand. "think so.


you?" "clipped my shoulder on a mailbox," i said. "it hurts a little. not a lot. maybe i could take an aspirin. just one. not a whole dose or anything." she sighed.


"my god, you're a whiner, dresden." we sat there quietly for a minute while sirensbegan in the distance and came closer. "bomb, you think?" murphy said, in that tone people use when they don't know what else to say. "i was grounding some extra energy out whenit went off. must have hexed up the bomb's timer or receiver.


set it off early." "unless it was intended as a warning shot,"she said. "whose bomb, you think?"

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