Jim Butcher - White Night

"It'll only hurt for a minute." Murphy sipped at her coffee and nodded at a woman walking toward the apartment building. She wore a simple sundress with a man's white cotton button-down shirt worn open atop it. She was in her late thirties, maybe, with pepper-and-salt hair worn in a bun. She wore sandals and sunglasses. "How about her?"

"Yeah," I said. "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 watch with 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 that you 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 dry cleaner's. They're funny like that."

Murphy gave me a direct and less-than-amused look. "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 in Latin do much of anything on time. If they're all there by four, we'll know there's some kind of black magic involved."

Murphy snorted, and we waited for a few minutes more. "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, and the beating the vampires took afterward, things have been pretty quiet. I went out to New Mexico this spring."

"Why?"

"Helping Luccio train baby Wardens," I said. "You've got to get way out away from civilization when you're teaching group fire magic. So we spent about two days turning thirty acres of sand and scrub into glass. Then a couple of the Red Court's ghouls showed up and killed two 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 the idea," 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 going to be so that the vamps can lick their wounds, get their numbers up again, and come back for the sequel."

"Kill them all?" she asked. "Let God sort them out?"

"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. The building was old, and the elevator wasn't the fastest in the world. Murphy shook her head. "If what you said about people beginning to fear you is true, then there's got to be a reason for it. 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 bullets may 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 words like '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," I said. "Her mouth was as big as a bucket."

Murphy flipped both her hands palms up in a 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."

"Yes."

I turned to her and looked down at her and said, more quietly, "Golly, Murph. Why did you think I wanted you along?"

She looked up and smiled at me, the corners of her eyes wrinkling, though her voice remained tart. "I figured you wanted someone along who could notice things more subtle than a flashing neon sign."

"Oh, come on," I said. "It doesn't have to be flashing."

The elevator doors opened and I took the lead down the hall to Anna Ash's apartment—and stepped into a tingling curtain of delicate energy four or five feet shy of the door. I drew up sharply, and Murphy had to put a hand against my back to keep from bumping into me.

"What is it?" she asked.

I held up my left hand. Though my maimed hand was still mostly numb to conventional stimuli, it had never had any trouble sensing the subtle patterns of organized magical energy. I spread out my fingers as much as I could, trying to touch the largest possible area 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 hand slowly 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." I 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."

"Uh-huh," I said. "Discouraging your average prowler, supernatural or 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 react with my aura and go off."

"Can't you just take it apart?"

"Whoever did this was worried enough to invest a 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 then she got it. "And you'll scare them if you just walk through it like it wasn't there."

"Yeah," I said quietly. "They're frightened, Murph. I've got to be gentle, or they won't give me anything that can help them."

Murphy nodded and knocked on the door.

She rapped three times, and the doorknob was already turning on the third rap.

A small, prettily plump woman opened the door. She was even shorter than Murphy, mid-forties maybe, with blond hair and rosy, cherubic cheeks that looked used to smiling. She wore a lavender dress and carried a small dog, 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 started speaking, Murphy said, "Hello, my name is Sergeant Murphy, and I'm a detective with 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 before I got my mouth open, the little woman said, "Of course, we all know who you are, Mister Dresden." She put her fingers to her mouth. They were shaking a little. "Oh. 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 started wagging. "Heya, little dog."