Jim Butcher - Proven Guilty

“I serve the law.”

“You do,” I said. “You always have.”

“I can’t walk away from it. I won’t walk away from it.”

“I know that too.”

“And… we’re so different. Our worlds.”

“Not really,” I said. “We sort of hang around in the same one, most of the time.”

“That’s work,” she said quietly. “My work isn’t everything about me. Or it shouldn’t be. I’ve tried a relationship built on having that in common.”

“Rick,” I said.

She nodded. Pain flickered in her eyes. I never would have seen that a few years before. But I’d seen Murphy in good times and bad-mostly bad. She’d never say it, never want me to say anything about it, but I knew that her failed marriages had wounded her more deeply than she would ever admit. In a way, I suspected that they explained some of her professional drive and ambition. She was determined to make the career work. Something had to.

And maybe she’d been hurt even more deeply than that. Maybe badly enough that she wouldn’t want to leave herself open to it again. Long-term relationships have the potential for long-term pain. Maybe she didn’t want to go through it again.

“What if you weren’t a cop?”

She smiled faintly. “What if you weren’t a wizard?”

“Touche. But indulge me.”

She tilted her head and studied me for a minute. Then she said, “What happens when Susan comes back?”

I shook my head. “She isn’t.”

Her tone turned dry. “Indulge me.”

I frowned. “I don’t know,” I said quietly. “We decided to break it off. And… I suspect we’d see a lot of things very differently now.”

“But if she wanted to try again?” Murphy asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Let’s say we get together,” Murphy said. “How many kids do you want?”

I blinked. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“I don’t…” I blinked a few more times. “I hadn’t really thought about it.” So I thought about it for a second. I thought about the merry chaos of the Carpenter household. God, I’d have given anything for that when I was little.

But any child of mine would inherit more than my eyes and killer chin. There were a lot of people who didn’t think much of me. A lot of not-people thought that way, too. Any child of mine would be bound to inherit some of my enemies, and worse, maybe some of my allies. My own mother had left me a legacy of perpetual suspicion and doubt, and nasty little surprises that occasionally popped out of the hoary past.

Murphy watched me, blue eyes steady and serious. “It’s a big question,” she said quietly.

I nodded, slowly. “Maybe you’re thinking about this too much, Murph,” I said. “Logic and reason and planning for the future. What’s in your heart doesn’t need that.”

“I used to think that, too.” She shook her head. “I was wrong. Love isn’t all you need. And I just don’t see us together, Harry. You’re dear to me. I couldn’t ask for a kinder friend. I’d walk through fire for you.”

“You already did,” I said.

“But I don’t think I could be the kind of lover you want. We wouldn’t go together.”

“Why not?”

“At the end of the day,” she said quietly, “we’re too different. You’re going to live for a long time, if you don’t get killed. Centuries. I’m going to be around another forty, fifty years at the most.”

“Yeah,” I said. It was one of those things I tried really hard not to dwell on.

She said, even more quietly, “I don’t know if I’ll get serious with a man again. But if I do… I want it to be someone who will build a family with me. Grow old with me.” She reached up and touched the side of my face with warm fingers. “You’re a good man, Harry. But you couldn’t be what I need, either.”

Murphy took her thumb from the button and left the elevator.

I didn’t follow her right away.

She didn’t look back.

Stab.

Twist.

God, I love being a wizard.

The room was typical of my usual hotel experience: clean, plain, and empty. I made sure the blinds were pulled, looked around, and shoved the small round table at one side of the room over against the wall to leave me some open space in the middle of the floor. I slung my backpack down on the bed.

“Need anything?” Murphy asked. She stood in the doorway to the room. She didn’t want to come in.

“Think I have it all. Just need some quiet to get it set up.” There was no reason not to give Murphy a way out of the awkwardness the conversation had brought on. “There’s something I’m curious about. Maybe you could check it out.”

“Pell’s theater,” Murphy guessed. I could hear some relief in her voice.

“Yes. Maybe you could cruise by it and see what’s to be seen.”

She frowned. “Think there might be something in there?”

“I don’t know enough to think anything yet, but it’s possible,” I said. “You get a bad feeling about anything, don’t hang around. Just vamoose.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I already planned to do that.” She went to the door. “Shouldn’t take me long. I’ll contact you in half an hour, let’s say?”

“Sure,” I said. Neither one of us voiced what we both were thinking- that if Murphy missed the check-in, she’d probably be dead, or dying, or worse. “Half an hour.”

She nodded and left, shutting the door behind her. Mouse went over to the door, sniffed at it for a moment, then walked in a little circle three times and settled down on the floor to sleep. I frowned down at the carpet and opened my backpack. Chalk wouldn’t do for a circle, not on carpet like that. I’d have to go with the old standby of fine, white sand. The maids would doubtless find it annoying to clean up, but life could be hard sometimes. I pulled out a glass bottle of specially prepared sand and put it on the table, along with the main blob of Play-Doh and Bob the skull.

Orange lights kindled in the skull’s eye sockets. “Can I talk now?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You been listening to things?”

“Yeah,” Bob said, depressed. “You are never going to get laid.”

I glared at the skull.

“I’m just sayin‘,” he said, voice defensive. “It isn’t my fault, Harry. She’d probably bang you if you didn’t take it so godawful seriously.”

“The subject. Change it,” I suggested in a flat voice. “We’re working now.”

“Right,” Bob said. “So you’re planning on a standard detection web-ward for the building?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“It isn’t going to be very helpful,” Bob said. “I mean, by the time something manifests enough to set off your web, it’s going to be all the way into the real world. While you’re running for the stairs, it’s already going to be tearing into somebody.”

“It isn’t perfect,” I said. “But it’s all I’ve got. Unless you have a better idea?”

“The thing about having several centuries of experience and knowledge at my disposal is that it doesn’t do me any good unless I know what it is you want me to help you fight,” Bob said. “So far, all you know is that you’ve got an inbound phobophage.”

“That’s not specific enough?”

“No!” Bob said. “I can think of about two hundred different kinds of phobophages off the top of my head, and I could probably come up with two hundred more if I took a minute to think about it.”

“That many of them who can do what this thing did? Take a solid form and attack?”

Bob blinked his eyes at me as though he thought me very thick. “Believe it or not, the old ‘take the form of the victim’s worst fear’ routine is pretty much the most common move in the phobophage handbook.”