by Jim Butcher
I stepped across her threshold. Something tugged at me as I did, an intangible, invisible energy. It slowed me down a little, and I had to make an effort to push through it. That’s what a threshold is like. One like it surrounds every home, a field of energy that keeps out unwanted magical forces. Some places have more of a threshold than others. My apartment, for example, didn’t have much of a threshold—it’s a bachelor pad, and whatever domestic energy is responsible for such things doesn’t seem to settle down as well in rental spaces and lone dwellings. Murphy’s house had a heavy field surrounding it. It had a life of its own; it had history. It was a home, not just a place to live.
I crossed her threshold uninvited, and I left a lot of my power at the door as I did. I would have to really push to make even the simplest of spells work within. I stepped inside and spread my hands. “Do I pass inspection?”
Murphy didn’t say anything. She crossed the room and put her gun back into its holster, setting it down on an end table.
Murphy’s place was . . . dare I say it, cute. The room was done in soft yellows and greens. And there were ruffles. The curtains had ruffles, and the couch had more, plus those little knitted things (aren’t they called doilies?) were draped over the arms of the two recliners, the couch, the coffee table, and just about every other surface that seemed capable of supporting lacy bits of froo-fra. They looked old and beautiful and well cared for. I was betting Murphy’s grandma had picked them out.
Murphy’s own decorating was limited to the gun-cleaning kit sitting on the end table beside the holster for her automatic and a wooden rack over the fireplace that bore a pair of Japanese swords, long and short, one over the other. That was the Murphy I knew and loved. Practical violence ready at hand. Next to the swords was a small row of photographs in holders—maybe her family. A thick picture album with what looked like a real leather cover sat open on the coffee table, next to a prescription bottle and a decanter of some kind of liquor—gin? The decanter was half empty. The glass next to it was completely empty.
I watched her settle down in the corner of the couch in her oversized bathrobe, her expression remote. She didn’t look at me. I got more worried by the moment. Murphy wasn’t acting like Murphy. She’d never passed up a chance to trade banter with me. I’d never seen her this silent and withdrawn.
Dammit, just when I needed some quick and decisive help. Something was wrong with Murphy, and I hardly had time to play dime-store psychologist, trying to help her. I needed whatever information she could get me. I also needed to help her with whatever it was that had hurt her so badly. I was fairly sure I wouldn’t be able to do either if I didn’t get her talking.
“Nice place, Murph,” I told her. “I haven’t seen it before.”
She twitched one shoulder in what might have been a shrug.
I frowned. “You know, if conversation is too much for you we could play charades. I’ll go first.” I held up my hand with my fingers spread. Murphy didn’t say anything, so I provided her end of the dialogue. “Five words.” I tugged on my ear. “Sounds like . . . What Is Wrong with You?”
She shook her head. I saw her eyes flicker toward the album.
I leaned forward and turned the album toward me. It had been opened on a cluster of wedding pictures. The girl in them must have been Murphy, back when. She had longer, sunnier hair and a kind of adolescent slenderness that showed around her neck and wrists. She wore a white wedding gown, and stood next to a tuxedo-clad man who had to have been ten years older than she was. In other pictures she was shoving cake into his mouth, drinking through linked arms, the usual wedding fare. He had carried her to the getaway car, and the photo-Murphy’s face had been caught in a moment of laughter and joy.
“First husband?” I asked.
That got through to her. She glanced up at me for just a second. Then nodded.
“You were a kid in this. Maybe eighteen?”
She shook her head.
“Seventeen?”
She nodded. At least I was getting some kind of response out of her.
“How long were you married to him?”
Silence.
I frowned. “Murph, I’m not like a genius about this stuff or anything. But if you’re feeling guilty about something, maybe you’re being a little hard on yourself.”
Without a word, she leaned forward and picked up the album, moving it aside to reveal a copy of the Tribune. It had been folded open to the obituaries page. She picked it up and handed it to me.
I read the first one out loud. “Gregory Taggart, age forty-three, died last night after a long bout with cancer . . .” I paused and looked at the photograph of the deceased and then at Murphy’s album. It was the same man, give or take several years of wear and tear. I winced and lowered the paper. “Oh, God, Murph. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She blinked her eyes several times. Her voice came out thready, quiet. “He didn’t even tell me that he was sick.”
Talk about your nasty surprises. “Murph, look. I’m sure that . . . that things will work out. I know how you’re hurting, how you must feel, but—”
“Do you?” she said, still very quiet. “Do you know how I feel? Did you lose your first love?”
I sat quietly for a full minute before I said, “Yeah. I did.”
“What was her name?”
It hurt to think the name, much less to say it. But if it helped me get through to Murphy, I couldn’t afford to be touchy. “Elaine. We were . . . both of us were orphans. We got adopted by the same man when we were ten.”
Murphy blinked and looked up at me. “She was your sister?”
“I don’t have any relatives. We were both adopted by the same guy, that’s all. We lived together, drove one another nuts, hit puberty together. Do the math.”
She nodded. “How long were you together?”
“Oh. Until we were about sixteen.”
“What happened? How did she . . .”
I shrugged. “My adoptive father tried to get me into black magic. Human sacrifice.”
Murphy frowned. “He was a wizard?”
I nodded. “Strong one. So was she.”
“Didn’t he try to get Elaine, too?”
“Did get her,” I said. “She was helping him.”
“What happened?” she asked quietly.
I tried to keep my voice even and calm, but I wasn’t sure how well I managed it. “I ran away. He sent a demon after me. I beat it, then went back to save Elaine. She hit me with a binding spell when I wasn’t looking, and he tried a spell that would break into my head. Make me do what he wanted. I slipped out of the spell Elaine had on me and took on Justin. I got lucky. He lost. Everything burned.”
Murphy swallowed. “What happened to Elaine?”
“Burned,” I said quietly, my throat tightening. “She’s dead.”
“God, Harry.” Murphy was quiet for a moment. “Greg left me. We tried to talk a few times, but it always ended in a fight.” Her eyes welled up with tears. “Dammit, I should have at least gotten to tell him good-bye.”
I put the paper back on the table and closed the album, studiously not looking at Murphy. I knew she wouldn’t want me to see her crying. She inhaled sharply. “I’m sorry, Harry,” she said. “I’m flaking out on you here. I shouldn’t. I don’t know why this is getting to me so hard.”
I glanced at the booze and the pills on the table. “It’s okay. Everyone has an off day sometimes.”
“I can’t afford it.” She drew the bathrobe a little closer around herself and said, “Sorry, Harry. About the gun.” Her words sounded heavy, maybe a little slurred. “I had to be sure it was really you.”
“I understand,” I said.
She looked at me and something like gratitude touched her eyes. She got up from the couch abruptly and walked down a hallway, out of the living room, and said over her shoulder, “Let me put something else on.”
“Sure, okay,” I said after her, frowning. I leaned over to the table and pi
cked up the prescription bottle behind the booze, next to the empty tumbler. A medium-sized dose of Valium. No wonder Murphy had been slurring her words. Valium and gin. Hell’s bells.
I was still holding the pills when she came back in, wearing baggy shorts and a T-shirt. She’d raked a brush through her hair and splashed water on her face, so that I could barely tell that she’d been crying. She stopped short and looked at me. I didn’t say anything. She chewed on her lip.
“Murph,” I said, finally, “Are you okay? Is there . . . I mean, do you need—”
“Relax, Dresden,” she said, folding her arms. “I’m not suicidal.”
“Funny you say that. Mixing drinks with drugs is a great way to get it done.”
She walked over to me, jerked the pill bottle out of my hands, and picked up the bottle of booze. “It isn’t any of your business,” she said. She walked into the kitchen, dropped things off, and came back out again. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
“Murph, I’ve never seen you with a drink in your life. And Valium? It makes me worry about you.”
“Dresden, if you came over here to lecture me, you can leave right now.”
I shoved my fingers through my shaggy hair. “Karrin, I swear I’m not lecturing. I’m just trying to understand.”
She looked away from me for a minute, one foot rubbing at the opposite calf. It hit me how small she looked. How frail. Her eyes were not only weary, I saw now. They were haunted. I walked over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. Her skin was warm underneath the cotton of her T-shirt. “Talk to me, Murph. Please.”
She pulled her shoulder out from under my hand. “It isn’t a big deal. It’s the only way I can get any sleep.”
“What do you mean?”
She took a deep breath. “I mean, I can’t sleep without help. The drinks didn’t help. The drugs didn’t, either. I have to use both or I won’t get any rest.”
“I still don’t get it. Why can’t you sleep? Is it because of Greg?”
Murphy shook her head, then moved over to the couch, away from me, and curled up in the corner of it, clasping her hands over her knees. “I’ve been having nightmares. Night terrors, the doctors say. They say it’s different from just bad dreams.”
I felt my cheek twitch with tension. “And you can’t stay asleep?”
She shook her head. “I wake myself up screaming.” I saw her clench her fists. “God dammit, Dresden. There’s no reason for it. I shouldn’t get rattled by a few bad dreams. I shouldn’t fall to pieces hearing about a man I haven’t spoken to in years. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.”
I closed my eyes. “You’re dreaming about last year, aren’t you? About what Kravos did to you.”
She shivered at the mention of the name and nodded. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it for a long time. Trying to figure out what I did wrong. Why he was able to get to me.”
I ached inside. “Murph, there wasn’t anything you could have done.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” she said, her voice quiet. “I couldn’t have known that it wasn’t you. I couldn’t have stopped him even if I had. I couldn’t have done anything to defend myself. To stop wh-what he did to me, once he was inside my head.” Her eyes clouded with tears, but she blinked them away, her jaw setting. “There wasn’t anything I could have done. That’s what scares me, Harry. That’s why I’m afraid.”
“Murph, he’s dead. He’s dead and gone. We watched them put him in the ground.”
Murphy snarled, “I know that. I know it, Harry. I know he’s gone, I know he can’t hurt me anymore, I know he’s never going to hurt anyone again.” She looked up at me for a moment, chancing a look at my eyes. Hers were clouded with tears. “But I still have the dreams. I know it, but it doesn’t make any difference.”
God. Poor Murphy. She’d taken a spiritual mauling before I’d shown up to save her. The thing that attacked her had been a spirit being, and it had torn her apart on the inside without leaving a mark on her skin. In a way, she’d been raped. All of her power had been taken away, and she’d been used for the amusement of another. No wonder it had left her with scars. Adding an unpleasant shock of bad news had been like tossing a spark onto a pile of tinder soaked in jet fuel.
“Harry,” she continued, her voice quiet, soft, “you know me. God, I’m not a whiner. I hate that. But what that thing did to me. The things it made me see. Made me feel.” She looked up at me, pain in the lines at the corners of her eyes, which threatened tears. “It won’t go away. I try to leave it behind me, but it won’t go. And it’s eating up every part of my life.”
She turned away, grabbing irritably at a box of tissues. I walked over to the fireplace and studied the swords on the mantel, so she wouldn’t feel my eyes on her.
After a moment she spoke, her tone changing, growing more focused. “What are you doing here so late?”
I turned back to face her. “I need a favor. Information.” I passed over the envelope Mab had given me. Murphy opened it, looked at the pair of pictures, and frowned.
“These are shots from the report of Ronald Reuel’s death. How did you get them?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “A client gave them to me. I don’t know where she got them.”
She rubbed her eyes and asked, “What did she want from you?”
“She wants me to find the person who killed him.”
Murphy shook her head. “I thought this was an accidental death.”
“I hear it isn’t.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
I sighed. “A magic faerie told me.”
That got me a suspicious glare, which dissolved into a frown. “God, you’re being literal, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
Murphy shook her head, a tired smile at the corners of her mouth. “How can I help?”
“I’d like to look at the file on Ronald Reuel’s death. I can’t look at the scene, but maybe CPD caught something they didn’t know was a clue. It would give me a place to start, at least.”
Murphy nodded without looking at me. “All right. One condition.”
“Sure. What?”
“If this is a murder, you bring me in on it.”
“Murph,” I protested, “come on. I don’t want to pull you into anything that—”
“Dammit, Harry,” Murphy snapped, “if someone’s killing people in Chicago, I’m going to deal with them. It’s my job. What’s been happening to me doesn’t change that.”
“It’s your job to stop the bad guys,” I said. “But this might not be a guy. Maybe not even human. I just think you’d be safer if—”
“Fuck safe,” Murphy muttered. “My job, Harry. If you turn up a killing, you will bring me in.”
I hesitated, trying not to let my frustration show. I didn’t want Murphy involved with Mab and company. Murphy had earned too many scars already. The faeries had a way of insinuating themselves into your life. I didn’t want Murphy exposed to that, especially as vulnerable as she was.
But at the same time, I couldn’t lie to her. I owed her a lot more than that.
Bottom line, Murphy had been hurt. She was afraid, and if she didn’t force herself to face that fear, it might swallow her whole. She knew it. As terrified as she was, she knew that she had to keep going or she would never recover.
As much as I wanted to keep her safe, especially now, it wouldn’t help her. Not in the long run. In a sense, her life was at stake.
“Deal,” I said quietly.
She nodded and rose. “Stay out here. I need to get on the computer, see what I can pull up for you.”
“I can wait if it’s better.”
She shook her head. “I’ve already taken the Valium. If I wait any longer I’ll be too zonked to think straight. Just sit down. Have a drink. Try not to blow up anything.” She padded out of the room on silent feet.
I sat down in one of the armchairs, stretched out my legs, let my head fall forward, and dropped into a light doze. It had
been a long day, and it looked like it was just going to get longer. I woke up when Murphy came back into the room, her eyes heavy. She had a manila folder with her. “Okay,” she said, “this is everything I could print out. The pictures aren’t as clear as they could be, but they aren’t horrible.”
I sat up, took the folder from her and opened it. Murphy sat down in an armchair, facing me, her legs tucked beneath her. I started going over the details in the folder, though my brain felt like some kind of gelatin dessert topped with mush.
“What happened to your hand?” she asked.
“Magic faerie,” I said. “Magic faerie with a letter opener.”
“It doesn’t look good. The dressing isn’t right either. You have anyone look at it?”
I shook my head. “No time.”
“Harry, you idiot.” She got up, disappeared into the kitchen, and came back out with a first aid kit. I decided not to argue with her. She pulled up a chair from the kitchen next to mine, and rested my arm in her lap.
“I’m trying to read here, Murph.”
“You’re still bleeding. Puncture wounds will ooze forever if you don’t keep them covered.”
“Yeah, I tried to explain that, but they made me take the bandage off anyway.”
“Who did?”
“Long story. So the security guard on the building didn’t see anyone come in?”
She peeled off the bandage with brisk motions. It hurt. She fished out some disinfectant. “Cameras didn’t pick up anything, either, and there aren’t any bursts of static to indicate someone using magic. I checked.”
I whistled. “Not bad, Murph.”
“Yeah, sometimes I use my head instead of my gun. This will hurt.”
She sprayed disinfectant liberally on my hand. It stung.
“Ow!”
“Wimp.”
“Any other ways in and out of the building?”
“Not unless they could fly and walk through walls. The other doors are all fire exits, with alarms that would trip if someone opened them.”
I kept paging through the file. “ ‘Broken neck due to fall,’ it says. They found him at the bottom of the stairs.”