last place he wanted to be. He felt too vulnerable there—and he worried that the way a wizard’s presence disrupted technology could hurt or kill someone on life support, or do harm to some innocent bystander.
But there was so much blood on the boat. If he was that badly hurt, he couldn’t have gone anywhere on his own power. And down here, anyone who had found him would have called emergency services.
And the blood trail led to the lake.
I shook my head several times. I didn’t want to believe it, but you can’t make fact into fiction, no matter how much denial you’ve got to draw upon.
Stallings sighed again. Then he said, “You’re on suspension, Murphy. And this is a crime scene.”
“Not until we know a crime’s been committed,” I said. “We don’t absolutely know anyone’s been hurt or killed. Right now, it’s just a mess.”
“God dammit,” he said, his voice weary. “You’re a civilian now, Karrin. Get away from the fucking scene. Before someone gets word to Rudolph about this and Infernal Affairs comes down here to toss your ass in jail.”
“On any other day, I would think you were talking sense,” I said.
“I don’t care what you think,” he said. “I care what you do. And what you’re going to do is turn around, walk over to your car, get in it, go home, and get a good night’s sleep. You look like a hundred miles of bad road. Through Hell.”
See, most women would have been a little put out by a remark like that. Especially if they were wearing slacks that flattered their hips and butt, with a darling red silk blouse and a matching silver necklace and two bracelets, studded with tiny sapphires, which they’d inherited from their grandmother. And more makeup than they usually wore in a week. And new perfume. And great shoes.
By any measure, that kind of remark was insulting. When you were dressed for a date, it was more so.
But Stallings wasn’t trying to piss me off. The insult was Martian, too, for something along the lines of I have so much regard for you that I went out of my way to create this insult so that we can have the fun of a mildly adversarial conversation. See how much I care?
“John,” I replied, using his first name, “you are a sphincter douche.”
Translation: I love you, too.
He gave me a quiet smile and nodded.
Men.
He was right. There was nothing I could do here.
I turned my back on the last place I’d seen Harry Dresden and walked back to my car.
IT HAD BEEN a long day, starting most of two days before, including a gunfight at the FBI building—which the news was still going insane about, especially after the office building bombing a couple of days before that—and a pitched battle at an ancient Mayan temple that ended in the utter destruction of the vampires of the Red Court.
And after that, things had gotten really dangerous.
I’d shown up to that ratty old boat where Harry was crashing, dressed in the outfit Stallings had insulted. Harry and I were supposed to go grab a few drinks and . . . and see what happened.
Instead, I’d found nothing but his blood.
I didn’t think I would sleep, but two days plus of physical and psychological stress made it inevitable. Nightmares came to haunt me, but they didn’t make much of an impression. I’d seen worse in the real world. I did cry, though. I remember that—waking up in the middle of the night from bad dreams that were old hat by now, sobbing my eyes out in pure reaction to the events of the past two days.
It happens. You feel overwhelmed, you cry, you feel better, and you go back to sleep.
If you don’t get it, don’t ask. It doesn’t really translate into Martian.
I WOKE UP to a firm knock at my front door. I got out of bed, my Sig in my hand, and flicked a quick glance out the window at the backyard. It was empty, and there was no one at the door that led into my kitchen. Only after I had checked my six o’clock did I go to the front door, glancing quickly out the window in the hall as I went.
I recognized the stout young man standing on the porch, and I relaxed somewhat. Since I slept in an oversized T-shirt, I grabbed a pair of sweats and hopped into them, then went to see the werewolf standing at