“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t know. I’ve known Marcy for years.”
“You knew her years ago,” I corrected him with gentle emphasis.
Marcy rubbed one foot against the other calf, and stood looking down, her eyes on her feet. It looked like a habitual stance, social camouflage. “She’s right, Will,” she said in a quiet voice.
Will frowned at her. “How?”
“She should be suspicious of me, given the circumstances. I’ve been back in town for what? Two weeks? And something like this happens? I’d be worried, too.” She looked up at me, her expression uncertain. “I want to help, Sergeant Murphy,” she said. “What do we do?”
I stared at them both, thinking. Dammit, this was another one of those Dresden things. He could have pinched his nose for a second, then swept his gaze over them and reported whether or not they were who they said they were. Supernatural creatures are big on shapeshifting. They use it to get in close to their prey. In an attack like that, a mortal has the next-best thing to zero probability of escaping.
I knew. It had been done to me. The sense of chagrin and helplessness is terrible.
“To start with,” I said, “let me see if you can come in.”
Marcy frowned at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that if you’re a shapeshifter or something, you might not have an easy time coming over the threshold.”
“Christ, Sergeant,” Will began. “Of course she’s a shapeshifter. So am I.”
I glowered at them both. “If she’s who she says she is, she won’t have a problem,” I said.
Will sighed and looked at Marcy. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine,” the young woman said. “It’s smart to be careful.”
Marcy held her hands out to her sides, in plain sight, and stepped
into the house. “Good enough?”
Houses are surrounded by a barrier of energy. Dresden always called it the threshold. It’s all murky magic stuff to me, but the general guideline is that anything that’s too hideously supernatural can’t come in without being invited. A threshold will stop spirits, ghosts, some vampires (but not others), and will generally ward away things that intend to eat your face.
Not everything. Not hardly. But a lot of things.
“No,” I said, and put my gun away. “But it’s a start.” I nodded to a chair in the living room. “Sit down.”
She did, and she sat looking down at her hands, which were folded in her lap.
Will followed Marcy in and gave me a look that meant, in Martian, What the hell do you think you’re doing?
I ignored him.
“Marcy,” I said, “why didn’t you respond to Will when he tried to contact you earlier?”
“I tried,” she said. “I called back as soon as I got the message, but I didn’t have Will’s cell number. Only Georgia’s.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Um,” she said, “I just got back into town. And Georgia doesn’t need any stress. And he’s married. I mean, you don’t just go asking for a husband’s phone number. You know?”
Which was reasonable, put that way. I nodded, neither approving nor disapproving.
“I left messages on the answering machine at the apartment,” Marcy said. “It was all I could do.”
“And I checked the messages after I’d run your errands,” Will said. “I called her back and had her come over. She swept for scents, and then we came here.”
“Will,” I said, firmly, “please let me handle this?”
He clenched his jaw and subsided, leaning against a wall.
I turned back to where Marcy sat and continued towering over her, a posture of parental-style authority. “Tell me about your relationship to Georgia.”
“We’re friends,” Marcy said. “Close friends, really. I think of her as a close friend, I mean. She was very kind to me when Andi broke it off with me. And we were friends for years before that.”
I nodded. “Did Will explain what was going on?”
She nodded. “Georgia and Andi have been taken.”
“How do you know it was Andi with Georgia?”
“Because I was there,” Marcy said. “I mean, not last night, but the night before last. Will was out of town and we had a girls’ night.”
“Girls’ night?”
“We hung out and made fondue and watched movies and lied about how we all looked better now than when we first met. Well, except that Andi actually does.” She shook her head. “Um, anyway, we stayed up late talking, and Andi slept in the guest bed and I slept on the couch.” She glanced up at my eyes for the first time. “That was when we had the nightmares.”