"I am tired," she replied. "Tired of being looked at like I'm some sort of nutcase. Even Carmichael, my own partner, thinks I've gone over the edge in all of this."
"The rest of the station think so too?" I asked her.
"Most of them just scowl and spin their index fingers around their temples when they think I'm not looking, and file my reports without ever reading them. The rest are the ones who have run into something spooky out there, and they're scared shitless. They don't want to believe in anything they didn't see on Mister Science when they were kids."
"How about you?"
"Me?" Murphy smiled, a curving of her lips that was a vibrantly feminine expression, making her look entirely too pretty to be such a hardass. "The world's falling apart at the seams, Harry. I guess I just think people are pretty arrogant to believe we've learned everything there is to know in the past century or so. What the hell. I can buy that we're just now starting to see the things around us in the dark again. It appeals to the cynic in me."
"I wish everyone thought like you do," I said. "It would cut down on my crank calls."
She continued to smile at me, impish. "But could you imagine a world where all the radio stations played ABBA?"
We shared a laugh. God, that room needed a laugh.
"Hey, Harry," Murphy said, grinning. I could see the wheels spinning in her head.
"Yeah?"
"What you said about being able to figure out how the killer did this. About how you're not sure you can do it."
"Yeah?"
"I know it's bullshit. Why did you lie to me about it?"
I stiffened. Christ, she was good. Or maybe I'm just not much of a liar. "Look, Murph," I said. "There's some things you just don't do."
"Sometimes I don't want to get into the head of the slime I go after, either. But you do what needs to be done to finish the job. I know what you mean, Harry."
"No," I said, shortly. "You don't know." And she didn't. She didn't know about my past, or the White Council, or the Doom of Damocles hanging over my head. Most days, I could pretend I didn't know about it, either.
All the Council needed now was an excuse, just an excuse, to find me guilty of violating one of the Seven Laws of Magic, and the Doom would drop. If I started putting together a recipe for a murder spell, and they found out about it, that might be all the excuse they needed.
"Murph," I told her. "I can't try figuring this spell out. I can't go putting together the things I'd need to do it. You just don't understand."
She glared at me, without looking at my eyes. I hadn't ever met anyone else who could pull that one off. "Oh, I understand. I understand that I've got a killer loose that I can't catch in the act. I understand that you know something that can help, or you can at least find out something. And I understand that if you dry up on me now, I'm tearing your card out of the department Rolodex and tossing it in the trash."
Son of a bitch. My consulting for the department paid a lot of my bills. Okay, most of my bills. I could sympathize with her, I supposed. If I was operating in the dark like she was, I'd be nervous as hell, too. Murphy didn't know anything about spells or rituals or talismans, but she knew human hatred and violence all too well.
It wasn't as though I was actually going to be doing any black magic, I told myself. I was just going to be figuring out how it was done. There was a difference. I was helping the police in an investigation, nothing more. Maybe the White Council would understand that.
Yeah, right. And maybe one of these days I'd go to an art museum and become well rounded.
Murphy set the hook a second later. She looked up at my eyes for a daring second before she turned away, her face tired and honest and proud. "I need to know everything you can tell me, Harry. Please."
Classic lady in distress. For one of those liberated, professional women, she knew exactly how to jerk my old-fashioned chains around.
I gritted my teeth. "Fine," I said. "Fine. I'll start on it tonight." Hoo boy. The White Council was going to love this one. I'd just