Proven Guilty (23 page)

There was a room available on the fifth floor. I paid an extra fee to allow Mouse to stay, and we got checked in.

There was no one else in the elevator, and we rode in a silence that became increasingly tense. I shifted my weight from side to side and fiddled with one of the two plastic cards the desk clerk had given us. I cleared my throat.

“So here we are,” I said. “Heading up to our hotel room.”

Murphy’s cheeks turned pink. “You are a pig, Dresden.”

“Hey, I didn’t put any innuendo into that. You did it yourself.”

She rolled her eyes, smiling a little.

I watched numbers change on the elevator panel. I coughed. “Yes, sir-ree. Alone together.”

“It’s a little weird,” she admitted.

“A little weird,” I agreed.

“Should it be?” she asked. “I mean, we’re just working together. We’ve done that before.”

“We haven’t done it in a hotel room.”

“Yes, we have,” Murphy said.

“But they all had corpses in them.”

“Ah. True.”

“No corpses this time,” I said.

“Heh,” Murphy said. “The night is young.”

Her reminder of the dangers before us put a bullet through the head of
that
conversation. Her smile vanished, and her face regained its usual color. We went the rest of the way in silence, until the elevator doors opened. Neither one of us moved to get out. It almost felt like there was some kind of invisible line drawn across the floor.

The silence stretched. The doors tried to close. Murphy mashed down on the Door Open button with her thumb.

“Harry,” she said finally, her voice very quiet, her blue eyes focused into distance. “I’ve been thinking about… you know. Us.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“How much thinking?”

She smiled a little. “I’m not sure, really. I don’t think I wanted to admit that… you know.”

“Things might change between us?”

“Yes.” She frowned at me. “I’m not sure this is something you would want.”

“Between the two of us,” I said, “I think I probably have more insight into that one.”

She frowned. “How do you know it’s what you want?”

“Last Halloween,” I said, “I wanted to murder Kincaid.”

Murphy glanced down as her cheeks turned pink. “Oh.”

“Not literally,” I said, then paused. “Well. I guess it was literally. But the urge died down a little.”

“I see,” she said.

“Are you and him… ?” I asked, leaving the question open.

“I saw him at New Year’s,” she said. “But we aren’t in anything deep. Neither of us want that. We’re friends. We enjoy the company. That’s all.

I frowned. “We’re friends too,” I said. “But I’ve never taken your pants off.”

“We’re different,” she said, her blush renewing. She gave me an oblique look from beneath pale eyelashes. “Is it something you want?”

My heart sped up a little. “Uh. Pants removal?”

She arched a brow and tilted her head, waiting for an answer.

“Murph, I haven’t been with a woman for…” I shook my head. “Look, you ask any guy if he wants to have sex and he’s going to say yes. Generally speaking. It’s in the union manual.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Including you?” she pressed.

“I’m a guy,” I said. “So yes.” I frowned, thinking about it. “And… and no.”

She smiled at me and nodded. “I know. You couldn’t do casual. You commit yourself too deeply. You care too much. We couldn’t have something light. You would never settle for that.”

She was probably right. I nodded.

“I don’t know if I could give you what you want, Harry.” Then she took a deep breath and said, “And there are other reasons. We work together.”

“I noticed.”

She didn’t quite smile. “What I mean is… I can’t let relationships come close to my job. It isn’t good for either.”

I said nothing.

“I’m a cop, Harry.”

My belly twisted a little as I realized the rejection in the words, and the lack of any room for compromise. “I know you are.”

“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.

Chapter Twenty-three

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.”

“Oh. Right.” I shook my head. “But this whole place is open territory. There’s no threshold to use to anchor anything heavier than a web. At least if I do that much, maybe I can get into position fast enough to directly intervene when the thing shows up again.”

“Things,” Bob corrected me. “Plural. Phages are like ants. First one shows up, then two, then a hundred.”

I exhaled. “Crap,” I said. “Maybe we can come at this from a different angle. Is there any way I can redirect them while they’re crossing over? Make it harder for them to get here?”

Bob’s eyelights brightened. “Maybe. Maybe, yes. You might be able to raise a veil over this whole place—from the other side.”

“Urk,” I said. “You’re saying I could hide this place from the phages, but only from the Nevernever?”

“Pretty much,” Bob said. “Even then, it would be a calculated risk.”

“How so?”

“It all depends on how they’re finding this place,” Bob said. “I mean, if these are just naturally arriving phages finding a hunting ground, a veil won’t stop them. It might slow them down, but it won’t stop them.”

“Let’s assume that it isn’t a coincidence,” I said.

“Okay. Assuming that, the next variable is finding out whether they’re being summoned or sent.”

I frowned. “There are things strong enough to send them through from the other side? I didn’t think that ever happened anymore. Hence the popularity of working through mortal summoners.”

“Oh, it’s doable,” Bob assured me. “It just takes a hell of a lot more juice to open the way to the mortal world from the other side.”

I frowned. “How much power are we talking?”

“Big,” Bob assured me. “Like the Erlking, or an archangel, or one of the old gods.”

I got a shivery feeling in my stomach. “A Faerie Queen?”

“Oh, sure. I guess so.” He frowned. “You think this is Faerie work?”

“Something is definitely screwy in elfland,” I said. “More so than normal, I mean.”

Bob made a gulping sound. “Oh. We’re not going to go visiting the faeries or anything, are we?”

“Not if I can help it,” I said. “I wouldn’t take you with me, if it came to that.”

“Oh,” he sighed. “Good.”

“One of these days, you’re gonna have to tell me what you did to make Mab want to kill you.”

“Yeah, sure,” Bob said, in that tone of voice you use while sweeping things under the rug. “But we should also consider the third possibility.”

“A summoner,” I said. “Given that someone actually threw a ward in my way the last time the phage showed up, that seems to be the most likely of the three.”

“I think so, too,” Bob said. “In which case, you’re in trouble.”

I grunted, and started unpacking candles, matches, and my old army-surplus knife. “Why?”