Michael drew in a sharp breath.

"He would have walked away otherwise," I said. "Run out the clock, and we'd never have found him in time. It was the only way. It was almost like Shiro knew. Even back then."

"G.o.d's blood, Harry," Michael said. He pressed a hand to his stomach. "I'm fairly sure that gambling is a sin. And even if it isn't, this this probably should be." probably should be."

"I'm going to go get that little girl, Michael," I said. "Whatever it takes."

He rose, frowning, and buckled his sword belt around his hips.

I held up my right hand. "Are you with me?"

Michael's palm smacked solidly into mine, and he hauled me to my feet.

Chapter Thirty-nine.

A s war councils go, our meeting was fast and dirty. It had to be. s war councils go, our meeting was fast and dirty. It had to be.

Afterward I tracked down Murphy. She'd gone back to Charity's sewing room to check on Kincaid.

I stood quietly in the door for a minute. There wasn't much room to be had in there. It was piled high with plastic storage boxes filled with fabric and craft materials. There was a sewing machine on a table, a chair, the bed, and just enough floor s.p.a.ce to let you get to them. I'd been laid up in this room before. It was a comforting sort of place, awash in softness and color, and it smelled like detergent and fabric softener.

Kincaid looked like the Mummy's stunt double. He had an IV in his arm, and there was a unit of blood suspended from a small metal stand beside his bed-courtesy of Marcone's rogue medical facilities, I supposed.

Murphy sat beside the bed, looking worried. I'd seen the expression on her face before, when I'd been the one lying horizontal. I expected to feel a surge of jealousy, but it didn't happen. I just felt bad for Murph.

"How is he?" I asked her.

"This is his third unit of blood," Murphy said. "His color's better. His breathing is steadier. But he needs a doctor. Maybe we should call b.u.t.ters."

"If we do, he's just going to look at us, do his McCoy impersonation, and tell you, 'Dammit, Murphy. I'm a medical examiner, not a pasta chef.'"

Murphy choked out a little sound that was as much sob as chuckle.

I stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. "Michael says he's going to make it."

She sat stiffly underneath my hand. "He isn't a doctor."

"But he has very good contacts."

Kincaid shuddered, and his breath rasped harshly for several seconds.

Murphy's shoulder went steely with tension.

The wounded man's breathing steadied again.

"Hey," I said quietly. "Easy."

She shook her head. "I hate this."

"He's tougher than you or me," I said quietly.

"That's not what I mean."

I remained silent, waiting for her to speak.

"I hate feeling feeling like this. I'm f.u.c.king terrified, and I like this. I'm f.u.c.king terrified, and I hate hate it." The muscles in her jaw tensed. "This is why I don't want to get involved anymore. It hurts too much." it." The muscles in her jaw tensed. "This is why I don't want to get involved anymore. It hurts too much."

I squeezed her shoulder gently. "Involved, huh?"

"No," she said. Then she shook her head. "Yes. I don't know. It's complicated, Harry."

"Caring about someone isn't complicated," I said. "It isn't easy easy. But it isn't complicated, either. Kinda like lifting the engine block out of a car."

She gave me an oblique glance. "Leave it to a man to describe intimate relationships in terms of automotive mechanics."

"Yeah. I was kinda proud of that one, myself."

She huffed out a quiet breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and leaned her cheek down onto my hand. "The stupid part," she said, "is that he isn't interested in...in getting serious. We get along. We have fun together. For him, that's enough. And it's so stupid stupid for me to get hung up on him." for me to get hung up on him."

I didn't think it was all that stupid. Murph didn't want to get too close, let herself be too vulnerable. Kincaid didn't want that kind of relationship either-which made him safe. It made it all right for her to care.

It also explained why she and I had never gotten anywhere.

In the event that you haven't figured it out, I'm not the kind of person to be casually involved in much of anything.

I couldn't fit any of that into words, though. So I just leaned down and kissed the top of her head gently.

She shivered. Her tears made wet, cool spots on the back of my hand. I knelt. It put my head more or less on level with hers, where she sat beside the bed. I put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against me. I still didn't say anything. For Murph, that would be too much like I was actually in the room, seeing her cry. So she pretended that she wasn't crying and I pretended that I didn't notice.

She didn't cry for long. A couple of minutes. Then her breathing steadied, and I could feel her a.s.serting control again. A minute more and she sat up and away from me. I let her.

"They said you were under the influence," she said, her tone calmer, more businesslike. "That someone had done something to your head. Your apprentice said that. But Michael didn't want to say anything in front of the other wizard, I could tell. And no one wanted to say anything in front of me."

"Secrets get to be a habit," I said quietly. "And Molly was right."

Murphy nodded. "She said that we should listen for the first words out of your mouth when you woke up. That if something had messed with your mind, your subconscious might be able to communicate that way, while you were on the edge of sleep. And you told us to listen to her."

I thought about it and pursed my lips. "Huh. I did. Guess I'm smarter than I thought."

"They shouldn't have suspected you," Murphy said. "I'm a paranoid b.i.t.c.h, and I gave up suspecting you a long time ago."

"They had a good reason," I said. I took a slow breath. It was hard, but I forced the words out. "Nicodemus threw one of those coins at Michael's kid. I grabbed it before the kid could. And I had a photocopy of a Fallen angel living in my head for several years, trying to talk me into picking up the coin and letting the rest of it into me."

Murphy glanced obliquely at me. "You mean...you could have become one of those things?"

"Yeah," I said. "Couple of times, it was close."

"Is it still...Is that what...?"

I shook my head. "It's gone now. She's gone now. I guess the whole time she was trying to change me, I was trying to change her right back. And in the Raith Deeps last year, she took a psychic bullet for me-at the very end, after everyone else had gotten out." I shrugged. "I had...We'd sort of become friends, Murph. I'd gotten used to having her around." I glanced at her and gave her a faint smile. "Crazy, huh? Get all broken up over what was essentially my imaginary friend."

Her fingers found my hand and squeezed tight once. "We're all imaginary friends to one another, Harry." She sat with me for a moment, and then gave me a shrewd glance. "You never told Michael the details."

I shook my head. "I don't know why."

"I do," she said. "You remember when Kravos stuck his fingers in my brain?"

I shuddered. He'd been impersonating me when he did it. "Yeah."

"You said it caused some kind of damage. What did you call it?"

"Psychic trauma," I said. "Same thing happens when a loved one dies, during big emotional tragedies, that kind of thing. Takes a while to get over it."

"But you do get over it," Murph said. "Dresden, it seems to me that you'd lock yourself up pretty tight if someone took a regular bullet for you with a regular body. Much less if you were under psychic attack and this imaginary friend died right inside your own brain. Something like that happens, shouldn't you have expected to be a basket case, at least for a little while?"

I frowned, staring down at my hands. "I never even considered that."

She snorted gently. "There's a surprise. Dresden forgets that he's not invincible."

She had a point there.

"This plan of yours," she said. "Do you really think it's going to work?"

"I think I've got to try it." I took a deep breath. "I don't think you should be involved in this one, Murph. The Denarians have human followers. Fanatic ones."

"You think we're going to have to kill some of them," Murphy said.

"I think we probably won't have much choice," I said. "Besides that, I wouldn't put it past them to send someone here for spite, win or lose."

Murphy glanced up at me rather sharply.

I shrugged. "They know that Michael and Sanya and I are going to be out there. They'll know that there will be someone here, unprotected. Whether or not they get the coins, Nicodemus might send someone here to finish off the wounded."

Murphy stared at me for a second, then looked back at Kincaid. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said without emphasis.

"I'm not playing big brother with you, Karrin," I replied. "But we are dealing with some very bad people. Molly's staying with Kincaid. I'm leaving Mouse here too. I'd appreciate it if someone with a little more experience was here to give the kid some direction, if it was needed."

She scowled at Kincaid. Then she said, "Trying to guilt me into playing worried girlfriend, domestic defender, and surrogate mother figure, eh?"

"I figured it would work better than telling you to shut up and get into the kitchen."

She took a deep breath, studying the sleeping man. Then she reached out and touched his hand. She stood and faced me. "No. I'm coming with you."

I grunted, rising. "You sure?"

"The girl is important to him," Murphy said. "More important to him than anything has been for a long time, Harry. He'd die to protect her. If he was conscious, he'd be demanding to go with you. But he can't do that. So I'll have to do it for him."

"Could be real messy, Murph."

She nodded. "I'll worry about that after the girl is safe."

There was a clock ticking quietly on the wall. "The meeting's in an hour."

Murphy nodded and reached for her coat. The tears were gone, and there was no evidence of them in the lines of her face. "You'd better excuse me, then. If we're going to have an evening out, I need to change into something more comfortable."

"I never tell a lady how to accessorize."

Going forth to do battle with the forces of darkness is one thing. Doing it in a pair of borrowed sweatpants and an ill-fitting T-shirt is something else entirely. Fortunately, Molly had been thoughtful enough to drop my own clothes into the washer, bless her heart. I could forgive her for the pot roast.

In the laundry room I had skinned out of Michael's clothes and was in the act of pulling up my jeans when Luccio opened the door and leaned in, her expression excited. "Dresden. I think I know wh-Oh."

I jerked my jeans the rest of the way up and closed them as hurriedly as I could without causing any undue discomfort. "Oh. Um. Excuse me," I said.

Luccio smiled, the dimples in her cheeks making her look not much older than Molly. She didn't blush. Instead she folded her arms and leaned one shoulder on the door frame, her dark eyes taking me in with evident pleasure. "Oh, not at all, Dresden. Not at all."

I paused and returned her look for a moment. "Aren't you supposed to be embarra.s.sed, apologize, and quietly leave?"

Her smile widened lazily, and she shrugged a shoulder. "When I was a girl, perhaps. But even then I had difficulty forcing myself to act awkward when looking at something that pleased me." She tilted her head and moved toward me. She reached out and rested her fingertips very lightly against a scar on my upper arm. She traced its outline and glanced up at me, lifting an eyebrow.

"Bullet wound," I said. "FBI werewolves."

She nodded. Then her fingers touched the hollow of my throat and slid slowly down over my chest and belly in a straight line. A shuddering sensation of heat fluttered through my skin in the wake of her fingertips. She looked up at me again.

"Hook knife," I said. "Sorcerer tried to filet me at the Field Museum."

Her touch trailed down my bare arms, lingering on my forearms, near my wrists, avoiding the red, scalded skin around my left wrist.

"Thorn manacles," I said. "From when Madrigal Raith tried to sell me on eBay."

She lifted my scarred left hand between hers, fingers stroking over the maimed flesh. These days I could move it pretty well, most of the time, and it didn't look like some kind of hideous, half-melted wax image of a hand anymore, but it still wasn't pretty. "A scourge of Black Court vampires had a Renfield that got creative. Had a homemade flamethrower."

She shook her head. "I know men centuries older than you who have not collected so many scars."

"Maybe they lived that long because they were smart enough not to get them," I said.

She flashed me that grin again. At close range it was devastating, and her eyes looked even darker.

"Anastasia," I said quietly, "in a few minutes we're going to go do something that might get us killed."