FIC: Head Case (2/4) [The Dresden Files]
Aug. 21st, 2008 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darktrent182For the next couple of hours, I hit the books, ate some leftover pizza that Bob suspected of having grown mold while inside of my refrigerator (it hadn't), and avoided sleep as much as possible. Given how vividly I remembered how that burned corpse looked in the diner, I wasn't interested in playing Russian Roulette with my subconscious and coming up with a doozy of a nightmare on top of the one that I'd been having lately. I might've been running on fumes, but it was better to be tired than to be scared of something I couldn't remember entirely and dead tired.
As I worked, I had Bob remind me to call Morgan on the hour every hour. The guy I kept talking to insisted that Morgan's disappearance wasn't that strange, but after the sixth time I called, the guy on the other end had actually stopped getting annoyed at me, and started to sound a little worried. Morgan always checked in, and after a bit of very loud fast-talking, I found out that Morgan wasn't out on an assignment, or stuck in meetings.
After I hung up the phone that time, I turned to find Bob frowning at me. "I assume Morgan's still out of contact?"
I nodded grimly. "Even the guys in the home office are getting worried. The one time Morgan being a tight-ass about protocol is actually helpful." I headed for the lab.
"What are you planning on doing?" Bob asked, walking through the wall and looking at me with a curious frown.
I opened one of the cabinets built into my lab table and pulled out a plastic bin, setting it down on top of the Greek mythology book that I'd forgotten to put away, and pulled out shards of a translucent, gold-colored crystal. Morgan and I had broken it together with a whole lot of magical energy a few months ago when my house had been dragged to the other side by Ancient Mai. And if I was right, I'd be able to use that energy in a tracking spell.
"Tracking spell," I grunted, pulling out a good-sized chunk a little smaller than my fist, and readied one of my little pots of tracking-spell mud, lighting the burner.
Bob frowned. "Is that the crystal you broke trying to escape the darkness?"
I nodded. "If I'm right, I can use this to track Morgan using his magic."
Bob shook his head. "The idea is sound, but you're not going to be able to do it that way."
I looked up. "What do you mean?"
"Tracking spells use one item that the person owned or possessed for a time," he explained. "The crystal is saturated with your magic as well as Morgan's. You're going to confuse the tracking crystal if you try to use your usual tracking spell to find him."
"Okay, so how do I do this?" I asked.
"Polarization," Bob said. "Remember how I said that adding any of your own essence to the spell would make it useless?"
I nodded. "So, this time, I'm going to add it?"
Bob nodded. "There are two principles embedded in the crystal you're using, intertwined in such a way that you can't separate them by simply cutting the crystal in half. In this instance, you're going to use the spell preparation to separate them for you. First, begin the mixture like you would a typical tracking spell, but instead of dipping the entire tracking crystal in, just dip one end of it."
I followed his instructions, and after I dipped in one end -- which was tricky, since touching the crystal itself during the process tends to contaminate the spell's effectiveness -- I looked up at Bob. "All right, what's next?"
Bob stopped his pacing to stand in front of me, his hands held behind his back as he leaned forward to look at the pot and the crystal. "Now, you're going to super-saturate the tracking solution."
I got where he was going with this. "Because my energy mixed with Morgan's is still there, but with more of my energy, one end will keep pointing at me, and then other--"
"--Will point at Morgan," Bob said, grinning. I had to looked away after a second, because Bob has a really nice smile. Genuinely happy, and definitely with a tinge of pride. The one-two combination of me making him proud, and him getting to participate in spellwork always makes for a happy Bob. And if I just happen to do more of my spellwork in the lab where Bob can watch, well, it's a victimless hobby.
I held my right hand over the little ceramic pot and closed my eyes. Concentrating on the image I wanted, I murmured, "Perfuseo." I felt the magical energy center in my palm, and then flow downward, slowly draining out of my hand like water through a colander. When I opened my eyes, a gentle blue-white light fell into the tracking solution like a steady rain.
"A little more," Bob murmured, his eyes intent on the mud. Seeing the blue-white light reflected in his eyes made them look almost luminous, and when he glanced up at me, they were like pale sapphires, brilliant and captivating. "It's ready."
I blinked, and then stopped concentrating on the spell, looking down at the contents of the little pot, still gently glowing blue. I picked up the tracking crystal again, and carefully dipped the other end into the mixture, slowly swirling it around in the muddy-looking solution before lifting it up.
Bob smiled again, and nodded once. "Activate the spell, and you're done."
I nodded. "Thanks, Bob."
"My pleasure."
Tracking crystal in hand, I grabbed my hoodie and my staff, and headed out to find Morgan.
***
It had been around seven in the morning when I'd finished the tracking spell preparations, and after one last call to Morgan's people to see if he'd showed -- he hadn't -- I got in the Jeep and hit the road.
Whenever I use a tracking spell to find something, it usually doesn't take that long, maybe an hour tops. I list finding lost articles as a specialty because I've had a lot of practice using the spell over the years. So, when I'd driven for four hours all over the city, on highways and all around downtown, I was pretty confused. It was as though the tracking spell had been a dog on the scent a few times, but it kept losing it somehow. Part of me was tempted to go back home and rework the spell, see if it had fouled up somehow despite Bob's seal of approval, but I pulled out the crystal again, concentrating on Morgan again. If I didn't find him within the next hour, I told myself, I would go back to the lab and rework it.
As I approached one neighborhood in particular close to the projects, I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but there was a change in the air when I paid attention to the tracking crystal. Something made it start moving slow and steady, the end with more of Morgan's magic suddenly catching something solid.
I turned a corner, and then felt a sense of... wrongness. There was something wrong, and my instincts were telling me that I should turn the Jeep around and step on the gas. Ignoring the bone-deep tension building up inside me, I kept moving forward through the suddenly sluggish traffic, uniformed officers redirecting cars away from what looked like a perfectly good, if completely empty street. I saw the crystal swivel to point down the deserted street. Great.
Pulling over into the nearest available spot on the curb, right in front of a fire hydrant no less, I turned the Jeep off and got out, watching the crystal, and playing Frogger with some slow-moving cars. It took a few blocks, the sense of foreboding growing in the pit of my stomach, and then I found the crystal definitively pointed at one specific building.
It was an apartment building, and it looked like it'd been built within the past few years. It was also visibly leaning over the street.
Police black-and-whites were holding crowds of people back, at least a block or two away from the leaning building, large police barriers making sure that the more ambitious gawkers didn't sneak by the cops. Making my way through the crowd, I held up the crystal again for confirmation, and saw that it was still pointing at the leaning building.
"Hell's bells, Morgan," I muttered to myself. "You'd better be rescuing a baby or something."
The sense of wrongness hadn't faded, and while I could have just as easily chalked it up to a building about to fall in the middle of Chicago, there was something more than that. It felt like something was building up somehow. I could hear something buzzing in my ears like a hive of bees. The sound got louder and louder.
I heard a single human scream of pure frustration coming from inside the building, and the crystal jerked in my hand.
"Jesus, I hope those guys get that nutjob out of there soon," one young man muttered next to me.
I turned to him, surprised. "What do you mean?"
The young man, a kid who sported enough piercings on his face to make walking near magnets a safety hazard, looked up at me. "One of the cops saw this black guy and tried to talk to him, but he was going nuts or something. He starts heading inside, and then she tries to stop him because he's past the barricade, but he starts yelling and grabs her."
The guy's story attracted more attention from the crowd around us. "Yeah," a young woman added, nodding. "I saw that. They were wrestling, and then he went inside the building. She followed him in, and she's been in there for a while, trying to get him out again."
"Hell's bells," I swore under my breath before raising my voice. I shoved my way through the crowd, saying excuse me to just about everybody before making it to the barricade, and one overweight officer. I was in the process of throwing one leg over when he tried to stop me.
"Hey, buddy, don't you know the building's about to come down?" he demanded, frowning and holding up a hand. "Stay back."
"I'm Harry Dresden. Murphy at the 2-7 knows me," I grunted, throwing my other leg over. "I need to get inside that building."
"The building's coming down," he said slowly, as if I were too stupid to know what was good for me. Hell, for all I knew, he was right. Still, that building was about to come down, and while Morgan could shield himself and escape unscathed, whoever was with him trying to get him out didn't have that luxury.
Just then, a tremor shook hard enough to make me wobble where I stood, and then the building swayed drunkenly. For a second, I stupidly thought that it might not tip over, but the tremor increased, and in a roar of concrete and steel like a wounded animal screaming, the building started leaning over like a drunk who thinks they're about to hit the wall, but misjudged the distance.
Murphy ran out of the building. "It's coming down!" she shouted, waving her arms in a warding gesture. "Get everyone back! Now!"
There was another tremor, this one even harder this time, and I had to hold my hands out for balance. The building leaned further and further over the street, the cops scattering out of its way seconds before it finally gave up the ghost and crash-landed, the upper floors landing on an office building across the street. Concrete and metal screamed as the two buildings scraped against each other, and finally, amidst the shouts and some "oohs" from the crowd, the high-rise hit the street, sending up clouds of dust and debris. I had winced and used my hoodie to cover my face while it fell, and when the roaring had stopped, I lifted my head and looked around slowly.
The tension in my gut didn't ease. Something was still very wrong.
The crystal in my hand jerked, but remained stubbornly pointing at the remains of the building.
"Well, that answers one question," I muttered to myself, dusting off my pants and having little effect before jogging forward, toward the wreckage. A good shield spell can take a lot of punishment, but they usually weren't designed to withstand buildings falling on top of the person they were designed to protect. Morgan was still in the rubble, and while the tracking crystal can find people, it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be alive when I find them.
Murphy made a beeline for me as I hurried. "Harry! What the hell are you doing here?"
"Looking for somebody," I said, holding up the tracking crystal by way of explanation.
"If it's the guy you were going to get in touch with, he resisted arrest and went inside before it came down," Murphy grunted, not looking pleased. "He was still inside when I came out. If he's not dead, he's going to wish he was."
I shrugged. "He knows a few tricks for getting out of trouble."
"Harry, stop," Murphy said firmly.
"Murphy, he's still in there," I told her. "I may not like the guy, but he's still alive, and he needs to get out of there before the trick he's using to keep himself alive wears off."
Murphy frowned at me, and then shook her head. "Harry, he wouldn't have survived being inside. No one would have."
I shook my head. "Don't count him out. Let me help him."
"It's too dangerous," she said, gently this time. "More of the rubble could shift, and then you'd be trapped in there too, if you aren't crushed by any debris that hasn't finished falling yet. Let the paramedics handle this. They've been on standby since the building started leaning earlier."
As I watched, a team of paramedics raced over to where the ground floor used to be, two of them carrying the gurney as they picked their way over the rubble while the third ran ahead of them, looking at Murphy. Murphy pointed them where to go, and they made their way over.
I turned to Murphy. "Murphy--"
"No, Harry," she said. "I'll arrest you if I have to, but you're not getting anywhere near this, not until it's been cleared."
We looked at each other, her glaring up at me without meeting my gaze, and me looking down at her. She wouldn't budge. She didn't completely believe that I could do half the stuff I could, and she was trying to keep me back for my own good. That, and she had at least ten other cops around, including Kirmani, that she could sic on me if she felt she needed backup.
Realizing that discretion was the better part of valor -- and feeling fairly sure that they'd take Morgan to the hospital -- I raised my hands in surrender and backed off. "Okay, okay. You win."
"I win?" Murphy frowned up at me skeptically.
"You win," I confirmed. "Backing off now. Go do what you need to do, and good luck."
Murphy glared at me a bit more, as if that were going to get me to spill my guts, but when I didn't offer up anymore secrets of the trade, she nodded slowly and turned back to the scene. I, on the other hand, turned around and headed back for my car.
On my way to the hospital, I swung by a pay phone and deposited a quarter, managing to get in touch with Morgan's co-workers. After some yelled conversation that got me some curious looks from people walking by, I told them that I'd found Morgan, and then hung up. I neglected to tell them that I knew where he was going, mainly because I had questions to ask him, since he'd been seen at one of the crime scenes, and I didn't want the Wardens to pull a disappearing act with him before I could get a chance to ask.
With the traffic redirected from that one street, it took a little longer than usual to get out of that part of town, but the rest of the way to the hospital was relatively smooth sailing. I got a cup of coffee while I waited, breaking my last ten dollar bill and trying not to think about how many bills I was going to be late paying this month, and when the ambulance showed up, and a gurney carrying Morgan hustled inside, I headed inside as well, making a beeline for the waiting room.
It took a few more hours before I got to see Morgan, and after dodging around areas where there were people hooked up to life support, I made it to his room.
Morgan actually looked fairly decent, considering that a building had fallen on top of him a few hours before. What I could see of him not covered by the flimsy hospital gown or the bedsheets was whole and unmarked, the only evidence that he'd been injured at all being one leg that was already in a cast. In sleep, he looked haunted, as weird as that sounds, his face lined with tension.
His eyes snapped open, and after he glanced around at parts of the ceiling, he zeroed in on me. I made sure to keep my gaze averted, but Morgan seemed insistent on trying to look into my eyes. It was... pretty damn unusual, considering that he usually made sure not to meet my gaze for more than a second or two.
"Morgan?" I asked, not quite sure what to say. Since that time when we were trapped in my house with two dragons, only one of them vaguely friendly to us, we'd ended up being a bit friendlier to each other, but not by much. I guess you could say that the tension's diminished some, but we still walk carefully around each other. So, as stupid as it sounded, I went ahead and asked the typical question. "How are you doing?"
"Dresden." He said my name like he was drowning. "You need to get out."
"Get out?" I frowned, feeling my shoulders tense up. "Why? I just got here."
"The darkness." He gulped, his eyes widening a little. "It's still closing in. It's infecting everything."
"Darkness?" I looked around, more than a little confused. "Morgan, it's the middle of the day. There's no darkness here."
"Still here." He shook his head and gulped again. "It's still here." He looked like he was trying to get out of bed, but when he moved, his eyes fluttered closed, and he sagged back against the pillows, his skin a sharp contrast with the white sheets. I moved forward, not sure what to do, but knowing that Morgan going unconscious in the middle of a conversation wasn't normal.
"Excuse me, sir?"
I yelped and jumped maybe about a foot before I turned around and found a plump, grey-haired orderly standing at the door. She swept in and made a beeline for Morgan, checking his pulse before peeling back an eyelid. When she finished examining him, she looked up at me. "Sir?" she repeated. "I don't know who you are, but you're going to have to leave. The patient needs his rest."
"His name's Donald Morgan," I said. I don't know why I felt the need to correct her. I probably shouldn't have, since it would mean that Morgan had a medical file with the hospital, but it was better than nothing.
She arched an eyebrow. "He was brought in with no ID, so we didn't have a name to call him. Thank you. Now, if you'll please wait in the visitor's area, the doctor still needs to run more tests to see if there's anything else that's wrong with him. The x-ray machine hasn't been cooperating."
Wizards tend to be a walking Murphy's Law when it comes to machines -- the more delicate the equipment, the more likely it is to foul up on us -- which makes going to hospitals to get checked out especially time-consuming.
I nodded. "When he wakes up and starts talking, can you have him call this number?" I asked, offering her my business card.
She accepted it, and when she saw what was printed on it, her eyebrows rose, and she gave me a disapproving look. "I highly doubt Mr. Morgan needs someone to pull rabbits out of a hat for him."
I set my jaw and tried to smile at her. I'm not sure how well I succeeded. "He's in the same line of work. And it's important that he gets in touch with me."
She snorted once, but I saw her accept the card and place it on the table next to Morgan's bed. "We'll see if he's up for much of anything after the tests are finished."
"Thanks," I said. And with that, I went home, and crashed face-first into bed.
***
I didn't sleep well that night, if I managed to get any sleep at all.
In between half-remembered dreams of terrified blue-green eyes and overwhelming fear, I stared up uselessly at the ceiling of my loft, the puzzle of the deaths turning over and over in my mind, the details getting jumbled together. I really should've gotten out of bed and got things straight in my head, but I was too tired. Too tired to actually sleep, too tired to think. Great.
Part of me just wanted to pass out, right then and there, and not wake up for a week. I was tired enough to do it, but Murphy needed my help, and call me a chauvinist, but I can't turn my back on a lady in distress. My sense of chivalry is more of a knee-jerk reaction, and when it hears about a fair damsel, it kicks into overdrive. The only problem was, I had no freaking clue what was going on.
Finally giving up the ghost when I saw sunlight creep up the walls of my bedroom, I padded downstairs just in time to get startled by the phone ringing. A quick glance at the wind-up clock nearby said that it was just after eight.
"Dresden," I said.
"Where is he?" Murphy demanded.
"Huh?" I said intelligently. I'm not that thrilling a conversationalist when I wake up, especially after the restless night I just had.
"The guy who had the building fall on him," she explained impatiently. There was the sound of her checking something in the little notebook she carried with her. "Donald Morgan. I came to see if he'd be more lucid this time, but the hospital staff said he'd been signed out against medical advice before shift change this morning. Now, I repeat, where is he?"
"I don't know," I said honestly, wiping my face with the hand not holding the phone. I heard a snort on the other end, to which I responded, "Seriously, Murphy, I just woke up."
Murphy's grunt was grudging this time. "Do you know an Amber Swensen?"
I blinked. "No. Who's that?"
Realization hit me exactly two seconds later. Amber. She'd been the one junior Warden who'd survived the dragon trapped in my house, masquerading as Murphy. If Amber had signed Morgan out of the hospital, then the Wardens had him. At least that was one less thing to worry about, even if it did make talking to Morgan harder. I didn't know too much about the Wardens, but I knew that they were like the cops -- they looked after their own. And apparently, whenever a Warden had checked into the hospital, they spirited him or her away in the dead of night. Maybe it was a good thing that my brain hadn't been firing on all cylinders just then, because Murphy didn't pick up on the lie I'd just told her.
"Great," she muttered. "Wonderful. I have two bodies on my hands, and my only potential suspect on one of them just went up in smoke." A sudden, irritated bleep interrupted her, and then she said, "Hang on. I've got another call." There was another bleep, and then the line went dead.
I hung up the phone, heading for the fridge. Phones have a tendency to foul up around wizards, just like any other high-tech stuff. Hell, my answering machine worked two times out of ten, and that was on a good day. Since Murphy knew about my ongoing battle against technology, she'd know it wasn't deliberate, and if it was really important, she'd get back to me.
I dug around in the fridge, getting myself a glass of milk, and pondering the concept of breakfast. When I righted myself, I saw Bob walk through the wall separating the living area from the lab, and approach me like a man on a mission. Since I was still running on fumes sleep-wise, I went ahead and let myself appreciate the view. "Hey, Bob. What's up?"
"No much in terms of research, I'm afraid," Bob replied. He stopped for a moment and looked at me. "Harry? Are you all right? You look terrible."
"You should see the other guy," I said, rubbing my face again in an effort to wake up further.
"If you'd been in a fight yesterday, it would certainly explain why you came home covered in dust and fell into bed," Bob said. He was trying to sound unconcerned, but the look in his eyes told me that I'd worried him. I brought him up to speed while I made breakfast, and when I was shoveling bites of fried egg into my mouth, Bob frowned curiously.
"And Morgan was insisting that darkness surrounded him still?" Bob narrowed his eyes, one of his thumbs starting to worry at the amber ring he wore on his left pinkie.
I nodded, chewing a few more times before swallowing. "I'm wondering if somebody got to him? Maybe did a little mind magic after he left Mr. Crispy at the diner?"
Bob considered that for a moment, and then shook his head. "Magics affecting the mind usually have a purpose behind them, whether it be to force the victim to action or inaction. Creating the impression that Morgan was surrounded by darkness that did not actually blind him would have been pointless."
"Unless," I said slowly, a thought coming to me. "Morgan saw something he shouldn't have, something that somebody didn't want him to see." I sipped some milk. "Could be that the illusion is punishment, or a way to try to get him to go nuts so that he can't tell anyone about whatever he saw."
Bob looked doubtful. "I wouldn't be too sure, Harry. From what you described, Morgan was acting irrationally before he entered the building that was about to collapse, correct?" At my nod, he continued. "To ensure that the spell wouldn't be interrupted, the wizard would have to maintain line of sight with Morgan, and no one else was at that scene except for Lieutenant Murphy. And you've already established that she doesn't have the gift."
"Thaumaturgy doesn't need line of sight," I pointed out.
"Not everything Dark is thaumaturgical, Harry," Bob said patiently. "And in this case, Morgan isn't seeing black smoke. He's seeing darkness." He frowned a little, something occurring to him. "Dark magical energies, perhaps?"
I tried to think of a counter to that, but I couldn't. I shook my head with a sigh. "I don't know. Whatever he's seeing, Morgan got spirited away by the Wardens. If I don't get to him soon to ask him what he was doing with Mr. Crispy, I might as well let Murphy arrest me for obstruction."
Bob pursed his lips. "It's unlikely that the Wardens would let you speak to him, especially if they wished to heal Morgan's injuries without interference."
I finished my food and put the plate in the sink. "They'll just give me the run-around anyway," I said, shaking my head.
"Then what do you propose to do?" Bob asked, frowning at me.
"Research," I said, rinsing out the glass and setting it on top of the plate. Wiping my hands on my pants, I turned back to Bob. "Whatever the hell is going on just took out a Warden, Bob. I need to figure out what's happening, and I need to know as quickly as possible."
***
A few hours, damn near half of my collection on magical attacks, and one serious case of eyestrain later, I was sagging onto my lab table, resting my forehead on my folded arms gingerly as a headache started behind my right eyeball.
Bob pulled his head out of one bookcase, frowning a little as he thought. When I lifted my head to glance over at him, he shook his head. "Nothing here."
I sighed, and put my head back down. Think, Harry, think, I told myself sternly.
"There's got to be something I'm missing here..." I muttered.
Bob opened his mouth to say something, and I heard the bell chime over the front door, and Bob nodded once. "I'll see if I can find anything else."
I frowned, looking at the stacks of books that had slowly taken over my lab table. I didn't like doing it, but I nodded. "Be back in a bit. If you find something, just shout. We can play the assistant angle if it's a customer."
Bob nodded again, and resolutely stuck his head back into the bookcase he'd been slowly reading through. I managed to open the steel door and slip out before I heard someone moving slowly around the storefront.
"Harry?" Murphy called, her voice sounding tense.
I frowned, walking down the corridor to the storefront to find Murphy standing uncertainly on the rug in front of the door, looking around. "Murphy?"
Her eyes locked onto my face without meeting my gaze for more than a second. "There you are," she said, closing her cell phone and setting it down on the corner of my desk. "I tried calling a couple times, but I kept getting the machine."
"I've been busy." When she moved closer, I could see she was tense, the kind of tense that usually meant that Murphy was ready to pull her gun. "Murph? You okay?"
"Fine," she snapped reflexively. As much as I have a knee-jerk reaction to damsels in distress and women in general, Murphy has a need to prove that she can stand on her own two feet without anybody's help. Sometimes, it worked in her favor -- you don't get to be a police lieutenant if the guys in command see you scared. Other times... not so much.
I frowned. "Really? Because you don't look it."
"You're one to talk, Harry," she said, a smile tugging at her lips. "Have you slept at all?"
I shook my head. "It's my personal cure for visions of drowners and people fried to a crisp," I said. "You should try it sometime. I'm making friends with all the roaches and everything."
Murphy shuddered a little, wrinkling her cute little nose a little. "Now I know you've lost it." After a moment, her smile slipped. "Harry, I... I think something's happening to me."
I blinked, sobering. "What do you mean?"
"I keep..." Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head. "This is going to sound weird, but... I can't stop thinking about my daughter."
If I'd been expecting Murphy to say something, that wasn't it. "Anna?"
She nodded. "It's... it's like I need to talk to her, to know she's safe. I mean, this has happened a couple times before, but it's... I don't know. It's important now."
"You've been seeing a lot of weird things these past couple of days," I said. "It makes sense that you'd want to make sure your family's safe. It's okay."
"It's not just that, though." Murphy shook her head. "For the past couple of hours, I've been seeing this little girl. She's mostly been at the corner of my eye, and when I try to look at her, she disappears. And she looks so much like Anna. I..." She frowned, looking small and worried. "Am I going crazy, Harry? Is this more of what happened with Boone?"
Boone had been a two-bit criminal who'd been released from prison, only to gain immortality through an ancient Egyptian tablet. During the whole mess, Murphy had been possessed by Boone's soul. It had taken her months to get over it, and there were still times when she looked... not quite whole.
"I don't think so, Murph. In fact," I said, frowning a little. It was a bit of a mental leap, but considering who Morgan was, my gut was telling me I was on the right track. I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder. "I think we're getting closer to whoever's doing this. Here, how about I close up shop, you can sack out on my couch, and when you've gotten some sleep, we can put our heads together."
Murphy shook her head again. "I can't. The captain's breathing down my neck, demanding results. The sooner I can report to him, the better."
"Okay, but be careful, huh?" I said, frowning. I squeezed her shoulder for emphasis, and for a moment, I thought I felt her shoulder get a little warm under my hand. "You look beat."
She looked up at me, avoiding my eyes, and smiled a little. "Yes, Dad. I'll be fine. Take care of yourself." She turned around and headed out the door, the bell over the door jangling.
I watched her go, and when I glanced at the desk, I saw her cell phone, lying innocently next to the Chinese dragon sculpture I'd gotten years ago at a garage sale. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at, but when I did, I scooped it up, mentally composing my apology for blowing up her cell phone as I followed her out. I was about to catch up with her when she started crossing the street.
Right into the path of an oncoming car.
"Murphy!" I shouted, lunging for her. By some miracle, I managed to grab her arm and yank her backwards, causing her to stumble into me. I wobbled a bit, but managed to keep my feet as the car screamed past us, blowing its horn in two irritated beeps before disappearing from view. I righted Murphy and looked at her. "Stars and stones, some people. You okay?"
Murphy's eyes were wide, but after a few deep breaths, she nodded slowly. "Yeah, I'm fine."
"Murph?" I said, a bit confused. She'd nearly gotten hit by a car, and last I checked, that wasn't something you just shrugged off.
Murphy shook her head. "No, really. I'm okay. Just a bit rattled."
I nodded slowly. "You were about to leave your cell phone." I offered her the phone.
"Thanks," she said, taking the phone from me and sliding it into her coat pocket.
"Look, Murphy, are you sure you're all right? You can stay a little while. I can get you some water or something, give you a chance to calm down a little."
Murphy sighed, and shook her head. "I wish I could, but I really need to get going. See you tomorrow." She stepped away from me, and after quadruple-checking that no more cars were coming from either side, she stepped out into the road. I watched her well after she got to the other side and into her unmarked car, wondering if maybe I was going nuts myself. But, I shook my head and headed back inside.
Crazy or not, people still needed my help.
I closed the door when I got inside, double-checking that the sign was flipped over to deter any would-be customers and locking it.
"Harry?" Bob called. A second later, he walked through the wall, raising grey eyebrows at me. "Who was that just now?"
"Murphy," I said. I heard a faint buzzing noise, but when I looked around, I couldn't see anything that could've been causing it. "I think the case's getting to her."
"Oh?" Bob looked curious. When I finished explaining, he looked even more surprised. "Oh, dear."
"I tried to get her to stay, but you know what she's like," I grunted. "Did you find anything useful?"
Bob shook his head. "No, but I'll keep digging." He frowned at me for a long moment, and then added, "Perhaps, you should rest. I can continue working."
I frowned. "Aren't you always saying that two heads are better than one?" I asked.
Bob sighed. "You usually don't look as though you've been run over by a car. Go rest, or I'll start singing funeral Masses."
"Oh, no, anything but that," I deadpanned, pretending to clutch at my heart.
"Would you rather I..." He paused for a moment, and then said, "Complained to you that the rent is due next week, and that you really should be asking Lieutenant Murphy for an advance so that you don't have to pay late fees again?"
This time, I glowered at him. Just because I'm in love doesn't mean that Bob doesn't annoy me from time to time. "You're not really encouraging me here, Bob."
"Harry, I have a certain vested interest in making sure that you're capable of working," Bob explained. "Since this consultation business is your only source of income, it behooves me to make sure that you can complete each assignment without customers refusing to pay for bad service. And if it includes hounding you until you actually get some rest, then I'm prepared to be as annoying as possible in order to get you to bed." He eyed me. "Now, are you going to continue to be stubborn, or am I going to have to badger you some more?"
I kept up the glare. "That research isn't going to do itself."
Bob rolled his eyes. "I'm well aware of that, and I intend on continuing, but only after you get to bed."
I snorted. "Bob. Seriously."
"I'm not going to convince you to go to sleep on your own, am I?" Bob asked flatly, watching me steadily.
"Nope," I said cheerfully, heading for the lab.
Bob kept pace with me, walking through the wall and waiting until I'd closed the door behind me before speaking. "At this point, we seem to be concentrating on too many variables."
I sank onto my stool, and for once, I just sat there. I rested my jaw in the palm of one hand and just sat there. "Sorry, Bob, but after the amount of research we've done already, my brain's starting to fry."
Bob turned away from the bookshelf he'd been squinting at to shoot me an irritated look. "Why do you think I suggested that you sleep? After a few hours' rest, you might see our conundrum in a different light, or even think of an avenue of research we hadn't considered yet."
It was a good argument, and I'm sure that given a minute or two, I would have come up with a witty remark to his mother-hen routine, but my brain got stuck on the word 'our'.
It's not like Bob's never said the word before, or never stood with his back to me like he did now, his head turning as he perused book spines. The lines and curves, emphasized by the cut of his suit -- different flavors of red that made him look pale while reminding me of passion and energy.
I shook my head. Dangerous territory, Harry, I told myself firmly. He might catch on if you keep doing that.
But that 'our' sounded different in my head, somehow. It sounded almost like a promise.
"Hey, Bob, take five, will you?" I said suddenly, my lips tingling a little as I said it.
Bob turned from the bookcase to look at me curiously. "Very well. Have you thought of something?"
I shook my head. "Nothing useful about the case, but I wanted to ask you something."
His eyebrows rose. "Yes?"
"If you were able to turn mortal right now, no questions asked, no black magic involved, no breaking the laws of magic, what would you do?"
Bob blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"You heard me, Bob," I said. "What would you do? Where would you go?"
Bob blinked again, and then he breathed in slowly, his chest lifting with the motion despite the fact that he literally hadn't breathed in almost a thousand years. "Harry..." He paused, and squinted his eyes just a little. "I know we've rarely spoken about my brush with mortality, but can we please change the subject?"
I frowned, a bit surprised by the reaction. "Come on, Bob. You must have thought about it."
I could see the muscles in Bob's jaw tighten. "Perhaps so, but it would avail me nothing to dwell on it now."
"How come?" I asked. The curiosity was there, almost bursting at the seams -- I'd left Bob along since the time Justin had turned him mortal and he'd had to pretend to betray me in order to make sure Justin died permanently, but I'd never stopped wanting to ask him about it. Now that I had, I almost wished I hadn't brought it up, given the look on Bob's face.
My mouth, on the other hand, had ideas of its own.
Bob looked at me, his eyes almost boring holes into my head. "I had a few bittersweet hours of mortality, Harry. To be able to smell the smog in the air for the first time, to actually feel the leather seats in the car that Justin's double used to take you to the morgue. To taste magic on my tongue, in my mouth..." He shook his head. "I have those memories, and I can remember them as though they'd happened only yesterday, and I know I can never have that again."
"But if you could?" I asked, my voice coming out gentle somehow. Ever since that incident, I'd made my own tentative plans to bring Bob back from his curse, to let him have mortality again. I'd been a bit stuck on the how, but I couldn't help but wonder what Bob would do if I ever managed to free him.
"Does it truly mean that much to you?" he asked, his voice low and curious, as though he hadn't considered the possibility that I'd think about this on my own. For all I knew, he really hadn't.
I nodded once, not trusting my voice as I looked up at him.
After a long silence, he nodded slowly. "Very well." He stopped, and then he looked puzzled. "To be honest, I've distracted myself from thinking about it for so long that I'm not sure what I would do."
I had to tamp down a smile. "Well, do you know of any places you want to see for yourself?" I started mentally preparing an itinerary.
He blinked, and then squinted his eyes as he thought, his lips pursing into a kissable near-pout. "I suppose I would travel to England, see if there are any surroundings that might have survived nearly a thousand years. Perhaps travel the continent, while I was there."
"You never went to Europe when you were alive?" I asked.
Bob shook his head. "Travel in those days was a serious undertaking. After I had finished my apprenticeship, I'd traveled northward to get away from people. Going to the continent would have been counter-productive."
"Okay, so where else do you want to go?"
"I'm not really sure," he hedged, and then he cocked his head. "Most likely to a place where there were no other people. One thing I've missed while being a ghost is being alone."
That stung a little, but I was pretty sure I didn't count. "Being alone?"
Bob nodded. "I'm rather sick of my fellow man, Harry, and it would be nice to live out in the middle of nowhere, at least for a while, and enjoy nature again. No one else to bother me, no one to be forced to make polite conversation with."
"Sure thing," I said, nodding. "I'm sure there's places we could go without having to worry about any neighbors for miles."
Bob paused for a moment, looking utterly baffled, and then he shook his head. "I'm sorry. I must not have been clear. When I meant 'being alone', I truly meant being alone. You've been a very good friend to me, and I'll always treasure our memories together, but let us not forget what exactly we are to each other." He looked pointedly at his skull, engraved with symbols and binding spells, sitting on top of one of my books like a morbid paperweight.
I felt like a rug had been ripped out from under me. I'd been in love with Bob since I was a teenager, and after Justin's death, I'd come to rely on him as the one friend that I had left who truly understood me. He had been a rock I could lean on when I was hurt or scared or angry. Finding out that he was willing to leave me behind in his 'get away from the world' idea, that he thought of me as his keeper first instead of his friend... it stung deeply.
I cleared my throat, trying to cover for the silence, but Bob kept going.
"There's been some projects that I've been working on during my... enforced retirement that I've yet to put to practical experimentation, for reasons that should be obvious," he said, his lips quirking into a bitter smile. "It would be wonderful to be able to see them in action. And before you ask, Harry, you know that a wizard's intent shapes their magic. Even if you were so inclined to listen to me try to explain my work to you, the way that you would create the effect in your mind wouldn't be the same as the way I would, so the spell could come out differently, even disastrously, were you to try to attempt it."
I nodded numbly. "I remember."
Bob nodded, looking satisfied. "It's good to see that you haven't forgotten everything I taught you."
"No, just all of the boring parts," I said wittily. Bob sighed and rolled his eyes. I managed a smile, but my heart wasn't in it. "Would you come visit in between projects?" I tried to ask as lightly as I could. "It'd do you good to get out of the house every once in a while."
Bob nodded. "I'm sure I'd find occasion to visit." The look of polite disinterest on his face almost made me wince. If I'd returned him to mortality, and he went through his plan to disappear from the world for a while so he could play with his experiments in peace and quiet, I'd be lucky if I saw him once a decade. Not the best thought in the world, but at least I wasn't fooling myself.
As much as this conversation had hurt, I told myself that I appreciated Bob's honesty. He hadn't sugarcoated what he really wanted in an effort to spare my feelings, and after a few centuries as a ghost, I'd probably want to get away from other people for a while, too. Hell, I'd probably want to get away from the guy who reminded me of a time when I was a literally a ghost of my former self.
For some reason, I had always thought that if I ever managed to bring Bob back to full-blown mortality again, with no strings, no cosmic debt hanging over either of us... well, I thought he'd stick around. That he'd end up staying here in Chicago with me, sacking out on the couch, or even taking the bed while I heroically suffered a pain in the neck or cramped legs on his behalf. That we'd fight over what kind of toothpaste to buy, or what food was left decaying in the back of the fridge.
Yeah. Right. In this land of fairy tales, Mai would give me a ride on her back as we flew over rainbows and danced in faerie circles while Morgan played a guitar and sang songs about love and joy and all that was good in the world.
Of course Bob would want to strike out on his own. Sure, he would've had to worry about the High Council, but after a few centuries of watching how the 'good guys' operated, I was fairly sure Bob could avoid being detected by their best Wardens after about a week or so of effort.
And of course he'd want to leave me behind. I was nothing but a reminder of when his will hadn't been entirely his own. Sure, I might have been the first master he'd served who'd actually given him free rein to do as he wished within the limits of his curse, but I hadn't tried to free him from the first day I'd become the guardian of his skull. In fact, the first thing I'd done as his master was interrogate him, accuse him of being a powerless liar, and lock him inside his skull for a month out of sheer anger and frustration.
Yeah, I was Mr. Congeniality, all right.
Despite finding out that returning Bob to mortality would mean that he would leave without ever looking back, I knew deep down that I'd still look for a way to break his curse and make sure he lived a mortal life before his soul was finally free to pass on. I love the guy, and sure, I can be selfish from time to time, but that would be going too far.
Sitting at my lab table, only half-listening to Bob's smooth, low voice as he detailed ideas as they came to him, I realized that I would rather live the rest of my life without Bob than to have Bob with me when I died, because there was no way I was going to let the man I loved be imprisoned for eternity. There was just no way.
Bob paused in mid-sentence, and frowned at me. "You haven't been listening to a word I've said, have you?"
I smiled up at him, a little sheepish. "Nope."
He rolled his blue-green eyes and sighed heavily. "Of course." He looked at me patiently. "Harry, are you quite sure you're not going to sleep?"
I nodded, and then my head swam a little, my vision going a bit blurry. I could feel something burr against my skin, and I yawned.
Bob shot me a victorious look. "Go to bed, Harry."
I scowled at him, but I got up from the stool and stretched my arms. "All right, fine. But don't think you've won."
Bob smiled fondly. "I will quaver in my shoes when you wake up, I'm sure. Good night, Harry."
I don't remember much about what happened after that. I know that I went upstairs and I planted face-first into my pillow. I remember distinctly feeling a sense of deja vu before blackness enveloped me, and I slept dreamlessly.
***
Back to Part One.
Continue to Part Three.
As I worked, I had Bob remind me to call Morgan on the hour every hour. The guy I kept talking to insisted that Morgan's disappearance wasn't that strange, but after the sixth time I called, the guy on the other end had actually stopped getting annoyed at me, and started to sound a little worried. Morgan always checked in, and after a bit of very loud fast-talking, I found out that Morgan wasn't out on an assignment, or stuck in meetings.
After I hung up the phone that time, I turned to find Bob frowning at me. "I assume Morgan's still out of contact?"
I nodded grimly. "Even the guys in the home office are getting worried. The one time Morgan being a tight-ass about protocol is actually helpful." I headed for the lab.
"What are you planning on doing?" Bob asked, walking through the wall and looking at me with a curious frown.
I opened one of the cabinets built into my lab table and pulled out a plastic bin, setting it down on top of the Greek mythology book that I'd forgotten to put away, and pulled out shards of a translucent, gold-colored crystal. Morgan and I had broken it together with a whole lot of magical energy a few months ago when my house had been dragged to the other side by Ancient Mai. And if I was right, I'd be able to use that energy in a tracking spell.
"Tracking spell," I grunted, pulling out a good-sized chunk a little smaller than my fist, and readied one of my little pots of tracking-spell mud, lighting the burner.
Bob frowned. "Is that the crystal you broke trying to escape the darkness?"
I nodded. "If I'm right, I can use this to track Morgan using his magic."
Bob shook his head. "The idea is sound, but you're not going to be able to do it that way."
I looked up. "What do you mean?"
"Tracking spells use one item that the person owned or possessed for a time," he explained. "The crystal is saturated with your magic as well as Morgan's. You're going to confuse the tracking crystal if you try to use your usual tracking spell to find him."
"Okay, so how do I do this?" I asked.
"Polarization," Bob said. "Remember how I said that adding any of your own essence to the spell would make it useless?"
I nodded. "So, this time, I'm going to add it?"
Bob nodded. "There are two principles embedded in the crystal you're using, intertwined in such a way that you can't separate them by simply cutting the crystal in half. In this instance, you're going to use the spell preparation to separate them for you. First, begin the mixture like you would a typical tracking spell, but instead of dipping the entire tracking crystal in, just dip one end of it."
I followed his instructions, and after I dipped in one end -- which was tricky, since touching the crystal itself during the process tends to contaminate the spell's effectiveness -- I looked up at Bob. "All right, what's next?"
Bob stopped his pacing to stand in front of me, his hands held behind his back as he leaned forward to look at the pot and the crystal. "Now, you're going to super-saturate the tracking solution."
I got where he was going with this. "Because my energy mixed with Morgan's is still there, but with more of my energy, one end will keep pointing at me, and then other--"
"--Will point at Morgan," Bob said, grinning. I had to looked away after a second, because Bob has a really nice smile. Genuinely happy, and definitely with a tinge of pride. The one-two combination of me making him proud, and him getting to participate in spellwork always makes for a happy Bob. And if I just happen to do more of my spellwork in the lab where Bob can watch, well, it's a victimless hobby.
I held my right hand over the little ceramic pot and closed my eyes. Concentrating on the image I wanted, I murmured, "Perfuseo." I felt the magical energy center in my palm, and then flow downward, slowly draining out of my hand like water through a colander. When I opened my eyes, a gentle blue-white light fell into the tracking solution like a steady rain.
"A little more," Bob murmured, his eyes intent on the mud. Seeing the blue-white light reflected in his eyes made them look almost luminous, and when he glanced up at me, they were like pale sapphires, brilliant and captivating. "It's ready."
I blinked, and then stopped concentrating on the spell, looking down at the contents of the little pot, still gently glowing blue. I picked up the tracking crystal again, and carefully dipped the other end into the mixture, slowly swirling it around in the muddy-looking solution before lifting it up.
Bob smiled again, and nodded once. "Activate the spell, and you're done."
I nodded. "Thanks, Bob."
"My pleasure."
Tracking crystal in hand, I grabbed my hoodie and my staff, and headed out to find Morgan.
***
It had been around seven in the morning when I'd finished the tracking spell preparations, and after one last call to Morgan's people to see if he'd showed -- he hadn't -- I got in the Jeep and hit the road.
Whenever I use a tracking spell to find something, it usually doesn't take that long, maybe an hour tops. I list finding lost articles as a specialty because I've had a lot of practice using the spell over the years. So, when I'd driven for four hours all over the city, on highways and all around downtown, I was pretty confused. It was as though the tracking spell had been a dog on the scent a few times, but it kept losing it somehow. Part of me was tempted to go back home and rework the spell, see if it had fouled up somehow despite Bob's seal of approval, but I pulled out the crystal again, concentrating on Morgan again. If I didn't find him within the next hour, I told myself, I would go back to the lab and rework it.
As I approached one neighborhood in particular close to the projects, I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but there was a change in the air when I paid attention to the tracking crystal. Something made it start moving slow and steady, the end with more of Morgan's magic suddenly catching something solid.
I turned a corner, and then felt a sense of... wrongness. There was something wrong, and my instincts were telling me that I should turn the Jeep around and step on the gas. Ignoring the bone-deep tension building up inside me, I kept moving forward through the suddenly sluggish traffic, uniformed officers redirecting cars away from what looked like a perfectly good, if completely empty street. I saw the crystal swivel to point down the deserted street. Great.
Pulling over into the nearest available spot on the curb, right in front of a fire hydrant no less, I turned the Jeep off and got out, watching the crystal, and playing Frogger with some slow-moving cars. It took a few blocks, the sense of foreboding growing in the pit of my stomach, and then I found the crystal definitively pointed at one specific building.
It was an apartment building, and it looked like it'd been built within the past few years. It was also visibly leaning over the street.
Police black-and-whites were holding crowds of people back, at least a block or two away from the leaning building, large police barriers making sure that the more ambitious gawkers didn't sneak by the cops. Making my way through the crowd, I held up the crystal again for confirmation, and saw that it was still pointing at the leaning building.
"Hell's bells, Morgan," I muttered to myself. "You'd better be rescuing a baby or something."
The sense of wrongness hadn't faded, and while I could have just as easily chalked it up to a building about to fall in the middle of Chicago, there was something more than that. It felt like something was building up somehow. I could hear something buzzing in my ears like a hive of bees. The sound got louder and louder.
I heard a single human scream of pure frustration coming from inside the building, and the crystal jerked in my hand.
"Jesus, I hope those guys get that nutjob out of there soon," one young man muttered next to me.
I turned to him, surprised. "What do you mean?"
The young man, a kid who sported enough piercings on his face to make walking near magnets a safety hazard, looked up at me. "One of the cops saw this black guy and tried to talk to him, but he was going nuts or something. He starts heading inside, and then she tries to stop him because he's past the barricade, but he starts yelling and grabs her."
The guy's story attracted more attention from the crowd around us. "Yeah," a young woman added, nodding. "I saw that. They were wrestling, and then he went inside the building. She followed him in, and she's been in there for a while, trying to get him out again."
"Hell's bells," I swore under my breath before raising my voice. I shoved my way through the crowd, saying excuse me to just about everybody before making it to the barricade, and one overweight officer. I was in the process of throwing one leg over when he tried to stop me.
"Hey, buddy, don't you know the building's about to come down?" he demanded, frowning and holding up a hand. "Stay back."
"I'm Harry Dresden. Murphy at the 2-7 knows me," I grunted, throwing my other leg over. "I need to get inside that building."
"The building's coming down," he said slowly, as if I were too stupid to know what was good for me. Hell, for all I knew, he was right. Still, that building was about to come down, and while Morgan could shield himself and escape unscathed, whoever was with him trying to get him out didn't have that luxury.
Just then, a tremor shook hard enough to make me wobble where I stood, and then the building swayed drunkenly. For a second, I stupidly thought that it might not tip over, but the tremor increased, and in a roar of concrete and steel like a wounded animal screaming, the building started leaning over like a drunk who thinks they're about to hit the wall, but misjudged the distance.
Murphy ran out of the building. "It's coming down!" she shouted, waving her arms in a warding gesture. "Get everyone back! Now!"
There was another tremor, this one even harder this time, and I had to hold my hands out for balance. The building leaned further and further over the street, the cops scattering out of its way seconds before it finally gave up the ghost and crash-landed, the upper floors landing on an office building across the street. Concrete and metal screamed as the two buildings scraped against each other, and finally, amidst the shouts and some "oohs" from the crowd, the high-rise hit the street, sending up clouds of dust and debris. I had winced and used my hoodie to cover my face while it fell, and when the roaring had stopped, I lifted my head and looked around slowly.
The tension in my gut didn't ease. Something was still very wrong.
The crystal in my hand jerked, but remained stubbornly pointing at the remains of the building.
"Well, that answers one question," I muttered to myself, dusting off my pants and having little effect before jogging forward, toward the wreckage. A good shield spell can take a lot of punishment, but they usually weren't designed to withstand buildings falling on top of the person they were designed to protect. Morgan was still in the rubble, and while the tracking crystal can find people, it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be alive when I find them.
Murphy made a beeline for me as I hurried. "Harry! What the hell are you doing here?"
"Looking for somebody," I said, holding up the tracking crystal by way of explanation.
"If it's the guy you were going to get in touch with, he resisted arrest and went inside before it came down," Murphy grunted, not looking pleased. "He was still inside when I came out. If he's not dead, he's going to wish he was."
I shrugged. "He knows a few tricks for getting out of trouble."
"Harry, stop," Murphy said firmly.
"Murphy, he's still in there," I told her. "I may not like the guy, but he's still alive, and he needs to get out of there before the trick he's using to keep himself alive wears off."
Murphy frowned at me, and then shook her head. "Harry, he wouldn't have survived being inside. No one would have."
I shook my head. "Don't count him out. Let me help him."
"It's too dangerous," she said, gently this time. "More of the rubble could shift, and then you'd be trapped in there too, if you aren't crushed by any debris that hasn't finished falling yet. Let the paramedics handle this. They've been on standby since the building started leaning earlier."
As I watched, a team of paramedics raced over to where the ground floor used to be, two of them carrying the gurney as they picked their way over the rubble while the third ran ahead of them, looking at Murphy. Murphy pointed them where to go, and they made their way over.
I turned to Murphy. "Murphy--"
"No, Harry," she said. "I'll arrest you if I have to, but you're not getting anywhere near this, not until it's been cleared."
We looked at each other, her glaring up at me without meeting my gaze, and me looking down at her. She wouldn't budge. She didn't completely believe that I could do half the stuff I could, and she was trying to keep me back for my own good. That, and she had at least ten other cops around, including Kirmani, that she could sic on me if she felt she needed backup.
Realizing that discretion was the better part of valor -- and feeling fairly sure that they'd take Morgan to the hospital -- I raised my hands in surrender and backed off. "Okay, okay. You win."
"I win?" Murphy frowned up at me skeptically.
"You win," I confirmed. "Backing off now. Go do what you need to do, and good luck."
Murphy glared at me a bit more, as if that were going to get me to spill my guts, but when I didn't offer up anymore secrets of the trade, she nodded slowly and turned back to the scene. I, on the other hand, turned around and headed back for my car.
On my way to the hospital, I swung by a pay phone and deposited a quarter, managing to get in touch with Morgan's co-workers. After some yelled conversation that got me some curious looks from people walking by, I told them that I'd found Morgan, and then hung up. I neglected to tell them that I knew where he was going, mainly because I had questions to ask him, since he'd been seen at one of the crime scenes, and I didn't want the Wardens to pull a disappearing act with him before I could get a chance to ask.
With the traffic redirected from that one street, it took a little longer than usual to get out of that part of town, but the rest of the way to the hospital was relatively smooth sailing. I got a cup of coffee while I waited, breaking my last ten dollar bill and trying not to think about how many bills I was going to be late paying this month, and when the ambulance showed up, and a gurney carrying Morgan hustled inside, I headed inside as well, making a beeline for the waiting room.
It took a few more hours before I got to see Morgan, and after dodging around areas where there were people hooked up to life support, I made it to his room.
Morgan actually looked fairly decent, considering that a building had fallen on top of him a few hours before. What I could see of him not covered by the flimsy hospital gown or the bedsheets was whole and unmarked, the only evidence that he'd been injured at all being one leg that was already in a cast. In sleep, he looked haunted, as weird as that sounds, his face lined with tension.
His eyes snapped open, and after he glanced around at parts of the ceiling, he zeroed in on me. I made sure to keep my gaze averted, but Morgan seemed insistent on trying to look into my eyes. It was... pretty damn unusual, considering that he usually made sure not to meet my gaze for more than a second or two.
"Morgan?" I asked, not quite sure what to say. Since that time when we were trapped in my house with two dragons, only one of them vaguely friendly to us, we'd ended up being a bit friendlier to each other, but not by much. I guess you could say that the tension's diminished some, but we still walk carefully around each other. So, as stupid as it sounded, I went ahead and asked the typical question. "How are you doing?"
"Dresden." He said my name like he was drowning. "You need to get out."
"Get out?" I frowned, feeling my shoulders tense up. "Why? I just got here."
"The darkness." He gulped, his eyes widening a little. "It's still closing in. It's infecting everything."
"Darkness?" I looked around, more than a little confused. "Morgan, it's the middle of the day. There's no darkness here."
"Still here." He shook his head and gulped again. "It's still here." He looked like he was trying to get out of bed, but when he moved, his eyes fluttered closed, and he sagged back against the pillows, his skin a sharp contrast with the white sheets. I moved forward, not sure what to do, but knowing that Morgan going unconscious in the middle of a conversation wasn't normal.
"Excuse me, sir?"
I yelped and jumped maybe about a foot before I turned around and found a plump, grey-haired orderly standing at the door. She swept in and made a beeline for Morgan, checking his pulse before peeling back an eyelid. When she finished examining him, she looked up at me. "Sir?" she repeated. "I don't know who you are, but you're going to have to leave. The patient needs his rest."
"His name's Donald Morgan," I said. I don't know why I felt the need to correct her. I probably shouldn't have, since it would mean that Morgan had a medical file with the hospital, but it was better than nothing.
She arched an eyebrow. "He was brought in with no ID, so we didn't have a name to call him. Thank you. Now, if you'll please wait in the visitor's area, the doctor still needs to run more tests to see if there's anything else that's wrong with him. The x-ray machine hasn't been cooperating."
Wizards tend to be a walking Murphy's Law when it comes to machines -- the more delicate the equipment, the more likely it is to foul up on us -- which makes going to hospitals to get checked out especially time-consuming.
I nodded. "When he wakes up and starts talking, can you have him call this number?" I asked, offering her my business card.
She accepted it, and when she saw what was printed on it, her eyebrows rose, and she gave me a disapproving look. "I highly doubt Mr. Morgan needs someone to pull rabbits out of a hat for him."
I set my jaw and tried to smile at her. I'm not sure how well I succeeded. "He's in the same line of work. And it's important that he gets in touch with me."
She snorted once, but I saw her accept the card and place it on the table next to Morgan's bed. "We'll see if he's up for much of anything after the tests are finished."
"Thanks," I said. And with that, I went home, and crashed face-first into bed.
***
I didn't sleep well that night, if I managed to get any sleep at all.
In between half-remembered dreams of terrified blue-green eyes and overwhelming fear, I stared up uselessly at the ceiling of my loft, the puzzle of the deaths turning over and over in my mind, the details getting jumbled together. I really should've gotten out of bed and got things straight in my head, but I was too tired. Too tired to actually sleep, too tired to think. Great.
Part of me just wanted to pass out, right then and there, and not wake up for a week. I was tired enough to do it, but Murphy needed my help, and call me a chauvinist, but I can't turn my back on a lady in distress. My sense of chivalry is more of a knee-jerk reaction, and when it hears about a fair damsel, it kicks into overdrive. The only problem was, I had no freaking clue what was going on.
Finally giving up the ghost when I saw sunlight creep up the walls of my bedroom, I padded downstairs just in time to get startled by the phone ringing. A quick glance at the wind-up clock nearby said that it was just after eight.
"Dresden," I said.
"Where is he?" Murphy demanded.
"Huh?" I said intelligently. I'm not that thrilling a conversationalist when I wake up, especially after the restless night I just had.
"The guy who had the building fall on him," she explained impatiently. There was the sound of her checking something in the little notebook she carried with her. "Donald Morgan. I came to see if he'd be more lucid this time, but the hospital staff said he'd been signed out against medical advice before shift change this morning. Now, I repeat, where is he?"
"I don't know," I said honestly, wiping my face with the hand not holding the phone. I heard a snort on the other end, to which I responded, "Seriously, Murphy, I just woke up."
Murphy's grunt was grudging this time. "Do you know an Amber Swensen?"
I blinked. "No. Who's that?"
Realization hit me exactly two seconds later. Amber. She'd been the one junior Warden who'd survived the dragon trapped in my house, masquerading as Murphy. If Amber had signed Morgan out of the hospital, then the Wardens had him. At least that was one less thing to worry about, even if it did make talking to Morgan harder. I didn't know too much about the Wardens, but I knew that they were like the cops -- they looked after their own. And apparently, whenever a Warden had checked into the hospital, they spirited him or her away in the dead of night. Maybe it was a good thing that my brain hadn't been firing on all cylinders just then, because Murphy didn't pick up on the lie I'd just told her.
"Great," she muttered. "Wonderful. I have two bodies on my hands, and my only potential suspect on one of them just went up in smoke." A sudden, irritated bleep interrupted her, and then she said, "Hang on. I've got another call." There was another bleep, and then the line went dead.
I hung up the phone, heading for the fridge. Phones have a tendency to foul up around wizards, just like any other high-tech stuff. Hell, my answering machine worked two times out of ten, and that was on a good day. Since Murphy knew about my ongoing battle against technology, she'd know it wasn't deliberate, and if it was really important, she'd get back to me.
I dug around in the fridge, getting myself a glass of milk, and pondering the concept of breakfast. When I righted myself, I saw Bob walk through the wall separating the living area from the lab, and approach me like a man on a mission. Since I was still running on fumes sleep-wise, I went ahead and let myself appreciate the view. "Hey, Bob. What's up?"
"No much in terms of research, I'm afraid," Bob replied. He stopped for a moment and looked at me. "Harry? Are you all right? You look terrible."
"You should see the other guy," I said, rubbing my face again in an effort to wake up further.
"If you'd been in a fight yesterday, it would certainly explain why you came home covered in dust and fell into bed," Bob said. He was trying to sound unconcerned, but the look in his eyes told me that I'd worried him. I brought him up to speed while I made breakfast, and when I was shoveling bites of fried egg into my mouth, Bob frowned curiously.
"And Morgan was insisting that darkness surrounded him still?" Bob narrowed his eyes, one of his thumbs starting to worry at the amber ring he wore on his left pinkie.
I nodded, chewing a few more times before swallowing. "I'm wondering if somebody got to him? Maybe did a little mind magic after he left Mr. Crispy at the diner?"
Bob considered that for a moment, and then shook his head. "Magics affecting the mind usually have a purpose behind them, whether it be to force the victim to action or inaction. Creating the impression that Morgan was surrounded by darkness that did not actually blind him would have been pointless."
"Unless," I said slowly, a thought coming to me. "Morgan saw something he shouldn't have, something that somebody didn't want him to see." I sipped some milk. "Could be that the illusion is punishment, or a way to try to get him to go nuts so that he can't tell anyone about whatever he saw."
Bob looked doubtful. "I wouldn't be too sure, Harry. From what you described, Morgan was acting irrationally before he entered the building that was about to collapse, correct?" At my nod, he continued. "To ensure that the spell wouldn't be interrupted, the wizard would have to maintain line of sight with Morgan, and no one else was at that scene except for Lieutenant Murphy. And you've already established that she doesn't have the gift."
"Thaumaturgy doesn't need line of sight," I pointed out.
"Not everything Dark is thaumaturgical, Harry," Bob said patiently. "And in this case, Morgan isn't seeing black smoke. He's seeing darkness." He frowned a little, something occurring to him. "Dark magical energies, perhaps?"
I tried to think of a counter to that, but I couldn't. I shook my head with a sigh. "I don't know. Whatever he's seeing, Morgan got spirited away by the Wardens. If I don't get to him soon to ask him what he was doing with Mr. Crispy, I might as well let Murphy arrest me for obstruction."
Bob pursed his lips. "It's unlikely that the Wardens would let you speak to him, especially if they wished to heal Morgan's injuries without interference."
I finished my food and put the plate in the sink. "They'll just give me the run-around anyway," I said, shaking my head.
"Then what do you propose to do?" Bob asked, frowning at me.
"Research," I said, rinsing out the glass and setting it on top of the plate. Wiping my hands on my pants, I turned back to Bob. "Whatever the hell is going on just took out a Warden, Bob. I need to figure out what's happening, and I need to know as quickly as possible."
***
A few hours, damn near half of my collection on magical attacks, and one serious case of eyestrain later, I was sagging onto my lab table, resting my forehead on my folded arms gingerly as a headache started behind my right eyeball.
Bob pulled his head out of one bookcase, frowning a little as he thought. When I lifted my head to glance over at him, he shook his head. "Nothing here."
I sighed, and put my head back down. Think, Harry, think, I told myself sternly.
"There's got to be something I'm missing here..." I muttered.
Bob opened his mouth to say something, and I heard the bell chime over the front door, and Bob nodded once. "I'll see if I can find anything else."
I frowned, looking at the stacks of books that had slowly taken over my lab table. I didn't like doing it, but I nodded. "Be back in a bit. If you find something, just shout. We can play the assistant angle if it's a customer."
Bob nodded again, and resolutely stuck his head back into the bookcase he'd been slowly reading through. I managed to open the steel door and slip out before I heard someone moving slowly around the storefront.
"Harry?" Murphy called, her voice sounding tense.
I frowned, walking down the corridor to the storefront to find Murphy standing uncertainly on the rug in front of the door, looking around. "Murphy?"
Her eyes locked onto my face without meeting my gaze for more than a second. "There you are," she said, closing her cell phone and setting it down on the corner of my desk. "I tried calling a couple times, but I kept getting the machine."
"I've been busy." When she moved closer, I could see she was tense, the kind of tense that usually meant that Murphy was ready to pull her gun. "Murph? You okay?"
"Fine," she snapped reflexively. As much as I have a knee-jerk reaction to damsels in distress and women in general, Murphy has a need to prove that she can stand on her own two feet without anybody's help. Sometimes, it worked in her favor -- you don't get to be a police lieutenant if the guys in command see you scared. Other times... not so much.
I frowned. "Really? Because you don't look it."
"You're one to talk, Harry," she said, a smile tugging at her lips. "Have you slept at all?"
I shook my head. "It's my personal cure for visions of drowners and people fried to a crisp," I said. "You should try it sometime. I'm making friends with all the roaches and everything."
Murphy shuddered a little, wrinkling her cute little nose a little. "Now I know you've lost it." After a moment, her smile slipped. "Harry, I... I think something's happening to me."
I blinked, sobering. "What do you mean?"
"I keep..." Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head. "This is going to sound weird, but... I can't stop thinking about my daughter."
If I'd been expecting Murphy to say something, that wasn't it. "Anna?"
She nodded. "It's... it's like I need to talk to her, to know she's safe. I mean, this has happened a couple times before, but it's... I don't know. It's important now."
"You've been seeing a lot of weird things these past couple of days," I said. "It makes sense that you'd want to make sure your family's safe. It's okay."
"It's not just that, though." Murphy shook her head. "For the past couple of hours, I've been seeing this little girl. She's mostly been at the corner of my eye, and when I try to look at her, she disappears. And she looks so much like Anna. I..." She frowned, looking small and worried. "Am I going crazy, Harry? Is this more of what happened with Boone?"
Boone had been a two-bit criminal who'd been released from prison, only to gain immortality through an ancient Egyptian tablet. During the whole mess, Murphy had been possessed by Boone's soul. It had taken her months to get over it, and there were still times when she looked... not quite whole.
"I don't think so, Murph. In fact," I said, frowning a little. It was a bit of a mental leap, but considering who Morgan was, my gut was telling me I was on the right track. I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder. "I think we're getting closer to whoever's doing this. Here, how about I close up shop, you can sack out on my couch, and when you've gotten some sleep, we can put our heads together."
Murphy shook her head again. "I can't. The captain's breathing down my neck, demanding results. The sooner I can report to him, the better."
"Okay, but be careful, huh?" I said, frowning. I squeezed her shoulder for emphasis, and for a moment, I thought I felt her shoulder get a little warm under my hand. "You look beat."
She looked up at me, avoiding my eyes, and smiled a little. "Yes, Dad. I'll be fine. Take care of yourself." She turned around and headed out the door, the bell over the door jangling.
I watched her go, and when I glanced at the desk, I saw her cell phone, lying innocently next to the Chinese dragon sculpture I'd gotten years ago at a garage sale. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at, but when I did, I scooped it up, mentally composing my apology for blowing up her cell phone as I followed her out. I was about to catch up with her when she started crossing the street.
Right into the path of an oncoming car.
"Murphy!" I shouted, lunging for her. By some miracle, I managed to grab her arm and yank her backwards, causing her to stumble into me. I wobbled a bit, but managed to keep my feet as the car screamed past us, blowing its horn in two irritated beeps before disappearing from view. I righted Murphy and looked at her. "Stars and stones, some people. You okay?"
Murphy's eyes were wide, but after a few deep breaths, she nodded slowly. "Yeah, I'm fine."
"Murph?" I said, a bit confused. She'd nearly gotten hit by a car, and last I checked, that wasn't something you just shrugged off.
Murphy shook her head. "No, really. I'm okay. Just a bit rattled."
I nodded slowly. "You were about to leave your cell phone." I offered her the phone.
"Thanks," she said, taking the phone from me and sliding it into her coat pocket.
"Look, Murphy, are you sure you're all right? You can stay a little while. I can get you some water or something, give you a chance to calm down a little."
Murphy sighed, and shook her head. "I wish I could, but I really need to get going. See you tomorrow." She stepped away from me, and after quadruple-checking that no more cars were coming from either side, she stepped out into the road. I watched her well after she got to the other side and into her unmarked car, wondering if maybe I was going nuts myself. But, I shook my head and headed back inside.
Crazy or not, people still needed my help.
I closed the door when I got inside, double-checking that the sign was flipped over to deter any would-be customers and locking it.
"Harry?" Bob called. A second later, he walked through the wall, raising grey eyebrows at me. "Who was that just now?"
"Murphy," I said. I heard a faint buzzing noise, but when I looked around, I couldn't see anything that could've been causing it. "I think the case's getting to her."
"Oh?" Bob looked curious. When I finished explaining, he looked even more surprised. "Oh, dear."
"I tried to get her to stay, but you know what she's like," I grunted. "Did you find anything useful?"
Bob shook his head. "No, but I'll keep digging." He frowned at me for a long moment, and then added, "Perhaps, you should rest. I can continue working."
I frowned. "Aren't you always saying that two heads are better than one?" I asked.
Bob sighed. "You usually don't look as though you've been run over by a car. Go rest, or I'll start singing funeral Masses."
"Oh, no, anything but that," I deadpanned, pretending to clutch at my heart.
"Would you rather I..." He paused for a moment, and then said, "Complained to you that the rent is due next week, and that you really should be asking Lieutenant Murphy for an advance so that you don't have to pay late fees again?"
This time, I glowered at him. Just because I'm in love doesn't mean that Bob doesn't annoy me from time to time. "You're not really encouraging me here, Bob."
"Harry, I have a certain vested interest in making sure that you're capable of working," Bob explained. "Since this consultation business is your only source of income, it behooves me to make sure that you can complete each assignment without customers refusing to pay for bad service. And if it includes hounding you until you actually get some rest, then I'm prepared to be as annoying as possible in order to get you to bed." He eyed me. "Now, are you going to continue to be stubborn, or am I going to have to badger you some more?"
I kept up the glare. "That research isn't going to do itself."
Bob rolled his eyes. "I'm well aware of that, and I intend on continuing, but only after you get to bed."
I snorted. "Bob. Seriously."
"I'm not going to convince you to go to sleep on your own, am I?" Bob asked flatly, watching me steadily.
"Nope," I said cheerfully, heading for the lab.
Bob kept pace with me, walking through the wall and waiting until I'd closed the door behind me before speaking. "At this point, we seem to be concentrating on too many variables."
I sank onto my stool, and for once, I just sat there. I rested my jaw in the palm of one hand and just sat there. "Sorry, Bob, but after the amount of research we've done already, my brain's starting to fry."
Bob turned away from the bookshelf he'd been squinting at to shoot me an irritated look. "Why do you think I suggested that you sleep? After a few hours' rest, you might see our conundrum in a different light, or even think of an avenue of research we hadn't considered yet."
It was a good argument, and I'm sure that given a minute or two, I would have come up with a witty remark to his mother-hen routine, but my brain got stuck on the word 'our'.
It's not like Bob's never said the word before, or never stood with his back to me like he did now, his head turning as he perused book spines. The lines and curves, emphasized by the cut of his suit -- different flavors of red that made him look pale while reminding me of passion and energy.
I shook my head. Dangerous territory, Harry, I told myself firmly. He might catch on if you keep doing that.
But that 'our' sounded different in my head, somehow. It sounded almost like a promise.
"Hey, Bob, take five, will you?" I said suddenly, my lips tingling a little as I said it.
Bob turned from the bookcase to look at me curiously. "Very well. Have you thought of something?"
I shook my head. "Nothing useful about the case, but I wanted to ask you something."
His eyebrows rose. "Yes?"
"If you were able to turn mortal right now, no questions asked, no black magic involved, no breaking the laws of magic, what would you do?"
Bob blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"You heard me, Bob," I said. "What would you do? Where would you go?"
Bob blinked again, and then he breathed in slowly, his chest lifting with the motion despite the fact that he literally hadn't breathed in almost a thousand years. "Harry..." He paused, and squinted his eyes just a little. "I know we've rarely spoken about my brush with mortality, but can we please change the subject?"
I frowned, a bit surprised by the reaction. "Come on, Bob. You must have thought about it."
I could see the muscles in Bob's jaw tighten. "Perhaps so, but it would avail me nothing to dwell on it now."
"How come?" I asked. The curiosity was there, almost bursting at the seams -- I'd left Bob along since the time Justin had turned him mortal and he'd had to pretend to betray me in order to make sure Justin died permanently, but I'd never stopped wanting to ask him about it. Now that I had, I almost wished I hadn't brought it up, given the look on Bob's face.
My mouth, on the other hand, had ideas of its own.
Bob looked at me, his eyes almost boring holes into my head. "I had a few bittersweet hours of mortality, Harry. To be able to smell the smog in the air for the first time, to actually feel the leather seats in the car that Justin's double used to take you to the morgue. To taste magic on my tongue, in my mouth..." He shook his head. "I have those memories, and I can remember them as though they'd happened only yesterday, and I know I can never have that again."
"But if you could?" I asked, my voice coming out gentle somehow. Ever since that incident, I'd made my own tentative plans to bring Bob back from his curse, to let him have mortality again. I'd been a bit stuck on the how, but I couldn't help but wonder what Bob would do if I ever managed to free him.
"Does it truly mean that much to you?" he asked, his voice low and curious, as though he hadn't considered the possibility that I'd think about this on my own. For all I knew, he really hadn't.
I nodded once, not trusting my voice as I looked up at him.
After a long silence, he nodded slowly. "Very well." He stopped, and then he looked puzzled. "To be honest, I've distracted myself from thinking about it for so long that I'm not sure what I would do."
I had to tamp down a smile. "Well, do you know of any places you want to see for yourself?" I started mentally preparing an itinerary.
He blinked, and then squinted his eyes as he thought, his lips pursing into a kissable near-pout. "I suppose I would travel to England, see if there are any surroundings that might have survived nearly a thousand years. Perhaps travel the continent, while I was there."
"You never went to Europe when you were alive?" I asked.
Bob shook his head. "Travel in those days was a serious undertaking. After I had finished my apprenticeship, I'd traveled northward to get away from people. Going to the continent would have been counter-productive."
"Okay, so where else do you want to go?"
"I'm not really sure," he hedged, and then he cocked his head. "Most likely to a place where there were no other people. One thing I've missed while being a ghost is being alone."
That stung a little, but I was pretty sure I didn't count. "Being alone?"
Bob nodded. "I'm rather sick of my fellow man, Harry, and it would be nice to live out in the middle of nowhere, at least for a while, and enjoy nature again. No one else to bother me, no one to be forced to make polite conversation with."
"Sure thing," I said, nodding. "I'm sure there's places we could go without having to worry about any neighbors for miles."
Bob paused for a moment, looking utterly baffled, and then he shook his head. "I'm sorry. I must not have been clear. When I meant 'being alone', I truly meant being alone. You've been a very good friend to me, and I'll always treasure our memories together, but let us not forget what exactly we are to each other." He looked pointedly at his skull, engraved with symbols and binding spells, sitting on top of one of my books like a morbid paperweight.
I felt like a rug had been ripped out from under me. I'd been in love with Bob since I was a teenager, and after Justin's death, I'd come to rely on him as the one friend that I had left who truly understood me. He had been a rock I could lean on when I was hurt or scared or angry. Finding out that he was willing to leave me behind in his 'get away from the world' idea, that he thought of me as his keeper first instead of his friend... it stung deeply.
I cleared my throat, trying to cover for the silence, but Bob kept going.
"There's been some projects that I've been working on during my... enforced retirement that I've yet to put to practical experimentation, for reasons that should be obvious," he said, his lips quirking into a bitter smile. "It would be wonderful to be able to see them in action. And before you ask, Harry, you know that a wizard's intent shapes their magic. Even if you were so inclined to listen to me try to explain my work to you, the way that you would create the effect in your mind wouldn't be the same as the way I would, so the spell could come out differently, even disastrously, were you to try to attempt it."
I nodded numbly. "I remember."
Bob nodded, looking satisfied. "It's good to see that you haven't forgotten everything I taught you."
"No, just all of the boring parts," I said wittily. Bob sighed and rolled his eyes. I managed a smile, but my heart wasn't in it. "Would you come visit in between projects?" I tried to ask as lightly as I could. "It'd do you good to get out of the house every once in a while."
Bob nodded. "I'm sure I'd find occasion to visit." The look of polite disinterest on his face almost made me wince. If I'd returned him to mortality, and he went through his plan to disappear from the world for a while so he could play with his experiments in peace and quiet, I'd be lucky if I saw him once a decade. Not the best thought in the world, but at least I wasn't fooling myself.
As much as this conversation had hurt, I told myself that I appreciated Bob's honesty. He hadn't sugarcoated what he really wanted in an effort to spare my feelings, and after a few centuries as a ghost, I'd probably want to get away from other people for a while, too. Hell, I'd probably want to get away from the guy who reminded me of a time when I was a literally a ghost of my former self.
For some reason, I had always thought that if I ever managed to bring Bob back to full-blown mortality again, with no strings, no cosmic debt hanging over either of us... well, I thought he'd stick around. That he'd end up staying here in Chicago with me, sacking out on the couch, or even taking the bed while I heroically suffered a pain in the neck or cramped legs on his behalf. That we'd fight over what kind of toothpaste to buy, or what food was left decaying in the back of the fridge.
Yeah. Right. In this land of fairy tales, Mai would give me a ride on her back as we flew over rainbows and danced in faerie circles while Morgan played a guitar and sang songs about love and joy and all that was good in the world.
Of course Bob would want to strike out on his own. Sure, he would've had to worry about the High Council, but after a few centuries of watching how the 'good guys' operated, I was fairly sure Bob could avoid being detected by their best Wardens after about a week or so of effort.
And of course he'd want to leave me behind. I was nothing but a reminder of when his will hadn't been entirely his own. Sure, I might have been the first master he'd served who'd actually given him free rein to do as he wished within the limits of his curse, but I hadn't tried to free him from the first day I'd become the guardian of his skull. In fact, the first thing I'd done as his master was interrogate him, accuse him of being a powerless liar, and lock him inside his skull for a month out of sheer anger and frustration.
Yeah, I was Mr. Congeniality, all right.
Despite finding out that returning Bob to mortality would mean that he would leave without ever looking back, I knew deep down that I'd still look for a way to break his curse and make sure he lived a mortal life before his soul was finally free to pass on. I love the guy, and sure, I can be selfish from time to time, but that would be going too far.
Sitting at my lab table, only half-listening to Bob's smooth, low voice as he detailed ideas as they came to him, I realized that I would rather live the rest of my life without Bob than to have Bob with me when I died, because there was no way I was going to let the man I loved be imprisoned for eternity. There was just no way.
Bob paused in mid-sentence, and frowned at me. "You haven't been listening to a word I've said, have you?"
I smiled up at him, a little sheepish. "Nope."
He rolled his blue-green eyes and sighed heavily. "Of course." He looked at me patiently. "Harry, are you quite sure you're not going to sleep?"
I nodded, and then my head swam a little, my vision going a bit blurry. I could feel something burr against my skin, and I yawned.
Bob shot me a victorious look. "Go to bed, Harry."
I scowled at him, but I got up from the stool and stretched my arms. "All right, fine. But don't think you've won."
Bob smiled fondly. "I will quaver in my shoes when you wake up, I'm sure. Good night, Harry."
I don't remember much about what happened after that. I know that I went upstairs and I planted face-first into my pillow. I remember distinctly feeling a sense of deja vu before blackness enveloped me, and I slept dreamlessly.
***
Back to Part One.
Continue to Part Three.
