I froze in place, going completely still, even though I was standing in plain sight. A sudden movement would only have served to draw her attention to me. She went on by, her steps brisk, her expression empty of any emotion or spark of life, just as I remembered. I watched her go into Anna Ash's building.
Murphy, taking her cue from me, had frozen in place as well. She caught a glimpse of Helen Beckitt's back as she went inside.
"Harry?" she asked. "What was that?"
"The plot," I said, "thickening."
Chapter Six
"I don't like this," Murphy said. "Helen Beckitt has got plenty of reasons to dislike you." don't like this," Murphy said. "Helen Beckitt has got plenty of reasons to dislike you."
I snorted. "Who doesn't?"
"I'm serious, Harry." The elevator doors closed and we started up. The building was old, and the elevator wasn't the fastest in the world. Murphy shook her head. "If what you said about people beginning to fear you is true, then there's got to be a reason for it. Maybe someone is telling stories."
"And you like Helen for that?"
"She already shot you, and that didn't work. Maybe she figured it was time to get nasty."
"Sticks and stones and small-caliber bullets may break my bones," I said. "Words will never, et cetera."
"It's awfully coincidental to find her here. She's a con, Harry, and she wound up in jail because of you. I can't imagine that she's making nice with the local magic community for the camaraderie."
"I didn't think cops knew about big words like 'camaraderie,' Murph. Are you sure you're a real policeperson?"
She gave me an exasperated glance. "Do you ever stop joking around?"
"I mutter off-color limericks in my sleep."
"Just promise me that you'll watch your back," Murphy said.
"There once was a girl from Nantucket," I said. "Her mouth was as big as a bucket."
Murphy flipped both her hands palms up in a gesture of frustrated surrender. "Dammit, Dresden."
I lifted an eyebrow. "You seem worried about me."
"There are women up there," she said. "You don't always think very clearly where women are concerned."
"So you think I should watch my back."
"Yes."
I turned to her and looked down at her and said, more quietly, "Golly, Murph. Why did you think I wanted you along?"
She looked up and smiled at me, the corners of her eyes wrinkling, though her voice remained tart. "I figured you wanted someone along who could notice things more subtle than a flashing neon sign."
"Oh, come on," I said. "It doesn't have to be flashing."
The elevator doors opened and I took the lead down the hall to Anna Ash's apartment-and stepped into a tingling curtain of delicate energy four or five feet shy of the door. I drew up sharply, and Murphy had to put a hand against my back to keep from bumping into me.
"What is it?" she asked.
I held up my left hand. Though my maimed hand was still mostly numb to conventional stimuli, it had never had any trouble sensing the subtle patterns of organized magical energy. I spread out my fingers as much as I could, trying to touch the largest possible area as I closed my eyes and focused on my wizard's senses.
"It's a ward," I said quietly.
"Like on your apartment?" she asked.
"It's not as strong," I said, waving my hand slowly over it. "And it's a little cruder. I've got bricks and razor wire. This is more like aluminum siding and chicken wire. But it has a decent kick. Fire, I think." I squinted up and down the hall. "Huh. I don't think there's enough there to kill outright, but it would hurt like hell."
"And a fire would set off the building's alarms," Murphy added. "Make people start running out. Summon the authorities."
"Uh-huh," I said. "Discouraging your average prowler, supernatural or not. It's not meant to kill." I stepped back and nodded to Murphy. "Go ahead and knock."
She gave me an arch look. "That's a joke, right?"
"If this ward isn't done right, it could react with my aura and go off."
"Can't you just take it apart?"
"Whoever did this was worried enough to invest a lot of time and effort to make this home safer," I said. "Kinda rude to tear it up."
Murphy tilted her head for a second, and then she got it. "And you'll scare them if you just walk through it like it wasn't there."
"Yeah," I said quietly. "They're frightened, Murph. I've got to be gentle, or they won't give me anything that can help them."
Murphy nodded and knocked on the door.
She rapped three times, and the doorknob was already turning on the third rap.
A small, prettily plump woman opened the door. She was even shorter than Murphy, mid-forties maybe, with blond hair and rosy, cherubic cheeks that looked used to smiling. She wore a lavender dress and carried a small dog, maybe a Yorkshire terrier, in her arms. She smiled at Murphy and said, "Of course, Sergeant Murphy, I know who you are."
Maybe half a second after the woman started speaking, Murphy said, "Hello, my name is Sergeant Murphy, and I'm a detective with the CPD."
Murphy blinked for a second and fell silent.
"Oh," the woman said. "I'm sorry; I forget sometimes." She made an airy little gesture with one hand. "Such a scatterbrain."
I started to introduce myself, but before I got my mouth open, the little woman said, "Of course, we all know who you are, Mister Dresden." She put her fingers to her mouth. They were shaking a little. "Oh. I forgot again. Excuse me. I'm Abby."
"Pleased to meet you, Abby," I said quietly, and extended my hand, relaxed, palm down, to the little Yorkie. The dog sniffed at my hand, quivering with eagerness as he did, and his tail started wagging. "Heya, little dog."
"Toto," Abby said, and before I could respond said, "Exactly, a classic. If it isn't broken, why fix it?" She nodded to me and said, "Excuse me; I'll let our host speak to you. I was just closest to the door." She shut the door on us.
"Certainly," I said to the door.
Murphy turned to me. "Weird."
I shrugged. "At least the dog liked me."
"She knew what we were going to say before we said it, Harry."
"I noticed that."
"Is she telepathic or something?"
I shook my head. "Not in the way you're thinking. She doesn't exactly hide what she's doing, and if she was poking around in people's heads, the Council would have done something a long time ago."
"Then how did she know what we were about to say?"
"My guess is that she's prescient," I said. "She can see the future. Probably only a second or two, and she probably doesn't have a lot of voluntary control over it."
Murphy made a thoughtful noise. "Could be handy."
"In some ways," I said. "But the future isn't written in stone."
Murphy frowned. "Like, what if I'd decided to tell her my name was Karrin Murphy instead of Sergeant, at the last second?"
"Yeah. She'd have been wrong. People like her can sense a...sort of a cloud of possible futures. We were in a fairly predictable situation here even without bringing any magical talents into it, basic social interaction, so it looked like she saw exactly what was coming. But she didn't. She got to judge what was most probable, and it wasn't hard to guess correctly in this particular instance."
"That's why she seemed so distracted," Murphy said thoughtfully.
"Yeah. She was keeping track of what was was happening, what was happening, what was likely likely to happen, deciding what to happen, deciding what wasn't wasn't likely to happen, all in a window of a few seconds." I shook my head. "It's a lot worse if they can see any farther than a second or two." likely to happen, all in a window of a few seconds." I shook my head. "It's a lot worse if they can see any farther than a second or two."
Murphy frowned. "Why?"
"Because the farther you can see, the more possibilities exist," I said. "Think of a chess game. A beginning player is doing well if he can see four or five moves into the game. Ten moves in holds an exponentially greater number of possible configurations the board could assume. Master players can sometimes see even further than that-and when you start dealing with computers, the numbers are even bigger. It's difficult to even imagine the scope of it."
"And that's in a closed, simple environment," Murphy said, nodding. "The chess game. There are far more possibilities in the real world."
"The biggest game." I shook my head. "It's a dangerous talent to have. It can leave you subject to instabilities of one kind or another as side effects. Doctors almost always diagnose folks like Abby with epilepsy, Alzheimer's, or one of a number of personality disorders. I got five bucks that says that medical bracelet on her wrist says she's epileptic-and that the dog can sense seizures coming and warn her."
"I didn't see the bracelet," Murphy admitted. "No bet."
While we stood there talking quietly for maybe five minutes, a discussion took place inside the apartment. Low voices came through the door in tense, muffled tones that eventually cut off when a single voice, louder than the rest, overrode the others. A moment later, the door opened.
The first woman we'd seen enter the apartment faced me. She had a dark complexion, dark eyes, short, dark straight hair that made me think she might have had some Native Americans in the family a generation or three back. She was maybe five foot four, late thirties. She had a serious kind of face, with faint, pensive lines between her brows, and from the way she stood, blocking the doorway with solidly planted feet, I got the impression that she could be a bulldog when necessary.
"No one here has broken any of the Laws, Warden," she said in a quiet, firm voice.
"Gosh, that's a relief," I said. "Anna Ash?"
She narrowed her eyes and nodded.
"I'm Harry Dresden," I said.
She pursed her lips and gave me a speculative look. "Are you kidding? I know who you are."
"I don't make it a habit to assume that everyone I meet knows who I am," I said, implying apology in my tone. "This is Karrin Murphy, Chicago PD."
Anna nodded to Murphy and asked, in a neutral, polite tone, "May I see your identification, Ms. Murphy?"
Murphy already had her badge on its leather backing in hand, and she passed it to Anna. Her photo identification was on the reverse side of the badge, under a transparent plastic cover.
Anna looked at the badge and the photo, and compared it to Murphy. She passed it back almost reluctantly, and then turned to me. "What do you want?"
"To talk," I said.
"About what?"
"The Ordo Lebes," I said. "And what's happened to several practitioners lately."
Her voice remained polite on the surface, but I could hear bitter undertones. "I'm sure you know much more about it than us."
"Not especially," I said. "That's what I'm trying to correct."
She shook her head, suspicion written plainly on her face. "I'm not an idiot. The Wardens keep track of everything. Everyone knows that."
I sighed. "Yeah, but I forgot to take my George Orwellshaped multivitamins along with my breakfast bowl of Big Brother Os this morning. I was hoping you could just talk to me for a little while, the way you would with a human being."
She eyed me a bit warily. Lots of people react to my jokes like that. "Why should I?"
"Because I want to help you."
"Of course you'd say that," she said. "How do I know you mean it?"
"Ms. Ash," Murphy put in quietly, "he's on the level. We're here to help, if we can."
Anna chewed on her lip for a minute, looking back and forth between us and then glancing at the room behind her. Finally, she faced me and said, "Appearances can be deceiving. I have no way of knowing if you are who-and what-you say you are. I prefer to err on the side of caution."
"Never hurts to be cautious," I agreed. "But you're edging toward paranoid, Ms. Ash."
She began to shut the door. "This is my home. And I'm not inviting you inside."
"Groovy," I said, and stepped over the threshold and into the apartment, nudging her gently aside before she could close the door.
As I did, I felt the pressure of the threshold, an aura of protective magical energy that surrounds any home. The threshold put up a faintly detectable resistance as my own aura of power met it-and could not cross it. If Anna, the home's owner, had invited me in, the threshold would have parted like a curtain. She hadn't, and as a result, if I wanted to come inside, I'd have to leave much of my power at the door. If I had to work any forces while I was in there, I'd be crippled practically to the point of total impotence.
I turned to see Anna staring at me in blank surprise. She was aware of what I had just done.