She made a face. “I’m not worried about just you. You’ve got at least one gun stashed here, and I’m betting there’s more illegal material in the lab. If they like you for a suspect, they’ll get a warrant. And the FBI, as far as I know, doesn’t have any amulets to get them in here alive.”
I groaned aloud. Murph was right. I had a couple of illegal weapons in my apartment. The Swords were still in the lab, too. Plus some miscellaneous material that the government probably wouldn’t want me owning, including depleted uranium dust, for when the answer to “Who you gonna call?” turns out to be “Harry Dresden.”
The wards that protected my apartment were going to be an issue as well. They wouldn’t do anything if someone walked up and knocked on the door, or even if they fiddled with the doorknob—but anyone who tried to force the door open was in for a shock. About seventy thousand volts of shock, in fact, thanks to the defenses I’d put in place around my door. The lightning was savage, but it was only the first layer of the defense. It hadn’t been so terribly long since an army of zombies tore their way into my living room, and I wasn’t going to repeat the experience.
But my wards wouldn’t have any way of differentiating between a zombie or a crazed vampire or a misguided FBI agent. They simply reacted to someone forcing his way inside. I’d have to deactivate the wards before someone got hurt. Then I’d have to remove any suspect gear from the house.
Hell’s bells. Like I didn’t have enough on my mind. I rubbed my thumb against the spot between my eyebrows where the headache was forming. “I did not need this on top of everything else. Which is why she did it.”
“Why who did what?”
“Duchess Arianna of the Red Court,” I said. I filled Murphy in on my day.
“That’s out of character, isn’t it?” Murphy asked. “I mean, for them to do something this obtrusive? Blowing up a building?”
“They did similar things several times during the war,” I said. “She was making a statement. Blowing up my place of business right in front of God and everybody, the same way the wizards took out her husband’s command post in Honduras. Plus she’s diverting my attention and energy, yanking more potential support out from under me.”
Murphy shook her head. “She’s so clever she’s making a mistake.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. If she was all that smart, she would have blown you to pieces in your office.”
I nodded. “Yeah. That’s the most practical way.”
“So why didn’t she?”
“Figure she wants to inflict the maximum amount of pain she can before she gets rid of me.”
Murphy lifted her eyebrows. “For vengeance? That’s . . . kind of like a bad movie script, isn’t it?” She put on a faint British accent. “No, Mr. Dresden. I expect you to die.”
I grunted. Murphy had a point. Duchess Arianna almost couldn’t have been the sort to enjoy indulging her sadistic side at the expense of practicality. You don’t survive millennia as a vampire without being deadly cold-blooded.
Which meant . . .
“There’s something else at work here,” I said. “Some other game going on.”
Murphy nodded. “How sure are you that Susan is being straight with you?”
“Pretty sure,” I said. It sounded a little hollow, even to me.
Murphy’s mouth twisted up into a bitter curl. “That’s what I thought. You loved her. Makes it easy to manipulate you.”
“Susan wouldn’t do that,” I said.
“I hope not,” Murphy replied. “But . . . she’s been gone awhile, Harry. Fighting a war, from the sounds of it. That’s enough to change anyone, and not for the better.”
I shook my head slowly and said, “Not Susan.”
Murphy shrugged. “Harry . . . I’ve got a bad feeling that . . .” She scrunched up her nose, choosing her words. “I’ve got a bad feeling that the wheels are about to come off.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Just . . . the building blowing up is all over the news. You can’t find an anchor talking about anything else. People are screaming about terrorists. The whole situation is gaining more attention from higher up in the government than anything else I’ve ever seen. You say that most of the White Council has been effectively placed under the control of this Cristos person. Now the upper ranks of the Red Court are getting involved, too, and from what you tell me everyone is reaching for their guns.” She spread her hands. “It’s . . . it’s like the Cuban missile crisis. Everyone’s at the edge.”
Hell’s bells. Murphy was right. The supernatural world was standing at the edge—and it was one hell of a long way down to the war of annihilation at the bottom.
I took a slow breath, thinking. Then I said, “I don’t care about that.”
Murphy’s golden eyebrows went up.
“I’m not responsible for everyone else in the world, Murph. I’m going to find a little girl and take her somewhere safe. That’s all. The rest of the world can manage without me.”
“What if that’s the last straw, Harry? The little girl. What will you do then?”
I growled as a column of pure rage rose up my spine and made my voice rough. “I will make Maggie safe. If the world burns because of that, then so be it. Me and the kid will roast some marshmallows.”
Murphy watched me thoughtfully for several empty seconds. Then she said, very gently, “You’re a good man, Harry.”
I swallowed and bowed my head, made humble by the tone of her voice and the expression on her face, more than the words themselves.
“Not always rational,” she said, smiling. “But you’re the best kind of crazy.”
“Thank you, Karrin.”
She reached out and squeezed my arm once. “I should go. Call me.”
“I will.”
She left a moment later and I began sanitizing my apartment for government scrutiny. It would take me a little precious time, but being locked in a cage would take even more. I was still tucking away the last of my contraband when there was a knock at the door. I froze. After a moment, the knock was repeated.
“Harry Dresden!” called a man’s voice. “This is Special Agent Tilly of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have a warrant to search this property and detain its occupants for questioning regarding last night’s explosion. If you do not open this door, we will be forced to break it down.”
Crap.
Chapter 11
I tore the rug from the trapdoor again. I’d packed almost all of my questionable materials into a large nylon gym bag. I slung it over my shoulder, grabbed my duster, staff, and blasting rod, and nearly killed myself trying to go down the ladder too quickly. I stopped a couple of steps from the bottom and reached up to close the trapdoor again. There was a pair of simple bolts on the lower side of the door, so that I or the grasshopper could signal the other that something delicate was in progress, and distractions might be dangerous. I locked the door firmly.
“What’s going on?” blurted Bob from his shelf.
“Bob, I need the wards down now.”
“Why don’t you just—”
“Because they’ll come back up five minutes after I’ve used the disarming spell. I need them down. Get off your bony ass and do it!”
“But that will knock them out for at least a week—”
“I know. Go do it, and hurry! You have my permission to leave the skull for that purpose.”
“Aye-aye, O captain, my captain,” Bob said sourly. A small cloud of orange sparkling light flowed out of the skull’s eye sockets and rushed upstairs through the cracks at the edge of the trapdoor.
I immediately started dumping things into my bag. I was making a mess doing it, too, but there was no help for that.
Less than half a minute later, Bob returned and flowed back into the skull again. “There’re a bunch of guys in suits and uniforms knocking on the door, Harry.”