Murphy let out a groan that was almost lustful. “I like this plan. I’m starving.”
I sat there watching Molly and Charity, and felt a twinge of nerves inside me. I’d been sent to find black magic. Molly was it. She’d used her power to renovate someone’s brain, and as benign as her intentions might have been, I knew that it hadn’t left her unstained. I knew better than anybody how much danger Molly was still in. How dangerous she might now be.
I’d saved her from the bad faeries, sure, but now she faced another, infinitely more dangerous threat.
The White Council. The Wardens. The sword.
It was only a matter of time before someone else managed to trace the black magic back to its source. If I didn’t bring her before the Council, someone else would, sooner or later. Even worse, if the mind-controlling magic she’d already used had begun to turn upon her, to warp her as well, she might be a genuine danger to herself and others. She could wind up as dangerous and crazy as the kid whose execution had served as a prelude to the past few days.
If I took her to the Council, I would probably be responsible for her death.
If I didn’t, I’d be responsible for those she might harm.
I wished I wasn’t so damned tired. I might have been able to come up with some options. I settled for banishing thoughts of tomorrow for the time being. I was whole, and alive, and sane, and so were the people who had stood beside me. We’d gotten the girl out in one piece. Her mom was holding her so ferociously that I wondered if I might not have been the catalyst for a reconciliation between the pair of them.
I might have healed the wounds of their family. And that was a damned fine thing to have done. I felt a genuine warmth and pride from it. I’d helped to bring mother and daughter back together. For tonight, that was enough.
Thomas sat down on my other side, wincing as he touched the lump on his head. “Harry,” Thomas said. “Remind me why we keep hurling ourselves into this kind of insanity.”
I traded a smile with Murphy and said nothing. We all three of us watched as Charity, on the floor in front of the first row of seats, clutched her daughter hard against her.
Molly leaned against her with a child’s gratefulness, need, and love. She spoke very quietly, never opening her eyes. “Mama.”
Charity said nothing, but she hugged her daughter even more tightly. “Oh,” Thomas said. “Right.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Right.”
Chapter Forty-one
Father Forthill received us in his typical fashion: with warmth, welcome, compassion, and food. At first, Thomas was going to remain outside Saint Mary’s, but I clamped my hand onto the front of his mail and dragged him unceremoniously inside with me. He could have gotten loose, of course, so I knew he didn’t really much mind. He growled and snapped at me halfheartedly, but nodded cautiously to Forthill when I introduced him. Then my brother stepped out into the hall and did his unobtrusive-wall-hanging act.
The Carpenter kids were sound asleep when we came in, but the noise made one of them stir, and little Harry opened his eyes, blinked sleepily, then let out a shriek of delight when he saw his mother. The sound wakened the other kids, and everyone assaulted Charity and Molly with happy shouts and hugs and kisses.
I watched the reunion from a chair across the room, and dozed sitting up until Forthill returned with food. There weren’t chairs enough for everyone, and Charity wound up sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, chomping down sandwiches while her children all tried to remain within touching distance.
I stuffed my face shamelessly. The use of magic, the excitement, and that final uphill hike through the cold had left my stomach on the verge of implosion. “Survival food,” I muttered. “Nothing like it.”
Murphy, leaning against the wall beside me, nodded. “Damn right.” She wiped at her mouth and looked at her watch. She tucked the last of her sandwich between her lips, and then started resetting the watch while she chewed.
“Gone almost exactly twenty-four hours. So we did some kind of time travel?” she asked.
“Oh, God no,” I said. “That’s on the list of Things One Does Not Do. It’s one of the seven Laws of Magic.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But however it happened, a whole day just went poof. That’s time travel.”
“People are doing that kind of time travel all the time,” I said. “We just pulled into the passing lane for a while.”
She finished setting the watch and grimaced. “All the same.”
I frowned at her. “You okay?”
She looked up at the children and their mother. “I’m going to have one hell of a time explaining where I’ve been for the past twenty-four hours. It isn’t as though I can tell my boss that I went time traveling.”
“Yeah, he’d never buy it. Tell him you invaded Faerieland to rescue a young woman from a monster-infested castle.”
“Of course,” she said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
I grunted. “Is it going to make trouble for you?”
She frowned for a moment and then said, “Intradepartmental discipline, probably. They couldn’t get me for anything criminal, so no jail.”
I blinked. “Jail?”
“I was in charge of things, remember?” Murphy reminded me. “I was pushing the line by laying that aside and coming to help you. Throw in that extra day and…” She shrugged.
“Hell’s bells,” I sighed. “I hadn’t realized.”
She shrugged a shoulder.
“How bad is it going to be?” I asked.
She frowned. “Depends on a lot of things. Mostly what Greene and Rick have to say, and how they say it. What other cops who were there have to say. A couple of those guys are major assholes. They’d be glad to make trouble for me.”
“Like Rudolph,” I said.
“Like Rudolph.”
I put on my Bronx accent. “You want I should whack ‘em for ya?”
She gave me a quick, ghostly smile. “Better let me sleep on that one.”
I nodded. “But seriously. If there’s anything I can do…”
“Just keep your head down for a while. You aren’t exactly well loved all over the department. There are some people who resent that I keep hiring you, and that they can’t tell me to stop because the cases you’re on have about a ninety percent likelihood of resolution.”
“My effectiveness is irrelevant? I thought cops had to have a degree or something, these days.”
She snorted. “I love my job,” she said. “But sometimes it feels like it has an unnecessarily high moron factor.”
I nodded agreement. “What are they going to do?”
“This will be my first official fuckup,” she said. “If I handle it correctly, I don’t think they’ll fire me.”
“But?” I asked.
She pushed some hair back from her eyes. “They’ll shove lots of fan counseling and psychological evaluation down my throat.”
I tried to imagine Murphy on a therapist’s couch.
My brain almost exploded out my ears.
“They’ll try every trick they can to convince me to leave,” she continued. “And when I don’t, they’ll demote me. I’ll lose SI.”
A lead weight landed on the bottom of my stomach. “Murph,” I said.
She tried to smile but failed. She just looked sickly and strained. “It isn’t anyone’s fault, Harry. Just the nature of the beast. It had to be done, and I’d do it again. I can live with that.”
Her tone was calm, relaxed, but she was too tired to make it sound genuine. Murphy’s command might have been a tricky, frustrating, ugly one, but it was hers. She’d fought for her rank, worked her ass off to get it, and then she got shunted into SI. Only instead of accepting banishment to departmental Siberia, she’d worked even harder to throw it back into the faces of the people who had sent her there.