We.
"Hell's bells," I muttered, and stalked back inside my house. I slammed the door behind me, lit a candle, stomped into my little bathroom, and turned on the shower. The water was only a couple degrees short of becoming sleet, but I stripped and got in anyway, simmering with several varieties of frustration.
We.
We, we, we. Which implied she and someone else together. Someone who was not me. Was she? Susan, with the Pedantic Avenger there? That didn't track. I mean, hell's bells, the guy was just so dull. Boring. Blasй.
And maybe stable.
Face it, Harry. Interesting you might be. Exciting you might be. Stable you ain't.
I pushed my head under the freezing water and left it there. Susan hadn't said they were together. Neither had he. I mean, that wouldn't be why she had broken off the kiss. She had a really good reason to do that, after all.
But then again, it wasn't like we were together. She'd been gone for better than a year.
A lot can change in a year.
Her mouth hadn't. Or her hands. Or the curve of her body. Or the smoldering sensuality of her eyes. Or the soft sounds she made as she arched against me, her body begging me to-
I looked down at myself, sighed, and turned the water to its coldest setting.
I came out of the shower shriveled and turning blue, dried off, and got into bed.
I had just managed to get the covers warm so that I could stop shivering when my phone rang.
I swore sulfurously, got out of bed into the freezing air, snatched up the phone, and growled, "What." Then, on the off chance it was Susan, I forced some calm into my voice and said, "I mean, hello?"
"Sorry to wake you, Harry," said Karrin Murphy, the head of Chicago PD's Special Investigations division. SI routinely handled any crime that fell between the cracks of the other departments, as well as being handed the really smelly cases no one else wanted. As a result, they wound up looking into all kinds of things that weren't easily explained. Their job was to make sure that things were taken care of, and that everything typed up neatly into the final report.
Murphy called me in as a consultant from time to time, when she had something weird that she didn't know how to handle. We'd been working together for a while, and Murphy had gotten to where she and SI could handle your average, everyday supernatural riffraff. But from time to time, she ran into something that stumped her. My phone number is on her quick dial.
"Murph," I said. "What's up?"
"Unofficial business," she said. "I'd like your take on something."
"Unofficial means not paid, I guess," I said.
"You up for any pro bono work?" She paused and then said, "This could be important to me."
What the hell. My night had pretty much been shot anyway. "Where do you want me?"
"Cook County Morgue," Murphy said. "I want to show you a corpse."
Chapter Five
They don't make morgues with windows. In fact, if the geography allows for it, they hardly ever make morgues above the ground. I guess it's partly because it must be easier to refrigerate a bunch of coffin-sized chambers in a room insulated by the earth. But that can't be all there is to it. Under the earth means a lot more than relative altitude. It's where dead things fit. Graves are under the earth. So are Hell, Gehenna, Hades, and a dozen other reported afterlives.
Maybe it says something about people. Maybe for us, under the earth is a subtle and profound statement. Maybe ground level provides us with a kind of symbolic boundary marker, an artificial construct that helps us remember that we are alive. Maybe it helps us push death's shadow back from our lives.
I live in a basement apartment and like it. What does that say about me?
Probably that I overanalyze things.
"You look pensive," Murphy said. We walked down an empty hospital corridor toward the Cook County Morgue. We'd had to go the long way around so that I could avoid any areas with important medical equipment. My leather duster whispered around my legs as I walked. My blasting rod thumped against my leg rhythmically, where I'd tied it to the inside of the duster. I'd traded in my slacks for blue jeans and my dress shoes for hiking boots.
Murphy didn't look like a monster-hunting Valkyrie. Murphy looked like someone's kid sister. She was five nothing, a hundred and nothing, and was built like an athlete, all springy muscle. Her blond hair hung down over her blue eyes, and was cut close in back. She wore nicer clothes than usual-a maroon blouse with a grey pantsuit-and she had on more makeup than was her habit. She looked every inch the professional businesswoman.
That said, Murphy was a monster-hunting Valkyrie. She was the only person I'd ever heard of who had killed one with a chainsaw.
"I said you look pensive, Harry," she repeated, a little louder.
I shook my head and told Murphy, "I don't like hospitals."
She nodded. "Morgues spook me. Morgues and dogs."
"Dogs?" I asked.
"Not like beagles or cocker spaniels or anything. Just big dogs."
I nodded. "I like dogs. They give Mister something to snack on."
Murphy gave me a smile. "I've seen you spooked. It doesn't make you look like that."
"What do I look like?" I asked.
Murphy pursed her lips, as though considering her words. "You look worried. And frustrated. And guilty. You know, romance things."
I gave her a wry glance, and then nodded. "Susan's in town."
Murphy whistled. "Wow. She's - okay?"
"Yeah. As much as she can be."
"Then why do you look like you just swallowed something that was still wriggling?"
I shrugged. "She's in town to quit her job. And she was with someone."
"A guy?" Murphy asked.
"Yeah."
She frowned. "With him, or with him?"
I shook my head. "Just with him, I think. I don't know."
"She's quitting her job?"
"Guess so. We're going to talk, I think."
"She said so?"
"Said she'd get in touch and we'd talk."
Murphy's eyes narrowed, and she said, "Ah. One of those."
"Eh?" I said, and eyed her.
She lifted her hands, palms out. "None of my business."
"Hell's bells, Murph."
She sighed and didn't look up at me, and didn't speak for a few steps. Finally she said, "You don't set up a guy for a good talk, Harry."
I stared at her profile, and then scowled down at my feet for a while. No one said anything.
We got to the morgue. Murphy pushed a button on the wall and said, "It's Murphy," at a speaker next to the door. A second later, the door buzzed and clicked. I swung open the door and held it for Murphy. She gave me an even look before she went through. Murphy does not respond well to chivalry.
The morgue was like others I'd seen, cold, clean, and brightly lit with fluorescent lights. Metal refrigerator doors lined one wall. An occupied autopsy table sat in the middle of the room, and a white sheet covered its subject. A rolling medical cart sat next to the autopsy table, another by a cheap office-furniture desk.
Polka music, heavy on accordion and clarinet, oom-pahed cheerfully through the room from a little stereo on the desk. At the desk sat a small man with a wild shock of black hair. He was dressed in medical scrubs and green bunny slippers, complete with floppy ears. He had a pen clenched in one hand, and scribbled furiously at a stack of forms.
When we came in, he held up a hand toward us, and finished his scribbling with a flourish, before hopping up with a broad smile. "Karrin!" he said. "Wow, you're looking nice tonight. What's the occasion?"
"Municipal brass are tromping around," Murphy said. "So we're all supposed to wear our Sunday clothes and smile a lot."
"Bastards," the little guy said cheerfully. He shot me a glance. "You aren't supposed to be spending money on psychic consultants, either, I bet. You must be Harry Dresden."