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| Image by skefalacca on Pixabay |
We get our first look at the police station that houses SI. While he's waiting around for Murphy, Dresden has a run-in with a 3-eye user. The guy freaks out while being put into holding, and almost falls down the stairs, and when Dresden intervenes, he announces that he can see that Dresden is a wizard, and sees "those who walk before, and He Who Walks Behind". He Who Walks Behind is explained, although not in any very great detail, but "those who walk before" is less clear and more intriguing. It could be a reference to the other two Walkers, whom Dresden has yet to encounter at this point. It could also be about Dresden's like, lineage as a Starborn, a magical descendent of Merlin, or the Winter Knight. Hell, it could just be about how many lineages, prophecies, and plots started at the dawn of the universe or therabout in which Dresden is somehow enmeshed. This encounter convinces Dresden that 3-eye must actually give its users the Sight, since there is no other reasonable explanation how the man, who was definitely not a wizard, could have seen the mark of He Who Walks Behind on Dresden's aura.
Dresden explains to Murphy that tearing someone's heart out by magic would be virtually impossible for one wizard working alone, unless they were unconscionably powerful, or incredibly precise. (Dresden says he might be able to do it, to one person, without killing himself. Given where he places himself on the power scale in the early books, and how we see him get stronger throughout the series, it seems entirely possible that, post Cold Days or thereabouts, he could probably totally do this). A group could do it working together, but murderous criminals don't usually have the mutual trust and unity of purpose necessary for a serious group working. Since the 3-eye drug apparently actually works, and it would take a similarly skilled or powerful magic user to create it, Murphy puts this together with the fact that there has been conflict between 3-eye suppliers and conventional narcotics (Marcone's people), and concludes that it was this conflict that prompted the murder. This is very reasonable, and pretty close to right (mostly it just neglects some secondary motivations). It's the most reasonable Murphy has been all book, and she immediately ruins is by getting mad at Dresden for pointing out that he can be more helpful if she actually... lets him help. And for having gotten hit over the head with a baseball bat, which as far as we know was caused by Dresden being involved at all, which she hired him to be.
At that point, Dresden kind of falls off his chair, because of the head injury and the being awake for about 24 hours straight. It is a damn good thing Dresden has that whole wizardly enhanced healing thing, because he gets quite a few head injuries in the first half of the series, and under normal circumstances that shit is cumulative.
In the aftermath of Dresden's collapse, Murphy takes him home. There's a lot of attention here to caregiving and handholding and nervousness, which ends up feeling like Murphy is already being set up as a love interest, although Dresden seems to think she's just being a good friend. I would find this interpretation more plausible if I didn't already know that Murphy eventually does become a live interest. She gets Dresden home, and Linda Randall almost immediately calls. The ridiculous innuendo feels a little more natural here, since he opens the conversation with "Are you naked?". Linda has some information she thinks might be important, and arranges to meet Dresden at 8pm that evening, double booking with his date with Susan, although he doesn't remember that. He remembers he's forgetting something though, and after a minute wracking he brains, concludes that he was supposed to call Monica and give her an update. When he gets her on the phone, though, she calls him off the case, without giving a reason. She's also having problems with the phone, on her end, which Dresden doesn't read any more into than that phones can't even be consistent in how they mess up around him, but on a reread, it becomes obvious that it's a clue, technically perceptible by a first-time reader, that Monica is involved with magic.
Food: Murphy brings Dresden a cup of coffee in a styrofoam cup when he's waiting for her at the police station, and tells him it cost 50 cents.
I was sort of almost maybe ready to handle the amount of packing and carrying things and oh fuck what do we do with the cat involved in travel, and then I had to move. Again. I'm feeling kind of self-pitying and Genesis 4:12 about the whole thing, but I'm also just fucking exhausted. And NaNo is real. May you all have a relatively painless late November. Be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things.
