Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapter 21

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Monica has Dresden sit down with her in the kitchen, which is decorated with cartoon cows, and a row of glass bottles on the windowsill. This is basically the energy of every kitchen I've ever liked, so that's kind of nice. The room is described as her refuge, and it's an interesting contrast to Linda's little studio apartment. Linda has her whole own place, with the bathtub, and the candles. It's not necessarily a lot bigger than this kitchen, but it's all hers, in a way that Monica's space can't ever be. 

Monica pretty much immediately confirms that Jennifer Stanton is her sister, and only takes a little longer to also confirm that Victor is the one doing the murders. She talks about Jenny's career as a sex worker in that very 1990s way like it's maybe drug addiction. Ugh. She has a very hard time telling Dresden about Victor, which kind of reinforces my impression that there's some amount of compulsion involved here - especially given that the reasons she gives for not having been straight with him in the first place aren't especially coherent. The body language described is a lot like what we see from Fix when he's trying to get around Titania's orders in Proven Guilty and Small Favor. 

She walks him through Victor's descent into dark spooky magic, although exactly how he got started. It began with strange noises in the attic and accidentally setting the curtains on fire or making things fly off the shelves, along with increasing emotional instability, until one night he woke her up and made her drink the 3-Eye drug. This was not the cleverest thing he ever did - she pretty much immediately wanted more, because 3-Eye is magically addictive, but she could also see him, in the way you see people when you look upon them with the Sight. So in the short term, she was more willing to support his efforts, but she also had a clear picture of what kind of monster he was turning into. The logic of making an addictive magical drug so Monica would see what he saw, in hips that it would get her to Understand, is exactly the same kind of twisted, albeit on a smaller scale, as Aurora in Summer Knight trying to throw the courts out of balance to stop the conflict between them. So full points for consistency there. 

The description Monica gives of her life with Victor, before and after the magic stuff started, suggests to me that Jim Butcher either is a DV survivor or has talked to one extensively and actually paid attention and tried to understand their perspective. Monica shares her sister's desire to see the best in people, and likely some of her ability to bring it out in them. It was never gonna be enough to make an abusive fuckweasel like Victor Sells not behave like an abusive fuckweasel, but she tried. She quietly withstood more than a decade of mistreatment because she understood what motivated it. The way she keeps coming back to phrases like "it wasn't so bad", while giving a straightforward account of events that were so, so bad, is just - yeah. That's it, that's the thing. 

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As an aside, Dresden observes that Victor must have a serious natural gift, to be throwing around the kind of power he was, both deliberately and accidentally. But usually magic starts manifesting in adolescence, not when you're already married with two kids. This suggests two possibilities, one considerably more alarming than the other. Most likely, Victor had some amount of magical talent that he abandoned or repressed in his youth. (This is kind of supported by the fact that he no longer speaks to his parents). While it's less likely, the second option is that Nemesis can actually give people magic. It'm now ware of any other evidence that this is a thing, but it's unsettling as hell to consider. 

Monica describes how Victor went from using his own anger to using her fear, as a way to power the magic, before realizing lust was more effective for what he was doing. That's when he got Jenny involved, and she brought in Linda, who was probably their connection to the Becketts, and Tommy Thom, although Monica isn't sure why he was willing to betray Marcone. The magic sex parties were apparently pretty great, but Victor started summoning demons, always looking for more power, and eventually h started looking at the kids. So Monica talked to Jenny about how she wanted to leave him, and Jenny confronted Victor, which oh my fucking God why?! Jennifer Stanton worked for Biance, and was apparently, if not precisely involved with Tommy, at least fucking him regularly enough to get him involved in evil schemes. She could have gone to Bianca and said "Hey, I'm on of your best workers, can you please send someone to eat this asshole who's abusing my big sister?", but she didn't. She could have asked Tommy to go with her to Marcone and say, "Hey, you wanna know where the 3-Eye is coming from?" but she didn't do that either. Instead, she confronted Victor all by her fuzzy little self. I'm not saying it's her fault that he killed her - that was definitely his fault - but she had better choices available than the ones she made. 

Monica reiterates that she doesn't think there's anything Dresden can do to save himself, and then pretty much curls up in a ball and cries, and Dresden just kinda awkwardly leaves. He calls a cab, and then sits there thinking through his options. He can't ask Murphy for help, for obvious reasons. He can't call the Council, because they're too busy convening to accuse him of the murders, even though he thinks Victor must have broken every law of magic. This is a slightly exaggeration - by my count, he's only broken the first, third, and fourth laws. I can't rule out the possibility that he's turned someone into an animal, but I am highly confident that he has not travelled through time, raised the dead, or opened the Outer Gates, although I suspect he would have done that last if he'd been given more time. Eventually, Harry remembers the scorpion amulet, and thinks he might be able to use it as a link back to Victor, give himself an edge in the fight to come. On the offchance that he died horribly anyway, he tries to call Murphy, give her a heads-up, so there'll be someone coming after Victor. But Murphy's not at the police station, she;s searching Dresden's office, and blows him off when he tries to tell her it might be dangerous to go through the desk drawers. The chapter ends with clicking, swearing, and gunshots. 

Sorry the post is coming up late - I spent most of the past 48 hours sleeping. Hopefully this is one of those post-inauguration things and I'm not like, getting sick. I'm gonna push to get Chapter 22 posted tomorrow anyway, so stay tuned. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!