Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 17

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Harry's plan is to get into holding and put up a greater circle around MacFinn. Apparently, you only need the gold and gems and fancy stuff when you don't have a full understanding of the underlying principles, although based on what we're told in Ghost Story about how thaumaturgy usually works, it's likely that the proper materials help, even for an experienced wizard. On his way up to holding, he passes Murphy and Carmichael, the former scolding the latter for failing to apprehend Harry when he went to his apartment. I don't think Carmichael was actually there, although if he was it raises some interesting questions, since I don't think he'd have gotten distracted by Tera. Harry resists the impulse to stop and listen to their conversation, hurrying past them to his actual destination. 

He only has a little difficulty getting into the guard station that separates the holding cells from the rest of the building, but things rapidly start going more wrong from there. When he finds MacFinn's cell on the security monitors, it's empty - our werewolf transformed, broken out of his cell, broken into the neighboring one, and started eating some guy named Matson. 

I really appreciate that MacFinn's victims in this scene get names. The fact that they were arrested, as indicated by their presence in holding, doesn't make them meaningless canon fodder. There isn't even a throwaway "no one deserves this" to acknowledge that the reader might feel that way. Unfortunately, this doesn't do much to mitigate the fact that Clements, the second guy MacFinn kills, is the first black character introduced in the series, and he's literally only here to get eaten by a mildly outdated PTSD metaphor dressed up as the Big Bad Wolf. Why Jim Butcher, what big subconscious racism you have! 

Harry's efforts to draw the guard's attention to the carnage on the monitors are severely hampered, first by the blending brew, which turns his cries of "My god, people are dying, look at the screen!" into something boring and socially acceptable, and then by his own magic, which responds to his distress by turning to CCTV feed to snow and static, so that when the guard finally does look, all he sees is that there's something wrong with the monitors. Eventually, influenced by the potion, he figures he should buzz Harry through so he can clean. This makes the horrible screams audible, so he finally realizes that something is very, very wrong. 

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Unlocking the door lets MacFinn out, although realistically he was gonna get out eventually anyway. We get the full description of what he looks like in wolf form, albeit in grayscale, and then he goes after the guard, who was trying to help Harry keep the door closed. For a vanilla mortal who has no earthly idea what's going on, Mr. Unnamed Guard Guy makes a decent showing here, dodging out of the way, starting the alarm, and emptying his gun at Macfinn's head before being cornered behind his desk and devoured. This takes a while, and Harry starts trying to get out of the antechamber, using his staff to apply the force of his will to the bars on the door, multiplying the physical force he can bring to bear. 

He manages to bend them enough to squeeze through, at right around the same time that MacFinn finishes with the guard and turns his attention to Harry, finally letting us see him in full color, and thereby giving rise to the deeply unfortunate "scarlet smeared wash of brown streaked with wet scarlet". Seriously, did Butcher have to hand this to the publishers with a final round of edits still unfinished? It clearly was revised, and just as clearly wasn't revised enough. This, like the bizarrely self-contained Chaunzy chapter, is the kind of issue that develops in the second or third draft out of four or five. 

The door that took Harry several minutes, a tight squeeze, and the loss of a shoe to get through... isn't much of a barrier to a Loup Garou, He casually swats Harry into a wall, and Harry pretty much figures he's had it, but Murphy steps in and puts herself between him and the werewolf. 

Hey, check out how I actually got this one up on the day I was supposed to. Stay tuned for Chapter 18 on Saturday. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!

Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 16

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Harry makes it out of the woods, but he lost MacFinn at some point, and after like an hour of waiting around at a nearby gas station, he still hasn't shown up, so he calls Susan from the pay phone and asks for a ride. Initially, Susan waffles, saying that she "doesn't want to get in trouble", which is rather puzzling in light of her behavior throughout the first three books. Of course, it's possible she means she doesn't want to get in trouble without getting an article out of it, since she agrees once Harry hints that he'll tell her about the case. He feels "weak" asking a woman for help, which is gross and misogynistic, but he also asserts that she's the only person he trusts to help him with this, which raises a whole other issue. In Grave Peril, we're given the impression that Michael Carpenter and Harry have been friends for years. There's plenty of reasons why Harry doesn't as Michael for help with the actual cases in the first two books, including the one he gives in Blood Rites, which is that Michael is a lot more vulnerable when he's not on a mission from God. But he and Harry are friends, and usually that means you can ask for things like "Hey, I need a ride". That doesn't necessarily mean he made the wrong choice in calling Susan, but it's odd to me that he says she's the only person he trusts to help, when Michael exists and is nothing if not trustworthy. 

While Harry is waiting for Susan to show up, Tera appears from behind the dumpsters, naked but apparently unharmed. She says MacFinn was taken by the feds, and she'd like to borrow Harry's coat on account of the whole naked thing. Harry asks some questions to try and figure out where MacFinn was taken, and Tera answers them to the best of her ability, but she clearly doesn't understand why he's asking. From her perspective, it's a done deal - MacFinn has been captured, they failed, and when the moon rises he'll change and kill a bunch of people. This lupine fatalism is a clear callback to the attitude of the wolves in Wheel of Time when Faile is captured, and I note with interest that Fool Moon came out between Winters Heart and Crossroads of Twilight, almost precisely in the middle of the interminable story arc in question. This also causes me to notice that there's quite a lot of Faile in Susan's mix of calculation, impetuousness, and sincere affection, her playfulness, stubbornness, inexperience, and enthusiasm for life, and the way she makes decisions and places expectations on others based on a clear sense of The Way Things Ought To Be that doesn't quite line up with anyone else's. 

Harry is explaining that he doesn't intend to just let MacFinn shift and eat everyone in holding when Susan shows up. She has the good grace not to ask about the strange woman wearing Harry's duster and nothing else, and lets him fill her in on the situation. They swing by his apartment, where of course there are cops waiting outside. 

Tera volunteers to provide a distraction, and when Harry asks her not to hurt anyone, she hands him back his coast and proceeds to start dancing naked under a streetlight. Harry is only briefly distracted, and takes the opportunity to run into his apartment. He collects the potions he made earlier, a pair of coveralls that his mechanic left in the Blue Beetle, some clothes for Tera to borrow, and his wizard gear, including his staff. How Tera, who is tall for a woman but under 6 feet fits into anything of Harry's, I really don't know. I guess it's not totally impossible that they have about the same waist measurement, but she's gonna have to cuff the jeans an unreasonable amount, and at the very least she's going to look ridiculous in his T-shirt.  

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Harry and Tera both get their new outfits on in the car on the way to the police station, where Harry gets out of the car, completes his disguise by putting his staff in a wheeled bucket like it's a mop, and drinking the Blending Brew. It's described here as not really having a taste, which is at odds with...Peace Talk or Battle Ground, where we're told it tastes like moldy cardboard. Slightly different formula, maybe? In any case, this is probably my favorite potion in the series. The thing where your vision gos black and white, but people start coming back into color if they notice you is just...it's so cool. It also works, and Harry is pretty much able to stroll right in. 

Despite the fact that it's Monday, this is the Saturday post, and we will be doing Chapter 17 on Wednesday. That, however, will be our last Wednesday Dresden Files post for quite some time. Starting in July, our Wednesday reread posts will be Wheel of Time instead. We still don't have an actual release date, but there's good reason to believe it will be later than November 4th, and before the end of 2021, and at this point I'm prepared to call that good enough to be getting on with. So the schedule, such as it is, will look this going starting next month:

• Wednesday - Wheel of Time reread post
• Saturday - Dresden Files reread post
• Monday - Book reviews, advice columns, craft/process, and logistical posts, on an as-needed and/or catch-as-can basis. 

(By the way, if I'm gonna do an advice column any time soon, I'm gonna need more questions. I'm sitting on a few, but they're all hard. Ask me easier questions!)

Until next time, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!

Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 15

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MacFinn is both pinning and choking Harry, which severely limits Harry's options for a response. In desperation, he uses wholly nonverbal magic to electrocute MacFinn, kinda frying his own brain in the process. This is the first time it's explained why wizards normally use words in a language they don't actually speak, and the only time Harry does evocation without using any words at all. It leaves him dizzy and kinda hallucination, but it buys him some breathing room. Unfortunately, Tera has by now extricated herself from the snare, and thinks he killed MacFinn, so she tries to attack him, and his attempt to stop her with a whirlwind ends up rather more forceful than he intended, throwing her about 20 feet and stripping the leaves and bark from nearby trees. Harry attributes this to the inherent imprecision of evocation, something of which he complains throughout the first 8 books, but since this is, as far as I can recall, the only time he actually has this kind of problem when he's not super upset, I think it more likely that the nonverbal magic he used a minute ago is throwing him off. 

Two small asides. First of all, MacFinn is huge, like, as tall as Harry and "twice as wide", and if Harry had let Chaunzy fill him in on the "trivial details", he might have known that going in. Second, there's a whole thing where before Tera attacks him he thinks he sees her developing wolflike features but he's not sure if it's a hallucination or what. At this point it's pretty well established that this book is The Dresden Files Oops! All Werewolves, and we already know for a fact that Tera has a wolf form, so why are we getting "is it happening?" ambiguity here? Odd writing choice. 

Now that everyone's had a chance to calm down, Harry and MacFinn apologize to each other for the violence, and they head to MacFinn's campsite. Harry confirms that Kim Delaney is dead, which doesn't really surprise MacFinn, but he didn't know for sure. Then Harry insists that MacFinn answer his questions before he'll help, which MacFinn agrees to, with the constraint that they only have a few hours before moonrise. Mostly, he wants to know about Kim, how she knew MacFinn and came to be helping him, and why he killed her. Apparently he was frustrated with her for not leaving when he said the circle wasn't working, and if he's angry or frustrated at someone when he shifts, he's likely to attack them once in wolf form. He knew her through environmental activism, and she was indirectly involved with the Northwest Passage Project. His circle actually got messed up before last month's full moon, but he dealt with it by going off into the middle of nowhere. 

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This raises a couple of question for me. First, if the middle of nowhere was an option, why were they
experimenting with Kim doing the circle in an apartment in the middle of a city, rather than somewhere less populous? Second, who made MacFinn's circle in the first place? Third, with an entire damn month to work on it, why didn't they at least try to fix the permanent circle? It's not as though cost of materials was a concern, and wizards...exist. Even if he didn't want to get Harry involved, like because of the rumor that he was working for Marcone (although you'd think Kim could have cleared that up for him), there was presumably the circle's original creator, who would reasonably be the person most qualified to repair it. And why, why didn't Kim level with Harry about what she was working on?

MacFinn says he didn't kill Harding last month, and Harry believes him, but for some reason this sets off another paranoia spiral about Tera, whether she's killing people at MacFinn's request, whether she's working with Marcone against MacFinn, which...almost makes sense, except then why fix Harry's shoulder? He asks her a vague questions about the Alphas, and she gives an equally vague answer, which establishes that MacFinn doesn't know about whatever she's doing with the Alphas, and she doesn't want to tell him. That's legitimately suspicious, but the Q and A session gets cut short by the sound of Murphy and Carmichael searching the woods for them. Terra wants to split up, but Harry has to stay with MacFinn so he can do the circle when the time comes. All his reservations about working with them are immediately discarded in the face of a common threat. Tera, without consulting Harry or MacFinn, goes off to cause a diversion, keep the police busy, and after some hesitation on MacFinn's part, they make a run for it. 

I think we're actually coming up on being halfway through the book. If you missed yesterday's post about what we're gonna be doing with the Wheel of Time reread series, make sure you check that out. Chapter 16 should be going up on Saturday. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things! 

What We're Gonna Talk About When We Talk About Wheel Of Time

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While we still don't have a release date for the Wheel of Time TV show, we're getting closer (I mean, we must be), and I finished my preparatory reread, so this feels like as good a time as any to discuss in a little more detail what we're going to be doing with the reread series. Since this is going over a completed series, in which most of the mysteries are about as solved as they're going to get, and since we're talking about much longer books, with much longer chapters, in a world far more different from out own, it's gonna look a little different from what we're been doing with The Dresden Files. 

Let me start with a quick list of what we will not be doing

• Referencing the numerical power levels listed for various characters in the Wheel of Time Companion. They're nowhere in the actual fiction, and they kind of irritate me, so we're gonna be ignoring them. 
• Attempting to address the Big Unanswered Questions of the series, unless I really, really feel like it when I get to those bits. 
• Treating as definitive any information that exists solely in extratextual sources, no matter how official. 
• Making any assumptions based on the time in which the books were written, or the author's age and geographic origin, about the series's attitude towards gender, sex, and sexuality. (Or spirituality). 

What we will be doing

• Getting real in-depth about food, culture, economics, and ecology. 
• Looking for every instance of Gay, and probably talking about it in great detail.
• Covering New Spring either between Fires of Heaven and Lord of Chaos or between Crossroads of Twilight and Knife of Dreams. 
• Complaining about missed opportunities. 
• Discussing the textual morality of the series, as exemplified by what happens to whom, and what arguments those outcomes are making. 
• Trying out the literary agent hypothesis to see what things look like with and without it. 
• Wildly overextrapolating small clues about what things looked like in the Age of Legends, and in the time between there and the start of the series. 
• Splitting chapters longer than 30 minutes roughly in half, and chapter longer than an hour into roughly 30 minute chunks. 
• Having some fun with linguistics.
• Examining what the series does, and doesn't, have to say about gender. 
• Referring to extratextual sources when it suits me. 
• Assessing, non-comprehensively, the impact of Wheel of Time on the fiction that came after it and, to a lesser extent, how it was informed by what came before it. 
• Attempting to figure out what Robert Jordan thinks a blueberry is. 

There also exists the distinct possibility that I will say "fuck it" and start the rereads before we have a release date, because this is getting silly. New Dresden Files post should go up sometime between early tomorrow morning and late tomorrow night - I'm determined to get back in the Wednesday/Saturday schedule. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!

Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 14

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Harry regains consciousness in a hotel room. He's naked, except for the bandages on his shoulder, which
pretty much means that Tera undressed him and treated his wounds. She also cut the chain between the handcuffs. If Harry was able to sleep through all of that, including her pouring an entire bottle of hydrogen peroxide into the bullet wound, he must have been pretty out of it, and I'm amazed he's back on his feet without IV fluids. Either that wizardly healing factor has a better short-term rate of return than we've been lead to believe, or Tera used some kind of wolf magic to help things along. 

Tera comes in, and Harry makes a sex joke that goes completely over her head. I'm sort of curious how she's managed to be engaged to a human without picking up even basic colloquialisms, but I guess it's possible that they mostly just have serious and/or logistical conversations. If I remember correctly, they're planning to go just live in the woods, and they may be waiting to address any communication issues until MacFinn is out of the danger posed by his condition. 

Tera says it's near sunset, and they need to get moving son, but Harry doesn't want to go anywhere with her until she's answered some questions. He starts bombarding her with them, and she gets in his face, telling him that they will leave now. They make eye contact, but no Soulgaze follows. Since Harry hasn't ever Gazed her before, that means she doesn't have a human soul upon which he can Gaze. That means she's most likely a creature of the Nevernever, which makes him less inclined to trust her than ever. He asks why he should go with her, and she informs him that she's called the police, told them he's armed and acting erratic, and that given the week they've been having they're likely to shoot first and ask questions later. So he follows her to the car. 

On the way to wherever they're going, Harry gets into a bit of a paranoia spiral, wondering what exactly they want with him. He seems, against all reason, to think that Tera and MacFinn damaged the permanent circle themselves. One of the questions he asked was why they messed up the circle, not whether they did, and now he's wondering if they're trying to take out everyone who could repair it, starting with Kim. This line of thinking doesn't make a lick of sense, because if they didn't want MacFinn to be confined, they could as easily just...not use it? This never occurs to Harry, who eventually dismisses the idea on the basis that if Tera wanted him dead, she's had plenty of opportunity to kill him already. He also figures MacFinn is behind the murders that did occur during the full moon, and wonder if Tera did some of the others to take suspicion off MacFinn. This is really strange to me, because Tera notwithstanding, Alphas notwithstanding, MacFinn is cursed, and there's literally no reason to think he killed anyone on purpose. 

Eventually, they get to Wolf Lake Park, out in the suburbs. Tera, who can be totally silent when she wants to, is going out of her way to make noise, but Harry's too tired and stressed out to really think about why she's doing that. He makes more noise just walking than she does on purpose anyway. Suddenly, Tera gets caught in a snare, and MacFinn, although Harry hasn't yet realized that's who it is, punches Harry in the face, right where Murphy got him earlier, and pins him to the ground pretty effortlessly, despite Harry's best efforts to resist. 

Minor correction: Apparently I was spelling Tera's name wrong the entire previous post, and in every previous one in which she was mentioned. I apologize, and will use the correct spelling going forward. 

This was one of those logistical, transitional chapters about which there isn't a whole lot to say. Expect the next post sometime this weekend, when hopefully we'll finally get some answers. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read all the things! 

Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 13

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Murphy walks Harry out of the building and back into the garden, where Carmichael is keeping the feds at bay. Agent Harris looks very surprised to see Harry, which is reinforcement for readers who already caught that sending him to the Full Moon Garage is a setup, and foreshadowing for everyone else. Carmichael is also surprised, and openly questions Murphy about it. Even a they're putting Harry in the back of the car, Carmichael is non-hostile, and seems more curious than anything else. Compare to the scene at Linda Randall's apartment in the previous book, when he mentally reclassified Harry as a suspect as soon as Murphy says she wants him in for questioning. I don't know what exactly happened in the intervening six months, but it has had a serious impact on Carmichael's perspective, and his trust in his partner. He asks what happened to Dresden's jaw, and I find it interesting that he doesn't consider the possibility that Murphy was the one who hit Harry. This means that whatever else might have changed, he doesn't think Murphy would physically attack someone who hadn't done anything to warrant it, but he also doesn't think Harry would have done anything to warrant it. I don't really know what to make of that, but it's interesting. 

Murphy's stated reasons for arresting Harry are that he was arguing with Kim Delaney last night, and that she can "connect" him with Terra West (because he tracked her down at the abandoned department store) and with some of the "decorations" (the ritual circle) in the house. She says she's charging him with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to commit murder. The conspiracy thing is fine, I mean, it's obviously bullshit, but it's fine, but the only way anything Harry did is obstruction of justice is if we're going by the TV police procedural version of the law where it's "obstruction" to refrain from volunteering information that incriminates you, rather than y'know, a constitutionally protected right. I guess it's possible that she thinks his crumpling up the circle diagram was deliberate destruction of evidence? The closest I can put together to a coherent version of events here is that she thinks Harry had some pre-existing conflict with Kim Delaney, culminating in the argument at Mac's, and that he worked with Terra to mess up MacFinn's circle and arrange for Kim to try and contain him with the temporary one, which he knew she wasn't able to do, leading to MacFinn breaking out and killing her? (No idea what Terra's motive is supposed to be here. Jealousy of Kim?) And that he crumpled up the diagram because it was evidence of his nefarious scheme? That would be extremely thin even if Harry hadn't been cooperating fully with the investigation, including confirming that MacFinn is a Loup Garou, and that he recognizes Terra West. Ugh. 

Harry, for his part, feel like he betrayed Murphy by not having put the pieces together faster. I suspect part of the reason this book is in people's head under "times Harry kept things from Murphy" is because they remember the arrest, and Harry feeling guilty, but not the circumstances. Harry is just transitioning from a depression spiral to a panic attack, because not only is MacFinn still out there somewhere, he couldn't have been the one to kill Spike, the timing isn't right, which means there's a second killer who also hasn't been apprehended, or even suspected, when Terra rather alarmingly appears outside the car window. She's here to rescue him, pretty much whether he likes it or not, because he's the only one who stands a chance of stopping MacFinn. 

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Harry gets shot in the shoulder in the escape attempt, so Terra has to boost him over the fence, leaving her without time to get away herself. After some panic and deliberation, he uses a spell to magnify the steam coming up from his blood on the pavement into an entire fog bank, which gives her the cover she needs to climb over without getting shot. She's impressed as shit by the spell, too, but Harry doesn't really have time to adequately enjoy that, before losing consciousness from blood loss and exhaustion. 

Summer is awful, my head hurts, and I'm tired. I also feel like there was something in this chapter that I'm failing to address, so if you can think what it was, let me know in the comments. I hope to get another post up sometime this week. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things! 

Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 12

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MacFinn's place is super fancy, with a bunch of sculpted hedges, and Harry feels like he's being watched. Carmichael meets him out front, and is reintroduced. He claims he still doesn't believe that Harry's a wizard, but he's polite, even cordial, a sharp contrast with his attitude in the previous book, and when he goes so fas as to ask whether the rumors about Harry's involvement with Marcone are true, he accepts Harry's emphatic denial. This is a pretty transparent effort to increase the emotional impact of Carmichael's death at the end of this book, but it's also effective, in part because it's actually a very reasonable progression from how Carmichael was in the last book. He's smart, a critical thinker who doesn't take things for granted, but not unwilling to trust his instincts. Also Murphy treats him like a punching bag, and based on how she's treated Harry so far this book, I'm guessing he's had a pretty bad time of it, and may be less reflexively inclined to take her side or defer to her judgment than he was during Storm Front. Combined with the fact that, however sketch the circumstances may have looked, Harry not only solved the murders on which he was called in to consult, but a whole other case as well, his change of attitude makes sense. Carmichael cares about results, to a sufficient extent that he keeps on doing the job in the afterlife, in Chicago Between, in Ghost Story. At this point, he has reason to associate Harry with results, regardless of what he believes about the supernatural, and Murphy's suspicions with abuse and, if her behavior towards Carmichael in Storm Front is any indication, embarrassment. 

The inside of the apartment is huge, and Harry can smell blood as soon as he walks in the door. Murphy looks pissed, although Harry doesn't pause to consider why that might be the case. She first takes him to a bedroom, which contains a Greater Circle done in chalk and incense, and Kim Delaney's corpse. There's blood everywhere, and her throat has been ripped out. Harry is validly freaked out, and tells Murphy he's not sure he can do this. Murphy pretty much blows him off, and starts describing what they know, and what she thinks happened. She figures Kim was trying to help MacFinn, whom she has correctly identified as a Loup Garou, something went wrong with the circle, he got out, killed her, and escaped through the window. Harry agrees with this assessment, and shared what he learned from Chaunzy, who is referred to in this chapter only as "the demon", which reinforces my instinct that Chapter 11 was written or revised out of sequence with the rest of this book. Murphy asks Harry to follow her, and leads him to the actual bedroom that people sleep in, with furniture and a carpet. Here, she shows Harry a picture of MacFinn and Terra West, and asks him to confirm that the latter is the woman he saw with the Alphas, which he does. I am immensely curious what the room that currently contains the temporary circle was usually used for. Ballroom dance, possibly? Rich people sometimes have a room for that, and it's often a large converted bedroom with hardwood floors. 

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Murphy tells Harry to follow her again, and he's finally processed through enough of what else is going on to notice that something is seriously up with Murphy. He asks her about it, but she just glares at him and keeps walking. Down in the basement, Harry sees the damaged greater circle, the permanent one made with silver and gemstones, and finally realizes what Kim Delaney has to do with any of this, why she wanted to know about the greater circle, and that he's basically responsible for her death. 

Harry wants to talk to Murphy, as a friend, about how he's feeling, but when he starts talking she shows him the circle diagram that she picked up off the floor at Mac's, and he finally realizes why she's mad at him. He starts trying to explain, but she punches him in the stomach, calls him a liar, and arrests him. 

Let's take a second to review the events that led us to this moment. In Storm Front, Murphy calls Harry in to consult on a murder investigation. She asks Harry to find out how to tear someone's heart out with magic. He says he's not sure he can do it, but isn't willing to get into the incredibly personal and sensitive reasons why he's not sure. 25 hours later, she calls him to yell at him for not already having finished the research, and forbids him to go talk to Bianca, threatening to have him locked up to stop him. When he does do the research, almost the first thing she does is ask if he's naming himself as a suspect, then gets mad at him for a) having gone to see Bianca, in defiance of orders she had no right to give, and b) having been physically attacked for his involvement with the case. (She does not, by the way, ask for a description of his assailant, or otherwise act like a responsible police officer responding to the information that a citizen of her city was physically assaulted while, and likely for, attempting to assist a criminal investigation. She just scolds him.) As soon as Harry finds out the killer is using the storms, he tells her, and her response is "why didn't you tell me sooner". Harry makes one (1) bad decision in not telling Murphy how Linda Randall got his card (while his motivations were mixed at best, it's worth noting that honesty here could have gotten him arrested, and thus dead, not because he did anything to justify arresting him, but because Murphy had already threatened him with "protective custody" twice). She goes to his office to look for clues, and when he calls to warn her not to go through the desk, she assumes she should go through it, and upon getting sting by the scorpion construct, decides Harry's warning was a clever setup to cause that to happen. Between books, Marcone puts out rumors that Harry is working for him. Murphy slow-fades Harry, while getting pressure from IA about said rumors, and makes no effort to talk to him about anything that happened. In this book, they do finally talk about it, and Harry agrees not to keep secrets. He abides by that agreement, does what she asks as far as research, and is for the most part pleasant and cooperative in spite of her ongoing hostility. And then...this happens. If Murphy genuinely thinks Harry is involved with this set of attacks, IA should be investigating her, because she is pathologically paranoid in a way that's interfering with her ability to do her job. If she's just having a bad time and trying to exert some control and work out her frustrations, it's professional misconduct on a level for which she should absolutely be fired, and a completely unacceptable way to treat someone who, in spite of everything, still considers her a friend. 

That's what I got for this week. Stay tuned for Chapter 13. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!