Grave Peril (The Dresden Files 3)

The baby, I learned, had taken an abrupt turn for the better in the hours before dawn the morning Bianca's house had burned. I thought that maybe Kravos had taken a bite of the little guy, and I had gotten it back for him. Michael thought God had simply decreed the morning to be a day of good things. Whatever. The results were what counted.

"We've decided," Michael said, stretching a strong arm around Charity, "to name him Harry."

Charity glowered at me, but remained silent.

"Harry?" I asked. "Harry Carpenter? Michael, what did that poor kid ever do to you?"

But it made me feel good. And they kept the name.

Charity got out of the hospital three days before me. Michael or Father Forthill remained with me for the rest of my stay. No one ever said anything, but Michael had the sword with him, and Forthill kept a crucifix handy. Just in case I had some nasty visitors.

One night when I couldn't sleep, I mentioned to Michael that I was worried about the repercussions of my workings, the harmful magic I had dished out. I worried that it was going to come back to haunt me.

"I'm not a philosopher, Harry," he said. "But here's something for you to think about, at least. What goes around comes around. And sometimes you get what's coming around." He paused for a moment, frowning faintly, pursing his lips. "And sometimes you are what's coming around. You see what I mean?"

I did. I was able to get back to sleep.

Michael explained that he and Thomas had escaped the fight at the bridge only a few moments after it had begun. But time had stretched oddly, between the Nevernever and Chicago, and they hadn't emerged until two o'clock the following afternoon.

"Thomas brought us out into this flesh pit," Michael said.

"I'm not a wizard," Thomas pointed out. "I can only get in and out of the Nevernever at points close to my heart."

"A house of sin!" Michael said, his expression stern.

"A gentlemen's club," Thomas protested. "And one of the nicest ones in town."

I kept my mouth shut. Who says I never grow any wiser?

Murphy came out of the sleeping spell a couple days later. I had to go in a wheelchair, but I went to Kravos's funeral with her. She pushed me through a drizzling rain to the grave site. There was a city official there, who signed off on some papers and left. Then it was just us and the grave diggers, shovels whispering on earth.

Murphy watched the proceedings in complete silence, her eyes sunken, the blue faded out until they seemed almost grey. I didn't push, and she didn't talk until the hole was half filled in.

"I couldn't stop him," she said, then. "I tried."

"But we beat him. That's why we're here and he's there."

"You beat him," Murphy said. "A lot of good I did you."

"He sucker punched you. Even if you'd been a wizard, he'd have gotten to you - like he damn near did me." I shivered, remembered agony making the muscles of my belly tight. "Karrin, you can't blame yourself for that."

"I know," she said, but she didn't sound like she meant it. She was quiet for a long time, and I finally figured out that she wasn't talking because I'd hear the tears in her voice, the ones the rain hid from me. She didn't bow her head though, and she didn't look away from the grave.

I reached out and found her hand with mine. I squeezed. She squeezed back, silent and tight. We stayed there, in the rain, until the last bit of earth had been thrown over Kravos's coffin.

On the way out, Murphy stopped my wheelchair, frowning at a white headstone next to a waiting plot. "He died doing the right thing," she read. She looked down at me.

I shrugged, and felt my mouth curl up on one side. "Not yet. Not today."

Michael and Forthill took care of Lydia for me. Her real name was Barbara something. They got her packed up and moved out of town. Apparently, the Church has some kind of equivalent of the Witness Protection Program, for getting people out of the reach of supernatural baddies. Forthill told me how the girl had fled the church because she'd been terrified that she would fall asleep, and gone out to find some uppers. The vampires had grabbed her while she was out, which was when I'd found them in that old building. She sent me a note that read, simply, "I'm sorry. Thank you for everything."

When I got out of the hospital, Thomas sent me a thank-you letter, for saving Justine. He sent it on a little note card attached to a bow, which was all Justine was wearing. I'll let you guess where the bow was. I took the note, but not the girl. There was too much of an ick factor in sharing girls with a sex vampire. Justine was pretty enough, and sweet enough, when she wasn't walking the razor's edge of an organic emotional instability - but I couldn't really hold that against her. Plenty of people have to take some kind of medication to keep stable. Lithium, supermodel sex vampires - whatever works, I guess.

I had woman problems of my own.

Susan sent me flowers and called me every day, in the hospital. But she didn't ever talk to me for long. And she didn't come to visit. When I got out, I went to her apartment. She didn't live there anymore. I tried to call her at work, and never managed to catch her. Finally, I had to resort to magic. I used some hair of hers left on a brush at my apartment, and tracked her down on a beach along Lake Michigan, on one of the last warm days of the year.

I found her laying in the sun wearing a white bikini that left maximum surface area bared to it. I sat down next to her, and her manner changed, subtly, a quiet tension that I didn't miss, though I couldn't see her eyes behind the sunglasses she wore.

"The sun helps," she said. "Sometimes it almost goes away for a while."

"I've been trying to find you," I said. "I wanted to talk to you."

"I know," she said. "Harry. Things have changed for me. In the daylight, it's not too bad. But at night." She shivered. "I have to lock myself inside. I don't trust myself around people, Harry."

"I know," I said. "You know what's happening?"

"I talked to Thomas," she said. "And Justine. They were nice enough, I guess. They explained things to me."

I grimaced. "Look," I said. "I'm going to help you. I'll find some way to get you out of this. We can find a cure." I reached out and took her hand. "Oh, Hell's bells, Susan. I'm no good at this." I just fumbled the ring onto it, clumsy as you please. "I don't want you far away. Marry me."

She sat up, and stared at her hand, at the dinky ring I'd been able to afford. Then she leaned close to me and gave me a slow, heated kiss, her mouth melting-warm. Our tongues touched. Mine went numb. I got a little dizzy, as the slow throb of pleasure that I'd felt before coursed through me, a drug I'd craved without realizing it.