the hole in the wall, fifty feet down a hall that turns left, down more stairs.”
“Yeah, you got it,” I said.
“Uh,” Butters said. “Point of order? There’s a locked door and a bunch of guys with guns between here and there.”
Molly stood up. “They won’t have guns,” she said calmly.
Butters frowned. “Uh. Dresden just said . . .”
“I heard him,” Molly replied. “They’re going to empty their weapons at you the moment they see you in the doorway.”
“Okay. As plans go, I can’t be the only one who has a problem with that,” Butters said.
“Illusion?” I asked Molly.
She nodded.
Murphy frowned. “I don’t get it. Why that? Why not push them back with fire or make them all go to sleep or something?”
“Because this is the bad guys’ home,” I said. “They have a threshold.”
Molly nodded. “Any spell that goes through gets degraded down to nothing. I can’t push anything past the door. If I go in without being invited, I won’t have any magic to speak of. Without an invitation, Harry can’t cross the threshold at all.”
Murphy nodded. “So you’re going to give them a target at the door. Makes sense.” She frowned. “How were you going to get back in, Harry?”
I stood there for a second with my mouth open.
“Well, crap,” I muttered. “Over.”
Murphy snorted. “God, it really is you, isn’t it.” She turned back to her bag and took out a small black plastic hemisphere of what had to be explosives of some kind. She pressed it onto the door’s surface right next to its lock. “No problem. I’ll invite you in once the door’s down.”
“Doesn’t work like that,” I said. “Got to be an invitation from someone who lives there.”
Murphy scowled. “Nothing’s ever simple with you, Dresden.”
“Me? Since when have you been Polly Plastique?”
“Kincaid showed me how,” Murphy said without any emphasis. “And you know me, Dresden. I’ve always been a practical girl.” She pressed a little device with a couple of tines on it through a pair of matching holes in the bowl, turned a dial, and said, “Get clear. Setting for ten seconds. Whatever you’re going to do, Molly, have it ready.”
My apprentice nodded, and everyone but me and Murphy backed down the wall from the door.
I waited until they were done moving away before I said, “Murph, these gangers . . . They’re victims, too.”
She took a breath. Then she said, “Are they standing right by the door?”
“No. Five or six steps down.”
She nodded. “Then they won’t be in the direct line of the blast. This is a fairly small, shaped charge. With a little luck, no one will get hurt.”
“Luck,” I said.
She closed her eyes for a second. Then she said, “You can’t save everyone, Dresden. Right now, I’m concerned with the man these victims are torturing and holding prisoner. They’re still people. But they come right after him and everyone here on my worry list.”
I felt a little guilty for making an insinuation about Murphy’s priorities. Maybe it was too easy for me to talk. I was the one the Big Hoods couldn’t hurt, after all. I wasn’t sure how to say something like that, though, so I just sort of grunted and mumbled.
“It’s okay,” Murphy said very quietly. “I get it. Your perspective has changed.”
I stared down at her for a moment. Then I said, “Not about some things.”
“Relationship ambivalence from beyond the grave,” she said, her mouth turning up at the corners. “Perfect.”
“Karrin,” I began.
“Don’t,” she said, cutting me off. “Just . . . don’t. It doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“Of course it matters.”
“No,” she said. “You are not Patrick Swayze. I am not Demi Moore.” She touched a switch on the little box and it started ticking. “And this sure as hell isn’t pottery class.” She moved a couple of yards down the wall, pressed her hands up over her ears, and opened her mouth. Molly, Butters, and the wolves all did more or less the same thing. It looked . . . Well, they’d have been insulted if I said anything, but it looked darned cute on the wolves, them all crouched down with their chins on the ground, folding their ears forward with their paws. I’m sure any real wolf would have been shocked at the indignity.
I stayed where I was standing, right in front of the door. I mean, what the hell, right? When was I going to get a chance to see an explosion from this angle again?
I was a little disappointed. There was just