Legal Note: I do not own any of the characters associated with the Dresden Files. I do not have any legal right to use them or any other proprietary material originating from these books. This story was done just for the fun of it. Not for profit. If you like it please tell me. If you don't like it please tell me why with particulars but not excessive detail.

Summary: A mysterious death in a hotel room and a missing suspect bring Harry a new case. There's always more than meets the eye but when Lara Raith gets involved it could be deadly. Spoilers up to and including Turn Coat.

Author's Note: I wish to thank both MsAurora and Nytd for technical assistance with the matters of biology in this story. The concept was mine but I lacked the needed background to make things make sense. If you enjoy good reading you may wish to look up their stories. Both of these ladies are on my favorite authors list.

Catspaw
Chapter 1

I woke up to the sound of the phone in my ear. It rang again as I pushed Mister out of my lap earning myself a disgruntled glare. I had fallen asleep in my chair instead of the bed. Having just wrapped up two minor cases I'd been able to pay my rent and get the Beetle out of the garage with a little cash to spare. So I'd gone to Mac's and gotten myself a steak and three of his dark ales. I guess I'd had too many things to do lately. I was still tired. The phone rang again reminding me that there was no rest for the wizard.

"Dresden," I grumbled into the receiver. I'm not at my best first thing after waking up.

"Harry, it's Murphy," Sergeant Karrin Murphy's voice crackled through the line. She and her fellow detectives at Special Investigations sometimes called me in on cases that were beyond the normal methods of investigation. Once upon a time I had been a fairly regular visitor to the offices of SI. But after Karrin, then Lieutenant Murphy, had helped me out on a particularly difficult case and the rescue of the girl who had since become my apprentice budget cuts had rendered my services too expensive. The help Murphy had given had cost her her rank and seniority and any hope for advancement. It had cost my friend a large portion of her pride as well. I could never repay that kind of friendship to my satisfaction. But that didn't stop me from trying.

"What's up, Murph?" I asked standing and stretching the kinks out of my back.

"I need you to come down to the morgue." Murphy sounded tired. "I want you to look at a body. Butters has some questions."

Her mention of Butters brought to mind the image of a little geek with perpetually unruly, dark hair, glasses and a passion for polka music unrivaled on two continents. He also had one of the best brains for the sort of thing Murphy and I dealt with regularly. We both trusted him. If he had questions then this was not the typical fare.

"I'll be there as soon as I can." We said our goodbyes and I sorted myself out. I took Mouse, my big grey dust mop of a dog, out briefly and then got my staff. The last few visits I'd made to the medical examiner's building had not been all that fun. I mean a morgue is never a place that I want to visit but there are worse times than others. When zombies are involved that's one of the worst times.

I parked the mighty Blue Beetle and walked to the big glass doors that let into the lobby. Murphy was waiting for me and we brushed through the security door like it wasn't there. I'm a lot taller than Karrin is but I found I had to stretch my stride to keep up with her. I got the feeling this was important.

"What can you tell me?" I asked as we strode down the hallway.

"Female. We found her in a hotel room." Murphy's voice was grim. "Forensics is still going over the room. She looked like she'd been there a couple of days but the clerk at the desk said she'd checked in last night with a male of average height in his mid thirties. When the cleaning crew found her this morning he wasn't anywhere. No security cameras in the halls and the room was on the ground floor so there were no shots of him in the elevators. He didn't go through the lobby when he left."

"And Butters has questions for me?"

"He says he's never seen anything like this." Murphy gave me a glance out of the corner of her eye as we reached the exam room door. "Hope you didn't have breakfast."

Inside we found Butters leaning back against his desk with a pensive look on his face. His eyes were sparkling behind his glasses as he turned to face us. He gave me a half hearted smile.

"Hi, Harry," Butters said extending a hand. "Hope you didn't have breakfast."

Great. So much encouragement. "I keep hearing that. What's the situation?"

For answer Butters crossed to the gurney in the middle of the room with its blanket shrouded occupant. He drew the blanket back to reveal the head and torso of a woman. I can say it was a woman because Murphy had already told me it was. My stomach heaved and I barely kept everything where it was supposed to be. The corpse's face was bloated and discolored a nasty shade of purple. There were similar bloated patches on her shoulders, arms, chest and stomach. The luxuriant mane of black hair looked far to healthy to adorn such a foul thing as what lay on the table. I took in several deep breaths and got my revulsion under control. I shoved my emotions into a little box at the back of my brain and told them to shut their eyes for a few minutes. I'd seen a lot of awful things in the last few years but this was among the worst. This sort of thing shouldn't happen to anyone much less a woman. I looked at the body. I could see no signs of anything I recognized as paranormal. Extending my hand over the corpse I also extended my senses. I tried to feel something. Anything. And there it was. A flicker of magical residue. I yanked my hand back and closed off my senses again.

"Something?" Murphy asked dispassionately.

"Something," I told her as Butters covered the corpse. "I don't know what. But yeah. Something."

"So you haven't seen anything like this before?" Butters asked.

"No," I said distancing myself from the thing on the table. "Any idea of who she is? What caused all those... marks?"

"Her drivers license says her name was Katharine Ignatio. Age thirty two." Murphy handed me the license in a little plastic bag. The woman in the photo looked nothing like what was on the table except for the hair. Normally the DMV has a knack for taking absolutely terrible pictures. They always make you look like you should be on a wanted poster or an ad for a missing person. If you have a bad side that's the angle they will get the picture from. Mine made me look like a reject from the Manson Family. Katharine Ignatio's picture looked like it had been done at Glamour Shots. Even as small as it was the picture showed her to be stunning. No one was that lucky. I looked a little closer and then glanced back to the now shrouded body. The woman looked familiar somehow.

"Have you been able to track down any family?" I asked suspecting I knew the answer already.

"No family in the city or surrounding counties." Murphy was looking at me in that cop way she has. "No employer. She lived alone in the Gold Coast. No friends that we've been able to find."

"Waldo, what caused her to look like that?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," He admitted. "I've never seen that sort of damaged before."

"What could have done it?" I pressed. "Why does she look like that? Was she beaten?"

"No. When I first saw her I thought she must have been hit by a truck or something but there aren't any broken bones or abrasions. The only thing I found aside from the disruptions was indications that she had recently had sex. A lot of it."

I nodded. It was making a little sense now. I asked, "Disruptions?"

"The markings are caused by massive damage to her cells," Butters said moving to his desk. "I took some samples and did some microscopic pictures. These show the cells from some of the disrupted areas."

I took the print from him. I'm not much when it comes to biology so I can't really describe what I saw but it was sort of like Spaghetti O's when you drop the pan on the floor. I raised an eyebrow at him. Very Spok-like.

"The only thing that would cause damage like that would be an extreme atmospheric pressure change. Maybe," Butters said pointing to the parts of the picture he thought I should pay attention to.

"Atmospheric pressure change? Like the bends?" I said handing the print back to him.

"No. The bends or decompression sickness is caused by inert gases building up in the body. That's not what happened here." Butters shook his head. "This is more radical. It's almost like she was exposed to hard vacuum but that doesn't really fit either. Her cells were burst from the inside. Not boiled."

"Harry," Murphy looked at me hard. "You know her?"

"No." I didn't know this woman but I knew her family. "You aren't going to like this, Murph."

"Are you about to tell me that you can't tell me anything?" Murphy was about to be angry and I wanted to head her off before she started threatening me with something.

"It's what I have to tell you that you won't like." I raised my hand in a placating gesture and she eased down on the cop throttle. "I think she's related to the Raiths. She's a White Court vampire."