Life After Death

Chapter 3

"Harry Dresden is dead."

I lay trapped in the same recurring dream I had every night since I had awoken in the Chicago hospital. This nightmare replayed the events of that horrible night over and over in my subconscious mind and made me reflect upon how I had not been there in the end when Harry really needed me. The dream left me trapped in the realm between not quite conscious and not completely unconscious and neither of these states were ready to fully claim me or allow the other to do so until the horrible dream had played itself out fully and completely once again.

Chichen Itza was one of those places that would have been a perfect setting for a classic Hollywood horror film. The jungle itself that surrounded the place was intensely beautiful in its vibrant colors that were perceptible on some levels even in the darkness. Still the mere density of the undergrowth and the natural noises of nocturnal hunters and prey made me intensely aware that things even more incredibly dangerous and evil could leap out from any of these patches at any second seeking to end out lives. This created an increasing tension in all of us though none dared to mention it that felt like a slowly increasing weight placed upon our bodies with every further step into the jungle that we took. The only thing that kept me from turning and fleeing was not wanting to disappoint my friends who stood beside me; and of course Harry for whom I would willingly do anything. I could sense from their emotions that many of the others in our little group felt very much the same.

When that jungle finally and regrettably surrendered to the deforested plains of the once great ancient city we gained no sense of relief that our nightmare was past. Instead, seeing the terrifying stone pyramids, remnants of an ancient Central American religion where millions had been sacrificed on these altars in order to offer their hearts to the gods and their blood to the most powerful vampires of the Red Court, made us all wonder if we charging ahead only to end up the same way ourselves. The thousands of torches on the central pyramid gave silent testimony to the size of the army awaiting us and these numbers were not even significantly lessened after Harry had destroyed hundreds of Red Court creatures with his first spell.

But even still we all knew this is what we faced when we agreed to come along. Our mission was not one of total war. It was not to put an end to all these human sacrifices once and for all; that would have been a task far too great for us to even consider when we set out on this quest. Instead our goal was only to rescue one single person from this fate, a child selected for the power of her bloodline, the daughter of my master Harry Dresden.

Were I to try I doubt that I could recall for you much of the battle that took place that night once the war truly began. Even my nightmares have been relatively vague of specifics of the spells that I cast and the effects that they had. I remember and relive only a running battle of magic where it seemed that at every step something that wished to kill me was trying its best to do so in the most horrible ways imaginable while I was doing everything I could, far more than I should have been able, to prevent this result from occurring.

Emotions like fear, one sensation I had in abundance, lends strength to magic and I used all I could for there was no limits to the fear available to me that night. Neither were there similar limits on the love that I felt for being in the company of such friends as these. Most of that was for my master Harry who I had realized for a long time now was the love I had always wanted; and who I swore only to tell if I knew that I was dying.

I thought that moment had arrived when a random bullet ricocheted off the stone floors to the side of me and bounced under my shield spell and below my armored vest that would have stopped it as well and struck me in left thigh feeling like a weird momentary tug in the midst of the battle. I had ignored it and fought on, my mind focused so totally upon my magic that I had not even registered the pain.

Through it all I also heard a soft female voice in my head offering me comfort and advice that I instinctively trusted. It was not a voice I had ever heard, yet one that was somehow completely familiar to me. I am not one that trusts easily, but in this case I had no doubts. It was this lack of doubt that sustained me.

It was not until we had been reinforced by a handful of members of the White Council and their kenku allies who beat back the Red Court counterattack on us that the pain suddenly made itself known to me. Harry had shouted at me, something to get my attention that it was time to move on to rescue his daughter, and I wanted to turn and be there for him as he asked. But at that point I could feel my own life slipping away. It was the time I had planned to tell him I loved him and always would but all I could do at that moment was smile; the words would not come. "Rest now child." The voice in my head commanded. "They time is nigh." I slipped back into a familiar warm unconsciousness wondering if I would ever awaken again.

I woke up from that event, and from each recurring nightmare since, in the hospital, not one aboard a military ship which Harry's brother Thomas said he had first taken me to in order to save my life, but instead in the Cook County Hospital in Chicago nearly a full day after the Navy had patched me up. The first time I awoke Thomas was still there beside me as he had promised his brother even though he himself was so pale and needed desperately to feed that he was close to death from exhaustion himself. He would not come near me though, fighting his own demons to keep them from feeding on me in my weakened state, and said he had stayed this long only because he needed to speak to me when I awoke.

"Harry Dresden is dead." Thomas had said in a voice and with words so far removed from emotion that you could not tell he was willing to admit even to himself that his only brother was dead. I can sense emotions in others and what scared me the most at that moment was that Thomas felt nothing. He had n rage, no grief, heck not even a sense of relief that Harry had moved on to Heaven, though I do not know if Thomas's personal beliefs as a White Court vampire even allowed for that. He had loved only three people in his life, a girl named Justine whose very touch now would literally burn his flesh, and his mother and Harry, the only true family he ever felt he had, who were now both dead long before their time.

"What?" I asked weakly trying to sit up in my bed but the tubes feeding into my arms and the wires attached to other parts of my body had me so tangled up that in my still weakened state I could not accomplish even this simple act. Thomas merely looked at me and nodded to confirm that what I had heard him say was true without offering me any further explanation. Then he left my room, his steps limping from his own injuries sustained, obviously exhausted, and in need of food.

The state of Illinois does not support euthanasia so unfortunately there is one wing of the hospital where the terminal patients waiting to die are kept on life support until God calls them home. On the night that Thomas left my bedside eleven of these patients died seemingly peacefully and without pain for their bodies all wore smiles when they were found less than an hour later. Another five or six of these patients reported seeing the beautiful angel Gabriel walking the corridors and collecting those who said they were ready to leave this life and mortal existence behind. As no surprise drugs showed up in the autopsies or any signs of violence were found on any of the bodies, the hospital chalked it up as a weird coincidence and tried to keep the event under wraps. However, the story of the Angle of Mercy at the Cook County Hospital was the headliner in the Arcane newspaper later that week.

In the last five days since that night Thomas had walked away he had not returned to check up on me though many others did, my family members of course most of all. They were happy to see me and even happier when the doctor told them that I was healing and would have full use of my leg if I stayed off it for a few weeks and let the muscles heal properly. My mom let them know that when they released me and I came home I would not stray from my bed. Even still with Charity Carpenter's promises the doctors wanted me to stay for a few more days at least to ensure there was no chance of infection setting in. I knew I was so pumped through of antibiotics that the chance of that happening was unlikely at best.

These visits though did allow me to catch up on the other details that Thomas had not spoken of. I learned first that our mission had been successful and that Harry's daughter was safe under Father Forthill's watchful eye and protection.

I also learned of Susan's sacrifice and the death of the entire Red Court. That news had been spoken of by others but it was Warden Luccio who came by and as wizard to wizard told of the last minutes as she had learned of them from Wizard McCoy.

She also said that many of the younger wizards had petitioned for an honorary statement from the Merlin be made for Harry Dresden and that he be nominated up to serve out of sequence as the next member of the Senior Council for destroying the enemy who had slaughtered so many of our numbers. This movement was quashed by a combination of a Wizard Cristos's speech and a block of votes claiming the war only came about because of Harry Dresden in the first place. He even went so far as to translate and paraphrase Shakespeare for the cultured crowd claiming he came to Edinburgh 'not to praise Dresden but to bury this terrible idea.'

The two factions of Cristos's block and the young wizards looked ready to trade spells and blows over this issue until its death knell was sounded by no less than The Merlin himself who said the White Council was not a military service offering medals for those who performed duties (to appease Wizard Cristos's block, even exceptional ones (to appease the younger wizards), or to offer promotion out of cycle even for honorable traits of heroism that Wizard Dresden displayed by killing our enemies. The last slight was a warning aimed at Wizard Cristos since everyone knew he had been elevated out of sequence to the Senior Council strictly for politics.

Warden Luccio also asked me what I knew about Harry and if the rumors of his death were true. I told her of course that I did not know, as I'd been confined to this bed to heal, and that I only had the police stories and speculations of friends to based that on. I had not seen him I admitted, which I sensed was the real reason for her visit, but I also said this was not the first time someone had thought they had killed Harry only to find out to their surprise they had been wrong. We agreed that without a body, Harry would be listed in the wizard roles as merely as missing under mysterious circumstances, at least for the time being.

She wished me well and told me to contact her if I needed anything, which really meant if I heard anything about my master. I shook my head thought did not actually say I would. Hey, unlike words, a head shake I could say was induced not by my agreement but rather because of the state of physical health and exhaustion I was in. She left and I spent hours alone thinking over the implications of what she had said – and more importantly those things she had not said.

The good side though was by keeping me in the hospital that meant there were long stretches at night when visiting hours were over and my family and friends politely prodded from the room where I could grieve over my worry and loss without the others seeing me. My family had heard about the attack on Harry and took it stoically, my dad most of all saying he did not think God had called Harry home just yet. The look in his eyes though betrayed emotions of love, faith, and optimism rather than the cold reality of facts upon which he made this statement.

My oldest brother Daniel knew my feelings for Harry thanks to the soulgaze we had shared, but he said nothing about what I may be feeling to me or any of the rest of my family as far as I could tell. I suspected that my dad might know as well but again he also ever spoke of it to me. Instead like my dad did my entire life, he just always seemed to know the exact right time to pat my hand in comfort if I thought about Harry. I guess being the Hand of God who had wielded the Sword of Love, Amoracchius, might give someone an advantage when seeing this feeling in others.

It was my mother Chairty that I worried most about. Mom had never been fond of Harry until he had literally offered up his own life to save mine. At that point he was begrudgingly considered family, but still one she had to actively work to accept. And while she had come a great distance in forgiving him for the inadvertent pain our family had faced when he was around, all bets would be off if she even suspected there was anything remotely romantically physical between him and I. I kept silent on this even though she was probably the one person in my family who could really understand my feelings because we were so much alike.

When she had been about my age her life had been rescued by my father from a dragon of all things if the parts of stories I had finally pieced together were true. It was not that my father was incredibly handsome or that he was a literal knight in shining armor that had rescued her that had been the source of her love for him. It was because he was one of those rare breeds of men who willingly placed their life on the line to rescue others not for profit but because it was the right thing to do. Guys, girls may be attracted to bad boys at certain aspects of their life, but there are few women who do not want to have the 'good man' as their partner for life and the father of their children.

I admit that I chose not to talk to my mom about how I was feeling even though I knew she could offer me the best advice and comfort. I told myself that it was because I did not want to allow her to have any cause not to pray that Harry would be found alive. On the whole, Charity Carpenter's prayers tended to get answered more often than any person that I had ever heard of. And so my mom did not ask me about my feelings for Harry either because she could sense I was not ready to talk about it. She did not get this from being a sensitive mage like me attuned to feeling, but rather because she was my mom and had known me all my life.

Some of Harry's other friends came by to see me as well in those first few days. Will the Werewolf, yes he is an honest to goodness werewolf, came by once to sit with me and told me about a group of bad guys from the 'spooky' side of things that he and Murphy had taken down the night before. These predators had kidnapped Will's wife Georgia, also a werewolf, who was pregnant as well and were part of a larger group throughout the country that was trying to collect and sell people like him and I with unique magical abilities. Will's visit then had been to not only check up on me but to tell me that Murphy had decided that all of Harry's friends were going to protect the city against magical intrusions like this until he returned. Like my father Will and Murphy's claim was based completely upon hope but not a tremendous amount of factual underpinning that it would happen.

Murphy came by every other day as well. Being able to sense emotions I knew that if anyone took Harry's death as hard as me it would be Murphy. Normally in such a crisis she would have immersed herself into police work as a means to deal with her pain, but since our raid down in Mexico Murphy had been suspended from the force pending a performance review. She told me on one such visit that she believed this time they were going to take her badge once and for all if not trying to arrest her on some trumped up charge.

Gentleman Johnny Marcone had offered through a proxy to get her job back but Karrin was not one to compromise or accept a favor that might later get called in. She could look herself in the mirror and accept that the price to be paid was worth the actions she had performed and the lives she had saved. Like Harry, Murphy was another of those self-sacrificing types who lived on their own terms.

But even with this life changing event hanging over her head, Murphy did not let it keep her from trying to make me smile with Harry stories and keep me up to date on the investigation into his disappearance. She still had friends on the force and these friends were willing to feed her off the record information about the disappearance someone the entire unit of Special Investigation had considered one of their own.

My only other visitor was one inside my own head. It was the same motherly sounding voice that had offered me advice when we were down in Mexico; one that I seemed to recognize yet could not place. It sounded at times like my own mother offering me words of comfort in my dreams. At other times I could feel it charged with some sort of odd energy, like it was waiting for me to do or say something important though I did not know what. For a time I suspected it was the Leanansidhe, Harry's literal faerie godmother who had fought with us in Mexico, but while the voice seemed similar to the Fae Handmaiden's, there was a strange benevolence and honest caring in her words it that seemed out of place for the coldly deadly faerie I had fought beside.

"Prepare yourself child." The voice said to me in my dreams. "The time of thy ascendency grows near."

Murphy arrived that morning looking haggard around her eyes from a lack of sleep but still more energized in her body than I had seen in her last few visits. I knew at once she had something important to share with me. She scanned the hallway and the room I lay in looking for someone or something, then leaned over my bed and whispered right in my ear. "Someone who looks like Harry was seen last night."

She drew away from me with just a fleeting glimmer of what might be madness in her eyes; the formidable desire in your heart for something to be true even though your mind knows that it is not. Don't get me wrong, I did not think Karrin was close to losing it, declaring herself to be the reincarnation of Willy Wonka and deciding to reach out and gather up a group of Oompa Loompas to make chocolates for all the wonderful kiddies in the world or anything. Murphy would never break like that.

Instead I knew the greater danger is she would merely stray from the ideals she had so long lived by. The exhaustion she felt, both emotional and physical, was eating away at her and she was not ready to face it yet or better still overcome it. Like me, she had never told Harry how she really felt about him, or had done so only in such a way as to keep him at arm's length. In truth though what she really wanted was for him to ignore what she said was the right thing for them to do and instead sweep her up and love her so unconditionally that even if her mind swore it was wrong, her heart would shout those thoughts down. A part of her expected him to be the one to rescue that little part inside her that still wished for a good man to accept her for who she was and still sweep her off her feet.

The problem was that these days the average woman was lucky to meet one guy in this lifetime capable of that. And Karrin Murphy was now lying awake each night wondering why she had never recognized she wanted it and told him how she felt. This was tough for a woman who had the strength to face down both common villains and uncommon vampires but not the feelings in her own heart. Murphy was coming to consider that she had lost her one chance to be truly happy forever. And I knew just how she felt.

"Really?" I asked wanting to scoot up now more than ever but still mostly tied up like a kitten who had lost a battle with a ball of string. "What did you hear?" I asked seeking more information.

She looked at me and then pulled a chair over as near to the bed as she could so she did not have to speak too loud. Her hand also rested on my arm and slowly played the itsy bitsy spider walk. I knew immediately what she was concerned about.

If Harry was not dead then he was still wanted for questioning by the FBI and the Chicago Police for the destruction of two building and the attack on the FBI offices as well. It would not take anything more than a sympathetic judge and a story of a potential terrorist on the loose to get the warrant to put an electronic microphone in my room in case Harry came by or one of his friends told me where he was. Of course that was a situation I as a wizard was uniquely suited to dealing with.

I pulled my magic in and when I had enough I imitated a sneeze and called out my command word. "Hexus!" I said letting my magic short out the machines they had me linked up to as well as the television in the corner with a cascade of sparks. The spell might have been a wee bit stronger than I intended and reached further down the hall than I had intended as electronics all over the floor felt the effect. Thankfully the florescent lights in the room only flickered for a moment before coming back on fully. I did not see any telltale sparks or smoke from hidden recording devices but if there were indeed any in the room I was pretty certain they were dead now.

Murphy smiled at me and shook her head realizing what I had done but not particularly unhappy about it. An orderly popped his head into the room almost immediately noting my machines had died as well as my television. "Are you alright miss?" He asked showing he was more than a bit shaken about my smoking electronic medical equipment. I started to tug on the wires connected to me and he came to my bedside.

I nodded my head. "What was that?" I asked innocently, an acting skill I had perfected in dealing with my mother. I lifted my arms and he began disconnecting me from the machines for safety sake. The hospital's insurance company would not be pleased if they let a patient with a gunshot wound that was healing well get electrocuted and die because of faulty equipment and power surges I guess. I assumed there was probably a whole stack of messy paperwork for events like that.

"It must have been a power surge or something." The orderly said somewhat sheepishly confirming my own thoughts as he pushed the machines away from the bed which allowed me freedom to move normally except for my bandaged leg. "I'll be back to swap out your equipment but I need to check on the other patients on this floor first." I nodded and he left.

"You know how much equipment like that stuff costs?" Murphy asked me with a look of shock but still a smile.

"You know how much these guys charge for staying here?" I asked remembering the one bill from the hospital that I had seen when my dad had been critically injured over a year ago. I had originally paid it myself only to come to find out one of the city's most distinguished citizens, Gentleman John Marcone no less, had informed the hospital and the insurance company that he would take care of all the bills personally. Marcone decided this was only fair as my father had been critically injured risking his life rescuing the gangster from fallen angels in the first place.

Murphy let this subject go and decided that now was the best chance for us to talk without being overheard. "Stallings met with someone last night that looked just like Harry, someone the right height that was wearing the same coat and carrying a staff." Murphy explained.

"He told you that?" I asked.

"No." She replied. "Another officer I know saw them meet in a cop bar. He was the one who told me originally." She explained and then her emotions took on a little sense of disappointment. "When I called and asked John about it he was evasive and refused to say anything which makes me certain something weird took place at least."

This was dangerous ground we were considering and I could not afford to get things wrong. "Karrin, we both know Harry and the kinds of things he dealt with. While he has survived some pretty hairy things in the past, there are also a sufficient number of people out there who would like to tarnish his image too." I cautioned her subtly to remind her of the fight she and Will had gotten involved with just the other night. "Let's take this slowly and see if we can figure out what is going on."

"I thought I was the detective." She said with a smile but also a nod that said she agreed.

"You…" I almost said 'were.' "…are." I said after a delay. She looked at me knowing exactly what I had almost said but being comfortable with her choices did not take that near slip up of truth serious.

"I may not have my badge." She said with a smile. "But I still know how to follow a lead."

"Okay then let's start from the top." I said. "Tell me everything you heard, especially the details and let's see if between the two of us we can come up with what is really going on."

"That is exactly the problem." She said. "I gave you everything that I have on this already. All I know is that someone dressed just like Dresden and also carrying a staff called and met with Stallings last night. Since Harry's wardrobe is not exactly current Chicago fashion that means the person wore this getup specifically by choice and so with the intent of looking like Harry. And since John Stallings seemed to chat with him like an old friend then it seems most likely that the person in question actually looked and sounded enough like Harry to a well seasoned detective. That or who he really was meeting with was the real Harry Dresden." Murphy explained.

"Okay, as I see it this allows for three separate possibilities. First, some normal person is out there imitating Harry for some reason. Second, someone or something with magical talent is out there imitating Harry for some reason. Third, Harry Dresden is still alive and met with Stallings himself." Let's break these down and see where each of these takes us." I said.

"First, why would a normal person bereft of magical ability choose to dress up like the wizard Harry Dresden and then go talk to a cop who knows Harry personally and has a good chance of realizing he is not the genuine article?" I asked. "I mean that makes no sense to me."

"That is actually not as uncommon a scenario as you might think." Murphy said straight faced with just a hint of a shake of her head. "Besides the occasional criminals who actually pretend to be friends of the victim in order to talk to the police to learn how close they are to solving the crime, there are also the ones that hang around in the crowd when a body is discovered to see what they left behind that the police find." Murphy explained. "That is why cops always take pictures of the crowd and interview anyone who has an unnatural interest in the case." She paused and then added to her explanation. "There is also a small group of individuals who like to dress up like cops and go out to 'serve and protect' in their neighborhoods."

"Sort of like the imitation Batmans, Batmen, Bat dudes in The Dark Knight movie?" I asked.

"Yep just like that." She said obviously not trying to decide what the true plural for Batman was and solve that particular eternal mystery for comic book fans everywhere.

"Yeah, even so, don't you think Stallings would have recognized the fake?" I asked. "I mean he has known Harry for nearly a decade or so right? You really think someone just acting could pull that type of performance off to a cop?"

Murphy thought about it for only a moment before responding. "No." She said at last. "Not without a Hollywood makeup artist and a whole lot of studying on how Dresden walked, talked, and everything else he did. And anyone who was that close we would all know about and no one comes to mind for me that fits those requirements."

"Me either." I agreed. "Okay so we can eliminate ninety nine percent of the world's population from our suspect list." I said since normals were not likely. "So why would either someone gifted with magic or a being from the Nevernever choose to imitate Harry in order to talk to a cop who knows Chicago's most famous wizard?" I asked moving to my second group.

"Like you said earlier, there is the possibility of someone out there who wants to tarnish his image." Murphy replied. "The problem with that line of thought though is the simple fact that Harry does not really have all that stellar an image to begin with." She said with a laugh that was laced with heavy doses of honesty and irony.

"That is very true." I agreed. "It's not like he is Brad Pitt and he was voted one of People Magazine's one hundred most interesting people. In fact Harry's few appearances on television were enough to basically tarnish his own image to such a point that more people took him as a joke than seriously so why would someone else want to take that upon themselves?"

"Yep." Murphy nodded. "Most people I have talked to believed your boss was a nut job. The only ones who knew better were those of us who had regular dealings with him and knew the man."

"So someone intends to ruin Harry's image with one or more of his friends?" I asked skeptically. "For what purpose?"

Murphy sat there for almost a full minute without saying anything as her detective mind rolled down a list of possibilities and motivations that were behind most crimes. Imitating Harry was not going to get you rich or get you laid, hell it had not done it for the real Dresden so how did some second rate imitator think he would pull it off instead?

"Revenge is the only one that has any possibility. I heard that someone reported to SI that they observed a group of thirty exactly similar guys robbing a jewelry store. That sounds to me like that guy Binder may be back in town. Harry forced him to leave under less that cordial conditions so he might have the incentive to do something to balance out that score." Murphy informed me but even the look she wore said the details did not match what we were speculating. "But really if Harry is thought to be dead then what revenge does our actor get by pretending to be him?"

"Unless his goal is to hurt those who cared about Harry by making us think he might still be alive." I said taking that line of thought out to its natural conclusion. "That is rather twisted and knowing the power of Harry's friends and what they would do when they found out I would consider that damn near a suicide pact."

"Yeah, I can't really see that either." Murphy agreed. "Besides if they wanted to hurt us then we would be the ones seeing Harry. I would not have even heard about this Harry Dresden encounter if one of my friends from the academy had not been in the bar and passed it along."

"Okay so we eliminate evil intentions." I said. "What about the other side of the coin?" I asked.

"Good intentions?" Murphy asked. "Doesn't that bring us right back to the phony Batman plot again?"

"It does, but there is also no intentions." I said. "The phages that I faced liked to imitate movie monsters to create fear. Maybe there is some other creature that feeds of imitating people." My friend Hisha the Raksasha came immediately to mind but I knew the holy man would not do such a thing and certainly not without first informing me of his plan so not to cause me the hurt we just discussed. Based on the last letter from him I received two weeks ago he was still in a Buddhist temple in Tibet playing chess with a physically restored Lord Kline the nine foot troll.

"Are there such creatures as that?" Murphy asked.

"Not that I personally know of." I replied reasoning that the raksasha would only imitate a person for a purpose not just for purely for the entertainment of doing so.

"So we are back to Batman again." Murphy said bringing the conversation around once more to this point. "But who exactly would want to do something like that?" She asked me in a tone that had just a little more inquisitiveness to it than a simple question between friends. Hell I realized, Murphy was actually interrogating me without me even knowing it!

There was a convenient knock on the door before I could respond and the young orderly came back into the room. "I need to change your bandages before I start removing all this equipment." He said coming over to the side of the bed where my left leg lay wrapped and supported in a sling so I could not move it much and disturb the healing process.

His timing was perfect. "Hey doc." I said since I did not know the proper term for an orderly. He had a pair of those funny curved scissors and was carefully cutting away the wrapping on my leg and looking for blood in the process so did not respond but I could tell he was listening as he looked at my bandages. Thankfully there was only a few drops of dark red on the white absorbent cloth. "When do you think I can start walking around again?" I asked without even looking at Murphy to tell her that I understood her game. "I mean all this lying in bed is driving me nuts."

The orderly looked at the wound and then back at me. "Based upon the scabbing and edges healing you are showing phenomenal progress." He said with a smile as he put fresh gauze over the wound and began to wrap it again. "But if you walk on your leg now you will open the wound up completely again and have a good chance of bleeding out. Or worse still you could disturb a clot and give yourself a stroke and live as a vegetable the rest of your life." He explained taping off the wrappings. "No you need two or three more days before we can get you a wheelchair or a pair of crutches for a little mobility. And before you ask, even then you will probably have to use those for another month at least."

He finished up and left and I turned to Murphy and without giving away that I knew her game, I asked a question. "So where were we again?" I asked. "You were saying something about someone friendly with Harry imitating him for what purpose?"

Murphy looked at me and then shrugged. "I really have no clue." She said. "But let's start with if such a thing were even possible."

"Sure." I said pulling magic to me and calling out a small spell. "Noctus ex illuminus." I called out and suddenly it was not Molly Carpenter in the bed but instead Harry Dresden.

"You missed the scar on his eyebrow." Murphy said examining my work with a critical eye and finding a flaw immediately.

"I was only making a point." I said letting the spell fade away so that I would not tire myself out. The whole point of a hospital bed was to force me to rest so unnecessary spell slinging was probably a bad idea.

"So it can be done." Murphy said. "Is it a fairly simple spell?"

"It is for me because I am a sensitive magic wizard." I said. "My strengths lie in emotions and sensory-based spells. But these skills are really rare even among wizards. Most wizards in the White Council are the offensive combat types like Harry but not nearly as powerful. They could cast these types of spells too, just as I can cast fire spells, but they would break down relatively quickly." I explained as best I could.

"That is why Harry had you cast the illusion spell in Mexico and why he had to concentrate so hard for just a couple minutes when we used illusions in the FBI building." Murphy said.

"Yep." I agreed. "How long was 'Harry' talking to Stallings last night?" I asked Murphy.

"About ten minutes according to my source." Karrin said.

"That is possible then." I replied. "But for most of the combat wizard types that would really be pushing the edge of their endurance for this kind of magic I think."

"If that is true then it can't be combat wizards." Murphy replied.

"Why?"

"Because the same guy was in the bar for nearly ten minutes before Stallings even arrived and looked like Harry that entire time as well." Murphy explained. "If combat wizards would have a hard time with ten minutes then I assume twenty minutes would…"

"…yeah probably would be impossible without complete concentration." I said. "No way a combat wizard was holding a conversation and keeping up an illusion that long."

"What about the High Council?" Murphy asked. "Harry always said they were the most powerful wizards. Could they have pulled off something of that duration?"

"Probably." I said. "But the majority either hated Harry and would be glad that he was dead, or they were generally indifferent to him except when their paths crossed and would likely have little motivation to meet with a Chicago police officer just to talk. If they needed some information that Stalling had they likely have other magical means at their disposal that was far more direct and certain to get the results with all the deception. I could not even imagine Harry's mentor Wizard McCoy who was the closest to him on the Senior Council doing such a thing when he has pulled satellites from orbit to make his points in the past."

I decided to push the subject back at her now that she understood everything involved. "You know there really is only one wizard we know of who has the means and motive, as you cops like to call it, to pull off something like this." I said turning her suspicions back on her.

"Yeah, you." She agreed not quite reading my mind but having the respect for me to acknowledge her suspicions. "But unless you had the convenient Doctor Frankenstein wannabe on call for this meeting and his speech was all rehearsed ahead of time before he came in to change your bandages then you lack that little element that we police detectives like to call opportunity." Murphy replied with her own smile. "I'm sorry but I had to know for sure." She apologized.

"Trust me Karrin." I said. "I'm pretty sure I would have thought the same thing as you did if I had heard of it." I let that comment hang in the air. "So what are you going to do now?" I asked because I knew Karrin was not one to let things like this just drop.

"Well, as they never found Harry's body there is always the third option that he is still out there." Murphy replied as she stood up and pushed the chair back in the corner. "I think I'm going home to catch up on my sleep." She said. "Since I do not have an actual job to go to anymore I figure maybe I will spend my nights listening to the police scanners as I drive around looking for a wizard here in the city that everyone thinks is dead."

"You mean you actually think it's possible?" I asked letting a bit of emotion into my own heart as well.

"From this point on until I get definitive proof otherwise yes I do!" Murphy said with a new look of determination in her still tired eyes. "From this moment until that proof becomes available I say Harry Dresden is alive!"