Chapter Eleven
ANNA MURPHY
Anna was doing her best, but she was upset. That was why when a ball of gold and black sparkles came out of the skull and turned into a man, she screamed. The trunk lid and part of the back of the trunk exploded. She hadn't meant to do that. She really hadn't! Weird stuff just sort of happened when she got upset. Child and ghost stared at one another for a short moment before Bob came back to his senses. "Take the skull and run! Don't drop it and don't lose it. I can't help you if you don't have me with you. Now go!" with that he rushed back into his skull.
Anna was confused but not stupid. She jumped out of the car, (it had stopped with a jerk when the back end came apart) and fell onto the street. She quickly rolled under a parked car and then looked around for another hiding place. She didn't know why the man, or whatever he was, hadn't done anything but offer to help. It was this sort of thing that had made her father send her away and yet, all he had done was just to tell her to run away from the men who had kidnapped her. He hadn't been upset at all.
The gold and black sparkles came back out of the skull resting under her chest and between her arms, swirled around a bit before diving into the storm drain next to the front wheel of the car above them. It a matter of seconds it returned and once more became a man. "Go down into the storm drain. I do believe that you are slender enough to make it through the entrance. You must hurry; whoever took you will be looking for you. He won't look down there and as long as you keep moving he won't find you."
Anna nodded. That made a lot of sense. "Um, do you think that the skull will break if I drop it?"
The man looked at the skull and at Anna. "Wrap it up in your jacket and place it in your backpack. As long as you are careful in how you drop it, it should be fine. Be careful getting yourself down as well."
Anna nodded again and did as the strange man directed. She dropped her backpack and the skull with it, down the storm drain and then crawled backwards through the hole. It was a tight squeeze but she managed to get herself down under the storm drain and into the tunnels underneath the street. The drop wasn't too bad either, although she didn't like the dirty water she ended up standing in. She picked up her backpack from where she had dropped it. She was relieved to see that the skull wasn't damaged, at least no more than it had been before she dropped it. "Very good," she heard from behind her. "Now, are you injured in anyway?" Anna shook her head. "Excellent," the strange man looked around and then pointed down the tunnel. "I do believe that if we travel in that direction, we will be able to find a way out and eventually return you to your mother, and I to Harry."
"Ok," Anna said as she started walking in the direction he had pointed.
"Now, I do believe that introductions are in order." he said as he walked beside her.
"I'm Anna Murphy," she said.
"Ah, you must be Lieutenant Murphy's daughter. I am pleased to make your acquaintance," Bob said. He was delighted at this turn of events. Anna's earlier use of magic had concerned him, but now he realized that it would actually help in bringing the lieutenant further into Harry's world.
"And Sergeant Murphy's granddaughter!" Anna said proudly.
Bob bowed low. "Hrothbert of Bainbridge, former sorcerer at your service, but you may call me Bob, my dear."
"I like Bob better than Hrothbert."
"As do I," he replied.
"Why are you a former sorcerer and why were you in the lady's skull?" Anna asked as she hiked her backpack higher onto her shoulders. "Do you live with Mr. Dresden?"
Bob stopped for half a step, startled before continuing on his way. "You, my dear, are the first person who has ever seemed to realize that the skull did not originally belong to me."
Anna stared. "Duh! It's a lady skull!"
"Indeed she is," Bob smiled sadly. "And yes, in a way I do live with Harry, or rather the skull belongs to Harry and I go with it. You see, I am a ghost."
"Neat!"
Chapter 12
HARRY DRESDEN
"Stay back Dresden!" Kirmani yelled. He was hustling Murphy into a room filled with electronic equipment. Kirmani may not have understood why electronics and I didn't get along but he did have enough experience to understand that me plus a lot of electronics in the same room was a bad thing, especially if we needed to have those electronics work in order to find one missing child and a skull.
"Whoever took Anna put her in the trunk of a car and was headed west," I yelled through the door. Kirmani nodded and gestured at the computers and the lab tech in front of him and Murphy. I just hoped that they would have better luck than I did when it came to tracking down that particular car. I was damned good at finding things and people, but I needed something to connect me to the car or the person driving it. The only connection I had was to Bob. I wasn't about to ask Murphy for Anna's necklace now. It was also a good thing that although Kirmani didn't like me, he did acknowledge two things; one, that I would never deliberately hurt Murphy, not for anything in the world and two, that I knew stuff that he couldn't explain. I would never yank anyone's chain over this and he knew it. So he wouldn't bother to try and confirm the information that I had given him, nor would Murphy tell him how I got it.
While the tech guys did what they do best to find the car and Anna, I went to the stairwell and down to the bottom landing, to do what I do best. Now, I could have found an out of the way corner closer to Murphy, but I was more than a little upset. Whoever had taken Anna had taken both an innocent little girl, the only child of the woman I love, and the only family I had left. That meant that I had less control over power surges than usual, and the way I felt now I would probably short out the entire building when, not if, I had one. That was the downside of being the type of wizard I was.
Bob had tried for years to teach me finesse, but I had too much power for my level of skill to handle. The first time I tried to light a candle, I set the table on fire. Rather than try to achieve the impossible, I had settled for the near impossible, learning how to manage the power I had, trading finesse for brute strength. Dealing with finesse meant using small amounts of power. Learning spells that could handle my power levels had taken as much time as learning the basics. It had taken too much of my time really. I had been forced to drop out of high school to deal with the problem.
Now I was as good as I was going to get when it came to handling my power, or at least I knew a lot more tricks to dealing with it than I ever had before. The real problem these days was handling the power surges that came with really strong emotions. I sat down on the landing and crossed my legs. Pulling a small crystal skull out of my pocket I grabbed the metal railing with my other hand. With any luck, (not that mine was of much use most days,) the surge that I knew would come would ground itself into the metal. I closed my eyes and my fist, activating the tracking spell. Images flashed through my mind, a quiet street, a car bursting apart at the seams in the back, Anna dropping a backpack down a storm drain, Anna crawling down after it. The last image terrified me and I lost control of my magic.
The surge that I had tried to prepare for slammed out of me and out into the building around me. All of the lights burst, and the security camera burst first into sparks and then flames. I didn't bother to watch. The moment the magic receded; I was up and running up the stairs. Anna was down in the storm drain system. That was a really, really bad place for a little girl to be, especially one that appeared to have a touch, probably more, of magic.
Chapter 13
CONNIE MURPHY
Technically I wasn't supposed to work on Anna's kidnapping. I was her mother. On the other hand, no one was pointing that out as we looked through the open case files for a likely suspect and through the traffic cam footage for any vehicle that might have been anywhere near Harry's office in the last hour. That was one of the good things about this case. We knew within two minutes of the kidnapping where Anna had disappeared from, that she was probably in a car trunk, and that the kidnappers were headed west, at least according to Harry. The other good thing was that Traffic had also installed traffic cams two blocks west of Harry's office. If we were lucky, we had Anna's kidnapping on tape.
I don't know how Harry does it, where he gets his information or how his 'magic' stuff works, but I have learned over the last year the he was usually right, even if he wasn't always completely honest with me. He was also usually bloody, bruised and occasionally broken by the time the case was solved, but he was the last guy standing while the perps were down, and that counts as a win in my book. So I wasn't going to dismiss anything that he told us about Anna.
The tech guys found exactly what they were looking for within just a few minutes. In fact, the longest part about the whole thing was waiting for the right tapes to be collected. Jackson did his digital enhancement thing and in the background we could clearly see a large man in a t-shirt picking up a struggling child. "Keep on that bastard," I heard the Captain growl, but I was distracted by a uniform charging in with a package.
"The label says it's for Officer Murphy. We didn't want to take the chance," he shrugged and I steeled myself to open the package. I didn't want to open it. It wasn't too early for the kidnapper to be sending me something to prove that he had Anna. I silently prayed that whoever had taken Anna hadn't sent me a piece of her as I opened the box. There was a note and Dresden's skull inside. I slammed on my game face, the one that I use when my emotions are running high and I have to keep my mind on the job rather than how awful the job is.
"What the heck is that?" I hadn't noticed the cops gathering around me.
"It's Dresden's pet skull. Anna had it. It was missing from his desk this morning after Anna was taken."
"The kidnapper may have sent the skull but he doesn't have Anna!" Jackson exclaimed. He had still been following the brown Ford on the tapes. "Take a look at this Lieutenant." The image on the screen didn't make sense to me at first, not until I realized that the car hadn't actually blown up. It had simply, and rather violently, come apart. The back doors burst open and fell off, the roof peeled off towards the front, the lid of the trunk blew off, etc. and all of it happened in a matter of seconds. If I hadn't known better then I would have said that Harry was in that vehicle. Then I could see Anna falling out of what was left of the trunk and scurrying under a nearby parked car. "That's the last image we have of Anna Murphy."
"That's because she's underground, in the storm drain system. We need to find her and get her out of there fast," Harry said from the doorway. I could tell from the way he was practically bouncing in the doorway that he wanted to run in and drag me out, but he didn't. That was one of the things I respected about him. He knew he did something to electronics just by being around them that screwed them up and he did his best to avoid the stuff that the city shelled out a lot of cash for on our behalf.
"Whoever took her sent us your pet skull," I said, walking over to the door and shoving the box at him.
"Ah, no. Anna had my skull with her went she went into the storm drain," Dresden said firmly. "That's not mine." He took the box and we all followed him out of the room. He pulled the skull out and examined it. "It's not mine, but it's a really good copy." Then he just stopped and stared at the skull, his eyes growing wide with horror. "Oh god, tell me they didn't do that," he whispered.
I ignored his theatrics. "What do you mean that isn't yours. That's real bone Dresden, no way that's plastic."
Dresden glared at me. "I've had Bob from the time I was eleven years old. Trust me, I know every millimeter of that skull and this one isn't it." He went back to looking heart stricken at the skull in his hands. "But it looks like this might be Bob," he muttered to himself.
"It isn't, Bob," Kirmani said, wincing at the name and holding up a note. "Apparently the skull's name is Winifred and it's your inheritance from your mom Murphy, or at least I think that's who Maria Sanchez is. It's got nothing to do with Anna."
"Right, ah we need to go after Anna, there's no telling what she'll run into down there." Dresden shoved the skull into his backpack "Kirmani why don't you stay here and help bring in the guy who took Anna. We'll go after her."
I could tell that Kirmani thought Harry was shoveling crap at him. "I'll tell the Captain where we're going," he told me. I nodded. I wanted all the backup I could get. Anna deserved nothing less and if Harry was nervous, well I had learned to be careful when Harry got nervous.
Chapter Fourteen
HROTHBERT OF BAINBRIDGE
Bob knew that not only would those who had kidnapped young Anna be looking for her, there would be others down in the storm drain system that would love to get their hands on her, or him for that matter. So he kept his eyes open and racked his memory of the spells that a child of Anna's age and apparent ability might be able to use for defense.
"Mr. Tattoo and Mr. Skinny aren't going to stop looking for me Bob. Can you do anything to stop them so that my mom can arrest them? Some of the ghost stories I've heard says that ghosts can move things like ropes and tie people up with it." Anna said it very matter factly. Bob was impressed with her composure, but he wasn't fooled by it. He knew that for her to even bring the subject up meant that she was very worried and scared, the way she had reacted to his appearance had shown that.
"Unfortunately, I am not that sort of ghost. I am unable to affect the physical world in any fashion. However, one of the reasons I'm still around is to act as a sort of magical library. I know a great deal about magic and the various ways to use it."
Anna stopped and turned, facing Bob. "We need to do something. They're going to find us."
Bob took in her pale face and voice that trembled even as she did her best to remain calm. He had no doubt that she was trying to live up to her heritage as a police officer's child. "I may not be able to do much, child. However, that does not mean that I am useless." He gave her his best smirk. "You see, there's this little thing called psychological warfare." He bent down so that he could look her in the eyes. "With your hands and my knowledge, there is a great deal that we can do together to, how shall I put this?"
"Mess them up?" Anna asked. Bob smiled and nodded. They put their heads together and began to plan.
Chapter Fifteen
HARRY DRESDEN
The car that had been transporting Anna wasn't hard to find. Cops were crawling all over what was left of it and they had the street blocked off but I was able to find a place to park close by. Close up the destruction was more complete than I had thought. I had only seen a short glimpse of it with the tracking spell because of the spell's focus being Bob. "Harry tell me she's ok," Murphy demanded.
"She was fine when she ducked into the storm drain," I tried to reassure her. "We just need to find her before something down there does." The wind shifted, bringing with it the faint taste/smell of the magic used in Anna's escape. To my surprise it reminded me slightly of Ancient Mia, who I suspected of being a dragon. I knew for a fact that she was a shapeshifter, the most obvious clue being that she had never looked the same at any meeting I had, had with her. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to investigate. I had to get us down into the storm tunnels as quickly as possible.
"Harry, what happened to that car?" Murphy asked as we got out of my jeep.
I was busy checking my pack for supplies, mostly stuff that I had grabbed at random out of my office and out of the back of my jeep, so I wasn't really thinking when I answered Murphy. "Anna happened," I said as I packed two slices of pizza I'd swiped from the break room down at the precinct.
"WHAT! HARRY!" Murphy spluttered.
"We don't have time!" I snapped. Anna Murphy's terrified burst of raw power had shown an enormous amount of potential, far more than I would have expected coming from the Murphy family. Looking around to make sure that no one was watching, I pulled the storm drain cover out of the concrete with a little magic. I knew Kirmani and Murphy were probably gapping at me but things were going to get a lot stranger than that for them. Murphy in particular was going to have to learn how to deal with my world now that her daughter was showing the gift. Knowing her, I had a pretty good idea that she would be as protective of Anna as my father had been of me, and I would be there to make sure that this time, she had the backup that my father hadn't had.
Chapter Sixteen
ANNA MURPHY
Anna liked Bob the ghost. He had the best ideas for pranks to play on Mr. Tattoo and Mr. Skinny. First he wrote messages in the air. That was neat. She had to be careful not to touch them because they disappeared if she did. He had explained that not only would the messages make the creeps nervous; they were also just like when her mom yelled, 'Freeze Police!' at the bad guys. Good guys always gave the bad guys a chance to surrender, and they were the good guys.
Of course because Bob was a ghost he couldn't touch anything. That was where Anna came in. Bob showed her how to set up the traps. He even guided her hands like her mom did when they were making cookies together. Anna was setting up a slime slide when she found a toy magic wand. "Bob, how do you tell if a magic wand is a toy or real?"
"Ah, that is an intelligent question. The answer on the other hand is a bit more complicated than most would suspect." Bob led Anna further down the tunnels. "In the hands of a gifted person, a wizard or sorcerer for example, any wooden object that can be pointed can be used as a wand, however when channeling a significant charge of energy, a wand is not enough. A staff is necessary for anything truly large, but as with a wand, anything made of wood that can be pointed is sufficient. Harry uses a wooden drumstick as a wand and a hockey stick as his staff for instance."
"How do you know someone can do real magic?" Anna wanted to know.
Bob stopped at an intersection of the tunnels. "We don't want to go down there," he muttered quietly. He smirked and then wrote another message in the entryway of the tunnel he didn't want to take Anna down. "This way my dear," he said a bit louder and led her down the other tunnel. "The gift for magic manifests itself in late childhood to early puberty, between the ages of ten to thirteen. There are exceptions, but those are usually the result of having a magical entity somewhere in the family tree, having a dragon for an ancestor, for instance."
"Dragons for ancestors? You mean that dragons can have babies with people?" Anna gaped at Bob.
Bob looked sternly down at Anna. "Dragons are people. Never forget that Anna. They tend to get very testy when they think that those they are dealing with are prejudiced against them."
"I'm sorry, I didn't know that," Anna said ashamed. Her mother would be ashamed if she thought that Anna was acting like one of the idiots that committed hate crimes.
Bob smiled gently. "True ignorance is one thing and I am certain that you are the sort of person who does their best to correct their ignorance rather than be complacent and embrace the state." Anna was staring back at him confused. "I mean that when you make a mistake you do your best to learn from it and correct it. When you know that you do not know something you do your best to learn about it rather than just continuing on making the same mistake over and over again."
"Making the same mistake over and over again is stupid!" Anna snorted. Then she gnawed on her lip, "Bob, do you think, well I'm not ten yet but things, things have been happening around me when I'm upset, like what happened with the car. Do you think that's magic?"
"I know it is magic. You have a strong gift, and I mentioned the dragons because your magic has a similar feel to it. That wand would make a good beginners tool for you." Bob said gently.
"Could you teach me?" Anna asked hopefully.
"I would be honored, but we must ask your mother for permission."
Chapter Seventeen
HARRY DRESDEN
As soon as we were down in the tunnels I swept the cover back over the storm drain hole. The last thing I wanted was more cops coming down here to look for Anna, even if that was where her kidnapers had gone as well. The reason I knew that was because on the opposite side of the tunnel from where we had jumped down were two trails of adult foot prints, but I could see no sign of Anna's. Well, that and the storm drain cover had been a lot easier to move than it should have been. Someone had moved it not long before we got there. Personally I hoped that they ran into a rumble of smeekers. Smeekers are a sort of snake crossed with a rat and a small, very small, fairy. Don't ask me how that one happened, all I know is they're as fertile as rats, mean as fairies, and hungry like a swarm of starving locusts. You really don't want to know what they get from the snake. Yuck.
The tracking spell that was linked to Bob wouldn't show me anything but bare tunnels which meant that I was going to have to use another way to track our missing people. Fortunately, thanks to Murphy's mother, I now had a truly foolproof way of doing so. I reached into my pack and brought out the skull that was inside. I raised it up and looked once more at the, oh so familiar and heart wrenching grin; Bob's grin. I had known for years that Bob's facial features, most notably his teeth, did not match what I saw when he materialized. I had always thought that Bob had changed his appearance to suit himself, after all the man had been dead for more years than anyone knew. Why shouldn't he change his looks if he wanted?
But this skull had Bob's smile, while the skull he had been imprisoned in did not. Knowing the Council the way I did, that could only mean one thing. Bob had been imprisoned inside not his skull, but most likely what they would see as his greatest victim's, Winifred. Knowing just how much Bob loved Winifred, even now; the very idea chilled my soul. The worst part of that was the fact that this skull, Bob's skull, was also covered in the curse runes that kept Bob imprisoned. There was no way that Bob could know that most likely his lady, his great love, was as imprisoned as he was. He would have begged me to find her if he had.
I held the skull out to Murphy. "Listen to me Murphy. I know that you don't believe in magic. I know that you don't want to know the truth about this sort of thing, but you don't have a choice now. That's why I didn't make you ditch Kirmani. He's going to be your witness that what you're going to see is real, not just right now but from now until we find Anna and get her out of here. Now, your mom sent you this skull. That means the skull belongs to you and to you alone. The runes on the skull tell me that there is a ghost imprisoned in this skull. Only the owner of the skull can command the ghost, no one else." I could see that Murphy still didn't understand. Sighing I reached out and took one of her hands in mine and placed the skull, (Bob's skull! I was never going to get used to that!) into hers. "Just tell the ghost to come out. I need to use whoever the ghost is to track Bob."
Chapter Seventeen
CONNIE MURPHY
I looked at the skull I now had in my hands and looked back at Harry. I didn't want to deal with this. I just wanted to find Anna, alive and well. To do that I needed Harry and he needed me to make a fool of myself. 'Well, it isn't like you haven't been down that road before Murphy,' I thought remembering the one time Harry and I had kissed. I took a deep breath. "Come on out ghost whoever you are."
I didn't expect to see a sparkle of gold and black emerge from the eye socket. I was even more startled to see that sparkle start to swirl around and turn into the form of a woman, a woman I recognized. "AUNT WINNIE?" I gasped. Aunt Winnie had disappeared long before my mother left my father. She had read me bedtime stories and watched me when my mother was busy. She had been my favorite babysitter, hands down. She had never once been anything but nice to me.
"It is good to see you again, Constantia," she said with a nod. "I hadn't hoped that you would remember me."
"You're a ghost!?" I spluttered.
She merely nodded. "From eldest daughter to eldest daughter for a thousand years your family has guarded me and my prison so that one day a prophesy may be fulfilled. Now the duty has been passed on to you." Winifred stopped and looked around. This place was not where she had expected to have this conversation. "May I ask why we're in," she gestured around her, "this place?"
"My daughter Anna was kidnapped this morning. She escaped and came down here. Harry says that he needs your help to find her." I gestured at Harry. She turned towards him with a single lifted eyebrow. I remembered that look, but never in all the years could I remember trying had I been able to copy it. Harry wasn't going to weasel out of this one.
Chapter Eighteen
HARRY DRESDEN
This was Winifred, Bob's Winifred. She stood tall and graceful in front of me, wearing a modern woman's business suit. It suited her just as Bob always wore his suit with panache. With the heels she was probably Bob's height and her hair dark red hair was braided into a type of bun. When she turned to me and gave me that look, I couldn't help what came out of my mouth. "You two so belong together."
When the look on her face turned to confusion I blushed. I really hadn't meant to say that out loud but it was true. The very look she had first given me told me that she was more than a match for Bob, the snark master extraordinaire. "Harry Dresden at your service, Lady Winifred of Bainbridge," I said with a bow.
"I was never a lady Wizard and how are you aware of my name?" The coldness in her voice was reminiscent of what I had heard from Bob at his angriest. This was one dead and damned sorceress that I did not want to cross. Good thing for me I didn't want to do anything that would get me into trouble with her.
"I'm the current owner of Hrothbert of Bainbridge's prison and you have always been his lady," I said at my gentlest. "Bob was the one who raised me after my father died. Officially it was my uncle who was raising me, but truthfully I spent a lot more time with a certain grumpy ghost. Right now Anna Murphy has Bob's prison with her. While I do have a tracking spell on it that only shows me the area where it is. As you can see," I gestured to the concrete walls around me, "that's not going to do me a lot of good down here. However, he is connected to you and you are connected to him in ways that cannot be broken. With your permission, I can use that connection to track them down."
I had always been very careful before to never refer to Bob's skull as his prison, not wanting to deliberately remind him of his cursed state and punishment. That was something that I would never do again. It had to hurt him far worse to know that he was imprisoned inside his lady's skull than anything I could do or say to remind him of how he came to be there.
Chapter Nineteen
WINIFRED OF BAINBRIDGE
Winifred stared at the wizard in shock as the prophecy ran through her mind once more. The one thing that hadn't changed in all of the centuries she had been a ghost was that people, regardless of their station in life, loved to gossip. So she knew who Harry Dresden was, and what he had done; namely the fact that he had killed his uncle, Justin Morningway with Black Magic. She also knew that he had somehow managed to survive the White Council's trial. The Morningway line was one of the more powerful ones among wizards and it had long been rumored that it was as black as it was powerful, but the man standing in front of her was no dark wizard. The tainted line had finally born a white knight.
Winifred had known real knights when she was alive. They had simply been the soldiers of the time, but even then a few of them had been the sort of men who had inspired the myth of the white knight. They had been the sort of men who had been unable to do the wrong thing, no matter how it had affected them personally. She had met more of them over the centuries and because of the prophecy, she had done her best to learn to spot them. Harry Dresden was just that sort of man.
Mentally Winifred gave herself a shake and returned her focus to the matter at hand. The sooner they found young Anna, the sooner she would be reunited with Hrothbert. "With your permission?" she asked Constantia.
"Harry, just do whatever it is you're going to do and let's get on with it. The longer we wait, the closer the perps are getting to Anna."
"Right," Harry said and cast a simple like to like spell.
Winifred would have once felt immediate distain for such a performance. Now, having taught children to master their abilities for so long, she felt much more sympathetic. "You say that Hrothbert was your teacher?" she asked as she turned and began following the pull of magic that would lead her to all that was left of her mortal remains. What was once a part of a person remained so forever, that was the connection the magic was able to use.
Harry squirmed a bit. "It's not Bob's fault. He tried to teach me finesse, but my magic runs more towards brute force." Harry hesitated before going on. "He doesn't know about you. I mean, he knows that it's your skull he's trapped in, obviously. He just doesn't know that you're trapped in his skull."
"I know," Winifred said gently. That had been one of the conditions she had been forced to deal with.
"Excuse me," Murphy jumped in. "Would someone please fill me in here? Who is Hrothbert or Bob or whatever his name is? Why is he trapped in her skull and vice versa?" She held up the hand that wasn't holding her gun. "I get that he's your 'tea expert', Harry. I get that he's a ghost too, that he raised you and that he's the one who taught you to do your thing. Tell me what I don't know."
Winifred glanced back at the mortals behind her. This was bound to be interesting.
"Ok," Harry glanced around. All three of his companions, even Kirmani who was supposed to be watching their backs, had their eyes glued to him. "His name is Hrothbert of Bainbridge but I call him Bob. When he was alive he was one of the most powerful sorcerers around."
"And the imprisoned inside the skull thing?" Murphy asked. "Let me guess, he was the bad guy in the fairy tale; selfish, cruel, hated everyone and power hungry. How did Winifred get mixed up in it? Did he kill his unwanted wife for a new piece of tail?"
Winifred would have verbally flayed Constantia for voicing the suggestion, if it hadn't been for the fear in her eyes. Winifred took in the guns in both Constantia's and the other man's hands and realized that was the sort of man that, as a police officer, she had to deal with often. As Hrothbert was the only thing currently standing between young Anna and those who had kidnapped her, not to mention on the other horrors that might be lurking in this place, Winifred could understand her position.
"No, but in a way it might have been better if he had been that sort of man. Hrothbert only loved two things, knowledge and Winifred. What he didn't care about was how he got that knowledge. Eventually he fell deep into the Black. Even then things might have worked out the way things usually do; hero rides in, the bad guy goes down, and everybody celebrates, except that when they tried to take him out, Winifred was killed and he wasn't. I don't know all of the details, but I'm pretty sure he went crazy with grief."
Harry paused and a wave of sadness crossed over his face. "He used his knowledge to bring Winifred back from the dead. Do you remember that case we had a while back? The one with Sharon, morgue assistant?" Murphy and Kirmani both nodded. "Well, bringing someone back is supposed to be impossible for even a wizard but it can be done, if the one casting the spell is willing to pay the price. Very few people know that it is possible, Sharon is one of them and Bob is another. While I don't know what sort of price they both paid to cast that spell, I do know the price the White Council exacted on Bob for his crimes. He was caught and his sentence was to spend all of eternity trapped inside of her skull as a ghost, only until today I thought it was his own skull. I don't know why Winifred here is in the same position though; she would have been seen as the victim."
"Because it was the only way to fulfill the prophecy," Winifred answered.
Chapter Twenty
CONNIE MURPHY
"What prophecy?!" Murphy demanded. That was the second time that Winifred had mentioned a prophecy. If she was supposed to be involved in a prophecy, she wanted to know exactly what it was. The tunnel wasn't giving her any more information other than they were still going in the same directions as the footprints. This wasn't the first time she'd had to trust in Harry's magic, but she was always happier when she could see some physical evidence he was right.
"When a tainted line brings forth a white knight/The black soul shall repent/And redeem himself for the sake of the knight/Only then shall lovers be reunited in death. From eldest daughter to eldest daughter/This trust shall be given/As one is guarded/So must the other be." Winifred quoted serenely.
Murphy could see Harry blanch. "What Harry!"
"It's already happened. Do you remember what I told you about my uncle? That he killed my father with the Black?"
"And you killed him," Murphy finished. She still wasn't sure what to think about that one.
"I had found the evidence that he had killed my father. I was demanding that he confess. We both were using magic. He was throwing things at me and I squeezed the doll that he killed my dad with. I'm not proud of that, but I just wanted him to tell the truth. He threw a table at me and I threw myself on the ground. I fell on the doll and he died. The Council ruled it as self defense." She could see how even talking about the subject brought back haunting memories for him, but if there was one thing that she knew about Harry Dresden it was that he wasn't the one who had started the fight.
"He had made contingency plans though, a silacrum of himself that would take his place if he ever died. The silicrum was to make a deal with Bob; release Bob from his curse, return him to mortality in exchange for bringing my uncle back from the dead. Bob went along with it in order to save my life and to make sure that my uncle was destroyed forever. I'm just glad that for Bob, once cursed means forever cursed. He returned to being a ghost after he gave up his life for mine."
"That's how the crushing evidence disappeared from your uncle's corpse?" Kirmani butted into the discussion.
Harry nodded. "The point is; Hrothbert of Bainbridge would never have given up his life for anyone except Winifred. Bob did for me, which fulfills the prophecy."
"And if Maria had been allowed her way, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference." Murphy could hear the growl in Winifred's voice. "She did not wish to acknowledge that she had ever been married to Sergeant Murphy. I'm afraid that included refusing to admit to your existence Constantia."
Murphy shrugged. That wasn't anything she hadn't long ago figured out. "It's Connie or Murphy, not Constantia."
"As you wish," Winifred said.
"So what did you do?" Harry asked. Murphy wanted to know as well. There was no way that Winifred would have let that get in her way.
Winifred smirked. "I had your brother Carlos mail Hrothbert's skull to your father's station."
All three of the mortals laughed at that. "Sneaky," Kirmani said admiringly. "Hey Dresden, there are some more of those weird floating words up ahead."