Storm Front #1

Chapter 2

Karrin Murphy was waiting for me outside the Madison when I came walking up. Karrin and I are a study in contrasts. Where I am tall and lean, she's short and stocky. Where I have dark hair and dark eyes, she's got Shirley Temple-blonde locks and baby blues. Where my features are all lean and angular, with a hawkish nose and a sharp chin, hers are round and smooth, with the kind of cute nose you'd expect on a cheerleader.

It was cool and windy, like it usually is in March, and she wore a long coat that covered her pantsuit. Murphy never wore dresses, though I suspected she'd have muscular, well-shaped legs, like a gymnast. She wasn't precisely slender, but she wasn't voluptuous, either. She was built for function, and had a pair of trophies in her office from Aikido tournaments to prove it. Her hair was cut at shoulder length, and whipping out wildly in the spring wind. She wasn't wearing earrings, and her make-up was of sufficient quality and quantity that it was tough to tell she had on any at all. She was a fit and attractive woman in her thirties, though she looked more like a favorite aunt or a cheerful mother than a hard-bitten homicide detective.

"Don't you have any other jackets, Dresden?" she asked as I came within hailing distance. There were several police cars parked illegally in front of the building. She glanced at my eyes for a half-second and then away, quickly. I had to give her credit. It was more than most people did. It wasn't really dangerous unless you did it for several seconds but I was used to anyone who knew I was a wizard making it a point not to glance at my face.

I looked down at my black canvas duster, with its heavy mantling and waterproof lining and sleeves actually long enough for my arms. "What's wrong with this one?"

"It belongs on the set of El Dorado."

"And?"

She snorted, an indelicate sound from so small a woman, and spun on her heel to walk towards the hotel's front doors.

I caught up to her, and walked a little ahead of her.

She sped her pace. So did I. We raced one another towards the front door, with increasing swiftness.

My legs were longer, and I got there first. I opened the door for her, and gallantly gestured for her to go in. It was an old contest of ours. Maybe my values are outdated, but I come from an old school of thought. I think that men ought to treat women like something other than just shorter, weaker men with breasts. Try and convict me if I'm a bad person for thinking so. I enjoy treating a woman like a lady, opening doors for her, paying for shared meals, giving flowers–all that sort of thing.

It irritates the hell out of Murphy, who had to fight and claw and play dirty with the hairiest men in Chicago to get as far as she has. She doesn't like to take any gift from any man. She glared up at me while I stood there holding open the door, but there was a quality of something that was almost reassurance about the glare, of relaxation. She took an odd sort of comfort in our ritual, annoying as she usually found it.

Wow. How bad was it up on the seventh floor, anyway?

We rode up in the elevator in a sudden silence. We had worked together several times, and knew one another well enough, by this time, that the silences were not uncomfortable. I had a good sense of Murphy, an instinctual grasp for her moods and patterns of thought which I start to develop whenever I'm around someone for any length of time. Whether it's a natural talent or a supernatural one I do not know.

My instincts told me that Murphy was tense, stretched as tight as piano wire. She kept it off her face, but there was something about the set of her shoulders and neck, the stiffness of her back, that made me aware of it. Or maybe I was just projecting it onto her.

The confines of the elevator made me a bit nervous. I licked my lips and looked around the interior of the car. My shadow and Murphy's fell on the floor, and almost looked as though they were sprawled there. There was something about it that bothered me, a nagging little instinct that I blew off as a case of nerves. Steady, Harry.