Murphy glanced obliquely at me. “You mean…you could have become one of those things?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Couple of times, it was close.”

“Is it still…Is that what…?”

I shook my head. “It’s gone now. She’s gone now. I guess the whole time she was trying to change me, I was trying to change her right back. And in the Raith Deeps last year, she took a psychic bullet for me—at the very end, after everyone else had gotten out.” I shrugged. “I had…We’d sort of become friends, Murph. I’d gotten used to having her around.” I glanced at her and gave her a faint smile. “Crazy, huh? Get all broken up over what was essentially my imaginary friend.”

Her fingers found my hand and squeezed tight once. “We’re all imaginary friends to one another, Harry.” She sat with me for a moment, and then gave me a shrewd glance. “You never told Michael the details.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know why.”

“I do,” she said. “You remember when Kravos stuck his fingers in my brain?”

I shuddered. He’d been impersonating me when he did it. “Yeah.”

“You said it caused some kind of damage. What did you call it?”

“Psychic trauma,” I said. “Same thing happens when a loved one dies, during big emotional tragedies, that kind of thing. Takes a while to get over it.”

“But you do get over it,” Murph said. “Dresden, it seems to me that you’d lock yourself up pretty tight if someone took a regular bullet for you with a regular body. Much less if you were under psychic attack and this imaginary friend died right inside your own brain. Something like that happens, shouldn’t you have expected to be a basket case, at least for a little while?”

I frowned, staring down at my hands. “I never even considered that.”

She snorted gently. “There’s a surprise. Dresden forgets that he’s not invincible.”

She had a point there.

“This plan of yours,” she said. “Do you really think it’s going to work?”

“I think I’ve got to try it.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t think you should be involved in this one, Murph. The Denarians have human followers. Fanatic ones.”

“You think we’re going to have to kill some of them,” Murphy said.

“I think we probably won’t have much choice,” I said. “Besides that, I wouldn’t put it past them to send someone here for spite, win or lose.”

Murphy glanced up at me rather sharply.

I shrugged. “They know that Michael and Sanya and I are going to be out there. They’ll know that there will be someone here, unprotected. Whether or not they get the coins, Nicodemus might send someone here to finish off the wounded.”

Murphy stared at me for a second, then looked back at Kincaid. “You bastard,” she said without emphasis.

“I’m not playing big brother with you, Karrin,” I replied. “But we are dealing with some very bad people. Molly’s staying with Kincaid. I’m leaving Mouse here too. I’d appreciate it if someone with a little more experience was here to give the kid some direction, if it was needed.”