It only took me a few seconds to control myself again—but I didn't want to go back in that room. I didn't need to see what was there anymore. I didn't want to see the two dead people, whose hearts had literally exploded out of their chests.

And someone had used magic to do it. They had used magic to wreak harm on another, violating the First Law. The White Council was going to go into collective apoplexy. This hadn't been the act of a malign spirit or a malicious entity, or the attack of one of the many creatures of the Nevernever, like vampires or trolls. This had been the premeditated, deliberate act of a sorcerer, a wizard, a human being able to tap into the fundamental energies of creation and life itself.

It was worse than murder. It was twisted, wretched perversion, as though someone had bludgeoned another person to death with a Botticelli, turned something of beauty to an act of utter destruction.

If you've never touched it, it's hard to explain. Magic is created by life, and most of all by the awareness, intelligence, emotions of a human being. To end such a life with the same magic that was born from it was hideous, almost incestuous somehow.

I sat up again and was breathing hard, shaking and tasting the bile in my mouth, when Murphy came back out of the room with Carmichael.

"All right, Harry," Murphy said. "Let's have it. What do you see happening here?"

I took a moment to collect my thoughts before answering. "They came in. They had some champagne. They danced for a while, made out, over there by the stereo. Then went into the bedroom. They were in there for less than an hour. It hit them when they were getting to the high point."

"Less than an hour," Carmichael said. "How do you figure?"

"CD was only an hour and ten long. Figure a few minutes for dancing and drinking, and then they're in the room. Was the CD playing when they found them?"

"No," Murphy said.

"Then it hadn't been set on a loop. I figure they wanted music, just to make things perfect, given the room and all."

Carmichael grunted, sourly. "Nothing we hadn't already figured out for ourselves," he said to Murphy. "He'd better come up with more than this."

Murphy shot Carmichael a look that said "shut up," then said, softly, "I need more, Harry."

I ran one of my hands back over my hair. "There's only two ways anyone could have managed this. The first is by evocation. Evocation is the most direct, spectacular, and noisy form of expressed magic, or sorcery. Explosions, fire, that sort of thing. But I doubt it was an evocator who did this."

"Why?" Murphy demanded. I heard her pencil scritching on the notepad she always kept with her.

"Because you have to be able to see or touch where you want your effect to go," I told her. "Line of sight only. The man or woman would have had to be there in the room with them. Tough to hide forensic evidence with something like that, and anyone who was skilled enough to pull off a spell like that would have had the sense to use a gun instead. It's easier."

"What's the other option?" Murphy asked.

"Thaumaturgy," I said. "As above, so below. Make something happen on a small scale, and give it the energy to happen on a large scale."

Carmichael snorted. "What bullshit."

Murphy's voice sounded skeptical. "How would that work, Harry? Could it be done from somewhere else?"

I nodded. "The killer would need to have something to connect him or her to the victims. Hair, fingernails, blood samples. That sort of thing."

"Like a voodoo doll?"

"Exactly the same thing, yes."

"There's fresh dye in the woman's hair," Murphy said,

I nodded. "Maybe if you can find out where she got her hair styled, you could find something out. I don't know."

"Is there anything else you could tell me that would be of use?"

"Yes. The killer knew the victims. And I'm thinking it was a woman."

Carmichael snorted. "I don't believe we got to sit here and listen to this. Nine times out of ten the killer knows the victim."

"Shut up, Carmichael," Murphy said. "What makes you say that, Harry?"

I stood up, and rubbed at my face with my hands. "The way magic works. Whenever you do something with it, it comes from inside of you. Wizards have to focus on what they're trying to do, visualize it, believe in it, to make it work. You can't make something happen that isn't a part of you, inside. The killer could have murdered them both and made it look like an accident, but she did it this way. To get it done this way, she would have had to want them dead for very personal reasons, to be willing to reach inside them like that. Revenge, maybe. Maybe you're looking for a lover or a spouse.

"Also because of when they died—in the middle of sex. It wasn't a coincidence. Emotions are a kind of channel for magic, a path that can be used to get to you. She picked a time when they'd be together and be charged up with lust. She got samples to use as a focus, and she planned it out in advance. You don't do that to strangers."

"Crap," Carmichael said, but this time it was more of an absentminded curse than anything directed at me.

Murphy glared at me. "You keep saying 'she, " she challenged me. "Why the hell do you think that?"

I gestured toward the room. "Because you can't do something that bad without a whole lot of hate," I said. "Women are better at hating than men. They can focus it better, let it go better. Hell, witches are just plain meaner than wizards. This feels like feminine vengeance of some kind to me."

"But a man could have done it," Murphy said.

"Well," I hedged.

"Christ, you are a chauvinist pig, Dresden. Is it something that only a woman could have done?"

"Well. No. I don't think so."

"You don't think so?" Carmichael drawled. "Some expert."

I scowled at them both, angry. "I haven't really worked through the specifics of what I'd need to do to make somebody's heart explode, Murph. As soon as I have occasion to I'll be sure to let you know."

"When will you be able to tell me something?" Murphy asked.

"I don't know." I held up a hand, forestalling her next comment. "I can't put a timer on this stuff, Murph. It just can't be done. I don't even know if I can do it at all, much less how long it will take."

"At fifty bucks an hour, it better not be too long," Carmichael growled. Murphy glanced at him. She didn't exactly agree with him, but she didn't exactly slap him down, either.

I took the opportunity to take a few long breaths, calming myself down. I finally looked back at them. "Okay," I asked. "Who are they? The victims."

"You don't need to know that," Carmichael snapped.

"Ron," Murphy said. "I could really use some coffee."

Carmichael turned to her. He wasn't tall, but he all but loomed over Murphy. "Aw, come on, Murph. This guy's jerking your chain. You don't really think he's going to be able to tell you anything worth hearing, do you?"

Murphy regarded her partner's sweaty, beady-eyed face with a sort of frosty hauteur, tough to pull off on someone six inches taller than she. "No cream, two sugars."

"Dammit," Carmichael said. He shot me a cold glance (but didn't quite look at my eyes), then jammed his hands into his pants pockets and stalked out of the room.

Murphy followed him to the door, her feet silent, and shut it behind him. The sitting room immediately became darker, closer, with the grinning ghoul of its former chintzy intimacy dancing in the smell of the blood and the memory of the two bodies in the next room.

"The woman's name was Jennifer Stanton. She worked for the Velvet Room."

I whistled. The Velvet Room was a high-priced escort service run by a woman named Bianca. Bianca kept a flock of beautiful, charming, and witty women, pandering them to the richest men in the area for hundreds of dollars an hour. Bianca sold the kind of female company that most men only see on television and the movies. I also knew that she was a vampiress of considerable influence in the Nevernever. She had Power with a capital P.