I made it out of the park, exhausted and barely able to keep from screaming with pain.

I’m still glad Harry’s suffering. Mind you, nowhere near as glad as I’d be if these books were just about someone else entirely.He finds a gas station and hangs out creepily for an hour but no one else shows. Not sure why he thinks they’d have headed right there if they escaped, but he’s the protagonist so we can assume something’s gone very wrong.

It finally occurs to him that Rodriguez actually likes him and her job, and so is a generally helpful person who he should’ve involved.

“Harry?” she said disbelievingly. “My God. Where are you? The police are looking for you. They keep calling here. Something about a murder.”
“Misunderstanding,” I said and leaned against the wall. The pain was getting worse as chills soaked in and I started to shiver.

But of course, he’s still not going to explain and the narration has moved from pleasant Harry suffering to poor woobie Harry suffering while girls are meanyfaces to him.

He asks for her help, and she, wholly rightly, points out she knows nothing beyond what she just said regarding police, him, murder.

“I could explain it,” I offered, struggling to keep my words clear through the pain. “But it’s sort of a long story.” I dropped a subtle emphasis on that last word. Sometimes it scares me how easy it is to get people to do what you want them to do, if you know something about them.
“Story, eh?” Susan said. I could hear the sudden twinge of interest in her voice.
“Sure. Murder, violence, blood, monsters. Give you the whole scoop if you can give me a ride.”
“You bastard,” she breathed, but I thought she was smiling. “I would have come to get you anyway.”
“Sure you would have,” I said, but I felt a smile on my own lips.

This is an interesting little dodge of the whole issue. Harry presents this as a quid pro quo thing rather than that you’re supposed to keep your friends in the loop, especially when your friends could actually help. But actually making it that would present Rodriguez as evil for leaving him to shiver himself to death (the fact she doesn’t know this is irrelevant) so she has to say that she’d get him anyway.

The whole bit about how all his problems are because he won’t tell people things they should know is thus skipped.

I hated to draw Susan into this. It made me feel cheap, somehow. Weak. It was that whole problem with chivalry that I had. I didn’t want a girl to be riding to my rescue, protecting me. It just didn’t seem right. And I didn’t want to endanger Susan, either. I was a murder suspect, and the police were looking for me. She could get in trouble, for aiding and abetting, or something like that.
On the other hand, I didn’t have much choice. I didn’t have any money for a cab, even if I could get one this far from the city. I didn’t have a car. I was in no shape to walk anywhere. My contacts, in the persons of MacFinn and Tera West, were gone. I had to have help, and Susan was the only one I thought I could trust to do it. If there was a story involved, she’d go to hell itself to get it.
And I had used that against her, to lever her into helping me. I didn’t like it that I had. I’d thought better of myself.

More interestingly, we see here that Harry is absolutely meant to have flaws. They’re just oriented weirdly.

Harry’s chivalry, which he doesn’t even pretend is about protecting women since that’s the next sentence but is about thinking they’re just so much lesser it’s humiliating to be helped by them, is a good guy flaw, where it makes his life harder to hold to.

Harry telling her about something she’s interested in and letting her willingly help him is a bad guy flaw of using a girl by letting her make her own choices and he feels really sorry.

Incidentally, you could have the exact same dynamic if it was wizards/muggles. Wizards actually are better than muggles as far as we can tell, and since female wizards don’t exist so far, it’d mean he was still doing the whole must-protect-weaklings thing to any women he interacts with. It’d also explain how his chivalry is compatible with the way he treated Bianca or how he believes witches are more powerful at certain evil magics rather than just another flavor of frail little children for him to condescend to. But it’s not enough to have Harry act this way, it’s important the reason be sexism so the author can go on about how women need to shut up and realize how nice he’s being to treat them that way.

Suddenly, he hears a repeated scratching sound and investigates to find Tera.

She was naked, her body a uniform shade of brown, without an ounce of excess fat on her. Her hair was mussed and had leaves and bits of twig caught in it. Her amber eyes looked even more alien and wild than usual.
She rose and came toward me, evidently unconscious of the cold. She moved with a feral sort of grace that made me all too aware of her legs, and her hips, even though I was battered, fatigued, and brooding.
“Wizard,” she greeted me. “Give me your coat.”

Pretty sure she’s conscious of the cold in that case.

I’m of two minds about the whole brown thing. The part of me that’s all YAY TERA thinks it’s cool whenever you have human things defaulting to brown skin as the obvious natural form, plus that’s more practical every way you look at it. The part of me that’s OMG STOP THINKING ABOUT FUCKING HER HARRY YOU’RE A CREEP thinks that having the person who’s actually an animal and constantly being referred to as alien and wild and generally “other” be brown-skinned is skeevy (I believe last book the only person who was probably nonwhite was “boater brown” “Shadowman” and urgh still hoping that means white guy who likes tanning.) and just about her being exotically fuckable to last book’s battered MILF.

The sleeves were too long, and the coat dangled to her ankles, but it covered her lean, strong body well enough. I found myself faintly regretful that I’d had it with me.

That’s the worst thing about this book’s chivalry.

There were decent people who were chivalrous. They were mistaken, but they acted the best they could on the information they had. They were good, self-sacrificing people who, because they believed women were more fragile, worked harder to provide for them and protect them just as we all would say that it is good to sacrifice to protect children.

That is not the person Harry is. It doesn’t even bear a resemblance. Can you imagine a chivalrous person being happy to have no jacket to offer a naked woman? Can you imagine any halfway decent human being thinking they are happy that there are no obvious articles of clothing to cover a naked woman in freezing weather? It’s the difference between the sincere missionary and the slaver.

A chivalrous person would’ve handed her the shirt off his back if he had no jacket.

But then, there’s no reason for her to even be “naked”, after all. A wolf looks enough like a dog for one walking next to a person to be passed off as a pet. She’s in human form because the author wants her to be, and with that in mind, the regret at having a jacket seems half the author’s.

In story terms, the only reason is if Tera is reasonably certain Harry will stop giving his solitary fuck if she doesn’t get his attention like this.

Anyway, somehow MacFinn managed to get captured even though Tera’s deliberate distraction wasn’t enough to get her caught, but she did see that Murphy argued for MacFinn to go with her so we know MacFinn’s at the station and so Harry knows that he needs to act fast or he’ll never get to see Murphy in a dress.

Therefore, he sighs and calls up Murphy to ask to be taken into custody and but allowed to do the circle.

I don’t need to even do the whole haha kidding anymore do I? Yeah he’s going to do some other stupid shit instead, that involves going to his apartment for his stuff therefore magic.

Rodriguez shows up.

I felt a little surge of defiant energy.
“There’s our ride,” I said. “Follow.” I relished throwing the terse command at Tera, and she stared at me. I turned my back on her and stalked over to the car.

I don’t understand how these books were published, I really don’t.

Tera slipped in front of me, threw the passenger seat forward, and slid into the backseat with a flash of long, lean legs

At least while he’s focusing on objectifying her, that brain isn’t also in charge of the hilarious bitch joke.

“Good Lord,” Susan gasped. “What happened?”
“I got shot,” I said.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” Susan stammered, still stunned.
“Is this female always so stupid?” Tera asked.

Right so now it’s the part where women hate each other. Moving right along, Harry makes a point of how horrible it is to have to explain what’s going on to Rodriguez when he’s so tired but does it because poor woobie, never mind how he hated explaining anything the other dozen times he was fine.

“So you’ve got to get to MacFinn,” Susan said, when I was finished, “before the moon comes up and he transforms.”
“You’ve got it,” I said.
“Why don’t you call Murphy? Tell her what’s going on?”
I shook my head. “Murphy isn’t going to be in the mood to listen. She busted me and I fled arrest. She’d have me in a cell before I could say abracadabra.”

Which is the place Harry needs to be given MacFinn is already in a cell.

They head for his house only for Harry to remember that unlike him, the police aren’t lazy-asses and so have staked the place out.

There’s only the one door in, and you can see the windows from here. I just need the police to not be looking for a few minutes.”

If only he had some sort of way of summoning all-concealing mist, by magic or some such.

Tera volunteers to be the distraction again.

I looked over my shoulder. “I don’t want any violence.”

Just look at all that chivalry. “Yeah sure, but while you’re risking your life could you do it on hard mode?”

Tera agrees, which naturally means Harry’s immediate response is

searching for any signs of deception or betrayal. What if Tera was the killer?

For all Harry claims he’s so nice, he knows that people actually going along with his bullshit is odd. He then reminds us, yet again, that hey, did you know Tera is able to shapeshift and so could’ve done the killings, and recaps everything about the but what if but what if but wait that makes no sense and is stupid but hey what if. Harry, you didn’t even get properly concussed this book, you don’t even have an excuse.

“What are you going to do?” I asked Tera.
Instead of answering, the amber-eyed woman stripped off my duster and handed it back to me, leaving herself nude and lovely under the rain. “Do you like to look at my body?” she demanded of me.
“Careful how you answer this one, buster,” Susan growled from the car.
I coughed, and glanced back at Susan, keeping my eyes off of the other woman. “Yeah, Tera. That will work fine, I guess.”
“Wait for twenty slow breaths,” she said. There was a note of amusement in her voice. “Pick me up at the far end of this block.” Then she turned on a bare heel and glided into the darkness between streetlights in a graceful lope.

Don’t worry, it can still get worse.

The cops weren’t watching me. They were staring at the pool of light beneath the streetlight behind them, where Tera spun gracefully through the steps of some sort of gliding dance, moving to a rhythm and a music I could not hear. There was a primal sort of intensity to her motions, raw sexuality, feminine power coursing through her movements. Her back arched as she spun and whirled, offering out her breasts to the chill rain, and her skin was slick and gleaming with water.

WOLVES DON’T FUCKING DANCE.

This would still be somewhat exploitive, but you could make the argument that really it’s about Tera thinking this is a dumb human hangup and not caring about nakedness herself, so she figures walking by while naked is the easiest solution. And a naked woman wandering by in the rain would absolutely get a cop’s attention for other reasons too.

But no, she dances. She sexy dances showing off the breasts that to wolves mean mating time is very over and isn’t happening again anytime soon. Because female nakedness is always and forever sexual, and primal means you can fuck it.

When Harry’s done perving on her, he finally goes inside.

The two potions were in their plastic sports bottles on the counter where I had left them. I grabbed up my black nylon backpack from the floor and threw the bottles into it.

Let’s think about something else.

Low-density polyethylene, or LDPE, was first invented in 1933, although its sport-bottle applications came well after. Squeeze bottles apparently first appeared in restaurants in the 1950s, after Harry’s cutoff, and the kind he’s using some time after that. And, of course, we know from the car issue that technology just plain being newer is enough to make it count. At the least, Harry should have problems with the technology of the top all the time, and that’s before getting into the fact that any given product can have a tweaked formula and who knows if that counts as technology. You want to show how messing with stuff is an actual flaw? Sometimes he goes for a potion and it’s already leaked all over everything. Also, it’s vaguely 2000, so people aren’t thinking of BPAs yet, but as that gets going, more and more stuff will come apart in his hands because it’s BPA-free for your safety :D

Nylon is similarly a 1930s invention, so it should work but wear out much faster due to his bag presumably not being made of vintage 1945 nylon when they knew how to make things properly by gum. And one day he’s going to pick up a bag and there’s going to be a soft poof as half of it dematerializes because it’s a green eco-fiber mix. I live in your future Harry and I know what’s coming and you deserve it so very much.

Harry then grabs a new outfit, tylenol like that’s gonna do anything though points for plausibility as at least it’s not a blood thinner, a bunch of his existing collection of smooth stones and oh wait right he’s a wizard so at the last second he remembers to grab the staff.

Mister paused at the top of the stairs to look back at me, his cat eyes enigmatic and irritated

I want to point out that Harry sees no contradiction between being able to clearly identify an emotion and being enigmatic, presumably because he knows women are always enigmatic and yet they’re constantly irritated with him.

He then leaves and we continue return to the previous misogyny.

Tera was on her hands and knees in the middle of the pool of light behind the sedan, her damp hair fallen all around her face, her lips parted, facing the two plainclothes officers, who had gotten out of the car and were speaking to her from several feet away. Her chest was heaving in and out, but having seen her in action, I doubted that it was merely from the exertion of her dancing. Looked nice, though. The policemen were sure as hell staring.

…

“It worked,” I said. “We did it.”
“Of course it worked,” Tera said. “Men are foolish. They will stare at anything female and naked.”

“This is a universal fact of the universe, explaining why I, a wolf, believe it despite wolves spending their entire lives naked and not giving a shit, and that’s why feminism needs to chill out and accept that men will always view women as ambulatory sex dolls. It’s nature, bitches haha do you see what I did there because werewolves SO CLEVER.”

Anyway, this is one of those things that confuses anti-feminists. But the unspoken corollary of “all men are rapists” in modern society is “so just stop complaining already there’s nothing you can do”. The thing about systemic imbalances is even the negative stuff gets twisted to be the other person’s problem. If it bugs the men’s-rights groups so much then maybe they can go NOT ALL MEN at this kind of bullshit for once.

Speaking of all, women are also all jealous harpies, so Susan is angry and muttering about how we are going to talk about this one, mister. because lol girlfriends always angry about you being around other women and always in the exact same impotent way.

Anyway, remember Harry made a potion to fool wolf senses. He now guzzles that to blend in at the police station. In some ways, this actually makes more sense – we were told fooling werewolves would be really difficult and the potion was just the best he could do, but blending in enough that busy, tired humans in a place full of other humans don’t notice one more human seems rather easy.

This is the sort of failure success that works – the problem he’s now facing is a lesser one, so he’s kind of wasting the potion with overkill, so it’s fair that it should work super well.

For whatever reason, though, Harry doesn’t admit this (although it being overpowered will actually lead to some delicious consequences, so it seems like the author actually grasps good plotting here, but I guess he hates admitting things are easy for Harry more).

I would look like background to any casual observers, a part of the scenery that they wouldn’t glance at twice. So long as they didn’t give me an intense scrutiny, the potion’s power should be able to keep me from being noticed

Anyway, we’ll see shortly that even with scrutiny the potion still prevents notice, but how would Harry know, it’s not like he’s some sort of magic geek or something.

Harry also tells us he can’t drink his supercoffee potion because mixing potions evidently always makes you cripplingly sick. We’ve discussed the awesomeness of potions before so I approve of this additional tactical wrinkle even as I bet Dark Crazypants could’ve totally solved it because he’s awesome.

A sort of grey feeling came over me, and I realized with a start that the colors were fading from my vision. A sort of listless feeling came over me, a lassitude that advised me to sit down somewhere and watch the world go by, but at the same time the hairs on the back of my neck prickled up as the potion’s magic took effect.

This suggests another issue for potions, that they can have spillover effects. I bet the reverse is true and a potion that mainly works on your own mental state may have a tiny impact on your surroundings. Maybe the potion equivalent of ragemonster power also makes other people less likely to back down from you despite how obviously bad of an idea it is, so even forewarned allies will end up snapping at you and getting attacked.

Anyway, what proceeds is quite cool. Magic is generally is.

Shadows shifted and changed oddly, all greys and blacks and whites, and for a second I felt like an extra on the set of Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon.
The solid old matron of a sergeant sat at the front desk, thumbing through a glossy magazine, a portrait done in colorless hues. She glanced up at me for a second, and tinges of color returned to her uniform, her cheeks, and her eyes. She looked me over casually, sniffed, and lowered her face to her magazine again. As her attention faded, so did the colors from her clothing and skin. My perceptions of her changed as she paid attention to me or did not.

Magic! Why is there so little magic in these books about magic? Why is there so little magic in so many other books about magic? Magic is great.