No, truth is he couldn't he had been mostly dead for half of that year and in rehab for the rest... She also had good reason to believe he was dead in Ghost Story, so why weren't her first words to Harry, "HARRY! YOU'RE ALIVE! I thought you were dead, what happened?" But no, about her feeling betrayed because he didn't call or write....
Murphy didn't know about Harry being held by Mab. When he tells her, she even points out that it's really unlikely that Harry couldn't have figured out how to contact her. Dresden's narration agrees that yeah, if he had really wanted to, he probably could have, but didn't. Thomas is the only one who really has the reaction a lot of fans probably want, and I get it, but hers is perfectly consistent with her character.
Point here is, she knows she shouldn't wield one, her instincts are right... But she brings it anyway... Does she even ask Harry's opinion on whether or not that was a good idea considering? No... Did she trust that he might agree with her? No.. Instead she hides it like a fat lady hiding a candy wrapper thinking no one would notice.. For all her smarts, she displayed her ignorance because she should have known that Nick was listening in and would set her up.. Harry realized it the minute she pulled the Sword out that he didn't know she had with her, but it was too late then..
She doesn't have to ask Harry for permission. First, she has the swords already, and Dresden has accepted that by Skin Game. He doesn't say "Bring the swords," he says, "Are you going to bring the swords?"
Second, she really doesn't have to ask him if it's a good idea, because he had already told her it was.
Skin Game, from pages 40-41 on my Nook:
"Ask you something?"
"Sure."
"You planning to bring one of the Swords with you?"
[Narrative snip]
She frowned, her eyes scanning the street, and didn't answer for a moment. When she did, I had the impression that she was choosing her words carefully. "You know I have to be careful with them."
"They're weapons, Karrin," I said. "They're not glass figurines. What's the point in having two genuine holy swords with which to fight evil if you don't, you know, fight evil with them occasionally?"
"Swords are funny," she replied. "The most capable muscle-powered tool there is for killing a man. But they're fragile, too..." [snipping irrelevant details, Murphy says they're supposed to fight the Fallen in the coins, not the ones who hold the coins, she doesn't want to save them, et cetera.]
"So you'll just let them sit and do nothing?"
"I'll give them to anyone I think will use them wisely and well.. But people like that don't come along every day. Being a keeper of the Swords is a serious job, Harry. You know that."
"Yeah, I do..."
Anyway, Harry makes his opinion clear. He thinks they should be used, Murphy says she has to be careful.
And, again, her making a mistake doesn't mean she makes that mistake out of distrust. I didn't say that she was smart to hide it—in fact, I said quite the opposite. I'm not sure what Nic listening in has to do with anything; he didn't hear anything about the Sword, because she didn't say anything about it.
Not cheerleader, but supportive... If you have a alcoholic that has stayed off the booze for a year, do you berate him because he went off to kick the habit? Or do you say something to the effect that he looks great or keep up the good work you are there for him? That's what friends do...
I'm not sure which point you're referring to. In Cold Days, Harry isn't an alcoholic who laid off booze for a year, he's an alcoholic who's been sipping amaretto for the past hour and insisting that he's fine, and she's trying to make sure he doesn't have his car keys. In Skin Game, I don't see any berating at all.
Evidence? The fact that she keeps reminding him he could turn into a monster... That means she thinks he could still turn into a monster... No, my friend she doesn't completely trust that he won't.
She mentioned it at the beginning and the end of Cold Days, because Harry keeps saying so. He arranged his own suicide because he was terrified that he might turn into one. She then says that she's afraid because she might like it too much.
And yet she spent the rest of Cold Days right there with him, trusting him enough to charge at the Wild Hunt, then, you know, drive a motorcycle across Lake Michigan.
In Skin Game, the only time (that I can recall) that she comes close to saying "Oh my God Harry you're going to murder us all" is when they first get to the slaughterhouse, and Harry starts creepily listing off reasons not to murder someone with zero context. They see someone, and the temperature in the car drops, and Harry starts saying, "Reason one: witnesses," and so on. Even then, her response isn't to, you know, run, or say "Harry you're an animal and should be locked up," it's the following:
Skin Game, page 45-46 on my Nook:
"Four," I said quietly, "killing people is wrong."
I became conscious of Karrin's eyes on me. I glanced at her face. Her expression was tough to read.
She put her hand on mine and said, "Harry? Are you all right?"
I didn't move or respond.
"Mab," Karrin said. "This is about Mab, isn't it? This is what she's done to you."
"It's Winter," I said. "It's power, but it's. . .all primitive. Violent. It doesn't think. It's pure instinct, feeling, emotion. And when it's inside you, if you let your emotions control you, it..."
"It makes you like Lloyd Slate," Karrin said. "Or that bitch Maeve."
I pulled my hand away from hers and said, "Like I said. This is not the time to get in touch with my feelings."
She regarded me for several seconds before saying, "Well. That is all kinds of fucked-up."
[Narration snip]
"I don't want to be like this."
"So get out of it," she said.
"The only way out is feetfirst," I said.
She shook her head. "I don't believe that," she said. "There's always a way out. A way to make things better."
Oh, man.
I wanted to believe that.
In the above, she's acknowledging that he has a problem, which, to continue with the alcoholism comparison, is kind of important. Harry is explaining his experience, and she agrees that it's bad, because, you know,
it is. He just spent a few minutes talking himself out of murder. Then she tells him that he can figure out a way to get out of it. She's telling an alcoholic that he needs to get help.
In what way is that not supportive? If I were to read Harry's conversation with Michael cynically, it's not a stretch to say that Michael is simply enabling him. Harry tells him he's worried he might change. Michael just says, "You won't. You're Harry!" I get it, and Michael is probably my favorite character, but it's a little dangerous to feed that kind of thinking for too long.
It makes Harry feel better, and he probably needed to hear something like it at that particularly low moment (less than an hour after he failed to protect yet another innocent man) but I think most people would agree that just cruising along as he has is not a long-term solution. Harry
needs to lose the Winter Knight's mantle, or he's not going to last too much longer.
Don't get me wrong, that's not the way I read the conversation, really, but my point is that pretty much any conversation, viewed cynically enough, is bad for Harry.
Do you think Butters would have come to mistrust Harry in a vacuum? She may not have added to it, but I bet she didn't disabuse him of that notion either.
She disabuses him of it on the page, in front of us. We get to see her do it. We don't see what happens between Cold Days and Skin Game, so we don't know what took place between them. Murphy's reaction to Butters doesn't indicate one way or another that she's heard any of it before.
We do know Butters's reasons for distrusting him, and he doesn't mention Murphy at all.
