He considered it. It was very tempting. But in the end... what good would it have done? Susan wouldn't want him to do it. Hell, if she'd popped out of the woodwork and he hadn't left the house in four months she'd probably have slapped him. So he forced himself to get his boots on every day and do his damn job. He found lost things. He worked on improving a few of his foci and enchanted objects and stuff. Cries most nights, but doesn't admit it, and that's been getting better. Recently he took a job protecting some kind of monastery from monkey demons.
A factor relevant to that particular job is currently napping in his coat pocket. He found the puppy there afterwards and tried to call that monk dude, but the monastery seemed to have vanished. Which was weird. But he got the puppy vetted by Bob and Father Forthill, and they said the little guy wasn't some kind of hellspawn, so... he kept him. Called him Mouse. Let him nap in his coat pocket. Mister got along with him, because Mouse wasn't big enough to be a threat to the big cat's authority.
Anyway, Mouse is napping in his coat pocket, and Harry just got out of the morgue looking at a corpse. He's pretty sure this is the work of some White Court bastard. The victim doesn't have a mark on him, but he's got the dopiest grin in human history. And Harry, being Harry, knows from dopey grins. So Harry sets out looking for a White Court vampire. Thomas doesn't know of any of his cousins who'd have gone after this guy (their official victims are dumped in a nearby quarry, apparently), so he's out investigating the red light district. And trying to look like someone who would be interested in a prostitute, instead of someone who would rather cut off his testicles with a spoon than lay a finger on a member of the oldest profession.
"Feel free to spread the good news. Maybe you'll get people to stop calling the cops on me when I'm trying to save them from horrible monsters."
"More than I'd like. I mean, it's understandable, I guess. Enormous man shouts 'Fairies are attacking! Get down!' and starts shooting things, there's some natural assumptions there. But it'd be nice to get the benefit of the doubt."
"I have tried that! I'm, uh, not very good at lying outright. I mean, I could lead with 'look out, he's got a gun!' but that doesn't exactly lead to fewer cops being called. And half the time they think I'm the one I'm talking about."
"You know, I might consider it. How are you at killing things? Because that's also part of the job."
"Well, there's an opening in my 'punching monsters and lying to cops' department if you want it. Pay would probably be kind of anemic, but you get to save people's lives and all."
"I'll test run you sometime, maybe next time there's a ghost infestation in O'Hare and I have to carry a bag of depleted uranium and iron filings through airport security. Trial by fire and all."
"Oh yeah. Cavity searches, a thrilling adventure. I ended up getting my ass saved by the poltergeist manifesting and needing to be slain. The TSA guy apologized afterwards, I gave him some of my ghost dust in case another one showed up. That's the depleted uranium, it helps with the killing of ghosts."
"Not typically, no. They're usually pretty quiet, but when they are a problem they're very nasty and damn near impossible to kill without ghost dust or some enchanted weapon or other. There was this ghost that went around smothering babies, it was unpleasant. That's generally the kind I kill."
"Her husband was an abusive creep. Her baby started crying one night and she put her hand over its mouth to quiet it down so he wouldn't get mad, but she suffocated it by accident. That pushed her over the edge and she murdered her husband with an axe, then chopped off the hand that smothered her child. She was put in the chair, she popped back up again, but she'd already gone off the deep end, so all she remembered was her last moments. So she went around the maternity ward suffocating all the babies that cried."
"Yep. Most ghosts are just sort of wispy and don't do all that much, though. I know a guy who works with ghosts, he knows a lot more than me. I just know how to kill the ones that go bad." He sighs. "That's kind of the extent of a lot of my knowledge."
"Some stuff needs killing. I'm here to protect this city however I can. If that was tea parties and rainbows, I'd know a lot about tea parties and rainbows. Unfortunately, it's usually more about killing things."
Harry pulls up outside a nice-looking old wooden apartment complex. "Home, sweet home."