alters emotions

"I wasn't talking about the face-melty thing, Harry," she said then. "Not directly. I'm talking about the stupid trash can. I'm talking about the look on your face right before you made the fire go away. I'm talking about what happened to that movie-monster thing in the hotel last year."
It was my turn to frown. "What?"
Murphy stopped for a minute, evidently considering her words as carefully as a bomb technician considers wiring. "There are moments when I wonder if you are losing control of yourself. You've always had a lot of anger in you, Harry. But over the past few years, it's gotten worse. A lot worse."
"Bullshit," I snarled.
Murphy arched an eyebrow and just looked at me.
I gritted my teeth and made myself ease back down into my previous slouch. I took a deep breath and counted to ten. Then I said, "You think I have anger issues."
"When you destroyed that trash can - when you slagged it in a moment of pure frustration, destroyed it, inflicted thousands of dollars of damage on the city sidewalk, the building behind it, the shops inside - "
"All of which are in Marcone's building," I snapped.
"I'm sure the people who work the counter at" - she consulted her little notepad - "the Spresso Spress and run the registers at Bathwurks probably don't know anything about Marcone, or care about him, either. They probably just go to work and try to pay their bills."
I frowned at her. "What?"
"Both shops were hit by bits of concrete and molten metal. They'll be closed for several weeks for repairs."
"They're insured," I said. I didn't sound like I believed it made a difference, even to me.
"People got hurt," Murphy said. "No one's face got melted, but that's not the point. You know the score, Harry, You know the kind of damage you can do if you aren't careful."
I didn't say anything.
"It's just like being a cop. Knowing martial arts. I know that I can do some fairly awful things to people. It's my business to make sure that awful things don't happen to people. I'm careful about how I use what power I have - "
"I'll tell that to my dentist," I said.
"Don't be petty, Harry," she said, her voice serious. "I've made mistakes. Admitted them. Apologized to you. I can't change what's happened, and you're a better man than that."
Unless maybe I wasn't. I felt ashamed for making the remark.
"My point is," Murphy said quietly, "that you knew what kind of damage you could do. But if what you say is true, in the moment you used your magic you thought that what you were doing was right. You thought it was okay to destroy something because you were angry. Even though it might hurt someone else who didn't deserve it."
I felt another surge of rage and... ...and...
And holy crap.
Murphy was right.
The sigil of angelic script, the only unburned flesh on my left hand, itched madly.
"Oh, hell," I said quietly. "Pot, kettle, black, all right. All day long."
Murph sat beside me, not saying anything, not accusing me of anything. She just sat with me.
Friends do that.
I put my right hand out, palm up.
Murphy closed her hand on mine for a moment, her fingers warm and small and strong.
"Thanks," I told her.

White Night Chapter 32, Page 324-326


"We are," she said. "I have a purpose here. A mission. That has not changed." She turned away from me, the shadows around her growing darker. Her form blended into them. "I do not change."
"Speaking of," I said. "A friend pointed out to me that I may have developed some anger issues over the last couple of years. Maybe influenced by... oh, who knows what."
The fallen angel's shadow turned her head. I could only tell because her lovely profile was slightly less black than the shadow around it.
"I thought maybe you would know what," I said. "Tell me."
"I told you once before, my host," the shadow said. "You are easier to talk to when you are asleep."
Which was just chilling, taken in that context. Everyone has that part of them that needs to be reined in. It's that little urge you sometimes feel to hop over the edge of a great height, when you're looking out from a high building. It's the immediate spark of anger you feel when someone cuts you off, and makes you want to run your car into that moron. It's the flash of fear in you when something surprises you at night, leaving you quivering with your body primed to fight or flee. Call it the hind brain, the subconscious, whatever: I'm not a shrink. But it's there, and it's real.
Mine wore a lot of black, even before Lasciel showed up.
Like I said. Chilling.
The fallen angel turned to depart on that note, probably because it would have made a nicely scary exit line.
I extended my hand, and with it my mind, and barred her departure with an effort of simple will. Lasciel existed only in my thoughts, after all. "My head," I told her. "My rules. We aren't finished."

White Night Chapter 33, Page 334-335