Dead Man's Witch

by Gimme Mocha

Grace Bowden, small-time Chicago witch, is contacted to help with a ghost problem. She just wants to help the boy-ghost, but when her path crosses that of Harry Dresden, she'll need more than good intentions to get out of it alive. Set during Dead Beat!

I ducked as another book flew at my head. This wasn't worth fifty bucks.

"Grace…"

"I've got it!" I yelled back, resuming my rummage in the black messenger bag slung over my shoulder. "I've got it…" I repeated.

"Grace!"

Triumphantly, I raised the squirt bottle shaped like a fat little bear. "I've got it!"

An invisible hand smacked my wrist and I lost my grip, the bear skittering across the floor and under the coffee table. "I don't got it…"

"This is no time for a Three Stooges skit!" Matt hollered.

I hit the floor and scrambled after the bear, seeing Matt from the corner of my eye lift a cross. "Spirit, we urge you to cross over into the…"

A rumble shook the house. With a yelp, he stopped praying and dove out of the way as the entire bookcase fell toward him.

"I think you're only pissing him off," I said, ever the helpful sidekick.

"Just find the damned salt water!"

"Don't say damned." My searching hand finally closed on the plastic. "Ah HAH!"

"Hurry up!" Matt said, covering his head from a flurry of books.

Hastily, I yanked off the little red cap and squirted the salt water into an almost-circle, leaving a tiny arc open. "Summoned be," I said, dropping a small brown leather bag inside the circle. "Summoned be. Summoned be!"

The bag jerked and spun but before it could hop out of the circle, I used another squirt of salt water to close it. Squeezing my eyes shut, I poured as much energy as I could into it, feeling a little drained as the circle snapped closed.

Books dropped to the ground, bibliopuppets no more. Cautiously, Matt lifted his head and peeked around while I caught my breath and rubbed my shoulder where a book had struck me. This entire caper was giving me a very jaded view of hardback publication.

I eyed the bag. "I think we're good. It won't last forever, though."

He got up and approached the circle from the other side. "Are you sure this is really Arnold?"

I didn't blame him for his skepticism. Arnold had always been a mischievous little guy, very much still a little boy even though he'd died sometime in the 1800s. He hid keys, pulled hair sometimes, changed channels on the TV, things like that. This level of activity was not only unlike him, it was usually beyond him. "He's the only one welcome here," I said. "That doesn't mean something nastier couldn't have snuck in, but…"

I looked around, feeling for the energy flows through the house. They were tinged with my essence; understandable since I had warded the house years ago at the request of the owners. "No," I finally decided. "Nothing else got in here. This has to be Arnold. You don't suppose this is going to be like that other Halloween, do you?"

"God, I hope not."

"Amen," I said. It seemed polite. I'm not Christian, but I have nothing against the God of Abraham either.

'That other Halloween' was how we still referred to the events of four years ago. Ghosts all over town had gone utterly apeshit. That was when Matt and I met, actually. I was using what talent I had to try and protect a friend from an irate ghost, and she had called Matt for the same reason. Nothing had gone right, and though I'd like to claim credit for everything finally settling down, it all just got quiet again after Halloween was over. We still didn't like talking about that other Halloween.

"Still," I continued, "this is the fourth cleansing we've had this month. And Arnold here used to be so nice."

Matt scratched absently at a clotting cut on his face, grimacing instantly and wiping his fingers on his jeans. "We should talk to somebody," he concluded.

"Morty, maybe?"

"He still hasn't returned my call from when we did the Wilson basement."

"He's the only real ectomancer I know of in the city," I said with a shrug.

"I guess we see what we can get out of Arnold, then."

I nodded my agreement, reluctant though it was. At least Arnold was a sentient ghost, one who could sometimes recognize individuals and even respond to his environment. We had a shot. My nose wrinkled at the stench of burning herbs. "He's about to get out of the bag anyway."

"Will the circle hold?"

"For a little while. He's awfully feisty, though. As soon as the water dries, he's out of there. Assuming he doesn't break free on his own; salt water's fast and easy, but not really sturdy."

With a pop, the bag exploded like a confetti-filled balloon, blackened leaves poofing out in a cloud. The ashes hit the sides of the invisible circle and drifted down, coating the carpet with gray and black. I hoped the Brandersons wouldn't deduct cleaning expenses from our fee.

I couldn't see anything inside the circle, and a glance at Matt showed a similar frustration on his face. "Tape?" I suggested.

With a huff of annoyance – at himself, I supposed – Matt pulled out a small digital recorder and turned it on. "Arnold," he said. "What's wrong? Why are you so angry?"

There was a pause. We didn't really expect to hear anything, but sometimes we could get voices on tape, something we could hear later. EVP wasn't always precise, though. Sometimes it was just blurred sound that required so much interpretation, it was virtually useless. The results could be like audible ink blots; they revealed more about the listener than about the speaker.

Then we heard it, just as eerie, atonal, and pitch-skewed as any playback except this sound came from empty air in the middle of my circle. "Esssssss. Cape."

I looked to Matt again. If my eyes were like his, they were big enough to hold a Thanksgiving turkey. "S-cape?" he said. "What, like Superman?"

"Escape," I whispered. "He's trying to escape. From us?" I looked back at the circle. "Escape from us?"

Another sound, a murmur of singsong that I couldn't make out. "What? Arnold, we didn't understand."

The singsong sound rose and fell over and over, faster and faster, rising up the scale to a high-pitched whine. A spike of pain twisted into my forehead and I yelped, slapping hands to my head as I cringed. Backlash. I tried to warn Matt, but before I could speak, my circle cracked and broke. Plant ash rose again as wind rushed from the center of what had been my circle, ruffled our hair, and vanished.

"Damn," Matt sighed, looking around as if he could see where Arnold had fled.

I gulped down a wash of nausea, willing the contents of my stomach to stay on the inside of me. Not, I realized, that a pile of half-digested meatloaf would be that noticeable. Between the overturned furniture, the books, the broken lamps, and now the light patina of burnt herbs, the room was trashed. "He doesn't really seem any calmer," I said.

"Yeah," Matt said, turning off the recorder. "Somehow I don't think we're getting paid for this one."

---

We didn't get paid for that one. I tried to remain philosophical about it. After all, we hadn't done our job, not really. Still, at least we could reassure the Brandersons that little Arnold should be wiped out for a few days. Maybe they could get some sleep while we pondered our next move.

We did our pondering in Matt's apartment. From the outside, it probably looked like I was sulking and staring at the rattling washing machine, but I was pondering.

"Here," he said, handing me an old sweatshirt and pants.

I pulled them on, only then shucking out of the towel. Matt was, by choice and vow, abstinent, but he had made it perfectly clear on several occasions that being abstinent didn't mean blind or devoid of hormones. So, I tried to be considerate. My clothes, covered in dirt, dust, and speckled with blood, were currently being agitated by the stacked washer/dryer unit in the pantry area.

He eyed me. "Are you back far enough?" he asked.

"I'm tired," I said. "Don't worry, I don't have the energy to hex a light bulb, let alone your appliances."

"Good. Then let's listen to the tape, see if it caught what Arnold was saying." He set the little device on the tabletop and fussed with plugs and speakers and his laptop.

He usually kept the computer in a room away from me. On my best days I wasn't wizard enough to break a digital recorder – at least not without trying – but his computer had been known to go a little wonky around me from time to time. Better safe than sorry, especially since all his Mass Effect save games were on that hard drive.

It was nice he trusted my judgment on how tired I was, though. Usually I didn't get to hear the direct playbacks of our EVP sessions. I had to wait until he dropped them to CD and could play them for me.

That was just one of the adjustments we'd made for each other since we started working together. We were an odd mix, I suppose; the computer programmer/paranormal researcher and the retail witch. But it worked for us, largely because we started with mutual respect and went from there.

Except that he kept threatening to stick me in a Faraday cage and see what happened. I used to think he was getting all BDSM on me, until I looked it up.

"There," Matt said, tapping at the keyboard.

I sat back, just in case. "Try the whisper first. Everything after that was all noise."

He nodded and wiggled his fingers. Matt said he couldn't do magic, but I wasn't sure there was much of a functional difference sometimes.

From the speakers, I heard Arnold's voice again muttering out two syllables on a fall-rise pitch that sounded very little like the child he was supposed to be. I frowned and shook my head. "Turn up the volume?" I suggested.

Matt did, then looped the sound so it played over and over.

Mystified, he looked at me over the top of the screen. "What's a kimler?" he asked.

"I think it's Kimmel. Maybe he's afraid of bad late-night talk show hosts."

"No, that's definitely an 'r' at the end."

It took about fifteen minutes and replays of both sets of sounds before we agreed. "Ok, so who's Kemmler?"

I held up my hands in surrender. "I never heard of the guy," I said. "Someone a ghost is afraid of, that's for sure. Maybe he had something to do with Arnold's death." I thought about it. "The timing's bugging me, though. Why now?"

"You mean why this Halloween and not the other one?"

"Or any other. Not that other Halloween. The house was newly warded then," I said. "He was safe behind a threshold and wards."

"Isn't he this year, too?"

I sighed. "I don't know, weaker wards maybe? I'm just guessing. We never did find out everything that happened that Halloween. Maybe whoever tried something then is trying it again?"

Matt nodded. "So, it's a wizard."

"It could be. Not one I know, though."

"How do you know it's not one you know?"

"Because I don't know anyone who could do something on this scale, not something that could affect the entire city."

He eyed me. "There's one guy."

I frowned in puzzlement for a minute before I felt my face go pale, the blood rushing off to find somewhere else to be. "No," I said.

His sigh was so sharp it was almost a cough. "I don't get why you're so scared of him."

"Do you read none of the newspaper clippings I give you?"

"C'mon, they can't all have been his fault."

"Enough of them were!" I held up a hand so I could tick off my points. "Remember Agatha at the hospital? Him."

"Uh, as I recall those babies lived. Maybe he stopped her."

"Okay, what about giant purple monkey demon?"

"In the first place, you never saw it yourself and neither did I. In the second place, it was chasing him. That wasn't his fault either."

"I'm not exactly filled with the urge to hang out with someone who gets chased by a giant purple monkey demon, whether he called it up or not. And who was the last person seen with Kim Delaney?"

"Whoever killed her?"

Now I was getting frustrated. "Rain of toads!" I said, pulling out what I expected was my trump card.

"You think he made it rain toads? That was a freak storm, there was a whole weather report on it."

"Freak storm, my pagan ass. That was magic."

"Oh yeah. A storm. Oooo, how mystical."

"Werewolves at the university?"

"The ones on that fake tape that no one has seen since? Gimme a break. I'm not even going to dignify that one with a response."

I let it go. Even to me, the werewolves thing had always sounded hokey no matter how many people from that part of town swore by it. I folded my arms defiantly. "And I'm not going near Harry Dresden."

Ever since Matt had seen Dresden on the Larry Fowler show, he had been itching for an excuse to talk to him about magic and magical things. So far, I'd managed to dissuade him, but I had a feeling he wasn't going to let this go.

Technically, I could've gone to Dresden if the problem had been bad enough. He wasn't a Warden, but he was on the White Council, or so I'd heard. I was barely a blip on the Council's radar screen down here in the Pee-Wee League, but I'd had a visit from one of the Wardens a few years back.

It wasn't something I had shared with Matt. Frankly, one meeting with a gray-cloaked, sword-wielding mage who shattered every ward I had just by walking through them – and that was while he was walking over my threshold, mind you – was more than enough to keep my mouth shut.

There were days I almost managed to convince myself it hadn't happened, but all I had to do was dig out the slagged remnants of my answering machine to reinforce the memory. Not one piece of electrical equipment in my apartment had survived that encounter. He made sure I knew that if I violated their rules ("Not that you probably could," his memory sneered at me) he would cut my head off and not bother to put down his lunch to do it.

While it was true that Dresden wasn't a Warden, there was no way he didn't piss them off on a regular basis, not with as flashy as he was. Trouble didn't so much follow him around as zero in on him like a guided missile, with similar collateral damage. Between the way buildings and people around him had a habit of going boom, and the likelihood that he was under direct Warden observation, getting near Harry Dresden seemed about as smart as running toward a police station waving a gun.

Death by Wizard.

"Fine," Matt said, matching my folded-arms pose. "Then in a few days when Arnold is feeling better, he'll break more glass, throw some more books, and maybe this time he'll really hurt someone."

I glared at him. He glared back. "Fine," I said, stomping to the phone on the wall. "I'll call and ask. But I'm not going near him."

The refrigerator wheezed a little and rattled into silence as I stalked by it. I reined in my anger and (I admit it) fear as best I could, ignoring Matt's yelp and his mad scramble to get his computer to minimum safe distance. As I flipped through the yellow pages, the ice maker in the door spat out a few random ice cubes and, with a startled pop, the 'fridge kicked back on.

After a minute, I hung up the phone. "He's not there," I said. "I got his answering service."

"So leave a message."

"Uh… no."

"Why not?"

"Because I haven't recently sustained any head injuries that resulted in brain damage?" I sat back down. "What kind of message would I leave with a mundane answering service?"

"They've probably heard weirder."

He was likely right, but in truth I was just glad I wouldn't have to talk to Dresden. "Can't risk it," I said. "We'll just have to think of something else."

He pushed away from the table. "Fine," he said. "Then, we're going to Mac's."

"Ah crap," I muttered.

---

Truth be told, Matt could have gone into Mac's any day of the week. The bar's open to the public, but Matt said he always felt mildly uncomfortable around there. Not threatened, just vaguely embarrassed, like he'd been caught eavesdropping on a private party.

To me, Mac's was like a sigh of relief captured in drywall.

Sure, part of that feeling is the effort Mac put into the place; magic doesn't pool up or fill the space like an annoying hum. It disperses effortlessly, quietly rearranging itself from moment to moment. It's soothing.

Really, most of that feeling for me is being someplace where you know that everyone gets it. Everyone, to a greater or lesser degree, can see what you see. They feel what you feel. If something odd prickles the back of your neck, odds are good it's prickling the necks of everyone else in there. Heads will all rise and turn at the same unseen, unheard alarm. You never have to hide those reactions at Mac's.

Hell, in Mac's actually having those reactions is probably a good thing. It's neutral ground, which means not only do the one-bit practitioners like me hang out there, but so do the big boys, most of whom I can't even identify. I could, however, identify the feeling of whoomph whenever one of 'em would walk in. It's like a metaphysical cannonball into the pond of quiet; there's a bow wave of pressure as the atmosphere adjusts to the new presence.

So far tonight, nothing was in there. I mean, no one was, no one important enough to make me worry, anyway. I led the way to the bar, relaxing as I wove between the pillars. Matt lingered behind me, probably staring at the carvings. I didn't check, just slid onto a barstool and put down a twenty.

Mac wandered over and set a bottle of homebrew in front of me. I don't normally drink beer, but what Mac makes doesn't really qualify as beer. This is what most beer wants to be when it grows up. I took a drink of the dark foamy stuff and sighed happily.

Mac looked from me to Matt then back to me. One eyebrow lifted slightly.

I shrugged. "Straight," I said. "Sorry."

He grunted. I guess that meant Matt could stay. It wasn't an accolade and fanfare or anything, but in this place a grunt was as good as a speech.

I was taking another sip of my beer when Matt caught up to me. He leaned on the bartop. "Hey," he said with a smile at Mac. "Harry Dresden been in tonight?"

I choked on my beer and slapped a hand over my mouth. Slowly, I raised my eyes to Mac.

Sure enough, he was glaring at me, an expression of infinite disgust. My puppy had just piddled on the floor. I cringed and nodded. "I know, I know. I'll handle it."

With a snort, Mac wandered off again.

Matt just looked confused. "What? What'd I do?"

I grabbed his arm and pulled him off to a table, shoving him into a seat. "Don't do that," I hissed. "Don't ever do that."

"Don't what? Ask if someone's been here? Are you kidding me?"

"No, I'm not." I ran a hand through my hair. "These people are hunted, daily. Hunted by things you can't even pronounce. Things inside the community, things outside it… People like you, even. If humans knew how much was going o—"

"Oh give me a freaking break already," Matt said. "For one thing, you are human, Grace. Hate to break it to you, but you are. For another thing, don't go all X-Files on me; the government is not out to get you, there are no men in black suits and anonymous cars chasing you."

Not as far as I knew, but there were people in gray cloaks. I didn't know what kind of cars they drove. "I'm just saying they're right to be paranoid. They don't know you, they barely know me. What makes you think they're going to just start telling you what you want to know?"

"Because I'm just asking if he's been in?"

"No," I said, leaning toward him. "You're a stranger, a straight, and you're asking about one of the most powerful people in Chicago in the one bar where we can go and not feel like freaks. You ask Mac, Mac tells Dresden, Dresden decides to find out who's been asking about him…"

"And what? Kills me?"

"No," I said again. "But maybe he stops coming here because now he knows people will look for him here. It's not an escape anymore."

"It's a public bar, Grace."

"You just don't get it, do you?"

"You know what? I'm not interested. I'm not." Matt stood, five feet ten of angry computer geek. "All I want to do is help the Brandersons and calm Arnold down. You want to play Mysterious Witch Lady, you have fun with that."

"It wasn't my idea to come here."

"Yeah. My mistake. Won't happen again."

With that, Matt stalked out trailing righteous indignation like overused cologne. I watched him go. Four years of friendship probably hadn't just ended, not over a squabble like this. Probably.

I blinked as a hand deposited my abandoned beer in front of me and looked up to find Mac giving me his best Sympathy Grimace. "This is why I can't have nice things," I said glumly.

He patted me on the shoulder. "Dresden?"

I shook my head. "No, that was Matt's thing. Ever since Dresden was on Fowler, he's been wanting to meet him. This was just… I guess the first legitimate opportunity he had to track him down." And it was legitimate, really. I angled my head to one side and peered up at Mac. "I don't suppose the name Kemmler means anything to you, does it? Might have been some kind of wizard?"

Mac's eyes glittered, then narrowed.

Yipe, I decided, leaning away.

My beer bottle vanished in one swipe of his hand, the same swipe that deposited a twenty on the table where the beer had been. "Go home," Mac said. "Stay there."

Then he was gone, back behind the bar. He didn't stop staring at me, though. And not just him. The other patrons had caught something of what was going on, and it was clear: I was being kicked out of Mac's. Mac had taken back a beer and given a refund. This was one for the history books.

I tried not to look like the kid being sent to the principal's office as I walked out the door, but my face was hot as the grill behind the bar.

Outside, I settled my hands into the pockets of my coat. "Yep," I said to no one, inhaling sharply through my nose. "That was good for me. Not humiliating at all."

Now I really wanted to know who Kemmler was.

Fortunately it seemed so did Matt. I expected him to be long gone, but he was there, leaning against his car.

I wandered over. "Hey," I said.

"Hey," he replied, scuffing a sneaker against the pavement. "Find out anything?"

"Just that Mac knows who it is and thinks I should hide at home."

"So, someone serious."

"Yeah."

Silence.

"I'm sorry," he said finally. "I didn't… I shouldn't have walked out. It's just that whole 'you know not of what you speak, mortal' bullshit really gets on my nerves."

"Well, I usually try not to be that pretentious about it," I said carefully. "But it's still true. Look, if I went poking around the insides of a computer without knowing what I was doing, wouldn't you try to stop me?"

"Especially if it was my computer," he said, half a grin tugging at his lips.

"Yeah, so, there y'go. This isn't… I know you've seen me do little spells and stuff, but really, don't kid yourself. I'm nothing compared to some of the things that're walking around Chicago. There are people and things that could kill me, would kill me, just for talking to you about them. I know it sounds paranoid, but it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you."

He sighed and looked up at the night sky somewhere overhead. "Yeah," he said. "I get it."

"Do you?"

"No. Maybe not. I dunno. How about we just say that, for now, I'll take your word for it."

It wasn't much. I tried to look at it from his side of things. He really had no clue, none, what was possible. So to him, it probably did sound all melodrama. "Deal," I said.

He stepped away from the passenger side and let me into the car, getting into the driver's seat. "So what's our next move?"

"I can think of one other place we could try. It's got one hell of a book collection, much better than where I work. Might be something there on this Kemmler guy."

"Where to, Miss Daisy?" he asked, starting the car.

"Bock Ordered Books."

---

Bock Ordered Books isn't in the nicest part of town, not even if you go in the middle of the day. This late at night, and this close to Halloween, it was particularly grim. Even still, there were people going in and out of the store and we had to park a few spaces down the street.

I half-turned in the seat to face Matt, but before I could speak, he held up a hand. "I know, I know. Wait here."

"Well, you made me wait in the car when you went into Computer Age."

"I don't think books are going to stop working when I walk by, but… I get it. I'll wait here."

I slid out of the Toyota and walked down to Bock's. I'd have felt better if I'd had a can of mace or maybe a fragmentation grenade, but I projected "uninteresting" as best I could and made it to the door without a hitch.

Artemis Bock was behind the counter. I honestly don't think I've ever seen him anywhere else in the store, despite the fact that he runs it alone. I made a point of keeping my eye out for a "Help Wanted" sign. Sooner or later, he was going to have to hire someone and I wanted the job. I craved the job.

He had books.

Bock Ordered Books had books that I couldn't afford if I sold myself into white slavery, and he had books that, so far, I wasn't even permitted to look at. Half the time, you had to know what you wanted when you came in, or you didn't get to see the really good stuff. I had a feeling that any books talking about a Wizard Kemmler would be in the back. In a cage. An actual cage.

I also had a feeling that I shouldn't actually mention Kemmler or I'd get kicked out. Again. Sure, it was a novel experience in Mac's, but the novelty had worn off quickly. I smiled at Bock. "Ectomancy?" I asked.

He didn't smile back. "No."

I sighed. "C'mon, Arty. What'm I gonna do, suddenly go all powerhouse on you? It's to help a little boy ghost, have a heart."

"I don't have a heart. And don't call me Arty. Third shelf, back corner."

I wasn't sure ectomancy was the place to start, but if something could frighten a ghost, there'd be references there. Bock didn't really like it when practitioners used his place like a library, but there was always the chance we'd buy something. And, when I could afford to, I usually did.

Just try looking for references to ghosts and Halloween, and you'll be inundated. I wasn't trying to find a needle in a haystack, I was looking for one particular needle in a pin factory. And I hadn't been at it long when I saw the woman nearest me look up, blanch, and head for the door.

I looked over my shoulder. Bock was there somewhere, but I couldn't see him for the six foot plus inches of black trench coat between us. The guy in the leather coat wasn't much wider than the wooden staff he carried, but I understood what had made the other woman leave. I'd have bolted too, if I wouldn't have had to brush past him to do it.

Harry Dresden.

Nervously, I glanced around. There weren't any monkey demons in sight, and so far the building wasn't on fire. Maybe I could still get out.

Artemis said something about the cage, and they both turned to look. Hastily, I yanked a book in front of my face and kept it there as Dresden walked past me, boots thudding on the floor with what I personally felt was a little too much drama. Someone should tell the man that he's intimidating enough, he doesn't need to dress like he's heading for a shootout at the OK corral.

Someone else, I mean. I know I wasn't going to offer up any sartorial critiques.

I heard him talking then. Survival instinct was urging me to flee, but I spotted Bock back at the counter and knew there wasn't anyone in the back room. Cautiously, I slid around the bookshelves to peer around the door jamb.

He stood quarter-profile to me. I could see him with a book in his hand, smiling, chatting to…

…absolutely no one.

Someone touched my shoulder and I jumped a little, turning to see Artemis Bock beside me. He drew me away from the door, him looking stern, me looking abashed. I was getting a lot of practice with that look lately.

Safely away from the door, he asked, "Did you find what you need?"

"Uh…" It took a minute to remember why I'd come. "No," I finally concluded. I peered around Bock toward the back room. "That is Harry Dresden, right?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Nothing. No reason." If I leaned just so, I could see the hem of Dresden's coat and his shoulders.

I don't know why, but I felt compelled to warn Bock. He was a nice old man... Ok, he wasn't. He was built like a biker gone sedentary and was sort of crotchety, but he still didn't deserve to have his store brought down around his ears if Dresden was calling up invisible spirits in his back room. But, I thought charitably, maybe the invisible spirit had always been there and I just hadn't seen it. "You don't have any invisible spirits that live here, do you?"

He sighed in resignation. "No."

Oh. "Listen, you know he's back there talking to no one, right?"

"Yes," Bock said, thin lips all but vanishing as they thinned some more.

"Okay. Well." I stepped back from the counter. "I'm just gonna...go."

"You and everyone else."

I looked around and realized he was right. Just before Halloween or no, the store was now deserted but for me, Bock, Dresden, and something that might or might not really be there. I wasn't sure which made me more nervous: the idea that Harry Dresden was conversing with creatures even I couldn't see, or the idea that he'd flipped his lid. Either way, it was time to bail. I shrugged sheepishly and ducked out, heading back toward the car.

It was empty.

I snatched in a quick breath and looked around, finally spotting Matt across the street, poking at his cell phone. I hurried to him, pausing a short distance away as he held up one finger. Finally he closed the distance between us.

"Sorry," he said. "I got a message and was trying to check it, but my phone went weird."

"Yeah, that's probably becau-" I stopped myself. If I told him Harry Dresden was in Bock Ordered Books, he'd be across the street and into pestering range before I could tackle him and sit on him.

Wait a minute. I frowned and looked back at the store, mentally gauging the distance. Dresden was in the store, in the back room. Unless the man was at that very moment performing a Superior Ritual of Whoop-Ass, Matt should have been well out of range in the car. But he'd had to get across the street to get a clear signal.

Which meant the problem wasn't Dresden.

"Oh shit," I whispered, looking around again.

"What?" Matt asked.

Now that I was looking for them, I spotted them. Two people, one taller than the other, swathed in black cloaks with hoods. Standing there. Waiting.

Grabbing Matt's arm, I yanked him behind a car and ducked. "Shit," I whispered again. "Shit, shit, shit."

"What shit? Shit what?" He was whispering too, taking his cue from me.

There was a chance, though a slim one, that we could get back to the car and take off before Dresden came out and things got all kablooey. Maybe, I tried to console myself, they weren't here for Dresden. Maybe they were there looking for Unicef donations. Or maybe they were just waiting for him to come out and then the three of them were going to go for coffee and pie. But I doubted it.

I looked over at Matt, meeting his gaze for a second before looking back at the Black Cloaks. "When I say, we're going to get up, go directly to your car, and drive away."

"What's the mat- Wow, is that Harry Dresden?"

"Shit!"

I yanked him down farther. Across the street, silhouetted in the doorway to Bock's shop, Harry Dresden loomed like a slice of intruding night. The hairs on my arms lifted and tugged, and I felt pure magic rush around me, through me, pouring into the shop. The door opened, and he stepped out.

For a moment, it seemed as if he dragged the store's light with him out into the darkness. Power, I realized, sheer power called at his command, concentrated into one man until he shone with it. His left hand blazed blue and white and shades of both I couldn't name, shedding licks of flame that vanished and reformed, like solar flares of magical energy.

He walked toward the waiting pair, unhurried, head down, his expression wreathed in shadow. The street had gone completely silent as if not even distant traffic noise wanted to get in his way. Each steady footfall was plainly audible, and the staff he held in his right hand tapped the pavement in time with his steps. The sound echoed weirdly off the buildings around us until his luminescence brushed the hems of the black cloaks, and he stopped.

Slowly, he lifted his head.

"Holy crap," Matt whispered.

I saved up an 'I told you so' for later, settling for gripping his arm tighter to silence him.

Cold wind swirled down the street and chilled my skin even through my winter coat, carrying his words to us in a tone scarcely less frosty. "What do you want?"

"The book," came the answer from the taller of the two. The voice was identifiably male, but not identifiably human. It sounded odd, twisted, warped.

I turned away from the scene, flattening my back against the car as I thought furiously. Running sounded good, but getting up to run did not. I wasn't sure I could call up a shield strong enough to defend both of us from whatever might happen across the street. There certainly wasn't time to try both ideas, and either one might attract notice.

What I needed was to be subtle. That was good. I could do subtle.

I peeked around the front fender of the car. The smaller figure had stepped to the fore and seemed to be trying to reason with Dresden. I wished him luck. Dresden didn't look like he was in the mood to be reasonable.

"Whatever happens," I whispered to Matt, "I need you to trust me completely and remain very, very still."

He continued to stare at the show-down. "Uh huh," he whispered.

He wasn't really paying attention, but that counted as consent. And that was what I really needed to include him in what I wanted to do, consent.

There are a lot of ways to cast a veil. The easiest is simply to convince some of the light coming at you that you aren't where it thinks you are. It bounces around a little, and presto, you're invisible. You can't see quite as well because you're deflecting incoming light, and the initial pop of magic is noisy, but it works. It's also hard to maintain. I can pull it off for a little while, but I wanted to do more than be invisible. I wanted to be unnoticed and protected.

I closed my eyes and leeched off the tiniest amounts of magic possible, hoping the trio across the street would be too involved with each other to care what I was doing.

The wind continued to swirl around us. I borrowed that movement, gave it a form in my mind. "Divert," I whispered softly, letting the magic I drew in leak back out into the wind. "Divert. Divert." My lips continued to move though my voice faded, and I chanted it in silence like a mantra. When I could no longer feel the wind against my face, I cracked open my eyes.

The sound of the argument was muted, barely audible. Wind-blown trash swirled and skittered about three feet out. Even the streetlights seemed dim as the world moved around us. Diversion was a quiet spell, subtle as a breath. We weren't invisible, inaudible, or unassailable. Just almost. Matt hadn't even noticed.

I looked over the hood of the car, relatively pleased that no one else had either, when the wind abruptly canted at a 90 degree angle, drawn in toward the trio. Someone was pulling power, and a lot of it. Given how Dresden still looked, glowing already with power, I supposed it was one of the others.

I couldn't hear what Dresden said, but he slammed his staff into the ground and a muted rumble like a warning growl could be heard even through my diversion spell.

Shifting my weight, I rose slightly to be better positioned in case I had to get fancy with the deflecting. "Here we go," I muttered.

"Huh?" Matt asked.

"Dorosh!" snarled Tall Black Cloak as if in answer.

Darkness ran screaming from an explosion of light, Dresden's shield ripping through the night like a newborn sun as something hit it and flung him backward, slamming him into the ground several feet away.

Matt yelped in alarm and started to rise, putting himself outside the range of my carefully crafted spell. I grabbed him and hip-checked him, knocking him into the car we had been crouching behind and covering his body with mine. Nose to nose, I said between clenched teeth, "Don't. Move."

Our eyes locked and I felt it tremble between us, the opening of a soul gaze. Before it could take, I looked away again.

Pressure from without and pressure from within were taking their toll on my spell. The energies being spewed around by Harry and his attackers were like nothing I'd contended with before. A fine sheen of sweat broke out on my forehead and trickled down to my eyes. Matt went still, making it easier to keep us covered. The real trick was not to fight against the pressure, but to flow with it. Magical aikido. Divert, not deflect.

With a shaky breath, I relaxed into the rhythm of the spell and my protection reasserted itself. I risked another look, and instantly wished I hadn't.

Whatever Black Cloak had done to him, Dresden was back on his feet. Raising his staff, he spun it over his head and whipped the end of it toward Black Cloak "Forzare!" I heard, the sound properly muffled. Incarnadine light blazed up and down the length of his staff, burning like magma through the darker wood. Ripples of distortion snapped away from him and slid under Matt's car.

The Toyota skipped into the air and flipped sideways, crashing down on Black Cloak.

My jaw bounced off the pavement.

Matt, hearing the screech of metal, pulled away enough to look. "That's my car," he said blankly, as if I hadn't noticed. "He totaled my car."

"I know. You should go yell at him about it."

He shook his head.

That 'I told you so' was getting closer and closer to the surface. "Now do you want to stay put?"

He nodded and kept nodding, ducking lower and lower.

Impossibly, Matt's car shifted. I blinked rapidly, my brain unwilling to accept what my eyes were telling it. The flipped-over car moved, and the guy it had landed on got up. Hadn't even lost his hood doing it. I still couldn't tell who it was, and was now certain I never wanted to know. Black Cloak staggered to his feet.

I hesitated while some kind of tug-of-war went on between Harry and the smaller figure. Dresden wasn't looking all that perky, and for all that he was a walking advertisement for life insurance, he was also one of the good guys. I cast about frantically for anything I could do that might help, something that would be effective against the kind of being that could shrug off a whole car. Deciding that even a minor distraction could help, I reached for an empty beer bottle by the curb.

Something better showed up.

Wolves, a lot of them, melted out of the darkness aided by nothing more than the magic possessed by all hunters. One crouched on top of the undercarriage of Matt's car. Faced with the new numbers, the two cloaked figures vanished in a wash of fresh magic.

The wolf atop Matt's car jumped down to crouch near Dresden, shimmered, and reformed into a man.

A naked man. Very, very naked.

After five seconds of staring at a lot of lean muscle, I looked away, embracing modesty. "Huh," I said. "What do you know?"

"Werewolves?" Matt asked with a gulp.

"Werewolves." I owed several people an apology.

"What do we do now?"

I sat on the pavement, my back to the front wheel of the car, and took a breath. "Now we wait. When they leave, we go make sure there weren't any casualties."

"Besides my car."

I patted his knee. "Besides your car," I said.

Matt sat beside me, landing heavily. I looked over at him. "You ok?"

He thought about it for a minute. "Nope," he decided.

"I tried to warn you," I said, sympathetic to the last.

"Yep."

The sound of car alarms and approaching sirens was muted and warped by my spell.

"So. You're not really very good at magic, are you?"

"Hey!"

"No offense," he said, "but... seriously." He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of what we'd just witnessed.

"No, I can't flip cars," I said with acidic undertones. "But I can turn your computer into a paperweight at twenty paces, so don't piss me off."

"Point taken."

We sat there awhile longer on the pavement in the cold, listening to the sirens getting closer. I peeked out and saw no one, so I let my spell dissipate. Light, sound, wind, scent all returned in an inward rush, and I stood. "Coast is clear," I reported.

Matt didn't get up. "You sure?"

"Yep," I said. "When you talk to the cops, you might want to stick with telling them you didn't see what happened. You can't make up something as stupid as what they'll come up with, and if you try to tell them what really did happen…"

"I'll get locked up," he concluded. "Yeah. I didn't see nothin'."

I left him to talk to the cops and went to check on other damage. I wasn't the only one. People had emerged from apartment houses and were engaged in their favorite pastime: milling about. Glass and debris were strewn across the sidewalk and street, but it didn't look like there were any casualties of the human variety.

Artemis Bock came out of his store as he saw me, evidently taking my approach as an indication that things were safe enough. His feet crunched on the broken glass as he turned to survey the damage. "Didn't leave quite fast enough, did you?"

"Well, I'm still alive," I said. "So I suppose I did, for certain values of fast enough."

Eventually, the cops got done interviewing everyone they could. No one had seen anything. They never did, in this neighborhood. Matt and I helped Bock clean up. Most of the other owners of damaged buildings were content with a police presence overnight and decided to deal with it in the morning. Matt's car had taken the brunt of the damage, though a few others had their windows blown out.

When the wrecker finally showed up for Matt's car, I went inside Bock Ordered Books to get out of the wind for awhile. The inside of the store wasn't badly off, except for more glass which had fallen just inside. Only a few items from the shelves were out of place, and I began setting them right.

"One cop car," Bock said. "That's all they're leaving."

I smiled a little. "It'll be enough. He's right outside."

"He'll be asleep in an hour. Or get pulled off to something more urgent. Always happens."

I looked at the plywood-covered windows and thought. There had to be something I could do, even if it wouldn't last. Plywood was all well and good for keeping out passers-by, but anyone with a crowbar would make short work of it. Hell, even a tire iron…

A grin played with the corners of my mouth. I let it. This was gonna be good. "Got any rubber bands?" I asked.

Half an hour later, Matt and Bock had cleaned up most of the mess and I was considerably more tired than I'd been at the outset. I held up a small square of broken frame, glass, and plywood held together with rubber bands. "Taa daa," I murmured as I stood, swaying a little.

Bock steadied me by the elbow. "What's that?"

Moving carefully, I tacked my creation up just inside one of the windows and stepped back to lean on the counter. Nodding toward a length of splintered window frame, I said to Matt, "Hit the window. Just stay to the side."

Matt eyed me, as did Bock, but he stepped up to the plate and took a swing.

The wood bounced, an unexpected rebound staggering Matt back a few steps.

I smiled, justifiably proud. "If someone tries to smash their way through the plywood, you'll know who it was. He'll be the guy at the hospital with a tire iron buried in his forehead."

Bock stepped forward, gingerly running a hand over the plywood.

Matt tossed his would-be bat into the large rubber trashcan and rubbed his hand. "Felt like smacking a big sheet of rubber," he said.

"That was the idea."

"What'd you do?"

I gestured to the dangling rubber band square. "Thaumaturgy," I said. "You make a representation of a thing and manipulate it, causing change in the thing it represents. The more bits you have of the thing you're trying to manipulate, the better it works. In this case, glass and frame and plywood splinters represent the window. Rubber bands are the effect I wanted. Add magic and willpower, and presto."

His eyes went from my little rubber band creation to me and back again. "You made a voodoo window?"

That got a laugh from me, tired as I was. "Something like that," I said.

Bock looked over his shoulder at me. "How long will it last?"

"Most of it will fade when the sun hits it," I said regretfully. "It'll probably have a bit more flexibility than normal plywood by nightfall, but that's about it. It certainly won't survive two sunrises."

He nodded, hands on his hips, looking satisfied. "That'll do," he said.

"It'll give you some peace of mind until morning." Which, my gritty eyes were telling me, was not as far off as I'd like. And I had to work. I had the seniority at the shop to have Halloween off, but October 30 was not up for debate. "I have to go and pretend that I can get four hours of sleep and function just fine."

"I'll drive you home, but I have to go pick up my rental first," Matt said.

"I'll call you a cab," Bock offered, stepping back toward us.

I yawned, hearing my jaw pop. "Wake me up when it gets here," I mumbled, sliding down the counter to sit on the floor, head back.

Someone nudged me and I blinked. "Cab's here," Matt said.

Time had passed. Wow. "Oh," I said, accepting his help to rise. "Funky."

"Here," Bock said, holding out a bag.

I took it, feeling the weight of it. "What's this?"

"What you were looking for. You just didn't know it."

I didn't know what to say. What I wanted to do was snatch the book out of the bag and start reading, but it seemed rude somehow. Plus, I wasn't sure my eyes would focus. "Thank you, Artemis."

"Just be careful," he said, glancing at the bag uncertainly, as if he wanted to take it back. "Be a hell of a way to repay you, getting you killed."

A horn honked outside, and Matt tugged me toward the door. "I'll be careful," I promised, going with Matt before Bock could change his mind. "And I'll let you know what happens."

The inside of the cab was warm. It was enclosed. The seats felt feather-soft. Matt whacked me with an elbow.

"Ow!" I said, whacking him back.

"Wake up. You weren't that wiped an hour ago."

I glanced at the cabby, but he wasn't in the mood for conversation. He seemed mostly intent on getting the hell out of Bock's neighborhood. I lowered my voice anyway, forcing Matt to lean closer. "I'm not very good at magic, remember?" I said, not entirely without some grump to it. "I summoned and held Arnold, then kept a diversion spell on us. That took most of my whammy. The window took everything I had left, and then some."

"Why'd you do it, then? I mean, even if the cop had fallen asleep, anyone breaking through the plywood would have made a lot of noise."

I closed my eyes again as my vision swam. "He deserved it," I said sleepily, not bothering to clarify my pronoun. "It made him feel better."

"Grace!"

"What?" My head snapped up and I glared.

"We're at your apartment."

Confused, I looked out the window. We really were. "Man, that is funky," I mumbled, opening the door.

"You gonna get inside okay?"

"Yeah," I said, waving him off. "I'll call you tomorrow after work."

"Today after work," he corrected me. "It's almost 4 am."

Oh blessed gods. I was too old for this. And I was only twenty-three. "G'night."

I knew better than to sleep without eating something. I dropped Bock's book on one of the two chairs flanking the café table between the windows in the main room, still within easy reach of the 'fridge. Turkey and grapes stuffed in a pita pocket served as dinner, washed down with a glass of orange juice. I set my alarm and dropped onto my day bed/couch to finish my food, barely remembering to put the glass on the coffee table before I was asleep.

---

I took the book with me to work. Showing up wasn't optional, but actually doing anything sort of was. With three of us on duty, I claimed position of power and sat at the register while Maryann and Josie ran around the store helping customers. I didn't get a lot of time to read, but I got some.

I learned two things from the book in short order.

The first thing I learned was that the man who wrote the book was a total loonbucket. According to the title page, the book was "The Diary of Magus Entmeyer," a handwritten journal of workings, notes on spells, theories to be tested, and if it had stopped there, he would have come off like some kind of genius of dead-things magic. His drawings were precise and sharp, his handwriting was clear. The spells were neatly outlined, and his thoughts about experimentation were logical, even insightful.

The problem wasn't the spells, it was everything else. And there was a lot of everything else. It's like the man had a split personality. For example, the one page where he was writing about the usefulness of cemetery dirt (gross, but useful) when he interrupted himself for a two-page diatribe on the smell of his wet boots. That handwriting was crammed together, bolder, and sloppy enough to have belonged to a demented third grader. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide The Sharp Objects, I swear.

The second thing I learned was that I was butt-ignorant when it came to magic. This came as something of a surprise, as I considered myself fairly well-grounded in magic and magical theory. I had always known I wasn't in the heavyweight division, but I thought I did pretty well with the power I did have. From the book, I learned that there were things possible which I had never even considered, and Entmeyer didn't tell me how to do any of them. He just referred to things, mentioned them in passing, and it was driving me nuts. How the hell did you use magic to bottle a smell? Or catch moonlight in a mirror?

Even more frustrating, I didn't have time to pursue any of that now. I had to focus on Arnold's problem. Fortunately, there the book did come in handy because Entmeyer, in addition to being a nutball, was also something of a whiz (pardon the expression) when it came to the dead. There were two recipes in particular that sounded helpful. Unfortunately, one of them involved depleted uranium and, drat the luck, I was fresh out.

The other, however...

It involved a specific sort of circle and some special incense. I had some of the ingredients at home, but not all of them so it was good I worked in a pagan supply store. I wasn't big into herbs, but I knew the basics. Judging by the list, this stuff was gonna stink to high heaven.

The only thing that concerned me was that Entmeyer hadn't meant for this book to be an instruction manual, so he wasn't always clear on things. I puzzled out the anise reference, but "that stinky herb Almira grows" could have been anything. I went with Valerian root, which smelled like old gym socks. Or wet boots, for that matter.

Rebeka showed up just before six, freeing me to go home. I had Josie ring up my sale (employee discounts be praised) and called Matt.

"I think I have something," I said, "but we need to get back in the Branderson's house."

"That might be a problem," he said. "I went by there. They've bugged out."

"Bugged out?"

"Their neighbor said they packed up the car and left. I've been trying to reach Mr. Branderson on his cell, but he's not picking up."

Dammit. I needed to talk to Arnold, and I didn't want to wander around a spirit realm looking for him. "Meet me at my place," I said. "I'll get us in."

"You have a key?"

"Something like that."

A thin rain had begun by the time I was waiting outside my apartment for Matt. I shivered, hood up, and peered down the street before I remembered that his Toyota was sitting in a car graveyard. I anticipated the kind of bland four-door that populated most rental lots.

A long chunk of metal with more fins than a school of sharks slid up to the curb, bumped briefly over it, and settled back onto the street with a thump. Rain drizzled off the leopard pattern convertible hard top.

I was still staring when Matt rolled down the window. "If you say one word, I'm making you walk."

I held up my hands, messenger bag dangling from one of them. "I wasn't going to say a word," I said, wishing I'd carbed up for the mile-long walk to the passenger door.

"Good," he said.

"I might use several," I continued, sliding into the car and bumping my head on the cherry-ball fringe that lined the interior roof. "Like, wasn't this car in that movie where Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes drove across country with John Leguizamo to save a dirt town from homophobia?"

"Grace…"

"Of course, I don't think theirs was purple."

"Grace."

"You do realize that when Big Percy's bitches bail him out from that possession charge, he's gonna need his ride back."

"Look, it's the free rental from the garage and it was all they had."

"Your garage is run by a pimp?"

"Why don't you just tell me what you've got in mind for tonight?"

"I'm going to go talk to Arnold," I said, relenting.

"He wasn't that talkative last time."

"Ah, but that was when Arnold was coming to us. I'm going to him."

"You're…going to die?"

"No. Don' t need to."

"Is it dangerous?"

I thought about it, absently stroking the black faux fur seat covers. "I guess," I said. "I mean, I've never done it before. But I'll have a weapon with me."

"What weapon?"

I pulled my right foot up and drew a double-edged dagger from a boot sheath. "My athame," I said. The black leather wrapping the hilt was old and worn. I would have to replace it soon, I realized. Other than that, it was relatively plain. Just a blade. And yet, much more.

"That thing?" Matt wasn't impressed. "It doesn't look sharp enough to cut butter."

"It's not," I said, frowning at him as I slid it away. "It's not for cutting physical things. It's magical, it's used in rituals. Look, don't disrespect the athame. I inherited it, it's old, and it's very cool, dammit."

"Fine. And what will I be doing while you're playing Ghost Whisperer?"

"Making sure no one interrupts. If someone moves my body around, there's a chance I'll be stuck."

"Stuck?"

"Let's just say at that point there won't be any discernible difference between me and Arnold."

The sun had technically set by the time I was off work. When we got to the house, the clouds had wiped out whatever remaining glow might be on the horizon. The rain had begun in earnest, and we dashed to the porch to get out of the damp.

Matt looked around. "Okay," he said. "You're up."

I stared fixedly at the deadbolt. There were many ways to open a locked door magically - or mundanely for that matter - but most of them were noisy. Besides, I didn't really have the oomph to blow a door off its hinges, or even to snap a deadbolt. But, to brag a little, I really am good at subtle. And thaumaturgy.

The Brandersons had installed a Schlage lock. I guess they're good. I know they're popular. It's the same kind of deadbolt I have on my apartment door. That would make this easier. I fished through my key ring while Matt fidgeted. "Stop looking guilty," I murmured. "Look, I have a key."

"You do?"

My key fit with a little bit of wiggling. I hesitated a moment, not sure if I wanted to change the lock or my key. Finally, I chose my key. I could adjust it again, but if I changed the lock then the Branderson's would be locked out for a few days until the spell wore off.

I summoned my magic, let it flow down my arm, my hand, and through the key into the lock. "Aperio clave," I murmured, picturing the key turning easily, the lock opening.

Repeating the same procedure on the doorknob, I let us into the house.

Matt turned to close the door and lock it behind us while I looked around the dark house. "I take it back," he whispered. "You're pretty good at magic."

"Oh sure," I said, whispering too. "Now that you know I can break into your apartment and stuff Cheerios in your nose while you're asleep, you start sucking up."

I walked into the darkened living room, grateful the Brandersons had never put in an alarm system. I could have hexed one, but that still would have brought the cops. The threshold, I was relieved to note, posed no problems despite my legally suspect entry. They had invited me in on more than one occasion, after all. I peered up the stairs but so far Arnold was quiet. Encouraged, I headed up, one hand on the rail to help guide me in the darkness

Up here, the streetlights that had helped light the downstairs weren't as helpful. The windows were all in rooms behind closed doors. "Library?" I whispered.

Matt nodded and I took a left, feeling my way. I tripped and stumbled, but Matt managed to snag my arm and I stayed upright. My foot had hit something. Glass crunched under my boots as I took another step, and I winced.

Feeling carefully with my toes, I made it down the hallway to the spare bedroom that they had converted into a library. Light spilled in the window, revealing a room scarcely less trashed than when we had left.

Arnold had been busy. And active. He shouldn't have been; the display of power he'd put on for us should have tapped him out. No wonder the Brandersons had taken off; after we had left, he must have gone on some kind of dead-kid rampage.

By streetlight, we cleared the center of the room. It must've been cleaned at least once since we left because the broken lamp glass had all been picked up, which was all to the good. We simply piled the books into the corners and set the bookshelves on their sides along the walls, then rolled up the rug to leave me with bare floor to work with. Cleanup accomplished, I pulled down the blinds and drew the curtains, blanketing the room in darkness again. I didn't want anyone seeing candlelight and wondering what was going on.

I always kept the messenger bag packed, with the exception of things on my altar at home. I just never knew what I would need in the field. That meant it took me awhile to fish out a little bag containing masking tape, a tape measure, string, and a grease pencil.

Matt glanced up from thumbing through a book, half a smile quirking his lips upward as he watched me measure out a length of string. "You're welcome," he said in a soft sing-song, going back to whatever he was reading.

"Thank you," I mumbled back, yet again. After watching me struggle once for almost two hours to free-hand draw a perfect circle, Matt had reminded me that I had, in fact, taken art class in third grade and knew perfectly well how to draw one. Tie the grease pencil to one end of the string, measure out a length of string the radius of the circle you want to draw, tape the other end to the floor, and voila. The amount of time I'd saved since then was just ridiculous.

Mundane solutions: never overlook them, even if practicality isn't all that mystical or cool.

Of course, there was no such hope for the sigils, most of which I'd never seen before. These were magical symbols that had to touch the circle without interrupting the perfection of its arc. I stepped into the circle. Once there, I gestured for Matt to hand me the book. From the inside, I began to scribe the sigils on the floor just inside the circle. This wasn't easy, or safe. Mistakes were simply out of the question. I was already taking a chance on the herbs.

I checked the boot sheath to make sure the athame was still there, then I withdrew my herb bundle and lighter from the bag. With a deep breath, I looked up at Matt. "Okay," I said. "Here I go."

"Are you sure about this?"

"You coulda asked me before I spent fifty bucks on supplies," I said. "But yeah, I'm sure. Nothing to it. I'll just go all spirit and talk to Arnold, then come back here and we'll figure out what to do from there."

I must've sounded as confident as I was trying to, because he just nodded and settled himself down on the rolled up rug to wait.

I took a breath and exhaled slowly, pushing energy into the circle. I felt it close around me, felt the energy begin seeping into the scribed sigils. The herb bundle smoldered as soon as I touched the lighter to it, and I wafted the smoke around my head, my heart, then all around my body. At the same time, I began the soft chant described in the book, though I admit I had to stifle a cough once or twice. I had been right; the smoke reeked.

It seemed to be staying inside the confines of the circle, too. It was thick and getting thicker, a gray-black wall of stinky fog obscuring my sight. It burned my eyes, and I fought to keep chanting, to keep my focus. Smoke scorched my throat and writhed into my lungs, squirming there and trying to eat its way out again.

I forced myself to take another breath. Abruptly the air was clear. I saw the room, my body sitting in the circle, Matt vacillating between boredom and worry, and halfway between the two of us was Arnold.

At least, I assumed it was him. It was a young boy, no more than seven or eight I thought, with shaggy blond hair, a floppy-brimmed hat, suspenders, and short pants. He had a rifle slung around his scrawny chest, and I didn't know enough about weapons to say much more than that, except that it wasn't terribly oversized for him, and it looked old. He was barefoot, and I saw him so clearly I could even see the dust on his feet, the dirt smudges on his legs. I could also easily read the tired fear and pleading in his blue eyes.

"Arnold?"

He looked up, past me, and his eyes went wide with panic.

Then I was grabbed and yanked. I didn't even have time to yelp in surprise before I was through the wall, through the trees, catching glimpses of Chicago as I was ripped through it. I couldn't see what had hold of me; it was like there was a rope around my waist, and I was being reeled in. I saw buildings that I didn't recognize populated by people in clothes I couldn't even identify. There was a funny green haze over everything. Once or twice, I got an impression of teeth snapping at me as I passed, but whatever was happening to me was too fast for such hunters.

It stopped. I didn't drop, I just wasn't moving anymore. I was in a clearing of trees that looked too mundane to trust. The ground definitely looked weird enough to still be some kind of spirit realm; it pulsed, flexed, but I didn't lose my balance on it. Here and there, other spirits whirled past me.

None of them looked too happy, and none of them were Arnold.

Nervously, I reached down into my boot and checked the dagger, reassured that it had made the trip with me. I thought it might. Even though I was technically more spirit than physical myself at the moment, the dagger always existed half in the spirit realm. I hoped I wouldn't need a weapon while I was here, but like the saying goes, "In God we trust. Everyone else keep your hands where I can see them."

This particular athame was special. It was something of a magical heirloom, handed down from witch to witch. My instructor had given it to me during a whole big ceremony, once she felt I had learned everything I could from her. I was proud of it, as proud of it as she had been herself. Even in the physical realm, the black-handled knife knew my touch. It buzzed faintly when I held it. Here in this weird pseudo-spirit world, the buzz was audible.

I began to realize that most things didn't look quite solid. The trees mostly did. The buildings, less so. They never seemed to keep the same shape from moment to moment. Columns appeared and vanished, windows changed shape from many-paned to two-paned, doors were double then single, or sometimes vanished altogether. Even the entire building would sometimes be there and sometimes be nothing more than a vague hint of what it was. Age, I realized, finally identifying a gray blur as a heat pump. The older something was, the more of an impression it left.

I was just starting to adjust when something very, very solid caught my attention. It was a figure in a black cloak, hood pulled up. Wafts of color played around the cloak, dark and somber with pulses of fiery light.

It was one of the people who had confronted Dresden, the short one. And me without a convenient car to hide behind.

He stopped, his cloak moving around his ankles as if urging him to continue. The hood canted slightly toward me, and when he spoke I found out that he was a she. Despite the distance between us, I heard her clearly. "What are you doing here, girl?"

Actually, that was a pretty good question. "I'm not exactly sure," I said. "I thought the circle would keep me in the house."

"Circle," she repeated, turning it into a question.

Well, as long as she was talking to me, she wasn't trying to kill me. "I have to talk to a spirit. A boy. I used a spell..."

She held up a gloved hand and I fell silent, watching the green glow swirl up from the ground and lap around my knees before settling down again. Another wailing ghost, this one a woman with no arms and no legs, spilled past me deeper into the trees.

"What was the spell?" she asked, ignoring the half-a-woman.

"Uh... Well, there was incense to burn, and a circle with sigils..."

"What kind of incense?"

I named the ingredients as best I could remember them, but I hadn't named more than four or five when she stopped me again.

"Entmeyer," she said, and I couldn't tell if that was asperity or amusement in her voice. Probably a little of both. "You have Entmeyer's journal."

"That's what the cover says."

She turned toward me completely. "Interesting," she murmured from maybe fifty feet away. "And you're still alive. Most people completely sever themselves from their bodies, trying that spell. You interpreted the anise correctly, I assume?"

"Yes," I said, faintly pleased that I could answer in the positive.

"What else?"

"Valerian," I said, shifting uncomfortably on spirit-feet. Valerian's main use in herbal remedies is as a sleep aid. In magic, it translates roughly the same way, being used mainly in spells to bring on dreams. Which might help explain why nothing looked quite solid. I wasn't entirely in a spirit realm. It's possible I was also in a dream state. I had thought about that after I picked it, but mostly I had picked it because it stank. "It was the smelliest thing I could think of."

"And you ended up here," she mused. "You are exceptionally fortunate, girl."

"Thank you." Well, what else was I going to say?

The hood moved as she nodded, some decision reached. "Rosemary," she said.

"Sorry?"

"The smelly herb from Almira's garden. It's rosemary."

I rolled my eyes at myself. Rosemary. Of course.

"Go home, girl," the cloaked woman said. "And stay to your own body. It isn't safe to be abroad now."

"I'll do my best," I said. "But I have to help this ghost."

She hesitated. "His worries will be over soon," she said softly. "Begone."

One word, accompanied by a flick of her wrist. Green energy boiled out of the ground and swatted me.

My breath whooped out of me as I slammed back into my body, the reaction flinging me out of my circle entirely. I felt my head hit the wall, and then I didn't feel anything for a long, long while.

---

When I woke up, it was dark. Wait, it had already been dark. Hadn't it? What time was it? What day was it? Where was I? And was my brain, in fact, leaking out of my ears?

"Ow," I said, trying for a quiet, dignified whimper but sounding more like a wounded seal.

A herd of wildebeest trampled up the stairs. My head throbbed in time with their pounding hooves. Whumpity-whump went the wildebeest. Whumpity-whump went my head. My hands tried to lift so they could locate my skull, but they were pinned beneath a steel plate.

Matt burst into the room, sans wildebeest. "Grace!" he shouted, flinging himself at me.

"Ow," I protested conversationally. I knew I was repeating myself, but it was my best monosyllable.

"Oh thank god. You just blew backwards and then you didn't wake up. I didn't want to move you. All I could think about was what you said about what might happen if someone moved your body, so I just covered you up. I figured as long as you were breathing ok, I should probably wait."

Ah. A blanket. That's what was weighing my arms down. Steel plate, fuzzy blanket. Easy mistake to make. I peered at Matt, who was staring at me as if I held the key to the universe. I didn't think I even had the key to the universe's minibar, but I didn't want to tell him that and dash his hopes.

Also, I think I was a little loopy. "What time is it?" I said, trying to make my tongue move in the correct patterns for speech.

"Around five in the morning," he said. "Dawn soon."

Dawn. Crap. I had to hurry, and couldn't hurry. "Help me up."

With Matt's help, I rose to my feet and wobbled there for a minute until the birds circling my head flew off. I had a lot more sympathy now for ghosts we'd banished. I wondered if it hurt even if you didn't smack into a wall. I hobbled over to the circle and retrieved the herb bundle from inside it, then sat on the rolled up carpet and began picking it apart.

"Go downstairs," I said to Matt, "and look through the kitchen cupboards. See if they have any rosemary in the spice rack. Don't turn on the lights. We still don't want the neighbors wondering what's going on."

"Rosemary?" He didn't go. "Wait, you're going to try this again? Are you nuts?"

"No," I said. "Just better informed. I messed up the incense; I need rosemary." I spread out the herbs and began flicking aside the small, hard bits of Valerian root.

"I am not helping you. Something catapulted you across the room and into a wall, Grace. The whole point of this was to stop people from being hurt, not to land you in the hospital."

I waved an impatient hand at him. "It wasn't Arnold. I messed up, I wasn't in the house. I need the rosemary to do it right." I rose unsteadily. "I'll go get it."

"No," Matt said, pushing me back down. "Just sit here. Look, there's more. I… I tried to call an ambulance. I thought maybe I should risk it. I didn't know what to do." He took a deep breath. "Here's the thing, though. The phone's out."

I waited, staring at him. "Your phone doesn't work after being in proximity to someone working a spell. I'm shocked. Shocked, I say."

He shook his head with an ease I envied. "It's not just my phone. The house phone's out, too. And all the power. I went outside to look around, and the whole city's dark. The power's out all over Chicago."

What the hell? I certainly hadn't done that. I swallowed. "I don't know," I admitted. "It's probably all related. The ghosts, Arnold, the cloaked people, now this… I don't know how. Arnold might be able to tell us more, but I need the rosemary."

Matt sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. "I'll find it. But I honest to God don't know why you're going through this much trouble."

My hands fell to my lap and I stared at the mess of herbs. "I saw him," I said.

"Him? Arnold?"

I nodded. "Just as clear as day. I saw him. He's not angry. He's terrified. He's… he's this little blond-haired blue-eyed boy. I can't just abandon him. Not now."

Biting my lip, I went back to sorting herbs by candlelight. I didn't look up when Matt left, taking a candle with him, and I didn't look up when he came back. He dropped a small plastic bottle next to me.

Picking it up, I examined it. McCormick spices. Sprigs of rosemary would have been better. "I can work with this," I said. "Thanks."

"If it wasn't Arnold," Matt said, "what happened?"

I mentally measured how much plant material had been burnt off and tried to add enough rosemary that the ratios would still come out. It made for a nice stall while I decided how much to tell Matt.

Whatever was happening to Arnold, it had something to do with the cloaked figures who had fought Dresden. I didn't know what, I didn't know how. What I did know was that any of the parties involved could kill me or him and not worry about needing to explain what happened to the bodies.

"Backlash," I lied. "Bad ingredients, bad spell. It happens, just not usually that violently."

"Then how do you know rosemary's the right ingredient?"

"It was one of two possibilities," I said. "Look, I know what I'm doing."

"I hope so," he said as I finished tying the sloppy bundle together. "If you have to be hospitalized, I have no idea how to explain any of this."

I stood up and went to inspect the circle. I had to focus. Whatever was going on out there, it wasn't my business. My job was here, in this house, helping a little boy. The cloaked people, they were Dresden's problem. Render unto Caesar and all that.

She-Cloak's slap had the same physical angle as the metaphysical one had; it had knocked me up and back. That turned out to be fortunate, because the lines of the circle were undisturbed. I know, because I went over them an inch at a time, looking for any smudge or smear in the circle or sigils and found none.

Some things just don't get any easier with practice. Inhaling burning herbal smoke while keeping up a chant in Latin is one of them. It didn't help that I had to focus past the throbbing in my head, either, but I managed. As before, the smoke stayed inside the circle. As before, there was no warning to the transition. This time, I remained standing in the circle. Silver-white light streamed up from the sigils and wrapped around my wrists and ankles. "Hah!" I said. "Score one for the cloaks."

I didn't see Arnold, though. Just Matt, and he didn't react no matter what I said to him. I tried to leave the circle, but I couldn't. Well, the spell was intended to keep me where I had been.

"Arnold?" I called. "Please come out. I can't leave this room."

Whatever type of spirit I was at the moment, I wasn't all-seeing. Arnold popped into view in front of me, lips turned down, eyes angled up at me. He didn't speak. I crouched to be more on a level with him. "I need to understand what's happening. I think you can tell me."

Nothing.

"You said Kemmler before, right?"

He vanished.

Crap.

I straightened up, sighing. "Arnold, come on. You're tearing up the house on a regular basis, and all you have to say for yourself is 'Kemmler'? I went through a lot of trouble to come here and talk to you."

"They're going to take me."

I turned. Arnold was behind me, staring out the window. "Who's going to take you?"

"Kemmler's people. They're taking everyone. They took you."

"They can't take me now," I said, pouring as much assurance into my tone as I could.

He looked back at me, all huge blue eyes and sad face. It was like a Precious Moments figurine with more dirt and a gun. "Don't let them take me."

"I won't let them take you."

Without movement, he was right in front of me. "Swear?"

I crouched again, meeting his eyes without blinking. "I swear," I said. "I won't let them take you."

Golden light flared through the windows, making him glow like a tiny angel. I blinked at the effect, then looked past him. Dawn. The rising sun, the new day, the beginning. It took a toll on all spells, and mine was no exception. My spell belonged to the old day, metaphorically speaking, not the new. I felt the spell fray. Arnold vanished and, with considerably more gentleness than I had the last time, I settled back in my body.

Raising a hand, I coughed and waved away the remnants of the incense.

"That was quick," Matt said, rising from his seat on the rug. "It went better?"

"Better," I agreed, rising carefully and stretching. My head still hurt. So did my neck, actually. How hard had I hit the wall? I turned to look at it, in case there was a Grace-shaped dent in it. "Not a particularly revealing chat, but it went better. I guess I can try again tonight. There just wasn't enough time before sunrise." I looked out the window as thunder grumbled. The sun had been a spiritual thing, then, not a physical one. "Such as it is."

"What did he say?"

"He said "They're taking everyone."" I shrugged. "Like I said, not revealing."

"Everyone?" Matt thought about it, helping me begin the cleanup.

"I think he meant ghosts. He said they took me."

"You got taken?"

"Yeah," I said. "I think I did. Let's go get some breakfast. I have to 'fess up."

The Brandersons had a nice electric stove and a microwave, neither of which helped much under the current circumstances. They also, however, had a fireplace. After a brief debate about which of us was better suited to starting a fire (Matt had been a Boy Scout, I had dropped out after Brownies), we managed to heat some water for instant coffee and scrambled up some eggs in a cast iron pan. It was all very Little House on the Prairie. As we ate, I came clean with Matt about what had happened during the first spell. He freaked out, predictably, but got over it when I kept pointing out that I was safe now.

While we ate, we pondered our next move. "Everyone seems pretty calm," he said, watching people outside the big bay windows on the front of the house walking around even at this early hour, despite the continued rain.

"An unexpected vacation day," I said. "No one really minds one of those. Wait until tonight, when it really gets cold and dark."

"And they start taking everyone."

I shivered and levered myself to my feet. "Well they're not taking Arnold," I said with far more conviction than was warranted by the disparity in power levels between me and the cloaks.

Matt looked up at me in surprise. "You have a plan?"

"I have part of a plan. Part one is to strengthen the wards on the house. They were originally designed to protect the inhabitants of the house, and technically that includes Arnold. It didn't include me, so there was nothing to stop me from getting grabbed."

He watched me rummage through my messenger bag and followed me into the kitchen. "What's part two of the plan?"

I handed him Entmeyer's journal. "You read while I work."

"Read it?" He looked as revolted as if I'd handed him half a dead rat. "I'm no wizard."

"I didn't say you had to cast anything. Just look through it."

"For what?"

"Anything about binding a spirit. Willing ones," I amended hastily. "Binding unwilling human spirits is… very bad."

"Bad like stuff blows up?"

Bad like the White Council would have me drawn, quartered, and the pieces tossed into separate volcanoes, just to be safe. But with everything I had already told him, with everything he'd seen so far, I still hadn't brought up the Wardens. "It's black magic," I said finally. "Evil. I'd rather not mess with it."

"Got it. No evil spells. Are they going to be written in blood or marked with a special little horned Mr. Yuck face so I know which ones they are?"

I sighed. "Just read. Let me know if you see anything, and I'll figure out which ones are workable and which ones aren't."

He went back into the living room to read and I got to work. I didn't usually mix religion and magic, but household wards were one exception. I filled a wooden salad bowl with water from the house's tap, sprinkled in some salt from the cabinet, and tied together a few bay leaves from the spice cabinet.

Holding one hand over the bowl, I whispered a soft prayer to Vesta, the Roman goddess of hearth and home. It wasn't an odd choice. Despite the anglicized name, the Brandersons were actually both of heavily Italian descent. They weren't particularly religious, either, and had been charmed when I had originally discussed the choice with them. Vesta it had been, so Vesta it was again.

I walked the house, using the bay leaf bundle to sprinkle salt water in the corners, painting the door jambs and windows and every possible entrance from the outside. I didn't neglect the chimney, electrical outlets, phone lines, ceiling light fixtures, vents, anything that could be used as a conduit. I even hit the pipes in the bathrooms.

It took hours. Arnold never made a peep the entire time, and neither did Matt. When I finally finished with the attic, I gave the house another once-over to make sure I hadn't missed anything. My last stop was the living room, where I found Matt sound asleep under a blanket on the couch, Entmeyer's book open on his chest.

I let him sleep. I had had a nap, however involuntary it had been, while Matt had been up all night worrying that I was dying and there wasn't anything he could do about it. He hadn't fallen directly asleep, I saw as I reached over to take the book. There were little slips of paper tucked into the pages, makeshift bookmarks tagging a couple of different spells.

I took the book to the fireplace and settled down next to it on a pillow after arranging another log on the fire. My head hurt. I was tempted to sleep too, but the day was slipping by and night was on its way.

Matt actually had a pretty good eye for this sort of thing. He had marked three spells. One of them bound a spirit to an object. It was almost what my little leather bag of herbs could accomplish, only on a more permanent basis. There wasn't any mention of how to undo the spell, though, and I didn't want Arnold stuck in a decorative vase or whatever.

Another one involved summoning and containing a spirit in a circle, but you had to have something belonging to the person you wanted to summon, and you had to know the spirit's true name for it to work. The theory was that once I had summoned Arnold, no one else could do it. It involved a lot of material, all things involved with the spirit. I didn't have the money or the time to run down everything we might need, and I certainly didn't have anything that had belonged to Arnold while he was alive, even assuming I could get him to tell me his full name.

The third one was the most freaky, but it was the only one I thought might work. Maybe. If things got desperate. I read it several times over, practicing the visualizations, the words, in case I'd need it.

I just really hoped I wouldn't.

My growling stomach finally told me it had been too long since scrambled eggs and coffee, and I went back to the kitchen. It turned out the Brandersons must eat out a lot because there wasn't much choice, and most of it was frozen stuff designed to be nuked. I wasn't sure how a Stouffer's lasagna would taste if cooked over an open flame, and decided not to find out. Peanut butter sandwiches and milk would do just fine, I decided after I sniffed the milk a few times.

Matt woke up and rubbed his head sleepily, half-snorting as he came to. I hid a grin behind a bite of sandwich. "Time zit?" he asked.

"Dunno," I said after a swallow of milk. "Sun's going down, though. I think. And the storm's getting worse. Time to cowboy up."

He stumbled over to me and took a sandwich off my plate.

"Didn't mean to sleep," he said, lips smacking on gooey peanut butter. "Some of it was kind of cool, then he went off about his neighbor's chickens. That dude was a few graham crackers short of a s'more."

"I know, right? Did you see the part about his boots? What was that?"

"Are all wizard books like that?"

"Wouldn't know," I said. "That was my first."

"Mine too. Cool. I've only been studying this wizard stuff for a few hours and I've caught up with you."

After that we ate in silence, and tried to ignore the fact that we were huddling together near the fire. Both of us kept looking out the window at the rain that smacked the glass hard enough to make me wonder if it was sleet. Every flash of lightning made one or both of us jump a little.

"Do you think…" Matt asked, glancing at me.

"Think what?"

He shook his head. "I'm not sure. I just feel jumpy."

"Scared," I said. "You can say scared, I won't tell anyone. I'm scared, too."

"I'm not scared," he said. "I'm the man, we don't get scared. I'm expressing solidarity with your fear."

"Power to the people," I said.

"Stick it to the man," he agreed.

His hand found mine, and we laced our fingers together, staring out at the storm.

Something crashed overhead. It's hard to say which one of us screamed louder, but I do know I got up first. And Matt was crushing my hand.

"Ow," I said, shaking my hand free.

"Arnold?" he guessed.

"Let's go find out."

The library. Everything we had done had been centered on the library, so we went back there. Halfway up the stairs, I took Matt's hand again. The house was black as the inside of a tomb. There were no streetlights to cast even a faint illumination, and the moon was hidden behind boiling storm clouds. Every now and then, a streak of lightning would give us a photo-flash view of the house, but believe me when I say that did more harm than good.

Matt pushed open the door to the library. It should have creaked. A nice creaking door was all this scene needed. Lightning blazed across the sky, flooding the room with blue-white light. In that split second, I saw Arnold in the center of the room, his mouth open in a scream.

"Holy shit!" Matt screeched, grabbing me hard in the darkness that followed. "Did you… Tell me you saw that."

"I saw that," I confirmed, my voice shaking a little. "That was Arnold. We need to light a candle."

I went to where I remembered the candles being, waiting for another flash of lightning to help me locate the lighter. My skin crawled as I thought about where Arnold was now, and did he possibly have a knife or an axe or something. As firmly as I could, I squashed the thought. Despite the atmosphere, Arnold wasn't a killer. He was a scared little boy. I had to pull myself together.

The candle gave off more warm golden light than seemed possible, and both Matt and I sighed in relief.

"Well," Matt said, coming over to join me in the room, "at least we know they haven't taken him yet."

I handed the candle to him while I looked for another. "No, not with the wards freshly set. They couldn't get him out without me knowing it. I'd feel it."

As if on cue, something hit my wards and the impact shuddered through me, sending me staggering like a drunk across the floor. A second impact almost threw me to the floor.

Matt grabbed me, supported me as I reeled under a third blow. "Inside," I garbled out. "It's coming from inside the house."

"Grace."

Matt's whisper caught my attention and I peered at the wall between the windows. A faint green phosphorescence glimmered there, no more than waist high. Arnold, I realized.

Before I could say it out loud, the glow slammed into the wall, into my wards, and rebounded.

"Is he trying to get out?"

I stumbled away from Matt, toward Arnold. "No," I gasped. "They're taking him."

Pressure built on the outside of my wards and I clutched at my stomach, feeling it like a fist. Whatever spell it was, it was calling the dead, summoning spirits, and it had no patience for anything like an invocation to an ancient Roman goddess. I reached for Arnold, a futile gesture. He wasn't solid, and I had no way to grab him.

I cried out in pain, shoving up the sleeves of my sweater, revealing long welts on my arm. Arnold evidently had no trouble trying to grab onto me. Another jolt shook my wards, and I saw Arnold bash into the wall again and again.

"Do something!" Matt yelled at me.

I gritted my teeth around the pain, the steadily building pressure, the intermittent slams of Arnold's energy against my wards, and began the awkward chant from Entmeyer's book.

This one wasn't in Latin, but I had studied French in high school and that's what the words had looked like to me. I had to hope I was right, that the pronunciations were at least close. More important, though, were the visualizations that accompanied it.

It was an invitation to possession. It couldn't force a spirit to take up residence in the mage's body, but it could offer the body if the spirit wanted to use it. It's not as easy as Whoopie Goldberg made it look, either. Or maybe it would have been if I were a medium, someone whose abilities were designed to blend with spirits. For a mage, there were instinctive barriers as well as deliberate ones. We never wanted anyone else inside our heads.

Until we did. And then it took some fancy footwork to get around our own knee-jerk defensiveness. Arnold must have felt the change. As I worked my way through the labyrinth of maybe-French, I felt something cold leech into me. Heat didn't drain away, it was just pushed back, deeper and deeper into my chest, into my mind.

This was it, my last resort. If I could shelter Arnold inside my own body, they couldn't take him. I wasn't even positive I'd be able to get him back out, not without damaging either him or me, but as I felt my wards crack and shatter, I knew I'd made the right choice. I felt his thoughts brush mine, his fear and the beginnings of hope, his youth and his incredible age. He was safe. They couldn't take him without taking me, and they couldn't take me. They couldn't take him.

Outside power, stale and bitter, lanced through me. It swept through my body with acid-tipped claws, raking my soul.

They took him.

I screamed.

---

I rediscovered sanity at about 70 miles an hour as The Purple Beast rounded a corner on tires that screamed only a little louder than I was. I caught my final scream, choked it down into a whimper and tried to get my bearings. I suppose the distance between me and Arnold was finally small enough that it didn't hurt, exactly. It wasn't comfortable, but I no longer felt like someone was trying to pull my nervous system out through my nostrils.

"Thank God," Matt said, glancing over at me before quickly returning his attention to the street. "Can I stop?"

"No!" I yelped, jerking upright in my seat. "Just keep going, go."

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel as he caromed down what I finally recognized as Green Bay Avenue at speeds that would have gotten him shot on sight, had there been any cops around. Or other traffic. "Which way? I've been playing warmer/colder with your screams since I dragged you out of the house and threw you into the car."

I gestured vaguely northwest. The storm battered at the car, but it was one long slab of pure American steel; no measly Midwest hurricane could stop it. I could feel Arnold in a not very nice way; I could taste his terror and pain on the back of my tongue like rotten meat and too much pepper. Whether I was part of him or he was part of me now, I couldn't say. It didn't matter, either. All that mattered was finding him and stopping whatever was happening to him.

"Holy shit!" Matt screamed, stomping on the brakes and fishtailing the car sideways into a parking lot, sluicing up a tidal wave of rainwater in our wake.

"Don't stop!" I yelled, looking back to see what he was looking at. "Holy shit!"

All I could see was a leg. It was a giant leg, covered in pebbly skin and glowing with a faint greenish light. The ground shook as that leg was followed by another. My brain wouldn't process. Leg, I got. Clawed foot, I got. That's all.

Without meaning to, I crawled out of the car to gape as 42 feet of dead dinosaur crashed past us. It roared as it thundered by and my eardrums flinched from the sound; wind, storm, pounding rain, Tyrannosaurus, it was all part of the same maelstrom of noise. Digging one massive claw into the pavement, it rounded a corner, tail thrashing to counterbalance itself. I ducked as pieces of building flew overhead.

I couldn't tell where the roar stopped and the storm took over. Car alarms wailed at owners who wisely stayed inside. I could still hear the rumbling of the dinosaur's passage as it continued down a side street, and, I swear to all the gods, I heard an oompah-oompah somewhere in the distance over the thunder and wailing wind.

Slowly, I looked over at Matt. He stood beside the car, door open, gaping. Even when he looked at me, he didn't manage to swing his jaw closed again.

Finally, I yelled, "Did you just see a tall wizard and a short, frizzy-haired, one-man polka band ride by on a zombie Tyrannosaurus Rex?"

Matt just stood there a moment, rain flattening his hair onto his head and drizzling into his open mouth and wide eyes. "No," he finally yelled back with a finality that left no room for discussion.

I turned back to the path of destruction. "Yeah," I said. "Me neither."

"Should we call someone?"

"Phones are out," I yelled, shaking the storm out of my eyes. "Besides, who do you want to call? Alan Grant?"

"Good point. So what do we do?"

"Follow that dinosaur!"

We got back in the car and Matt pulled out onto the trashed road, driving more carefully what with all the brand new Jurassic potholes. His common sense caught up with us about a block later. "Wait a sec, we're following that?"

"That was Dresden," I said. "Whatever's happening to Arnold, he's involved. He's going about the right direction, so we'll stay behind him and be secure in the knowledge that no one's even going to look twice at us when they can stare at a dinosaur." I thought about it. "Also, in retrospect, 'follow that dinosaur' is probably the coolest thing I'll ever say in my entire life."

"I want to argue with that, but I can't. By the way, I take it back again."

"Take what back?"

"You sincerely suck at magic."

Stupid Dresden. A freaking dinosaur. "Yeah," I sighed. "I know."

The dinosaur had left us in its tracks – almost literally, though the convertible handled better than you'd think for a land yacht – but it was surprisingly easy to follow the path of a Tyrannosaurus Rex through the streets of Evanston, monster storm or no. We hung another left on Central.

"Oh my God," Matt murmured, leaning forward to look ahead and up.

I didn't blame him. I was too. Ahead of us, through the trees and buildings, the clouds were glowing the same sickly green as the dinosaur had been, as the ghosts had been, and they spun around each other, an ugly vortex slipping with deceptive gentleness toward the ground.

"Arnold's in there?"

"I think so," I whispered.

My mouth went dry, and I bit my tongue as my teeth began chattering. I was soaked to the skin from my brief exposure to the rain, and I tried to tell myself it was just the damp that was making me cold. But my heart knew pure terror. What the hell was I doing?

Matt had stopped the car. "Grace," he said.

It was in his eyes, as surely as panic was in mine. Sympathy, I saw there, fear for me, understanding. If I wanted to give up, he wouldn't blame me. It was too big. It was all just too big. Neither one of us said anything, letting the squeak-slap, squeak-slap of the windshield wipers do all the talking.

I looked back toward the building tornado. Ahead, I could feel Arnold. He was there somewhere, caught in a spell that I hadn't protected him from. There was no way I could have. This was a clash of magical titans, people who could summon a vortex of the dead, who could call from the grave zombies of creatures that had been dead for millions of years. What did I have? A knife, a geek, and a pimp-mobile. It was absurd. The power divide was ridiculous, mind-numbing, staggering. I'd have laughed if I hadn't started crying.

I closed my eyes and hoped my tears would be masked by the rainwater still dripping from my hair. "I have to," I said, some part of me hating myself for being this stupid. "I promised him I wouldn't let them take him, and they took him. I can't let him die."

"He's already dead."

"Not to me. I have to try, Matt."

"It's suicide. You're going out in that with nothing more than a boot knife? What're you going to do if you run into that dinosaur? Go all Princess Stabbity-Stab on its toe?"

I looked out at the storm and chewed my lips. He was right. It was suicide. But somewhere in all that chaos was the spirit of one little boy who had looked up at me with big eyes and made me promise. "I have to," I said again.

He pounded his fists on the steering wheel. "Dammit, Grace…"

Our doors opened. I got grabbed and shrieked in fear, even as my mind identified the army uniforms and that no one was pointing a gun at me. "We've got to get you out of here!" the soldier yelled at me. "Come with me, right now!"

I snapped my head around to see Matt being similarly man-handled. National Guard, I realized. Athletic men with large guns, freaked out enough to use them. They could be a problem. "Stall!" I yelled at Matt.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I wrenched my rain-slick arm free and whapped up a solid veil with a pop of willpower and magic that would have been something to be proud of, in other circumstances.

"What the fuck?" I heard. "Where the hell did she go?"

"Where'd who go?" Matt asked, bless his quick-thinking brain.

"The girl, smartass! Where's the girl?"

"What girl?"

I didn't wait to hear the rest of the conversation, just pelted into the driving rain. My veil wouldn't hold, but it didn't need to. The storm was more than cover enough. I didn't bother to stick to the roads, not now that I knew where I was going. Even if I couldn't see exactly where I was going.

The wind spun around me, alternately pushing and pulling, and my hair whipped around my head, lashing at my skin and my eyes. I raised a hand to shield my face from the stinging ends, and couldn't even guess how far I had run. When I hit grass, it was half mud and it squelched around my boots, pulling and sucking at them. When I crossed sidewalks, I splashed through puddles. The roads were awash in streams that mocked the puny gutters they flowed past.

I kept moving toward the beacon of Arnold's desperation.

A ghost rose up from the ground like sickly green steam directly in front of me, and I squeaked in surprised, stumbling back half a step. Skin followed form, clothes followed skin, poured from the ground up. I stared while he rebuilt himself, and he stared back.

I didn't have my geek or my pimp-mobile, so I pulled out the only weapon I had left; my athame. It shimmered weirdly in the greenish glow rippling from the ghost. I shouldn't have stopped to gawp at it; it certainly wasn't the strangest thing I'd seen in the last hour, but I couldn't help it.

My attention snapped back to the ghost, a man with a bushy beard and an axe lifted over his head. In the time it took me to scream, he slashed it at me. I threw up an arm in a futile attempt to ward it off.

Just as the wraith-blade touched my arm, my aura flared an answering verdant green, paler than that of the weapon but definitely mine and definitely effective. The blade bounced. I didn't stop to ponder, just stabbed out with my athame.

The magical blade slashed cleanly into the ghost's chest, toward a brighter knot of light centered there. The tip slid in effortlessly, parting the twisting tangle of energy with ease. The ghost vanished, popped like a balloon. Steam hissed up from the knife; banishing the ghost had heated the blade, the falling rain cooled it almost instantly.

The spell, I realized. The spell calling the ghosts could be broken, my athame could sever the bond between ghost and spell. Suddenly, Arnold had a chance. I whooped and waved my athame at the clouds overhead. "Princess Stabbity-Stab to the rescue!" I howled, giddy with relief as I pushed my way through the sheets of rain toward the center of the storm.

The closer I got to the steadily descending tornado, the more my skin glowed. I could see it easily now. I looked like someone had coated me with the contents of one of those chemical sticks I used to swing around at raves. I stopped in the lee of a building to consider it. It had to be whatever remnant of Arnold remained with me. I was carrying part of a ghost inside me, in a way. All the necromantic energy in the air was calling to the dead, including the spirit of the dead I held. It was tugged out from its cozy nest inside me, seeping out of my pores.

I waved my hand a little, staring at the contrail of green it left behind. It was like a bad drug trip. Or a good one, depending on your viewpoint, I supposed.

I stopped. Beyond my hand, I could see a form sprawled on the concrete. Hurrying forward, I identified the gray cloak he wore. A Warden. It was a Warden. Dresden must have called in the troops.

"Hey," I said, leaning down to touch his shoulder.

He was cold, and I yanked my hand away in instinctive revulsion before cautiously reaching back out and turning him over.

Definitely dead. His eyes stared up at nothing, his expression slack in death. It had to be my imagination supplying the combination of rage and terror there. Had to be. It didn't take a genius to see what killed him; his throat gaped open, washed clean by the rain.

Lightning flashed close by, thunder shaking the earth as more ghosts slid from the ground. I yelped and lurched backwards, foot slipping on the wet cement. It wasn't quite enough to dodge the thrust of a saber. As with the axe man's weapon, the point of the sword hit my glowing aura and bounced. The ghost soldier frowned, then swung it like a bat and swatted at me. I flinched away, as the impact on my arm hurt.

My own ghostly aura protected me from the piercing weapons, but they could still knock me around. A shade grabbed me and threw me into the building. I flailed at him with my athame, the blade slicing without resistance through his ghostly flesh until it found the center of the spell binding him to life. His form swirled away, torn apart by the wind.

My hand let me know that my athame had gotten hot enough to be uncomfortable, but I just clenched it tighter and slashed at the next ghost even as he pounded me to the ground. I took his leg off in one swipe and he toppled sideways, tearing himself along the athame's blade until I could wrestle it around to the twist of energy.

The athame was glowing again, but not with ghostly energy. With heat. I cried out in pain as it shone red-hot, steam hissing around it. I didn't dare drop it, not with another ghost swinging his rifle at me like a club. I ducked as the weapon whistled overhead and passed through the building. While he was overextended, I lunged forward and pierced his chest.

My nerves decided they'd had enough of my idiotic commands, and my hand sprang open as the blade blazed molten white-gold. My screams were audible over the storm, and I clenched my good hand around my wrist. I could see the blisters rising on my skin and I slammed my hand into the cold water rushing down the street. Whether that was better or worse, I hadn't decided yet when someone wrapped an arm around my throat and dragged me backwards.

Choking, I skittered my gaze around until I found the athame on the ground. What was left of it, anyway. The lump of slagged metal cooling on the sidewalk bore no resemblance to the blade I had once wielded, except for the remnants of the hilt. I clawed at the arm around my throat, looking up and back to see the leering half-face of a dead cavalry soldier. I let go of his arm, trying desperately to suck in air, my hands flailing on the sidewalk.

Through the pounding of my pulse, I heard the clatter of metal as my hand met something. I grabbed at it, feeling something sharp bite into my skin. I didn't care, didn't have time to care, I just swung it backwards.

The soldier howled and let me go. I twisted around on my knees, sucking in whooping gasps that were as much rain as air. His half-face now clung to half a head, and I adjusted my hold on the sword, grabbing it by its grip. The sword fit uncomfortably in my burned and slashed hand, but I swung it anyway, splitting him cleanly in half.

Blade met spell, and severed it. He vanished howling, but as long as he vanished I didn't give a damn what sound he made doing it. I sat back on my heels, head bent, dragging in one breath after another past the pain in my throat. After a minute, I looked over at the dead Warden. His sword, I realized.

"Thank you," I whispered hoarsely. "I need this. I'm sorry."

Panting hard, I raked my muddy hair out of my eyes. I stayed on the ground, letting the rain pound over me before I gave in to Arnold's distant desperation and struggled to my feet again. "Coming," I muttered, heading into the storm. "I'm coming. Just hold on."

As I stumbled on, I had a hard time holding on to the sword. Part of that was the damage to my right hand, but part of it was simply the sword itself. There was something slippery about it in a way that was more like opposing magnetic poles than blood and rain. Well, it was definitely a magical item. It had sliced through the ghosts as cleanly as my athame had, and hadn't heated up doing it. Maybe the sword had been made specifically for that one mage, to handle his energies alone.

Oh well. As long as I could hold it, I would. It still cut for me, even if it didn't seem to like it much.

I realized that some of what I was hearing was the roar of the dinosaur. Dresden. Good. Maybe everyone would be watching Mr. Flashypants and ignore little old me. It wasn't really fair. He got to ride a dinosaur into battle, and here I was looking like something the cat wouldn't deign to drag in. I didn't even have my own magical artifact any more, didn't have time to grieve over its loss.

I also didn't have time to wonder if the dinosaur would eat me if I got in its way, so the lack of wondering time wasn't all bad.

Arnold was close now. I tried to stop, to take stock of the situation, but as I tried, I realized I couldn't. Confused and alarmed, I dug my heels in only to feel myself dragged forward an inch at a time. I fought against it with an undignified squawk. It would have been a determined, warrior-princess yell but for the damage to my throat, honest.

It was pulling me in, just like it pulled in all the ghosts. I could make out individuals now, a whirling mass of screaming dead, howling their outrage and fear as they whipped around the center of that descending whirlwind. And somewhere in that mass was Arnold.

But before I could save him, I had to save myself. I felt another tug, this one definitely pulling from the center of my body. Tendrils of green twined away from me, spinning outward and vanishing up into the tornado. Thin and vague as they were, I could still see them even in the lightning and the rain.

"Oh god," I whispered.

Reaching out, I snagged hold of a tree and held on for three entire seconds before the spell yanked me off my feet and I went flying. Beneath me, a small army of ragged people reached out for me, aimed rifles at me. I flew past them, hurtling toward the twister through a vicious cross-breeze; the wind was moving perpendicular to my flight, slinging debris as fast and hard as a hail of bullets.

Something slashed across my back. I shrieked and reached out, swinging wildly for anything. The sword flashed with reflected lightning; I had almost forgotten it. I struggled against the winds that slapped me back and forth like a kitten with a ball of string, wriggling onto my back before I could bring the sword to bear. I swung it gracelessly at the threads, and when blade met magic, magic lost.

The threads snapped and the wind lost its potency. I felt a surge of triumph for a brief second, until I realized how high up I was. For an instant, I had the horrible feeling that I was going to suffer a Wile E. Coyote death as I hung in the air, then plummeted.

I slammed into the muddy turf, managing nothing in the way of saving myself except for making sure the sword wasn't under me. The ground felt oddly lumpy and it stank. Even in my wobbly state, I pushed away from the stench and gagged as I realized I had landed on a man.

No, not a man. A zombie. Not a ghost like the things I had fought my way through so far, this was an actual flesh and blood zombie. Well, flesh anyway. Patchy flesh. And most sincerely dead, now that I had landed on it. Its arms were outstretched, reaching, clawing toward a figure that spun and dodged more of its kind.

The man's gray cloak swirled around him as he moved, despite the rain. His aura burned with latent fire, and he wielded a star-bright sword with one hand and a gun in the other. In the time it took my diaphragm to recover from its zombie-stomping, he had dispatched the other three around him. He whirled to face me, his gun snapping up toward my head.

"No!" I said, holding out my left hand, fortunately not the one with the sword in it. If I'd lifted a weapon, I was fairly certain I'd have been dead before I got even that one word out.

His wrist flicked upward, and a bullet smashed past my ear.

I squeaked and flung my arms belatedly over my head, then glanced behind me when I didn't end up all dead. Another zombie fell as I watched, lacking its head entirely. Gross.

The Warden's dark eyes narrowed at me as he finished his turn. Bronze skin glowed in a sheen of rain and sweat, reflecting the magic that he called. The hood of his cloak was flung back off his head, his ink-black hair wet with rain, shining like liquid obsidian.

I knelt on the gory remains of a splattered zombie, covered head to toe in mud and grass, in blood and zombie guts. Somehow, in a battlefield of the dead, I had found the one gorgeous wizard in the area while I didn't have so much as lip gloss on. My life sucks.

He lowered his gun. A fork of lightning flickered behind him, illuminating the gleam of his sword, his gray cloak swirling around him like he was the earthbound avatar of Dramatic Poses. He didn't speak.

So I did. "I can't let them take him!" I yelled over the howling storm, as if he knew exactly who I was talking about. "I swore I'd protect him!"

Whoever the Warden was, he didn't take a lot of time to think about it. He just glanced at the sword I was holding. I could see the muscle jump in his jaw, but the roar of the dinosaur behind him caught his attention. He began to move toward the sound, leaving me with one grim promise over his shoulder as he vanished into the storm. "I will find you."

Somehow, I didn't get a very Last of the Mohicans romantic vibe off that.

I felt a spike of fear not my own, and looked up. Arnold. He clung to the fringes of the storm. I could see him, struggling toward me, bound to me as I was to him. Maybe it made him metaphysically heavier, our tie, maybe …

It didn't matter. "Arnold!" I yelled, scrambling to my feet as the storm swept him past me. One leg protested violently and almost gave way, but I ignored it and broke into a limping run. I gave chase, slipping through the ranks of the zombies, dodging a flailing arm, ducking under a swung branch. Focused on Arnold, I clambered over upturned picnic tables and the fallen trunks of trees. I slid to a stop as a trash can bounced past me, driven by the wind, and managed to twist free of another grasping hand. Somewhere nearby, I could hear voices though I couldn't make out the words.

I kept my eyes on my prize. There had to be a way to reach him. I leaped onto the trunk of a fallen oak, an old giant that had withstood everything Chicago could throw at it for the last hundred years or so, until the demon storm. Thick branches spiked upwards into the air, whipping furiously, branches stripped bare.

Clumsily, sword in one hand, I scrambled higher into the spread of the branches of the fallen tree, scanning the sky constantly, searching the unearthly swirl of green-black cloud for one familiar form. Something smashed into the opposite side of the limb I clung to and almost shook me free. My muscles burned and quivered as I hung on, then forced myself higher, into the clear.

Debris scraped against me, clawing at my skin, and I raised an arm to protect my face. There! "Arnold!" I shrieked.

I don't know if he heard me or felt me. I saw his thin little arms swimming through the air, his body almost upside down as he reached for me. Bracing my boots on the tree limb, I prayed, begged, and flung myself into the air.

My arms wrapped around his head, and together we fell back to earth. I smacked into the branches of the tree I had just left, felt a stabbing pain in one thigh, and my legs collapsed under me as we hit the ground. But I had him pinned under me, as solid as the ghosts that attacked me had been, and I grinned even through the pain. "I got you," I said.

Relief and triumph died in a forward thrust of movement. We slid along the ground toward the vortex that hovered only scant feet over the ground, tearing up strips of muddy turf. I could barely make out human figures near the tip of the vortex. We were still moving. Oh gods.

I looked down at the spirit child, and suddenly I didn't want to do it, didn't know if I could do it. It was one thing to slice apart the half-fleshed homicidal spirit of a cavalry soldier who was trying to split my head open. It was very much another thing entirely to spear a little boy in the chest with a three-foot chunk of sharp, magical metal.

Princess Stabbity-Stab had left the building.

"I don't know what else to do," I whispered.

It didn't matter. He heard me fine and, so help me, he smiled at me. Then he nodded.

The spell dragged Arnold another foot across the ground, taking me with him. I flattened myself atop him as a picnic table bounced over us, driven by the screaming wind. Cold gripped my wrist. I looked down; Arnold 's hand, fingers circling the wrist of my right hand, the one with the sword.

I couldn't hear him, but I could read his lips. You promised.

I had. I gulped once, hard enough to hurt as I sat back, keeping him pinned under me though we inched closer to the funnel. "I'm sorry."

I reared back and pierced the bright heart at the center of his chest with the Warden's sword.

---

Apparently, that's when the other tree fell on me. I don't remember that part so well.

Evidently, it pushed me into ground that had been churned up into relatively soft mud. They only found me because one of the rescue crew saw my sword sticking out from under it. I should have died.

For a few days, I thought I had. But no such luck. When I was finally discharged from the hospital, it was with broken ribs, a punctured thigh, a bone-deep slash on my right palm that they couldn't stitch what with the third degree burns there too, and a series of ugly abrasions on my face that made me think about investing in belly dancer veils.

Oh, and enough antibiotics to cure Ebola, along with some painkillers that could make Timothy Leary hallucinate.

Matt had been a steady visitor while I was hospitalized, if only to find out how many IV pumps I would short out that week (four). We had a lot of fun watching the news. Ergot poisoning was our favorite mundane excuse. I would have lost $20 betting on 'gas leak', except that Matt had bet 'terrorist chemical warfare', so we both lost and just called it even.

He had a new car by the time I was discharged, his Toyota having been declared a total loss, and he showed up to drive me home. I sort of missed Barney the Purple Automobile, but it had vanished back into the night, off on another adventure, keeping a date with destiny.

"I wish I'd been there," he said yet again on the drive home.

"No you don't."

"No I don't." He flicked a quick grin at me, an expression that faded into sympathy as he looked at my face. "I just think maybe I could've helped."

"Not really," I sighed, eying with regret the lack of black velvet seat covers. Maybe I could buy him some. "I couldn't do much, wouldn't have been able to do anything if it weren't for the athame." A stab of sharper regret went through me, and I dropped my gaze.

"I'm sorry about that," Matt said softly. "I know it was important to you."

"It belonged to Anne Farrow," I said. "She's the one who taught me. And she got it from her first instructor, who got it from his first instructor." I sighed again. "I was the fourth generation of witch to carry it, to use it. And I broke it."

"You used it to save a soul," Matt corrected me. "Somehow I think all of those other witches would be proud it had been used that way."

I tried to smile, but it hurt my face to do that. "Yeah," I said. "Maybe you're right. Still, I wish I still had it. What was left of it."

"Maybe we could go look for it," he offered.

I shook my head. "Nah, I'm sure the city cleanup crew scraped it off the pavement and threw it into a dump somewhere."

"Well," he said after a minute, "at least you got a replacement."

The sword. The hospital had kept it with my belongings, though they weren't quite sure what I had been doing with it in the middle of a tornado. I had mumbled something about a costume party. Never mind that I hadn't had the rest of a costume on when they dragged me out from under the tree.

"It's not really mine," I said, remembering the look on the Warden's face.

He changed the subject. "Hey, I went by the Brandersons' house. They're back in town."

"Really? Everything quiet?"

Matt nodded. "Not a peep, they say. I guess that means Arnold's really gone."

It made me feel bad. It shouldn't have. "I guess so."

"I told them that we thought Arnold's antics had been designed to get them out of Chicago, where they'd be safe. And now he had moved on."

"That was nice," I said, smiling at him. "It's a better ending than the real one."

"Yeah, I wasn't sure how to tell them about dino-zombies and a ghost tornado."

"That's your ergot poisoning talking."

"I'm having a relapse," he agreed.

There was no parking in front of my apartment building, surprise surprise, and Matt double-parked. "Want help getting upstairs?" he offered.

I shook my head. "Nah," I said, opening the door and levering myself out carefully. It wasn't easy to manage one crutch, the sword, and the bag of pills and orange juice from the drug store, but I had to learn. "Wouldn't want you to get a ticket."

"Oh no," he said, leaning across the car to watch me. "Not a ticket. How horrible."

I laughed a little, despite the pain. "One little zombie apocalypse, and your Horrible Things scale gets all wonky," I chided. I wedged my way toward the stairs.

"Hey, Grace?"

I half-turned.

Matt had gotten out of the car and was leaning on the roof. "Do you think you'll call him?"

"Who?"

"Dresden."

"And say what?"

"I dunno. Hey, I really liked your sweet dino-ride? Something. So he knows you were there."

"Why would I want him to know?"

He flung up his hands, exasperated. "Don't you want someone to know? You saved Arnold."

I winced and looked down. "Did I?" I asked after a minute, squinting across the glint of sunlight at him.

Matt didn't answer right away. "I think you did," he said finally, firmly. "Maybe he moved on, y'know, wherever spirits are supposed to go. Either way, he didn't get eaten by the storm."

I tried to take comfort in that not for the first time since I had woken up, and probably not for the last time either. I hefted my bag. "Gonna go inside," I said, "get stoned, sleep for a few years. I'll think about the rest of it later."

He waved me off. "Yeah. Go indulge your drug habit. I'll call you tomorrow."

I made it up the stairs with considerable thumping and wobbling. Once inside, I dropped the sword onto the café table and the drugs on the kitchen counter, pausing to catch my breath. Eyeballing the distance to my day bed, I pondered the odds that I could get there before the drugs kicked in versus the difficulty in getting over there with a glass of orange juice.

Before I could weigh all the pros and cons, someone knocked on my door. Unencumbered, I limped to the door.

It was Warden Gorgeous. And I still didn't have any lip gloss on, dammit.

I winced and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for him to rip through my little wards. When he didn't, I eventually peeped one eye open.

He looked confused. "May I come in?" he asked, his voice brushed with a Spanish accent that was just as pretty as the rest of him.

"Uh… Sure." I was confused myself. "Sorry. It's just, y'know, the last Warden who visited me barged in and fried my toaster."

His expression cleared and brightened into a smile that was all white teeth and flashing dark eyes. Every estrogen molecule in my body sighed and fluttered its eyelashes. "I would never barge into a lady's home," he assured me.

I think he was flirting with me. I looked like I'd been dragged face first across Satan's patio, then been beaten soundly with Satan's patio furniture, and he was flirting with me. Awkwardly, I backed away from the door and let him enter.

He looked around with a bit. "I'm Carlos Ramirez," he said. "Warden of the White Council. But I suppose you knew that."

I hobbled to the day bed and sat heavily, keeping my wounded leg out. "The cloak and the sword sort of gave it away. I'm Grace Bowden, absolutely no threat to anyone whatsoever. But I know you knew that."

With another grin, he bowed his head slightly. "I know a few ghosts who might disagree with that self-assessment," he said, being generous. "I did say I'd find you."

"Oh. The sword. It's there." I nodded my head toward the table. "I can't say anything about the condition it's in, I'm afraid. It's been in hospital storage since the storm."

He crossed my apartment in three easy strides, gently lifting the sword from the table. His dark eyes were sad, the corners of his mouth turned slightly down. "Vaya con Dios," he murmured.

I felt guilty and ducked my head, not wanting to intrude on his grief. "I'm sorry," I said eventually, uncertain. "I wasn't trying to be disrespectful when I took it."

Ramirez shook off his sorrow and gave me another smile, though this one didn't have the wattage of his others. "Did the sword help you?"

I nodded. "Saved my life. Maybe someone else's, too."

"Then Raymond would have been pleased." He passed the sleeve of his sweater over the blade, then removed a sheath from the bag he carried and slid the sword into it. "Did you save him, then? The man you were out there for?"

"Boy," I corrected. "I was out there for a little boy." I stared unseeing at a square of sunlight on my floor. "And I'm not sure if I saved him or not."

"You tried."

"Is that enough?"

He turned toward me and shrugged, one of those gestures that says far more when a handsome Latino does it than when I do it. "You went into the teeth of that storm, braved things that killed people of great power, and you did it armed with nothing more than a knife and your courage. I think it's enough."

I struggled not to blush. "Yeah well," I said, grasping for something more eloquent to say. "I also had a geek and a pimp-mobile. Credit where it's due." Then I frowned. "Wait, how'd you know about the knife?"

"Ah. When we went back for our friend's body, this was nearby." From his bag, he drew out my athame.

I stared at it even as he stepped closer and held it out. I took it, stunned, turning it over and over in my hands. It was perfect. Oh, not newly-forged perfect, but it looked exactly as it had before the storm. It even felt the same, buzzing contentedly in my hand. I gaped up at him. "How…?"

Carlos grinned at my expression. "Entropy works both ways."

I laughed, blinking away tears of happiness. "No it doesn't," I said.

"It does when I tell it to," he said with pardonable smugness.

I believed him completely. I think I even fell a little bit in love with him at that moment. I looked back down at the athame before he could see the tiny beating hearts I had for pupils. "Thank you," I whispered.

"Anything for a brave and beautiful young witch," he said, bowing over my bandaged hand. Before I could even fumble for a reply, he slung his bag over one shoulder in an easy move that pulled his red sweater tight across his chest and let himself out of my apartment.

He really was pretty. For a Warden.

I carefully set the athame back in its place on my small altar, then took my pills and stretched out on my bed, wincing. Oxycontin seeped its little opioid fingers into my brain, confusing my neurons all to heck. I think I still hurt, I just wasn't sure I gave a damn anymore.

The lack of pain – or at least the lack of caring about the pain – made me sigh in relief. My head swam, the world blurred. Just before I dropped off the abyss into sleep, I was back in the storm, being dragged toward a howling tornado of the tortured dead.

My eyes snapped open.

I spent the next hour trying not to fight the drugs, trying to fall asleep.

Sometimes trying just isn't enough.