"You want me to go to a haunted house?" Murphy asked. Then after a brief pause, she added, "With you. On Halloween."

"Not with me. FOR me," I corrected. "And it's a Haunted House,"

"What's the difference?"

"Capital H."

Murphy sighed and shot a look up at me through her bangs that made me feel about six inches tall. It's a more impressive feat than it sounds, as I stand about a foot higher than her.

"Murph, please," I looked at her as earnestly as I could. "I really need your help on this. If I go in there, it'll be like...sending a nuclear bomb in. If something's up, you've got enough experience to know, and if not, there's no damage done. I don't want to risk denizens of the after-life assuming that I've come to do them bodily harm. Er, non-bodily harm."

"And why would the ghosts think you're out to harm them, Dresden?" Murphy has an amazing number of looks. This one demanded explanation, or I might be facing bodily harm.

"That thing coupla years ago," I muttered darkly, remembering. "Where I might have possibly dealt with some necromancers and their legions of zombies and ghostly hordes. Thus killing them all."

Murphy knew what had gone down that Halloween, basically. In the way that I'd told her that I'd "handled" the final reunion of Kremmler U. I'd left it vague for one simple reason. It had sucked. A lot. Several people had died, and I'd come face to face with a side of me I didn't know I had and that I wasn't comfortable with existing.

After what seemed like hours, Murphy sighed again. "Fine. I'll go. What, EXACTLY, will I be dealing with in there?"

"Could be anything," I began hesitantly. "Ghouls, poltergeists, the fae having a laugh at human's expense, demons, zombies..." I stopped at Murphy's dark glare and held up my hands appealingly. "Seriously. The victims I've talked to have been...incoherent."

"You have no idea what's going on in there?" she asked

"None. But I think it's bad, Karrin."

She looked me in the eye for a moment. I must've looked pretty serious because she didn't ask anymore questions, just nodded and rose to leave. "I better get going then."

I stood when she did but slumped back onto my stool once she left, a weight lifting from my shoulders.

See, I really COULDN'T have gone to the house. The magical community tends to be touchy around people like me. You know, people who have, say, killed one Faerie Queen, or attacked the castle of another. Or sent a zombie T-Rex to eat ghosts, or invaded a vampire stronghold. Things like that tend to put others on their guard around you. On the off chance there wasn't anything serious going on, I didn't want to show up and possibly CAUSE something serious.

On the other hand, if there WAS something harming these people, I didn't want whatever it was to be on its guard. I wanted it totally unaware so that when Murphy came back with the information I needed, I could kill it dead. Advantage: Team Dresden. Don't look so shocked. Sometimes I come up with something approaching a plan.

I was still congratulating myself when the phone rang.

"Dresden, I am going to KILL you!"

I moved the receiver away from my ear slightly. Murphy has an impressive bellow. "I'm...sorry?"

"It's not a house. It's a goddamned FOREST, Dresden! A giant fucking FOREST that is trying to eat people!"

"No one mentioned that to me," I said defensively.

I prepared for a verbal ass-kicking. There wasn't one, which made me eye the phone distrustfully. Stupid technology. In the midst of trying to figure out if I'd actually lost the call, or Murphy was so mad at me that she couldn't speak, I realized that the line wasn't actually SILENT. Pressing the phone hard to my ear hard, I tried to separate the background noise from the normal static and Listened. It's harder to Listen over the phone, but it's not impossible, so I blocked out the normal office sounds and focused on the other end of the line.

Heavy breathing, multiple voices shouting. Twigs snapping, something slapping against the phone. Another sound more similar to the static...rustling? The distinctive bark of a discharging firearm. Then there was silence. Murphy was running, and given the extra voices, she had other people with her. She was shooting …

Hell's bells. She was still IN the forest.

I dropped the phone without even attempting to return it to the cradle and bolted toward the front door. Stopping only briefly to don my protective leather duster and grab my staff, blasting rod and keys, I ran to the rescue. My beat up blue Volkswagen beetle kicked up gravel as I gunned it and headed toward the outskirts of town.

So much for my brilliant plan.