Morgan drew a sword – yes sword - from under his brown coat and moved towards the shop-front doors raising the point to trace one of the strange symbols Harry had painted on the doorframe. As he did so the sign glowed with a pale golden light that gradually brightened to near white. More magic, it made me feel twitchy. I decided I really didn't need to watch this and turned back to the kitchen climbing the stairs to the loft.

Harry was invisible beneath a tatty comforter. Bob stood brooding over him radiating love and concern, evil sorcerer my eye. "Bob," I hissed.

He looked up and moved to head of the stair; "Yes, Leftenant?"

I nodded towards Harry. "How is he?"

He shot a worried glance over his shoulder. "More drained than I have ever seen him but I cannot detect any permanent damage."

"Sheldrake-Peabody was torn to pieces," I said. It wasn't exactly a question.

"Yes." The monosyllable fell flat between us.

"Blankets," I suggested, "pillows?"

Bob blinked at the abrupt chance of subject then equally suddenly shifted from worried mentor to gracious host. "Of course, I beg your pardon, Leftenant. You will find bedclothes in the cupboard under the stair."

Smoke and sparks followed me back down the stairs and Bob reformed himself in front of the cupboard door. "It sticks a bit I'm afraid."

It did but after a few good heaves I got the door open. Harry owned three sets of sheets, a plethora of pillowcases – no two matching – an afghan, a quilt and what looked like an old horse blanket, not a bad collection for a bachelor. There was also an extra pillow. "So," I said, stuffing said pillow into a flannel pillowcase. "You were evil huh?"

Bob's face went stony, his eyes bleak. "Yes."

I picked up the afghan with my spare hand and kicked the cupboard door closed; "How evil, on a scale of one to ten?"

"Twelve." He bit off the word.

I sat on Harry's couch, punched the pillow into shape and wedged it against the arm. "Good."

Bob blinked then walked across the room to stand over me as I lay down under the afghan. "I beg your pardon?"

I shrugged as I tried to settle myself comfortably on the lumpy sofa. "We're going up against serious magical bad-guys right? It'll be real handy having somebody around who knows the type and how it thinks."

"The Lieutenant makes a good point," Morgan agreed coming from the hall. He subsided into Harry's broken recliner sticking his sword point down in the floor. "Well, Hrothbert, you know as much as we do - any speculation?"

Bob frowned consideringly, one hand moving to twiddle with the heavy ring he wore on the other. "As you know Justin Morningway was engaged in a plot against the High Council six years ago –"

"That would be the High Council that's disbanded leaving us all in the lurch?" I inquired.

"That is correct."

"Just checking," good to know I was up to speed.

"The Council in its infinite wisdom concluded that Morningway had acted alone," Bob continued to me, "though several members, including Ancient Mai the head of the Council, chose to regard Harry as a co-conspirator who managed to escape justice on a technicality."

"Harry?" I started to laugh then I remembered what I'd seen earlier in the night and choked on it.

"Dresden was known to have used Black magic against his uncle," Morgan said quietly.

"Accidently, in the midst of a desperate struggle," Bob snapped. "Harry killed Morningway in self-defense, Leftenant."

I looked at Morgan. He nodded heavily. "That is true. But Black magic is seductive and highly addictive. A practitioner who has fallen once is likely to do so again."

"If you're trying to tell me Harry's evil I'm not buying it," I answered. No man who'd put himself in harm's way as many times as Harry had, for innocent and not so innocent people alike, could be anything but good. Not bright maybe but good. Sure I'd arrested him a couple of times but deep down I'd never really believed he was guilty of anything but yanking my chain.

"I did," Morgan said flat and bleak.

"I was not in Justin Morningway's confidence," Bob continued grimly. "But I did witness his final confrontation with Harry. You may recall, Warden Morgan, I said at the trial that Morningway had spoken of 'others' I suggest that those others were considerably higher placed than anyone suspected."

"Sheldrake-Peabody," I said.

"And possibly others," Bob added, his pale eyes on Morgan.

"I agree," said the Warden heavily.

I hiked myself a little higher on the pillow. "Okay, so they've achieved their first aim – the High Council is history. Any idea what their next move is likely to be?"

"Yes," Bob answered, "It will be against Harry."

"Say what?" I said blankly.

Morgan leaned forward. "Explain yourself, ghost."

"Gladly," said Bob. "Justin Morningway went to considerable lengths to obtain custody of his nephew as a child and to recruit him as a man. We know that Harry is an unusually powerful wizard – presumably so did the conspirators. Failing to co-opt Harry for their cause they have done their best to eliminate him as an opponent. As long as the Council existed they had to work covertly by feeding suspicion and prejudice against him. Now that the Council has fallen they can and will attack him openly."

There was a silence as we all digested that. I thought of Harry asleep upstairs, exhausted and defenseless. Of all the times I'd seen him bruised, bloodied and vulnerable. And I thought about him facing down Sheldrake-Peabody hurling lightning and thunder like some ancient god. I shivered and I didn't know whether it was out of fear for Harry of fear of him.

Morgan nodded slowly, coming to some decision. "Given that we have no idea who our enemy is or what their plan may be, it's fortunate that we can count on them to come to us."

Well that was one way of looking at it.

…..

A deep resonant sound like big bell knocked me out of a light doze. I opened my eyes to see Morgan disappearing down the hall. I flung aside the afghan and hurtled after him, sliding to a halt at the back of the shop-front. Bob came through the wall a second later and together we took in the scene before us.

A thing with a woman's body and a demon's face stood in the entrance, both doors were flung wide but it – she? – was being held outside by a wavering gold-white magic force field. Morgan stood facing her, sword in hand. His back was to us but the demon woman was clearly pissed.

"Have you gone mad?" she almost shouted.

"No, Mai," he answered, his deep voice calm as a dose of valium. "I have finally gone sane."

I leaned towards Bob. "That thing's the boss Wizard?"

He nodded, pale eyes not moving from the confrontation before us.

"Yeeks!" I said softly. Harry had that gunning for him?

"You're siding with Dresden!" The demon wizard was saying with furious disbelief.

"I am allying myself with the only Wizard in our world who is certainly not implicated in a Black magic conspiracy of unknown extent that has already succeeded in taking out the High Council." Morgan returned evenly.

She stared at him. First the anger went out of the demon-face then it morphed into a woman's, young, pretty, Asian - and stricken. "You suspect me," she said in shock. "Me?"

Morgan nodded. "Yes, Mai, I do." His voice was barely above a whisper and the hand holding the sword quivered ever so slightly but he continued steadily. "Harry Dresden is a threat to the conspiracy – and you have been pushing for his head since the day he killed Justin Morningway."

Mai looked like I would look if Kirmani came out and accused me of being a dirty cop. Like a trust, a partnership she'd relied on had suddenly broken in her hands. Then she went demon again, angry demon. "You're trusting in a Morninway," she hissed, I mean literally hissed like a snake or a steam kettle, "a Morningway?"

The sword came up again. "I am trusting Harry Dresden," Morgan answered.

"Justin Morningway's nephew," a claw-like hand stabbed towards Bob, who flinched, "His student!"

"Oh give me a break!" It wasn't until everybody, including the ghost, turned to stare at me that I realized I'd spoken aloud. I seemed to have the floor so I walked forward to stand next to Morgan, only then realizing just how tense he was. "You don't know squat about Harry do you?" I asked old demon face. "So, he comes from a bad family. So Bob here made Voldemort look like choir boy umpteen centuries ago, none of that's got a damn thing to do with who Harry Dresden is and what he does, which is help people. And frankly, lady," I finished, "if I had to pick who was the evil wizard around here I'd choose you!"

Bob's faint, "Oh my word," was clearly audible in the stunned silence.

I was on a roll. "On the off chance you aren't the bad guy you might want to take a closer look at this Wizard Peabody's associates instead of picking on Harry. In the meantime we've got better things to do than stand around arguing with you." I snagged a door handle in each hand and slammed them right in that demonic face. I looked up at Morgan, his mouth was hanging open. "So that was your boss?"

"Yes," he seemed to be testing his voice as if not quite sure it was in working order.

"Oh my," Bob seemed to be having trouble with his voice too. If he hadn't been dead I'd have offered him some smelling salts. "Leftenant Murphy you have just insulted the former head of the High Council and quite possibly the most powerful wizard in the world."

I walked past him on my way back to the couch. "So? I've already got God knows how many wizards gunning for me, what's one more?"

…..

Harry laughed himself sick. "God," he said, wiping the tears from his eyes, "wish I'd seen that."

"I can't quite believe I did," Morgan said dryly.

The hour was ungodly. Harry's bathroom mirror told me I looked like five miles of bad road after a broken night in his sofa. And all he had in the way of breakfast was cheerios – without milk. No wonder he's so skinny.

I took a sip of the instant dreck Harry uses for coffee. "Come on, guys, give me some help here. I need to close the Sheldrake case and the truth just won't cut it."

"No kidding," Harry's flexible face furrowed in concentration. "You said you'd found Peabody's body, Morgan, what did you do with it?"

"Brought it to the Council chamber to prove my case," he answered.

"Can you get it back?"

Morgan considered, "Probably."

"That was a huge storm last night," I said slowly. "I could say my suspect was killed by a tornado."

"Which in fact is almost exactly what happened," Morgan agreed.

"I'm going to need something to tie Sheldrake decisively to the murders though," I continued, thinking out loud.

"I'm sure that can be arranged," said Morgan.

…..

"I guess God is on the side of the CPD."

I finished signing on the dotted line put the form into the finished pile and reached for another before looking up at Kirmani leaning over the partition between my cubical and his. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Sid."

He gave me his patented 'you gotta be kidding' look. "Come on, boss, who's the one who always says suspect coincidence?"

"Me," I answered, writing my badge number on the top of form twenty or thirty. "But unless you believe somebody other than God called that storm down on Sheldrake after planting an address book full of the victim's names and information in his pocket, a coincidence is what we've got." Wizards may be quick to anger but mine weren't at all subtle. I mean talk about obvious, guys!

Normally I hate the paperwork associated with closing a case but today I actually enjoyed it, reveling in the normality of it all and sometimes forgetting for minutes at a time that my life had taken a sharp right into the Twilight Zone. I now had saving the world as a second career and if my wizardly associates and I failed the normalcy I was currently enjoying would be history – but hey, no pressure!

I drove home at the end of the day to find my house full of wizards. I walked through my front door and there was Harry, face intent as he finished daubing a weird symbol on the solid oak divider between living and dining rooms. Looking around I saw signs everywhere; on the paneling, the damask wallpaper, every window frame, the carved mantle over the fireplace and even the ceiling. "Dresden!" He jerked around to stare at me, brush dripping on the hardwood floor. "What the hell are you doing!"

He made calming motions with his other hand. "Easy, Murph –"

"Easy!" I fairly shrieked, "What have you done to my living room!"

Suddenly Bob was at my side. "Harry is incorporating defensive wards into your home, Leftenant. It is necessary for your safety –"

"Unless you want move in with me," Harry finished for him with a suggestive smirk I took a step forward with murder in my heart and he flung up both hands defensively. "It'll be okay, Murph, I promise. Just let me finish."

"Please, milady," Bob coaxed.

I growled in my throat but hey, the damage was done so I plopped myself in the nearest chair and divided my glares between the ghost and his wizard as Harry finished defacing my historic woodwork. Then he picked up his hockey stick, which had been leaning against the back of the couch, and took up a stance in the middle of the room stick held blade end up at arm's length and bowed his head in concentration.

The hockey stick started to glow gold. I swallowed, I really don't like magic. Blue-white energy uncomfortably similar to the lightnings I'd seen Harry wielding the night before coursed down the stick illuminating strange signs written in light. Power exploded from the hockey stick and I shrank into myself as tendrils of light shot out in all directions touching the painted symbols and making them blaze. The walls of my house fluoresced golden - just like Harry's hockey stick. And then abruptly it was over; my living room was back to normal, no lights no painted symbols. Harry's hockey stick was just a piece of wood and Harry himself was dropping onto the couch and breathing hard.

I unwound myself slowly; "That it?" He nodded slightly, his head rolling back to rest on the sofa. "You okay?"

"Sure," he said not opening his eyes.

I looked at Bob, he nodded reassuringly. "Setting wards is fairly energy consuming, Leftenant." He thought a minute, trying to come up with a comparison I could comprehend. "Rather like running a mile."

"Except your legs aren't sore the next day," Harry said.

Morgan came in from the hall. "I am finished upstairs," he said to Harry then gave me a polite nod. "Good evening, Lieutenant Murphy."

"Yeah, just terrific," I reached into my purse and took out a tightly folded wad of papers. "Copies of the evidence from the Sheldrake case," I explained holding it out to him. "I thought maybe you'd see something in it we missed."

"Thank you, Lieutenant." He took the papers over to a chair, unfolded them and started reading.

"So, anybody try to kill Harry yet?" I asked the room at large.

"I have managed to resist the temptation," Morgan replied, eyes on the reports. Harry smirked.

"Me too," I said, "though I came close when I found him painting graffiti all over my living room."

"Hey, how about some trust here?" Harry asked finally opening his eyes.

"You are a loose cannon, Dresden," Morgan said.

"Amen," I agreed with feeling; powerful, unpredictable and dangerous as hell. I looked at Harry sprawled on my couch, all cute, scruffy and vulnerable, and sighed. Getting my head around both of his aspects was going to take some doing.