I am not going to go into great detail about what I saw during Nanoha's prematurely triggered teleportation spell. Suffice it to say that although H.P. Lovecraft's descriptions of things so horrible and alien that merely looking at them causes madness are slightly exaggerated (at least with normal vision; the Sight can very easily do exactly that), a scenic tour of various types of non-Euclidean geometry is still not very conducive to one's lunch remaining in one's stomach. At least there didn't seem to be anything alive watching us.

Except for the amused-looking woman with the parasol, but I'm pretty sure she was a hallucination.

Hell's bells, I hope she was a hallucination.

I must have blacked out at some point, because I woke up laying on the grass, with the sun shining straight over my head. The mother of all headaches reported in right on time, and I had to squeeze my eyes closed for a minute before I could look around again.

Molly was starting to sit up beside me, still clutching Bob and Fidelacchius. Nanoha, on the other hand, was still out cold, the slow rise and fall of her chest the only clue that she hadn't done worse than just give in to exhaustion. I had a feeling she'd stay that way for a while. Mouse was nowhere to be seen, which at this point could mean any number of things.

"Ugh," Molly said groggily. "What the hell was that?"

"Whatever it was, it's the reason we use the Ways instead of cooking up teleportation spells," I said. "That's your lesson for today, grasshopper. Did you see what happened to Mouse?"

She shook her head. "I just woke up. How long were we out?"

"That's a good question. So is 'where are we?'" I replied. We were apparently in the backyard of a good-sized two-story house. Looking up and around, I saw the backyard was also occupied by what was either a fairly large shed or a guest house, as well as a small pond. From what I could see over the fence, around the house seemed to be a fairly average assortment of similar houses and apartment buildings, with a bunch of high-rises a little further away. Okay. We were in a city. Some city. Somewhere. Nice, Harry. Really flexing those investigative skills right there.

"Your total time unconscious cannot be measured accurately due to temporal inconsistencies." I almost jumped as the jewel-thingy's voice popped back into my head; apparently the mental link was still active. "Total time unconscious after arrival was approximately one minute, eight seconds. We are in Uminari City, Uminari Prefecture, Japan, Earth. This is my Master's parents' home."

"Guess are little trip through the bad part of hyperspace worked, then. Wait. 'This' as in the city, or 'this' as in the house?"

"You are currently in the backyard of the Takamachi residence. You are also speaking out loud."

Molly was looking at me funny. I held up the jewel. "One of her gadgets," I said, nodding in Nanoha's direction. "It talks in your head. Does a lot of other things, too."

"I can also speak out loud," it spoke out loud, which—to my apprentice's credit—only got a raised eyebrow out of her. "My Master's last order was to render assistance to this Guest User; I will continue to do so as long as you continue to act in my Master's best interests."

"Which you will, if you know what's healthy for you." The voice came from right behind us; I whirled around to face—oh crap.

He was a middle-aged Japanese guy, big but not huge. He had greying black hair and dark brown eyes, but the family resemblance to Nanoha was obvious. And he was holding up a katana in a way that made it very clear that he knew how to use it. "Easy. No sudden moves. You're lucky Raising Heart spoke up when she did; this blade might have been at your throat by now. Now, who are you, why are you with my daughter, and why were you all unconscious on my lawn?"

Well. That could have been worse. It could have been better, granted, but it definitely could have been a lot worse. Or perhaps not, judging by the very large, dog-shaped shadow I noticed in some nearby bushes. (For a cross between a Caucasian shepherd and a main battle tank, Mouse can be surprisingly stealthy if he wants to be.) "Um. Harry Dresden. Professional wizard. She's Molly Carpenter, my apprentice. Your daughter hired me to help her hide from some people who were chasing her. Things got a little hairy, and she decided to teleport us here to throw them off. She was a little vague, but she said you could protect her. Somehow."

He nodded and lowered the sword. Apparently, I had answered correctly; I took that as a cue to stand up. He offered his hand and I shook it. "I'm Nanoha's father. Shiro. You said you're a wizard...you're with the White Council?" His English was flawless, just as Nanoha's had been.

"Yes." Huh. Another guy named Shiro with a katana. Was 'Shiro' just a swordy kind of name in Japan or something? And apparently Nanoha wasn't exaggerating when she said her family was in the know—the White Council wasn't exactly top secret, but neither did it advertise its existence to the mundane world. "Not on official business, though. I work as a private investigator in Chicago; she must have found me in the phone book."

Another nod. "I've never cared much for the Council, personally." Molly made an indistinct noise of approval at that. "But if Nanoha trusted you enough to give you Raising Heart, well, I trust my daughter's instincts on these things. He can be trusted?"

I wasn't quite sure who he was addressing with that question, until the jewel in my hand spoke up—in my mind, this time. "Guest User, Mr. Takamachi is requesting that I read private information from your mental state and convey it to him. No information other than your intentions towards my Master will be read, no external information can be written to your mind, and none can be conveyed to other individuals—not even my Master—without your express permission. Do you accept? Please speak response aloud to verify conscious decision."

I blinked a couple times. Hell's bells. The fact that it had asked my permission probably meant that I hadn't given this thing an all-access pass to the inside of my head just by activating it, but I still didn't want it to go poking around in my thoughts. I frowned and mumbled "No."

"This Guest User has not authorized access to those elements of his mental state,"the jewel-thing immediately spoke aloud. "However, his actions so far have indicated a sincere desire to aid my Master, despite confusion regarding elements of the situation he does not yet understand, although his motives may be partially mercenary in nature. Similar inferences can be made regarding Miss Carpenter. The canine currently residing in the bushes to your left is so far unreadable, but seems to be both highly intelligent and loyal to this Guest User."

Shiro looked sharply at Mouse's hiding place, where the gigantic dog was already noisily revealing himself, shooting what could only be a canine glare at the jewel-thingy. He covered his surprise well. "Is that a Foo dog? Been a while since I've seen one of those."

"No worries," I said. "He's friendly. To people who aren't trying to chop my head off, anyway."

Shiro shook his head slowly. "A Foo dog. A bloody Foo dog. I guess my daughter went to the right place." He sighed. "That'll have to be good enough for now," he said, looking down at his daughter's unconscious form. "Where's Vivio?"

"Pardon?" It sounded like a name, but not one that I'd heard Nanoha say.

"Vivio. Nanoha's daughter. Where is she? She had to have been with her."

"Her—she has a daughter?" Molly spoke up, echoing my own thoughts. In the limited time I'd had to speak with her, I hadn't figured Nanoha as the type who'd have a kid at her age.

That raised a whole bunch of new questions, and more questions were exactly what I didn't need right now. "Nanoha hasn't had anyone with her since I met her," I said carefully. "Though that was only a few hours ago."

Shiro frowned. "That doesn't make sense. She wouldn't have left her behind. Has Nanoha mentioned her? At all?"

"Not that I can recall."

He shook his head. "She must have left her with Fate...I wish she had told us more."

"She contacted you?"

"She called a few days ago, told us that she'd gotten in some kind of trouble, but that she was okay and not to worry. She asked me how I'd go about 'disappearing' for a few months."

"Why would she ask you about that?"

He smiled joylessly. "Let's just say she had good reason to believe I was familiar with the topic, and leave it at that. Now—"

He was interrupted by a loud noise that resembled nothing so much as an entire forest being chainsawed down simultaneously. I looked down.

Nanoha had started to snore. Loudly.

There was an awkward moment of silence. "Why hasn't she woken up yet?" Shiro finally asked, his voice edged with concern.

"Well...I think she put a lot of energy into that teleport. And she kind of implied she hadn't slept properly in a few days."

"So she knocked herself out. Again." He shook his head. "She always pushes herself too hard."

"Pushes herself too hard? You do know she's been running for her life?"

He narrowed his eyes at me. "I know quite a bit about what she's been doing, including a lot of what she refused to tell me. Doesn't mean I like to see my baby girl do that to herself, again and again..." He sighed. "We can talk about this later. For now, let's get her inside." Without further ado, he gently hoisted her up and began to carry her over towards the house.

"Right," I said. "Molly? Mouse?"

The Takamachi household...well, it was big. Not huge, but big, especially considering I'd heard living space was at a premium in Japan. And its sheer emptiness made it feel all the larger—I'd expected a few more people from the way Nanoha had talked about her family.

"Does anyone else live here?" I asked Shiro.

"Just my wife, Momoko, and I. She's at work right now—we've been alternating days off since Nanoha called us, in case something happened." He looked back at me, frowning. "It does feel too quiet in here, doesn't it? It's just been the two of us since the children moved out. They stop by once in a while—mostly Miyuki, my other daughter; she lives close by—but it does get lonely sometimes. Which is why we spend most of our time at the cafe."

Nanoha's room was pretty much what you'd expect from a nest that empty—a precisely made bed, carefully arranged stuffed animals, and various other mementos of a childhood not long past, all intended to let their owner know that no matter where she had gone, she always had a home there.

Wish there was a place like that for me.

Shiro carefully laid his daughter down on the bed; she murmured something indistinct and rolled over. "Rest well, little Nanoha," he whispered, then motioned us out of the room. "All right," he said once the door was closed. "How long do we have?"

"I don't know. Nanoha said the teleport would throw off their tracking spells, but she didn't say by how much or for how long."

He grunted neutrally. "Let's assume they're already on their way. There's a reason Nanoha came back to me for help."

"She said you had 'resources', whatever that means."
"Well, she's not wrong. My old job...I have contacts. I know some safehouses. And if it comes down to a fight...well, it's been a while, but rest assured I can handle myself."

I remembered him standing over me, katana raised, and nodded. "Considering what she's told me, I was hoping to get her under official White Council protection as soon as possible. I don't think any mundane security is going to help for long, and...the Council needs to know what she knows."

"Hm." Shiro took a moment to consider that. "I may not like the Council much, but I think you're right about that. The protection part, anyway; I doubt much good will come of them knowing about the TSAB."

"The what?" The introduction of an acronym has, in my experience, never helped a situation in any way.

"The TSAB. It's..." He paused. "Nanoha hasn't told you much about who she's on the run from, has she?"

"Only that it's an organization she works for. And that they're, uh, foreign."

"Organization. Well. It's definitely an organization," he said cryptically. "And has she told you how 'foreign' they are?"

"She has, yeah."

"And you believed her?"

"It's really the only thing that makes sense, unless she's a time traveller or something."

"Wait, what are you guys talking about?" Molly asked. I hadn't specifically mentioned the part about where Nanoha had come from to her.

"Space," I said. "The final frontier. Except it's apparently not much of a frontier."

"Oh," Molly said. "Oh."

"Yeah," I said. "It's that big."

"I need to make a few calls," Shiro said. "Help yourself to anything in the fridge; it's probably the last time I'll be seeing it for a while." He paused thoughtfully. "Actually...Molly, was it? Watch over Nanoha for me. If she wakes up, she's likely as not to blast out of here and try to draw them off. She has this thing about getting other people involved, even when she's the one who needs protection. Suppose that's what I get for trying to give her a normal childhood," he said with a rueful grin.

"Uh..." Molly looked over to me for confirmation.

"Sure. Wait, hang on." I held out Nanoha's talking jewel-assistant-thing. "Give this back to her if she wakes up. I'll hang on to the skull for you." I made sure that the jewel passed in front of the skull's eye sockets as I dropped it into Molly's hand, then gently picked up the skull. "Oh, by the way," I asked Shiro, "where's the bathroom?"

"Down this hall and over to the right."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome," Shiro said. "Now, like I said, there are calls that need to be made. With any luck, we should have at least an hour; that should be time enough to get things into motion."

I ducked into the restroom, still holding the skull. I closed the door, switched on the fan, and quietly said, "Okay, Bob. We need to talk."

The skull's eye sockets glowed a bright orange, and a voice came from deep within it. "Holy shit, boss. What have you gotten yourself into this time?"

Bob was a spirit of air and knowledge that was bound to the skull. I'd 'inherited' him from the man who had first taught me magic, if you consider 'scavenged from his house after killing him in self-defense' to be a legitimate definition of 'inherited'. Bob was a virtual encyclopedia of magical information—both the techniques of magic and the various supernatural beings out there—and his knowledge had helped me out of countless scrapes.

"I'm still trying to figure that out. I was hoping you could help with that. How much have you seen?"

"I was only there for the teleport spell that chick cast. And I got a good look at that jewel thing you were carrying. Boss, I have no idea what we're looking at here, and that makes me very, very worried. I've got some basic impressions, but not much."

"Figures." If Bob was worried, so was I. He wasn't all-knowing—in fact, there were a number of things he knew surprisingly little about—but he'd never come up completely blank on anything that I could recall. "Can you give me whatever you did get?"

"Yeah. Yeah, okay. The...the teleport spell. It definitely took us through the Nevernever, but not any part of it I've ever seen. If I had to guess...I'd say the spell took a few stray particles in the air with a tiny wisp of a sympathetic connection to the destination—maybe they were in the general area a long time ago or something—and used them to brute-force open both ends of a brand-new Way. And something like that would have taken us...look, you know how most of the Ways are through Faerie? Generally closest to Earth, both in terms of distance and general environment?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Forcing open a Way with such a faint connection might have taken us out into the outer regions of the Nevernever, where virtually nothing works like it does here. Hence the screwy geometry around there. Hell, Harry, it was hard to tell what anything was out there, but you might be one of the only mortals alive to get a good look at the Outer Gates."

"Hell's bells," I said. It seemed like the most appropriate response.

"No kidding. And I don't know what the hell that spell was or how she did it, but...Harry, that shouldn't have been possible. Manipulating the connection between Earth and the Nevernever like that...That's Faerie Queen-level magic. Not in terms of power—the Nevernever's malleable, you could probably do it if it was just a power thing—but the focus it would require, the understanding of how that connection works, it's just not something a human should've been able to do."

"Right," I said. "I kind of figured. And the jewel?"

"Yeah. The, uh, jewel. Boss, I don't know if you've gotten a look at it with the Sight yet, but that ain't just a jewel."

"Again. Kind of figured."

"It's a custom focus of some kind, like your staff or your blasting rod, but it's the most complex and intricate one I've ever seen. And when this chick was running power through it, setting up the spell...well, I only know the theory of how computers work—not like I could get much more, living around you—"

"Well, excuse me—"

"—but if I was going to design one that ran on magic, I'd imagine it would look a heck of a lot like that. Or, more likely, like the crudest, most basic parts of it. Where did she even get something like that?"

"Probably from Starfleet Academy."

"Ah, right. That. So. Aliens, huh?"

"Yep."

"Figured they'd show up eventually."

"What, you knew they were out there?"

If Bob could have rolled his eyes, he would have. "No, Harry. But it's pretty obvious. Life is everywhere, both on Earth and in the Nevernever. It can survive in the most ridiculously hostile conditions, it can form in the most unlikely places. And statistically speaking, Earth can't be the only planet where it's formed. So," he said, "what kind are they?"

"What?"

"You know. The aliens. I mean, I know the girl is an Earthling, but you must've gotten a good look at a couple of them when you were fighting them off. What kind are they? The Star Trek kind, with weird-colored skin and funny-looking ears, but with women who have all the right curves in the right places? Or are they the, uh, Lovecraft kind?"

Considering his incorporeality and lack of, well, humanity, Bob's interest in human sexuality borders on the bizarre. I pay him in romance novels. "Come to think of it...I didn't get a good look at the goons who broke down my door, but they looked human. Not just humanoid, actually human. Height was right, general shape seemed right—at least as far as I could tell through the helmets and uniforms."

"Hmm. That's...weird. Convergent evolution, maybe."

"Maybe," I said. "In any case, I'm going to need you to stay idle for a while. You okay with pretending to be a disturbing heirloom for the time being?"

"As long as I get to watch whatever happens next. Hell, boss, I haven't seen anything new—really new—like this in decades. And hey, having Molly hold me like that? Payment enough." He paused. "You know, she's probably going to ask why you're dragging me along eventually."

"I know." Molly didn't know about Bob, and for good reason—he's kind of fuzzy on human morality, and some of the spells he could (and would) teach her were exactly the kind of temptation she didn't need. "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."

There was someone else in the house when I came out. I could hear a distinctly female voice speaking with Shiro from downstairs, one I didn't recognize. I frowned and Listened in as I started toward the stairs.

"—involved in this? It could cost you your career. Maybe more, if what you've been telling me is true."

"Shiro, I'm frankly insulted. Nanoha is my friend, and has been for more than a decade. For heaven's sake, she's practically my daughter-in-law. Career concerns are a minor detail next to that. Furthermore, you should realize that if what I'm telling you is true, it's absolutely critical—for myself, and for virtually everyone she knows—that Nanoha remains free."
"Yes, but—" Shiro sighed. "You're right. Of course you're right. Even the White Council—oh. Hello, Mr. Dresden," he said as I came into view. "Lindy, this is Harry Dresden. He's the Council wizard I mentioned. Mr. Dresden, Lindy Harlaown. She's Nanoha's..." He seemed to consider his words for a split second. "Nanoha's old boss," he finished.

Lindy Harlaown was a hair taller than Nanoha, and by 'a hair', I mean 'a whole lot of mint-green hair', tied back into something that might have been described as a ponytail if there hadn't been so damn much of it. Yes, you heard me right. Mint. Green. Hair. And unlike Molly, who'd sported something resembling that a few times, she managed to make it look perfectly natural. Other than the hair, though, she was pretty in a very...young way. Pale skin with nary a wrinkle or blemish to be seen (save for an odd pattern of four green dots on her forehead), a lean, fit body without a hint of extraneous fat...it didn't really add up with what she'd said about Nanoha being 'practically her daughter-in-law'. Hell, from her tone of voice—soft, but authoritative—I'd expected a woman twenty years older, at least. Aliens, I reminded myself. She probably has the technology—or magic—to look like whatever she wants to look like. "Mr. Dresden," she said, bowing Japanese-style. "I'm afraid I know little of the White Council, but it is good to have someone along with an alternative perspective on the situation."

"Pleasure. Though I think my perspective might be more useful if I had a better idea of what the plan is here."

"It was simple," Shiro said. "We were going to get Nanoha to a magically protected safehouse, and then contact the White Council and seek their help, assuming you could, in fact, convince them to take Nanoha under their protection."

"I don't think that would be a problem," I said, remembering what Bob had said about Nanoha's magic.

"Perhaps. Lindy, however, thinks that she has a way of getting Nanoha somewhere much safer and much farther away, via means that are much more difficult to trace than a simple teleport. Her plan, however, is much riskier, involving as it does sending a signal that will draw the vultures straight toward my house."

"And then dropping a beating like they could never imagine onto those vultures," Lindy said, smiling.

"Well, yes. That part does hold some appeal. And I've already said it's a better plan, Lindy. That doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Wait," I said. "What kind of signal?"

"A distress call," Lindy said. "Encrypted so that only one specific ship's crew could read it. And once they did, help would be on the way within a couple of hours. Probably less. They could stop an attack in its tracks, evacuate Nanoha, Shiro, and I—plus the rest of Nanoha's family, who Shiro's already contacted—in a minute or two, and be on their way in a blink of an eye."

There was an unspoken "but..." at the end of that. I spoke it, of course.

"But that distress call would either be routed through the ship that Nanoha's pursuers are deploying from, or the only TSAB comms satellite in Earth orbit—which they're monitoring, if they're even remotely competent at their jobs." There was that acronym again. I was really going to have to figure out what kind of TLA (or would that be FLA?) it stood for soon. "While they couldn't read its contents, they'd be able to locate the source within minutes."

"So all we have to do is hold out for a couple of hours against these people, and then a deus ex machina comes along and beats them up? Wow. There's no way that that could possibly go wrong. I thought you said this was the better plan."

"It's not as bad as it sounds," Lindy said, glaring. "Shiro and I can both hold our own in direct combat, and I assume a Council wizard such as yourself can do likewise. And if we can hold them off even temporarily, they'll likely retreat and request some heavier firepower; and let me assure you, the red tape involved in that kind of request—especially on an unadministrated world—will give us another hour right there."

"So...we're relying on bureaucracy to save us." I shook my head. "I don't know if that's if the stupidest or the most brilliant thing I've ever heard."

"And I suppose you have a better idea?"

"Yes! Get her to the White Council like in the original plan!"

Lindy gave me a long, thoughtful look. "Mr. Dresden," she said. "If it was as simple as keeping Nanoha safe, taking her to the White Council would be the best option, at least in the short term. But the situation is rather more complex than that, as I have been explaining to Shiro. If the Council is found to be sheltering her, the consequences could be dire."

"Dire? How dire are we talking here?"

"I don't know," she said. "The events surrounding Nanoha's framing are still...unclear, to say the least. But what is clear is that someone wants her out of the way, someone with a great deal of power, and from what I understand, your White Council would not be much of an obstacle if their shelter did not prove 'out of the way' enough."
A chill went down my spine. The people I had faced so far, while tough, didn't seem like they'd be much threat against a prepared Council stronghold. But on the other hand, I had no idea whether they were run-of-the-mill grunts or the best of the best.

And besides. They had a spaceship. They were in orbit right now. I've seen Aliens; I know what 'the only way to be sure' is. "But if you take Nanoha offworld, Earth stops being interesting to them."

"For certain values of 'interesting'. But yes, they'd likely leave Earth alone for the time being if they knew Nanoha wasn't here."

"Okay. I get it. We need to get her onto your magic rescue spaceship, and we need to attract attention to ourselves to do it. Attention which we might be able to deal with or delay." I shook my head. "This is still a bad idea."

"You don't have to be part of it," Lindy said. "You got Nanoha to us; we won't force you to do anything else. You and your apprentice can leave now, go to the White Council, and tell them everything you know. It's well past time we made official contact with Earth, anyway, and if this is what sets it off, so much the better. Or go back to your lives and forget any of this ever happened. It doesn't matter much."

I thought about that for a moment. On the one hand, I did very much have a life to go back to, and knowing Chicago, something would inevitably start eating people if I left for more than a week. On the other, well...Nanoha needed help. A lot of help. And while I didn't know the details, I now knew she had a daughter waiting for her, somewhere out there. Even if she had all the backup in the world...maybe, just maybe, I could make a difference by being there. And then there was the whole information thing—I needed to know more if I was going to go back to the White Council with a story this crazy. "I'll think on it," I said. "In the meantime, though, I have an idea. Where is this magic...space...radio thing, anyway?"

Okay. Bear with me for a moment. Wizards don't get along with technology. If it was invented past World War II or so, it just doesn't work well if magic is nearby. Maybe it increases the rate at which stuff rusts or decays, maybe it's blah blah quantum technobabble. Whatever it is, it's a fundamental rule one has to deal with when learning magic. I don't have any electronics (or hell, even electricity) in my apartment, and my car is an old, old VW Beetle that still breaks down, despite weekly maintenance.

Of course, that all hinges on the assumption that the technology in question wasn't designed to work with magic in the first place. Which is something I'd assumed was impossible; but, well, I've seen a lot of impossible—or at least highly unlikely—things today.

Take this magic space radio thing, for example. It was about the size of a hardcover book, and seemed to consist entirely of a screen. Lindy explained that it could quickly record a video, encrypt it, and transmit it pretty much anywhere in the galaxy.

Anywhere. In. The. Galaxy. I'd have to think about the ramifications of that later.

"And it runs on magic?" I asked.

"In a sense. It's a mix of magic-channel circuits and solid-state electronics much like the ones on Earth."

"But that's impossible. You'd fry the electronics."

She shrugged indifferently. "They're shielded."

"Shielded. Right. Of course they're shielded." I shook my head. "Okay. I'm going to try something that probably won't work. Shiro. Have you been on a vacation somewhere recently? Anywhere, just as long as it's nowhere near here."

Shiro nodded. "Momoko and I went to Paris about eight months ago."

"Paris. Perfect. Did you take pictures? Any memorabilia? Even money's good, if you've still got any. I need as much of it as you can find on short notice, ideally with a landmark. Like the Eiffel Tower or something."

He frowned. "I'll see what I can find."

"Good. I'll also need someplace I can set up a good-sized circle. Lindy, can you get that thing set up so that I only have to press one button to send the message?

"Yes. I'll need a moment to record it."

"Great. Wonderful." I dug into the pockets of my duster, and, after some searching came up with one of the pieces of chalk I keep around just for just such an occasion. "Let's make some magic."