"Um, Harry?" I began tentatively.

Harry stooped to pick up the plastic dog toy from the floor. It was shaped like a miniature basketball and pitted with teeth marks. It didn't weigh much, but that didn't mean it wouldn't hurt when it impacted. Harry could see seven feet tall from where he was standing and was built entirely of lean muscle. He could put some real force behind the lightweight Wiffle ball bat if he had to.

"Yes, grasshopper?" he said, giving the bat a practice swing.

Ordinarily, we'd be practicing shielding outside, but an unexpected shift in the whether had fouled up the plan. Rain pounded the outside of the old boarding house, speckled the egress window, and the diffuse light cast a grayish square of light near my foot. It was probably just as well. The last time someone had witnessed Harry's idea of shielding lessons, they'd threatened to call the cops. The dog toy didn't break anything when it impacted, but it did sting, and there was an added layer of humiliation when it rebounded with a squeak. If Mouse was in on the game, fetching it after it rolled away, there'd be dog slobber for added ick factor.

Still, I could see why the soccer mom had gotten her panties in a bunch. From the outside, she'd seen a grown man swinging a bat at two underage girls. It still looked pretty bad from my vantage point, back pressed against one of the apartment's walls, spaced feet away from Mercy. It felt like the world's smallest firing line. I was looking forward to the end of this lesson and the start of potions. I was actually good at those.

"Something happened at school today and I wanted to ask—ack!"

The ball went sailing through the air with a wet 'thwack,' heading in an arc for my head. I tried to get a hand up in time, squeaking out a hasty "Kakusu!" but it was too late. The ball impacted my cheek, splattering me with warm spittle. It let out a cheerful squeak when it landed near Mercy's foot. She had her eyes closed, but a small smirk tugged at the corners of her mouth. She was enjoying this. Jerk.

"Come on!" I cried, mopping up the slobber with my sleeve. Mouse trotted to my side and all but bowled me over as he retrieved the ball. "I was trying to ask you a question."

Amusement glittered in Harry's eyes when Mouse offered him the ball. "And an attacker isn't going to stop coming for you just because you want to chat. Constant vigilance, grasshopper."

"Why does she get Padawan and I get grasshopper?" I asked, shooting Mercy a dirty look. She deflected Harry's next strike with ease. Shielding came naturally to her and was probably the only reason she'd survived the rawhead.

"I'd look cuter with that little braid thing," she said.

"As if!"

Thwack!

The rubber ball hit me out of nowhere and I lost my balance, slamming a shoulder into the wall. I turned to face a grinning Harry. He was weighing the spit-slicked ball in one hand. Don't ask me how he'd done it, but Mouse had already ferried the thing back to him. His tongue lolled out in a doggy grin, tail wagging hopefully as Harry bounced the toy on his palm.

"You had a question?" he prompted.

"Yeah. Something happened at school today, and I wanted your take on it. Mercy and I were leaving our last class and I stumbled into...something"

Harry's grin faded, and a mass of worry lines fanned out on his brow. "A cold spot? Sometimes you get those if there's a ghost hanging around. A strong enough person can leave an impression, and the death doesn't have to be violent to create a spook. Your school has been around since the 1890s. At least one person has to have died there."

I bit my lip. How did I explain it without sounding crazy? Mercy was already tiptoeing around me, as though one wrong word would snap my sanity in two. I didn't want Harry looking at me the same way. But if I was right and there was something in the school...

"It was cold, but I don't know if it was ghostly. It felt oily and just plain wrong. The smell was the worst part. Sewage and rot. That kind of smell you can taste. I followed it all the way to the library before it just...vanished."

Harry gave Mercy a look. Her eyes were open, and fixed on me in concern, though she hadn't changed her relaxed position against the wall.

"Did you feel it?"

Mercy shrugged. "No, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there. You know she's better than me at that kind of thing."

Harry paced over to the couch and sat, settling the bat across his knees. He rolled the ball to Mouse, who pounced on it the second it was within range. A chorus of squeaks and playful barks ensued until the ball shot into the bedroom and out of sight.

"Sewage?" he asked. "As in rotten eggs? Sulfur?"

"Maybe. It also smelled like roadkill. Does that mean something to you?"

Harry scratched his chin thoughtfully. A day's growth of beard had come in, giving him a scruffy, dangerous kind of look. I liked it. A lot. Guess I was a hypocrite after all. At least the janitor was close to our age. Harry had at least a decade on me.

"It sounds like something was lurking near that part of the Nevernever. A demon, maybe."

"Demon?" I asked. Well, more like squeaked. "As in hell?"

"No, not necessarily," Harry said with a frown. "Demon is a broad term for hostile non-fae entities that exist outside of our reality. Hell is only one possible origin point. They range from the mildly irritating, like mold or slime demons, to the big league baddies like the Fallen."

"But a demon couldn't get inside the school, right?" Mercy asked. Her freckles stood out starkly against the milky white of her skin. "I mean the teachers are nuns!"

"It's not holy ground, per se, so it could be fair game. Faith doesn't repel every kind of demon, but if it's skulking around, it could be vulnerable to that sort of thing."

I raised a hand. "Maybe this is a stupid question but...why?"

"The Nevernever runs parallel to our world, and it can be shaped by whatever it's pushing up against. If you wanted to open a way to something relatively harmless, you go someplace that fosters a lot of goodwill, like a soup kitchen or a charity. On the flip side, the shadier elements would be drawn to someplace where a lot of suffering has occurred. You can also change the destination by altering the nature of a place."

"Like dropping a bomb on the soup kitchen," Mercy said.

"Bingo. If you tried to open a way in the middle of the wreckage, you'd come out someplace violent."

"So," I said slowly, mulling over the implication. "Something bad could have happened in the library to draw a demon in? Like chumming the water to attract a shark?"

"Exactly like that. If that's really what's happening. I couldn't say without looking."

The other explanation hung in the air unspoken. It could be nothing. I could have hallucinated the entire thing, in which case, this whole conversation had been a waste of everyone's time. Was it terrible that I was kind of hoping for a demon, just to prove I wasn't crazy?

A sharp rap on the door made us all jump. Harry was on his feet in seconds, striding purposefully toward it, exerting an effort of will as he went. I felt the complex knotwork of spells slacken, but they didn't completely give way. Harry hefted the bat onto his shoulder and called, "Who's there?"

"It's Michael," Dad said, voice muffled by the door between them. "Can I come in? Something's happened and we'd like your opinion."

Harry settled into a more relaxed stance, the bat clattering to the floor. The wards fell, and a minute and a lot of grunting later, the door opened. Dad stepped inside, scuffing mud off his boots. He looked older in the business casual he wore to work. The blue dress shirt had been pressed into crisp angles, and the starched collar rose above his beige overcoat, undaunted by the rain. His badge hung on a lanyard around his neck, catching the firelight and reflecting it back into our eyes. His expression softened when he spotted us sitting on the living room floor.

"Hey Uncle Michael," Mercy said, giving him a shy wave. She'd never seemed completely comfortable around Dad, for whatever reason. "What brings you out here so late?"

He smiled, but the strain showed in the set of his mouth. "Work. I'm afraid this lesson will need to wait until later. You should head home. Charity should have dinner ready by now."

"But-" I began.

"No buts," he cut across me, voice stern. "Go home. Now."

Mercy and I exchanged a glance. The whip crack response wasn't like him. Something was going on here. I opened my mouth to ask exactly what, but Mercy put a gentle hand on my shoulder and gave him a demure smile and a soft, "Yes, Uncle Michael."

Dad didn't say anything more until we'd donned our coats and said our goodbyes. Then he gave us each a hug, and gave us a good-natured push toward the door, promising he'd be home later.

I waited until we were halfway to the mailbox to whisper, "What the hell was that about?"

Mercy pulled her keys from her pocket with a grimace. "I don't know, but I don't think that stuff in the library was a coincidence. Something is definitely hinky. Want to find out what?"

"Did you have something in mind?"

"I refreshed the runes on the Pente stone last week, and I think I better this time. I give it a week until Aunt Charity finds it."

I raised an eyebrow. "We're eavesdropping?"

"Are you game?"

I laughed. "Is that even a question? I'm in."