Well, this has been… fun. Since my last update, there were:

Twelve pages thrown out,

Eleven pounds of bloating,

Ten prayers to porcelain,

Nine sudden bills paid,

Eight sleepless nightmares

Seven dozen blood draws,

Six family arguments,

Five weeks in clinic!

Fours hours surgery,

Three teeth yanked,

Two deadlines passed,

And a feeling that this chapter blows!

My last several months have been absolute garbage. Just horrible. The author of this story hasn't died, however, which I'm putting in the plus column.

It does, however, mean that my writing speed (and possibly quality) have tanked in recent months. I'm doing what I can to fix that. Special thanks to my editors Alix and Alex, who both have stepped up in my time of need for both research and review.

So. We last ended with Dresden taking a nap at the end of the first day, and the first arc. Now, hopefully, all the pieces are in place for the next part. Two sections and maybe two dozen chapters left to go, plus a possible after-the-end section.

Thank you all for staying with me thus far while I've stumbled around both in the story and in life. I'll get back to it, one page at a time, and hopefully Dresden will survive his world falling apart a little better than I have.

Cheers!

Scratch scratch scratch.

I wasn't anywhere. Couldn't feel much. Just warm, calm, quiet. No aches. No pains.

Scratch scratch scratch.

Slowly, I came back to myself. Felt like I was in the embrace of a deep blanket, deeper than the one I was used to.

Scratch scratch scratch scratch.

I opened my eyes. The room wasn't mine, but it was nice. I must have stayed at a hotel yesterday.

Scratch scratch scratch.

And apparently I'd left Mouse outside! Oh, management wasn't going to like that!

I struggled to stand, pushing myself up, and made my way to the door; I'd left my staff leaning beside it. I guess I hadn't gotten undressed before bed yesterday; my leather duster held tight against my arms until I tugged it back into place. I pulled open the door, feeling my own magical wards around it, and I reached forward and took them down. Thomas was waiting there with Mouse, who licked my hand.

"Good morning, guys," I told them, stretching. "Either of you sleep as well as I did?"

Thomas looked oddly at Mouse, like he expected an answer, then shook his head and looked me up and down. "Did you do some kind of drugs last night, Harry? You're… chipper."

I blinked. I looked back in the room, confused. "I don't… think I did? Keep an eye on me, I guess." I shrugged it off and grabbed my staff. "Let's see what kind of breakfast this place has, eh?"

Thomas stopped me before I could step past him. "I'm serious, Harry. Are. You. OK?"

The added emphasis slowed me down, and I stopped, meeting his eyes. We'd done the Soul Gaze long ago, so there wasn't any risk we'd have another.

Soul Gazes never fade in memory, ever. I realized I'd had one last night, one of the Skeleton, Sans, and his long, dangerous hallway.

The memories of yesterday flooded back, coming in way later than they should have. Everything from barely waking up onward through meeting the King of Monsters, taking a job to explain the White Council, Morgan's threats, the failed sleeping potions, the attacks at Mort's and at Mac's, rushing to the Monster's mansion, my trashed home, coming back and finally…

"Oh, shit," I breathed. I focused back on my brother, who'd caught my shoulder when I'd started to slump, coming out of the gentle haze I'd felt. "Um. We have a problem."

He chuckled. "Just the one, then?"

I shook my head. "Breakfast, then I'm going to bring you up to speed. Things just got worse. Much worse."

I had Mouse lead us back into the lounge we'd passed earlier, with a bar on one end and the big TV on the other. Unlike last night, there were a few early risers around. The TV was on, quietly playing Sesame Street, and a pair of monsters eyed us from the couches in front of the screen, one a mouse in a scarf and the other something akin to the devil's twin. There were also a few monsters sitting at the bar, including an oversized yellow bird. An actual bird. A strange, tuxedo-clad creature with a dancing fire for a head stood behind the bar, holding an empty glass in one fiery hand and a rag in the other. They eyed us, too, and I had to look twice when I realized the fire was somehow wearing glasses.

"On second thought," I muttered, "maybe we should hold off on trying to push through the house a second time."

The glass table near the bar didn't have any monsters sitting at it, and Thomas and I moved over to sit down, Mouse trailing us. The monsters reminded me of Mac's customers on a bad day, looking at me like I was the harold of some dangerous events they wanted no part of, but they weren't crazy or motivated enough to actually try telling me to leave. I did my best to ignore them.

"Alright," I started, smoothing back my hair. "The kind of help I was hoping for isn't on the way. Some is, but not half of what we wanted."

"What happened?" Thomas pressed.

I told him quietly, not wanting anything nearby to hear. It took a few minutes, and a scaled reptile monster wearing pajamas with cat-girls on them shuffled in and sat sleepily at the bar while I did.

When I finally finished, Thomas swore.

"So we're stuck in the middle of a worldwide attack by some force working with the Red Court, and the Red Court is working with Outsiders?!" he asked, trying to keep his voice low.

If I haven't taken the time to explain the dangers of the Seventh Law, it's with good reason. Thou Shalt Not Open The Outer Gates. It's basically the only law you can get beheaded over just for trying to find out more. The Red Court was playing footsie with Lovecraftian horrors that'll destroy all of existence if they get half a chance, and they were just one piece of a much larger, more dangerous picture. When those things come to town, most people stop thinking about winning or losing. They start thinking about minimizing losses, if it's even possible.

"That's about the length of it, yeah," I sighed. "And we're running out of time. If we can't shut them down all at once, we're going to be right back where we started, only we won't even know we failed."

Thomas brought his fist down toward the table suddenly, but stopped just short of smashing it. The lighter slam still made the yellow reptile in pajamas squeak and flinch at the sudden movement and sound. I looked over at it, cowering somewhat, and saw that the bartender had squared up and set the glass and rag down on the bar.

"Sorry," Thomas managed. He gave them half a smile, doing his best to look sheepish.

The pajama monster took a shuddering breath, then pushed off the stool and waddled over to us, hands rubbing over one another. The creature was short, and probably would have only come close to my waist if I'd been standing up, but stood at about eye level with us sitting down. "Y-you guys b-better not cause trouble here, alright?" it (she?) managed to say.

"We're not trying to," I offered. "Just want to have some breakfast and move on, and it doesn't have to be in that order. Shouldn't have trouble from us."

"W-well, good!" she said forcefully. "We've had some trouble with humans before, and-and we're not going to stand for it anymore." She shrunk in a little on herself. "Not-not that you're going to do anything, but we'll stop you if you try!"

"We're cool, Sheriff Shorty," I insisted, waving her down. "If anything, we're here to help. That's the plan, anyway."

If I didn't hear it in her voice, the shock written across her face said it all. "H-help?!"

She shook her head, like she was trying to clear it, then took a cell phone out of her pajama pockets and turned halfway away from us. She started typing into it, and Thomas and I exchanged glances.

"If you think we should go-" Thomas began, but she shook her head and pressed one last button forcefully.

"Sorry, I just can't stand by when I'm not sure anymore. Undyne is coming. I-if there isn't any-"

She was cut off by the sound of heavy footsteps racing up the long hallway, and the Fish-woman in question was at our table with a spear in our faces in seconds. Thomas and I managed not to flinch as I took her in a second time, looking over her tank top and sweats. Given the heavy fragrance of sushi and little droplets of sweat, I could hazard a guess that she was up and at 'em in the early morning for some cruel parody of an exercise routine.

Her glare, backed up by those shark teeth, twisted in confusion. "Alphys?" she asked, pointing her spear from my face over to Thomas, then down at Mouse. His tongue waved lazily around as he contemplated the spear like an oversized dog toy; apparently he wasn't bothered by the interesting fish or her smell. "What did they do?"

The squat yellow monster, Alphys apparently, went from starry-eyed and satisfied to unsure in the same time it took for Undyne to arrive. That is to say, almost instantly. "I-I-I…"

The fire monster behind the counter murmured something, and if I'd been Listening I might have caught it. Undyne's weird fish-fin ears wiggled, and she dropped her spear. It vanished as it hit the ground. She gave us another one of those smiles that reminded me of a combination of the one I'd seen on the face of Lake Michigan's own creature of the black lagoon (I'd shot it with my old .38 before being dragged down to the depths, but caught a cold after), that ghoul we'd fought earlier, and an angler fish. So plenty of wonderful associations there.

"I thought you guys left yesterday. Guess Sans doesn't keep as good a watch as he thought!" she said like it was a joke. "Have you eaten yet? Breakfast is on me if you haven't!"

And just like that, the tense atmosphere was gone. Apparently the fish knight was respected enough that her approval bought us all kinds of leeway, and a huge, cupcake-shaped spider that had been watching from the long hall decided it was safe to come out and join the others on the couch.

Though she didn't manage to find her voice, Alphys joined us at the table while Undyne brought a huge platter piled high with pancakes, syrup, muffins, toast, hash browns, bacon, sausage, several thin cuts of steak, a couple styles of eggs, and the king of warm morning wake-up calls, coffee. Apparently having a fire monster cook for you was about as close as you could get to having a professional chef on staff, and I caught more than a few glints of yellow pass between the two of them in what I suspect was a tip worth more than my car.

"You'll have to ask if you want something specific, like one of his specialty burgers, but this spread is what we normally have since Grillby's new bar got blown up," Undyne told us as she passed out plates, motioning between herself and the lizard. The yellow monster in question must have had some kind of chameleon background, because her face had turned strawberry red. "I don't know if you hard boiled detective-guys have whiskey in your coffee like in the movies, but you can ask for that too."

I didn't answer. I was too busy enjoying the best breakfast I'd had in probably years. Mac's steak sandwiches were still better by a small margin, but they shouldn't have had to compete with the scrambled eggs. They shouldn't have had any trouble winning out over the toast. Like the plain noodles I'd had yesterday instead of a bottle of Mac's microbrew and famous steak sandwich, the food had something extra that I had to chalk up to magic. Whatever it was, it could make even the simplest of Monster-prepared foods into freaking Lembas bread.

I slid one of the thin steaks off the table and into Mouse's waiting mouth, and Undyne interpreted it as an opportunity to feed him as much as he could eat off our plates, to the dog's delight. She didn't take my warning on giving him hash browns seriously, and I grimaced as she poured half a plate of them into his waiting maw.

"Oh, we're going to pay for that later," I groaned. "He's going to need to be kept out of enclosed spaces for a week."

"M-maybe I can make some kind of mixture that can, uh, reduce his emissions," Alphys finally spoke. "If it's really that bad, I mean."

"Maybe," I offered the olive branch. "If you can feed him something that'll prevent the inevitable biological attack without hurting him, I'm sure everyone he meets for the next few hours will thank you."

"Okay," she said, half to herself as she turned out of her chair and started walking away. "It should just be a question of neutralizing the chemical reaction before he is able to pass the-"

"Hey, wait up a second," I broke her concentration before she managed to get too far. She turned back, giving me the classic deer-in-headlights look at the sudden realization that she'd automatically tried to leave without so much as an off-handed goodbye. With her attention firmly on me, I gestured to the still impressive feast. "He isn't going to gas us now. You can take a few minutes to finish breakfast before you whip up whatever super serum you're thinking about. We have time."

She sat back down carefully, flashing me a forced smile. "Uh… sorry about earlier," she said, instead of picking up her utensils. "I didn't mean to treat you like a bad guy. I mean, I did, but I didn't mean it like you were a bad guy, just that we're really sort of threatened by bad guys right now, not just because you sort of looked like one, not that you do though, and-"

"Hey, hey hey!" I raised a hand to calm her down as she became more frantic trying to explain herself out of that mess. "It's fine. No harm, no foul. How about we start over?" I smiled wide, stood, and bowed grandly. "Harry Dresden, professional beanpole, at your service."

The effect was somewhat reduced by my accidentally putting my sleeve in my pancakes and syrup when I leaned over, and I swore under my breath, looking around for a napkin. Mouse pawed lazily at my leg, and I sat back down to let him lick the offending processed tree juice away.

The yellow pajama-covered monster apparently took it at face value, because she stood up on her chair to match me. "I'm Alphys, Royal Scientist and advisor to the throne," she said confidently, with a half bow of her own. Then she blanched. "I mean, I was the royal scientist, then I got fired, and now I'm just on retainer unless they need something. Kind of."

I chuckled. "Works for me." I paused. "Except for the science part, and the thing where you have a cell phone. Doesn't magic typically play foul with technology? I mean, I can't keep a cell phone for more than a week before it breaks, but you were typing on that thing like a teenager."

Alphys blinked. "I… I hadn't heard that. ...Maybe it has something to do with the barrier, and all the years we spent underground? I mean, we got old anime movies that fell down the Waterfall, and I could make those work, so… I guess I'd have to research it before I could come up with anything conclusive."

"Let me know if you do, because there are a ton of times I'd have paid a lot of money I don't have for a chance to phone a friend in the middle of a crisis," I told her.

She nodded thoughtfully. I eventually waved to get her attention, then gestured meaningfully to the food. After a moment she got it, then started eating again.

Undyne leaned over to me. "She's just embarrassed because she didn't realize it was you," she confided with all the whispering volume of an air horn. "She's a huge fan of your work on Monster-Human relations."

"UNDYNE!" The yellow monster screamed, bright red again, and then she actually dove under the table to hide from us. It was glass, and in no way impeded our ability to see her doing her best to further hide under her chair. Unsuccessfully, I might add. Thomas sighed.

"Well, I'm glad that's sorted," Thomas said, ignoring that my plethora of new, unspoken questions had in no way been answered, "But as nice as this has been, we sort of have things to worry about, don't we?"

I nodded, changing gears. "Yeah. Yeah, we do."

I pushed my breakfast aside and folded my hands up with my elbows on the table.

"I know there are a ton of things we need to do today, but first I've got friends who need to be warned." I pointed at Undyne. "If you have a phone you could use, or a landline I could use, then I need to call some werewolves up and tell them to keep an eye out on campus. After that, I think the first place we should check from my map is the morgue. If there's going to be trouble with Necromancers, it's just the most obvious place to start given our choices."

Undyne lifted up her cell phone, and I gave her a number to call. She stepped away to deliver the message, "Dresden says keep your heads down and watch out for Necromancers," because that's the kind of cheery stuff that friends call you about, and I leaned over to Thomas to get his view on things.

"I expect you know more about the threat of Necromancy than I do," he murmured, "but if we're going to have any chance of moving quickly enough to have an impact on these things, we're going to need transport. Either a cab on retainer, or a borrowed car, anything so long as there's room for the grey behemoth. I'm not sure a taxi will be happy with us all day, either."

"Your friends say thanks, but that they'll decide if they're going to keep their heads down," Undyne broke in as she sat back down. "And if you're looking for a car, we've got a bunch you could use."

My eyes settled on her ear-fins, and they wiggled.

Stupid monster hearing superpowers.

"Alright, Undyne," I told her, turning my chair to include her in the conversation. "If you've got a heavy car that'll fit Mouse and the rest of us, and it's old enough not to care about my magic screwing with newer technology, then I'm open to suggestions."

She gave me that fishy grin again, and I realized a second too late that I'd just invited her along.