The last chapter, Consequences, took me three months. I went weeks at a time with zero real progress. I kept hitting a wall on how to get the characters out of the morgue after locking them in, especially without death or serious injury. It could have been as easy as, "Dresden blew the walls open and they escaped," but I wanted it to feel more believable and compelling than that. The whole "Polka will rise!" section felt like a hot mess as well, and on the whole, I'd rather move on and fix it all later, if ever.

To get through it, I wrote a grand total of 40 pages of content that wasn't the morgue, including 7 or so for this chapter. I'm talking about chapters in stories I don't plan to release, and 2 and some change in rough drafts on a book I'm writing.

So I released the last chapter and the rough, uncompleted draft of this chapter to my editors/reviewers at the same time on the 19th or so.

Alex looked it over and said, "Well, now you're on a roll. You can probably finish and release the next chapter in a week."

I laughed.

He was serious.

Alix was also on board, fixing huge problems with Undyne's dialogue. Special thanks to them both for making the quick turnaround possible.

The early morning is not a deterrent to commuters who need to drive to work in Chicago. Cars were filling the roads, with nary an open taxi in sight. That meant we were jogging on the sidewalks, past the nearby hospital, on our way to backup from my furry friends at the university. It would have been only a couple minutes if we were driving, but those same three miles or so weren't so kind to pedestrians in a hurry.

It was only a few minutes into our journey that I discovered something new and exciting about my newfound fame. Apparently, if I can be seen covered in blood, running with my staff in hand and backed by other people also covered in blood and openly carrying weapons, then it means magical shenanigans are afoot. It used to be a loud signal to get away from the crazy blood-covered maniacs.

Now apparently it meant people were going to shout at me on the streets.

"What's going on?!" A yell came from the road, where people in cars had slowed traffic to a standstill. Pedestrians were also politely getting the hell out of the way ahead of us.

I decided honesty was the best policy. "Zombies at the morgue, stay away from it!" I called back.

Now, again, you need to understand that I normally am not taken seriously when I say things like that, so I had to stop almost immediately afterwards when I heard several people scream. While Thomas was keeping pace, Butters had almost ran into me. I stumbled, and pointed my staff at the source, expecting we'd finally been followed. Instead, it was just some lady in her car, and several kids doing the same in response.

"Look," I shouted, realizing the problem. "It's not contagious, but they will kill you! Just stay away from there, maybe get behind your thresholds! I'm working on the problem! And call the police to cordon it off or something."

Before we could continue, a red truck with huge tires and an extra half foot of lift off the ground pulled off the road and onto the sidewalk in front of us. We squared up, expecting a fight, but the driver's window rolled down and a heavyset man with a thick beard leaned out. He waved us over.

"Get in the truck!" He called out with a slight southern accent. "Wherever you're headed, I can get you there."

I was caught off guard. I'd never really had random civilians backing me up like this in a crisis before. I took a moment, then waved the crew over to him. I helped pull Butters up after me into the back seat; with the truck's suspension holding it up, it was a bit of a climb into the cab. Thomas took the front, and Mouse managed to jump way up over the side and into the truck bed as Undyne joined Butters and I in the back seat.

"Get us to the University," I told him as we all got our seatbelts on, and he quickly started honking and yelling at the others to get out of the way as his behemoth truck pulled around. "We've got friends there."

"You got it, Dresden," the man said, focused on the road. "How bad is it out there, anyway?"

"Just a couple necromancers trying to kill me and maybe all the new Monsters from the Underground. Not sure yet how much of the city they plan to tear up," I admitted, catching my breath. I watched out the window as we drove on, our new friend liberally leaning on his horn and navigating around traffic snarls on the wrong side of the road.

"Should my daughter and I get out of the city tonight?" he asked, looking around for his next illegal maneuver. "I know she's been looking forward to Halloween tomorrow night, but if there's gonna be real zombies, maybe we should just take a vacation."

"That might be best," I told him, closing my eyes for a moment. "That, or behind the best threshold you can find. Maybe Saint Mary of the Angels' church."

I laid back, coming down off the adrenaline. The day had just started, and I was ready for it to end. No real chance of that happening. I vaguely noted Thomas taking over to explain the concept of a threshold to the attentive man, how the sense of family and home could hold off supernatural threats, the homey-er, the better. Unless you invited the threats in, of course.

Butters was muttering. Better that than catatonic.

I kept my eyes closed, thinking about the mess we were in, and the help I was about to ask for. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn't go to the Alphas for more than a place to lay my head for a few hours. They were good kids over at the college, but they were still kids. They didn't need to get involved in the big leagues with me and the Necromancers, especially with their only magical trick being the ability to shapeshift into wolves at will.

Today was not ordinary circumstances. Today was bad circumstances, and I had a terrible gut feeling that the city was going to get much worse before it got better. With Halloween coming up, as I'd been reminded, just tomorrow evening, the barrier between life and death was going to get thinner. Ghosts got stronger, the dead got restless, and I had to deal with the aftermath more often than not.

It would also be my birthday. I'd try to remember to blow a party horn in celebration between the encounters with psychopaths.

"We're here," the bearded man told us as we came to a stop. "Good luck with whatever this is, Dresden. We're all rooting for you."

"Uh, thanks," I told him, taking off my seatbelt. "I'll get it fixed as soon as I can."

We got out and the man saluted us, then drove off after Mouse jumped out of the back of his truck. I noted that he had stopped halfway up on a curb, but nobody bothered him about it after they saw who had gotten out. I realized people were pointing at me. A few already had their cell phones out and were either calling out or pointing them at me.

I ignored them and we started heading over toward the Alphas' rooms.

"I get that I'm a little famous," I said to nobody in particular, "but I didn't realize that extended to random people on the streets backing me up when I look like I've gone ten rounds with Tyson in a jam factory. What gives?"

Undyne chuckled and Thomas cleared his throat to answer me as we jogged, Butters trailing a bit behind with Mouse. "You don't know? Everyone was interested in what you've been doing behind the scenes of every spooky crime in the last few years, and SI has had to go back over the cases you've been involved in. To actually tell the truth rather than blame it on terrorism or whatever sounds logical," he clarified. "While you're not wanted for crimes against Chicago… yet... the internet has a good idea of what you've been up to, and the news has gone international about some of it. You're Chicago's Resident Wizard. Trademarked."

"How am I trademarked?!"

"I put in for it," Thomas laughed. "I planned to tell you tomorrow, but then… this."

"Yeah," I huffed. "This."

We arrived to the Alphas' apartments soon after, and they were expecting us. The Alphas are, as one might expect from individuals living on or near the campus, college students. They're also shifters, and their particular flavor of transformation is wolf. While they weren't ready to throw down with the likes of Dr. Death, they had staked their claim on all the campuses and kept low level threats in check for almost as long as I'd known them. I had never brought them completely up to speed with the magical world at large because I wanted to keep them from getting caught up in the middle of it all.

Their leader, Billy Borden, gave me a slow once over, stopping on my messed up eye. Billy had gotten taller since I'd last seen him, and the last of his acne and flab was almost gone around his new muscles. He, like most of the Alphas, wore loose clothing that could be shed quickly if he had to go lupine. Today it was grey sweats.

"Harry," he said, voice tight. "Your problems have become the entire city's problems, and we've been caught with our pants down. Tell me you're here to bring us up to speed without telling us to go hide in a hole somewhere?"

I grimaced. "At this point, I'm inclined to tell everyone to find a good hole to hide in. Until we can regroup and take the fight back to them, I was hoping you would share yours."

He crossed his arms, standing firm. "You need our help. We want to give you that help. We can't if we don't know what we're up against."

"I'm with him," Butters spoke up, and I turned to see him with my good eye, startled. "If I'm caught up as a hostage to get to you, I think I'm in far enough to deserve to know why."

I looked at Thomas, who gave me a small shrug, his signal that he wasn't getting in the middle of this one. I sighed, trying to wipe my eye, but Butters grabbed my hand.

"Don't rub that, you'll make it worse," he told me.

I sighed again. It itched.

"I'll bring everyone up to speed, but I'd rather only do it once. Can we come in?"

Billy leaned over and gave me a few sniffs. He nodded. "Dresden and his friends may enter," he spoke formally, then turned and led us inside.

Several other Alphas were waiting for us in their semi-muscled glory, the rewards of an athletic lifestyle. I saw Georgia, Andi and Kirby in the living room/kitchen combo, standing around a table with a map spread across it, and another guy whose name was on the tip of my tongue was passing out sandwiches. A circle of salt had been laid in the middle of the floor, and another girl, Marcy I think, sat waiting in it. Two more of them, Cindy and Phil, were sitting on a long leather couch, watching the news; it was showing a weather forecast at the moment.

Mitchell, that was his name, handed Phil a sandwich and noticed us coming in. He whistled, looking us over. "Rough, man."

Everyone but Marcy came to meet us and help carry wounded if need be, and Georgia raised her eyebrows at my condition. "Here, take a seat," she ordered. "I'll get the first aid kit."

The map was cleared from the table as I sat heavily in one of the chairs the Alphas hadn't been using, and Butters, still in his bloody scrubs, went into the kitchen to wash his hands a few times. As the only graduated Doctor among us, he had accepted grudgingly that he was going to have to look over any injuries.

"I became a medical examiner to get away from live patients," he grumbled. It was the same argument he always gave when I asked to be treated outside of the hospital, where my magical interference might kill some poor sap's heart monitor.

Somebody got him a set of clean clothes, but he told them he'd wait until after a shower.

As it turned out, Thomas had broken a few fingers at some point, but his own supernatural healing had taken care of it; his eyes lingered over some of the female Alphas, but he kept his inner demon under firm control. Undyne was scratched in a few places, but only needed a few band aids. Butters himself had pulled a muscle in his arm when he had thrown me over the fence on our escape from the morgue (which I was amazed by; he's maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet). He said it hurt, but wouldn't prevent him from helping me.

After a careful washing of my face off and a little peroxide poured over everything just in case (then washing everything again to get the peroxide out), it turned out I needed three stitches. My request for an early morning beer was declined, as the medical kit had some lidocaine or something in it instead.

While I tried to hold still, Butters put stitches in my eyelid. To distract myself, I answered whatever questions anyone had on magic and magical threats. At that point, they weren't giving me much choice, and it helped to have something to focus on while I firmly gripped the edges of my seat.

"If we die because of something you could have told us and didn't, that's on you," Billy had told me. He wouldn't be the first I'd lost trying to protect that way. I wasn't happy, but I told him what he wanted to know.

After I'd explained to them what I knew about the necromancers, Butters declared that he was done and needed to shower for a week. "Don't let those stitches get pulled out, and don't rub it," he warned me. "I'm not going to perform surgery on you if your eye develops a droop because you didn't take care of it."

With that, I asked for a quiet place to sit and think. I promised I'd tell them more on the threats of the magical world after our current problems had been handled. They told me the bedroom had another couch and TV, so that's where I went. Glasses of water were being handed out, so I grabbed one.

"Undyne," I called her over. "Do you have a minute? There are some things I've been meaning to ask you."

"Yeah, sure," she said, sounding a bit distracted. "Hey, can we call Alphys and the others from here? I want to let them know we're alright."

"Can it wait a few minutes?" I asked as the TV flickered. I focused on keeping my emotions down and edged away from the expensive machine. "This shouldn't take too long."

"Fine," she said. "If you really think it can't wait or whatever."

I lead her to the back room, then closed the door behind us and sat down on the couch, leaning back. She flopped down on the couch next to me and dumped her glass of water over her face. I resisted the urge to apply my palm directly to my own as the water got everywhere.

"Great. Do you remember when you asked what zombies were, because you said they don't have souls?" I asked her, pulling up my duster as the water tried to slide over to my side of the couch.

"Yeah, you said you wanted to talk about something I said. What was it?"

I thought back. "Something along the lines of, 'somebody used magic to bind these people to their will.' Which is illegal, by the way, so if you ever find somebody who does that kind of thing, you're right, it's wrong."

"Alright. So, what did you want to talk about if we both already know that?" she asked, not bothering to get up.

"Hmm. I guess for starters, what do you think a necromancer actually is?"

"I dunno, some humans who wear black robes and use magic to kill people and bind their will?" she guessed offhandedly.

"Undyne, do you know anybody who has come back from the dead or brought somebody back themselves?" I asked, trying to prod her into revealing something.

"Oh, yeah, the Amalgamates," she said, as apparently it wasn't a secret. "And Alphys, she brought them back with her Determination experiments. Their families were happy to have them back despite what happened, what with a bunch of monsters fusing into combined creatures, so it all worked out in the end."

I blinked a few times while my brain processed the new information. I felt like a record player skipping the music notes and replaying the last section of music over and over again as more pieces of the puzzle tried to come together, and I realized that whatever I said next, I needed to be very, very careful.

"So Alphys is a Necromancer then."

Thank you mouth, you useless moron.

Undyne sat up all the way and looked at me with wide eyes, her mouth kept closed. She blinked, I blinked, we did the whole lost-in-shock thing together. She broke the silence first.

"OK, so maybe I don't know what a necromancer is," she admitted. "Alphys is a good person though. Just because she was experimenting with SOULs and Monsters who had fallen down, that doesn't change anything. She's smart, and if you ask her, she could probably help you understand whatever you're thinking about," she was getting louder, trying to convince me. "She isn't a bad guy like them."

"Almost nobody believes they're the bad guy, Undyne," my mouth continued at normal volume, hopefully saving my ass for once rather than digging me in deeper. "If you can only make a perfect world by destroying people's lives, it isn't a perfect world at all." Or it could say that. That wasn't going to backfire.

Undyne jumped to her feet and pointed at my face, and it took a lot of willpower not to throw my shield up in an instant; she wasn't holding her spear, but if she reached for power, I'd be ready for her. "She's a good person!" Undyne insisted. "Everybody makes mistakes, and she did everything she could to make it better afterwards! They're fine, alright?! They're with their families and they love them!"

I carefully raised my hands in surrender, not willing to push the point. "Fine. Alphys is a good person who made mistakes and did what she could to fix them. No arguments. But can you at least tell me what you mean when you keep referring to people's souls?"

"Ugh, just… just wait a second, OK?" she stepped back. "Here, it's this."

What followed was perhaps one of the most terrifying experiences I have ever had, and while it wasn't a Soul Gaze, I doubted it was something I would ever forget.

One moment, I was sitting on the couch and Undyne was reaching forward. The next, I was having an out of body experience as she pulled her hand toward herself. The world became dulled and distant, like the haze around the speaking stones I had used with Ebenezer. A little red heart-shaped thing had come out of my chest, and I could feel it hovering around in the air, like a phantom limb I could just barely control.

All of that was secondary to the feeling of my life, my magic, everything I was oozing out of my chest into the little red heart.

"That's your SOUL," Undyne pointed to it. "It's like the essence of who you are."

I felt vulnerable, exposed, naked like I never had been before. I couldn't move, could barely breathe from the raw terror I felt at those first three little words. It was my soul.

All at once, I understood exactly why the White Council wanted these Monsters exterminated.

"Undyne," I choked out, trying desperately not to panic as I mentally fought to bring myself together. "Put. That. Back."

"Fine, jeez," she muttered, helping push it back into my body. "It's not like I was gonna Fight you or anything…"

The sensation of the red heart re-entering my body was disorienting, and I might have blacked out for just a moment as my vision reestablished itself behind my eyes. I tried to get my breathing back under control as my heart, my real heart, tried to tear itself in half pumping blood and what little adrenaline I had left throughout my system.

It took me a few moments, but eventually I managed to calm down enough to speak.

"What the fuck is wrong with you YOU CRAZY GODDAMNED FISH?!" I screamed. "You took out my soul and showed it to me?! Are you out of your goddamned mind?!"

Undyne flinched. "Hey, I didn't-"

"THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN SAY THAT WOULD MAKE THAT OK, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!" I shouted her down.

"No!" she shouted back. "I don't! Why don't you explain it to me, like the dumb fish I am?!"

I took a shuddering breath and stood up to walk over to the wall. My hands were shaking, and I didn't want to turn my back to her, but I couldn't stand to look at her.

This was it, I realized.

This was the secret danger of Monster kind that had led people to lock them away and bury their memories.

The details were irrelevant, no matter how they wanted to spin it. I'd already known that Monsters could take people's souls when they died, but it wasn't until that moment that I understood exactly what it meant.

God help me. I was scared, I was angry, and I wanted the mob of torches and pitchforks to bury the problem in a hole, never to be worried about again.

For a few moments, I hated her.

…

It passed. I don't know exactly how long we both stood there, but eventually I managed to bury away the problem in my mind, rather than bury the fish who had made me feel that way. Undyne was shifting uncomfortably, and I dimly remembered Bob telling me that her people could feel emotions or be hurt by them, if I was too angry. Maybe she could feel how much I hated her just now. She might have even realized how much I'd panicked if it were true.

I kept focusing on slowing my breathing.

She couldn't have known. Hell's Bells, she hadn't even thought it was a big deal.

Finally, I managed to work my way back over to the couch, and I sat down. This time, I shook the shield bracelet out of my duster's sleeve.

She noticed.

I didn't care.

"Undyne," I managed to say, keeping my voice even. "I don't ever want you to do that to anyone again. Ever. And when we get home, back to your mansion with all of your friends, I want you to tell everyone that can do that that they are never going to do it again. Ever. Because that? Was scary. And humans destroy things that they don't understand that scare them. I'm pretty sure you had a war on the subject."

She flinched. Given that she'd spent the majority of her life underground, probably hearing about the history of that war, living the aftermath of it, I somehow doubted she would forget.

"It's different for us," she said firmly. "Monsters can touch each other's SOULs without hurting one another. SOULs are way, way stronger than you're pretending they are."

I shook my head. "What happens when a soul is destroyed, then?" I asked, still fighting to keep my voice even. "Last I checked, it means there's no chance of an afterlife. Zippo. Nada. Nothing. And a whole lotta humans will fight you forever if they think you'll put that at risk. What you did to me? I felt like I could die, from the moment it started to the moment it ended. It was terrifying. Alright?"

Undyne was slowing down, looking slowly around at nothing, like she trying to figure out where I was coming from. Finally, still looking into the distance, she spoke. "We care about each other, you know?" she said slowly. "All of us. Even Jerry. We'd never put each other's SOULs at risk. Not even human SOULs, we wouldn't risk them being lost like that. I guess I just forgot for a moment that humans… don't protect each other like that."

"It's not about trust or- or maybe it is, I don't know," I tried to say. "But messing with somebody's immortal soul is wrong. It's wrong on a moral, immutable level." I clenched my fists. "It's scary, it's dangerous, it's- I don't know what it is. Even if somebody tells you to do it, just… don't. Please."

She shook her head, frustrated.

We didn't say anything for a while. I wondered idly how much of that our neighbors in the next room had heard. I had a lot more questions, about Alphys and her necromancy, but for right then, I just wasn't up for it.

"It stands for Determination," she finally said.

"What?" I asked, sitting up.

"Your SOUL is red. That means Determination. Like Frisk. It stands for willpower, never giving up, strength of character… it means you're strong. I probably couldn't have hurt you if I tried."

"You wanna run that last one by me again?" I asked, somewhere between curious and annoyed.

She was looking away, like we she was remembering something. "I haven't told anyone this before, but when I first met Frisk… the kid insulted me. Did you know that?" she asked. "Crazy kid… I was ordered to capture 'em, or take their SOUL hostage, and I broke one of my spears in half so the kid could put up a good defense, rather than get steamrolled. Like your shield there, you know? You've got one. But the kid… I threw a few spears at 'em."

I gave her a Look.

"I know, alright?" she said sheepishly. "We were stupid about humans before we came to the surface. We've been working on it. Anyway, so, I give the kid a spear to block my attacks. Give them a fighting chance, right? Only… the kid deliberately didn't block. At all. Just held the spear off to the side, like I was a great big joke. Took three spears to the SOUL, didn't even flinch."

I was caught between morbidly impressed and absolutely disgusted. I didn't interrupt. She took it as a sign to continue.

"Now, according to Frisk, Monster food is good for the human SOUL. Literally. It's like some kind of healing medicine."

That explained a lot, and raised even further questions.

"So Frisk just takes the shots, right to the core of their being. And what does the kid do? Nothing. Just stands there. I told 'em, 'I gave you that spear to block me, just hold it up and defend yourself!' ...so the kid deliberately pulls the spear out of the way and takes three more shots, right after I helped put the spear where it would have blocked me. Then the kid flips me the bird."

"Say what now?" I asked in surprise.

"Yeah," Undyne laughed. "That was what I thought! I mean, who just gets shot on purpose, over and over again? I made them hold the spear up again, told them to hold it right there, and the kid did it again! And then pulled out a Nice Cream and ate it, rather than fighting back!"

"An ice cream?" I asked, finding myself drawn into the story.

"Yeah, a Nice Cream! Meanwhile, I'm looking around for hidden cameras, because let's face it, I'm no slouch when it comes to attack magic. I had to ask myself, what is this kid made of? What are humans made of? We have it written in our history books that in the war, we couldn't even kill a single one while they slaughtered thousands of us and… even though I had to keep fighting, to bring the kid to Asgore, I think that was the first time I realized how screwed we were if we had to fight another war with humanity. Anyway, I just thought you might want to know. About your SOUL, I mean. It's way, way stronger than you're giving it credit for and… it's red because you're filled with Determination."

"I've had a few Soul Gazes over the years," I admitted, "but no, I've never really wanted to know about that particular mirror before. I guess 'Determined' is as good a label for me as anything else."

She nodded, and tentatively sat back down with me on the couch.

I thought it over for a while while Undyne gradually leaned further and further down over the armrest, until finally I asked another question. "Hey, do they seriously say in your history books that you didn't kill any humans? In the entire war?"

She grimaced. "We lost really badly." She huffed. "Almost all our strongest soldiers got cut down at the start, in the opening attacks before we knew what was going on. Regular Monsters, not trained soldiers, had to fight just to keep our villages safe. I mean, there were still heroes, like Gerson, The Hammer of Justice- my old mentor- but there weren't nearly enough like him to put up a strong front. Between the sudden attacks by the wizards and with as many humans as there are, the war didn't last a month. We surrendered," she started clenching her fists, a habit I'd seen a lot of recently. "Everyone who could be was forced Underground. Those who refused were slaughtered. Then… seven insanely powerful wizards locked us away."

I remained silent. I was still processing everything she'd said earlier, trying to connect whichever dots I could, while she took time to ruminate on her people's losses.

Eventually, I spoke up again. "Undyne, you said that you beat Frisk up with magical attacks," I said. "Hit 'em right in the soul. Are you seriously saying the kid was fine?"

She looked up, and I had to repeat the question.

"Uh, yeah," she said, thinking back on it. "The kid's a powerhouse, even without killing anyone to boost their LOVE or EXP." She pronounced them 'love' and 'ex-pee.' "And Monster magic doesn't do too much to a human's physical body. It usually goes past to the SOUL. Monsters' bodies aren't really made of flesh, they're made of magic mixed with dust surrounding a SOUL, so… I guess that's why I'm not so hung up on showing you yours. We can see them because it's almost all we are, and the things that hurt humans' SOULs doesn't do much to ours unless we go out of our way, and normally… we don't." She shook her head. "That's the kind of stuff we grow up knowing. If you want specifics, you're going to have to ask an expert, like Alphys."

She narrowed her eyes at me.

"Don't hurt her."

"I won't," I sighed. "Just so long as she swears off killing or trying to bring back the dead."

Undyne looked like she wanted to hit me, but she swallowed her rage and looked pointedly away.

I had a feeling Alphys hadn't sworn off raising the dead, and if she kept it up… I had another feeling the White Council was going to come knocking. That could only ever end badly.

I didn't say anything more to Undyne about it. What could I say?

There was a tentative knock on the door. I looked at Undyne, who shrugged.

"Come in, we're done yelling," I said, and the door revealed Georgia. She looked grim.

"You're going to want to see this," she said quietly.

Undyne and I exchanged looks, and we got up to go see what it was. I nearly ran into the door jam with half my vision screwed up, but we both walked into the living room. Everyone was gathered around the TV except Marcy, who was standing in the circle, careful not to cross it. Was she there to help the others if another wave of whatever-it-was knocked us all out?

I put it out of my mind as I stood behind the couch. The reporter continued speaking.

"We're getting calls saying that Harry Dresden, Chicago's Resident Wizard, warned civilians to stay indoors, at home, behind their thresholds," she was saying. "While whatever is bring the dead to life isn't contagious, it has been confirmed that any corpses left behind could be brought back again to fight us. The National Guard has been called, and it is expected that a state of emergency will be declared very soon. We can only hope that it will be enough to keep what officials are calling a Zombie Apocalypse from ending further lives. This is Nancy Callahan with NBC news, and we will bring you more details as we get them."

The TV started to flicker, so Billy shut it off.

For a few moments, nobody spoke. They all looked at me.

I didn't say anything. For once, I didn't feel like making any snide comments.