Normally, I tend to find myself alone, scared and with my friends either miles away or unable to help me deal with whatever magical mayhem is knocking on my door when things get really bad. Like I told the kid, Frisk: sometimes it's just you against the world, and you need to stand up and face all its evils head on. There are also times when you've got somebody watching your back, like my friends Michael and Murphy, or even more recently my brother Thomas. Other times I've faced down doom stark naked or on fire, both in the same week, and I've barely scraped through.

I'd never expected to hear about those same magical threats from the television, and it hadn't even occurred to me that I'd ever have the National Guard called in for support. Finding myself alone might not turn out to be as much of an issue as it normally was.

Calling in the forces of humanity as a whole is the magical world equivalent of the nuclear option; once that genie is out of the bottle, you get the Salem Witch Trials or the current systematic extermination of the Black Court of Vampires. Once the word gets out, every child will learn about the threat and know how to fight back. And they never stop. If you kill a million humans, a hundred million more are ready and waiting to take their places. And it only escalates from there.

Whether the world knew it or not, this immediate response to a threat could represent a shift in the very foundations of the magical world.

And here I was, smack dab in the middle of all of it, literally named on national television as a leading expert on the subject.

"What day is it?" I asked out loud.

"Sunday, the thirtieth. " Billy answered instantly. "Tomorrow is Halloween."

"Sunday, huh?" I mused. "Maybe that's why the roads weren't as full as I expected them to be. It feels like a Tuesday. And tomorrow's Monday, nothing good ever happened on a Monday."

"What are we going to do, Harry?" Thomas asked, looking at the assembled crew. "We need a game plan."

I shook my head, trying to get a handle on everything that was going on. I blinked, fighting the urge to itch at my eye. My view ended up on the table, where the Alphas had put their city map earlier, and I took my own out while I thought out loud. Two of the Alphas responded to the action, quickly taking it from me and smoothing it out on the table while I spoke.

"OK," I began slowly, "First and foremost, we start calling people. Friends, family- I know you wanted to call Alphys, Undyne." She nodded back to me. "Hells Bells, I'm pretty sure Chicago PD and SI wanted me to call yesterday, but I've just been so busy I didn't follow up with them."

The room at large, except for Mouse who remained alert and Butters, whom I remembered a moment later was taking a shower somewhere, joined us around the map.

"After we call anybody and everybody, we need to get in touch with the military," I continued, "So somebody needs to get them on the line and figure out what they'll be up to before Chicago finds itself in a shooting war with the zombies. Assuming they haven't already gotten started on that," I grimaced. "Like the lady on the news said, at that point people need to be indoors. Better yet, they need to get whoever there's room for them, into the churches, temples, synagogues, anywhere with a strong religious foundation. If those places can be fortified against the Red Court and this new Necromancer faction, then they'll at least be bunkered down."

"The Red Court's behind this?" Billy cut in, probably frustrated I hadn't emphasized that while answering questions earlier, but I waved him down.

"Allegedly," I admitted. "They hit the White Council hard yesterday, and they killed an entire city with some kind of nerve gas when the Wardens retreated. I don't believe in military coincidences for attacks that huge, and neither did my contact. The Vampires are also playing with Outsiders, so it sounds like they're not playing by the rules anymore. I doubt they're going to have the numbers to actually invade Chicago, but I'm not taking any chances. As a side benefit, religious establishments can keep out some serious mystical threats, and at the very least they've got some of the strongest thresholds in the city besides Michael's house."

I pointed to the black dot on the campus, and then another at the museum.

"These marks represent serious black magic, specifically Necromancy, that has been done recently according to my source for all things afterlife, Mortimer Lindquist. He's apparently going to flee the city, but this was his parting gift. If the Red Court is going to be crossing lines, I think it's high time we did the same."

I took a deep breath.

"I say, so long as the military is coming to town? We should point them in the right direction." I tapped the black mark on the campus. "We give them a copy of this map, we tell them to look over and fortify these locations based on their size, and we lock the Necromancers out of anything they might have left behind. I'm planning on going to each of these places myself to look for things nobody else can see, which frees whoever else is up for it to hound these Necromancers non-stop. Whatever's happening, I'm pretty sure it's going down tomorrow, on Halloween night. If we can keep them off their game for the next 48 hours or so, then I think they'll have to pack it in and go home."

I ran a hand through my hair.

"That's the overall plan. Some of it's reasoning, some is guesswork and gut instinct, but I think it'll work as something to shoot for. If you guys hook up with the police and give them the same rundown I gave you while Butters stitched up my face, then we can try to get everybody on the same page." I nodded. "Thoughts, anyone?"

I'd half expected the Alphas to be scowling at me for pushing them off to the side, but they were nodding along with me. Andi, one of the girls, spoke up. "It sounds like it'll work."

Thomas cleared his throat. "I'm guessing you weren't planning on going it alone between the sites, were you?"

I half shook my head. "I might have wanted to before, but that was before the National Guard was called in and the White Council essentially told me they couldn't send help. That, and there are now zombies walking the streets, apparently. I've never had to deal with something quite that blatant before, and I think the bad guys won't hesitate to just shoot me on sight like some creatures tend to."

"It's a start," Billy agreed. "Alright, we'll mark the locations on our map and meet up with the military while you go door to door. Alphas, get ready to move!"

"Thomas, Undyne?" I called my brother and the fish woman closer. "I've got something I need you both to do."

I was last to use the landline, giving me a few minutes to collect myself and get my emotions under control. My first, and maybe my only call, was going to be to SI.

"911, what is your emergency?" The cool voice asked over the phone.

"This is Harry Dresden, and I need to speak with whoever is in charge right now at SI."

"Harry Dresden?" the voice asked. "Please hold, we'll connect you through shortly."

I sighed as the phone reminded me to remain calm and stay on the line, an automated message. I would have called Murphy's desk directly, but given that she was out of the country, I didn't want to wait on a phone that wouldn't pick up. That, and for some reason I couldn't for the life of me remember SI's direct line. Maybe it was nerves catching up to me over the morning's mess.

"Hello?" the voice over the phone was considerably gruffer.

"Hello, this is Dresden," I responded.

"Thank fucking christ," the voice growled out. "Do you have any idea how hard we've been looking for you for the past hour? Reports have you last seen at the University, can we pick you up there? We have a lot of ground to make up, yesterday."

"Listen, no, I'm going straight to another location I've verified something serious went down at, Bock Ordered Books. You can pick me up there, right?"

The voice exhaled hard, but the voice responded, "Yes. We can meet you there. How bad is it going to be?"

"Compared to the morgue?" I asked him, scratching at the back of my head with my numb left hand, "Not as serious a mess, but it's got the same hallmarks of Necromancy, I just don't know exactly why yet."

"I've known you for thirty seconds and I already don't like the way you do things," the voice growled some more. "Before you go galavanting off into another firefight, would you spare a soldier some fucking intel on what exactly we're fighting out there?"

"Soldier?" I asked, but thought better of it before I got sidetracked and the phone exploded or something. "Nevermind, yes. Yes, I have several locations where these guys have either been seen or are going to be again, and I've got a map I'm sending your way with the exact locations. May I list them off for you now?"

I heard some shuffling around whatever mess was happening on the other end of the phone, and the voice said from a little farther away, "Go."

I listed the locations: the Museum, the University, the Morgue, Mac's Bar, the one I was heading toward at Bock Ordered Books, and another somewhere out past the interstate 90 toward Rockford.

"I'm sending a map, and the size of the circle should give you some inkling of how big a spell these guys have been casting at each of those locations." I refrained from mentioning the footprints on my own map, as we'd confirmed they weren't a problem. "If you can keep those places locked down, you may be able to force them away from their goals."

"What are their goals," another voice chimed in, a little farther away. They must have put me on speakerphone.

"Without talking it over with one of them, best guess says they're preparing something big for Halloween night, probably at midnight. When I say big, I mean the mess at the Morgue is going to look like small potatoes in comparison."

"How many of them are there?" the first no-nonsense voice cut in again.

"Six, I think, worth mentioning." I thought back to what Sans had told me. "A guy and a girl wearing black robes, one of them attacked me at Mortimer Lindquist's house. A guy covered in liver spots and may have arthritis. The next is responsible for this morning's attack on the morgue. Him, I've seen in person, got a good look at his face: he has grey hair, a scar turning up his lip, and was wearing a leather duster like mine. Tall, too, maybe six-three. He spoke with a British accent, don't know if that helps. Finally, there's the Capiorcorpus, or Corpsetaker, who I was warned can body-swap when she's about to die. Last I saw, she was between five-two and five-five, brown curls, pretty face with dimples, totally out of her mind but calm about it. If you fight her, do it from a distance."

"You said there were six worth mentioning. I count five. What'd you miss?" the voice demanded.

"Sorry, yeah, I was just thinking back to how she ate my magic last we fought," I told them. "She was working with a Ghoul, a supernatural assassin hitman. It eats people, and I didn't get a good look at him before his face elongated into a facefull of jackal's teeth. Super strength, hard as hell to put down, use bigger bullets," I finished. "You got all that?"

"Yes," The voice responded. "It's crap, but it beats the hell out of where we were five minutes ago. Any particular reason you want us to meet you at this bookstore rather than pick you up where you are now?"

"Uh…"

Andi, a redheaded Alpha who looked like she had just a touch too much coffee, was trying to get my attention. I waved her off for the moment, then continued. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I was hoping to get there before it became a huge scene. If there's something still there, the last thing we want is to scare it off to where we'll have to track it down again. If you could set up a perimeter a block out, it might be better than falling on it immediately. Other than the interstate, this is one of the spots that looks out of place on my map."

There wasn't an answer, and the line was silent. Either I'd been cut off, or they'd muted themselves.

"Guys, I'm going to need to get a move on. Can you put men on those places I told you about, just in case the Necromancer terrorists are still there or are going back?"

The sound of movement cut in on the line, and the second voice told me, "Yes, we'll handle it. We'll have people waiting around the bookstore. We're going to want to talk to you when we get there. Is that clear?"

The power went out. Thankfully, landline phones still work even with the power out, but it startled me that things had suddenly gone darker in the room.

"Shit, are you still there?" The voice asked.

"Yeah, I heard you. I'm going to get a move on. See you there."

I hung up the phone, and turned to Andi.

"What's up?" I asked. She stopped looking around at the outage and frowned at me.

"We didn't discuss who was going to back you up," she said simply. "We need to know how many of us are going with you."

I sighed, looking at the door, then back to her. "At this point, I think the military is going to be my backup. Them plus Mouse should be more than enough to get me through the next hour."

"Oh, and it's going to take the entire Pack to explain to whoever's in charge about what we're up against?" She asked. "Not likely. Kirby and I are here to support you, whether you like it or not."

"Fine, great," I told her, annoyed. "Where is he and how soon can we go?"

"Bringing the car around with Mouse, and right now," she ignored my tone.

"Then let's get moving already."

As best as we could tell, most of the city was without power. With my warnings having been sent out by the morning news crews and police sirens blaring in all directions, the roads were a little easier to navigate then I might have expected, even for a weekend. It didn't take long to get to the nearby bookstore, so we parked half a block out in a red zone. I suspected the police had bigger things to worry about than parking tickets.

"I don't know what we might be getting into in there," I told the others before we got out of their newish Ford Focus; my legs barely fit, but I managed. "So just in case this turns out to be a battle of wits, I want my opponent to think I'm alone and unarmed. I want you two and Mouse guarding the front entrance, out of sight, and if we get any backup, I want you to send them around to the back, to block off the area. Any questions?"

None were forthcoming, so Andi and the messy, black-haired Kirby, athletes both, ditched their clothes (while I took interest in the sky) and morphed into their wolf forms. It was done in a flash, quicker than could be seen unless you were looking very closely, and I wasn't in the habit of staring at naked college kids. Mouse let out a small bark, and led the two of them off toward a side alley.

I stretched my legs, glad as I'd ever been that I'd taken up running. If today was going to be as long as I thought it was, I was probably going to be doing a lot of it over the next two days. I took my staff in hand, and strolled over toward the oldest occult bookstore in Chicago, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious.

The little bell tinkled as I stepped inside, and Bock himself was standing at the counter. He gave me a once over, folding his arms, but he didn't say anything even after his eyes stopped on my staff.

"Afternoon, Bock," I said. "Anything strange out among the shelves today?"

He huffed. "No more than usual."

I nodded to him, then started walking along the front aisle of the wooden shelves, looking for anything out of place.

The bookstore was a small, simple affair. It had somewhat plush carpets, old wooden shelves and a couple light bulbs covered in glass with small etchings, presumably to prevent them from breaking as often from wizards like me passing through.

Lo and behold, there was another customer there today. She was holding a copy of Die Lied der Erlking, going through the pages like she was looking for something, rather than reading them. Blonde, tall, curves everywhere I looked. If I pictured her wearing a hospital smock, with sterile gloves and a facemask, then she was a dead ringer for the camerawoman who had been at my house last night.

"Fancy seeing you here," I drawled, shaking out my shield charm. I leaned out of the aisle to keep her in my sight while I spoke over the shoulder to Mr. Bock. "You're probably going to want to take a walk. I'll keep an eye on things here while you're out."

I didn't bother waiting for him to respond as I stepped forward, into swinging range of my staff. No reason to start the fight yet, but I wanted to get a look at whatever pages she was looking at.

"Oh!" the lady exclaimed, taking in my stance and stepping back. "I'm sorry, Mr. Dresden. Can I help you?"

"I'm not too sure," I admitted, taking another step forward. "Maybe you could tell me what exactly you're looking for?"

She bit her lip, glancing down at the book in her hands. Slowly, she offered it to me, open to a poem, Erlkönig, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I would have had to drop my staff to take it, so I didn't. "This was the poem I was telling you about last night," she said carefully. "After seeing your copy of this book, I was curious about why it wasn't torn up, and I remembered that I'd seen it here, in this occult shop, a few years ago."

"A few years ago," I asked, testing each word as I said it. I raised an eyebrow. "You expect me to believe you saw it years ago in this shop, and it just magically stuck in your head all that time?"

She shook her head, hair dancing around her face. "I have an eidetic memory. Perfect recall. Once I've seen something, it's always there, waiting to be called back up again."

I grunted. She didn't seem like she was gearing up for a fight. She actually looked like a bookworm minus the glasses, the way she pulled the book back and crossed her arms over it, but I wasn't going to trust my gut one way or the other about her. I'm a sucker for a pretty face, but knowing Necromancy had been done here had me on edge.

"So. You're just in the wrong place at the wrong time, eh? Tell me something. If you have perfect recall, then why did you need to take another look at that book? It's not like you'd have forgotten anything in it."

She pouted. "I didn't read the whole thing cover to cover when I was here last time. I just flipped it open to a few random pages to see if I wanted to read any more of it."

"Mmhmm," I grunted. "See a strange book at a crime scene, might as well investigate it."

"For your information-"

"My, my, Mr. Dresden," an oily voice slithered out from between the shelves, and a dark figure wearing a black cloak with the cowl completely lost in darkness stepped out behind me. I pivoted on the spot, turning my shield charms toward him while I pointed my staff toward the blonde. "I knew you were a thorn in my side for your ability to gather information seemingly out of nowhere, but I hadn't realized it was quite so… literal."

I glanced back and forth between the man with the Cowl and the blonde, then did a double take. In the instant I'd looked away, she had vanished.

I'd been pulling information out of nowhere, he said?

I opened my third eye, quick as can be, but the only difference between the bookshelves (some holding power in the hidden pages of their books) was that she hadn't been there in the first place.

She hadn't left any footprints in the plush carpeting.

I forced myself to put it out of my mind, and pointed my staff back toward the dark figure; if she wasn't physically there, I had to trust she couldn't stab me in the back. The man in the deep cowl hadn't taken advantage of my confusion. If anything, the bastard looked amused.

"I wonder, then, how closely related to the time shifts you've been these past several months?" he probed, and my heart stopped.

I didn't give him an answer; normally I'd quip for its own sake, but my throat had closed up as I recalled advice I'd heard at least twice over: don't talk about time travel.

"There's no reason to be rude, Mr. Dresden," the cowled figure murmured, clasping his gloved hands. "I've always been willing to let you come over to our side, no matter how many jokes you make about Darth Vader when I do."

"I'm not sure I'll be a good fit if I'm not even allowed to make them," I said carefully. I was drawing in power, probably enough that the man in the hood noticed, but he didn't seem to care. That wasn't good news. "If I don't get my daily recommended value of snark out, it gives me hives."

"Is that so?" Cowl, as I started thinking of him, took the idea seriously, tilting his head. "Perhaps in another life we may consider silencing you for the sake of seeing such a reaction. I've never heard of the like in my long life thus far."

"If it weren't my shtick, I might recommend you to add it to your diet. Maybe it's never an issue, but do you really want to risk something like that? Picture it: you're chanting, calling up dark forces, and BAM! Suddenly, hives. Ruins your whole day."

He nodded deeply, like I'd exposed one of the greater truths of the universe. "I appreciate both the warning and your consideration of my well-being, Mr. Dresden. Now then, with your 'daily snark' quotient filled, perhaps we could return to the subject of the time loops. I'm sure you've noticed them, nearly every magical talent in the city has."

I grunted, not willing to say more. He took it as a sign that he should continue.

"While it was entertaining and enlightening to discover that we'd been caught in them, and while we've certainly put our newfound foreknowledge to good use, it is time that these jumps through time come to a close. If you would be so kind, please inform your ally that enough is enough. We've won, and all the loop is serving to do is exhaust his or her power. It's really rather pointless, don't you think?"

"I guess I could pass it along," I spoke as easily as I could, but my mind was racing. They weren't responsible? My ally? If not them, then who?

I doubled down with a broad smile.

"Aw, come on, Cowl. Groundhog day is a wonderful movie! Tell your guys to get over the headaches, because we're not giving up until we get things right!"

Cowl must have seen something in my face, because he sighed, then tsked three times. "You don't have any clue about the ones responsible, do you?"

He's going to hit you from all sides. Shielding head-on won't be enough.

"I'm terribly sorry, but if you aren't going to join us, and you know nothing about the last obstacle we've been facing, then there's really no reason for us to continue. Good day, Mr. Dresden."

I dropped my staff and threw all my power, everything I had, everything I'd gathered, all my fear, my rage, my confusion, everything into my shield bracelet, forcing it not into the usual half-hemisphere of glowing blue power, but instead into a dome, completely covering me. I doubled over, literally taking a knee to better weather whatever storm was coming, and to minimize the total area I needed to defend.

It still wasn't enough.

Cowl raised a gloved hand and yanked it to his chest. A hundred blades, hidden in the books of the far wall, burst out and bounced off my shield from behind.

Cowl grunted as I chuckled, and then he hit me with his combo.

The initial blast of force hit me from the front, like I'd been expecting, but then the shelves on either side of me slammed together, shattering them and throwing books out randomly, and then spears of force slammed in from all directions, attempting to turn me into a pincushion. If it had stopped there, had I been given a moment to breathe, I would have managed, but the entire spell repeated, SLAM from the front, spikes from everywhere, and now the broken pieces of the shelves hammered me down alongside the other waves of force and power. It was the third massive fist of power from Cowl's direction that finally broke through my shield, and it still had enough after that to lift me off the ground and throw me back a dozen feet, and I scrambled to raise it again when a different kind of explosion filled the air. Gunfire. Lots and lots of gunfire. Cowl quickly raised a shield of his own, but he'd been caught off guard, and I think he must have been shot at least twice. I raised my right hand, and tried triggering my force ring. No dice, I'd used it's one good shot at the morgue. If he felt the attack, he didn't act like it, not even when I did a moment's mental arithmetic and repurposed my force ring as a focus to throw a hasty blast of energy at him again. He stepped calmly backward, over the mess of books littering the ground, back toward the back room where the more rare and valuable texts were locked away. The door must have been left propped open a bit, because with a final wave of his hand it flew open and he ran through it.

It was another ten seconds before the even rat-tat-tat-tat of machine guns cut down to one, then none, and I vaguely heard calls of, "Cease fire!" I was shaking while I pushed myself to a sitting position, and I could feel my shield bracelet burning into my wrist, the little metal shields almost red-hot from the power. I whispered words of power, gently, to pull the heat away.

"Flickum bicus," I subvocalized, and sparked a tiny flame to life above my right hand. With only the heat of the shields to keep it lit, the burning sensation faded down to a mere uncomfortable heat. I dropped the spell as men in military fatigues entered the store, pointing their rifles around, periodically calling out, "Clear!"

I raised my shaking hands as best I could from the floor.

I looked at the floor where Cowl had stood, but nary a drop of blood had been left behind. I doubted I'd find any fibers to track him with, either.

A few minutes later, I was escorted out the front, the sound of gunfire and howling echoing in the distance.