"Wakey wakey, Boss man," a voice echoed painfully through my head. "It's time we had a chat. You're late for this, in fact."

I blinked heavily, trying to gauge where I was, and all I saw was an expansive black void. I looked blearily in the general direction of the voice, my voice, and I saw a figure there, one that quickly crystallized into a familiar shape.

Standing as tall as a basketball player, he was wearing a black leather coat. He had a gloved left hand; my own twitched. He smirked with his rugged-but-not-actually-handsome face, and stroked his little black goatee. Every time I saw it, it made me picture an old-timey cartoon villain tying a screaming woman to a set of train tracks, laughing maniacally all the while. He didn't seem to need a focus like my Staff or broken blasting rod, no, because he was suave and subtle, what might have been, the less savory roads untraveled.

Me. It looked like who I could have been if I'd fallen to the power of the Dark Side. Given that this was supposed to represent my subconscious, it was sobering whenever I found myself down here. I'd talked to myself in the past, in a very literal way, and no matter how dumb I could be, I always came away from these little talks having learned something. Usually I understood the message I was trying to give myself subconsciously only after I suffered the consequences of missing the memo. By then, people had usually died.

Part of me really, really wanted to feel exhausted, but as this was apparently the inside of my mind, I didn't feel much of anything.

Except frustrated annoyance. I had that in spades.

"What happened now?" My voice was not whiney.

"You," Darth Me answered jovially. "You happened. More than once, actually. Get up, I'll introduce you."

My inner evil waved his jazz-hands dramatically to the side, and another version of me walked up.

This one was considerably less of an evil-goatee bad guy, but for all the wrong reasons. He looked bent, almost hunched over his staff, and while I could see the ghost of a smile on his face, it was rough enough to call a grimace, or a sneer, or maybe a smug caricature of something sly. I couldn't quite tell because he had a distracting open wound. The injury started near the bone of his chin under his right ear, where it flayed his cheek clean off and continued past what was left of his nose, and finally cleaved a chunk of his hair away above his left eye.

Whatever had done that hadn't been gentle to his right eye, which was dangling out of its shattered socket.

At my gobsmacked stare, the smile turned huge and genuine, which was fucking creepy to see on my own face, half cleaved off.

"Good to see you too, Past Me," the figure chuckled. "Ignore the scars, that's what you'll tell the next guy if you find yourself in my position."

"What-" I shook myself. "What happened?"

Other-me-without-the-goatee, or maybe Future Me, shook his head, the eye dangling down freely. I stared at it. "Short answer? Quintus Cassius of the Denarians. The Snakeboy. You'd call him Liver Spots about now, and you'd realize he was coming back for revenge when he'd already captured you, coming after Lasciel's coin. Or, one of us did, way back when in the future, and we've passed it along ever since. If I don't miss my guess, Snakeboy's coming up next in your timeline, Past Me."

Quintus Cassius, The Snakeboy, or Liver Spots as I was calling him, had been a major threat before I'd more or less neutralized him two years ago. He had given up the coin of a Fallen Angel, which ordinarily meant he'd be free to walk away from his crimes without being punished by the Knights of the Cross, three holy warriors wielding Swords forged from the nails that Jesus bore. Supposedly, giving up the coin meant you were being remorseful, and seeking a better path, but more often than not the bad guys just used it as an excuse to get away and try again later. I'd been around at the time Snakeboy had told us he point blank he was getting off scot free, and I'd had a baseball bat... and after the holy guys left the room I'd ensured he wouldn't bother us any more.

I guess that's why it had looked like he had arthritis in all his joints. Apparently he'd taken it personally.

Snakeboy had gotten most of his power, and his immortality, from one of the thirty pieces of silver Judas had been paid to betray one third of the Holy Trinity. Those coins, those thirty little Roman denarii, each held the presence of a Fallen Angel. If you touched one, you could be corrupted. Depending on who told the story, it was only a matter of time from that first touch until you were warped beyond all recognition. The wielders of the Swords three had been standing against the corruption those Fallen spread, and they leveled the playing field whenever those Swords were drawn… but for all their physical prowess, magical ability and sheer Angel strength, the real dangers behind the coins could be found in their more subtle plays.

Their leader, Nicodemus, rarely if ever fought, but he played the long game. Last year, just after I'd helped prevent him from unleashing the next Bubonic Plague, he'd thrown an unbonded coin into my friend's backyard, and then he'd walked away. I'd slapped my hand on a silver denarius to prevent an infant child, the most recently born son of Michael Carpenter (one of those three Knights of the Cross), from growing up alongside the whispers of one of the Fallen. The unburned circle of flesh in the palm of my left hand, branded with the symbol of an hourglass, was a constant reminder that I really, really should have just picked up the baby instead.

I'd buried the coin in a circle in my basement, enchanted it as best I could, and did my best to forget about the whole thing.

"That can wait just a minute, as important as it is," my possibly-evil Subconscious cut in around Future Me's explanation. "We've got bigger issues to deal with first."

"Bigger than me getting carved up by a Denarian?! For Lasciel's coin?! What?!" I shouted, pushing forward in my mindscape, hysterical. "If I'm playing with future knowledge, breaking the Sixth Law, maybe I should figure out what kind of shit happened that made that seem like a reasonable idea, huh?!"

"No," Future Me cut in, scratching the back of his head, seemingly unconcerned that he'd dropped several knowledge bombs on me. "Actually, Dark Inner Me is right. We should probably deal with her first."

"Who?!" I shouted, now thoroughly angry and confused, but Subconscious Me just pointed behind Actual- behind me.

Like I'd said, a very young child had nearly touched the coin of a Fallen Angel. I'd made a grab for it instead, and I had touched it with my bare flesh. I'd Seen what happened to one of the suckers who'd taken up a coin, Seen his soul chained and bloody around a pillar of madness in his own mind while a Fallen piloted his body around like a rental car with insurance. I'd tried to forget about touching the coin, but it kept me up nights wondering what it would eventually cost me.

The bill had come due.

Like one of those loons in a horror film, I turned around slow.

Lasciel, the Temptress, was wearing a nice blue-and-white cotton dress, like the one you'd expect on Alice down the rabbit hole. She didn't look like the inevitable corruption of my soul, but I suppose if it was obvious, she wouldn't be half as dangerous. She smiled her perfect, beautiful smile at me, and gave me a little friendly wave. Even from here, I could smell that faint essence of strawberries in her blonde hair. She must have noticed, because she blushed and winked at me.

My Subconscious slapped me upside the back of the head.

"Ogle the pretty Angel later. We've got work to do."

"Buh?" I articulated grandly, and Future Me chuckled.

"Yeah, she and I came to an understanding," he said flatly. "She stops trying to push her coin on me until after the mess was over, and I let her help me fight off the birth of a new, shitty death-god wannabe." He leaned in on his staff and stage-whispered, "She couldn't help herself from distracting me right near the end, before I could throw my Death Curse, so the enemy won. Again. Maybe if she doesn't do that!" he shouted angrily, "The enemy won't win next time!"

"I'm sure that you and I had an understanding," the Fallen Angel wiped invisible dirt from her pristine dress, "but I only have eyes for the two of you that still matter. Get thee behind me, Dresden?" She taunted, and Future Me flinched. I guess he'd used that phrase on her a few times.

I shivered. If she knew even a tenth of what had happened between other versions of herself and me, then I was even more screwed. Just because her coin, the one that contained the real Lasciel, was buried in my basement, didn't mean this one couldn't convince me to "take up her power." Past experience told me that the coins could vanish from inside the best-made magic vaults money could buy if someone cursed with a shadow called out to them.

I made a vow to remind myself as often as possible that the pretty lady planned to eat my soul.

The Fallen turned her attention back to me with a knowing smile. "Just so there are no misunderstandings in the future, I've been helping you along, bit by bit, since you first smelled Brimstone when you cast a spell. That's Hellfire, and the caveman translation is that it supercharges your spells. I've tried helping you in smaller ways before then, especially with your fear of fire, but you've been remarkably stubborn in keeping me out. Or," she smiled winsomely, "you were before you drew on my power."

"I haven't," I denied reflexively. "Whatever you've got, I don't want it."

Future Me raised a hand almost in tandem with my Subconscious, and I glared at both of them as my Subconscious motioned for Future Me to take point.

"Two things," he started off. "First, she does bring Hellfire to the table. That's really not something to turn your nose up at. After things started completely falling apart, I was happier to have it than not. She's got perfect recall and pretty much every language ever hidden somewhere in your head, and she can make your pain go away long enough for you to get the job done when it matters, so keep an open mind even if," he turned back to her, "we're never taking up the coin."

He smiled back at me.

"Two," he continued, and then his tone became sheepish. "I know for a fact that I threw a van at Kumori, or, uh, the black robed lady, back at Mortimer's place with a touch of Hellfire. She's fine, by the way, but was peeved when she talked to me at Bock's place. I saw that this time around, Cowl himself showed up. So… yeah. We did use her power. That means the Fallen Angel's here to stay unless we give up magic completely." He sighed, shaking his head, and I agreed with the implication. Yeah, like that would ever happen.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, counting up to ten. My Subconscious took the opportunity to mutter something to Future Me, and the harlot in my head tittered. I opened my eyes back up to see that she had altered her clothing into a nun's outfit, and she clasped her hands and bowed to us, the picture of innocence.

Future Me cleared his throat, and I blanched at his eye hanging out of the broken socket, staring at it.

"Yeah, I was blindsided by Quintus Assius, because fighting him was an eye opener, and in the end, his final attack was one I didn't see coming," he joked, moving his head and making the eye swing back and forth like a pendulum. I felt a little green, even if I'd just gotten out of a zombie fight. That was my face. "Anyway, back to business. As you've already figured out, the Necromancers are cheating with both hands. The problem is, as far as we've gathered, it's somebody on our side who's enabling them, and not on purpose, either. Now, while I need to be more careful with what I share-"

"Wait, why?" I cut in. "If they're cheating, why aren't we cheating right back? In fact, why don't you just-"

"Share everything I know?" Future me cut me off. "No." His voice was hard, uncompromising. "I asked the same question, and I'll give you the same answer: that headache you get when the future starts becoming different timelines in the past? If we merge, or something like that, you get that headache for days. Even Lasciel there won't be able to keep it fully away. Hell's Bells, even with what little I've shared, as my new friend would say, you're gonna have a bad time. How well would you have done against Cowl if you were popping advil like candy? How well do you think you'll do if you need it after this? Worst part is, apparently that version of us died by overdose. On pain medication." He gave me as flat a look as he could with his torn up face, crossing his arms. "If I share too much info, you'll get flashes of images and thoughts at random times alongside a massive headache, though maybe not quite as bad as debilitating pain. Just enough that it's likely to screw you up at a key moment; our enemies know about that weakness and are counting on it. So I have to ration this stuff, good as it is."

"Can we turn that against them?" I asked, wondering about the poor ass who had died about as proud as Elvis on his toilet. Me. About a version of me, popping pills.

"Tried, failed, apparently it's worse than a waste of time," he sighed. "Lasciel, my version, cut that off as a choice after my own Past Me explained to her how it went wrong. Apparently they're using some kind of dark ritual to sidestep the headaches. You don't want to know the details."

My Subconscious leaned in, eyebrow raised. "Fun as this is, we need to cut a deal with the Angel. Soon. We don't have forever before something wakes us up, and according to A Pirate's Life for Me here, it's harder to contain her from the outside. I can still work on building a cage down here, but you have to decide to put her in it. Or not. If the first taste is free, then you might as well enjoy it."

Future Me lifted his hands and stepped back. "This one's on you two. I learned the hard way that asking my own Future Me to solve the problem can backfire in a don't-you-wish-you-had-the-coin kind of way. I mean, I didn't take it, but still."

I shook my head, then leveled my gaze back at the same face and gentle smile I'd seen before once hidden under a face mask, and once in a bookstore. It seemed genuine, like she really wanted to help me.

I felt again that if she had Future Me to steal ideas off of, however long he'd been here, then I was probably more screwed than I knew.

Before I could open my mouth, a book appeared in her hands. I recognized the designs, but the title had shifted to English: The Song of the Erlking.

"Before we start negotiating, I just wanted to let you know that no matter how things turn out, this is yours whenever you need it," she assured me. I narrowed my eyes at her.

"Why would I want that book in the first place?" I demanded, but it was Future Me who cleared his throat. I turned to face him.

"The Necromancers plan to call the Wild Hunt, and if they don't, they'll sucker you into doing it. The ritual to call the Erlking, leader of Wyldfae and the goblin tribes, is in there. If he gets free, he calls the Hunt. Oh, and uh… try not to insult him if you can avoid it. Word is, he takes it personal. That's coming from other versions of Us, so… yeah."

"Thanks," I growled back at her. "A gift to stab myself with."

She just smiled that damned perfect, knowing smile. "You can do whatever you like with it, my host. Just reach into your pocket, and there you'll find it waiting for you."

Her smile didn't change as another book appeared in her grasp. This one made Future Me gasp.

It was apparently titled The Word of Kemmler. I'd never seen it before in my life.

"You shouldn't have that yet," Future Me growled, and I noticed he'd just about called Power into his hands to throw at her.

She chuckled once more. "I shouldn't have the Erlking's song just now, either, but you've been so kind as to provide that, as well. Even if you exist as a buffer against the future, you've brought all kinds of wondrous toys with you."

Future Me exhaled hard, then turned to me. "Don't bargain for that. It's what the Necromancers are here for, what Bob helped create. It's everything you never knew about Necromancy, and if you think you need it, you're probably already screwed."

My Subconscious scoffed. "Just because you were in a bad place and couldn't handle it doesn't mean we'll make the same mistakes."

"And arguing like this is helping no one," I cut off my doppelgangers, then hooked a thumb at the Fallen. "More so in front of her. So where is this book in the real world, anyway? Just in case," I motioned Future Me down, but he sighed, then chuckled.

"As far as I know, the Necromancers never found out. It's actually under a desk on the second floor in the Field Museum. I, uh, didn't follow the clues myself, but I was told it was hidden under Sue's skull. The real one. So it's right there if you want to avoid bargaining for a copy. I may not have used it, but... other versions of us did. Seriously, be careful with the Word of Kemmler. It's bad mojo on a different scale. Now... something something Fallen Angel ground rules."

The three of us smiled at Lasciel, the Webweaver, and she smiled back. "Don't worry about me, boys, I'm in no rush."

Something jarred me, making me stumble in the void, and Future Me started panicking. "Hell's Bells, that's too soon!" he shouted, looking around frantically. "Uh, quick! We think it might have been Alphys for the time loops," the black void was lighting up to white, "Bob's skull can be remade, it's safe to trust Sans-"

And then I woke up.

"He's coming around," a voice thundered like Zeus had just heard Hera was divorcing him, and I almost passed out again. I would have loved that, maybe Future Me had more information to share.

My head was pounding like a rock concert. Somebody shined the full force of the entire sun directly into my eyes, and I (without shame) screamed like a little girl.

I weakly shoved away at whatever was responsible and I whimpered, trying to curl into a little ball. I felt something fluffy sniff at my face, and then hot, stinky breath filled my nostrils followed by a wet rag on my face. Several times. I loved my dog, but the smell made me want to vomit some more.

"Should we put him back in the circle again?" Somebody female whispered, the sound loud and violent against my migraine, and I briefly wondered if it was Andi. Where had she been during the fight, anyway?

"He was screaming bloody murder even with it up. You think it'll help now?" some other female asked her back.

More than anything else in the world, I wanted to pain to go away.

'Your wish is my command, my host,' A voice whispered gently into my ear, and then the world dampened down again to something much more manageable.

Part of me wanted to scream that I'd been stupid enough to ask the air for a favor when someone like her was listening, but the rest of me was just glad I wasn't feeling like death warmed over anymore.

"What happened?" I asked nobody in particular. I started trying to push myself up, so Mouse got underneath me and lifted while two pairs of hands pulled me up from under my armpits. I noted the dull feeling telling me that the blood on my face had dried again, minus Mouse's cleaning. "Did we win?"

"Yes, barely," Andi told me, and I looked over and oh she was completely naked. Not hiding it, either. I turned back away as she continued, "Your play with the dinosaur skull worked. The Corpsetaker's neck was broken, but her Ghoul friend almost got her away anyway. Without the zombies distracting us, we kept the pressure on until the both of them were dead. She didn't even manage to release her Death Curse."

"And nobody's acting out of the ordinary?" I asked, looking at the destruction in the museum. "She's called the Corpsetaker for a reason."

"She was unconscious, and we kept our distance," the other woman cut in, and I turned to see that it was the same soldier who had helped run the breach. "Apparently she wasn't expecting her neck to be broken. Too bad for her."

I sighed. "Small miracles. I'll take a lucky break over losing any day of the week."

There were bodies being laid out in the middle of the room, last rites being given, and I walked over to look at the fallen. The corpses, not the Angel, I thought to myself. A faint chuckle sent nasty shivers down my spine. Anyway, they had been laid out, and the zombie-soldiers were being handled more carefully, just in case they were planning to get back up again. They could tell the difference between who was raised and who wasn't by how pale and cold the corpses were.

There were also helpful green flashing arrows over each of the zombies, just in case I'd missed any, until I made a small cut-off motion with a free hand. The illusion vanished with another whisper of female titters, and I resolved to build a cage in my mind for my unwelcome passenger as soon as I could find the time.

Dinosaur Sue's skeleton was actually surprisingly intact. While her fake skull had been melted to slag, I didn't think any real bones were damaged in the fight.

I took a deep breath of coppery air, and looked up at the second floor, where I could picture the faint image of her real skull waiting. It wasn't just my imagination; I could visualize the skull and a few of the surroundings, even if it made my suppressed headache flair up for a moment. Gifts from the Future, I guess.

Too bad he couldn't outright talk to me if I wasn't hanging out with him.

"I have a quick errand to run," I told the two ladies, and maybe my dog. "I just need a moment."

Nobody answered or bothered me as I walked up to the stairs across the battle-worn room, then climbed the staircase.

Sue's skull, her real skull, weighed six hundred pounds, and was set atop a reinforced table next to a desk. The glass case it had been held in was shattered, like all the other glass cases in this part of the museum. I noted the dried, flakey bloodstains around the banisters here, and realized that this was where the zombies had probably dropped down from.

I walked up to the front of the desk, ignoring the slight headache of memory on where the book was hidden underneath, and crouched down, reaching blindly forward to grab it.

"Ow," I pulled my hand back, confused. There were a bunch of little red dots all over my palm and fingers. I crouched further down and tried to look up under the desk, where the book should have been.

Instead of a book, there was a little jet-black metal cylinder with spikes flared out from it.

I looked back down at my hand, where little drops of blood were welling up.

"Empty Night, you told me they hadn't found Kemmler's book," I groaned.

In hindsight, relying on my Past self for warnings about future threats was stupid. He outright told me that some female Necromancer, Kumori I think, had met him back in Bock's bookstore. If that had changed, then why couldn't they have finally found out where the Word of Kemmler was hidden?

Especially because his warning at the end, Bob's skull can be remade, gave me a good idea on where my spirit of intellect had ended up.

These people weren't stupid. If they were able to send messages to themselves in the past, without suffering the consequences like the rest of us did, then every time I did something different, they'd probably prepare a counter.

That only made me wonder how on Earth they'd figured out where the book was this time, but decided to either wait until now to booby trap it, or why they'd waited until now to grab it. Whatever the answer was didn't bode well for me. More so because I suspected I might be the next Past Me to another Dresden all too soon if I didn't get the right kind of help, and soon.

At my insistence, not wanting to risk the lives of everyone else there by taking out the generators the city was now running on, I wasn't being rushed to the hospital. My magic, and my condition, might have wiped out power to the building. The little metal cylinder, with spikes like a puffer fish, was going in my stead. A hazmat team had come up after I'd explained what had happened to the others (amidst a lot of yelling that aggravated my magical headache), and they were both quick and careful in their removal of the hazard from where anybody else might touch it.

The medical professional the military had lent me had pretty much thrown his hands up in despair, then carefully washed and bandaged my injury, informing me that while it wouldn't help if the magical poison had already spread, at this point he'd consider just cutting my hand off if it meant I would stop doing stupid things. Further, depending on the poison, which we currently knew all of Jack and Squat about other than that nobody could swab samples of it off the cylinder, I might have only have a few minutes or I might die in agonizing pain in a few hours. As I couldn't do a damned thing about either situation, I took his advice to "magic up a cure or start praying" under advisement. That, and to "avoid strenuous activity so it wouldn't spread faster."

Like that was going to happen.

It didn't help that Lasciel had quietly confirmed that there were tons of magical maladies that I might be suffering from, and that her initial "scans" confirmed that an antidote alone wasn't going to be enough no matter what I was suffering from. Of course, that I was still up and moving only meant that it was likely to be really, really bad.

I was sitting on the front steps of the Field Museum, my staff sitting across my knees, and more soldiers were moving around me as they worked to secure the scene. Part of me uncharitably considered them little more than extra pawns that the Necromancers could use in their plans. I quashed the thought, looking back down at my bandaged right hand. The metal pins hadn't really damaged it, except with whatever nasty thing was now working its way through my systems.

Despite my current efforts to picture a cage that might fit an Angel in my mindscape, Lasciel had volunteered to watch my vitals to see what kind of poison it was, and I simply hadn't ordered her not to. I was already dealing with too much to prevent the over-eager Fallen from poking around for my benefit. Her offer of the coin, and all the power and healing that went with it, went both unasked and unanswered. From what little we'd seen of each other, she'd apparently decided to hold off on tempting me until she had a better opportunity. Not that I expected her to miss it when it came, especially when whatever was killing me got worse.

My headache flared up for a moment, and I grimaced. I'd lost my focus on building the cage, and it made me irrationally angry. I forced the emotion down, and started counting prime numbers under my breath while thinking on where my allies were.

Mouse was still inside, offering a fuzzy head to pet to the members of the military who weren't handling things so well. Andi had been talking quietly with Kirby near the military trucks a little bit ago, then the two (at the time, naked) Alphas had retrieved their sweats and headed back inside. I'd learned that the college wolves had snuck up to the second floor with Mouse during the fight, looking for an opening, and that Mouse had apparently jumped down into the fray on the first floor just before he'd started Barking. The Alphas had taken out a few zombies at the start of the ambush, and had probably saved at least a few lives.

Maybe if I'd had one of them with me, they could have seen the spike trap before I'd been caught by it.

"that doesn't look so good," a voice came up behind me, and I swung my staff at him before I knew what was going on. I grunted, the muscles in my right hand complaining much more than usual that I was using them.

The short skeleton was standing in front of me now, further down the staircase, his skeletal grin wide in the noon sunlight. "is that how you greet all your friends, or are you just happy to see me?"

"Stuff it, Napoleon Bone-a-part," I growled, lowering my staff back into my lap and making an effort not to stretch my stiff, bandaged fingers. "Unless you've got some really good news, now's not the time."

Sans' grin fell a little as he looked over at the museum. While the glass doors were somewhat opaque, I didn't doubt he had some idea about what had happened inside. Sure, we got the Copsetaker, probably, but Grevane had gotten away. That meant he was likely building up another army, and we had no idea where he might strike next. Other than the University, which I was informed had the highest concentration of soldiers in the city.

Which might not even slow them down.

"depends on what you consider good news," Sans put his hands back in his pockets. "my brother is enjoying his status as a royal guard, and he's teaching the next generation of monsters about gravity magic. no idea if you'd consider that good news like i do, though."

I looked down at him, standing on a lower step, and I dropped my head into my half-crippled hands, gloved and bandaged both.

I couldn't forget what I'd Seen earlier, and my mouth didn't bother slowing down to ask my brain for permission to speak.

"We found the missing Monsters," I told him. "Their power… their lives were sacrificed into a ritual."

He didn't answer back.

"I'm sorry."

"we found the place where the guy who did it is waiting for us," Sans said quietly. "he's stronger than that should have made him. much stronger."

I looked back down at Sans, at his empty, black eye sockets. Apparently he understood what had happened at Bock's all too well.

"I'm good to go take him down any time, then," I stood tall, taking my staff into my bloodied hand, the bandages no longer stifling the bleeding.

'Perhaps that isn't the best of choices, my Host,' Lasciel's voice was much less certain than it normally was. 'I believe I've discovered the roots of the Curse you're now enduring.'

Sans was staring at my hand.

"What is it?" I asked both of them.

While Lasciel hesitated, Sans didn't.

"why is your soul crumbling to pieces around your right hand?"

I looked at my hand, blood freely dripping from it down my staff.

"uh... are you ok?" Sans asked carefully, staring at my hand. His eye lights had come back on, but his ever-present smile somehow looked ill.

"You know what?" I told him back confidently, flexing my fingers around the blood. "I can't actually feel it hurting. At all. So with all the crap I've had to put up with in the past hour, let alone the past two days… this doesn't even phase me anymore. Any other day, this would sit comfortably at the top of my to-do list and I'd be losing my mind, but today? Just add it to the pile of things I'm gonna have to deal with later."

"yeah, that's sort of a right now problem, not a later problem," Sans cautioned me, looking back up at my eyes. Since we'd had the Soul Gaze, I could meet his without hesitation. "i know some girls who might be able to help, but damage to your soul like that can't wait very long. i can see it eating away at the edges of who you are, weakening you. if it finishes the job… either you'll end up soul-less, or you'll die. couldn't tell you which is more likely."

I could lose my immortal soul because of the Necromancers. Because the Monsters threatening it weren't enough. "Fine," I huffed, annoyed. "How quickly can these girls of yours put Humpty Dumpty back together again? I don't exactly have a couple days to take off."

"there's your good news, then," Sans smiled a little less… frown-ily. "tori is the one who can probably hold you together best while we whip something up on your behalf. she's preparing for the fight we're expecting with the dirty monster killer. if you're ready to go, i know a shortcut."

'If you insist on making my progenitor's coin an absolute last resort,' the peanut gallery offered her unsolicited advice, 'then this is probably your only other option. I advise going with the skeleton, my host.'

"Thanks," I answered both of them, one more sincerely than the other, "but shouldn't we bring along backup? Like Mouse, at least?"

"eh... i'm kinda pooped," Sans shrugged. "and we're both in a hurry. normally i'd say to take your time…"

"But today hasn't been a normal day no matter what you're measuring it against," I agreed, unconcerned. "Alright, give me a moment to tell people where we're going."

Sans nodded waving me off.

I stared at him.

"what?"

"Where are we going?" I asked as diplomatically as I could, given how angry I suddenly felt. My hands were twitching, and little shivers that turned to sweat worked their way up my bloodied face. I wiped it away, but that just left more blood from my hand. If I could see my knuckles, they'd be white with how hard I was holding my staff.

Sans blinked. "the graveyard somewhere."

I shook my head, swallowing the desire to bash his stupid head in. "Which. One?"

"graceland cemetery? the guy is waiting near an open grave."

"Oh." I chuckled mirthlessly. "That grave is mine, and he knows we're coming."

Sans nodded slowly, probably trying to figure out if I was joking with him somehow. "just so long as we're all on the same page."

I left him on the stairs, practically skipping with excitement to tell the others.

There were more traps to spring, and the military wasn't going to be happy with me rushing ahead again, but hey. Needs must.

Mouse met me at the door, and I slowed down to give him a huge hug. "Hey, boy," I held him close. "We're going to Graceland Cemetery. My grave. You remember where it is, don't you, boy? Don't you?"

Mouse tried pulling back, and I looked into his eyes, growling at him.

"Fine, be that way. Go, or don't, see if I give a shit."

I shoved past my dog, who quickly scooted out of the way. I was about ready to brain somebody with my staff again, when the bitch of the hour chimed in.

'While I'm delighted that you're taking your mood swings in stride, my host,' the whore spat poison directly into my brain, 'Perhaps you should avoid upsetting your allies. You'll be less likely to survive if you do, and then where would we be?'

I chuckled, finding the idea a little funny. "Yeah, I probably should. Thanks for letting me know, eh?"

'Would you like me to help regulate your emotions, my host?' her voice was like a summer breeze in winter, melting away the powdery snowfall. 'It might help you in the coming hours.'

I paused, considering it. Something in the back of my mind was screaming at me that this was a bad idea, but the rest of me wasn't sure why.

Still, it would probably help to be cautious… right?

"Uh," I looked around the room, clenching my hands, keeping an eye out as the soldiers, all of them, were moving a bit too carefully, too cleanly, too quietly for the situation. How many of them were really soldiers? "Maybe if you only helped with the negative emotions, or, I mean, if you helped regulate only in the ways that you know I'd know wouldn't have negative consequences on me or take advantage of my compromised position or hurt me, or mess me up in any way?"

'...under other circumstances,' she said carefully, 'I'm not sure how well I could abide by that request, but in this instance, losing your soul like this would mean I've failed at my job.'

As Andi and Kirby approached, slowly, like they'd spook me, I felt the shaking nonsense that had been running through my brain fade away.

I felt like about as dumb as I ever had, turning to a Fallen Angel to regulate my health, but I shoved it down into my overfilling "deal with this later" box.

"Dresden?" Kirby asked carefully (unlike the Fallen, who I realized had remained optimistic and cheerful throughout our conversation, I'd just heard her wrong). "Are you… feeling alright?"

"I wasn't for a moment there," I admitted. "But that was before I realized what the poison was doing to me and started working to fight off the side effects. Mood swings." I didn't bother explaining how I was containing them. "The only people who can help me," I cut to the chase, "are the Monsters. They're preparing an assault against one of the Necromancers, the guy I've been calling Liver Spots, at Graceland Cemetery. Apparently, he's jacked up on Monster dust, so they're being cautious. Unfortunately, I need to move ASAP to meet their healer on site, and my teleporter only takes one passenger, so you'll have to meet me there. I need to go, now, or I'm super dead. Might even come back as a zombie. If that happens, put me down, won't you?"

Lieutenant Tarkin had been coordinating things from the sidelines since the fight, and he apparently overheard me. He'd approached halfway through my quick summary.

"Dresden, are you seriously preparing to jump into an unknown scenario, leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces, again?" He asked, his voice level. He didn't sound frustrated, so much as he was apparently just verifying the facts, such as they were.

"Pretty much, yeah, why?"

He shook his head. "I don't suspect I could stop you if I had a tank. I'd offer you a radio if I didn't know you'd fry it. Yes, thank you for informing us lesser mortals what you'll be up to. I'll pass word along, and soldiers will converge on the Graceland as quickly as we can mobilize them. Best of luck."

He turned and walked over to a radio operator set up away from the bodies, having decided he was done with me.

Not that I could blame him, all things considered.

Andi and Kirby were already limbering up. "We're ready to move," Andi assured me.

"Great! Get going, I'll meet you there."

Andi paused in her stretching. "You said your teleporter could take a passenger. Is there some special reason it can't make multiple trips or something?"

"I get that you want to help," I nodded, "but the teleporter is a person, and that person only has enough juice to make the one trip. The plus one on the teleporter is me. Seriously, if you want to help, you need to get moving the slow way. I'm dying a gruesome death here. I can't wait up."

Maybe it was an exaggeration, but given who and what we were up against, I suspected it wasn't one. That, and part of me still didn't want to see these kids fighting in the big leagues.

Andi ground her teeth lightly, probably picking up on my ulterior motives, but she nodded at Kirby. The two of them tossed aside their shirts and leaped towards the doors, their sweatpants falling away as they transformed into wolves in the air. I turned to watch Mouse shove open the door for them where he'd been waiting, watching me, and then the three of them were gone.

Sans was at my side. As usual, I hadn't seen him move, but this time I suspect it was because I wasn't paying attention.

He held out his hand.

I took it.

A moment later, I felt the semi-familiar opening of a Way, and he pulled me through it.