Mr. Dresden directed me to sit on the couch while he bustled around the place lighting candles.

I thought about getting up to help him with it. His left hand wasn't good for much and the rest of his body didn't move much better. Mom and dad didn't go into specifics, but I knew that he'd come off worse in a fight the last time he'd gone up against a supernatural nasty. Harry didn't like to think about it either, which was why I didn't have more details to draw upon.

But I was here to confess my magical mishap, and I thought he'd probably be mad enough without the implied insult that my help would offer.

Ultimately the decision was taken out of my hands. A huge, hairy dog, bigger than a mastiff clambered onto the couch, spreading himself across my lap. It locked my legs in place more effectively than any pair of cuffs could have. I raised a hand to scratch its ears in an effort to avoid the tongue bath I could sense coming. The dog chuffed happily and leaned more of his weight into me, shaggy feather-duster tail tickling my face with every energetic wag.

"Push him off he bothers you," Harry said absently, not really paying much attention to me. "He'll take the hint and move."

He seemed completely preoccupied, which was out of character. I hadn't interacted with Mr. Dresden much of late, but during the rare occasions I had seen him in the past, he seemed to be a very in-the-moment sort of guy. Daydreaming wasn't conducive to staying alive when you had as many enemies as he did.

There was something brewing just beneath the surface. A cold echo of fear twisted my guts into painful knots. The bagel I'd stuffed into my mouth before sneaking out of the house sat like a carb-laden anvil in the pit of my stomach. Aches and pains that weren't my own settled onto me, making me feel about twenty or thirty years older than I really was. Bleedover, from Mr. Dresden. His thoughts churned sluggishly beneath the surface, and I could tell he was struggling to make something of them. I could probably hear them if I pressed.

Instead, I redoubled my efforts to please my furry overlord. Grounding techniques could work sometimes too, when I only needed to block out one person, like now. Five things you can see. A little more difficult here than anywhere else. Mr. Dresden sort of redefined the word "spartan." I probably had more in my room than Mr. Dresden had in his whole house. The living room was mostly covered in throw rugs, to disguise the fact the floor was stone. They were mostly handmade Navajo rugs, though there was one area rug with a picture of Elvis' attractively superior mug on it. There was a bookshelf with battered paperbacks, a Star Wars poster, a tapestry or two, and that was it. The kitchenette I could spy from the corner of my eye was modest, and if there was anything particularly flashy in his bedroom, I'd eat the dog on my lap.

I recounted the four things I could feel to myself (it was mostly the dog) and then the three things I could hear. The shuffle of Mr. Dresden's feet, the rhythmic beat of the dog's tail on the couch, my own racing heartbeat in my ears.

I was so busy trying to ground myself that by the time I got around to the smell portion of the exercise, the predominant scent in the apartment was coffee. When I blinked myself into focus again, Harry was holding a steaming mug out to me.

"Cup of Joe?" he offered weakly. "Normally I'd offer Coke, but I'm fresh out of anything but this and Mac's Ale."

He gave me a very pointed glance, as though he expected me to beg for booze. Maybe he would have at my age. I wasn't sure. Even if I'd been in the mood to drink, I wasn't about to press my luck. I was neck-deep in trouble as it was.

"Coffee's great, thanks," I mumbled, taking the cup from him. I braced myself for the possibility of burns as I did so, given the dog hadn't shifted off of my lap. Shockingly, the tectonic shaking stopped as soon as I had the cup in hand.

Harry retrieved a cup of his own and settled onto the couch as well, angling his long, lanky frame so that he could keep an eye on both me and the door. He was primed, as though he was expecting something big and hairy to come charging through the frame at any second. Who knew? Maybe he was.

"So what's going on?"

I took a scalding swallow of coffee, stalling. I was raised Catholic. Confession really should have been second nature by now. But for some reason, it was hard to know where to start. Did I just come out and say it? You know the scads of corpses on the street? Yeah, that's my fault. It felt like that was something that needed to be built up to.

So I went with a careful half-truth instead.

"I'm hearing things."

The second the words tripped out of my mouth I wanted to pull them back in. Yeah, because that was so much better.

Harry's brows lifted but he remained impressively stoic in the face of that little announcement. "Hearing things? Seems like a problem you should talk to your parents or a doctor about."

I grimaced. "That came out wrong. I meant...I'm sensing things. Feelings and impressions, mostly. Sometimes thoughts, if people aren't careful."

There was a brief flicker of surprise in his eyes, but his expression remained fixed. "Sure this isn't a puberty thing?"

My fingers curled hard around the mug, gripping until they turned white. When I'd come here, I'd been expecting him to help, not condescend to me. So much for the heroic Mr. Dresden. My mouth may have run away with me.

"Fine, you want proof?" I nodded to his left knee. "You think you dislocated that during your last fight with an ogre, but you're not sure. You can't feel it well enough to tell. There's a knot in your back that you can't reach, and it's starting to distract you. Oh, and yeah, I know that you're giving me a brush-off to tend to something more important. Something's scaring you. Bad. You're annoyed that I came to your door to make the day worse."

Harry considered me for a long minute, reassessing. Some of the tension in his shoulders eased out, and he really seemed to settle into the couch. The pressing need to get out the door abated, taking the edge off my anger. I realized that I'd risen into a half-crouch sometime during the tirade in a vain attempt to make myself taller than him. I settled back down too and drained my coffee cup in one go for lack of anything else to do.

"Thoughts too?" he checked.

I nodded. "If I press or they're really loud. I don't try to do it on purpose. It's not fair. It's not like people can help what they think, you know. But it's hard to tune out at home. Especially yesterday."

"Yesterday?"

"Molly's birthday."

Harry recoiled, reacting to her name like it was a slap across the face. His eyes, which hadn't been looking directly at me anyway, dropped down to his hands. Anger and shame seared across my awareness before he could rein it in.

"Yeah," he croaked, shoving a hand into his overlong hair. "I can imagine that was..."

"Hell," I finished dryly. "Yeah. It usually is."

Harry's eyes twitched up to my face again. "Has this been going on long, then?"

"Since I was thirteen. It wasn't so bad at first. But it's getting worse and I...I wanted it to stop. I wanted everyone to stop screaming questions in my head. I just want some peace and quiet."

Harry sipped his coffee thoughtfully. "Sounds like you might be a Sensitive. It's something that'll require a more delicate hand than mine, I'm afraid. I can probably put you in contact with someone in a week or so. Sorry about the delay, kid, but there's something I have to take care of first. I don't know if you noticed, but there's evil afoot. Mother nature doesn't usually decorate Chicago with carrion for shits and giggles."

My stomach pitched horribly at the word "evil."

"I...um...I think I might have something to do with that."

It was my turn to dodge eye-contact. I was afraid to examine whatever expression was on Mr. Dresden's face. His stare burned into the side of my face, hot and accusatory and the impression of his thoughts slammed to a halt and began careening in an entirely new direction seconds later.

"Daniel."

He drew my name out in stern, warning tone. My shoulders hunched without my conscious permission as all the doubt and anger he'd been feeling slammed into me. He continued in the same tone when I didn't speak.

"Daniel, what did you do?"

The dog on my lap had gone very still, listening to our exchange somberly. I shoved my fingers into its fur to steady myself again. I couldn't force myself to speak much over a whisper, but in the silence of the apartment, it was enough.

"I wanted it to stop," I repeated slowly. "They're thinking about her almost constantly, Mr. Dresden. At least one of them wonders where she is. Every single day for two years now. I just wanted to find her body. I thought if I could end the questions, then maybe everyone could start to heal. I didn't mean for this to happen. I swear."

"But how did you even...?"

He stopped himself, heaved a heavy sigh, and then scooted closer to me. "The Word of Kemmler. You picked it out of my thoughts."

"I did. I'm sorry. I just thought-"

"That you could come to the rescue," Harry finished bitterly. "Solve the case all by your lonesome. And now you've made things about a thousand times worse. Didn't you pick up on the fact it was bad news, even in my head? Necromancy is illegal for a reason. It's dark stuff."

Something seemed to occur to him then, and he let out a low string of curses. "The Laws. You broke the fifth law. Christ."

He stood and did his best to pace the room. It resembled an ungainly zombie shuffle, more than anything else. He kept running his hands through his hair, cursing.

"Laws?" I asked, alarmed by the rising panic that was battering against his careful control. "Can't I just...get a slap on the wrist? It's my first offense, so they'll go easy right?"

The sound that escaped Mr. Dresden was more groan than chuckle. It was clear he didn't find any of this funny.

"No, kid. You break the law and most of the time you don't get a second chance to do it again. The sentence is death."

"But I didn't mean it. I didn't know-"

"Ignorance of the Law is no excuse. That's what the Merlin will say. They'll send the Wardens if they trace it back to you. Hell, I'm a Warden, now. Jesus..."

The shakes that came over me then were purely my own, uninfluenced by the separate and weighty mass of Mr. Dresden's nebulous fear. Death? What kind of maniacs would kill someone for acting in ignorance? It wasn't right. Wasn't fair.

"I was just trying to help." The words were hushed, fervent. "Are you...do you have to tell?"

Mr. Dresden finally stopped pacing, letting his hands drop to his side. His jaw worked a few times and then he set his shoulders stubbornly.

"No. If you die...I think I might as well just stab both your parents too, and finish the job off. They can't take something like this. Especially not after Molly. What I am going to do is call Murphy back. You and I are going downtown, and then you are going to talk. Everything you heard, everything you did, everything you suspect. You're telling it all to Murphy and we're going to fix this. Do I make myself clear?"

I nodded stiffly. I was about thirty seconds away from swallowing my tongue. I wasn't sure how to unlock my lungs and breathe again. Harry nodded.

"When I'm done, you're calling your mother. I'm not lying to her about what's going on. That's your business. Mouse and I will be waiting in the Beetle when you're through."

"What do I say?"

Mr. Dresden shrugged. "Get creative. Tell her I'm taking you on a field trip. Or a boy's night out."

"Boys night out makes it sound like you're taking me to a strip club."

A smile ghosted across his face before he could stop it. "Heh. She'd just love that."

"Well, it's not believable, anyway. I don't believe you have enough ones to shake at an exotic dancer, Mr. Dresden."

"Rude. Factual, but rude."

I couldn't help it. I smirked, just a little. Then it dropped away when I realized I still had to think up an explanation for my absence. A smirk etched itself onto Mr. Dresden's face, and for the first time since meeting him, I finally understood why Amanda and Alicia had tiny crushes on him.

"Good luck, kid. You're going to need it."