I woke up when I felt the ripples hit the island.

Don't get me wrong, being the sole caretaker of a massive magical island prison responsible for holding in the most terrible monsters of several dimensions has its downsides, but the bond I had with the island itself was still pretty neat-o. I could feel every grass rustling in the breeze, I could sense every beetle crawling on every tree (and wasn't that just a little bit creepy), and I could feel the waves lapping against the sand of the shore.

Most particularly, I could feel where the waves were irregular, where they were coming in just a little faster than normal, where the water had been disturbed. And I knew what that meant.

Company.

There are only two kinds of people who visit a place like Demonreach, largely because the island tends to discourage every other kind. The one kind is the sort most people would expect... friendly folks who know about you and your island and are dropping in for a nice visit. The other kind is the sort I expect... vast eldritch horrors looking to jump-start Armageddon by cracking open the island and unleashing its nightmares on an unsuspecting world.

Hey, if your life was anything like mine, that's what you'd expect too.

I like to think I'm as optimistic as the next guy, but I made sure to grab my leather duster, staff, pentacle, and Winchester shotgun before I hurried down to the dock. Anything that could get past the island's already-severe defenses wouldn't be greatly deterred by a shotgun, but it was often surprising to see the effect of a solid round of buckshot on even the nastiest of the nasty.

I needn't have worried. As I crested the hill, I saw the familiar shape of the ancient Water Beetle chugging valiantly toward land. Aboard would probably be my brother Thomas, and the ceremonial pizza that he always brought to our little picnics.

As I watched, a blonde head appeared on deck and waved at me. My heart did a little skip that had probably nothing to do with anticipatory cholesterol imbalance, and I waved back. Karrin. She hadn't been coming out to the island recently, and Thomas had only replied evasively that "she's busy."

Which of course wasn't the sort of thing a confident, self-assured manly man like myself might take the wrong way and agonize over. Nope. Not me. Not a trace of Denialitis in my veins. It's not like a long-distance relationship had ever gone wrong before.

But hey, she was here now. All that worrying was in the past.

Even so, I frowned. There was something... off about the boat. Something I couldn't put my finger on. Not anything magical, so much... my Power wasn't picking up anything wrong with it. But on a deeper level, one I didn't even know I had... I could sense that something really strange and bizarre was going on that boat.

A balding, middle-aged man in a suit came out on the deck next to Karrin and peered out at me.

I shuddered. Creepy.

"So you're Harry Dresden." Balding-and-middle-aged stuck out his hand to shake mine. "Pleasure to finally meet you."

I gave his hand a short, curt shake. No sense in not being polite, after all. "Finally?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

The man gave a little shrug. "Everyone kept telling me I should talk to you, but no one would tell me anything about you or how to get in touch with you."

I sized up the man. He wasn't anyone I recognized, which wasn't in itself odd, but I know a lot of the major players in the magical realms and Chicago, and this man wasn't any of them. He was somewhere between Murphy and Thomas in height, and fit without being really built. I still wasn't getting any sort of power-sense off of him, so he wasn't a practitioner of any sort. His suit wasn't expensive, which meant he wasn't one of Marcone's lieutenants, but it wasn't cheap either, so he wasn't one of his goons either.

And he smiled a lot, which made him immediately suspicious to me.

Put simply, he was bizarrely ordinary, the sort of person who didn't hang around with Karrin or Thomas, didn't come out to Demonreach, and didn't have a feel that tickled at the back of my head like an itch that wouldn't go away.

But Murphy was just standing there beside him, grinning ear to ear and looking from one to the other of us like she was checking to see if either of us had sprouted horns yet.

"My name's Phil, by the way." He must have noticed me giving him the once-over. "Phil Coulson."

"Good to meet you." I didn't quite cover the growl in my voice. He didn't seem to catch it, but Murphy sure did. She sent me a death glare and I sighed internally. Right, right. Be nice.

I directed my attention to a less frustration-inducing target. Comparatively less, anyway. "Is that it, Thomas?"

"Just about." My vampire half-brother came out of the boat and laid the last set of cases on the dock. "Should see you through the week. I brought that set of pots you mentioned, so you should be able to heat up your soup."

"Yay." I said, staring at the case full of soup cans. Hells Bells, but I was tired of beef-and-vegetable. Of course, I could always take the Way to Chicago and pick up some other food, but the island got cranky if I did that too often, and it could be rather taxing (That didn't mean I was going to stop doing it though. Those shopping trips were my only chance to visit Maggie, and even if she was better off being raised by Michael rather than me, I was going to be a part of my daughter's life, no matter what). So it was soup for most meals, which quickly got old. I had grave misgivings about how much heating up the soup would alter that. At some point in the near future I really needed to work out how to use my powers as the Winter Knight to create a good-sized icebox. Then I could stock up on more substantial but perishable things and not have to eat most of my meals from a can. My last attempt had resulted in five pounds of perfectly good steak becoming spectacularly freezer burned within ten seconds, and then shattering like glass when I took it out. "And the pizza?"

Thomas froze. He looked at Murphy. Her eyes were wide, her mouth very still. Coulson looked from one to the other of them, as if puzzled.

I let out a loud, dismal groan. This day could NOT get worse.

Then my brother broke into a snicker, and I realized how much I hated him.

Murphy started laughing, and even Coulson let out a chuckle or two. "On the boat." Thomas grinned, still sniggering his hopelessly smarmy head off. "I'll go and get it." He turned toward the cabin, "We actually brought two this time."

I blinked and immediately took back every evil thing I'd ever said about my brother. "Two?"

"Yeah." He said, reappearing with two boxes. "Enough for all of us." He nodded at Coulson.

I took back the takeback. "Oh."

"What do you call this place, anyway?" Coulson asked, glancing around.

I couldn't help it. "Whatsup."

My brother groaned, and Murphy's lingering chuckles flattened into a sigh. "Harry..."

Oh, sure, when my vampire brother plays a cool trick involving a man's sole source of sustenance it's one thing, but when I make a classy pun on classic joke, that's lame. Sounds fair.

Coulson's forehead crinkled in a satisfying manner. "Island Whatsup?" He turned to study me. "Not exactly catchy."

"No..." Murphy groaned, kneading her forehead. "He's talking about the... wharf." She groaned again, seeing that Coulson still didn't get it. "The marina. The port. The wooden thing you're standing on."

"The dock." I interposed, grinning maliciously at Murphy. She shook her head at me.

"Whatsup... Dock." Coulson tried it out. "Damn." He turned to Thomas. "I knew we should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque."

Thomas isn't much one for the classics. "Huh?"

I laughed despite myself. Okay, so this guy wasn't all bad. ""You won't find this place on any map or Google Search," I told him, slapping him on the back and leading him down the dock. "So technically it doesn't have an official name. But it's called Demonreach."

"Sounds... friendly." Coulson observed.

I grinned as we reached the end of the dock. "It's not. But as far as I can tell, there are no demons on the island." Under, I wasn't going to guess. I still had no idea of half the prisoners I was supposed to be guarding in "The Well" really were.

"Oh, Harry!" Karrin called to me as Coulson was about to step off. "Is the island angry at all today?"

Coulson's foot froze inches above the ground. "Is the island...?"

"No, no, it's fine." I called back to her. "Shouldn't mind a few visitors." I stepped off first, just in case, and got a sense for the land. Yes, Demonreach was feeling mellow—or at least not actively malevolent.

Coulson remained hesitating at the end of the dock until both Thomas and Murphy had pushed past him and stepped onto the ground. "Come on, Coulson." Murphy called back derisively. "It won't bite. Not if Dresden says it won't."

"So, you actually know Captain America." I said, through a mouthful of pizza. At his nod, I shrugged and licked some grease off my fingers. "Big deal. I know Santa Claus."

Coulson lifted his own slice from the other side of the pizza. "I also used to work with Thor."

"I still work with Odin." Who was technically the same person as Santa Claus, but that wasn't something I particularly needed to share at the moment. "The real Odin, not your alien-god knock-off."

"Harry." Murphy and Thomas practically said together.

"Could you not be an ass for once?" Thomas asked.

I just shrugged. "Authority figures bring out the worst in me."

Actually, I was having a pretty good time. Coulson had a surprisingly good sense of humor for someone in a suit, and also a surprisingly good knowledge of pop culture. Before I'd even realized we'd started, he and I had been trading quips for almost half an hour, with Thomas throwing in an occasional jibe and Murphy sitting back and shaking her head at us. Sure, he was a representative of a shadowy government organization that had apparently almost assassinated everyone in the country while I was on the island, but once you got past that, he wasn't really a bad guy.

"Uh, actually," Coulson raised his hand. "I'm not an authority figure. Not anymore. Sort of a fugitive right now."

Damnit. I was trying to hate this Coulson guy, but he wasn't making it easy.

"And actually, that's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about." Coulson leaned forward. "See, SHIELD's been always sort of on the fence about whether the Thor we know was actually a god, or just an alien. And now that we know about the Asgardians operating out of Oslo..."

I looked at Murphy, who shrugged. "They're not exactly subtle."

"...it's just made things even more confusing." Coulson shrugged. "I was hoping you could help us out with that."

I frowned. "Sorry. I've seen the newsreels, but I've never met Thor, or Loki, either in the real world OR in the Nevernever..."

"Sorry... Nevernever?"

"Faerie realm." Murphy supplied. "Sort of an interdimensional cosmos of magic."

"Ah."

"Basically, I've nothing to compare it to." I shrugged. "They could be the same people, but I wouldn't know them if I met them. The only one of the Norse gods I've actually met is Odin."

"And we have no footage of our alien Odin." Coulson frowned. "I see."

"It was a big to-do in the magical community when we saw New York." I offered. It was actually a really interesting question, and one that bigger minds than mine had wondered about, so I could understand Coulson's frustration. "Some people said Odin's little boys were drumming up business for their dad's security firm, others said that mortals were impersonating the gods and ought to be punished for it."

"Don't you have someone you can ask?" Coulson frowned. "Say, Odin?"

I chuckled without humor. "Here's the thing about the fae, Phil. They can't give a straight answer. They can't lie, either, but they have this pathological fear of straightforwardness."

"Ah. Gotcha." Coulson sighed. "Like Congress."

Damn, I could get to actually like this guy. "For what it's worth, what I saw didn't look anything like the descriptions I'd heard of either brother—Thor's supposed to have red hair, for one. But here's the other thing about the fae." I continued. "Nothing is ever what it seems with them. Sure, I've met Odin as the head of Monoc Securities, but I've also met him as..." Whoops, almost let the Santa secret slip there, "...someone else, who looked completely different. So, if he wanted to..."

"He could adopt another, totally different persona as an alien monarch, and he'd look completely different." Coulson nodded. "I see. And so could his sons."

"Pretty much." I nodded. "Or create a whole new species, for all I know, of aliens with the names of his pantheon. He'd have motive, too. Related or not, your 'aliens' have been very good for old Eyepatch."

"How so?"

I shrugged. "Popularity. After hundreds of years, people are starting to look up 'Odin' in the encyclopedia again. Some are even starting to believe in him again. I have reason to believe that this could get him a lot of currency in the magical realm."

"But people are believing in him as an alien." Coulson argued. "Doesn't that change things?"

"It might actually have helped." Thomas suggested. "I mean, gods walking the earth, that's nonsense. Aliens walking the earth, that's a conspiracy theory that's going to fester on forum boards for forever."

Damn, I hadn't thought of that. "It's possible." I agreed. "It's the sort of sneaky thing the fae would do. Odin's more straightforward than most, but he's also smart as heck. I could see it." I debated whether to share another piece of information. "Heck, there's talk of other gods doing something like it now, just because of how well Odin's done."

"So we might start seeing Ra, Ares, Quetzalcoatl on earth now?" Coulson asked. He sighed. "That's beautiful. One of our cells was already pretty sure that Hercules was coming to earth."

"Hercules?" I cast about. I was pretty sure I'd never met Hercules, or anyone else in the Greek pantheon with one exception. There were rumors they ran some sort of school in New York, but nothing that'd ever been substantiated. "Can't say I know anything about that. I have met Hades, though. Pretty nice guy, but he almost never leaves his home. Unlike most of the Greek gods, he's more concerned with doing his job then messing around with us mortals. I also met a Maenad once, but you probably don't want to work them them. They spend all their time jinxing booze to encourage drunk and disorderly behavior - they're pretty much the reason drunken soccer hooligans exist. "

Coulson winced, as if disappointed. "Shoot." He looked at Murphy. "Looks like you'll have to get a team together after all, Agent Murphy."

That startled me. "What?"

Murphy actually blushed. I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the times I'd seen her do that. "I'm... the new head of Special Investigations." She reported. "At SHIELD."

"Seriously?" I sat back and blinked for a few moments. On the one hand, I was happy for Karrin, of course... she'd never been the same since she lost her old job, and I'd always known there was a part of her that still wanted to be a cop, not a vigilante. Technically she still would be, but ex-government vigilante organization was definitely a step up. As was "Head."

On the other hand... this was really not helping with my long-distance relationship anxieties. Neither was the fact that she was apparently going to be working for Mr. Gives-me-a-weird-feeling-I-can't place.

"Harry?" The others were looking at me strangely. "You've been quiet for five seconds. Something wrong?"

"Trying to think of a joke meshing 'Murphy' with 'Mulder and Scully.'" I answered, giving a contemplative frown. "Can't... quite get it to work."

Murphy snorted and threw a little clod of dirt at me.

"So..." I tried to think of something positive. "Good work?"

"It's not bad." Murphy shrugged. "Actually it's taken a bit of my workload off—Coulson provided tech support to help us better support the Paranet, which has helped us pick up a few of them as agents and others as regional consultants. And I've been getting in touch with 'Special Investigation' police units in other cities." She shrugged. "Most of them are pretty out in the cold with their own cities, so they're willing to work with an ex-cop."

"She's been very helpful in terms of networking and organizing." Coulson gave a pleased smile, and I felt rumble of irritation. "Already we practically have a whole new section, with global reach, most of whom aren't even on a regular payroll."

"The networks were always there." Murphy shot back. "You idiots were just clueless about them."

Coulson winced. Apparently that was a reference to an old argument. "So," I asked, as nonchalantly as possible, "How does that affect your work with the BFS?"

"So far, not a lot." Murphy shrugged. "They're basing the new Special Investigations place out of the castle, so it's really about the same."

I blinked. "Really? How does Marcone feel about that?" Marcone is a Chicago gangster more interested in making money than in dying from eldritch horrors, which is why he finances the BFS and essentially runs the castle they use.

"I spoke with Marcone." Coulson interposed, a little stiffly. Something told me he hadn't enjoyed the interview. "We managed to come to an understanding that..." he shrugged. "...left both of us unhappy, but not enough to keep complaining."

"Really." Marcone's better than most in his business about working with others, but again, ex-government watchdog agencies are a new high.

Coulson shrugged again. "I had an old friend in the underworld vouch for me. There's also talk—though Marcone didn't confirm it himself—that Chicago is under siege from the Maggia, an international crime syndicate." Coulson gave a wry smile. "So he also needs a certain amount of help."

Occasionally I forget that some of the people in the magical world have other things they do. Marcone's a gangster, but a lot of times I tend to lose track of the fact that that means he has plenty of ordinary enemies.

Then again, Marcone's got a crowd of undead Vikings for hitmen, plus at least one Valkyrie, so... "He'll be fine."

"Most likely." Coulson nodded. "But one can never have too many friends." He seemed to consider this a moment. "Or at least... mutually beneficial partnerships."

"Uh-huh." I answered, watching him. That was a pretty obvious lead-in. "Let me guess. And I should consider having more friends, right? Tell me, what mutual benefit do I get from this partnership?" They looked at me and I snorted. "This isn't the first time I've heard a employment pitch, you realize. You didn't come out to Demonreach for the scenery."

Coulson laughed and rubbed the back of his neck. "We don't want to recruit you per se, Mr. Dresden." He answered. "We're kind of a shiny-gadgets type of agency, and we hear those tend to blow up around you."

"True."

"Besides which, Agent Murphy says you have responsibilities on this island which mean you can't leave for more than a few days at a stretch before needing to return. Coupled with the shiny-gadgets-boom thing, that means you... really couldn't do anything for us." Coulson frowned. "Or really even tell us anything, without a boat ride or something. We can't even call you reliably, since you can't use cellphones and there's no landline to this island. So we'd rather not take you on, as a recruit or consultant."

"Fine by me," I said, letting out a huge sigh of relief. "I've got more commitments than I can comfortably ignore already." It was hard enough having to balance my responsibilities as Warden of the Council, Warden of Demonreach, and Knight of the Winter Court.

"What we WOULD like you to do is recommend some people who would be useful." Coulson added. "Thomas and Murphy have made a few suggestions already, but both of them agreed that you would know better."

I hmmm'd a little bit. "The thing is," I said, "most wizards don't have my sunny disposition or easy approachability. They don't have my good looks or sparkling intelligence either, but that's another matter."

"Or your humility." My brother deadpanned.

"Sad but true." I nodded. "The thing is, they're all leery of official attention, and they do their damnedest to stay out of human politics. It's even encouraged, at the Council level. I don't think they've done anything to 'meddle in muggle affairs' since World War II."

"World War II?" Coulson had a strange look on his face.

"Mostly the magical side." I told him. "Nothing to do with HYDRA. There was this guy named Kemmler... it's a long story."

"Kemmler?" Coulson leaned forward eagerly. "Heinrich Kemmler? One of the elite in Hitler's Thule society?"

I blinked at him. "You know about him?" Kemmler was the sort of dark secret that the Council had done their best to sweep under the carpet. And the Council had a lot of experience sweeping stuff under the carpet. It wasn't to say he was unknown, but it was to say that no ordinary person should have known about him. My weirdness detector went up a few notches.

"Johann Schmidt—the Red Skull, founder of HYDRA—consulted with him very closely in the early days." Coulson nodded. "It's thought that Kemmler was one of his major sources in locating the Tesseract. We could never find out very much about him, though. Was he really a necromancer?"

Kemmler hadn't been a necromancer. Kemmler had been the premiere necromancer of the past millennium, the sort of guy who makes Hitler look like a fluffy bunny by comparison. I mean, I'd never met the guy, but considering that my old amoral talking skull considered him to be a sick, evil man and Mab, queen of the cold-hearted Winter Court, the lady who once ordered me to kill her own daughter (For good reason, but still) openly referred to him as a monster and a madman, I felt it was a safe assessment. The White Council killed him seven times over, not just because he deserved it, but also because doing it only once hadn't worked. His final execution back in '61 — at the hands of the entire Council, not just the Wardens — involved guns, axes, shovels, ropes, a flamethrower, and several other extremes. He wasn't a guy with a lot of friends, is what I'm saying.

"Three of his pupils nearly caused a zombie apocalypse eight or nine Halloweens ago, so yeah, probably." My brother deadpanned.

"What?" Murphy glanced from one of us to another. "Who tried to start a what now?" Oh, that's right. She had been vacationing with Kincaid in Hawaii when that had happened.

I rubbed my eyes tiredly. "So your Red Skull was friends with this guy?"

"At the start. Their rivalry got to be pretty bitter toward the end... according to records, Kemmler and Schmidt had a falling out over the Tesseract, and they became terrible enemies."

"I'll bet." 'Terrible' didn't begin to describe an enemy like Kemmler. Probably he'd sent Schmidt to get the Tesseract for his own uses, and seen his use of it as a betrayal. I had a feeling that if this Schmidt hadn't kept that Tesseract darn close, he'd have been hit with a butt-load of incredibly painful spells.

"What's this about zombies?" Murphy asked. She had a very peeved look on her face. Murph doesn't like being kept in the dark about things.

"Later." I rubbed my forehead, thinking hard. "Did Kemmler have people in HYDRA?" I asked.

"A number of his people went over to help with the search for the Tesseract." Coulson answered.

"This is just a thought, but it's possible Kemmler actually did the magical world a solid." I said, rubbing my chin. "Either because of his infiltrators in the group, or through some magic curse or something" (It would probably have required Black Magic, but that sort of stuff was peanuts to a guy who started world wars just so he could play with more corpses) "Kemmler might have hid the magic world from HYDRA just to spite Schmidt. He probably saw Schmidt as more of a threat than the White Council, at the time."

"And in the process of hiding it from HYDRA, he hid it from SHIELD, too." Coulson nodded. "It fits. Every so often, our enemies solve our problems for us."

"It solves one, at least." I smiled at Coulson. "Though not completely. That sort of connection is definitely the sort of thing that might interest the Council. Not enough to give you firepower against HYDRA, but enough to get them to pay attention to you.

"Unless it turns out that Schmidt's people got a hold of some of Kemmler's necromancy textbooks before they parted ways. The Council's been trying to wipe out Kemmlerite necromancy and destroy all his works for decades. Even then, don't count on them offering to help with anything other than the Kemmlerites."

"That's all I'm asking for." Coulson spread his hands. "I'm not the sort to try and boss around a crowd of super-powered wizards, believe me. Honestly, all this magic stuff sort of freaks me out—I'd rather not use it more than I have to. But if there's anything we can do to help..." He shrugged. "...we're in the same world. We should try to have some sort of understanding so we're not getting into each other's way."

"You should probably start by talking with the different Wardens." I advised. "They're the day-to-day enforcers you're most likely to be working with or against. I'd begin with Ramirez."

"They mentioned him." Coulson nodded at Murphy and Thomas, who were also nodding. "The... Warden in charge of the Western seaboard, right?"

"Tex would be a good one to talk to also." I offered. "He's in charge of..."

"Texas. Yeah, I got it." Coulson looked amused.

I grinned in response. "Anyway, you'll probably want to talk to all of the Wardens at some point, just so you know each other and don't get in each other's way. But Ramirez is the friendliest, and most open, so he's the one you should start with. Then he can provide introductions and things will go much smoother."

"Ah." Coulson exchanged glances with Murphy and Thomas. "I was sort of hoping you would introduce us to the White Council." He answered.

I boggled at him. I've done a lot of boggling in my time, the price of working with people who often simply don't get how the magic world works. "What?"

"Not, like, actually bring us in to meet them." Coulson held up his hands. "We're not that stupid. But just... tell them about us. Let them know we're aware of the magic community, and we want to help."

"I'm not sure that would really recommend you to them." I frowned. "Again, wizards aren't fans of secretive agencies. That's sort of their thing, and they worry about copyright infringement. Plus, I'm not sure I can exaggerate how much I am not in the White Council's good books right now."

"You still have some friends." Murphy pointed out. "Plenty of good people still in that Council who respect you."

"Ramirez would still be better."

"If Ramirez comes to them, they'll find out you talked to us anyway, and ask why you never told them." Coulson looked a little smug, and I realized he was hardly a new hand at manipulating people. "Work it as a way of currying favor, if you like—warn them about us. Say you wanted to be sure they were alert to the danger."

I stared at the man. "You want me to deliberately set a bunch of ultra-powerful wizards with chips on their shoulders and huge judgmental complexes against you."

"If it helps this Ramirez come along with a positive report that completely discounts it, sure." Coulson smirked. "Worst case scenario, you'll look a little paranoid."

Paranoid isn't bad. Lots of famous wizards are paranoid, although technically it isn't paranoia when you actually do have curses and demons and various supernatural entities out to get you.

Finally I shrugged. "I can work with that," I said. "I'll send word on up to the White Council, let them know. Due warning, though..." I raised a finger. "Working with the White Council is always a one-way relationship. You may help them, but good luck getting them to help you. And they're not likely to be too happy about the fact that you're associated with an organization distantly connected to one of their biggest headaches." I had a feeling a soulgaze was in Coulson's future, in some form or another.

"Grumpy people are nothing new." Coulson shook his head. "I'm not expecting the council's help against HYDRA. I'm the newcomer to this rodeo. I just want to open some lines of communication." He hesitated. "That being said, we are really out of our depth in this whole magic business..."

I grinned. "I can think of a few wizards who might be able to give more practical help—Elaine Mallory, for one."

"Your ex?" Thomas blinked at me. Murphy frowned.

"She's a wizard-for-hire, like me." I shrugged. "Or like I used to be, anyway. More open to working with normals. And she's more accessible, so she should be easier to consult. She's also a shiny-gadgets-go-boom person, though, so..."

"We'll take precautions." Coulson nodded. "Is one of them this man, by any chance?" He brought a picture out of his coat—a white man with black close-cropped hair and a goatee. "His name is Steven Strange. We have reason to think he's part of the magical community, but we've yet to find anything about him."

I studied the picture and shook my head. "Sorry. Don't know him."

Coulson made a frustrated sound and pocketed the picture. "It figures. The only thing we've been able to get on him is the name 'Rashid,' and we don't even know what that means."

I froze. Rashid I knew. Anyone who was anyone in the magical world knew of Rashid, Senior member of the White Council, the Gatekeeper, one of the most powerful wizards in the cosmos, by title if not by name. Few people knew he was the literal Gatekeeper, the man responsible for keeping the Outsiders outside. I wanted desperately to ask Coulson for the picture again, to see if there was any resemblance. Was he family? An apprentice? A civilian disguise?

But asking would have been too suspicious. So I shook my head. "Sorry. Don't know anything about that either."

Coulson eyed me narrowly, and I got the feeling he'd been lied to by much better liars than me. But he just shrugged. "If you DO find anything out about him, be sure to tell him he was apparently on HYDRA's hit list."

"Sure." Another thing that might get the Council's attention. Though if this Steven Strange was at all connected to Rashid, I doubted he was ever in any real danger.

"And I don't suppose the name 'Ivy' means anything to you either."

Ivy, teenage girl and holder of the Archive, recorder of all written knowledge in the history of ever? "Nope, never heard that name before." Murphy looked a little cagy and just slightly freaked out. I got the impression this was something of a sticking point between her and Coulson.

"Fair enough." Coulson shrugged, standing. "I guess I can understand the desire to keep secrets, what with being a fugitive and all. Thanks for your help."

"If I see Odin, I'll ask about Thor." I grinned, standing also, and shaking his hand.

Coulson winced. "Please don't. He still thinks I'm dead, and I'd rather keep it that way."

My handshake froze. It was impossible, but maybe... "You died?" I asked. "For real?"

"Sort of?" He shrugged. "I mean, it's not like I remember much after getting stabbed through the chest. They tell me I was medically dead for several weeks." He shook his head. "It's... kind of complicated."

That was it. That was the weird vibe I was getting off of him, the strange connection gnawing at the back of my mind.

Resurrection isn't common, even in the wizarding world. Those who did manage to go to the other side and back (Without necromancy being involved), like me, tended to be at the center of very freaky stuff. (Granted, I had sort of been before, too, but dying had definitely upped the weirdness factor.) Somehow, the world tended to focus on them, make them the center of cataclysmic events.

And, apparently, they shared a weird connection that I'd never known about till now.

"Yeah." I nodded amiably. "Been there before." Coulson's eyes widened as he caught my meaning. I slapped him on the shoulder. "We'll have to talk more later, Phil."

He smiled back. "Definitely."

A/N: This chapter was co-written by Afalstein like the last one was, only this time he was the primary author while I did the revising when it was the other way around last time.