A ripple of gooseflesh washed up my arm, beginning on the back of my hand, and I jerked my fingers back in pure instinct. Huh. There were wards on the door, magical defenses. I hadn't expected that. Wards can do all kinds of things to an intruder, from suggesting that he turn around and leave, to giving him a stiff push away, to frying him like a bug zapper.

I took a moment to study the wards. They were a smooth patchwork of enchantment, probably the result of several lesser talents working together. Somebody like me can put up a ward that is like a huge iron wall. This was more like a curtain of tightly interwoven steel rings. For most purposes, both would serve fairly well-but with the right tool, the latter kind of wall is easily dealt with.

"And I'm the tool," I muttered. Then I thought about it, sighed, and shook my head. "One day," I told myself, "one brave and magnificent day, I will actually be cool."

I rested my fingertips lightly on the door and went over the wards in my thoughts. Aha. Had I tried to break in, the wards would have set off an enormous racket and a bunch of smoke, along with a sudden, intense sensation of claustrophobia. Fire alarms would have gone off, and sprinklers, and the authorities would have been summoned.

That was a nominally effective defense all by itself, but the claustrophobia bit was really masterful. The noise would trip off an instinctive adrenaline response, and that combined with the induced panic of the ward would send just about anything scurrying for the exit rather than take chances in what would have been a very noisy and crowded environment. That kind of subtle manipulation always works best amidst a flurry of distractions.

Washington's been doing it like that for decades.

I cut the wards off from their power source one at a time, trying to keep the damage to a minimum so that it would be easy to fix. I already felt bad enough over what I was about to do. Then, once the wards were off-line, I took a deep breath and leaned against the door with a sudden thrust of my legs and body. I'd been working out. The doorframe splintered and gave way, and I slipped quickly and quietly into Waldo Butters's apartment.

It was dark inside, and I didn't know it well enough to navigate without light. I left the door a little bit open so that the light from the hall would leak in. This was the dangerous part. If someone had heard the noise, they'd be calling the cops. I needed to be gone in the next five minutes.

I crossed the living room to the short hallway. Butters's bedroom was on the right, his computer room on the left. The bedroom door was closed. There was a faint light in the computer room. I entered. There were several computers set up around the walls of the room, which I knew Butters and company used for some kind of group computer game-related thingy they all did together. The computers were all turned off except for one, the biggest one in the corner, which sat facing out into the room. Butters called it the captain's chair. He sat there and coordinated some kind of game activity. Raids, I think they were called, and they went on into the wee hours. His job required him to work nights, and he claimed it helped him keep circadian rhythm to play video games on his off nights.

That monitor was on, and in the reflection in the glass of the room's single window, I could see that the screen had been divided into maybe a dozen sections, and every single one of them was playing a different  p**n ographic scenario.

A human skull sat on the table, facing the monitor, and faint orange flickers of light danced in its eyes. Despite its utter inability to form any expression, it somehow gave the impression of a happily glazed look.

I'd been in the room for about two seconds when the computer made an awful sound, coughed out a little puff of smoke, and the monitor screen went black. I winced. My fault. Wizards and technology don't get along so well, and the more advanced the technology is, the sooner something seems to go wrong-especially with electronics. Butters had been cobbling together a theory to explain why the world worked like that, but I'd drawn the line at covering my head in a tinfoil hat in the name of science.

The skull let out a startled, disappointed sound, and after several disoriented flickers, its eyelights panned around the room and landed on me.

"Harry!" said the skull. It didn't move its jaws to form the words or anything. They just came out. "Hell's bells, you're back from the dead?"

"From the mostly dead," I replied. "You made it out of Omaha Beach, huh?"

"You kidding?" Bob said. "The minute you were clear, I ran like a bunny and hid!"

"You could have taken that jerk," I said.

"Why would I want to?" Bob asked. "So when do we set up the new lab? And can I have broadband?" His eyes gleamed with avarice or something near it. "I need broadband, Harry."

"That's a computer thing, right?"

"Philistine," Bob the Skull muttered.

Bob wasn't a skull, per se. He was a spirit of air, or intellect, or one of any of a great many other terms used to describe such beings. The skull was the vessel that he inhabited, kind of like a djinni's bottle. Bob had been working as an assistant and adviser to wizards since before crossbows had gone out of style, and he'd forgotten more about the ins and outs of magical theory than I knew. He'd been my assistant and friend since I'd first come to Chicago.

I hadn't realized, until I actually heard his voice, how much I'd missed the demented little perv.

"When do we get to work?" Bob asked brightly.

"I am working," I said. "I need to talk to you."

"I'm all ears," Bob said. "Except for the ears part." Bob blinked. "Are you wearing a tux?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Tell me you did not get married."

"I didn't get married," I said. "Except for the whole Mab thing, which is creepy and weird. She spent the last three months trying to kill me once a day."

"Sounds like her style," Bob said. "How'd you get out of it?"

"Um," I said.

"Oh," Bob said. "Uh . . . oh. Maybe you should go, Harry."

"Relax," I said. "I know you've had your issues with Mab, but I'm the only one here."

"Yeah. That's kinda the part that bothers me."

I scowled at him. "Oh, come on. How long have you known me?"

"Harry . . . you're Mab's hit man."

"Yeah, but I'm not here to hit you," I said.

"You could be lying," Bob said. "Maybe the Sidhe can't lie, but you can."

"Hell's bells, I'm not lying."

"But how do I know that?"