"Mouse?" I asked.

There was a wet, snuffling sound by my ear, and Mouse licked my cheek.

"Good," I said. "Butters?"

There was silence.

Thomas looked at the backseat, frowning.

"Butters?" I repeated. "Heya, man. Earth to Butters."

Silence.

"Butters?" I asked.

There was a long pause. Then a slow inhalation. Then he said, in a very weak voice, "Polka will never die."

I felt my mouth stretch into a fierce grin. "Damn right it won't," I said.

"True." Thomas sighed. "Where are we going?"

"We can't go back there," I said. "And with the wards torn down, it wouldn't do us too much good anyway."

"Where, then?" Thomas asked.

I stopped at a stop sign and patted at my pockets for a moment. I found one of the two things I was looking for.

Thomas frowned at me. "Harry? What's wrong?"

"The copy of the numbers I made for Grevane," I said. "It's gone. Liver Spots must have grabbed it from me when we were tussling."

"Damn," Thomas said.

I found the key to Murphy's house in another pocket. "Okay. I've got a place we can hole up for a while, until we can figure out our next move. How bad is the cut?"

"Bleeder," Thomas said. "Looks worse than it is."

"Keep pressure on it," I said.

"Thank you, yes," Thomas said, though he sounded more amused than annoyed.

I got the Beetle moving again, frowning out the windows. "Hey," I said. "Do you guys notice something?"

Thomas peered around for a moment. "Not really. Too dark."

Butters drew in a sharp breath. His voice still unsteady, he said, "That's right. It's too dark." He pointed out one window. "That's where the skyline should be."

Thomas stared out. "It's gone dark."

"Lights are out," I said quietly. "Do you see any anywhere?"

Thomas looked around for a moment, then reported, "Looks like a fire off that way. Some headlights. Some police lights. The rest are…" He shook his head.

"What happened?" Butters whispered.

"So that's what Mab meant. They did this," I said. "The heirs of Kemmler."

"But why?" Thomas asked.

"They think that one of them is going to become a god tomorrow night. They're creating fear. Chaos. Helplessness."

"Why?"

"They're preparing the way."

Thomas didn't say anything. None of us did.

I can't speak for the others, but I was afraid.

The Beetle's tires whispered over the streets as I drove through the cold, lightless murk that had fallen over Chicago like a funeral shroud.

Chapter Twenty-four

Murphy's house had belonged to her grandmother. It was a dinky little place, and resided in a neighborhood built before Edison's lights went into vogue, and while some areas like that became ragged and run-down, this particular street looked more like some kind of historical real estate preserve, with well-kept lawns, trimmed trees, and tidy paint jobs on all the homes.