I nodded back to him and said, "Thanks."

I got into the SUV and headed out to speak to the only person in Chicago who knew as much about magic and death as I did.

Mortimer Lindquist had done pretty well for himself over the past couple of years, and he'd moved out of the little California-import stucco ranch house he'd been in the last time I'd gone to visit him. Now he was working out of a converted duplex in Bucktown. Mort leased both halves of the duplex, and ran his business on one side, with his home on the other. There were no cars in the business driveway, though he mostly operated at night. He must have already wrapped up for the evening. He had abandoned the faux-Gothic decor that had previously graced his place of business, which was a hopeful sign. I needed the help of someone with real skill, not a charlatan with a batch of gimmicks.

I parked the SUV in the business driveway, mowing down a patch of yellow pansies as I did. I wasn't used to driving something that big. The Beetle might be small and slow, but at least I knew exactly where its tires were going to go.

The lights were all out. I availed myself of the brass knocker hung on the residential door.

Fifteen minutes later, a bleary-looking little man answered. He was short, twenty or thirty pounds overweight, and had given up trying to conceal his receding hairline in favor of shaving his scalp completely bald. He was wrapped in a thick maroon bathrobe and wore grey slippers on his feet.

"It's three o'clock in the morning," Mort complained. "What the hell do you—" He saw my face and his eyes widened in panic. He hurried to shut the door.

I stabbed my oak staff into the doorway and stopped him from closing it. "Hi, Mort. Got a minute?"

"Go away, Dresden," the little man said. "Whatever it is you want, I don't have it."

I leaned on my staff and put on an affable smile. "Mort, after all we've been through together, I can't believe you'd speak to me like that."

Mort gestured furiously at a pale scar on his scalp. "The last time I had a conversation with you, I wound up with a concussion and fifteen stitches in my head."

"I need your help," I said.

"Ha," Mort said. "Thank you, but no. You might as well ask me to paint a target on my chest." He kicked at my staff, but not very hard. Those slippers wouldn't have protected his foot very well. "Get out, before something sees you here."

"Can't do that, Mort," I said. "There's black magic afoot. You know that, don't you?"

The little man stared at me in silence for a moment. Then he said, "Why do you think I want you gone? I don't want to be seen with you. I'm not involved."